TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.024

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.0 KB | 113 lines

                                                                                EAST-WEST, Page 45

Kohl Takes On Topic A


By unveiling a scheme for the "confederation" of the two
Germanys, he pushes a delicate issue to the fore


    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.