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Europe
at the Drina: the Context of the war in Bosnia Michael
Stenton Moscow
1996
How was it that the small and rather unimportant war in Bosnia was so difficult
to stop? Why, for four years, could
it be resolved neither in the South Slav context nor within a European balance
of power, even though no one could claim that it was ignored?
Why did the European Union not take the opportunity apparently conceded
to it in 1991 to act as a great power? What
are the implications of apparent American leadership in the Western Balkans and
why did it happen? Because these
questions cannot be answered in a purely Bosnian context, it is doubtful whether
any major aspect of the war which may have just ended can be explained
convincingly without reference to the great themes in contemporary Europe which,
in importance, far outclass the fate of the former socialist republic of
Bosnia-Herzegovina. This paper is an attempt to explain the non-Yugolsav context
into which the Yugoslav civil wars were forced.
The European Union and the NATO alliance form the principle part of this
context. An attempt to explain the course of the war, in a logical and
chronological sense should be possible, but not quite yet.
This paper does is a preliminary step.
It interprets the large international questions posed by the EU and NATO
so that the effective rivalries of major states become more clear.
It is a commonplace that the international community has not found
agreement about Bosnia very easy. It
ought to be more widely appreciated that many sources of disagreement were not
'Bosnian' at all, and that several powers were present - on the ground, in the
air and behind the scenes - not for what they could do for Bosnia but for what
the Bosnian crisis could do for them.
The rising perspective in 1995 was the expansion of NATO.
The future of NATO was as clear as mud after 1989.
Today a new shape is forming, though it is still unfinished.
The agenda is set by Germany. This security theme is connected to
yesterday's agenda and tomorrow's: the Maastricht treaty issues of currency
union and European federation. Those too were set by Germany. Let no one repeat the slogan that Germany is an economic
giant and a political pigmy. When
it seemed half true, it was less fact than an appearance enhanced by Germany's
diplomats and commentators; and some of those who turned the slogan into a
cliche+' had no intention to remain pigmies: they wanted, and now have, a more
German policy. Some leading Germans
have long known what was to come. The practised assertiveness that secured the
European Monetary Institute for Frankfurt did not pop up out of nothing. German
negotiators play tough where it matters: behind the closed doors of the crucial
institutions.
Germany has done well by waiting and working.
After twenty years of uncertainty, she is the European 'first among
equals'. Where Germany is still hesitant it is from genuine doubt not natural
diffidence. What we need to know is whether the scales of power are still
bouncing erratically in post-Soviet shock or whether power and influence in our
continent can no longer be in balance. Germany in 1995 is wealthy and
influential but not quite the industrial super-power she was in 1900 or 1941.
The German army is again the strongest in Europe, but for the present this does
not seem to matter much. It is her geo-political status, and her membership of
important institutions, which today makes her favour uniquely desirable in
Eastern Europe. This is not a
pejorative way of putting the matter. In
Britain curiously strong conventions operate against undue attention to a
distinct German policy. A Germany
using its full influence requires as much critical attention as America or
Japan. But she does not get it.
German policy does exist, and we ought to be very interested in it.
It is unwise, or sinister, to to say 'Europe' or the 'Atlantic Alliance'
when, at bottom, Germany is meant.
German leaders seemed, a little time ago, 'satisfied' not revisionist. They use
a 'European' political language which affects to transcend any question of
revisionism. It would be unkind to say this language is insincere.
In any case, while _all_ Germany's neighbours want to be friendly, there
are no prizes for trying to deconstruct it. But it would be foolish to overlook
how German Europeanism fits national goals. The language - even 'Never Again' -
is made to work in her favour. The language is not analytic, it is poetic and
the great metaphor is of Europe as a tide, as the wave of the future, always
going forward. Logic is not a barrier: Kohl likes to say that the convoy must
not move at the speed of the slowest. (This language is also adopted by British
Europhiles for whom the failure to sign the Treaty of Rome, almost forty years
ago, is still a source of unassuaged regret.)
Germany has become a media power second only to the USA.
German voices now shape the liberal Europeanism once designed to hold her
'in the West'. Partly as a result, Yugoslavia has vanished. So, as it happens,
has Czechoslovakia. Nato is expanding eastwards. Revision is being accomplished
at a furious pace.
In four respects Germany is explicitly revisionist. There is a claim to
permanent membership of the Security Council. It is looks as though Germany
already has, via the USA, a more effective UN veto than Britain and France.
Sanctions on Croatia during the Croat bombardment of Mostar in 1993 were
prevented by Germany. Secondly, Nato is being revised in a direction which did
not seem the most obvious in 1991. Thirdly, Germany intends to change the
European Community into a political federation on the scale of the USA.
Fourthly, Germany proposes either a new European currency or, perhaps
more likely, a DM-zone which will turn the central banks of selected neighbours
into subordinate currency boards. These
revisions are closely related. The
affairs of EU, NATO and the Security Council make more sense taken together than
seperately. But they cannot be
understood without conceding that the Germans, like everyone else, are
necessarily ambiguous about their goals and interests.
The way events and institutions will interact cannot be foreseen.
The German obsession with European rhetoric postpones the need to define
choices. The real object of German
policy seems to be to develop a position of unrivalled political strength on the
assumption that there will come a great Day of Reckoning, a super-Maastricht of
European destiny. This sort of
thinking - vague, romantic, shrewd and dangerous all at once - is German in a
curiously nineteenth-century way.
The German people do not desire an illegal dominion over Europe, but the German
Government cannot be supposed innocent about the dominant position it is
acquiring precisely through the demand for European unity.
It wishes to extend and entrench the advantages it now enjoys.
It has confronted us all with a new imperative.
The European Community, as free association of sovereign states, and the
purely defensive NATO that existed until recently must die.
Germany wants something else, preferably one thing - bigger, bolder and
better. Even if Kohl is less
dogmatic about his goals than he affects to be, that is, if he is more
Bismarckian than he appears, there seems no doubt that Germany is committed to
destabilising the present to secure leverage over the future.
In this sense, the fate of Yugoslavia, though arguably not Germany's
fault in a deep or comprehensive sense, is lesson in the potemtial for
single-mindedness in the new Germany. It
is an example of the risks Germany will take and the price which Germany will
allow others to pay.
We are not discussing an inevitable process of continental integration which
German leaders merely advocate. 'Europe' is not a defined project which comes out of the
marble with every tap of the integrationist mallet.
Helmut Kohl entered the Maastricht Treaty negotiation with radical and
difficult requirements. He demanded
an irreversible commitment to federation and monetary union.
He was given half of what he wanted and gave notive that he would soon be
back asking for the other half. Part
of what he secured - the ERM glide-path to monetary union - was subsequently
been shot to pieces by events. In 1992-93 the money markets destroyed the ERM,
the regulatory mechanism proposed by Maastricht as the pathway to monetary
union. Yet political manouevring on
this monetary issue remains perhaps the most important game played by the
European countries who have serious economies.
The currency market may not yet dance to a German tune, but the countries
which wish to do so are still willing to renew the attempt to coerce or by-pass
the market. This is an extremely
complicated issue, but it is even more serious.
Political leaders are not being merely pious about the 'ever-closer
union' enjoined by the Treaty of Rome when they contemplate the surrender of the
sovereign right of nations to issue money.
They are trapped by decades of costless rhetoric and European grants.
Of course, their preferred outcomes may not even resemble official
intentions. All we can say is that
the pressure for a radical new Europe remains strong, and it is getting
stronger. There is no German
consensus on the preferred outcome. The
Bundesbank would like to rewrite the rules for monetary union unilaterally, the
German Government might sacrifice the Bundesbank to secure closer political
union. (The Bank speaks of political union as a condition for monetary union
because political union is unlikely; the Government promises a currency 'at
least as strong' as the DM, though the promise is incomprehensible, to prevent
the public opinion cutting down its options.)
Despite Maastricht the future of monetary union, and therefore of
European federation, is entirely unclear. What is clear is that the next push,
like the last, will leave some member states sensing something uncomfortably
close to a German diktat.
Not every aspect of German revisionism is unacceptable, but in total it is
breath-takingly radical and astonishingly ambitious. No peace-time Germany has
ever revealed such a grand design. Blaming 'the Germans' collectively would be
premature and unduly pessimistic. German
good sense and restraint may still come into play.
It would also would be incoherent without clear alternatives.
But it must be said that the trend in Germany - even in the
Constitutional Court and the SPD - is for ever more support for Kohl's vision of
German political, military and monetary leadership.
(German popular resistance to losing the Deutschmark merely leaves the
hands of the Government untied. It
is no obstacle to the DM-zone which, at present, looks the likeliest alternative
to the Euro-currency.)
The sort European Community which existed until recently is what most Western
European leaders wanted. They often
have no strong views about the next stage of European co-operation except that
it might be worse to make a fuss than to go quietly into the conference
chambers. What we once called
'Eastern European' leaders want to know what they are likely to get.
Both sets of political leaders have special economic requirements (money
and trading priviliges) which are more immediate and comprehensible than the
greater themes. They fear to put
these interests at risk by making unwelcome contributions to the debate about
European, NATO and UN institutions conducted by their superiors.
Who are these 'superiors'? In
Europe there is no nakedly dominant power. But German political pre-eminence is more solidly rooted and
comfortable than it was even in Bismarck's prime. (No doubt because her military power is comparatively
reduced.) No one who adopts German
opinions puts their immediate bread-and-butter interests at risk.
This is an important practical matter from Ireland to Lithuania.
The European Community, despite British protests, has legitimised some
astonishly crude pork-barrel politics. The
French, Dutch and Danes took German money for so long that they cannot complain
of bribery now that the rest of Europe has replaced them in the queque of
political mendicants. There is no
real balance of power in Europe because the continent is destabilised by a flock
of real and potential client states clustering like hungry geese around Germany.
It is the obvious way to preserve or get access to 'European' funds.
EC expenditure constitutes a large system of bribery - the bribery of
states and the seduction of individuals and all sorts of lesser corruption.
Until recently it was paid for only by a willing Germany and an unwilling
Britain. It will end the moment its
political value to Germany ceases. Germany's
commitment to the EU makes France the next most important country.
But in France the permanent alliance with Germany has become an
Establishment obsession, a wager which is redoubled with the anguish of a
gambler who knows that his 'Method', which once paid well, might fail in changed
circumstances. The British resume a
certain importance whenever they ignore the propaganda barrage about being 'bad
Europeans'. The Russians would still matter if they chose to, although they have
perhaps already wasted the period in which it would have been most difficult to
dismiss their demands. Small
nations - one thinks of the Danes - could make contributions of disproportionate
importance if they had the confidence to take small risks.
But few have. Most states count for almost nothing and all - by the choice
of their leaders. They believe that
a new Europe is being made, and they are so far from grasping the risks that
their only idea is not be left out.
But this is not the personal idea of individuals.
Alongside the so-called 'single European market' a new 'single European
opinion' has being formed. Of
course, it is not the only opinion, but when the Eupopean Commission and Bonn
agree, it is the only agenda-setting opinion equally present in all EU (and
candidate) countries. It is media-synchronised in the sense that any twist and
turn in the line - say on the 'convergence criteria' for monetary uion (EMU) -
will be rapidly and tolerantly commented upon.
Other opinions scarcely exist in the same organised sense. They are not
discussed as factually and frequently; they are more readily charicatured.
Euroscepticism is not 'European': it is disorganised and disparate. Even its own
natural advange - nationalism - is turned against it whenever the size of issues
is too small to make the mobilisation of national opinion possible. (The fishing
boats appear on TV, there is a shrug of wistful regret, and a warning that
Parliament is impotent.) So far
Euroscepticism is a slumbering political giant. NATO Our
era is witness to a great weakness of the international system. The Cold War
gave military security to European states while removing responsibility for
strategic matters from their leaders, who grew more parochial and timid as a
result. They cannot now pick up the threads of power politics where their
predecessors put them down. They have lost their strategic sense but they do not want to
lose the feeling of security they enjoyed in the recent past.
They want to believe that someone will offer them a defence system and
security no less cheap and effective than before 1989.
It is no accident that Britain, the Western European country most
consistently serious about NATO, should have been the most sceptical about
expanding it. Of course, German
leaders have major strategic issues to resolve. However, though the problems are
not theirs alone, there is little sign of Western European governments risking
their equanimity, or Eastern European governments risking their hopes, by
revealing dissident opinions. In
today's environment Germany proposes, others react 'when the time is right'.
Candidate nations lining up to get into the EU and NATO already know that
free-thinking on several issues - not least Bosnia - would not be appreciated in
Bonn. When the Germans speak out, their position is well-prepared and
increasingly forceful. That was the
lesson of the Maastricht negotiations and the Yugoslav crisis. It is not exactly
their fault that other states are too weak and confused to speak with similar
force and preparation.
Before 1989 America had no certain interests inside Eastern Europe. More
recently, America has been finding its way about the Balkans - for the first
time. The open question is whether America is acting as America-in-NATO or on
its own account. Washington cannot have missed the signal that there is a
Franco-German or EU alliance which could one day take over the European half of
NATO and install a non-American commander-in-chief. This is something which
America could simply not prevent. The eventuality can be delayed but never
excluded.
Germany is ready to accept America-in-Europe for a few more years at least and
perhaps longer. NATO is not the
subject of a solid continental consensus. Every proposal comes from a state. The difficulty about the
NATO discussion is that the debate is secret and surfaces only in policy papers
produced by the relative open rules of American government. Yet the key
proposals now on the table have 'made in Germany' all over them. Germany is a
member of a nuclear alliance. Three
of its allies have nuclear weapons. Germany will not agree to remain without
nuclear weapons indefinitely. It is
practically certain that, even in the interim, Bonn will require a leading voice
in the nuclear policy of the NATO alliance.
Of course, it is clear that the mere possession of a nuclear weapon does
not translate into strategic leadership. But
if Germany can acquire strategic leadership, and then obtain nuclear weapons,
the change from a disarmed to an armed Germany will be be presented as logical
and obvious.
In the past it was possible to be inside NATO without belonging to the NATO's
nuclear planning group. Spain is an
example. This has changed. It now
appears that no application for membership of NATO will be considered unless the
applicant accepts membership of the nuclear planning group.
This was revealed only last year in American documentation, but it is
very unlikely that it was, in origin, an American policy.
The requirement must have been German, even though the US has provided
'political cover'. One day 'Europe'
will inherit the command and control of the so-called 'European pillar' of NATO.
Germany is now trying, successfully, to ensure that when it happens, the rules
will be clear and strict, and the NATO members to her east will have agreed in
advance to the closest possible military integration.
Bosnia has played an important role here. In
1992 American leadership in Europe seemd a thing of the past, a strategic
anachronism. Then Yugoslavia
collapsed and important voices, who had no great interest in the fate of the
Serbs and Croats, protested that Germany had had been arrogand, bullying and
wrong. Suddenly, Germany needed to be careful.
She could not be seen to lead the anti-Serb camp.
The recent emphasis on Europe's need for American leadership, though
adopted with uncritical enthusiasm by many in the USA, is a German answer to the
problem of how to cope with the first stirring of resentment at Germany's role.
Without the sudden reappearance of US leadership, German leadership - the
real thing - would be too conspicuous. This could provoke an anti-German
realignment. Yet it was Germany not
the USA which first pushed against Yugoslavia to establish the claim that
'Europe' has the right to re-allocate the historic counties, duchies,
palatinates, banovinas and sandz+~aks into which unsuccessful states
disintegrate. This high and mighty
Europe was widely expected, in Catholic Europe, to extend its sway up to the
borders of the 'Byzantine' or Orthodox East but not to include this East. It is
Germany discovered that Europe was not yet quite ready for this mission that
Euro-NATO still flies with American wings.
The important military alliance that hit the Serbs last year was between
the US Air Force and the Luftwaffe.
In Britain certain newspapers and television channels - the Guardian, the
Independent and even the BBC - are ready to teach the 'European mission' in the
way many nineteenth-century newspapers preached imperialism to sceptical
governments. But even journals more sceptical of Maastricht radicalism support
or tolerate a vague security mission in the East. The mission is canvassed in a
low-key way. There is little debate
about it, just as little awareness of how EU membership and NATO expansion hang
together. There is an idea floating
around that the expansion of NATO means the incorporation of the Catholic
nations - Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Magyars, perhaps Lithuanians. The selection
of these nations is one thing; the huge, terrifying idea of the permanent
exclusion of Russia is the logical corollary. Though no idea is more dramatic
and important, it is assumed not argued; the sentimental perspective is not
Atlantic it is central European or 'old Viennese'. The idea of expanding Nato,
is presented as a once-in-a-century chance 'we' must not miss as well as a
legitimate German defence requirement. For a few this chance is already defined
as an answer to pan-Orthodoxy, for others it is simply the alternative to chaos.
But is excluding Russia anyone's legitimate requirement? The Germans will not
allow Russia into NATO or the EU. This
strategic choice might still be questioned - by governments - but if it is not
challenged it will soon look perfectly natural.
There
is remarkably little debate about the future of NATO. Michael Portillo, the
British Defence Secretary, rejected a European Army in a speech to the
Conservative Party Conference. His remarks were badly received by the press.
Without the style of his delivery, an important marker might have been
recognised. But it was treated as laughable because he attacked what one can
still, today, present as a straw man - the defence dimsension of the EU . A few
days after the press slapped Portillo down, Kohl's likely successor, Wolfgang
Schauble, went to Oxford to speak. His theme was the development of the Western
European Union as the defence dimension of the EU. The real criticism of
Portillo is that he made no attempt to be taken seriously.
The problem is not new. NATO has
been a useful right-wing orthodoxy for so long that no Tory feels comfortable
about revealing signs of heterodoxy. No
Tory wants to question NATO, and no Eurosceptic in Britain, not even Mrs
Thatcher, has made a clear case. (In
recent times, Norman Tebbit was too homespun and Nigel Lawson was too discreet,
and both were somehow too late to stand as strongly as they eventually wished
against radical Europeanism.) Seriousness
is not difficult, but politicians - in Britain, Russia or anywhere else in
Europe - who want to warn against German policy must make an clear political
investment and accept a political cost. The security issue is large and
dangerous. Who wants the expansion
of NATO or 'out of area' operations or and the use of British, French,
Scandinavian and even Russian troops as proxy enforcers (in Bosnia) for American
and German policy? Who dares start
a debate?
The trend now obvious, after the confused period 1989-1993, is for NATO to be
expanded into the object which the EU expects to acquire when the integrationist
ratchet is slipped forward another notch or two. If the EU does not evolve this
way, Germany may do the job itself. The German ruling party, the CDU, has started to say this.
America-in-NATO can make no choices for Eastern Europe which are not
Germany's - except by withdrawing from leadership and forcing Germany to expose
its policy. If America takes the lead in expanding NATO, it promotes a series of
military conventions which would, in essence, be German commitments to confront
Russia. America can mask the goal of NATO expansion by blowing its
own trumpet hard as it is now doing in Bosnia.
This might serve to lull the British; it might also drive the French from
the arms of Bonn to the embrace of Berlin; but a merely presentational truth can
only be sustained for so long.
For the moment, then, Washington is the centre of the plot even if the motor of
change is Germany. Many Americans have not entirely discarded the possibility
that Russia will recover as a superpower. The American people show no appetite
for defense commitments in Europe far beyond the existing pattern. Clinton was
elected on the expectation that America was withdrawing in Europe. But the
advocates of keeping Russia sweet and avoiding confrontation lost the arguments
as the crisis in Russian society and industrial production deepened.
An America that was supposed to be becoming a Pacific-First nation has come back
to Europe with a vengeance. Bosnia
was the catalyst of this resumption of the Europe First policy. There is a
certain logic to this reversal of assumptions. American power in Asia is, at
best, dormant. There is no plan for
China unless it is to create a dependency on the American market. Japan cannot
be pushed about. Europe is much
more malleable and still very important and it has an exciting and accessible
'new frontier'. America is, for the present, still a nation of ex-Europeans.
Events have moved very sharply. In 1993 the EU had the UN mandate to negotiate
on Bosnia. In 1994-95 the US lead
the show, towing the feeble 'Contact Group' wherever it wants. It has set up in
the Balkans as a military power - with Croatia, Bosnia and Albania as proxies.
How has this happened? It appears to have evolved between vague pressures in
Congress and precise demands inside the Administration. The Bosnian war has been
crucial, although American choices before it began leave US motives and
reactions too intermingled for a simple cause-and-effect judgment. Anti- Serb
fury inside the State Department, the anti-Russian drive of the Czech-born
Ambassador Albright and the pressure of opportunities has helped pull Clinton
into an ambitious New Course. In future Washington, as a political community,
will be increasingly vulnerable to the willingness of Germany - and various
classes of hyphenated Americans - to persist with Russia as the Big Bear. It is
exposed to a plethora of lobbies, most of which are anti-Serb. The political
machine at the top is so tied up with domestic survival and endless lobbying
that major strategic choices can be and are produced without reference to the
departmental custodians of serious strategy - the Department of Defense and the
CIA. The Clinton White House was weak in leadership. The White House was wracked
by lobbying until Anthony Lake and Richard Holbrooke obtained a decision.
It is, however, the case that no American President, certainly not Clinton
hammered hard by Republican foreign policy criticism, could contemplate calmly
the renunciation of leadership implicit in allowing the European side of NATO to
frame its own goals in Eastern Europe and so swell into detachment. If Nato does
not expand something else will. The USA might not be sitting at the head of the
table. The USA can no longer simply demand to lead Europe, and a pre-Maastricht
suggestion that it should somehow be 'present' within the European Union was
simply ignored. But it has found a way, in Bosnia, of making itself
indispensible, and there is more to come. Keeping ahead of the game on Europe's
new frontier has been bought as a guiding concept.
Germany is America's for the moment. But Germany does not cease to protest that
France is her most important partner. This statement has the merit of keeping
France quiet. President Chirac is
no more likely to deny the German claim than Yeltsin is likely to boast that
Russia is friendless. But the claim is established and virtuous.
The Americans cannot even complain. Under its aegis Germany is able,
simultaneously, to develop with France the European defence dimension of the
longer-term while keeping the USA anxious to please by supporting American
military leadership in the near and foreseeable future.
Germany has its price. No country demanded the bombing of the Serbs more
consistently. Bonn wants to see its choices enforced in Yugoslavia and to have
the Catholic (or 'Latin') parts of Eastern Europe brought into a federal Europe
and the Nato alliance. (On both these issues, a section of Anglo-French public
opinion has been secured and, in Britain, seriously detached from state policy.)
The connection between Yugoslavia and the European issue is the connection
between the soup dish and the main course.
German choices are sometimes resisted. But it has been felt politically
impossible to say 'No'. Hence the pseudo-federalism half-tolerated at Maastricht
treaty; hence the 'Partnership for Peace' for Eastern Europehence; hence the
refusal of any state to challenge the hysteria about Bosnia and the Anglo-French
view (1992-95) that bombing the Serbs must remain on the agenda even though it
could be postponed. Much of this was a show put on to conciliate but not quite
to satisfy. But these were first responses. They have been followed by
clarifications. It was in 1994 that changes became apparent. Britain is
adjusting to what it previously rejected - the new German idea of a Europe of
two layers (or 'speeds'). America still wants to lead and so Clinton hailed
Germany as the new senior partner. NATO can go East. By the end of the year it
was rumoured that Washington had decided to use Croatia against the Serbs and to
go for Nato expansion. The doubts were discarded. In 1995 the new course became
known: the Krajina was overrun by an American-trained army; Nato bombed the
Bosnian Serbs (once the Anglo-French had agreed to change position).
Candidates for Nato membership were told that they could only be admitted
as members of the nuclear planning group.
German policy, though appearing hesitant after the mistakes and criticism of
1991-92, has suddenly won all the prizes. The world has not yet identified the
scope of Washington's new commitment, let alone had a chance to to react. When
Germany finally takes a permanent place in the Security Council and accedes to
French demands to 'Europeanise' the NATO HQ in Brussels, it could be a nuclear
power or so close to it as to be indistinguishable from a nuclear power.
The French perspective is a weaker alternative to Washington's. But the offer is
the same - leadership. Paris wants
Germany to outgrow its Atlanticism and accept the obligations of dual leadership
in Europe. To encourage this habit,
the French, like the Americans, must accept some German preferences.
A new French President looked for a simple popular gesture and ceased to
deflect the pressure against the Serbs. Indeed, this may have been a positive
choice by a neo-gaullist to capture the military iniative. (There was a similar
episode in early 1994 when the French wanted to trade readiness to bomb Serb gun
positions for American political flexibility. The Americans accepted the gift
and conceded nothing.) It is
interesting that Richard Holbrooke attaches such serious importance to the
election of President Jacques Chirac.
German grand plans may succeed in the immediate future.
She must avoid war, and so will avoid the pitfalls which she formerly
fell into. Eastern Europe craves the money and culture of the 'civil society' of
the West. But that Germany can, for the moment, design her own Europe and
ridicule opposition, does not mean that a balance of power can never be
re-asserted. Let us consider again the two temptations: NATO and 'the money'.
Germany's eastern neighbors need every assistance. They may even, at some future
time, need military security. But for the present, security is the one thing
they have. Why is the case for
consolidating this position rather than provoking confrontation with Russia so
neglected? The former Warsaw Pact states can be guaranteed by everyone. We can
even promise to defend them, and structure NATO on that assumption. But must we
absorb them, train them up, equip them with the highest high tech, impose on
them our next nuclear doctrines and glare into Russia from the Polish border?
Must a German NATO, like Stalin in 1945, go too far merely because it can?
The answer seems to be yes. Of course, it is not the 'old Germany' that wants
this. But there never was one 'old Germany', there were several - all rich in
talent, inconvenience and ambition, and all curiously ill-equipped to recognize
that a powerful state at the center of a continent is well-advised to avoid the
dangerous role of innovator. With every day that passes today's Germany
displays, to outsiders, more old features and is less like the West Germany we
used to know. The German on the Frankfurt omnibus does not altogether know this
yet. This is great pity. It means that Germany's leadership choices are not
subject to the democratic scrutiny which they deserve. They are still veiled by
Europeanism. But note how quickly the Government's national tone rises these
days! Questions about the engagement of the German Army in Bosnia have been
smothered by a call for national unity about alliance solidarity.
A great constitutional question has been brushed aside. Germany has gone to war
- outside her boundaries and outside the NATO area. The Serbs of Bosanska
Krajina were attacked by German strike aircraft. Every educated German knows
what the Bosnian war has altered the German constitution. They already know how
future historians will praise Kohl's ability to smother doubts with appeals to
national duty and compare them to Bismarck's finesse. The Bonn Government still
repudiates the idea of a separate German opinion about great matters, but it
regularly calls for a sort of German instinctual national solidarity in
executing a meta-German policy called Europe or Nato. It might be healthier to
have more German opinions and less concern for instinctual solidarity.
Kohl and Schauble have their political technique worked out to perfection.
They will invite everyone to look into the mirror, to see there the
disasters that might follow from refusing the new Europe.
The French, with extraordinary ineptitude, have taught the Germans to
use, without apology, arguments which Germans would not have dared advance on
their own account. Tie us into
'Europe', they say, so that we can be less German and more European, so that you
can have a European Germany not a German Europe.
The menace in this argument has been tolerated as reassurance precisely
because official French fears about Germany are crude and German answer to those
fears is at the same level. In fact, a mildly cynical translation of the German
plea to be allowed to be 'European' would be: 'Accept the new Europe we have
prepared for you or we will abandon you to your fears'.
The Yugoslav crisis has been useful for German diplomacy precisely because it
could be used to show that the European Union we have today is not ready for the
great power mission the Germans have in mind.
The same is be said of NATO: Bosnia, it is said, shows that nothing
happens unless America does it. Failure
to agree on radical new policies is no longer just
disagreement, it is evidence of a systemic weakness which must be
rectified. The role played by
Germany in transforming a Yugoslav crisis into a long war can be interpreted in
many ways - from taking the moral high ground to the old 'Drang nach Osten' -
but that role must be interpreted in the light of the German wish to see the
present system of European co-operation condemned as dangerously weak. But it might rather be said that Germany and America
prevented correct action - a sane 'safe areas' policy for instance - and delayed
a peace which long seemed possible. In
so doing they both had motives which transcended the Balkans. Will Germany be rewarded for its success in dragging Europe
and NATO into the Yugoslav civil war or will Europe recognize the warning? Back to Moscow Conference Back to Home Page
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