Return of The German Question

By Charles Krauthammer

Say what you will about imperialism, it does have a way of keeping the natives from killing one another. This truth is entirely color-blind. What was true for, say, British India and East Africa is true for Europe. For 40 years the brutal Soviet dominion over Eastern Europe suppressed a myriad of nationalisms and kept things quiet. Now that Soviet power is in retreat, things are quiet no more.

As the Soviets retreat, America is sure to follow (that is, if the U.S. has not, in a mood of euphoric anticipation, left first). As the smoke and fog of the cold war dissipate, so does the postwar division of Europe. With the receding of the two empires, many long dead questions return -- the Hapsburg, the Balkan, even the Danzig question. But none are so formidable as the one the wartime Allies thought they had buried in Berlin in 1945, the German question.

Germany was conquered, then divided into two states designed to remain forever in a state of permanent, if cold, antagonism. Pax Americana and Pax Sovietica solved the German problem. To put it another way, the first achievement of NATO is that it contained the Soviet Union. The second achievement, underappreciated now but not for long, is that with the collaboration of the Soviet Union, it solved the German problem.

No longer. It may not yet be polite to say so, but the German question is back. The first widely noticed hint occurred this spring when the West German Foreign Minister, in a rare demonstration of German assertiveness, forced a change in the American position (and entirely undercut Britain) on the issue of short-range nuclear weapons. The issue is relatively minor, but the demonstration was not. It not only showed alliance willingness to accommodate German demands, it also showed German willingness to make them, and to make them purely and unashamedly in terms of its national interest.

This mood of independence was further on display during Mikhail Gorbachev's visit in April, when West Germans showed an enthusiasm for the Soviet leader so wild that the Economist aptly dubbed it a "Gorbasm." Now, with West Germany absorbing huge numbers of East German refugees, talk of reunification grows louder.

Germany's immediate aim is to rid itself of the burden of being Europe's battlefield. (Hence the campaign against short-range nuclear weapons and low- flying training aircraft.) Its medium-range interest is to rid itself of foreign soldiers, which would turn it from an instrument of alliance policy into an entirely independent entity of its own. But its long-range goal is reunification or, to paraphrase Secretary of State James Baker in another context, dreams of a Greater Germany.

That dream is -- there is no need to be diplomatic -- everybody's nightmare.

The problem is that a united Germany, or even a confederated Germany, would be the hegemonic power in an independent Europe. Consider the evidence. The West Germans have built from rubble the most powerful economy in all Europe. Yet an even greater feat may have been performed by the East Germans. They have created a relatively productive economy under the impossible, absurd conditions of Marxist economics. Put these two together and you have what all of Europe understands will be its dominant power.

This does not, of course, mean German armies retracing the path of the Wehrmacht. But it does mean Germany coming to dominate the political economy of the Continent. Would such a Germany continue to, in effect, sustain and subsidize much of the European Community? Would it accept in perpetuity its shrunken postwar borders? Would it continue to abjure nuclear weapons?

Americans assume that West Germany is a Western power. But in fact Germany has traditionally seen itself as a Central European power. How it will define itself, with whom it will ally itself, and how it will choose to assert its power are at the heart of the anxiety that attends the German question.

The answer lies in the race between two enormous historical transformations occurring on either side of Germany. To the west is the integration of the European Community, a project that Robert Hormats, former Assistant Secretary of State, correctly calls the greatest voluntary transfer of sovereignty in history. Europe '92, which will establish a single West European market and might lead to a common currency and ultimately some kind of political confederation, is the major force pulling Germany west. With the decline of NATO, the great hope of keeping Germany oriented to the West is to lock it into a web of intimate economic, and ultimately political, relations.

The other great pull is to the east. It comes from the gradual dissolution of the Soviet empire, which will draw Germany into the geopolitical and economic vacuum left behind. Europeans already talk of West Germany, with its proximity, historical ties and vast economic power, developing a minicolonial sphere of influence among its East European neighbors. There is even talk of the French trying quietly to renew prewar ties to the East (in the interwar period France had close ties with Poland and the countries of the Little Entente) as a flanking maneuver to contain any eastern expansion of German influence. Plus ca change.

Europe's future will be determined by the contest between these two sirens calling Germany to its destiny. Which is strong reason for the U.S. to encourage a successful West European integration. True, such a Europe might turn into a protectionist fortress unfriendly to the American economy. But a unified Europe with ties that bind Germany is the best hope for a tranquil post-cold war world. And say what you will about unification, it is an even better national tranquilizer than imperialism.