Military expenditures—dollar figure: $57 million (1998)
Military expenditures—percent of GDP: 1% (1998)
Military—note: a CIS peacekeeping force consisting of Russian troops is deployed in the Abkhazia region of Georgia together with a UN military observer group; a Russian peacekeeping battalion is deployed in South Ossetia
Transnational Issues
Disputes—international: none
Illicit drugs: limited cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy, mostly for domestic consumption; used as transshipment point for opiates via Central Asia to Western Europe
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@Germany ———-
Introduction
Background: Germany—first united in 1871?suffered defeats in successive world wars and was occupied by the victorious Allied powers of the US, UK, France, and the Soviet Union in 1945. With the beginning of the Cold War and increasing tension between the US and Soviet Union, two German states were formed in 1949: the western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). The newly democratic FRG embedded itself in key Western economic and security organizations, the EU and NATO, while the Communist GDR was on the front line of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. The decline of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War cleared the path for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German re-unification in 1990. Germany has expended considerable funds—roughly $100 billion a year—in subsequent years working to bring eastern productivity and wages up to western standards, with mixed results. Unemployment—which in the east is nearly double that in the west—has grown over the last several years, primarily as a result of structural problems like an inflexible labor market. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other members of the EU formed a common European currency, the euro, and the German government is now looking toward reform of the EU budget and enlargement of the Union into Central Europe.