Europe East Meets West

By Bruce W. Nelan

Great issues of statecraft normally require great deliberation. Since the U.S. and the Soviet Union opened talks on controlling the growth of their strategic nuclear arsenals in 1969, only two limited treaties have been signed, the last one in 1979. East-West negotiations on reducing conventional armies in Europe began in Vienna and have yet to reach any agreements. Members of the European Community have been working toward economic integration, scheduled for 1992, since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957.

But that was the postwar world; this is the post-cold war world, and things are dizzyingly different. Europe has been transformed by the retreat of Soviet imperial power, the collapse of Communist governments in the center of the Continent and the evaporation of the Warsaw Pact. The blinding pace of events actually accelerated last week, clearing the way for the unification of Germany, a new European security system and a 35-nation conference to ratify the reconstruction -- all before the end of this year.

Only three weeks ago, President George Bush proposed cutting Soviet and American troop levels in the heart of Europe to 195,000 each, with the U.S. allowed an extra 30,000 in bases elsewhere in Europe. The following week Moscow said no, insisting on absolute parity. Last week, faced with demands for total withdrawal of Soviet troops from the soil of several East European allies, Moscow agreed. "We're dealing with historic change," Bush said. "It's very, very fast. We weren't aware on Monday that ((we)) were going to have a deal on Tuesday."

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began the year opposed to German unification but unexpectedly backed East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow's proposal earlier this month for a united, neutral country. Gorbachev then agreed with visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that unification is something for the Germans to work out among themselves, and he seemed to waver even on the principle of neutrality. Two weeks ago, Kohl proposed a monetary union with East Germany. By last week that suggestion had already become official policy on both sides of what used to be the Berlin Wall.

Since that wall was breached in November, German unification has usually been described as inevitable. Now it is considered imminent. NATO and Warsaw Pact Foreign Ministers gathered last week in Ottawa to discuss and quickly agree to Open Skies, a newly revived Eisenhower-era proposal that will allow unarmed planes to monitor military activities throughout the two alliances. Even as the formal meetings were going on, ministers of the two Germanys and the four victorious Allies of World War II, which retain some legal rights in Germany because no peace treaty has ever been signed, ran an almost continuous series of bilateral and multilateral talks in side rooms, corridors and hotel suites. They focused on how to impose order on the rush toward unification and reassure the nations that are most unsettled by the prospect. They agreed, said British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, on "a framework for avoiding free-fall."

What they came up with is a scheme insiders have dubbed "two plus four," which calls first for the governments of the two Germanys to meet, probably just after the March 18 elections in East Germany. They are to make internal arrangements for political and economic merger. When those have been agreed on, the four World War II powers -- the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain and France -- will join the discussions to resolve the external aspects of unification: the complicated issues of Germany's relationship to existing alliances, what troops may be stationed on German soil, formal recognition and security guarantees for the present borders. To seal the process, the 35- nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which came together in Helsinki in 1975, would meet at summit level late this year.

Actual unification might be simpler than it appears. Article 23 of West German Basic Law, the country's constitution, provides that other German states can simply accede to the Federal Republic. Some legal experts in Bonn interpret that to mean that East Germany or its individual states can simply announce that they are joining the West. If the East were to choose the route of Article 23, the Munich daily Suddeutsche Zeitung observed, "reunification through Anschluss would hit the Federal Republic like a thunderbolt." The rest of Europe would feel it too.

Many Europeans are apprehensive about reassembling a Germany of 77 million people in the center of the Continent. The Soviets, who estimate they lost 26 million people in their Great Patriotic War against the Nazis, have been the most vehement. If they were able, the Soviets would prevent unification altogether. That is impossible in view of Gorbachev's myriad problems, so they have tried to slow the process and attach conditions. When the "four" join the negotiations of the "two" in a few weeks, Moscow is expected to continue to argue for neutralization.

"No one doubts the right of Germans to self-determination," said Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in Ottawa last week. "But Germany's neighbors are entitled to guarantees that a united Germany will not be a threat to them, that it will not seek to revise European borders and that it will not see a rebirth of Nazism and fascism."

Time is probably all Moscow can gain by foot dragging, and perhaps not much of that. Gorbachev is too preoccupied with his declining economy and ethnic warfare in several republics to try single-handedly to remake Europe. Some 390,000 Soviet troops are still based in East Germany, but in practical terms they are much more likely to serve as part of a future security guarantee than as a weapon for working Moscow's political will.

The course of German events is a clear demonstration of how weak Soviet influence has become. The cold war's first frosts were felt in the months after V-E day in 1945 over Soviet attempts to force the Allies out of Berlin and consolidate Soviet control over Germany. The Soviets were determined that the Germans would never rise again and that their obedient Prussian and Saxon servants would rule permanently in East Germany. As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union could influence events only as long as it was willing to use its military power.

Shevardnadze said last week, "I think that the ideal solution would be a neutral Germany. How realistic it is is a question." The answer is, not very realistic at all. A Germany separated from NATO and heavily armed against all comers would be a very large cannon loose on Europe's deck, more worrisome to Moscow than it would be if it were still inside the alliance.

Three East European countries want no part of the Soviet stand. "I don't think it is a practical proposition," said Polish Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski. "Through neutrality you might easily isolate that economic giant and create a situation where Germany tries to become a power or a superpower." He said Poland would support an arrangement under which Germany remained in NATO if Western troops did not move forward into what is now East Germany. Hungary and Czechoslovakia supported the Poles.

That exact proposal has been advanced by West German Foreign Minister Hans- Dietrich Genscher. Under the Genscher plan, Germany would remain in NATO, but the alliance would undertake not to move any military units eastward after unification. It was only after a reassuring two-hour discussion with Genscher that Shevardnadze agreed to the two-plus-four formula, and U.S. officials say the Soviets have been more flexible in private than in public. In London a high-ranking British diplomat said, "They are already talking to us as if it were a fait accompli." Said a senior Soviet diplomat: "We of course would prefer a neutral Germany under our influence. If that cannot be . . . we would prefer the Genscher plan to an unanchored neutral Germany on its own. It is better to have it tied to NATO in some form than loose on its own."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov said in Moscow that the Soviet Union wants guarantees that Germany will pose no military threat. Neutrality is one way to achieve that goal -- but not the only way. "Our concern," he added, "is that war never again be unleashed from German soil." Western diplomats believe the Genscher plan will eventually carry the day, with Moscow reluctantly going along.

Most of the concerns about German unity have traditionally come from Moscow, but anti-German sentiment has by no means disappeared in Western Europe, despite nearly four decades of close cooperation inside the European Community. A Dutch official, who asked not to be identified, said last week, "Except for the Germans, no one in Europe wants reunification." British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has given broad hints of her feelings. At a dinner at 10 Downing Street in honor of Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki last week, she said the developments in Europe "may stir deeply felt anxieties." Poland and Britain alike "have had experiences in this century which have left their mark and which we are determined should not happen again." Although Thatcher assured Genscher later in the week that she will support his plan in the spirit of allied unity, she has also agreed with French President Francois Mitterrand that some of their countries' troops should stay in Germany even if American forces withdraw.

A recent poll indicates that 61% of the French favor German unification (vs. 45% of the British), but Paris officials are not enthusiastic. Said Foreign Minister Roland Dumas: "I took note of the remark of one East German who said, 'Our friendly neighbors should understand the desire of Germans for reunification.' I am tempted to answer him, 'Germans should also understand the worries of their friendly neighbors.' " Mitterrand last week conceded "the Germans' fundamental right to self-determination." But then he quickly added, "That said, the Germans must take into consideration the engagements that bind us to each other, to European security, to the future of the Community, to European equilibrium."

Dominique Moisi, co-founder of the French Institute for International Relations, finds that anti-German attitudes have become "rather fashionable among the French elite." The "climate of opinion," he says, is "moving in the wrong direction. We are beginning to see Germany presented as the new Japan within Europe. Japan is a code word for something alien, something non- European." He believes, on the contrary, that Germany is a "truly European power" and its unification will be a "positive thing."

Aside from their worry that a predilection for fascism and aggression might somehow lurk in German genes, Europeans are concerned about their economic future. The powerful $1.2 trillion West German economy already dominates the twelve-nation organization. Some members believe the addition of 16 million hardworking East Germans will increase that control, while others fret that Bonn's expected preoccupation with rebuilding the worn-out infrastructure in the eastern regions will delay European integration.

The President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, is in the latter group. He told the European Parliament last week, "I am haunted by anxiety as well as by hope. Will the Community be pushed to the sidelines, or will it be the pole and magnet for finding a solution to the German question?" Apparently concerned that the Community could be overshadowed by the planned 35-nation summit later this year, Delors proposed calling an E.C. summit immediately after East German elections in March.

West German officials have presented a strong defense of their motives and tried to put down the fears emanating from East and West. "We are aware of the historical dimension of this process," Genscher said in Ottawa, and that includes "remembering all the suffering inflicted on other nations in the name of Germany. We seek unification in the context of integration in the European Community, East-West partnership for stability, the building of a common European home and the creation of a peaceful order throughout Europe." Genscher joined with Shevardnadze in quoting Thomas Mann: "We seek a European Germany, not a German Europe."

To neighbors who demand guarantees for their borders, Genscher said the united Germany will include the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and the four sectors of Berlin -- "no less and no more. We do not have any territorial claims against any of our neighbors." Said Chancellor Kohl: " Germany must not thwart European integration. What happens next must not adversely affect the stability of Europe."

Germans have been offering reassurances to skeptical neighbors for decades without fully persuading them that the "same old Germans" are no more than ghosts of a rejected past. More than half of West Germans have been born since the end of World War II, and the theory of unchanging national character is demonstrably unscientific. In any case, the Federal Republic has operated a healthy and vigorous democracy for more than 30 years. As former Chancellor Willy Brandt has said, while it is true that there are nationalistic, right- wing groups in Germany, such movements also exist in East European countries, and the Soviet Union is home to the rightist, anti-Semitic Pamyat organization.

Meinhard Miegel, director of Bonn's Institute for Economic and Social Research, argues that although suspicion of Germany is understandable, it is unfounded. The Germans have "paid a high price for the lessons of history and have created one of the most liberal and democratic societies" in the world, he says.

Furthermore, says Miegel, the concerns about Germany's economic dominance of the European Community are overstated. "A sober examination," he says, "reveals that this economic giant is by European standards a medium-size country in which the population is declining and at the same time beginning to age."

Arguments, no matter how logical, are unlikely to ease the Germanophobia that still afflicts Europe. But such anxieties are fortunately not driving the governments of East and West in the wrong direction. They are not trying to stop the movement toward unification. All have formally upheld the German right to self-determination and have pushed to the back of their minds the dark shadows of two world wars. They have promised to unite what they hope will be a new Germany. One way to make certain that the result is a European Germany will be for the Europeans to complete the unification blueprint they agreed on in Ottawa last week.

With reporting by William Mader/London, Christopher Ogden with Baker and Ken Olsen/Bonn