United Germany and European security: time for the European defense community?

United Germany and European Security

The machine of German unification is now rolling. By the mid-1990s, Europe will have a whole new superpower at its centre.

Once the two Germanies have meshed, why should future German governments not station their troops wherever they like on German soil? Why should they not manufacture weapons of whatever category they like, including nuclear ones, for their own self-defence and sell them to whomever they like?

Absurd as it may appear, Germany is still technically at war with Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States. No peace treaty has ever been signed since the surrender of the Third Reich in 1945. In drawing up a peace treaty for signature with a united Germany, the four occupying powers are now faced with some very far-reaching questions. The answers to them will have an even more profound effect on the future shape of Europe and, potentially, global security than would a treaty signed in 1945.

According to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a united Germany will remain in NATO as the Western allies desire, rather than turning neutral. The West German electorate will make its views known at the end of this year.

In spite of recent statements made by Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze pointing to the contrary, the Soviets have now implicitly recognized the need to keep a united Germany in both the EEC and NATO. Why? The reasons are quite straight forward. First, the Soviets need the German capitalist superpower - and through it, the EEC which it will dominate - to save them from starvation in the short term (the price for allowing East Germany to leave the Soviet orbit, and for German unification, is understood to have been a secretly negotiated promise of massive food aid to the USSR). In the long term, the Soviets are relying on Germany to act as the locomotive for their hoped-for economic restructuring and survival.

Secondly, it has now dawned on the Kremlin that a neutral Germany, unfettered by ties to a US-dominated NATO, could turn again into a military loose cannon.

Neutrals like to guard their neutrality, and for that they have armies. Besides, against whom would a neutral Germany seek to defend itself, if not potentially hostile nuclear powers? Thus, the pressures for a neutral Germany to be nuclear-armed could prove difficult for future German governments to resist.

Arms sales is another delicate issue. How can one effectively and fully control the transfer of technology for chemical weapons and ballistic missiles to irresponsible regimes? If a united Germany severs its ties to NATO, there is a risk that even less attention will be paid to the potential consequences of unbridled commercial activities.

There is no point in pussy-footing around these questions, and the Four Plus Two negotiations should address them head-on.

Before the four occupying powers start talking to the two German governments, however, NATO's future role needs to be decided.

If the Alliance is to survive as such, it needs to engage in some hardheaded future threat assessments. These should cover not only the potential for the USSR to turn nasty again, but also examine political and economic threats to allied security. These include the holding to ransom of Western (especially German) creditor banks and corporations by a bankrupt Soviet Union faced with breakup; the spread of nuclear and chemical weapons; the proliferation of ballistic missiles; terrorism; the security of Gulf oil and other strategic resources in areas where non-democratic governments rule; the security of NATO's maritime trade routes, etc.

The present US Administration, and NATO itself, have been painfully slow in adjusting to the new European order. Unless they now move purposefully forward, the Alliance will wither away, and this will leave the Europeans to solve their security problems on their own.

Helmut Kohl has called for increased powers to be given to the European Parliament, for a Pan-European Security System, and eventually a Pan-European Government. His call has so far fallen on deaf ears in the governments of Europe's two nuclear powers. Both Great Britain (whose "special relationship" with the United States has lost its value in American eyes) and France (which vetoed the setting up of a European Defence Community within NATO in 1952) now seem mesmerized by the oncoming headlights of a united Germany.

They may be jolted out of their immobility by a Soviet military crackdown in occupied, independence-seeking Lithuania. This would remind them that Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet bear is not a cuddly soft toy, but an increasingly desperate beast with teeth and claws.

Unfortunately, it may take such an event to persuade London and Paris that, at last, the European Defence Community time has come.

The formation of a European Defence Community, if anchored in NATO to ensure US support, will lay to rest once and for all the deep-seated Soviet and European fears of a militarily resurgent Germany.

On this basis, the four occupying powers could formally close the book on World War 2 by signing a peace treaty that restored united Germany's honour and allowed them to withdraw in dignity and peace of mind.