The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace. - book reviews

ORBIS, Fall, 1997 by Harvey Sicherman

In January 1989, I was working as a consultant to the State Department, my principal task being to write the Senate confirmation testimony for incoming Secretary of State James A. Baker III. After reviewing my initial draft, one of Baker's confidantes took me aside. He understood, he said, that the statement had to give considerable weight to American interests in Europe. Nonetheless, the new administration was convinced that "the real action" would be in Asia. Europe, he declared, was "old hat" and not much would change there.

There was indeed to be real action in Asia. It came to be called the Tiananmen Square massacre and afterwards the Bush administration did very little with China. Meanwhile, in less than a year the "old hat" that was Europe transformed the entire international landscape as the collapse of the Soviet position in Germany presaged the end of the cold war and indeed of the USSR itself. All American - and Western - assumptions about the shape and future of international politics were swept away and the rest, as they say, is history.

And what history! German unification was about many things, but above all it was about surprises. The first was the peaceful nature of the change. Europe was the most heavily armed continent in the world. Its twentieth-century statesmen had distinguished themselves for fatal miscalculations, twice wrecking the continent with world wars that set new standards of barbarism. But this occasion offered a brilliant exception to the role. The second surprise was the complete lack of preparation in Washington and all NATO capitals for these events. No one in 1989 expected Germany to be unified so swiftly. Lack of preparation, however, did not paralyze the U.S. government. Instead it was to be pragmatism's finest hour as George Bush and his administration brought the cold war to a soft landing.

The third surprise was the performance of the principal players in the drama, especially those on the Western side. While Mikhail Gorbachev had a reputation for imaginative maneuvers, his counterparts in Bonn and Washington had heretofore been reckoned as solid but dull expositors of the conventional wisdom. Helmut Kohl was a cautious politician who reveled in local politics; George Bush, equally cautious, disdained "the vision thing." What an opportunity for Francois Mitterand, a man of heightened political sensibility, or Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady of the Falklands War and an early enthusiast for Gorbachev, to play outsize roles. Yet in the event, they proved less influential and even marginal to the case.

These surprises and their consequences still affect us. The sudden unification of Germany in NATO and the peaceful end of the Soviet empire reverberate strongly in the current debate over NATO expansion. Meanwhile, diplomats labor to erect a new European "security architecture," the flaccid successor to Harry S. Truman's "free world," Charles de Gaulle's "Europe des patries," Gorbachev's "Common European Home," and Bush's "Europe Whole and Free."

Each of the books under review grapples with these surprises and their consequences. Three offer accounts of the end of the cold war, while the fourth draws upon these events to discuss the future of Europe. One observation, however, should be made about all of them. This is history but not popular history. While one catches an occasional whiff of the street, the authors are all veterans of the conference room. Their accounts reflect a pale light: state papers rustle, computers clack, discussions are slow and banal, and carefully reviewed memoranda are stacked upon not so polished tables. One longs even for the sound of a quill scratching out Churchillian flourishes and vividly recording great events. But no matter. At least the pages of these particular histories are not tinted with blood.

Let us begin with Secretary of State Baker's massive tome, The Politics of Diplomacy, covering his tenure 1989-92. Baker came into office renowned for skillful tactics, among them his judicious - and successful - cultivation of a "good press" until it became clear that Bush would lose the 1992 election, whereupon the media became markedly critical. Baker never claimed a profound knowledge of foreign affairs, but he had a deep understanding of his president, enjoyed "schmoozing" the Congress, and picked his inner circle of advisers on merit rather than political background. He worked best when given the goal posts; within limits set by others, he knew how to get things done. Mrs. Thatcher, with her practiced eye, called him a "fixer."

The Baker memoirs are done in the modern style, aided by a team of researchers and written in part by that contradiction in terms, a "ghost" with a name - Thomas M. DeFranks. They did a good job, and the secretary's smooth voice rings true throughout. As in all such memoirs, the reader will not find the author anxious to discuss his mistakes. Secretaries of state tend to be proud, and by the end of their terms quite tired of critics. It is the smiley, wily Baker - he likes to win and almost always does - that we encounter in his memoirs.