Germany and the United States A "Special Relationship"

The study by Zelikow and Rice is a remarkable achievement. Both authors served on the National Security Council under President Bush and were active in shaping American policy in 1989 and 1990. They had unlimited access to all relevant State Department and White House documents. They also used, albeit to a far lesser extent, former East German and Soviet archival material while conducting numerous interviews with a variety of leading participants. As a result, the motives of non-American actors cannot be reconstructed with quite the same certainty as those of the Bush administration. Despite this qualification, Zelikow's and Rice's study is far superior to all previous work on the diplomacy of German reunification. Thanks to their early access to the documents, they are some twenty-five years ahead of the normal timetable for diplomatic histories, and their story is well-written and compelling throughout.