TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041392/0413000.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 15KB | 285 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 34

EUROPE

The New Germany Flexes Its Muscles


After 45 years of self-effacement, a reunified nation begins to
assert its power. The neighbors aren't too happy about that.

By JAMES O. JACKSON/BONN -- With reporting by William Mader/
London, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris


    To much of Europe, modern Germany resembles a child of
doubtful lineage adopted as an infant into a loving family: the
child has been good, obedient and industrious, but friends and
neighbors are worried that evil genes may still lurk beneath a
well-mannered surface -- all the more so now that the child has
become an adult.

    And what a powerful grownup it has become. United Germany,
with 80 million citizens and Europe's largest economy, is
asserting itself as never before in postwar history. It is
assuming a forceful leadership role in European foreign policy
even as the Bundesbank rules Europe's economic roost. Germany
has had a leading role in the task of guiding the former Soviet
Union through its postcommunist crisis; it was Chancellor Helmut
Kohl who, far more than George Bush, pushed for last week's $24
billion Group of Seven aid package for Boris Yeltsin's Russian
government. And German firms are grabbing up many of the best
business opportunities in the emerging market economies of
Central Europe.

    At U.N. headquarters in New York City there has been talk
of giving Germany a permanent role on the Security Council --
either directly, with a seat of its own, or by establishing a
European seat, which the Germans would almost certainly
dominate. "What we see -- some among us with a shudder -- is
Germany taking the helm in Europe," says James Rollo of London's
Royal Institute of International Affairs.

    This is not exactly what the neighbors had in mind. The
very idea of NATO, the E.C. and other postwar institutions has
been to lock Germany into a European structure, not the other
way around. Last December's E.C. summit in the Dutch city of
Maastricht was supposed to nail down the roof of a house that
would contain and control Germany as a cooperative, pacific and
co-equal member of the European family. But in the aftermath of
Maastricht, Germany has broken ranks on issues large and small,
upsetting and sometimes frightening its allies.

    When Germany unilaterally last month halted all weapons
shipments to Turkey, a NATO ally, because some of them had been
used against Kurdish rebels, the Turkish reaction was furious.
An Istanbul newspaper caricatured Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich
Genscher wearing a swastika, and Turkish President Turgut Ozal
darkly warned that "Germany changed a lot after unification. It
is as if it is trying to intervene in everything, interfere
with everyone, trying to prove it is a great power. In the
past, Hitler's Germany did the same thing." The attack was
intemperate and unfair -- it was Turkey that had been behaving
brutally, not Germany -- and anger with the Ankara government
ran so high in Germany that Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg
resigned for having failed to stop the arms shipments earlier.
Kohl rightly rejected Ozal's "tone and content."

    Yet only two days earlier, Kohl himself had gratuitously
disturbed the skeletons of the past when he hosted a cordial
lunch in Munich for Austrian President Kurt Waldheim. That made
him the first Western leader to meet Waldheim outside Austria,
breaking the diplomatic isolation imposed on the Austrian
President for his suspected knowledge of and involvement in
wartime deportations to Nazi labor camps. Kohl brooked no
criticism. "It's up to me as Chancellor to decide whom I'll meet
in Munich," he growled. "I don't need any advice."

    Waldheim aside, Bonn's behavior upsets its allies not
because it is necessarily wrong. Turkey's attacks on Kurdish
rebels are deeply troubling to all its NATO allies, and Germany
certainly has a right to object and even to withhold arms. What
has changed is Germany's style. The old, far more modest West
Germany would have worked quietly behind the scenes to obtain
allied consensus on arms transfers or to persuade Turkey to
behave less brutally. Not now, and perhaps never again. "Germany
is reflecting its power," says Rollo. "It is confident enough
to act on its own."

   Since Maastricht there has been a growing sense of
irritation among Germany's neighbors on a variety of issues. The
ink on the Maastricht agreement was hardly dry before Bonn
pressured -- some say bullied -- the rest of the E.C. into
recognizing the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Croatia and
Slovenia. Most of the 12 preferred to wait to give E.C.
negotiators a chance to implement a cease-fire, but Germany
forced a decision by threatening to go it alone. Then, just
before Christmas, the Bundesbank suddenly raised its interest
rates, compelling most of the rest of Western Europe to follow
at a time when governments were eager to ease credit to help
their economies recover from recession. Many Europeans saw the
bank's unilateral move as a warning that economic and monetary
union will simply replace de facto German economic dominance
with de jure economic hegemony.

    Lately, just about everything the Germans do seems to
cause annoyance. When Kohl urged that German be elevated to the
status of a working language in the E.C., alongside English and
French, a sen ior British diplomat sniffed, "It was a bit
presumptuous of them to demand everything at once." Countered
Kohl, who speaks neither English nor French: "Whether one likes
to hear it or not, it [German] is now the most widely spoken
language in the E.C." While that may be a slight exaggeration,
what the Germans call their Sprachraum (linguistic space) does
include more than 100 million people in Germany and in potential
E.C. members Austria and Switzerland, plus millions more in
Eastern Europe whose main second language is German.

    These signs of assertiveness are the more unsettling
because they represent such a departure from Germany's postwar
behavior. For four decades its foreign policy has been one of
self-effacing followership, never leadership. To Germans, the
worst political sin was Alleingang, going it alone. Boastfulness
was bad, even when such accomplishments as the postwar economic
miracle justified a certain degree of pride; any reference to
success was routinely followed by a word of gratitude to the
Western Allies and a word of apology for the Nazi past.

    Now the German inclination is to savor success without
dwelling on the past. Kohl, whose physical bulk and blunt manner
seem to personify the big new Germany, called the Yugoslavia
decision "a success for German foreign policy." Genscher flatly
said, "We were right!" For their part, Germans feel frustrated
when they are criticized for doing things that would seem
benign if done by virtually any other country. It is time, say
many Germans, to reap the benefits of 45 years of good conduct.
What they want is responsibility commensurate with duty. "When
it comes to paying, everybody says, `Germans to the front!'"
Kohl complains. "So when it comes to political responsibility,
I think the Germans should also be standing up front."

    And so they are, in the areas where they do the most
paying. By contributing about 70% of all assistance pledged by
the industrialized world to the new entities rising from the
wreckage of the old Soviet Union, Germany has emerged as the
point nation for managing the economic development of the
Commonwealth of Independent States. The same holds for the rest
of the old East bloc, where German business is overwhelmingly
in front. "The more the East is emptied of Soviet power, the
more it is being replaced by Germany's," observes French
historian Georges Valance.

    Such growing influence may be considered good or bad, but
either way it is probably unavoidable. "Indisputably, Germany
is going to occupy a totally dominant position in the years to
come," says Simon Petermann, professor of international
relations at Brussels Free University. "That's a position that,
in many respects, the Germans have long held. The difference now
is that the old formula casting Germany as an economic giant and
a political dwarf no longer holds true."

    But recognizing the inevitability of Germany's asserting
its power is not the same as welcoming it. French political
leaders are concerned that their entire postwar policy, which
adroitly cultivated a Bonn-Paris axis that magnified French
power by combining with Germany's, may be coming unstuck.
Germans firmly deny any intention to dominate Europe: Kohl's
slogan is "A European Germany, Not a German Europe." But they
are no longer willing to be subordinate within it. "The days
when the French could count on our subservience are over," says
a senior German diplomat. "And that applies to others too."

    Such talk raises hackles among the victims and victors of
World War II who fear a resurgence of Teutonic arrogance. When
former British Cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley in 1990 called
the E.C. "a German racket designed to take over the whole of
Europe," the cry of "Hear, hear" rose across Britain. Ridley's
views cost him his job, but he has gained some converts. "I am
beginning to think that Nicholas Ridley was on to something,"
wrote Financial Times columnist John Willman, who considers
himself pro-German. "Two disastrous attempts to establish German
hegemony over Europe earlier in the century by military means
failed to win friends and influence people. This time power and
influence have been won without a single shot being fired,
through the unbeatable combination of a stable currency and a
strong manufacturing base."

    Yet Germany's military power cannot be ignored. Its armed
force of 454,000 is Europe's largest. And it is assuming
increasing responsibility for its security as the U.S. draws
down its forces in Europe. Some German military demands are
inevitable. If France and Britain retain their nuclear deterrent
forces, for example, Germany probably will want to have a say
in how they are used to protect a future united Europe. If not,
says Valance, "Germany may one day decide to acquire nuclear
arms to deal with the threat of the ones in Ukraine."

    This sort of speculation is as troubling to Germans as it
is to their neighbors. So far, there is no consensus in the
country on the use of German soldiers anywhere outside the
territory of NATO, but the Kohl government has proposed a
constitutional amendment to permit participation in U.N.
peacekeeping operations. Some conservative political leaders
believe German troops should also be available for such joint
contingents as the U.S.-led coalition that fought the gulf war.

    In fact, Germany's initial hesitancy to support the
anti-Iraq coalition may have helped produce Bonn's recent burst
of assertive energy. The term gulf syndrome is applied to German
leaders who, stung by criticism of their early reluctance to
support Desert Storm, are determined never again to be thought
timid. There is even some concern that Kohl is going too far in
that direction. "Except for Hitler you have to go back a long
way to find a German head of government who speaks so
provocatively and insensitively about the outside world," says
Heinrich Jaenecke, a columnist for the weekly Stern. "Hubris has
led this nation astray more than once. The old symptoms are
reappearing."

    Karsten Voigt, a Social Democrat and a senior member of
the Bundestag's Foreign Affairs Committee, says what is
happening is a natural consequence of Germany's postwar
development, and not something to be feared. "With the changes
that have taken place, we have a stronger impact in whatever we
do," he says. "It is not that we are being more assertive, but
that even with continuity in our policies and behavior we have
more influence. The apprehension felt by other countries will
fade away in perhaps 10 or 15 years when people will see that
a united Germany is a stabilizing factor in Europe. Meanwhile,
we have to live with the criticism."

    But criticism rarely, if ever, comes from the White House.
The Bush Administration was unstintingly supportive of German
unification in 1990 and is no less so now that unity has,
inevitably, produced a more powerful Germany. "Let me state,
clearly and unequivocally, that we welcome and value this German
assertiveness in collective actions designed to achieve common
goals and objectives," says U.S. Ambassador Robert Kimmitt in
speeches to German groups. "With whom could the U.S. better
pursue effective collective action than Germany, a trustworthy,
reliable ally?"

    For some Germans, however, those words may be too kind.
Officials are uneasy when Americans talk enthusiastically of a
special German-American relationship. The slogan "Partners in
Leadership," which describes official U.S. policy toward
Germany, touches a Europeanist nerve. "When one talks of
leadership, one must think of the very successful system in the
E.C., where every country has just one vote," says Volker Ruhe,
general secretary of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union, who was
named Defense Minister last week. "We don't like to lead from
the front. We like to lead from the middle of the crowd."

    The way to be sure that Germany stays in the "middle of
the crowd" is to forge ahead with the integration of Europe.
Kohl may be a better Europeanist than anybody else in Europe.
"There was a tremendous sense of relief in the French delegation
as we came back from Maastricht," recalls Maurice
Gourdot-Montagne, a spokesman at the Quai d'Orsay. "We bet on
Helmut Kohl because he is the most European."

    Yes, but will he remain a good European if the others are
not? The Germans wanted, practically pleaded, to pool their
sovereignty at Maastricht in a broad European political union.
Such a union was promised, but is a long way from reality. "If
the Maastricht Treaty stalls, then we may see a return to
traditional policies of the German nation-state," warns Francois
Heisbourg, director of the London-based International Institute
for Strategic Studies. "Then Germany could feel free to break
out and go its own way." That happened twice in this century,
with devastating consequences. It would be the height of folly
for Europe's leaders to risk letting it happen again.