Kohl Takes On Topic A

By Daniel Benjamin

To his critics, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has been the perpetually shrinking statesman. Despite his formidable physical size, the Bonn leader has been derided for a political ineptitude that has time and again diminished his stature in West Germany and among Europe's leaders. Lacking the mettle of Margaret Thatcher, the imperial hauteur of Francois Mitterrand, and the wiles of his rival and coalition partner, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Kohl has made his mark as the Continent's veteran political survivor.

Last week, however, the Chancellor blindsided detractors and heads of state from Moscow to Washington with a far-reaching plan for binding together the two Germanys. By declaring his wish for a "confederation" of his country and East Germany just days before the Malta summit, Kohl pushed to the fore the issue that nearly everyone else would like to tippy-toe around, preferably for as long as possible.

Kohl's proposal, delivered in an uncharacteristically bold speech to the Bundestag, is predicated on the assumption that there will be free, multiparty elections in East Germany. Though the details remain nebulous, the outline provides for a massive infusion of economic aid from West Germany to follow soon after the polling. The two countries would then establish joint committees for determining what political and economic links would be established between them and how extensive the reunification ought to be. "Nobody knows how a reunified Germany will look," said Kohl. "But I am sure that unity will come if it is wanted by the German nation."

Given the demands of all those with an interest in reunification, charting a course on the issue requires any West German leader to navigate not with a telescope but with a kaleidoscope. One of Kohl's primary targets was West German voters, and he no doubt hoped to revive his dismal political fortunes. He faces a general election in December 1990, and at the moment his Christian Democratic Party's chances are rated as questionable. Since the tumultuous events leading up to the dismantling of the Berlin Wall began last August, Kohl has been attacked relentlessly for a flat-footed response to a historic moment. When he appeared on the steps of the Schoneberg town hall in Berlin on the night after the Wall was breached, millions of TV viewers saw a flustered and irate Kohl as he was heckled by an unfriendly crowd.

This time Kohl got the better of it. His speech was interrupted with applause by supporters and opponents, and his party's main rival, the Social Democratic Party, at first had no choice but to endorse the speech. Later in the week, though, when the Bundestag formally approved the plan, the SPD began feeling its politics again and abstained from the voting. Kohl also seized the high ground from the far-right Republican Party, which has issued absurd calls for complete German reunification to 1937's borders, which now include parts of Poland. Kohl reassured Germans across much of the political spectrum as well as Germany watchers around the world by emphasizing the term confederation. With its explicit echoes of the Zollverein, the customs union of German states that existed during the 19th century before Bismarck's unification of the nation, the word summoned an image of a large but unthreatening German entity.

The implied restraint -- no single, mammoth German state was ever conjured in the speech -- seemed to appeal to many of Bonn's allies, as did the fact that the text betrayed no inclination for West Germany to stray from the folds of NATO or the European Community. The U.S. reacted positively, though it did not endorse Kohl's plan. State Department spokesman Margaret Tutwiler said that "it should be no cause for concern that the Chancellor has laid out his vision for the future of Germany." The presentation did surprise Western capitals in one regard: Kohl had consulted none of them -- not even Paris, London and Washington, which, together with Moscow, are empowered by the postwar settlement to determine the conditions of reunification. His decision not to consult was a shrewd signal to everyone -- including, again, West German voters -- that reunification is pre-eminently a matter for Germans to decide.

The reaction in East Germany, another audience whose interests Kohl undoubtedly weighed, was more mixed. The parliament in East Berlin fulfilled one of Kohl's prerequisites -- for its own purposes, to be sure, not in order to please Kohl -- by eliminating the Communist Party's monopoly of power. But East German leader Egon Krenz told TIME that "so long as both states remain in their political and military alliances, a confederation of the two states is simply not possible." Several of the country's new opposition parties also weighed in against the Kohl scheme because of their desire to maintain some kind of separate, reformed socialist state. Even so, Kohl may have many more sympathizers whose views have not been articulated in press conferences. In pro-democracy demonstrations in Leipzig during the past few weeks, banners proclaiming GERMANY, ONE COUNTRY bobbed through the crowd.

There was one unambiguously negative response. As he prepared to leave for Malta, Mikhail Gorbachev named no names but warned against "clumsy behavior or provocative statements." Faced with the paradox of how to hold on to the Soviet Union's most strategically and economically valuable ally now that all the satellites have been freed from their confining orbits, Gorbachev warned that "any attempt to extract selfish benefits from these events ((is)) fraught with chaos." Kohl's next and far more difficult task is to convince Gorbachev -- and many who silently think like him -- that chaos is just what his plan will avert.

With reporting by Ken Olsen/Bonn and Frederick Ungeheuer/Berlin