Above all, such a design must transcend the euphoria based on personal relationships that surrounded the summit. With all respect for the subtlety of President Bush’s conduct, it is important to recall that we have been there before. In 1956, the first postwar summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev was lauded by The New York Times as follows: “Other men might have played strength against strength. It was Mr. Eisenhower’s gift to draw others into the circle of his good will and to modify the attitudes if not the policies of the little band of visitors from the other side of the Elbe.” One year later ensued the concurrent crises of Suez and Hungary, and two years after that the Soviet ultimatum over Berlin.
The world has changed dramatically since 1955. The United States has achieved most of the objectives it set for itself then; the Soviet Union is in deep crisis. For opposite reasons, both need a design for a journey from where they are to where they have never been. At the same time, this is likely to be the last summit at which it was possible to discuss the future of Europe without European participation. As Europe becomes politically unified and security concerns less dominant, the special advantage of the superpowers–their nuclear supremacy–will become less and less relevant to the political issues.
This may explain why the discussion on Germany at the summit was so inconclusive. The Soviets, shackled by the categories of the past, advanced a plethora of ideas that have been staples of Soviet foreign policy since the days of Stalin: that Germany join both NATO and the Warsaw Pact; that Germany become neutral; that it remain under the political umbrella of NATO but leave the military organization; that the Soviet Union join NATO; that an all-European security system replace existing alliances. The staleness of these proposals suggests that the Soviets find it hard to abandon their old dream of separating the United States from Western Europe their number implies that the Soviets are groping for a way out.
The American response has been based on the assumption that in the end the Soviet Union will prefer to preserve NATO because Moscow looks to Washington to act as a restraint on a unified Germany. This is why, together with its allies, the United States has proposed a number of concessions to make the idea of German NATO membership more palatable. Among them: changing the emphasis of NATO to make it a more political institution; imposing a variety of arms limitations on Germany; asking a reunified Germany to provide economic assistance to the Soviet Union; having Germany pay for Soviet troops to remain in present-day East Germany for a specified period, and reducing the number of nuclear forces on German soil.
The loud Soviet expressions of fear, however well founded in the psyche of the Soviet people, are surely not without some design. It is difficult to believe that Soviet leaders in possession of well over 10,000 nuclear warheads and the largest tank force in the world genuinely fear another German attack. And if they do, they would be better off with German forces as a part of NATO, which would surely veto any such preposterous enterprise.
The Bush administration has rightly resisted the effort to organize Europe around the fear of Germany. A policy of isolation would throw Germany back on its own resources. It would repeat its historic tragedy of wandering between two worlds and disquieting both.
Those in the West who fall in with the Soviet definition of the German problem prevent Soviet consideration of realistic alternatives. While in the end the Soviet Union may well settle for a continuation of NATO in its present form, this is clearly not the Soviets’ first choice. However remarkable Gorbachev’s personality, he is a product of Russian history. And Russian foreign policy, at least since Peter the Great, has been a tale of expansion not only in Europe but to the gates of India and into northern China. Whenever a limit was reached, the Russian empire under tsar or commissar–relentlessly sought to undermine whatever it had defined as the competing power center: Sweden; the Austro-Hungarian Empire; China; Britain in the Middle East; or the United States after World War II.
Since the days of Stalin, the various Soviet proposals regarding Germany have had one common characteristic: they have sought to sever the organic security link between Europe and the United States and undercut the American military presence. And as soon as the U.S. military presence is removed, the Soviet Union’s huge nuclear arsenal and vast remaining tank armies would become strategically dominant. Then a partially recovered Soviet Union could attempt a deal that would keep Germany in check with Soviet nuclear strength while turning Germany into the chief engine of Soviet economic recovery. In this manner, the Soviet Union would have used its weakness to achieve the hegemony over Europe that eluded it when it seemed strong. And America would have acceded to the domination of Eurasia against which it fought two world wars.
Multiple concessions: Accepting the Soviet premise that Germany is the major threat to European security is likely to tempt the Soviets into seeking more ambitious goals than stability. And it would encourage a “compromise” whereby Germany would remain in NATO but NATO would be emasculated through multiple concessions to the Soviet Union. The reluctance to classify the Soviet Union as a potential military threat accentuates that danger. After the summit, the absurd Soviet proposal to join NATO was rejected far too gently with the extraordinary argument that the Soviet Union is not yet a democracy.
In their heart of hearts. Gorbachev and his advisors surely realize that they cannot stop German NATO membership and that their threat to keep troops in East Germany unilaterally is empty. Unification will occur because the so called German Democratic Republic will dissolve itself into the five states (“Lander”) out of which it was formed. Each of them would then seek admission to the Federal Republic under Article 23 of that country’s constitution. All existing laws and treaties would apply automatically, including German membership in NATO. A neutral status could come about only through the deliberate destruction of the Atlantic alliance.
Nor does the Soviet Union have a realistic option to keep its troops in East Germany, as Gorbachev has hinted. For one thing, the Warsaw Pact provides that the GDR’s obligations to it lapse after Germany is unified. At that point, Soviet forces in East Germany would no longer have any local counterpart to facilitate maneuvers, troop movements and other routine measures. Besides, reverting to the status of conqueror would mortgage Moscow’s long-term relationship with a unified Germany.
The most realistic security system therefore would have the following components:
(a) the creation of a neutral belt composed of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary–on the Austrian model;
(b) the creation on both sides of this zone–that is, in the Soviet Union and in Germany–of an area with strict limitations on types of weapons and numbers of men;
(c) special restrictions on the territory of present-day East Germany to ensure that I NATO forces are not stationed there. (If Poland preferred to remain in the Warsaw Pact, symmetry could be maintained by prohibiting the stationing of Warsaw Pact forces on its soil.)
In such a scheme, neither side could launch an attack without extensive armscontrol violations and military operations across several hundred miles of neutral territory, which would require months of preparation and give ample warning.
Such an approach would be both realistic and comprehensive. It would break the pattern of searching among the various Soviet schemes for the ones that do the least damage–an essentially negative enterprise. Though the Soviet Union is too traumatized by recent events to deviate from the familiar, it may in the end be relieved by an approach that changes the question. However put, a new approach of this kind requires a radical redesign of negotiations on conventional force reductions in Europe.
When these negotiations began, the political dividing line ran through the center of Germany, and Soviet ground forces were assumed to be vastly superior. Since then, the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe have collapsed; most of the new governments have asked the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces. For an interim period, symmetrical reduction of forces will provide a way for the Soviets to withdraw forces without losing face and without creating American obligations that go beyond what the budgetary process is likely to allow. But with every increment of withdrawal, the principle of symmetrical forces will become more firmly established. Arms control runs the risk of permitting more Soviet forces than the East European countries want. Alternatively, it could generate pressures on the United States to withdraw all its forces from Central Europe, thus jeopardizing NATO. This is why the present approach should be abandoned after the completion of the first stage of negotiations in favor of a scheme more in line with existing European political realities.
The design of a new security system for Europe and a new approach to arms control requires the closest consultation and coordination between Western Europe and the United States. In the foreseeable future, Soviet conventional forces will be needed at home. But its nuclear forces remain intact and are preponderant vis-a-vis Europe. Deterring nuclear blackmail requires a new strategy as well as a political relationship based on the premise that European and American destinies are inextricably linked.
European unity is rapidly advancing in the political field and will sooner or later encompass defense. Therefore, the existing institutions for transatlantic dialogue will grow increasingly fragile. At present, military issues are discussed within NATO; political issues will find their focal point in the European Community as Europe moves toward unity. The United States has sought to make German membership in NATO more palatable to the Soviets by hinting at a new political role for NATO. But aside from the difficulty of defining such a role, the proposal runs up against the old European suspicion that the United States is somehow manipulating NATO to undermine Europe’s emerging political identity. For in NATO, the United States deals with the European countries individually; the European Community is not represented as an institution.
By the same token, the United States is for all practical purposes excluded from the political deliberations of the European Community. The standard procedure is for the Council of Ministers to convey its conclusions to the United States through a Chairman who rotates every six months. But that foreign minister is in effect an instructed messenger, he has no negotiating flexibility. The best he can do is to transmit the American views to colleagues understandably reluctant to hazard their hard-won consensus. Thus, security issues are relegated to a forum inimical to European identity while political issues are handled in a forum that excludes the United States from meaningful participation.
A solution must be found to permit the European Community to participate in NATO discussions, and for the United States to be heard within the European Community before deliberations harden into formal decisions. Perhaps a new comprehensive treaty between the United States and the European Community will be in order when European unity has sufficiently progressed.
The Soviets are entitled to a meaningful voice in European affairs. But their proposal for a European security system embracing North America, Europe and the Soviet Union to replace existing alliances is better designed to undermine the Atlantic alliance than to establish a forum for cooperation. If everybody agreed on everything, no structure would be necessary. And if they differ, the “system” could dissolve into competing national states. It would in fact come rather close to the map of Europe prior to World War I. Europe would disintegrate in the name of a “common European house.”
There are, however, common objectives that unite rather than divide: the environment, worldwide economic growth, cultural exchange, human rights, and confidence-building measures on arms. All these are suitable for the kind of embracing institution Moscow has put forward.
These designs gain even greater relevance against the backdrop of the drama playing itself out inside the Soviet Union. In so fluid a situation, it is reckless to gear policy to one man; the only safe course is to put forward objectives and purposes to which any emerging Soviet leader could relate. The Western democracies will lose their bearings if they focus on personalities and equate amiability with harmony.
Though I am of the view that America has prevailed in the Cold War, I also believe that a new international order can emerge only if neither side claims victory and neither side feels defeated. And the best way to bring this about is to stop the debate about the issues of yesterday and redefine the questions that make up the agenda for the future.
