7:00 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

This address considers the paradox of German power in the post-Cold War period. Despite the increase in territory and population attending unification, Germany has suffered a decline in its salience to American foreign policy calculations even though Europe’s importance to the United States remains relatively unchanged as does Germany’s importance to Europe. Professor Sperling argues that changes in external and internal environments have made Germany a relatively less critical partner for the United States - not even “Number Two” as Wolfram Hanrieder and Peter Katzenstein once argued. Those environmental changes are specific to the evolution of transatlantic security and economic relations which have disadvantaged or disempowered Germany; and there is a significant change in the strategic and economic orientation of the United States toward the Pacific (particularly China).

The argument proceeds in a stepwise fashion. First, Dr. Sperling charts the sources of Germany’s importance to the United States during the post-war period, 1945-1989. Germany’s role in the U.S. foreign policy calculus and value for the United States is assessed with respect to five criteria: the strategic, diplomatic, military, economic, and political. The importance of Germany is then categorized according to two variables: a) whether the importance is tangible (economic and military) or intangible (strategic, diplomatic, or domestic political coalitions); and b) whether the importance was positive (something Germany could do for the United States) or negative (something that Germany could do to the United States). Finally, the analysis is divided into five critical periods of German-American relations to discover elements of continuity and change: the immediate post war period (1947-1955), the onset of the economic miracle to the Nixon Doctrine (1959-1969), the Barre Report on monetary integration to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1969-1979), the second “Cold War” and the unification of Germany (1978-1990), and the post-Cold War period (1990-present).

James Sperling is a professor of political science at the University of Akron and an internationally recognized expert on German foreign policy. He received his M.A. from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. He also received graduate training at Edinburgh University (Scotland), the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), and as a Fulbright-Hays Scholar at the University of Kiel (Germany). Dr. Sperling is the coauthor of EU Security Governance (2007) and Recasting the European Order (1997). He has also edited or co-edited over 10 books, including Global Security Governance (2007) and Germany at Fifty-Five: Berlin ist nicht Bonn? (2004).

7:00 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008
Webster Hall Auditorium
Admission: free

A look at the path taken by Germany and its European partners from the destruction of the Second World War to today’s prosperity. How was Europe transformed from the world’s most violent continent to a place of peace and prosperity? Mr. Drautz will outline the role of Germany in the forging of the new European identity and in Europe’s path from war to peace and prosperity, the significance for Europe and the United States of the new, enlarged European Union, and how the EU can serve as a model for economic and political cooperation for other, often troubled, regions of the world.

Wolfgang Drautz has served as the German Consul General in Chicago since September 2005. After serving as both a lawyer and a judge early in his professional life, Mr. Drautz joined the German foreign service in 1976 and has held many interesting posts at German embassies, including twice in Moscow (1980 and 1994), and later in London (1998). As his first posting in the United States in 1984, Mr. Drautz served as the Deputy Consul General in Atlanta. In 1989, he was appointed as Germany’s permanent representative to NATO in Brussels. Throughout his career, he has served on a variety of key federal foreign office desks in Bonn and Berlin, including head of the Department for Consular Assistance before arriving in his present Chicago post as Consul General.

The jurisdiction of the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chicago covers 13 Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The Consulate fosters economic, trade, and business cooperation between Germany and the U.S., develops an exchange of students and scholars, provides information about German cultural activities and programs, and fosters bilateral contacts between non-governmental and civic organizations