Ein volk, ein reich, ein furor - German reunification

National Review, Oct 27, 1989 by Brian Crozier

BONN-The German Democratic Republic has even less claim to legitimacy than Stalin's other Eastern European satellites: it is the rump of an artificially divided country. But it may not be with us forever. Today, in the wake of collapse and bankruptcy in the USSR, talk of German reunification sounds less unrealistic than even a few weeks ago.

The spectacle of East Germans mostly young, active, and successfull families-fleeing to the German Federal Republic is intoxicating. But let us not forget that the root of that word means poison. In small doses, they say, cocaine makes you feel good; in large, euphoria takes over. I confess that I would feel easier

than I do about the prospect of a united Germany if the politicians in Bonn were more impressive. Chancellor Kohl doesn't seem to mind when he is described as a "populist"; and he is not the only pragmatist in high office in the West. As for the Social Democratic opposition (SPD), frankly, it scares me.

For some years, when Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was running the SPD, the FRG seemed sound and staunch. One could even develop temporary amnesia over Willy Brandt and his Ostpolitik, which, among other things, had given the Soviet Union formal recognition of the East German regime. Yet even Schmidtwho, after all, had been the first West

German leader to take public note of the deadly threat of the Soviet SS-20s was powerless to halt the drift toward neutralism in his own party. As if to celebrate his impending retirement, the SPD decided, at its party congress in April 1982, to adopt a new policy of "security partnership with the States of the East." Nor was this a timid change of course: support was overwhelming.

Surprising? Not really. The rebellious students of the 1960s, products of the "long march through the institutions," now run the SPD. The new policy translated as a commitment to quit NATO.

That is bad enough. But when Chancellor Kohl came back late last year from his trip to Moscow, he advocated support for key Soviet proposals, such as meetings between the ministers of the EEC and the Come-con countries, and of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Schmidt's successor as SPD chairman, Hans-Jochen Vogel, congratulated Kohl for adopting the SPD's own policy toward the USSR. The hysterically enthusiastic public welcome for President Gorbachev on his West German visit in June underlined the euphoric angle.

The all-German perspective, however, changes as fast as the pace of the amazing events in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The weakening of the Soviet power center brings two contradictory consequences: it makes the prospect of One Germany more concrete, and the danger of Soviet military intervention less likely.

Although Mikhail Gorbachev has not formally renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, he is tacitly conceding that it no longer has compulsive force. Under any of his predecessors the Red Army would long since have stepped in to prevent the Poles from giving themselves a Solidarity government and the Hungarians from tolerating non-Communist parties and sabotaging the Berlin Wall. The key, as ever, is still in Moscow, but in quite a different sense from the familiar one of the past 45 years.

Let us look at a possible scenario. The wave of discontent in the USSR has already reached such a pitch that the possibility of uncontrollable chaos and even of civil war can no longer be discounted. The ruling party is losing its grip. It would no longer be unthinkable for the Red Prussians of

East Germany to drift with the Polish/Hungarian tide. German reunification would then be a possible option, in conditions of maximum advantage to the West.

In such conditions, NATO would lose its meaning and purpose. Similarly, the SPD policy of a "security partnership with the States of the East" would become irrelevant.

The Russians and Ukrainians, the Georgians and Azerbaidzhanis, the Uzbeks and Kazakhs, etc., would be sorting out their own allegiances, probably with the shedding of much blood. As for President Gorbachev's common European home," it would acquire a new meaning. I, for one, do

not find it an intellectual strain to envision an enlarged European Community including the unified Germany, Poland, and Hungary, for a start.

For the West the strategic priority is a wider vision of Europe: wider than the petty commercial Europe of the Brussels bureaucrats; and geographically wider, too. Let the Europe of 1992 find room for Moscow's collapsing satrapies. But let the West Germans calm down. Euphoria is an enemy. The contemporary equivalent of Cromwell's keep your powder dry" is a firm and united commitment to NATO. The seenario hasn't happened yet.