The End of the Cold War?

Bush, Kohl, Gorbachev, and the Reunification of Germany

Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137488725
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This carefully researched history draws on archival sources as well as a wealth of new interviews with on-the-ground activists, political actors, international figures, and others to move beyond the narratives both the German and American varieties that have dominated the historical memory of German reunification.

Documents and Remembrances

C H A P T E R 1

The Beginnings

The American President as the Real Strategist? Or Who Gave the Impetus?

There were many preconditions for reunification: the independence movement in Poland and the Baltic states and then across the whole of Eastern Middle Europe; the economic decline of Eastern European socialism; perestroika under Gorbachev and his policy of noninterference in the Soviet area of influence; the people’s movement in the German Democratic Republic (GDR); the stream of refugees from the GDR to West Germany; and, last but not least, the policy of the leaders and foreign ministries of the states involved. I will begin with the last one.

The American Perspective

The files concerning reunification that were released on the instructions of the Federal Chancellery,¹ reactions to them in West Europe, and interviews that I conducted with Bush and his team in the autumn of 1999, all suggest that already by March 1989, the White House—and not Bonn, Paris, or London—wanted to initiate a new European and German policy in which the reunification of Germany should play a central role. The national security advisor Brent Scowcroft,² along with Robert D. Blackwill³ and Philip Zelikow⁴ at the National Security Council (NSC), were by then already convinced that German reunification had to be taken up as a political responsibility⁵ and thus criticized the official policy of the NSC. This is according to the Americans, Zelikow and Rice. The White House was impatient as two major visits by Bush to Western and Eastern Europe had been planned for the spring and summer of 1989. The future of NATO on the occasion of its 40th anniversary (founded on April 4, 1949) was also to be considered during these visits. Arrangements had already been made to hold the NATO “Anniversary Summit” in Brussels on May 29 and 30, 1989.

In the revised version of the aforementioned committee papers, the question of German reunification nevertheless continues⁶ to ferment “always under the surface,” but “the Germans” do not want “to bring this subject to the fore at this moment. The other Europeans are just as reluctant, ( . . . ) and it serves no US interests if we take the initiative and raise the subject.”⁷ Scowcroft is said to have been so “frustrated” by this position that he summoned Blackwill and Rice⁸ and asked them to bring about something “with more bite.” Blackwill and Zelikow had drawn up a memorandum in this debate, which Scowcroft passed on to President Bush on March 20, known as Scowcroft’s memorandum. It began with the words:

Today the highest priority of American European policy should be the destiny of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bush should help to strengthen Kohl who at present is behind in the opinion polls, behind an opposition which gives too little consideration both to the nuclear deterrent and conventional defence. It has to be the aim of American policy to overcome the division of the continent through the assertion of common values. ( . . . ) Even if we make progress in overcoming the division of Europe through greater honesty and pluralism, no vision of a future Europe is imaginable which does not also include an opinion on “the German question.” ⁹

Zelikow and Rice later stated that this controversial explanation (which was just as controversial for American strategists) was intended to place the German question back onto the agenda. Indeed, following this a directive went out explaining the policy of stemming the Soviet Union and formulating conditions for its international integration. That was the official reason for this new policy. Unofficially, it carried the wish to reduce Soviet influence, especially in Europe, and to strengthen that of the United States. This concept of a “commonwealth of free nations” was planned explicitly as an alternative to Gorbachev’s “communal European house.”¹⁰

Scowcroft: Essentially, I think it was Gorbachev who said all those wonderful words about this. But at the time, the beginning of 1989, no actions followed those words. The rules of the Cold War were still valid in Central and Eastern Europe. What we also wanted to see were actions to break up these structures. And the crucial aim was of course the reunification of Germany and Berlin, as this would give a clear sign that the Cold War was over.¹¹

Scowcroft’s maxim was that the vision of a new Europe had to include the reunification of Germany.¹² A further element was the new evaluation of the role of (West) Germany, namely a stronger understanding than before of the Federal government as a “partner in leadership”¹³—a role that Great Britain had played for decades. The reaction from London—where it was suspected that there was a shift in the importance of its partnership with Washington, away from London and toward Bonn—was so clearly negative that the American policymakers exercised more caution.¹⁴

Zelikow and Rice further maintain that in Germany, the CDU had wanted to take reunification off the current agenda in the spring of 1989, contrary to this new Bush policy.

In complete contrast to the German position, Bush gave a public speech in the Rheingold-Halle in Mainz demanding the ending of the division of Europe and Germany. This was during his German visit and directly after the NATO summit at the end of May 1989. The aim of the West was, he said, to achieve an “undivided and free Europe”:

For the founding fathers of the alliance this hope was a distant dream. Now this hope is the new task of NATO. ( . . . ) The Cold War began with the division of Europe. It can only be ended when the division of Europe is abolished. ( . . . .) There cannot be a European house (à la Gorbachev) when not all of its inhabitants can move freely from room to room. ( . . . ) We are striving for the self-determination of the whole of Germany and all the countries of Eastern Europe ( . . . ) Berlin must be the next stage.¹⁵

This speech was not printed in the files of the Federal Chancellery, and is available only in the transcript of the diplomatic talks between Kohl and Bush and others in Bonn on May 30, 1989. The transcript is not as blunt as the above speech. Zelikow and Rice go so far as to claim that Scowcroft had deleted the “radical phraseology” of the speech-writer “because he feared that Bush could go further with this (!) than Kohl in his comments on the German question.”

By this, Zelikow and Rice mean that “the Federal Government (was) not ready to take Bush at his word and to fully demand the American support for reunification, which the President had indicated in May.”¹⁶

The German View

All the German politicians who were interviewed repudiated both theses by Zelikow and Rice that the Americans had initiated the reunification and that leading CDU politicians were prepared to take reunification off the current CDU agenda at the beginning of 1989.

Horst Teltschik said in the interview, which was criticized by Zelikow and Rice, that “the German question was, for us as well, not about a territorial solution in the first instance” but rather about priority for “human rights, freedom, plurality and liberty.” However, he made the conditions clear to ensure that it would not finally be a state-defined unity: “If the people in the GDR decide for independence in a truly free vote” or if processes develop “which are directed at the overcoming of a nation’s statehood,” such as “European integration.”¹⁷

All the statements of these CDU politicians are centrally opposed to the playing off of the long-term reunification policy against the current pragmatic German domestic policy of prevention of a further cultural, social, and political drift away from one another. All three stress the strict retention of this double policy. Judged according to standards of scientific precision and honesty, the interpretation of Zelikow and Rice has to be described as a gross distortion, if not falsification.

All the then German politicians reject the self-portrayal of the Bush administration’s German policy as depicted by Rice and Zelikow. The foreign policy advisor to the then Federal chancellor was at first diplomatic and mildly rejected the claim of an early American reunification policy:

Teltschik: Individual parts of the CDU thought about whether the Union should follow some of the currents in the Federal Republic and not just delete the subject of reunification from the vocabulary, but rather whether it should pursue a policy which went in the direction of political recognition of the GDR at all. However, those were individuals and they had no chance with Helmut Kohl.¹⁸

Teltschik countered by referring to the fact that, even in September 2000, some American politicians, for example the national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, had held the German politicians of the time to be considerably more courageous and steadfast than the two Americans have depicted them and concludes:

I would not overvalue my former colleagues Condy Rice and Philip Zelikow. They were employees of the White House and were never present opposite us.¹⁹

De Maizière too, in answer to my question as to when he had first heard of the American strategy of German reunification with membership of the new Germany in NATO, explained that it had been after the American ambassador, Vernon A. Walters, had visited him. Walters’s visit was after de Maizière’s election as minister-president (March 1990) and before that he had only a faint suspicion of the American position.²⁰ Walters was actually one of the first to voice the possibility of reunification.²¹

Both their descriptions are surprising in this respect, as the US government had already sent out clear signals about reunification in the spring of 1989, as is evident in Bush’s speech in the Rheingold-Halle in Mainz.

Only in one point does Teltschik concede that both American colleagues, that is, myself as I was presenting their criticisms, were right:

Where you are right is and we regret this is that we did not take up the statement “partner in leadership” more strongly. This was a very far-reaching statement, which when faced with strong partners such as Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher, naturally had implications.²²

The then foreign minister of the Federal Republic, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, endorses Teltschik in this matter and criticizes Rice and Zelikow’s description:

Genscher: I am first inclined to think that this is a story based on hindsight. Certainly it was kept well hidden at the time.

Hans-Dietrich Genscher substantiates his claim by looking back at the policy concerning another question:

There was a lively debate in the autumn of ’88 and at the beginning of ’89, first within the Federal Government and then in the Alliance (NATO) about the English and the Americans’ intention to pass a resolution at the NATO conference at the beginning of May 1989 (stressing further) 1989, after which in the summer of 1994, five years later, nuclear short-range rockets with a range of 250 kilometres would be stationed on German soil. They could have reached the GDR, Czechoslovakia—

AvP: And Poland—

Genscher: —and the western part of Poland.

Genscher believed this to be wrong and anti-European, and furthermore that these weapons could endanger Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze’s position in Moscow. Therefore on April 27, 1989, he explained in the Bundestag debate on this matter that he would not vote for it, because, above all, of the people of the GDR. Genscher asked rhetorically: Why had the Americans wanted that, when at the same time they wanted the reunification of Germany and European unity?²³

Genscher adds a point against Zelikow and Rice:

You must of course know that Mrs Rice and Mr Zelikow did not sit at the negotiating table during the deciding negotiations and that there was a deep rivalry between the security advisors of the American President and the American Secretary of State and his ministry.

This rivalry was only compensated for by the friendship between Bush and Baker.

Genscher: If you look at the list of delegates who sat in the negotiating rooms and led the talks, then you will not find the two writers.²⁴

This last remark is not correct at least in regard to Condoleezza Rice. She was present at the important talks between George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, for the most part as a “note taker.”

Certainly Charles Powell, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, clearly remembers (events) from that time differently from the Germans and the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: The Historian as a Detective
• Documents and Remembrances
• Notes
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index