TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/073090/07300013.000

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                                                                                WORLD, Page 24

COVER STORIES

Kohl Wins His Way


A united nation within his grasp, the German leader will never
be underestimated again

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Daniel Benjamin/Bonn, James
Carney/Moscow and J.F.O. McAllister with Baker


    Waving expansively at the snow-topped Caucasus Mountains,
Mikhail Gorbachev observed with a grin that he and Chancellor
Helmut Kohl were already in the foothills and wanted "to
develop our relations further upward." After two days of talks,
their cordiality escalated to outright chumminess. They emerged
from a resort lodge in sweaters and open-necked shirts to
stroll bantering through the fields and flowers of the Russian
countryside. At the resort spa of Zheleznovodsk, they
jubilantly announced that they had swept aside the last
significant obstacles to uniting Germany by the end of the
year. Yes, Gorbachev said, a unified Germany could join NATO
if it liked. And yes, said Kohl, Germany would agree to ways
to allay Moscow's fears about the future.

    Though the four World War II victors -- the U.S., Soviet
Union, Britain and France -- must still formally sign off on
unification this fall, the Zheleznovodsk agreement caps nine
months of dizzying change in Europe and signals the beginning
of a fresh era. As Gorbachev put it, "We are leaving one epoch
in international relations and entering another." Added Kohl:
"The future has begun."

    German unification had been discussed at a string of minor
and major summits over the past few months, including the NATO
meeting in London three weeks ago that declared the Soviet
Union was no longer an adversary, thus paving the way for
Gorbachev to drop his reluctance to let a united Germany join
the alliance. Nonetheless, the swiftness and scope of last
week's pact stunned and slightly discomfited the Western
allies. George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, strong
supporters of Kohl and his unity efforts, were embarrassed at
being taken unawares. Baker's flustered response: "This is a
delightful surprise to the extent that it's a surprise, and
it's only a surprise to the extent that we anticipated." Bush
pointed out that he had long advocated a unified Germany in
NATO, "the sooner the better," but his response bore the air
of a man slightly defensive about being left out of such a
historic photo op.

    It is a measure of the skillful diplomat Kohl, 60, has
become that he quickly praised Bush for all his efforts,
saying, "Our American friends can rely on it that we are going
this way in close cooperation and partnership with them." The
German leader has always been the consummate local pol, more
at ease hoisting a glass in the local wine cellar than sitting
in chandeliered rooms stiffly exchanging diplomatic niceties
with foreign leaders. But over the past year, as Kohl realized
that he had the historic opportunity to bring his country
together again, he rose to the challenge better than many
people -- Germans and non-Germans alike -- expected.

    Kohl accomplished his diplomatic feats by relying on the
same skills that have put him on warm terms with a number of
world leaders. He started out badly with Gorbachev in 1986,
comparing the Soviet leader's public relations talents with
those of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. When Kohl
met with Gorbachev in Moscow last February, the two were civil
to each other, nothing more. This time Kohl asked if part of
his trip could be spent in Gorbachev's home region of Stavropol
and the nearby spas, where the two leaders might relax and get
to know each other.

    Though the ground for last week's pact had been prepared in
six meetings between foreign ministers Eduard Shevardnadze and
Hans-Dietrich Genscher over the past two months, Kohl had no
reason to expect Gorbachev would agree so quickly. The Soviet
leader clearly wanted to settle the issue of German unification
so he could move on to his country's domestic problems. But the
atmosphere surely helped. By the time they made their
announcement, the two men were laughing together. Observes a
Western diplomat in Moscow: "It may come as a surprise, but
Kohl and Gorbachev kind of like each other."

    Soviet officials insisted it was not just Kohl's sincerity
that carried the day. "The Kohl of 1990 is not the Kohl of
1986," said Vladimir Shenayev, deputy director of Moscow's
Institute of Europe. "Even a year ago, Kohl would have said
that a unified Germany would be a member of NATO and there was
no point in discussing it. Now he's showing an ability to
compromise." The promise of financial aid helped: having
already pledged some $3 billion in credits to Moscow, Kohl
agreed to sign a comprehensive economic pact with the Soviet
Union.

    The prospect of more deals to come between Bonn and Moscow
presents Kohl with a different diplomatic challenge: how to
assure his allies in Europe that the German powerhouse, the
largest economy in the European Community, is not seeking to
control Eastern Europe. Even before he arrived home, Kohl was
asked if the Zheleznovodsk agreement was a new Rapallo -- a
reference to the 1922 treaty between the communist U.S.S.R. and
the Weimar Republic that paved the way for German rearmament
after World War I. The comparison is "wholly off," said Kohl,
because "the reunified Germany is part of NATO and the European
Community."

    As he showed again just before leaving for the Soviet Union,
Kohl has become increasingly adept at handling the spasms of
angst about Germany. The immediate grievance was a statement
by British Trade Minister Nicholas Ridley that the "uppity"
Germans were plotting to take over Europe, and he would just
as soon hand over the Continent to Hitler. What made the uproar
worse was the widespread conviction that Ridley had only said
what Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher thought. But Kohl wisely
laughed off Ridley's remarks as "pretty silly," comparing them
to his own gaffe about Gorbachev and Goebbels. Ridley was forced
to resign.

    Thatcher's anti-German feelings seemed further confirmed by
last week's leak of a memorandum written by her private
secretary Charles Powell after a seminar she held with several
well-known experts on Germany. They had to explain to the Prime
Minister that the countries of Eastern Europe actually wanted
German investment and that this "did not necessarily equate to
subjugation." The Powell memo alleged that "abiding"
characteristics of the Germans, "in alphabetical order,"
included "aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism,
inferiority complex, sentimentality." The concept of permanent
national character is generally fatuous, and in this case
Powell's words make a poor fit for Kohl, the biggest German of
them all. Kohl can be intimidating because of his size (6 ft.
3 in.) and might sometimes appear aggressive, but no more so
than Thatcher. If he now looks assertive, it is only in
contrast to the penitent posture Germany adopted for most of
the postwar years.

    Kohl understands the visceral suspicion of Germany among its
neighbors and says, "I cannot deny our history." At the same
time, he insists that it is time to recognize how much Germany
and the world have changed. Kohl was 15 when the war ended. He
calls himself the first Chancellor of the post-Hitler
generation, and he firmly believes a little patriotism without
nationalism would be good for the country.

    As early as 1976, when Kohl made his first run for
Chancellor, he said one of his ambitions was to work with
foreign leaders "to bring about a more normal relationship with
the Germans." On his first visit to Moscow in July 1983, he
asked Kremlin leader Yuri Andropov, "What would you say as a
Soviet patriot if Moscow and the U.S.S.R. were divided?" A
return to normality has been his constant theme. "I am strictly
against having Germany singled out," he said in a TIME
interview last month.

    After Kohl came back from the Soviet Union last week, he was
asked how it felt to be the man of the hour. "When people come
to write about my period of office," he replied, "I would be
very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding
the happy medium again for the Germans."

    He summed himself up in that one sentence. He has no driving
ideology and no grand visions, other than that Germany must be
unified and anchored peacefully inside Europe. He really is the
German Everyman, striving for the Utopia of ordinariness. Says
Robert Leicht, political commentator for the Hamburg weekly Die
Zeit: "I often disagree with Kohl, but I take it for granted
he is a harmonizer. His whole life is dominated by the idea
that we must fit in the framework. It makes him a man who
deserves to be trusted."

    The notion of a framework helps explain why Kohl is so
committed to the increased integration of the European
Community and German membership in NATO. He says the isolation
of the Weimar Republic was one of the worst mistakes made after
World War I ended, and he vows to keep it from being repeated.
"Germany is part of the Western community of shared values,"
he says.

    While Kohl is riding the tide of popularity today, his
earlier course was often rough. Though he rose very quickly in
local Christian Democratic Party politics, he lost his first
bid for Chancellor and was outmaneuvered in 1980 by his
purported ally, Franz Josef Strauss, who became the candidate
that year. Kohl grew up in the provincial politics of the
Rhineland-Palatinate, where he was minister presifrom 1969 to
1976. He has spent almost his entire adult life as a workaday
politician, cultivating thousands of grass-roots contacts and
even now spending hours a day chatting with local pols on the
phone. His values are those of the large middle class that
supports him. Small wonder: he is middle class himself --
conservative, monolingual, a lover of plum tarts and whipped
cream.

    West German journalists and politicians prefer cosmopolitan
polish, and were quick to label him a bumbler. While he did not
lose his longing for normalization after becoming Chancellor
in October 1982, he often left foreign policy in the hands of
his coalition partner Genscher, the leader of the Free
Democrats.

    Instead, Kohl put his talents to work on the domestic front.
He instituted politically painful reforms of the tax and
health-insurance systems and supported a tight monetary policy
that made the German mark even hardier than the legendary Swiss
franc. Annual economic growth doubled from less than 2% to 4%.
His policies made the country so rich it can afford to pay $100
billion for unification and have enough left over to sweeten
its relations with Moscow and Warsaw.

    When Kohl did strike off on his own in foreign affairs, some
of his bungles lived up to the pundits' dark predictions. He
strained ties with Washington in 1985 when he insisted that
Ronald Reagan visit a cemetery in Bitburg even after it was
discovered that some Nazi SS troopers were buried there. His
visit to Poland last November was badly mismanaged by his
aides, and he alarmed the Poles and most of the world by
playing domestic German politics with recognition of the
postwar border.

    His stubborn refusal to guarantee the Oder-Neisse frontier
with Poland in the name of a united Germany demonstrates the
pragmatic way Kohl calculates political possibilities. He
expected the next election to be close, and he counted as many
as 10 million voters as having some ties or sympathy with the
German "expellees" from western Poland. By postponing the final
word on the border issue, he made them feel his concern for
them. He expects them to remember that when they step up to
mark their ballots.

    Kohl's favorite line is that he makes a good living out of
being underestimated. An indifferent public speaker, he can be
quite articulate in small meetings. He reads hungrily,
concentrating on biographies and histories; he impressed
Gorbachev last week with his grasp of Russia's past. If Kohl's
girth and glad-handing make some people who do not know him
think he is buffoonish, many who do finally meet him come away
talking about his sharp mind. He takes the measure of an issue
and comes up with a gut response on whether a policy will fly.
Says Friedhelm Kemna, editor of Bonn's daily General-Anzeiger:

suggestions from others."

    And now this perpetually undervalued man is the Unification
Chancellor, even if some of his success was owing to good luck.
The fact that Kohl happened to be the West German Chancellor
last year had nothing to do with Gorbachev's refusal to keep
East German leader Erich Honecker in power or with the march
of hundreds of thousands of Leipzigers and East Berliners
through city streets.

    But when the Berlin Wall fell on Nov. 9, Kohl understood
that unification was possible, and soon. During August 1989,
5,000 East Germans each week had arrived in the West through
Hungary. In November, 130,000 streamed through the dust of the
Wall. This was domestic politics, for which Kohl has an
instinctive feel. He knew that the dissidents on the other side
had won, that German communism was dead. And he knew that he
could probably wrap up his re-election if he could bring the
Germanys together. At the end of November, Kohl put forward a
10-point plan for unification. It startled his allies, who
counseled caution and deliberation.

    Even before the 10 vaguely worded points could be properly
explained to all parties concerned, they had become outdated.
Kohl had suggested a series of treaties with East Germany for
1990, a confederation by 1992. "I thought we would have
unification in 1993 or 1994," he says. But the stampede of East
Germans into the West -- 340,000 in 1989 -- convinced him that
the only way to keep them at home was to take the West German
system to them. In February he proposed an economic and
currency union that he pushed through, against objections from
his central bankers, and put into effect July 1.

    Kohl was now the engineer of the Deutschland Express. He saw
political unity within reach, and he was determined to grab it
before the opportunity vanished. Alone among the NATO leaders,
Bush signaled full speed ahead. Kohl plunged into the East
German elections in March, making a triumphant six-city
speaking tour, waving to huge crowds roaring, "Hel-mut!
Hel-mut!" -- a reception rarely accorded Kohl in West Germany.
Middle-class virtues and the dream of normality had not been
suffocated by more than 40 years of communism. The conservative
coalition for which Kohl campaigned, led by Lothar de Maiziere,
scored an unexpected landslide.

    Kohl is looking forward to a similar drive on his own
behalf. His standing in the polls sank as low as 36% early last
year, making it far from certain the Christian Democrats would
prevail at the polls this December. With Gorbachev's agreement
on the future in hand, the December election is expected to
include both parts of Germany. Kohl's beaming face is on every
German front page, and the polls put his popularity above 50%.
He said quietly last week: "You will forgive me if I say I
intend to win this election." He should be taken seriously; he
is very good at such calculations. And if he does win, it will
be the second time he has united his country.


____________________________________________________________ THE
KOHL-GORBACHEV PACT


    Meeting in the Caucasus resort of Zheleznovodsk last week,
Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev cleared the final hurdles for
the unification of Germany by year's end. The agreement's
highlights:

    -- A united Germany will be free to join NATO.

    -- The 380,000 Soviet troops in East Germany will be
withdrawn within three to four years.

    -- NATO troops will stay out of East Germany for those
years, though U.S., British and French units will remain in
Berlin until the Soviets leave.

    -- The German armed forces will be cut from their present
total of 590,000 (490,000 in the West, 100,000 in the East) to
370,000.

    -- Germany will renounce nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons.