Playing the German card - Soviet-German Joint Declaration

National Review, July 14, 1989

WRAPPED IN PLATITUDES about the rights of individuals as the "central element" of politics and the "right of peoples to self-determination"-principles still, comprehensively denied by Gorbachev's USSRthe Soviet-German Joint Declaration, signed at the outset of Gorbachev's campaign swing through West Germany, envisions a dramatic expansion of economic ties between the two countries. The Bonn government will actually guarantee German investments in the Soviet Union-thereby transferring the risks of doing business there from private firms and banks to taxpayers. No matter how unprofitable, how ill-advised, how inimical to Western interests it might be for the West to bail out the Soviet-bloc economies, the German taxpayer will make it risk-free to German entrepreneurs.

It would be naive to believe that these arrangements-and the subsidized advantage they will afford German capitalists vis-a-vis their counterparts from other Western nations-will not produce intense pressure for similar credit and investment guarantees from Rome, London, Tokyo, and even Washington. The cumulative effect will be a massive infusion of capital, high technology, and managerial knowhow into Soviet hands, despite the devastating consequences such transfers will have for Western security. In short, when it comes to Gorbachev's notions of a "common European home," Bonn is prepared to hold the mortgage, make the down-payment, and finance the construction at below-market rates.

The German policy entails a significant leap of faith, given the fact that the Soviet Union's military power and the priority of access it enjoys to resources and imported technology belie the Soviets' undertaking in the Joint Declaration that "war is no longer a tool of politics." It is the more ironic coming at the very moment when China is so palpably demonstrating the absurdity of Genscherism's central premise, namely that economic and financial relations will, of necessity, transform totalitarian Communist regimes and should be embarked upon without waiting for fundamental political reform. We must be mindful of this, as the infatuation with Gorbachev enables him to play a dangerous "German card" aimed at encouraging inattention to Western defense requirements and undermining present arrangements for controlling strategic trade and credits to the Soviet bloc.