So long as Gorbachev threatened to block the new Germany’s participation in the Western Alliance, and insisted on maintaining Soviet troops in what is now in the German Democratic Republic, the need for NATO to maintain a vigorus defensive stance in Central Europe was clear. A substantial (though reduced) American force would have to remain in West Germany. But last week’s KohlGorbachev pact undercut the logic behind maintaining NATO forces on German soil. French President Francois Mitterrand drew the obvious conclusion: it would be “inappropriate” for French soldiers to remain in Germany.
American defense officials claimed to see a “new NATO,” in which the European allies would carry an increasing share of the military burden and enjoy an increasing measure of responsibility for Western defense. But few Europeans ever accepted the American notion that the alliance could evolve into a serious political institution. Advocates of European unity look to the European Community, not NATO. The military justification for maintaining a strong (and expensive) NATO force posture is now dimmer than ever. Some NATO “Atlanticists,” particularly in Britain and Scandinavia, actually regret the fading of the cold war, because they fear it will dangerously loosen the bonds between the United States and Europe.
Atlanticists and European federalists agree, though, that the Kohl-Gorbachev pact last week completed a dizzyingly rapid process in which the new Germany has replaced the Soviet Union as the chief potential threat to European stability. Only a very few follow Britain’s former trade minister, Nicholas Ridley, in comparing the new Germany to Hitler’s Third Reich. But apprehension about what Germans may ultimately do with their mounting wealth and power is widespread in Europe, especially in France, the Netherlands and Poland and among European Jews generally.
Late last year Mitterrand and other EC leaders tried to persuade Kohl to make German reunification a gradual process. But Kohl sensed that Germans both East and West yearned for unity on the quickest possible terms. He deliberately accelerated the unification process, and the allies soon realized it could not be slowed down. The only way they could diminish the threat of a hegemonic Germany, they reasoned, was to anchor it to Western institutions. Over the past few months they have stepped up the pace of European Community integration, the better to bind the Germans into the Western economy. They are now pressing to upgrade the 35-nation Conference on European Security and Cooperation (the East-West “Helsinki process”) as a framework for German containment.
Unclear picture: The Germans, unsurprisingly, reject the idea that they might seek to dominate Europe. Unification, they point out, will increase Germany’s population by only a quarter. The country’s share of West European GNP will rise from 26 percent to only 31 percent. The combined economies of Italy and Britain will outweigh the new Germany’s. Inside the EC, German initiatives can be voted down by an opposed majority. Even in East Europe, where it is assumed Germany will dominate economically, the picture is far from clear. Last week the Czechoslovak prime minister invited U.S. businesses to come to his country to “counterbalance” the Germans.
Moreover, Kohl has promised to cut the German armed forces from 667,000 to 370,000. The new Germany will forswear atomic, biological and chemical weapons. In addition, Kohl proposes to contribute tens of billions of Deutsche marks to further the economic reconstruction of East Germany and the Soviet Union. If the rich, new German state does take the lead in Europe, it will do so by offering a model of generosity and responsibility, not by bullying or throwing its economic weight around.
It would be hard to imagine what more the Germans could do to prove their good intentions. Yet the doubts remain. Again and again, modern European history has been marred by the Germans’ romantic nationalism and resulting expansionism. The tragic division of the Continent after World War II had at least one negative virtue: it ensured against the resurgence of a belligerent Germany. With last week’s Kohl-Gorbachev pact, the Yalta system virtually disappeared. What will replace it is still uncertain. But it is blindingly clear that the geopolitics of the new Europe will be determined, for good or for ill, by the character of the new Germany.
