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Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989. Kristina Spohr
Читать онлайн.Название Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008280109
Автор произведения Kristina Spohr
Издательство HarperCollins
He was particularly sensitive because he knew Thatcher and Mitterrand had held their own tête-à-tête earlier in the day. What he did not know was that during the meeting, she pulled out of her famous handbag two maps showing Germany’s borders in 1937 and 1945. She pointed to Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia: ‘They will take all of this, and Czechoslovakia.’ Mitterrand played along with her at times – for instance saying that ‘we must create special relations between France and Great Britain just as in 1913 and 1938’ – but he also stated calmly that unification could not be prevented, adding ‘we must discuss with the Germans and respect the treaties’ that had affirmed the principle of unification. But Thatcher would have none of it: ‘If Germany controls events, she will get Eastern Europe in her power, just as Japan has done in the Pacific, and that will be unacceptable from our point of view. The others must join together to avoid it.’[136]
But they didn’t. When the communiqué was published it was clear that France and Germany had stuck together, firmly committed to both monetary union and German unification. What’s more, the others who had griped were all now on board.
On monetary union, the EC 12 ignored vehement objections from Thatcher, and took a new and important step towards creating a central bank and a common currency. They agreed to call a special intergovernmental conference in December 1990 – after completing closer coordination of economic policies under the Delors Report’s stage 1, scheduled for July, and getting through the FRG elections (to satisfy Kohl). Clearly the recent upheavals in Eastern Europe had added impetus to economic integration. Mitterrand argued that the Community needed to be strengthened to face the challenge of helping the ‘emerging democracies of Eastern Europe as they move toward greater freedom and to handle the growing prospect of German reunification’. This French-led consensus left Thatcher in her familiar position as the sole opponent of accelerated integration, extending also to her refusal to sign a Community Charter of Social Rights that everyone else happily approved. Its broad endorsement of labour, welfare and other workers’ rights was supported as an important counterweight to the strongly pro-business orientation of much of the integration agenda.[137]
In a separate statement, EC leaders also formally endorsed the idea of a single German state, but they attached some conditions which were intended to ensure that German unity did not cause European instability. ‘We seek the strengthening of the state of peace in Europe in which the German people will regain its unity through free self-determination. This process should take place peacefully and democratically, in full respect of the relevant agreements and treaties and of all the principles defined by the Helsinki Final Act, in a context of dialogue and East–West cooperation. It also has to be placed in the perspective of European integration.’ In other words, Western integration and pan-European security, underwritten by the United States, were integral to any process of German unification.
The EC statement did not ignore their ‘common responsibility’ for closer cooperation with the USSR and Eastern Europe in what was called ‘this decisive phase in the history of Europe’. In particular, it stressed the EC’s determination to support economic reform in these countries. There was also an affirmation of the European Community’s future role: ‘It remains the cornerstone of a new European architecture and, in its will to openness, a mooring for a future European equilibrium.’[138]
Kohl was enormously relieved. Despite all the arguments, his Ten Point gamble had paid off. With Europe and America fully behind him,[139] it seemed that he was now free to develop Deutschlandpolitik in the way he wanted.
*
As soon as he got back to Bonn, Kohl started planning the details of his meeting with Hans Modrow in Dresden, which was scheduled for 19 December. But no West German chancellor could take anything for granted. That seemed to be the lesson of forty years of history – with the FRG always beholden to the occupying powers, always bearing the burden of the Hitler era, always edgy about its lack of sovereignty.
One worry was the French announcement on 22 November that Mitterrand would visit the GDR on 20 December. Why now? Ostensibly his trip was simply to reciprocate Honecker’s visit to Paris in January 1988 but Kohl was aggrieved that he – the most interested party – was being upstaged. At a deeper level, he felt that the French president was being two-faced – professing support for Kohl and the drive for unity yet apparently cultivating a failing state for France’s own benefit. Moreover, on 6 December Mitterrand had met Gorbachev in Kiev to talk over Germany and Eastern Europe. Getting to the GDR ahead of Mitterrand was therefore the main reason for fixing the Kohl–Modrow meeting for the day before.[140]
On 8 December, there was another bombshell. Kohl learned that the ambassadors of the Four Powers were going to meet in Berlin to discuss the current situation. And not merely in Berlin but in the Allied Kommandatura – notorious to Germans as the centre of the occupation regime of the 1940s and a venue not used since 1971 when the Quadripartite Agreement on access to the city had been signed. The Soviets, apparently taking advantage of the EC summit, called for the discussion to be held on 11 December, just three days later. Asked if Bonn would be displeased about the meeting, a senior French official retorted: ‘That is the point of holding it.’ The Kohl government was indeed furious; its anger subsided only when the Americans promised to make sure that the agenda was limited to Berlin rather than straddling the German question as a whole. On the day itself, robust diplomacy by the Americans was required to kill off this rather crude Russian ploy to give the Four Powers a formalised role in deciding the German question.[141]
Coming just a few days after Gorbachev’s explosion to Genscher, the Soviet powerplay at the Kommandatura persuaded the chancellor that he had to make a determined effort to explain his Ten Points to Gorbachev and disarm Soviet criticism. He instructed Teltschik to draft a personal letter to the Soviet leader, eventually running to eleven typescript pages laying out a very carefully constructed argument.
In it Kohl explained that his motivation for the Ten Points had been to stop reacting and running after events, and instead to begin shaping future policies. But he also insisted that his speech was couched, and must be understood, within the wider international context. He referred specifically to the ‘parallel and mutually reinforcing’ process of East–West rapprochement as evidenced at Malta, closer EC integration as agreed in Strasbourg, and the likely shifts of the existing military alliances into more political forms and what he hoped would be the evolution of the CSCE process via a follow-up conference (Helsinki II). In these various processes, the chancellor emphasised, his pathway to unity would be embedded. He added that there was no ‘strict timetable’, nor had he set out any preconditions – as Gorbachev wrongly alleged. Rather the speech gave the GDR options and presented a gradual, step-by-step approach that offered a way to weave together a multitude of political processes. Kohl then summarised the ten points in detail before stating at the end of the letter that he sought to overcome the division of both Germany and Europe ‘organically’. There was no reason, he insisted, for Gorbachev to fear any German attempts at ‘going it alone’ (Alleingänge) or ‘special paths’ (Sonderwege), nor any ‘backward-looking nationalism’. In sum, declared Kohl, ‘the future of all Germans is Europe’. He argued that they were now at a ‘historical turning point for Europe and the whole world in which political leaders would be tested as to whether and how they had cooperatively addressed the problems’. In this spirit, he proposed that the two of them should discuss the situation face-to-face, and offered