# U.S. STRATEGY IN A NEW WORLD

## BY HENRY KISSINGER

It is the nature of revolutions to destroy the balance between concepts and reality. What is so extraordinary about the political upheavals of the past year is the growing obsolescence of not only traditional concepts of security but also of the machinery for devising new ones.

During the Cold War the threats to the security of the West were seemingly unambiguous and largely military. There was a broad consensus about the need to contain the Soviet Union.

Now, for the foreseeable future, ethnic conflicts and domestic tensions make it highly unlikely that the Soviet Union could deploy large ground forces outside its borders without ample warning. More likely, it will need to earmark its best troops to control domestic unrest.

On the other hand, the Kremlin's control over its strategic nuclear arsenal is probably the firmest element of its power structure. Even after a START agreement, the Soviets will possess about 10,000 warheads.

A DIRECT attack on the United States is deterred by the size and variety of America's nuclear arsenal. A START agreement will contribute an additional element of stability.

But these same factors make other countries within reach of Soviet nuclear weapons more vulnerable, at least psychologically. Toward most of them the Soviet Union possesses a nuclear monopoly; toward all of them a potentially crushing nuclear superiority.

How does one assess the Kremlin's political readiness to resort to its military potential in these circumstances?

How can America's nuclear deterrent be made credible for distant countries, however closely allied with America they are?

Will the period of internal Soviet weakness and assured mutual nuclear destruction invite Soviet nuclear blackmail or a period of reconciliation? How permanent is the Soviet crisis?

Is the old axiom still valid that Russia is never as powerful as it appears, but neither is it ever as weak?

None of these issues is addressed in the tug of war between the U.S. Defense Department and Congress over the so-called peace dividend.

The current defense budget is based on a five-year program that reflects a threat assessment essentially undertaken by events. There is a crying need for a new strategic doctrine defining likely dangers and how to deal with them as well as national objectives and how to attain them.

Unfortunately, the elaboration of strategic doctrine has never been an American forte.

Until the last two decades, America's resources were overwhelming in relation to foreseeable threats. As a result, its defense budget has historically reflected adjudication among the conflicting claims of the military services.

During periods of budgetary plenty, increases were translated into claims for an even further expansion of weapons systems. By the same token, periods of re-trenchment concentrated on personnel because personnel is expensive and the cuts can be reversed more easily.

In short, the thrust of American defense planning has not been so much to come up with a strategy as to protect weapons systems.

The trend of the American military establishment is in the direction of more and more complex weapons systems and ever fewer ready forces.

During periods of budgetary plenty, technological sophistication and abundance tend to obscure this state of affairs. But as soon as reduction of the defense budget becomes a major political issue, the military capacity of the United States begins to deteriorate rapidly.

Using a budget based on outdated threat assessments as a point of departure for allocating symmetrical cuts among the services is surely a prescription for progressive obsolescence. That trend is accelerated when congressional budget cutters aim at individual weapons systems with even less attention to long-range contingencies.

WITHIN the Atlantic Alliance, compartmentalization is also running increasingly counter to political reality.

Military issues are discussed within NATO; political issues find their focal point in the European Community, and will do so increasingly as Europe builds its political unity.

As that process gathers momentum, American military forces may turn into passive auxiliaries for the political decisions of others.

The United States has tried to counteract this tendency by proposing a new political role for NATO. But the proposal runs up against the historic suspicion of some Europeans that the United States is manipulating NATO to undermine European unification.

For in NATO, the United States deals with the European countries individually; the European Community as an institution is not represented.

At the same time, the United States is for all practical purposes excluded from the political deliberations of the Community.

The standard procedure is for the Council of Ministers to convey its conclusions to the United States through a chairman who changes every six months. But that foreign minister is in effect an instructed messenger with no negotiating flexibility. The best he can do is to inform his colleagues of the American views.

But since their decision usually emerges from months of painful deliberations and difficult compromises, they are understandably reluctant to change their position.

Thus, security issues are relegated to a forum infinital to European identity, while political issues are handled in a forum that excludes the United States from meaningful participation.

This incongruity makes it increasingly difficult for Europe and America to define their roles and strategies on crucial issues.

For example, there is general agreement that U.S. troops should remain in Europe. Two arguments are most frequently advanced: that NATO is America's sole institutional link to Europe, and that NATO is a means for tying Germany inextricably into the West.

But institutions thrive only when they are based on a common purpose; they cannot create it. NATO can remain America's link to Europe and Germany's link to the West only if it responds to a widely shared common purpose and a generally understood strategy.

This raises two issues: the level of U.S. forces and the hoary issue of nuclear weapons.

New York Post

Tuesday, May 29, 1990

(Continued)

THE level of U.S. forces is partly a military issue, but largely a psychological one; they must be large enough to leave no doubt that a conventional attack on Europe would involve the United States. Going much below 100,000 would raise grave questions in that regard.

The nuclear issue is almost entirely psychological.

The American public must become convinced that the defense of Europe against a nuclear threat which spares America is in the national interest.

And Europe must accept the fact that a nuclear guarantee, to be credible, requires some American nuclear deployment on the Continent to safeguard U.S. troops, and some arrangement within NATO that makes nuclear defense an Allied matter.

Too many in Germany justify their growing opposition to the stationing of any nuclear weapons on their soil with the goal of banishing nuclear risk from German territory. In the United States a significant group favors stationing all strategic weapons in this country or at sea in order to retain unilateral control of the decision to engage in nuclear war.

The political dilemma for the Atlantic Community is that so long as Europeans seek nuclear protection without nuclear risk, Americans will question having to shoulder risks in defense of Allied countries that those countries are avoiding. The end of that road is growing dissociation.

All this suggests that the nuclear issue must be faced explicitly and without delay. There must be a definition of political and strategic purposes.

Otherwise, the alliance will teeter between the denunciation of Central Europe and a strategy that makes the alliance itself a major political issue.

The same dilemmas exist with respect to arms control.

When negotiations on conventional arms control began, the political dividing line ran through the center of Germany, and Soviet ground forces were assumed to be vastly superior. In such circumstances, the goal of equal force levels was a major contribution toward stability.

Since then, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe have collapsed; most of the successor governments have asked the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces.

For an interim period symmetrical reduction of forces will help speed the Soviet withdrawal without obliging the United States to make greater reductions than budgetary pressures demand. But with every increment of withdrawal the principle of symmetrical forces will become more firmly established.

Arms control, however, runs the risk of legitimizing more forces in Eastern Europe than the host countries want. Or else it could generate pressures on the United States to withdraw all its forces from Central Europe.

Neither outcome reflects the political revolution of the past year. The symmetrical approach in fact will pro-

gressively be in conflict with political realities.

A creative solution would require not only good ideas but an equally wide domestic and Allied consensus.

A useful model could be the Advisory Council on Social Security established by President Ford. Composed of leaders of Congress and the administration, it hammered out an approach that overcame domestic discord and guided the legislative process.

IN the end, the defense budget is arbitrary and vulnerable unless it is related to a strategic doctrine defining priorities. The conclusions of a bipartisan commission would provide not only a guide but a safety net for the administration to protect it against arbitrary attacks.

A way must be found whereby the European Community is institutionally represented in the NATO Council when political issues are discussed and the United States has access to the deliberations of the European Community before they harden into formal decisions.

It is essential that a coherent view of East-West rela-

tions, strategy and arms-control negotiations emerges from the processes suggested here.

There should be a pause in conventional arms-control negotiations after the first stage to permit the elaboration of the appropriate mix between political and security elements.

In particular, there should be a careful examination of the concept of constituting the erstwhile satellite states as a neutral belt on each side of which an arms-control regimen would be established.

A time of upheaval poses so many challenges that it is not always easy to come up with the right answers. But it would be a pity to be ruled by procedures which do not permit us even to ask the right questions.

# De Gaulle: What He Would Do Now

By Henry A. Kissinger

In this, the 100th year of de Gaulle's birth, and two decades after he resigned from office, it is intriguing to reflect on how the great French president would have reacted to the extraordinary upheavals of our time.

My own encounters with de Gaulle were brief and one-sided. The first occurred at an Elysée reception during President Nixon's Paris visit in 1969. An aide ushered me into de Gaulle's presence. The president wasted no time on pleasantries. Eying me aloofly, he opened with a painful question: "Why do you not withdraw from Vietnam?"

"Because," I replied somewhat lamely, "it would undermine our credibility."

"Where?" de Gaulle demanded.

"In the Middle East," I suggested.

Gazing into the distance with seeming melancholy, de Gaulle said: "How very odd. In the Middle East, I thought it was your adversaries who have the credibility problem."

The encounter was quintessential de Gaulle. He did not believe that diplomacy required charm or personal relations but rather, and above all, a proper perception of the relations of forces. If these are correctly calculated, diplomacy can be successful. If not, neither good will nor charm can serve as a substitute. A basic aim of de Gaulle's

foreign policy was to liberate France from the vagaries of personality. This embroiled him into frequent clashes with the United States. American leaders were outraged by what they considered doubts about their good faith. But de Gaulle was trying to provide for the time when his American contemporaries would be gone from the scene and America would become absorbed in its own problems or with other continents — a time that may not be too far distant.

In other words, de Gaulle's clashes with America reflected entirely different sets of historical experience and perspective.

At the end of World War II, the United States emerged from its historic isolation into a position never enjoyed by any other nation. With less than a fifth of the world's population, it was producing more than a third of all the world's goods and services. It possessed an atomic monopoly. Its involvement in wars had been to respond to major threats perceived as temporary after which it seemed safe to withdraw again into isolation. Its commitment to foreign economic programs reflected the conviction that domestic strains result above all from discrepancies between expectation and reality and can be overcome by the mobilization of resources.

The two great postwar American initiatives — NATO and the Marshall Plan — marvellously responded to immediate problems even though they were based on premises about the nature of international relations that were as unique, indeed idiosyncratic, as America's history: that cooperation among nations is its own justification, that peace is natural and that division of labor is adequate motivation for the conduct of each ally.

De Gaulle emerged from a diametrically opposite historical experience. He led a country turned cautious by too many enthusiasms shattered, skeptical by too many dreams proved fragile, and conditioned not by his nation's sense of power or cohesion, but by its latent vulnerability.

De Gaulle did not believe that peace was the natural condition among states: "The world is full of opposing forces.... The competition of efforts is the condition of life.... International life, like life in general, is a battle."

Whereas American leaders stressed partnership, de Gaulle emphasized equilibrium. While Washington wanted to assign each ally a part in the overall task, de Gaulle believed that cooperation was meaningful only so long as each partner had a real choice. Washington, conscious of America's stability, focused on immediate, practical tasks; it urged an alliance structure which in the name of integration made separate action physically impossible. De Gaulle, governing a country wracked by generations of war and civil conflict, insisted that the manner of cooperation was as important as the goal itself. France, if it was to recover its identity, had to be perceived as acting voluntarily and therefore had to have freedom of choice.

De Gaulle inevitably opposed a NATO in which French forces were placed under foreign command and a Europe that dissolved French identity in a maze of supranational institutions. He warned that supranationalism was incompatible with France's identity as if "self-reclamation were henceforth its sole possibility and even its only ambition." He considered this

view not inconsistent with his advocacy of a united Europe "so that gradually there may be established on both sides of the Rhine, of the Alps and perhaps of the Channel the most powerful, prosperous and influential complex in the world." And he never strayed from affirming the importance of the American alliance even while doubting that America could, or wanted to, retain indefinitely its commitment to Europe — especially in the nuclear field. In fact, during the Cuban missile crisis, American officials were as astonished as they were pleased by de Gaulle's all-out support.

Americans had a tendency to accuse de Gaulle of delusions of grandeur. The fact was that American leaders, though personally humble, were cocksure about the future. By comparison, de Gaulle's arrogant style was in part designed to reinsure against the French nightmare in which the unexpected formed the most central historical experience. It was in the end a case of personal humility and historical arrogance on the part of the Americans clashing with the personal arrogance and historical humility of de Gaulle.

I bring up these ancient quarrels because the upheavals of the past year have suddenly given de Gaulle's view a new relevance. He would not have been surprised by the difficulties in which the Soviet system finds itself. Indeed he might well claim to have foreseen it at the height of the Berlin crisis of 1959: "There is in this uproar of imprecations and demands organized by the Soviets something so arbitrary and so artificial that one is led to attribute it either to the premeditated unleashing of frantic ambitions, or to the desire of drawing attention away from great difficulties. This second hypothesis seems all the more plausible to me since, despite the coercions, isolation and acts of force in which the Communist system encloses the countries which are under its yoke, and despite certain collective successes which it has achieved by drawing upon the substance of its subjects, actually its gaps, its shortages, its internal failures, and above that its character of inhuman oppression, are felt more and more by the elites and the masses, whom it is more and more difficult to deceive and to subjugate."

Yet, the suddenness of the collapse would have confronted de Gaulle with a contingency he could neither foresee nor sardonically dismiss: the sudden emergence of a powerful unitied Germany.

In his more exalted moments, de Gaulle implied that his remedy for that prospect was the force de frappe. "How will you keep Germany from dominating a Europe based on the nation state?" I asked him once during another one-sided conversation. "By war (par la guerre)," shot back de Gaulle.

But as a political leader de Gaulle was both more supple and more realistic. In the 1960s, de Gaulle obviously believed that it was possible to construct European equilibrium based on French political dominance, the division of Germany, West German economic strength and a continued though reduced American presence. In this scheme everybody had some role: The Soviet Union would see to the division of Germany, the United States would defend Western Europe against the Soviet Union, and France would in time take over the political leadership of Western Europe backed by German economic strength.

The pattern was however too Cartesian, that is to say too intricate. It left too little scope for the unpredictable. At any rate, it has collapsed. De Gaulle would surely recognize that the Soviet military threat has declined, that the American commitment to Europe is being reassessed and that France simply does not have the strength to organize a new European equilibrium by herself. The traditional French option to contain Germany by rapprochement with Russia is precluded by either of the foreseeable outcomes of the Soviet internal conflict: If there is chaos, Russia will be too weak to act as a counterweight to Germany; if Russian nationalism prevails, a Soviet Union with thousands of nuclear weapons might rediscover hegemonial aspirations. Nor in Europe of 18th-century diplomacy is it a foregone conclusion that the Soviet Union would opt for France as a partner. In any event, the least attempt to encircle Germany would almost surely reawaken the very nationalism that is France's nightmare. So at the end of the road designed to make America more dispensable, the United States has emerged again as the key to the European equilibrium — though it remains to be seen whether Washington understands that opportunity.

In these circumstances, I suspect that de Gaulle would pursue two courses: he would accelerate his long-range goal of European political unity. And he would rediscover new virtues in the Atlantic alliance.

De Gaulle would not in my view convert to the supranational concepts of Jean Monnet. More than ever, he would reject the counsels of integrationists looking to strengthen supranationalism in the field of economics. He would surely oppose a Europe run by functionaries. His attitudes in that respect would not differ too much from those of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

(continued)

International
Herald Tribune

Monday, May 7, 1990

Hans-Joachim Knaufinger

# Germany, Neutrality and the 'Security System' Trap

## Europe doesn't need a united Deutschland playing both sides against the middle.

As German unification moves inexorably forward, the key issues are not how to merge the economic systems of the two German states or even recognition of Germany's frontiers. These problems will almost certainly be resolved in fairly short order whatever the political maneuvers imposed by the upcoming West German elections. The ultimate stake is the foreign policy direction of the united Germany: whether it remains structurally part of the West or seeks a neutral position. The answer to this question will determine the stability of Europe well into the next century.

The German debate has returned to the controversies that accompanied the early days of the Federal Republic 40 years ago. Then the great chancellor Konrad Adenauer opted for organic links with the West, the first time in German history that such a commitment had been made. His critics were convinced that by forgoing neutrality, Adenauer was betraying the hopes for German unity.

A generation later, the debate has resumed with reversed roles. The heir to the Adenauer tradition is Chancellor Helmut Kohl, an advocate of both rapid unification and continued strong Atlantic ties. His German critics are charging him with forcing the pace unduly. Whether deliberately or subconsciously, some of them want to keep alive the option of neutrality by waiting to see whether perestroika will in the end produce the kind of Soviet Union that Germany could possibly balance against Washington. Of course the word "neutralism" is no longer fashionable; these days it marries under the banner of an "all-European security system," which proposes to dissolve all alliances, including NATO, by grouping the nations of Europe as well as the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union into a system designed to keep the peace by the consensus of all participants.

Clearly, the longer two German states remain in place, the more the outside powers will be tempted to multiply conditions for their unification. Rapid unification has the best chance of discouraging German temptations to seek unification through equidistance from contending pressures. Procrustiation on unification runs the risk of repeating Germany's historic inability to reconcile its geography with the political requirements of European stability.

The last of the major European countries to become a nation (in 1871), Germany in the past concentrated more on achieving unity than on devising strategies for dealing with it. The national interest was conceived in largely military terms. But the drive to manage simultaneously all dangers—real or imagined—threatened each of Germany's neighbors sufficiently to bring about precisely the hostile coalitions that its first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, described as Germany's nightmare.

Post-World War II Germany freed itself from this temptation. It is the German commitment to the Atlantic alliance that is now challenged by the process of unification.

Germany is now tied to the West by two institutions: the European Community and the Atlantic alliance. Except for the United Kingdom, few Europeans dispute that Europe should move rapidly toward political integration. The same consensus does not exist with respect to NATO.

Despite the dramatic changes of the past year, NATO's contribution to European stability remains indispensable. It is the only institution that relates America to Europe and Germany to a superpower. Three times in this century—in 1917, 1941 and 1948—American troops have proved essential to maintaining the European equilibrium. NATO gives the non-European countries of Europe, including Germany, a shield against nuclear blackmail. The American presence reassures West Europeans that they have a safety net should Germany—against all expectations—return to the road of nationalism.

Without a clear American role, the psychological map of Europe as well as of Atlantic relations would be radically transformed. But this is precisely the tendency being fostered by the fashionable concept of an all-European security system supposed to include Canada, the United States, the Soviet Union and all the states in between.

It would replace existing security arrangements by obliging all its participants to work together against threats to the peace. It is being pushed by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who hopes that by making NATO appear as a transitory phenomenon, the European security system would become more palatable to the Soviet Union. And the European security system has supporters as well in some East European countries eager to accelerate the departure of Soviet troops from their territory.

And the Soviet Union has weighed in with a scheme whereby Germany would be a member of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact until these were dissolved in an all-European security system after five to seven years.

The Soviet proposal, if serious, is cynical. For membership in two opposing alliances, besides being a diplomatic first, would be a complex equivalent for neutrality. And in the end the so-called European security system could not live up to its name. It would only promote insecurity.

The circle cannot be squared despite the best efforts of some of the advocates of the proposed European security system to make it appear a complement to NATO. It is by definition incompatible with the Atlantic alliance; it would erode all existing psychological dividing lines. The Wilsonian dream that every nation has an equal interest in security, that each dispute can be judged on its merits and decided altruistically, has never failed to produce disillusionment. A system of general collective security has historically proved useless against the biggest threat to peace—a major rogue state. How would the "peace-loving" states respond? What sanctions would be at their disposal? How would decisions be reached? How could such a system avoid all the frustrations of the United Nations and the League of Nations?

No arrangement would be more likely to create conditions in which one nation can dominate. For if everybody is allied with everybody, nobody has a special relationship with anybody. It is the ideal circumstance for the most ruthless seeking to isolate potential victims, which is why the Soviet Union under Stalin offered to join NATO in the first place. In such an arrangement a major rogue state would be secure in the knowledge that it would have a de facto veto over the actions of the so-called security system. How those who profess to fear undue German influence after unification can also advocate such a security system is obscure to me.

It would be reckless to dissolve the Atlantic alliance into an amorphous institution at the precise moment that traditional nationalisms are reappearing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is teetering between chaos and repression.

Germany's role remains central. While it is theoretically possible to maintain NATO without Germany, it is hard to conceive of a defense of Central Europe without America. And if American troops are to stay in Europe in numbers relevant to European security, it must be in Germany, especially in the light of the recent U.S.-Soviet agreement putting a ceiling of 30,000 on American deployment of forces outside the central front.

This is why it is important to resist the siren song of the symmetrical withdrawal of American and Soviet forces from Central Europe. If all Soviet forces were to withdraw from Central Europe, they would be only a few hundred miles away at the Polish frontier while American forces would be 3,000 miles away across the Atlantic. In such circumstances there would be even less symmetry in the nuclear field. After a START treaty, the Soviet nuclear arsenal would still vastly outnumber British and French nuclear forces. In any event, an organized European nuclear defense in the absence of U.S. forces is highly improbable.

Recent East/West negotiations may not reflect current political realities. There is an agreed ceiling of 195,000 men for each side in Central Europe and of 30,000 American forces outside the central area in Britain, Spain, Italy and Turkey. This implies that on the central front the forces will be symmetrical—either at some agreed level or at zero—both unsatisfactory outcomes. The ceiling threatens to give the Soviets a legitimacy to maintain more troops in Eastern Europe than the host countries want; therefore the host country must have the last word on deployments. And the floor allows too few American troops for realistic security missions if there is a complete withdrawal from the central front. In short, East/West negotiations must not enable the Soviet Union to achieve in its hour of weakness goals denied to it when it seemed menacing: a denuclearized Europe, a neutral Germany and a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Europe.

Not only arms control policy but also NATO organization and strategy need to be adjusted to the new political environment. The NATO structure should reflect the impending political integration and the growing role of Europe. After 1992 the European Community should be institutionally represented in the NATO council. And as Europe assumes the brunt of the conventional defense, the NATO commander should be European.

In the end there will be no substitute for a common strategy. Arms control is certainly important, but many forums for negotiating it already exist: NATO on the other hand was never designed for that purpose. The attempt to turn NATO into a political institution failed in the '70s in the face of French opposition. It is not likely to succeed now—when it may be considered by some Europeans as competitive with European integration and when it is difficult to define what that political role could be.

A military alliance cannot survive without a workable strategic concept that defines the probable dangers and the means to deal with them. For the foreseeable future, the Soviet ideological threat is over; the large Soviet ground army will be weakened by ethnic conflicts and technological backwardness. On the other hand, if perestroika succeeds, the renewed vigor of the Soviet Union could become as uncomfortable for its neighbors as it was before under czars and commissars alike. These historic pressures could be given impetus by the Soviet nuclear arsenal not even remotely matched in Europe. This is not the place to discuss the content of an appropriate strategic concept except to warn against dismantling Western military establishments through a budgetary process driven largely by domestic politics.

In the best of circumstances these processes require extraordinary circumspection and subtlety. Especially the upcoming forum of the four "victorious powers," which is to decide the international conditions of German unification, needs to be handled with utmost sensitivity. After 40 years of responsible alliance policy, it would not do for the Western democracies to treat the Federal Republic as a defeated country subject to its victors. Britain, France and the United States should surface nothing in that forum except after full consultation with Bonn. To stress Germany's equal status as a partner, the time has come, too, for the Western democracies to take the lead in jettisoning residual four-power rights, including the divided status of Berlin, as soon as possible.

Washington Post

Sunday April 15,1990

(continued)

SUPPLEMENT: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990

NEWSMAKER SUNDAY

AIR TIMES: Sunday, Mar. 18, 1990; 10:30 AM; 5:30 PM
Monday, Mar. 19, 1990; 3:00 AM

ORIGINATION: Washington, D.C.

GUESTS:
REP. DANTE FASCELL (D-Florida)
Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee

HENRY KISSINGER
Former Secretary of State

MODERATOR: Bob Franken - Newsmaker Sunday

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Elissa Free

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Kevin Bohn

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Lisa Lawrence

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "Newsmaker Sunday" (CNN)

MR. FRANKEN: Welcome to NEWSMAKER SUNDAY. I'm Bob Franken in Washington. In the good old days, a few months ago, events of just this week would have been the stories of the year, or century. The communist world continues to transform, while in the Mideast the government of Israel falls apart. We are joined here today in Washington by two who have been and will be right in the thick of things, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante Fascell. We'll try and sort out the week's breath-taking events next on NEWSMAKER SUNDAY.

MR. FRANKEN (on tape): Another routine week, one historic change after another. Dateline Germany: East German voters are electing a new government after throwing out the communists and eliminating the Berlin Wall, while in Bonn all the affected parties try to sort out German reunification which has gone in a brief time from almost unthinkable to apparently inevitable. But even that historic movement is overwhelmed by the week in Moscow. The Soviet Union has a new super-president. Mikhail Gorbachev has assumed unprecedented powers, and promised in effect to reconstruct his Marxist-Leninist state as a democratic country with a market-driven economy. How big that country will be remains to be seen. In Lithuania, the parliament has voted to succeed from the U.S.S.R., and several other Baltic republics are considering the same thing, as Moscow vacillates between a mild and hard line response.

Meanwhile, over in the Mideast, we certainly can't overlook the collapse of the Israeli coalition government. Labor

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and Likud are jockeying once again to head the next one, and an American peace proposal might hang in the balance. There's so much ferment everywhere that the Libyan chemical plant that burned down was nearly snoved aside from the world's attention. That's sadly true also of America's hostages, still held in the Mideast. Terry Anderson's fifth anniversary in captivity came and went last week. Renewed hopes some hostage release was in the works are dismissed as premature once again.

Among the many questions is the performance of President Bush. Put simply, is his administration on top of events, or racing to keep up?

MR. FRANKEN: So let's ask that question for starters first of Dr. Kissinger. Are they on top of things?

DR. KISSINGER: Of course, so many things have happened that were totally unexpected that nobody could have foreseen, but I think on the whole, on the main trends, they are on top of things, and have conducted a very subtle and thoughtful foreign policy.

MR. FRANKEN: The criticism is, however, that their subtlety has moved into reticence on occasion.

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, but some of the events--for example, on Eastern Europe, on Germany--they cannot force events beyond the election schedules and others. I think they've on the whole established a framework which will stand us in good stead.

MR. FRANKEN: Congressman Fascell?

REP. FASCELL: I think basically the administration is on top of the issues. Events have broken so fast it's very hard to keep up with them. I think the criticism, if any, is probably style as much as anything else, or rhetoric. The prose needs to be more forceful in explaining to the American people and the world, if you will, a vision of what this is all about, where we're going with emerging democracies, the place that the United States has in it. Without that, we seem to be responding piecemeal, although adequately, or perhaps get into discussions about whether or not the assistance is timely, is it enough money, and that seems reactive, and it may be that there really isn't too much the United States can do anyway.

So I think it is the vision of the future and where we're going that indicates a lack of real control, when, as a matter of fact, the administration is keeping up with events.

MR. FRANKEN: Well, the events are coming from every which direction, as we know, and in just a moment we'll check out on one of the world capitals when we continue with NEWSMAKER SUNDAY.

(Announcements)

MR. FRANKEN: The Soviet Union now has what is being

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called a super-president, that is to say, a leader with unprecedented
power. Dr. Kissinger, is this something to worry about?

DR. KISSINGER: It's an interesting phenomenon. It's described in much of our media as a move towards pluralism. But you could equally well describe it, and perhaps more accurately as the substitution of one man rule for one party rule, and how he will actually--legally Gorbachev has more power now than anyone has had in the Soviet Union since the days of Stalin. Can he exercise it? Will there be enough authority? That remains to be seen. But, effectively he has established now one man rule.

MR. FRANKEN: Is this, as I said, something to worry about?

DR. KISSINGER: It depends--when you have one man rule it depends what that one man thinks. Right now, I believe he's too preoccupied with his domestic affairs to be able to worry us in an expansionist sense. But I think he will face the problem of whether glasnost, the democratization and perestroika, the restructuring can exist side by side, and whether the ethnic problem, and the problem of central authority, how that is going to be related, and he may be--he will be oscillating, I think, between the dangers of chaos and the dangers of repression. And in that sense, we have something in the longer term to think about.

REP. FASCELL: Well, no doubt Gorbachev has consolidated his power. He's been doing that all five years, and every time there's a political test, we all wonder, is he going to make it. And so far every time he's been successful. Now, how will he use that? I agree with Dr. Kissinger that he's going to be wavering back and forth on the use of that power between trying to do something about his domestic and internal problems both economic and social. And the real test for us, the rest of the world, will be in the liberalization process of his foreign or international policy--let me put it that way. So a good test might be what relationship in Angola, what relationship in Cuba? Do they really follow through in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in other places, Afghanistan, et cetera. And if that becomes an integral part of the total pull back, expansionist concepts of the Soviet empire, then I think Gorbachev would really deserve a major place in history.

DR. KISSINGER: They're still putting $12 billion into the foreign adventures that the chairman was mentioning.

MR. FRANKEN: Well, that raises the question, the United States policy. The policy of the United States right now seems to be to be rooting for Gorbachev in all these changes. Should that be our policy?

REP. FASCELL: Oh, sure. Absolutely. We want the man to succeed in the economic improvement and in the liberalization

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with respect to Eastern Europe, and even internally.

MR. FRANKEN: Even with the dangers--

DR. KISSINGER: I have a slightly different view on this. So long as he conducts the policies of liberalization of especially foreign policy. We want him to succeed. But we want the policies to succeed, not the man to succeed. And so we have to hold him to standards. He should not be able to sell his staying in office as a quid pro quo for our concessions.

REP. FASCELL: Absolutely.

MR. FRANKEN: Well, what about the suggestion by a member of your party, House Majority Leader Gephardt, that we should provide aid to the Soviet Union, food for peace? Bad idea? Good idea?

REP. FASCELL: No. We can do all of those things, because the majority leader conditioned all of that assistance, either direct or indirect, upon certain standards as the secretary said. And you've got to maintain those standards. If, for example, the Pomyat pogroms against the Jews in the Soviet Union is not stopped, he can't get it under control, the harassment continues, the human rights efforts go to pieces, so to speak, we can't, you know, we can't give any aid.

MR. FRANKEN: The criticism is, among other criticisms, is that it's premature. Dr. Kissinger?

DR. KISSINGER: I would make a distinction between those things that alleviate immediate suffering, such as if there's a food shortage, which I would favor, favor those which strengthen the strategic capabilities or the military capabilities of the Soviet Union which I wouldn't do. One of the pressures on the Soviet system has been their inability to meet the consumer needs. And to the extent that those pressures continue, they will be forced to shift from the military sector into the civilian sector. And that's in our interest. There's a short term emergency in food, for example. I would favor helping them out. But fundamentally we can't solve the economic problem. The economic problem is total mismanagement.

MR. FRANKEN: Well, along the lines of their domestic problems, what about Lithuania? What should our posture be on Lithuania?

REP. FASCELL: I think the posture we've taken right now is a reasonable posture.

MR. FRANKEN: Which is sort of a non-posture.

REP. FASCELL: Well, it's waiting for the developments internally. I think it would be a mistake for us to take a position in the United States that what we're actually doing is fomenting an earlier action than the people themselves can handle.

DR. KISSINGER: We haven't recognized the occupation of

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NEWSMAKER...CONTINUED

the Baltic states for 50 years, and it's too late to start now. I think we have made it clear, and certainly it's in our political context that if they attempted to repress the freedom movement in the Baltics, they would suffer a severe strain on their relations with the United States. As long as they don't repress it, I believe that independence is almost inevitable, is inevitable.

MR. FRANKEN: We have to take another break here as we move from the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc to the Mideast, back in a moment.

(Announcement)

MR. FRANKEN: Our guests today, Dr. Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state, and Congressman Dante Fascell, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

You used to be called Henry the K as you were bouncing around the mid-East, involved in shuttle diplomacy. While we've had the Israeli government fall now, and the peace process seems to be a little bit stuck. Do you think it's time for somebody else to get involved in some shuttle diplomacy again?

DR. KISSINGER: I think it's being--I think the procedure is being properly handled, because shuttle diplomacy took place at the end of a war when there was need for some dramatic change. And when the substantive issues were very clearly understood. I think the real problem in Middle East diplomacy now is to not just focus on procedure, but try to come to some understanding, especially between the United States and Israel, where this process is supposed to go. So that these procedural issues, who sits in the room, don't become the substitute for what the--for the outcome of the negotiations. And if there was some understanding as to the floor below which this will not go, or beyond which we will not press Israel, I think there might be a calmer atmosphere in the internal Israeli discussion.

MR. FRANKEN: What calm there was was shattered by President Bush and his comments about East Jerusalem. Do you feel, Congressman Fascell, that this was something that was an accident or was there some sort of larger purpose?

REP. FASCELL: It's hard to say. I haven't discussed that with the president. But certainly the administration's regrouping after that comment, so as to take it out of the considerations of the matters that are going on. And the vote in the Israeli cabinet seems to indicate that that was successful.

The fact that it upset the Jewish community here in the United States and Israel is--there's no doubt about that.

MR. FRANKEN: Could this possibly have been some sort of Machiavellian effort to--

DR. KISSINGER: The problem, I think it shows the problem. Because the criticism is that he shouldn't have raised the issue

8 5

NEWSMAKER...CONTINUED

at this point. But the issue is unavoidable. There is no way
there can be a negotiation on this, on the West Bank without the
issue of Jerusalem.

MR. FRANKEN: It is U.S. policy, by the way, isn't it?

DR. KISSINGER: It is--I have no tactical disagreement
with trying to keep it for as late in the day as possible. But at
the end of the day, it has to be faced. And there has to be some
discussion between Israel and the United States on what we intend
to do. And even though it may be painful, at the end of it at
least we will know where we are all heading.

REP. FASCELL: Well, the issue is there, I agree with
that. And it seems to me that the $64 question is, how do you get
started. Now the Baker plan was an effort to get started on
something, so that all these other things naturally would fall
into place.

I agree with Henry, however, that you can't make procedure
substitute for the substantive issues. That would be ridiculous.
But there are a lot of driving forces in Israel right now, and in
the Middle East with the Palestinians. And I think one of the
fundamental things is that the climate of the world plus the fact
that the Middle East has been there in the situation this long, is
that the status quo is really not acceptable to anyone.

MR. FRANKEN: We had a situation that caught my fancy a little
bit. And that is that events of the week-overshadowed a crisis
with Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. He used to be the one that you
would always turn to when you needed a bad guy. Where does he fit
in to all of this, or doesn't he?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, of course he hasn't been the same
since the American attack on Libya in retaliation for their terrorist
action. I think that chemical plant is a danger to everybody in
the region. And I don't know who was involved, if anybody was
involved in starting that fire.

But anything that delays or eliminates the operation of
that chemical plant is a contribution to humanity. And so I think
that that was a positive development, without knowing what caused
it.

REP. FASCELL: No question about it. The poor man's
bomb, so to speak, in the hands of a Gaddafi or anybody else is
just--would be a disaster. And the fact that this plant burned
down is a plus for the whole world.

But it just underscores the necessity for the United
States and the Soviet Union to continue to take the lead and try
and reach an agreement among themselves, we're very close to doing
that, and internationally, both on the use of chemical and bac-
teriological warfare, on its production and its distribution.

MR. FRANKEN: Very briefly, there is another concentric

B 6

NEWSMAKER... CONTINUED

problem, and that is the hostages in the Mid East. Do you have
any idea what's going to be done, what should be done?

DR. KISSINGER: The painful thing about the hostages is
that the best way to get them back is to devalue them. To the
extent that they think they can keep us in turmoil and can keep us
negotiating, to that extent they have a vested interest in holding
them on to them.

And so I agree with the policy of no concessions to the
hostage takers. I believe that if Iran rationally should come to
the view that no American president can politically afford to make
concessions, they can get nothing for it. But they could get a
different atmosphere if they release them unconditionally. And
there are signs occasionally that that is being recognized.

MR. FRANKEN: And Congressman Fascell, do you support
the administration?

REP. FASCELL: I agree with that statement. I think the
only chance we've got is a political chance. There's no other way
to do it that anybody has come up with. And so if we can devalue
their interest in being held as hostages in terms of any gain to
the people who are doing it, we might have a better chance.

The solution of the political problems is our only hope.

MR. FRANKEN: We have to take a break right now. We'll
be back with more as we hopscotch around the world on NEWSMAKER SUNDAY.

(Announcements)

MR. FRANKEN: One of the other burning issues of the day
is the Bush administration's handling of China. I'd like to ask
you as a member of the loyal opposition, Chairman Fascell, your
feelings about the administration's conduct.

REP. FASCELL: Well, we took a very strong view against
the president's efforts with regard to China. And we felt it was
a real gamble. If the president wanted to take the heat for it,
for the benefit of the country, it remains to be seen whether or
not it was a good gamble.

But for the moment, it just seems like we forgave all
values that we hold dear in order to simply maintain contact with
a people, a billion people, and a government in which we have a
great interest.

So it's too early to tell whether the gamble paid off.
And the president right now unfortunately is reaping the criticism
that goes with that gambit.

MR. FRANKEN: You are one of the architects, of course,
of the contacts that we have with China.

DR. KISSINGER: I support the president's policy very
strongly. Because it seems to me nobody approves of what occurred
at Tiananmen Square. But we have a national interest in a relationship
with a billion, 200 million people, self-governing for 4,000
years.

And so we have to keep in mind that the relationship

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NEWSMAKER...CONTINUED

between China and Japan, China and the Soviet Union, East and Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and therefore the necessity of maintaining communications which I agree with. And it will--may yet turn out, and I believe it will turn out that it will also lead to some progress on human rights.

MR. FRANKEN: I just wanted to ask. You're the person to ask this, of course, when do you have to say that national interest is superseded by the moral questions?

DR. KISSINGER: There is no abstract answer to that. It's a level of intolerable behavior where moral considerations override all others.

I don't believe we have reached that point yet with China. And the administration has stated certain specific criteria, which it is applying and on which it continues to exercise pressure.

MR. FRANKEN: Congressman Fascell.

REP. FASCELL: Well, you know, it's a judgement call every time. And the position that the United States has to be in is to make it clear that the moral values is a very important consideration in our relationship, international relationship with the Chinese. But you know, we're doing other things too. It wasn't just a contact.

We're selling more sophisticated, high technology stuff to the Chinese than the Soviets and all of Eastern Europe put together. And we're taking a real gamble there. So that invites the criticism, if we're going to take that kind of gamble with the Chinese because of strategic interests in the Pacific, why can't we take that same kind of gamble with the Europeans and the Soviets.

MR. FRANKEN: Well, that brings us back a little bit west to Germany. What should our posture be?

DR. KISSINGER: I think that German unification is unavoidable. There are 400,000 Soviet troops in Eastern Germany. They have not felt they could use those to keep Germany divided. It they can't do it with 400,000 troops, none of us on the outside have any ability to prevent it.

Secondly, Germany has been an ally for 40 years and it's awfully late in the game to remember all the misdeeds they committed. So we have to keep Germany tied to the Western community within the unification framework.

REP. FASCELL: Reunification is a fact. It's de facto, it exists. Now whether or not it will ever be de jure under Two-plus-Four or Four-plus-Six or 35, remains to be seen. And whether or not the east and the west can make satisfactory financial

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NEWSMAKER... CONTINUED

arrangements on a unitary currency remains to be seen.
But as far as the people are concerned, it's there now.
MR. FRANKEN: Thank you both very much for being with us. What
you have just witnesses is a half hour trip around the world.
Thank you for joining us for NEWSMAKER SUNDAY.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

March 16, 1990

Pg. 25

Making the most of our defense dollars

By Lawrence S. Finkelstein

Defense budgets are destined to decline. Defense planners confront new challenges in conceiving and designing forces and force structures to meet unpredictable future threats to national security. Rational defense planning is driven by concepts about the threat to national security.

No doubt there is an overall shift in the sources of threat to national security. The risk of East-West war in Europe, always small, declines even further. Elsewhere, uncertainty remains. There are many international and internal conflicts that threaten or might threaten our national interests in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Defense planners will have to design forces that optimize U.S. capacities to respond appropriately to such challenges as military resources decline.

If they are wise, national leaders will do more than plan the use of competent U.S. forces to cope with threats to national security after they have arisen. They will, of course, be searching for "force multipliers," that is, ways to increase the utility of defense investments. Assisting the armed forces of allied countries is a favored way to do that. That strategy sometimes backfires, as is shown by the role of U.S.-supplied and trained air force units in the insurrection last fall against President Corazon Aquino in the Philippines and by the dependence of Manuel Noriega on the Panama Defense Forces.

Planners should recognize that reducing the threat by non-military means is the best way to multiply the usefulness of whatever forces we can afford. Heading off a challenge serves the national interest much better than having to respond with force. First of all, that is the task of diplomacy. We should preserve and build the capability of the Foreign Service, which is the nation's real first line of defense. Sound foreign economic policy and development assistance may also help to avert festering conditions in the Third World that could threaten U.S. security interests.

Peacekeeping by the United Nations is another means to head off threats. It serves the broad national interest in a peaceful world of orderly change. Its

possibilities as a "force multiplier" also deserve attention. Especially since creation of the United Nations Emergency Force to defuse the Middle East crisis of 1956, the UN has achieved a remarkable record of peacekeeping achievement. The Nobel Peace Prize it received in 1988 was well earned.

The UN has been important in bringing about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the truce in the Iran-Iraq war and the Cuban withdrawal of forces from Angola. A UN monitoring mission headed by Elliott Richardson was an important component of the recent Nicaraguan elections.

The UN has been an important part of "peace breaking out." Underlying that is a significant change in international politics that enabled the UN to be more effective than previously. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR has shown an interest in managing conflicts that paralleled the U.S. interest in having that happen. For the first time since the UN was founded in 1945, it may be able to benefit from the great-power collaboration thought necessary for the UN's security system to work at the beginning, but which has not existed in the intervening years.

An additional reason to believe this may be so is the USSR's strong advocacy of greater reliance on the United Nations. Thus, the UN can at least continue the kind of consent-based conflict management it performed while the U.S. and the USSR viewed each other as adversaries. Beyond that, the new international situation might make possible a "return to the charter," that is, resort to the power the Charter gave the Security Council to enforce peace and security. The Security Council hinted that it might do just that in the Iran-Iraq case.

On the whole, the United States has welcomed UN efforts to dampen or even snuff out conflicts before they reach the stage of threats to U.S. interests. It has not, however, fulfilled its obligations to pay its share of the costs of UN operations. Congress should act soon to appropriate the funds asked for by the administration to clean up the U.S. peacekeeping debt.

U.S. defense planners should seriously examine how to strengthen UN peace actions, through small investments of U.S. defense resources in, for example, intelligence, planning, communications, transportation and logistics, and even perhaps in the preparation and training of specialized units to take part in UN forces. Such measures could have a great payoff in averting contingencies the U.S. military might have to deal with in other ways.

Lawrence S. Finkelstein is professor of political science at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. He worked in the U.S. State Department and the UN Secretariat and is a former vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

B

9

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

March 20, 1990

Pg. 7

# Western States Ride High

Region buoyed by Pacific Rim activity; New Mexico may be hard hit
by declining Pentagon budget, but West as whole promises to adapt

SHIRLEY HORN - STAFF

By Catherine Foster

Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

LOS ANGELES

The West is doing better than the rest of nation in all categories. In fact, three Western states - Washington, Utah, and Nevada - have the top three economies in the country. While states outside the region are experiencing slow growth in manufacturing and construction, both those sectors are quite healthy in the West. And all states in the region, except Colorado, have had above-average employment growth.

"We expect that to continue," says Ronald Schmidt, senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Analysts attribute the strength partly to Pacific Rim activity, which has had an impact on several of the states. "It's keeping California buoyant and helping Oregon and Washington," says Lee McPheters, director of the Economic Outlook Center at Arizona State University at Tempe.

The Japanese are buying unprocessed timber from Washington and Oregon, then milling it in Japan, says Mr. McPheters. So timber sales are up, but mills are suffering. Idaho is doing well selling agricultural products and fish. And California, with its ethnic diversity, provides a growing market for trade with Asian countries and is the engine that drives much of the region's activity.

Hawaii is experiencing a

strong tourist trade from the Rim. But that same activity also means increased housing prices. Honolulu now has the highest median-priced homes in the country, Mr. Schmidt says.

The hottest housing markets are Las Vegas, Seattle, and inland California. High-priced metropolitan Los Angeles and San Francisco will see slower growth, says Schmidt, while business and housing will expand into outlying areas like Sacramento, San Bernardino, and Antelope Valley. Housing prices in Seattle are up 25 percent over a year ago, and apartment vacancy rates are under 4 percent.

The high cost of housing and quality-of-life factors, such as traffic and pollution, in southern California, are also sending people to Oregon. The main feature of that economy is construction, especially residential, which has been very strong in the past year.

All the Western states except Colorado registered above-average employment growth in 1989, the bulk of it coming from the service industry. And Idaho, Utah, Oregon, and Washington reported healthy gains in manufacturing employment. Unem-

ployment overall remained close to the national rate of 5 percent.

One major concern expressed at Security Pacific Bank's recent annual economic forecast for California was the effect of expected cuts in federal defense spending. The bank's conclusion, corroborated by other analysts, was that the fallout won't be too bad, at least in the short term. California's diverse economy (nondefense manufacturing, tourism, entertainment, mining, and agriculture) can handle the change.

California's dependence on defense "is only half of what it was in the '60s," says Kathleen Cooper, executive vice president and chief economist of Security Pacific National Bank.

"The big question is what will happen to New Mexico with the defense wind-down," says Mr. McPheters. "Like California, New Mexico's economy was linked to the Reagan defense buildup. With a less diverse economy than California's, it may have more problems. Much is tied to defense-related research."

For Boeing, a major employer in Washington State, defense cuts may be offset by a large backlog of mostly commercial orders.

The weakest economy in this region is Colorado. Job growth in 1990 is going to be below the national average, and population growth will be slow. "It's not growing," McPheters says. "The people we talked to said nothing is driving the economy; electronics, energy, tourism are not strong enough."

8 10

# Dangers

Continued from M2

History will always remember Gorbachev for having stood aside while Eastern Europe freed itself and for having started the transformation of the Soviet state. If the Soviet Union continues to reduce the percentage of its gross national product devoted to defense and its retreat from far-flung outposts such as Cuba, assistance in speeding the supply of consumer goods and technical help—as sketched by Secretary of State James A. Baker III and proposed by Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel—is surely appropriate.

But in the end Gorbachev's most intractable problems will be beyond the reach of outside powers. Like all other revolutionaries, Gorbachev could be consumed by the process he started. Gearing Western policies largely to the desire to "help" Gorbachev would create three points of vulnerability for the West: it would tempt Gorbachev to turn his tenure into the principal *quid pro quo* of diplomacy

it would create paralysis in the democracies if he is engulfed by consequences of his own achievements, and it would damage the credibility of leaders who have staked too much on a single Soviet personality, however meritorious.

The most worrisome outcomes of the crisis of communism are two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, a return to traditional great Russian repression of the nationalities; on the other, the disintegration of an empire built up in the 400 years since Ivan the Terrible.

A nationalistic Russia could resume the pressures to which imperial Russia subjected all contiguous areas in Europe and Asia for more than 200 years. A disintegrating Russia could tempt neighboring countries to restore historic ties with their kinsmen or simply to carve up the Soviet Union on the basis of traditional expansionism.

The world has suffered so much at the hands of communist ideology that it has nearly forgotten how uncomfortable a neighbor czarist Russia had been. Often invaded across a flat plain without natural frontiers, Russia grew to identify security

with pushing out its frontiers as far as possible. However understandable, that caused the Russian Empire throughout its history to seek to dismantle every power center within its reach: Poland, Turkey, Sweden, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, China, India.

One of history's jokes may be that the successors of Lenin will end up holding the Russian state together with practices used by heirs of Peter the Great. The nationalism of the smaller Soviet republics has already stimulated a virulent counterpart in the Russian Republic itself. But Russian nationalism has always been repressive and expansionist.

The challenge to the foreign policy of the democracies is to use the hiatus—as Moscow must give priority to domestic problems—to put in place a security system seeking to transcend the historic Russian quest for absolute security, which has meant absolute insecurity for everyone else.

In Europe such a system should return Soviet armies to national territory as quickly as possible. The intricate balance of arms-control negotiation along existing

military dividing lines obscures the real problem of establishing a realistic political dividing line. But once Soviet troops are returned home, such a system must then also strive for an arrangement that genuinely reduces Soviet fears of military attack from Europe.

All this must be accomplished while keeping in mind a diametrically opposite danger to the peace of the world: the possibility of a break-up of the Soviet state. The West can have no more interest in the disintegration of the Soviet Union than in its expansion. I would except the Baltic republics. Their annexation, never having been recognized by the West in the heyday of Soviet power, cannot now be accepted in the period of glasnost and perestroika.

But for the rest, the West must take great care to avoid steps with unforeseeable consequences. The collapse of authority in a country that possesses tens of thousands of nuclear weapons must be of greatest concern to all humanity. The problem is so terrifying, so contrary to traditional notions of sovereignty, that it requires cogent study.

Nuclear perils aside, the breakup of the Soviet Union would surely produce an extraordinary cycle of violence. Like a movie run in reverse, it could play back a brutal two centuries, and in the end draw in all surrounding countries whose competition provided the temptation for Soviet expansion in the first place.

To be sure, if Moscow is unable to preserve the Russian state, neither Washington nor other democracies are in a position to do so. But the West can practice circumspection, while experience must have taught Moscow that there is a level of repression that jeopardizes the democracies' domestic support for a policy of detente.

Coming to grips with such contradictorily prospects will force America to examine categories of thought it has historically rejected; to act not with missionary zeal but as custodian of an equilibrium, and to adjust policies to the fluctuating requirements of a balance of power rather than fixed legal principles or a doctrine of collective security. In that sense, the ultimate challenge to U.S. foreign policy is philosophical. ☐

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1990.

THE SUN

# Germany's Future — and Europe's

31A

I did LAST article, I explained why I consider German reunification inevitable. Since then a number of thoughtful questions have been raised as to whether such a prospect does not undermine military stability in Europe.

Of course, we must not overestimate the range of choices available. Whatever the evolution in Germany, the existing security arrangements based on the North Atlantic Treaty

By Henry Kissinger

Organization and the Warsaw Pact are eroding. The collapse of Soviet political and military power in Central Europe coincides with a declining fear in the Western democracies of military threat. Therefore the existing arrangements are becoming unsustainable.

The conventional solution is to accelerate arms-control negotiations. But the upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe have overthrown not only Communist regimes but also some of the premises of traditional arms-control theory.

The attempt to negotiate a balance on both sides of the existing military demarcation line in the center of Germany is no longer realistic. When the current stage of conventional-arms negotiations began the military and political demarcation lines were identical. When that negotiation on thinning out U.S. and Soviet forces is completed in the next few months, attention will have to turn to the design of a comprehensive European security system. Then the fact must be faced: The military and political dividing lines in Europe are no longer congruent. The military dividing line runs through Germany; the political one is at the Soviet-Polish frontier.

A dividing line through the center of Germany cannot continue to be appropriate after the two German states have held elections later this year. Two democratic German states drawing ever closer together and governed by parties professing comparable ideologies cannot possibly belong to two opposing alliance systems for any length of time. Such an incongruity would make the West — in the name of arms control — a partner in the division of Germany and put at risk Germany's pro-Western orientation.

Of course, the simplest approach would be to move the dividing line for European arms-control arrangements from the frontier between the two German states to the German-Polish frontier. This would settle the

ambiguity over the location of that border along the Oder-Neisse line once and for all. The obstacle to such an expedient is that the countries of Eastern Europe would be extremely reluctant to be grouped with the Soviet Union.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact are simply not symmetrical institutions any longer, if they ever were. The Warsaw Pact has lost its military rationale and will lose its political purpose with the advent of democratic governments in Eastern Europe. The United States has no reason to object to maintaining the legal facade of the Warsaw Pact. But for arms-control purposes the pact has been drained of content by Soviet policies.

How can symmetrical force levels be established along a dividing line that includes Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, which have already demanded the withdrawal of Soviet forces? Is arms control to become a device by which NATO legitimizes the presence of Soviet forces that the host country rejects? In the name of symmetry will the democracies end up sanctioning force levels higher than would be sustainable in internal Warsaw Pact diplomacy? And can the Soviet Union seek arms-control ceilings in which the withdrawal of Soviet units permits an enlargement of East European totals? Must NATO be dismantled to keep pace with the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact? That would turn the weakness of the Warsaw Pact into a device to dissolve NATO — a goal the Warsaw Pact failed to achieve when it was still relatively cohesive.

In future arms-control negotiations the United States will have to walk a fine line. It must not legitimize a larger Soviet military presence in Central Europe than the Soviet Union could maintain on its own. At the same time it must not encourage the impression that a complete Soviet withdrawal from Central Europe will have to be matched by a complete American withdrawal from Europe. Its geographic proximity enables the Soviet Union to be a major military factor in Central Europe from its national territory, while an American withdrawal across the Atlantic would destroy

the possibility of a balance of power on the continent.

A new European security system should reassure the Soviet Union with respect to its historic nightmare of invasion from the West; ease Western Europe's fear of Soviet invasion; protect the countries of Eastern Europe against Soviet aggression and German resurgence; reflect the

Military and political borders in Europe are no longer congruent. The military line runs through Germany, the political one is at the Soviet-Polish frontier.

reality — demonstrated by two world wars in this century — that a balance on the Continent requires the participation of the United States, and be compatible with some reasonable process of German unification.

Establishment of such a system is primarily a political and not a technical arms-control issue. The key to it is the future evolution of Germany. There are in fact only three possible political outcomes: (a) that Germany remain divided along the existing military demarcation lines; (b) that Germany be unified as a neutral state with a status similar to Austria or Finland; (c) that Germany be unified within NATO.

The permanent division of Germany would produce a chronic

Equal military ceilings could enable the Warsaw Pact to achieve with weakness what it failed to achieve with strength — the dissolution of NATO.

ropean crisis by tempting outside powers either to exploit or to stimulate intra-German conflict. The Soviet Union would surely be sucked back into Central Europe to maintain the division of Germany, whatever Mikhail S. Gorbachev's intentions or professions.

The concept of a unified and neutral Germany has a surface plausibility but grave underlying problems — even, and perhaps especially — for the Soviet Union. Neutralization is most easily verifiable in small or at most medium-sized countries that do not yet possess state-of-the-art technology. The larger the state and the more complex its economy, the more difficult it is to determine its real military potential. For example,

Cont.

Germany's... Cat.

324

Japan, whatever the size of its standing forces, could approach military superpower status within a short time of deciding to do so.

A free-standing unified Germany would be in much the same position. Indeed after a few years it might repeat Germany's historic mistake of attempting to achieve its own independent security, an enterprise which twice in this century produced global catastrophe.

But a Germany that would be part of NATO would be under the arms-control umbrella of allies with a vested interest in observing agreed limitations.

Moreover, an Austrian-type solution for Germany would create a single block from the French-German frontier to the Polish-Soviet border of states with similar international status and therefore propelled toward joint diplomacy. Surely there is no better formula for eventual German hegemony over Central Europe or a long-term German-Russian conflict.

Many thoughtful policy makers shrink from tackling the German issue because, while recognizing its complexity, they fear that tackling it head-on might overthrow Mr. Gorbachev. I believe that procrastination would produce the most dangerous consequences. Mr. Gorbachev surely deserves great respect for his willingness to confront the crisis of his society. But the West does neither Mr. Gorbachev nor itself a favor by pretending that the structural changes his policies have evoked can be calibrated by arcane analysis of his domestic position.

One way or another, the process now under way will proceed on many fronts: in an election year for both Germanys, the drive for unification will surely develop its own momentum; various parliaments will be reducing NATO defense budgets; different national leaders will push individual arms-control proposals, not least East European leaders seeking to get rid of Soviet troops. In these circumstances waiting on events is an invitation to chaos and to the unilateral dismantling of institutions that have brought us this far.

It may be that no security system will be able to contain the process now under way. In time Germany may become neutral either by its own choice or in response to a Soviet offer. Improbable as it now seems, a German initiative cannot be ruled out if German disillusionment with Western lack of support for its national aspirations continues to grow. And sooner or later the Soviet Union may play its "German card" — to exchange unification for neutrality — reckless as it would be for Soviet security in the long run. Whether Germany would accept it would depend not so much on exhortations as on the strength of its ties with the West. I believe nevertheless that over time such a formula would be accepted, especially if Germany could maintain its membership in the European Community.

Painful as I would find such a development myself, the United States would have no reason to panic. It should offer to preserve NATO for whatever core group of the Atlantic Alliance wishes it. In my view, that offer would be accepted with alacrity by Western Europe as a hedge against German revanchism or renewed Soviet aggressiveness.

In short NATO is needed for the internal West European balance and as a guarantee of European security. To be sure, the American deployments in Europe and the overall strength of NATO should take account of the declining military threat. But abolishing NATO cannot be a quid pro quo for the ailments of the Warsaw Pact. What NATO must do is to redefine the threat it is supposed to deal with, the strategy appropriate to it and the organization which reflects the changed roles of Europe and the United States.

History does not produce automatic results. It requires conscious action and a recognition of the historic moment. The time of arrival at our destination can be flexible; but agreeing what it is brooks no delay.

The Washington Times

MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 1990

25A

# Kissinger: Soviet chief faces even odds

By Warren Strobel
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has no better than an even chance of surviving the ethnic frictions that are threatening to tear the U.S.S.R. apart, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said yesterday.

In a televised interview, Mr. Kissinger also said that unless the United States more actively supports the unification of East and West Germany, it will face a backlash from renewed German nationalism.

He said Mr. Gorbachev's chances of surviving as Soviet president and general secretary of the Communist Party "are at best 50-50." But even if he is replaced, his successor will probably not be a hard-liner, as many observers have assumed.

The new leader, he said, likely will abolish Mr. Gorbachev's policy of glasnost — freedom to criticize and debate — but only in order to salvage the political and economic reforms known as perestroika.

The Soviet Union, he predicted, will be led by "somebody who claims to be a Gorbachev supporter or maybe Gorbachev himself cracking down on dissidents in the name of reform."

Bloody battles this month between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the southern Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, along with ever more strident demands for independence from the Baltic republic of Lithuania, have raised new questions about Mr. Gorbachev's ability to hold the U.S.S.R.'s diverse nationalities together and continue his five-year rule.

There are no concrete signs that Mr. Gorbachev's hold on power is weakening.

Mr. Kissinger, national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said that while Azerbaijani rivalry with Armenia plays a role in the conflict, "the real target of the Azerbaijanjani nationalists is the domination of Moscow."

"The real motive for the massive Soviet intervention is to keep Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union," he said. "To protect the Armenians, it was not necessary to deploy such massive force."

He made his remarks in a taped interview that aired yesterday on NBC-TV's "John McLaughlin: One-on-One" broadcast.

Mr. Kissinger, who was born in prewar Germany, termed unification of East and West Germany "unavoidable" and said the United States should "get behind it or else German nationalism is going to turn against the United States."

Washington's support for unification — the Bush administration has been cautious on the issue — also would help guarantee a Western tilt for the reunified state, he said.

His comments echo those of analysts and officials in Bonn, who say privately that while most West Germans do not resent the huge U.S. military presence, they might soon do so if that presence appears to have outlived its purpose.

Having lived under Nazi Germany, "I would not have been unfulfilled if ... the issue [of reunification] had not come up in my lifetime. But it has come up and it has come up in a way that makes it unavoidable," Mr. Kissinger said.

He said Moscow's "secret dream" is that the West will stop the reunification of Germany — which invaded the Soviet Union in World War II — and prevent the downfall of Mr. Gorbachev that might result.

While that puts U.S. policymakers in a dilemma, "I don't think that Gorbachev can ask us, in the name of the survival of one Soviet leader, to keep the Soviet army in the center of the continent and to keep an allied country divided against the will of its population," Mr. Kissinger said.

Gorbachev... cont.

'So far he's been able to step from chessboard to chessboard.'

— State Department official

It is clear that Washington can have little impact on the question of Gorbachev's ultimate survival. US officials can only sit by and watch as a man whose political skills they have come to admire greatly dodges and weaves, trying desperately to conquer his domestic problems. "We don't really know" if Gorbachev will be successful and survive as Soviet leader, President Bush said.

JOINING... CONT.

98

■ Unification will be part of a step-by-step process.

■ Germany must reiterate support for the principles of the Helsinki Act regarding its borders.

Statesmen forget at their peril that arcane language is not reality. The gradualism being preached is not tied to any specific program, nor has any Western leader defined German self-determination or a procedure for achieving it. As a result, the West runs a huge risk of turning into partners with the Soviet Union, defending the status quo and in sharing—in German eyes—the opprobrium for the division of Germany heretofore borne solely by the Soviets.

For decades the West has suspected Moscow of having a German card up its sleeve. It

would be ironic if the West now handed that card to the Soviets just as democracy surges through Eastern Europe.

The danger of making the Kremlin and the East German communists the key to German national aspirations results not only from Western pronouncements but also from Western actions. Both Mitterrand and Baker recently visited East Germany and met with leaders shunned by the West for 40 years, leaders who have been all but repudiated by the East German public and who even now are making it difficult for democratic parties to organize. And the West jumped at a Soviet proposal to hold, for the first time

since 1971, a meeting of the so-called *Kommandatura*, the four-power control commission for Berlin. These gestures—treating the East German state as the moral and political equivalent of the national states of Eastern Europe—imply a Western interest in the German

status quo. Over time this will generate a sense that German national aspirations are incompatible with the Western orientation of the federal republic.

Article 7 of the treaty that laid the basis for German rearment pledged the three Western powers to cooperate in working toward German unification. In the stormy debate that followed, the advocates of German integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were accused by their opponents of jeopardizing the ultimate unity of the German nation.

A similar, if less passionate, debate involved the issue of European integration. After an initial period of hesitation, all German democratic parties committed themselves to Atlantic as well as European institutions, and they have carried out their commitments for 40 years.

Germany's democratic allies should think twice before risking the Western connection of the federal republic by forcing German leaders to choose between

their allies and their national goals. They must not create a German problem in the name of avoiding it. Right now, the West German political campaign obscures these dangers because the opposition parties have chosen to blame Chancellor Helmut Kohl's alleged heavy-handedness for federal republic frustrations. But this quarrel will be temporary.

The question of how to treat East Germany internationally brooks no delay. In Eastern Europe, democratic institutions are likely to enhance domestic stability. In the German Democratic Republic, the opposite is certain to occur; free elections will generate pressures for unification. No formula can alter the fact that the principal reason for the existence of the East German state has been as a communist outpost of the Soviet Union.

If the East German people desire a separate state, no country in the world would object—probably not even the federal republic. But Western nations would be taking a fateful step if their own policies incited such an evolution.

Whatever the time scale for unification or its nature, a direction must be established within the next year. Once two German states—especially democratic ones—become fixtures of the European equilibrium, German unification can be pursued only at the cost of an international crisis. European politics will revert to the patterns of the 18th and 19th centuries. Outside powers—especially the Soviet Union—will be given an opportunity to manipulate inter-German rivalry. For the 200 years before German unification, as many wars were sparked by Germany's division as by its subsequent unity.

In truth, the choices are limited. Any attempt to make progress toward German unification conditional on progress toward European integration will defeat both—this is the weakness of the American principles. It will sooner or later turn German nationalism against European integration and Atlantic unity. And it will probably prove counterproductive to integration by giving those who fear German unity—and are not enthusiastic about European integration—the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Policy cannot invent reality; it can only use it. The time frames for German unification and European integration are simply not the same. The former is driven by fundamental emotions fueled by established democratic procedures; the latter reflects prudent calculations driven by technical bureaucratic procedures. The real choice for the Western allies is whether they fear German unity more than they prize European integration and Atlantic cohesion. The way to avoid German preponderance is not to ascribe to it motives contrary to 40 years of responsible German policy, even less to divide that country. Should Germany, against all current indications, seek the road of hegemony, Britain and France always have the option of increasing their

cooperation within the framework of European and Atlantic institutions. And the United States would surely use its influence to prevent an outcome that it opposed in two wars.

Several factors drive German unification. The dissolution of internal frontiers will force the federal republic to move rapidly toward equalization of living conditions in both parts of Germany. Otherwise, a mass exodus of East Germans is probable, exceeding the capacities of the federal republic to sustain. Common economic policies are inevitable; a common currency cannot be far behind.

Another impetus will be supplied by the elections scheduled for the two parts of Germany later this year: in the East in May, in the West in December. After initially declaring a hands-off policy, the West German political parties are apparently ready to make a major effort in the East elections because the outcome might give the winner a leg up in the West election campaign. It is highly improbable that the policies toward unification will, being essentially nonpartisan, vary on either side of the dividing line.

Therefore, appeals for gradualism are curiously irrelevant, and assurances to the Soviet Union that no effort will be made to accelerate the process could be dangerous. In fact, the victors of World War II have no realistic method to implement their misgivings.

The Soviet Union surely has the physical power to prevent German unification. But to do so by force would wreck the "Gorbachev fever" in central Europe on which Moscow has staked so much and worked so hard to foster the Kremlin can also offer unification in return for Germany loosening its Western ties.

The only realistic way to moderate the pace of events and to keep Germany in the Western community is to come to an agreement on the desired outcome and then to plan together the precise steps to reach the goals. Like many contemporaries who experienced the Hitler regime and World War II, I would have suffered no sense of deprivation had the issue of German unification remained in limbo for a while longer. Now that it has risen, we no longer have the option of deferring it to a more convenient moment.

A faster pace for European integration is highly desirable. But paradoxically it is most likely in the context of a Western plan on German unification. This is the best way of ensuring that European integration and the Atlantic Alliance are not perceived in Germany as a subterfuge for delaying unification. Particular steps can be staged over a reasonable time period, so long as the process moves toward an acceptable objective.

CONT.

The confederation proposal by Chancellor Kohl—greeted so lukewarmly by his allies—represents the minimum compatible with German aspirations and international necessities. Overcoming their misgivings, the allies should develop a long-range program in four stages:

* Elaboration of a timetable for German confederation to be completed within a two-year period. The confederation should have a common foreign policy as its goal.

* Implementation of another major step toward European political integration should be completed in a fixed time period after establishment of the German confederation. An important component is a specific program to enable Eastern countries to enter into association with the European community.

* Concurrent negotiation of a new European security system as a step toward full unification.

* Development of a program to move from confederation to whatever form of German unity a process of self-determination generates.

Discussion of a European security system demands another article. For present purposes it is enough to stress that the opportunity to build a truly new international system must not be lost in a maze of bureaucratic formulas masking old fears. It requires a clear vision of what lies ahead and, above all, an initiative equal to the challenge before us. ☐

SPECIAL REPORT

# Living With the Inevitable

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

P
olicy," the 19th-century Austri-
an Foreign Minister, Metternich,
once wrote, "is like a play in
many acts which unfolds inexora-
bly once the curtain is raised. To
declare then that the performance will not
go on is an absurdity. The play will be
completed either by the actors or by the
spectators who mount the stage."

In recent weeks, the curtain has risen on a new play in Europe. Many of the players are still hesitant, waiting to see what roles others assume first. Still, in the end, only one choice will remain: to complete the play or to be consumed by it.

Although the weight of the past—and uneasiness about the re-emergence of a unified Germany—may keep some from acknowledging it, we are witnessing the end of the immediate postwar era. The political world familiar for over a generation is disintegrating before our eyes.

The new realities are:

■ German unification in some form has become inevitable, whatever the misgivings of Germany's neighbors and World War II victims. The only statesman who seems to understand this fully is President Mitterrand of France—despite France's visceral fears of German unification.

■ NATO will have to be fundamentally altered to take into account the transformation of Germany and the perceived erosion of the Soviet threat.

■ The Warsaw Pact will not survive in its present form very far into the next decade.

■ Integration of the European Community will have to be accelerated to take account of new opportunities in Eastern Europe, most recently in Czechoslovakia.

■ These trends will require a new look at East-West relations, including (and perhaps especially) arms-control negotiations.

The observer's perplexity is the states-
man's challenge. President Bush has an
opportunity unequaled since the period im-
mediately following World War II. Rarely
have so many elements of international
relations been so fluid simultaneously.
The occasion to build a more stable and

more hopeful international order
occurs no more than once in a
century.

Though it will take many
months and perhaps years to com-
plete, that process must now be-
gin at the Malta summit between
President Bush and General Sec-
retary Gorbachev. What had been
conceived—at least on the Ameri-

can side—as a relaxed, philosophical stock-
taking has turned into an urgent opportu-
nity to begin shaping a revolutionary
situation. To be sure, President Bush will

not fall into the Reykjavik trap of negotiat-
ing a surprise Soviet agenda. But this does
not change the fact that the Malta summit
will take place with an agenda and under
conditions of international upheaval not
foreseen when it was planned.

Let me discuss the key issues in turn:

Unifying Germany

In recent weeks German unification,
for so long the subject of ambivalent rheto-
ric, has become a real possibility. Now
that it is disintegrating, a sudden nostal-
gia has developed for the status quo. At-
lanticists insist that the alliance can

When the new East German
leader, Egon Krenz, was appointed a
month ago, he announced that the so-called
German Democratic Republic had to be a
Communist state or it was nothing. He was
right. There is no historic basis for the East
German state except as a Communist out-
post. If it becomes democratic, it loses the
rationale for its separate existence.

But democracy is exactly what the rebel-
lious East German population is so pas-
sionately demanding, and what its
government has promised. The impact of
free elections would be quite different,
however, in the German Democratic Re-
public than it has been elsewhere in
Eastern Europe. In Poland, Hungary or

MALTA

SUMMIT

ORBAN—SYGMA

The fall of the wall: Celebrating in Berlin three weeks ago

German unification now
seems bound to take
place in some form

continue unchanged and that
German unification remains the
responsibility of World War II's
victors. Believers in détente
warn against promoting German
unification for fear of disquieting
the Soviet Union.

To be sure, the West has no rea-
son to get ahead of German de-
sires on reunification. Perhaps 40
years of Communist rule have produced
the ironic result of stimulating East Ger-
man nationalism. But if this is not the case,
it would be extremely dangerous for the

Western democracies—whatever
their secret yearnings or their
theoretical legal rights—to try to
keep Germany divided against
the wishes of the German people.
For sooner or later, such a stand
would ignite a new German na-
tionalism. And that would only
serve to undermine the responsi-
ble, essentially pro-Western lead-
ers in all of West Germany’s ma-
jor political parties.

Until recently, German unity,
insofar as it had any operational
meaning, was equated with the
unification of Europe. Extending
some of the benefits of the Europe-
an Community to Eastern Europe
was expected to help repair Eu-
rope's various fault lines. Though
that program remains essential,
recent events leave no doubt that
the unification of Europe has a
different rhythm than the unifi-
cation of Germany. For in Germa-
ny, the moving force is not a prag-
matic concept of integration but
elemental pressures for popular
participation in government.

NEWSWEEK : DECEMBER 4, 1989 51

SPECIAL REPORT

Czechoslovakia, free elections arguably strengthen the state; in the GDR they are likely to undermine it. Genuinely free elections would in all likelihood bring to power parties similar to those of the Federal Republic. The winners would almost certainly seek to synchronize West and East German policies and move the country toward unity.

Political tendencies will be reinforced by economic realities. Now that the border between the two Germanys has for all practical purposes been opened, it will be necessary to match economic conditions in the two parts of Germany. Otherwise there will be an exodus, especially of younger and more ambitious groups, that will drain the East German economy. Such improvement will require massive help from the Federal Republic. That is unlikely—and indeed senseless—if the Communist Party insists on maintaining its dominance over East German political life. (Of course, the Soviet Union has the physical power to stop all this. But it could do so only at the cost of heavy civilian casualties and the collapse of Gorbachev's mystique in the West.)

What form will the new Germany ultimately take? It is conceivable that the two Germanys may form some sort of confederation, with separate democratic governments linked by some common institutions. There is a historical precedent: 19th-century Germany was organized as a Confederation of separate states linked by a Customs Union—though it proved the precursor of a national state. A confederation may make it easier to satisfy Soviet security concerns by maintaining East Germany as a special security zone with limited armaments.

In the end, the outcome will be shaped by the wishes of the German people, not by outside forces. Outsiders can impose a solution only if they are prepared to use force—and to defy a people whose desire for freedom was strong enough to puncture the Berlin wall after 28 years of repression.

The synchronization of political and economic policies will inevitably raise the issue of the German Democratic Republic's military role. Even in a confederation, its membership in the Warsaw Pact would become questionable. It is hard to imagine how a German confederation whose Eastern portion was dominated by more or less the same political parties as the Western portion could be allied to both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. And it is inconceivable in the event of a federal state.

How can Moscow be persuaded to allow

East Germany to leave the Warsaw Pact? On one level, the Soviet Union has no choice. For after free elections, membership of the German Democratic Republic in the Warsaw Pact will become untenable. Certainly, the Soviet Union is entitled to guarantees against its nightmare of military aggression from the West. Some sort of special military status for East Germany is desirable, and the presence of some Soviet forces for an agreed period is conceivable. The United States and its allies should be prepared to deal with these subjects generally. But in the end, Soviet security concerns will have to be met by new arms-control arrangements or by a European peace treaty rather than by East German membership in the Warsaw Pact.

If the German Democratic Republic cannot remain in the Warsaw Pact indefinitely, what about West German membership in NATO? The Soviet spokesman, Gennady

Gerasimov, has asserted that unification is impossible so long as the two Germanys are each part of opposing military blocs. Does this mean that Gorbachev has decided to play "the German card"? Will the Kremlin offer unification in return for German military neutrality? Indeed, in his speech in East Germany in October, Gorbachev referred favorably to a proposal along those lines made by Stalin in 1953.

It is to be hoped that the Soviet leader will not be tempted by a specious symmetry between East Germany's membership in the Warsaw Pact and West Germany's alliance with NATO. If East Germany leaves the Warsaw Pact, it does not follow that the

Soviet Union is any better off if the Federal Republic leaves NATO. I would argue in fact that it is worse off. No Russian leader should disregard the lessons of history: that this century's two world wars grew out of Germany's attempt to pursue a purely national policy in the center of the Continent. Seeking to pre-empt any possible combination of surrounding countries, Germany threatened each of its many neighbors individually and provoked them to form rigid military structures that contributed to war.

Today, a nation of 80 million standing alone in the center of the Continent would again threaten European stability—and in the long run Soviet security as well. How would one define neutralization for a nation of such magnitude? How would one monitor it? Over time, such a Germany would be bound to become a military force. Or else the Soviet Union might be tempted to exploit a

neutralization agreement by insisting on verification measures tantamount to hegemony over Germany. Either course would threaten European stability.

Thus the safest outcome would be a united (or confederated) Germany that remains integrated into NATO but is constrained by new arms limitations throughout Europe. Strange as it may sound, membership in NATO would provide the best mechanism for monitoring agreed limits on armaments, because Germany's allies would have a selfish interest in seeing them observed. Such limits would have to prohibit NATO deployments beyond present dividing lines in Europe and include special provisions for the territory that is now the German Democratic Republic.

The problem of German unification is above all conceptual. It requires an idea of process—of how Germany might be unified and over what period of time. Will it become a single country with federal institutions, a confederal

state or something in between? What arms limitations are needed or acceptable? What is the appropriate European and Atlantic framework in which these changes should take place?

As they seek to answer these questions, it is imperative that the Federal Republic and its Western allies work together closely. But in doing so, they must keep in mind one overriding reality: the prerequisite for the continued adherence of the Federal Republic to the Western camp will be to concede some form of unification. The challenge is to ensure that it happens under circumstances that make every nation feel secure, including the Soviet Union.

LELOUP—J.B. PICTURES

After Reykjavik: A disappointed Reagan and Gorbachev

Malta offers the chance to begin shaping a revolutionary situation

52 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 4, 1989

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SPECIAL REPORT

NATO and Western Europe

Events in East Germany will undoubtedly speed up a process of attrition that has been going on within the Atlantic Alliance for several years. Driven by arms-control negotiations and "Gorbachev fever," the NATO countries have all stopped any serious efforts to improve their armaments. The Bush administration agreed last May to postpone the modernization of medium-range nuclear missiles in the Federal Republic. Now that postponement is likely to become permanent; under current conditions, there is no political party in Germany prepared to reopen the issue. A recent German visitor to Washington called the modernization prospect "laughable."

Yet the argument made against modernizing Lance missiles—that Germany must take special measures to avoid becoming a nuclear battlefield because it is so geographically exposed—logically applies to all nuclear weapons deployed on German soil. Thus the likely next phase of the NATO debate, even before the recent upheaval in East Germany, was the promotion of a nuclear-free zone in Central Europe. And once the concept of a nuclear-free zone is accepted, a doctrine of no first use of nuclear weapons—that NATO will not fire first under any circumstances—cannot be far behind. For given the range of nuclear weapons, the only way for participants in a nuclear-free zone to avoid nuclear war is by forgoing any use of nuclear weapons based outside that zone.

The progressive reduction of Western conventional forces on the central front appears to be irreversible. West Germany already plans to reduce the length of compulsory military service, a move that will cut its armed forces from 600,000 to 420,000—proportionally a larger unilateral reduction than what the West has proposed for the Soviet Union.

And the Soviets will surely insist on additional reciprocal German cuts as a part of arms-control negotiations later on.

A significant reduction of American ground forces in Europe has also become highly probable. Whether undertaken under direct or indirect pressure from Congress, the result will be a further erosion of NATO strategy. The concept of flexible response—that deterrence is only credible if it includes many stages short of all-out nuclear war—cannot be sustained under current conditions.

Even if the Federal Republic remains in NATO, a reassessment of NATO's purpose has become imperative. Against what

threat—and with what forces—should NATO be organized? What reductions of U.S. forces should be made, and based on what strategy? How large a U.S. presence should be left in Europe? What is to be the role of European forces? What should be the relationship between conventional and nuclear forces?

The answers to these questions ought to be the subject of the fullest and deepest NATO consultations since the formation of the Atlantic Alliance. Nevertheless, a number of principles can be stated:

* NATO should be adapted to new realities, not abandoned. The end of NATO would spell political chaos in Europe, trigger nationalist rivalries and tempt renewed Soviet expansionism.

* The process may well lead to substantial reductions of U.S. and Soviet ground forces—perhaps their total removal if overall Soviet forces are sharply reduced and

withdrawn deep into the U.S.S.R. But this prospect can be realized only if the NATO nations put an end to the irresponsible process of unilateral reductions now going on. While no country has anything to be proud of, the United States—as the leader of the alliance—runs the risk of setting an appalling example by prematurely suggesting dramatic defense cuts. If this process is not stopped, NATO will hand the Soviets an impotent Europe at the precise moment that the postwar generation's goals are within sight.

* Whatever the balance of conventional forces, some American nuclear presence and air forces must be retained on the Euro-

pean continent, with the exact level subject to negotiation. If the defense of Europe were again to rely exclusively on conventional weapons, peace would be at the mercy of historical instabilities. War after war has occurred despite the existence of conventional forces that on paper appeared more or less in balance. This is because success in conventional war depends on so many intangibles—of leadership and maneuver—that actual balances of power have proved very difficult to calculate.

Reliance on U.S. nuclear weapons based on American soil or at sea is not the answer, either. It was the lack of credibility of such a distant deterrent that brought American nuclear forces to Europe in the first place. What was true when NATO's deterrent was hugely superior is even more crucial today, given the growth of the Soviet nuclear stockpile and the trend of strategic-arms-control negotiations. In short, NATO

must link the nuclear defense of Europe and America, whatever happens with German unity or conventional disarmament. Otherwise we are on the road to Soviet hegemony if *perestroika* succeeds, and to nationalist chaos if *perestroika* fails.

* Conventional arms control negotiations must be redesigned. Currently, they are based on the continued existence of two military blocs. But the future of the Warsaw Pact—and especially of East German membership—is now in question. Above all, arms-control proposals must get away from the pedantic "bean counting" approach—weapons system by weapons system—so much in vogue. It must be brought into line with the growing sense of independence in East Europe and the need for a special status for the territory of the German Democratic Republic.

* Whatever happens, the relative weight of America within NATO is bound to diminish. A major withdrawal of U.S. forces, combined with a politically integrated Europe, will make it necessary to rethink an organization that evolved when America had a nuclear monopoly and was economically dominant. Europe must assume a growing responsibility for its own defense, with the United States playing a supporting role.

For the European Community to assume this strengthened position, it will have to come to terms with German unification. Some leading Europeans and Americans have warned that the European Community was never designed to accommodate a united Germany with a population of some 80 million. Though his-

FPG INTERNATIONAL

Iron chancellor: Bismarck, the father of German statehood

History teaches the risks of an unchecked German national policy

56 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 4, 1989

SPECIAL REPORT

torically accurate, that view is irrelevant to the existing situation. For the European Community cannot survive if the Germans see it as a device to thwart unification.

There is merit to the concern that a unified Germany would have disproportionate weight within the European Community. But the other members have the capacity to prevent German hegemony. Surely Britain, France, Spain and Italy, not to mention the smaller states, could shape a consensus that prevents domination by any one country, however powerful. Indeed, the strongest argument for Britain's wholehearted participation in the 1992 process is the need for Britain's political experience in establishing an appropriate balance within the European Community.

The precise balance is for Europeans to decide. But Americans can help to close a growing gap between the European Community, where frontiers are being blurred

and the United States is not represented, and NATO, where nations still speak with separate voices and the European Community has no means of expression. This suggests a twofold task: (1) Europe should be given some institutional voice within NATO, perhaps by reviving the West European Union; (2) the European Community and the United States should develop some systematic method of political consultation at a high level.

## East-West Relations

Ever since the advent of Gorbachev, the West has been obsessed with his mercurial and courageous personality. But reliance on a single personality is a counsel of despair. For if Gorbachev's foreign policy is a personal tour de force, it will not be sustainable in the long run. Indeed, the possibility that Gorbachev will not survive cannot be excluded, given his challenge to so many vested interests within the Soviet Union.

For the moment, however, Gorbachev's position still seems strong. No Soviet leader could have risked the Soviet Union's position in Central Europe without the support of the Soviet Army and the KGB. Those two institutions must have concluded that the only other option—repression—would require such brutality as to thwart any hopes of enlisting Western help in modernizing the Soviet economy. Yet if one believes that there exists a relatively wide consensus in the Soviet leadership, it becomes especially important to analyze the elements of that consensus.

There are three possibilities: (1) the Soviet leaders may believe that by relaxing the grip on Eastern Europe, they will be able to

maintain existing arrangements at less cost; (2) they may be playing the German card—that is, using the prospect of a neutral unified Germany to drive American military power from the Continent; (3) the Soviets may genuinely want to conduct a serious negotiation on a new East-West equilibrium. Unfortunately, Soviet leaders have made statements supporting all three theories. The most likely reason is that the Soviets have yet to make up their own minds.

At least some high-level Soviet officials may hope that discarding a failed ideology will allow them to continue the historic Russian policy of crushing any power center within Moscow's reach. Last summer an eminent Russian scientist, a member of the Supreme Soviet, told me that the Soviet Union's strategic position could not be challenged so long as it retained a large stockpile of nuclear weapons and Germany

rope while exploiting new disarmament provisions to achieve step-by-step political domination over Central Europe.

Gorbachev is too intelligent not to recognize the perils of such a strategy. For on the road to hegemony lie many potential pitfalls for the Soviet Union, any one of which could spell disaster. Every effort should therefore be made to negotiate a true equilibrium. History teaches that a stable peace can occur only if the interests of all major players are met—if the security concerns of all sides are adequately recognized. Both the Soviet Union and the United States will have to break with traditional patterns. The Soviet Union will have to abandon the strategy of weakening every other power center in Eurasia. The United States will have to drop challenges to the Soviet Union within its national frontiers. We have no reason to help sustain the internal arrangements of the Soviet Union, but we should be prepared to leave their erosion to the forces of history.

In practice, the new equilibrium should include the following elements: (1) a concept for German unification based on self-determination; (2) a special security status for East German territory; (3) a negotiated balance of forces on both sides of the present dividing line in Europe; (4) a sharp reduction of Soviet ground forces and the withdrawal of most of them deep into the Soviet Union, coupled with a withdrawal of a major portion of U.S. ground forces; (5) some provision for keeping U.S. nuclear weapons and air forces as part of the common Western defense strategy; (6) an integrated Western Europe with strengthened ties to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe; (7) a verifiable strategic-arms agreement.

The United States, which did so much to build the postwar era, now must help prepare a new international order. The meeting in

Malta cannot produce any agreements, as President Bush has repeatedly pointed out. But it can mark the first step of a long march toward a hopefully better world. In that journey, the United States cannot solve every problem, but it can contribute a sense of direction.

In a period of turmoil, it is important to avoid recklessness. But caution can only preserve the status quo; boldness is needed to reach a better future. Few presidents have had the opportunity that President Bush now has to leave his imprint on an era. The time has come—it has never been more urgent—for what President Bush has called that “vision thing.” ■

SUSAN BIDDLE—THE WHITE HOUSE

A piece of the wall: With Bonn's foreign minister, Genscher

## Events have given Bush an opportunity to leave his imprint on an era

and Japan were denuclearized. Hence, he argued, the thrust of Soviet policy should be to remove U.S. nuclear weapons from Eurasia. After that, it would be safe to ask Germany and Japan to help rebuild the Soviet Union. For the Soviet Union could always keep those countries in line by brandishing its nuclear monopoly in Eurasia.

At the time, I considered these the theoretical musings of an out-of-power intellectual. I am no longer so sure. It is not impossible that some in the Kremlin are gambling for high stakes. This group may calculate that a neutral unified Germany would enable the Soviet Union to salvage the Warsaw Pact and frighten Western Europe

58 NEWSWEEK: DECEMBER 4, 1989

Speaking Out

KISSINGER EXPECTS
A UNITED GERMANY

Declares Changes in the East
Set in Motion Forces That
Cannot Be Reversed

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 — Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger has told a foreign policy group that German reunification is inevitable and that NATO's plan for upgrading nuclear weapons in West Germany is now "out of the question."

In recent days, Bush Administration specialists have played down the prospects for unifying East Germany and West Germany while publicly paying homage to the goal of unification. At the same time, Soviet leaders have cautioned that 'calls for unifying the Germanys are provoking anxiety.

In an appearance on Tuesday night before the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, Mr. Kissinger asserted that "reunification of Germany is now inevitable."

Mr. Kissinger indicated that he did not welcome the prospect of a unified Germany and noted that "the same can be said of almost all Europeans, East and West."

‘De Facto Unification’

He declared, however, that changes in East Germany have set in motion political and economic forces that cannot be reversed.

"The next three or four years will see a de facto unification of Germany in that they keep some seemingly separate political structures," Mr. Kissinger said.

Mr. Kissinger warned that the United States cannot afford to be seen by the West Germans as opposing reunification and urged that a new security framework needed to be devised for Europe.

"Modernization of nuclear weapons in Germany is out of the question," he added, alluding to the Administration's plans to deploy new short-range.Lance missiles in Germany in the 1990's.

East Germany's surprising decision to open its borders to the West has set off a policy debate about the likelihood of German reunification and what the United States should do about it.

Vice President Dan Quayle said on Monday that a unified German state that is oriented toward the West is "inevitable," offering an assessment that has not been publicly expressed in recent days by other senior Administration officials.

While Mr. Kissinger argued the inevitability of German unification, other former top officials disputed this point.

Pressing for an Alternative

"I do not think that anything is inevitable. I disapprove of the term," said Paul H. Nitze, a top national security figure in Republican and Democratic administrations.

Mr. Nitze said that the reunification of Germany would "scare a lot of people" and added that American policy should be to encourage an alternative arrangement of close cooperation between the two German states.

"They do not have to have reunification," Mr. Nitze said. "They can have close relations between two independent states."

Mr. Nitze said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should not drop its plans for modernizing its nuclear deterrent in Europe but should also seek to negotiate limits on short-range nuclear arms.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, said that the Bush Administration ought to strive to develop a new security arrangement in Europe in which there would be a confederation of the two Germanys.

"You cannot end the division of Europe without ending the division of Germany," Mr. Brzezinski said. "If you want to end the division of Germany you need to end the fears that it generates."

He added that an agreement establishing a confederated Germany should include. "security arrangements" to address the worries of Poland, France and other European nations about German resurgence, but he declined to be more specific about how such an arrangement mightwork.

George F. Kennan, the former Ambassador to the Soviet Union and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, recently cautioned against "loose talk" about German reunification and against superficial speculations on arrangements to usher in a new Europe.

• "Many people talk about this as if it were something that would or could easily and naturally flow from any extensive liberation of conditions in East Germany," Mr. Kennan wrote in an Oct. 12 article in The Washington Post, referring to the prospect of German reunification.

Noting the presence of Soviet, American and other Western forces in Germany, Mr. Kennan wrote that far from being inevitable as Mr. Kissinger later declared, German unification was, in fact, "unthinkable without widespread agreement among all these parties."

‘Irreversible and Epoch-Making’

Devising an alternative security framework that satisfies the parties concerned, he said, was such a complex task that "it will not be accomplished at any one time, or subsumed in any

single document or settlement."

"We will be lucky if the task is substantially accomplished before the end of the century," asserted Mr. Kennan, who nonetheless described the changes in Central Europe as "irreversible and truly epoch-making."

But Mr. Kissinger appeared to be have Mr. Kennan's article in mind when he argued that the political forces for reunification have already been unleashed and that de facto reunification would occur within the next several years.

Mr. Kissinger said that he was aware of arguments holding that Western nations and the Soviet Union have the right to determine whether Germany will be reunified.

"That is true, but how are you going to exercise it?" he said.

Mr. Kissinger said that a freely elected East Germany Government "will produce parties that are the exact replica of West German political parties."

"There can be no Government there that will prefer to remain separatæ," he said.

Kissinger Sees 2 Possibilities

"If the border is open, there are only two possibilities," he said. "Either economic conditions will be equalized on both sides of the border, or most of the East German population will move to West Germany."

"Why should they stay in East Germany at a standard of living less than half of the Federal Republic? And why should the Federal Republic subsidize a state that the vast majority of the German people do not want?" Mr. Kissinger asked.

The result, Mr. Kissinger said, would be a de facto reunification or "at a minimum a complete harmonization of policies."

Mr. Kissinger said the Bush Administration has an opportunity to "create a new international environment" in which Moscow receives assurances that the changes in Eastern Europe do not threaten its military security.

He noted recent Soviet statements that Moscow might develop the same sort of relations with Eastern Europe nations that it has with Finland. "I think the Western nations ought to pick up that hint."

THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1989

Gerald R. Ford Foundation *Newsletter*

Spring 1990

Henry Kissinger Speaks in Grand Rapids

The Gerald R. Ford Foundation was honored to have former Secretary of State **Henry Kissinger** as the second speaker in the William E. Simon Lectures in Public Affairs series on January 31 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids.

Following a warm introduction by President Ford, in which he re-counted his long association with Kissinger and referred to their "unique chemistry," Kissinger captivated the audience of invited guests with his insights into current East-West relations.

Kissinger expressed his appreciation to President Ford for the "calm dignity" he brought to the White House following the Watergate period. He said that trying to conduct foreign policy while the executive authority of the United States was disintegrating was a "nightmarish prospect."

He noted that the changes that have taken place all over eastern Europe in the last year had their origins in the Ford administration. He said that the structure of arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union was established by Ford and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev at Vladivostok in 1974 and that the Helsinki agreements, for which Ford was vilified at the time, are a "forum and rallying ground" for fighters for democracy in Eastern Europe and "the most significant agreements signed in the last 30 years—there is no longer any dispute."

(continued on page 2)

Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford at a press conference in Grand Rapids.

INSIDE...

<table><tr><td>Ford: "I told you so!"</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Press & Divided</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Government</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>"Presidential Pets"</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Nast Cartoon Exhibit</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Research Grants</td><td>7</td></tr></table>

(continued from page 1)

Kissinger expressed his belief that, on many levels, this is one of the most exciting periods through which anyone can live. It is the culmination of what Americans have wanted since the end of World War II. He warned, however, that this new period calls for a type of foreign policy we have never before had to conduct.

We cannot, according to Kissinger, believe that Gorbachev is the answer to all our problems. It's important to remember that "states have permanent interests that do not change with personalities." We have to remain involved in foreign policy in order to "prevent all the resources of Eurasia from being organized by a hostile power."

We don't want anything from the Soviet Union, Kissinger said, except that it stay within its boundaries. "They shouldn't get claustrophobia—they have 11 time zones!"

"States have permanent interests that do not change with personalities."

The former Secretary of State ended on an optimistic note, saying that the whole international environment is changing in the direction of our values. The dangers have been reduced. "We are in a position to work on building a structure of peace in the world that, while it will require a constant vigilance, will be a lot less tense than what we have known for a generation."

"We are in a position to work on building a structure of peace in the world . . ."

C-SPAN videotaped the Kissinger speech and broadcast it eight times between February 2nd and 5th. It was also shown on Grand Rapids local access cable television. The speech will air on the "Ford Hall Forum," a national network radio program hosted by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

President Ford presents a crystal globe to Henry Kissinger as a token of appreciation from the Gerald R. Ford Foundation.

## COMING EVENTS

**February 6-April 8:** "Thomas Nast Cartoons: The Art of Politics" exhibit, organized by the Museum of Our National Heritage. Museum.

**March 5-April 23:** Great Decisions Lecture Series. Monday evenings. Museum. Free.

**May 5-November 4:** "Presidential Pets" exhibit. Museum. **May 5:** Presidential Pets Extravaganza.

**May 13:** Mother's Day. Free admission to the Museum for moms.

**June 14:** Flag Day. Display of flags from the 50 states. Museum.

**June 17:** Father's Day. Free admission to the Museum for dads.

**July 14:** President Ford's birthday. Free admission to the Museum.

2

Finding a New U.S. Foreign Policy
to Fit a New World of Opportunity

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

The abortive coup in Panama has unleashed a debate about the adequacy of the Bush Administration's decision-making process. Yet controversy about procedures misses the central point. In a crisis, there is usually so little time that officials react as athletes do, almost by rote—on the basis of attitudes that have become second nature. The key question concerning Panama is, therefore, not how the United States managed one incident, but how it could have slid, during two administrations, into a confrontation with a weak, dependent country, staking American prestige without achieving stated objectives.

The crisis could have been a blessing in disguise. Contrary to popular perception, the top reaches of government grow quiet during crises. Competition for pre-eminent status stops; more often, the competition is over who can avoid blame. A crisis has the hidden benefit of separating those willing to assume responsibility from those who maneuver for personal and career survival. These are lessons an Administration must learn—the sooner the better.

The fundamental imperative for a new Administration is an inquiry on how the United States chooses basic objectives. This is particularly important when the world teeters uneasily between the conventional wisdom of the past and the revolutionary reality of the present. Not since the end of World War II has the international situation been so fluid.

And not since the Marshall Plan or the formation of NATO has an American President had so great an opportunity to build a new international order. But equally, not since the end of American isolationism have the obstacles in the United States been so daunting.

No government of a major country reinvents its foreign policy with such regularity or so systematically as the American. Every eight years at most, the top personnel down to the level of deputy assistant secretary are removed even when—as happened this time—no change of party is involved. A large percentage of the next lower levels are simultaneously transferred from policy-making positions, sacrificing expertise and policy depth at a moment when political appointees are still without operational experience. Their seminal experience is often the recent political campaign, with its inevitable emphasis on short-term considerations geared to the rhythm of the TV evening news. Hence, high officials drawn from

the political world tend to be more concerned with avoiding criticism than with imparting a sense of direction and tend to confuse verbal formulations or public-relations exercises with long-range policy. For in a political campaign, pronouncement is substance; the focus has to be on what to say rather than on what to do.

For all these reasons, senior officials entering policy-making from the field of politics spend a disproportionate amount of effort seeking to dissociate themselves from their predecessors.

Then a key test of any new administration is its ability to generate objectives that go beyond liquidating the policies of predecessors. That point seems to me to have been reached in the Bush Administration. At least for now, it has postponed—in my view indefinitely—contraversy over the deployment of short-range nuclear weapons in Europe; it is cutting back the Strategic Defense Initiative in effect to a research program. But it has yet to put forward its concept of the new Europe, of Atlantic relations under conditions of *perestroika*, of the evolving role of China and Japan or of Latin America. In the nature of things, a long-range policy will take time to evolve; it would be both premature and unfair to criticize this Administration for failing to achieve it in a few months. But it is not too early to point out that in the end an administration will be judged by what it creates, not by what it liquidates.

In organizing to deal with the future, the Bush Administration has many assets, notably that the President and several key advisers have a wealth of seasoned foreign-policy experience. They are also, by nature, prudent. Tactical recklessness will not be the undoing of this Administration. But concentration on tactics and short-term politics could be. Ironically the fact that the top people have known one another for so long and obviously get along so well may prove too much of a good thing. They may be reluctant to challenge one another or even embark on projects likely to produce controversy. When harmony becomes its own end, really difficult choices tend to be avoided.

That tendency toward stagnation disguised as consensus is reinforced within each department, in the interdepartmental machinery and by evolving presidential-congressional relations.

In taking over, every administration faces institutional deadlock: Its instincts are for change almost for its own sake while the bureaucracy is committed to a status quo it helped achieve. But since the new men rarely know their goals beyond campaign rhetoric and the bureaucracy controls the paper flow, solving day-to-day problems may consume so much energy that little time is left for long-range policy. The State Department bureaucracy, convinced that few political appointees could pass the Foreign Service examination, tends to persist in its view without formally articulating it to higher levels of government. The Foreign Service has a wondrous ability to write memoranda that fudge options it does not approve without technically suppressing them, or to draft instructions for itself which, once signed by the unwary political appointee, can be interpreted in a surprisingly sweeping manner.

Such guerrilla tactics come to the fore when the Foreign Service believes its views are being systematically ignored—more or less the case today. A certain tension between the political leadership and the professional staff is both inevitable and desirable. But foreign policy cannot thrive without support from what is now one of the world's best diplomatic services; when disciplined and monitored, it can be marvelously effective.

The flow of cables in and out of State is so voluminous, the issues so complex that it can only be managed by teamwork between professionals and political appointees. Though it is still early in this Administration, this teamwork has in my view not yet been achieved.

More difficult is the task of aligning the interdepartmental process to the genesis of long-range goals. The most overwhelming experience of high-level government service is that there are always more problems than time. Then the urgent tends to drive out the important—especially, if paradoxically, in an Administration of extremely compatible individuals where there is great reluctance to play devil's advocate.

Countless treatises have been written about the relative role of the national security adviser and the principal Cabinet officers. There is no formally conclusive answer because so much depends on the personality of the President. Since he has the final power of decision, the way issues are presented to him must be compatible with his style of work. But as a general

LA Times, Sunday November 5, 1989
(continued)

proposition, Cabinet members are under
duress to deal with day-to-day issues.
They cannot avoid taking into account
the morale of their subordinates, which is
inevitably linked to short-term issues
rather than the uncertainties inherent in
long-range strategic planning.

Ideally, the national security adviser
should act as the conscience of the
Administration. He and the secretary of
state should not be so afraid of reigniting
bureaucratic struggles that they seek to
solve all problems by a nonaggression
treaty between themselves. The national
security adviser and staff should feel free
to raise forbidden subjects and to insist—
within limits tolerated by the President—
on the consideration of controversial
issues. The incumbent, Brent Scowcroft,
is almost ideally suited for this, though I
should mention that he is an admired
friend and former business associate.

The tendency toward the short-term
and the ad hoc is reinforced by the
growing role of Congress; its staffs have
multiplied as its claims have been extend-
ed from oversight of policy into control of
day-to-day tactics. Unfortunately, the
process of foreign-policy decision-mak-
ing rarely lends itself to the trade-offs
that characterize domestic legislation.
Effective statecraft demands patience,
nuance and confidentiality—characteris-
tics so often the opposite of robust
congressional politics. The Bush Admin-
istration has shown extraordinary defer-
ence to congressional views. It remains to
be seen whether this encourages pres-
sures or eases them. In the end, the public
and Congress will require a road map of
proposed long-range destinations. Only in
this manner does it become possible to
generate the sort of dialogue capable of
bringing about national consensus.

We thus return to our original problem:
whether this nation can, in a period of
revolutionary change, develop objectives
capable of shaping history. And this
depends even more on the cast of mind of
top policy-makers—executive and legis-
lative—than on the administrative ma-
chinery at their disposal.

Thus there is reason to be concerned
over the disparity between the descrip-
tion of our time as revolutionary and the
measures put forward to deal with it.
Those are still quite conventional. For
months there has been a debate in the
United States about whether or not to
affirm *perestroika*—an update of the Cold
War question: Can the Soviets be trusted
and to what extent? But now that *peres-
troika* has been endorsed, what are the
precise operational consequences? Nei-
ther Moscow nor the West has put
forward any recognizable definition. As a
result, neither Congress nor the public—

or U.S. allies—have any criteria for
determining what is being endorsed; the
crucial challenge for the West is to
develop a common concept and strategy
for the new era now being proclaimed.

There are celebrations of new democ-
racy in the world but little discussion on
the specific actions required to sustain or
defend it, especially in Latin America.

Defense is being reduced, but in the
name of what doctrine, by what strategy?

Conventional wisdom holds that the
two-power world is disintegrating but the
United States remains focused on a ver-
sion of arms control that is a vestige of
that world; so far no concept has been put
forward to take advantage of the most
significant opportunity *perestroika* seems
to open up: the political organization of a
new Europe, East and West, and the
consequent redistribution of responsibili-
ty within the Atlantic Alliance.

The comforting assumption seems to be
that evolution—in the Soviet Union and
in the world—will proceed smoothly
toward some form of undefined global
armony symbolized by an occasional
igh-level meeting. This suits American
optimism, though not the lessons of
history; they teach that revolutions tend
to proceed unevenly with periodic con-
vulsions until a new structure has
emerged. How to shape such a process
and what we understand by harmony
define the opportunity for peace. It is too
early to ask for an agenda that will cause
this Administration to meet its seminal
opportunities. But the process should
begin now with the recognition that the
answers can be no better than the
questions that are put. ☐

INTERNATIONAL

message to the Czechs and East Germans: Moscow wanted the refugee problem resolved before Gorbachev arrived in East Berlin—and, Shevardnadze stressed, the Soviets wanted it resolved “with or without the GDR’s approval.” Knowing the Czechs had no choice but to abide by Moscow’s wishes, the Honecker government gave the emigration its sullen blessing.

Some Western analysts speculated that Gorbachev might lobby privately for Hon-

ecker's removal. A senior West German diplomat said the East German leader could be gone from office "in a matter of weeks" through the combined pressure of Moscow, Bonn and the East German public. That is probably premature. Next spring, however, the regime will hold a critical Communist Party congress. "Up until now, every public and private signal has been that there won't be any changes in authority," said one U.S. offi-

cial. "If that begins to shift, you can assume the fix is in."

It was doubtful, however, whether a successor would be any improvement. Moscow would clearly prefer a committed reformer such as Hans Modrow, the hugely popular Dresden party chief who openly advocates the overhaul of East Germany's political and economic institutions. It was more likely, though, that any successor would be drawn from

## How Kissinger Sees It

As East-bloc unity disintegrates, the future of the two Germanys gains new importance. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger met with NEWSWEEK editors last week to discuss "the German question." Excerpts:

We are watching a political process in Europe in which the Soviets are losing political control in Eastern Europe, while NATO's military position progressively weakens in Western Europe. I consider what's going on now to be the lull before some storm. The problem in Eastern Europe is a disintegration of the concepts of the satellite empire. The communist parties, to the extent that they become national parties and participate in the electoral process, must adopt an attitude independent of Moscow because it's the only way they can legitimize themselves. In Poland and Hungary the communist parties may believe that by calling themselves social democrats they will save national communism. But this can't work in East Germany, because there you cannot be a national communist; as a nationalist you have to be for unification.

The basic dilemma of the West Germans is that they're emotionally cut loose from some of their Western moorings. It is a standard phrase of West German politics now that Germany has a special vocation in the East. They keep saying: we're good allies, we're reliable members of NATO, we are dedicated Eu-

ropeans, but everybody has to recognize that we have a special mission in the East. Where have they proved their special vocation in Eastern Europe other than in the military field? To speak of a German special historical relationship in Poland is absurd.

West German industrialists want to use Eastern Europe for low-cost manufacturing of German technology. They're putting a lot of money into some of these countries. What happens when the Soviets wake up and find that they have lost Eastern Europe economically to the Germans, and that East Germany is blowing up. Is it likely they will acquiesce to losing their Eastern European empire to the Germans? I can't conceive that. The internal disintegration could have reached a point where they will accept it, but I wouldn't want to base American policy on that proposition. What if the Soviets decide to demonstrate their power in Central Europe, perhaps in Berlin?

We have to come up with a political concept for the future of Europe, or we will be endlessly whipsawed between accelerating unilateral disarmament in NATO and the political disintegration of Central Europe. The art of foreign policy is to understand trends and to manage them. I would have preferred a more orthodox evolution. I would have preferred to maintain the present military structures and a gradual easing of tensions within them. But a trend exists.

DPA—PHOTOREPORTERS

A disintegrating empire: Calling for reform in East Germany

Events in the East will produce a situation where the United States has to take a position. The only question is whether we do it ad hoc, reacting to each crisis as it develops. Or whether we say that we're in a new period, however we got there. That new period requires the following concepts: the bipolar approach will no longer work. Therefore, we have to see how to manage trends in a manner that does not leave us at the end with a Europe less stable than the one we've known before. You already see in the Balkans that all the old quarrels are coming up again. You can visualize the German-Slav problems will be there again. You'll be back to traditional European politics without a concept and without the forces to handle them. What do we do if one of these countries decides to leave the War-

saw Pact? Should we try to get them out? Or should we encourage them to stay?

It must be in the Soviet interest not to be the permanent policeman of Eastern Europe, thereby jeopardizing a relaxation with the West. We have to find a way to give the Soviets assurances of security within their 1941 borders, and convince them that it is in their interest to get out of physical control of Eastern Europe—which, however, can be turned into a zone to make military attack against them impossible. We need a concept for Germany, for the evolution of Eastern Europe and for defense in a new political environment. We've gotten ourselves obsessed in the West. We were so militarized in our thinking that we're now militarized in our diplomacy—on both sides. And we have to get away from that.

NEWSWEEK: OCTOBER 16, 1989 45

INTERNATIONAL

the ranks of East Germany's Stalinists, men such as 52-year-old Egon Krenz, who emerged as heir apparent while Honecker was reported close to death following gallbladder surgery over the summer. Currently the head of the security police, Krenz is favored by party hard-liners who are seeking to hold back the tide of reform. "These are old men, immobile, petrified, unable to cope with changing times," said one official in Bonn. "They do not

understand why people are unsatisfied."

With the closing of the Czech border, East Germany exposed itself as a country that can no longer compete for its citizens' allegiance. Instead, said Dorothee Wilms, West German minister for intra-German relations, "The GDR [is] more than ever a state built on walls." East Germans' increasingly panicky claustrophobia is threatening to get out of hand. "In those circumstances," said a U.S. State Depart-

ment official, "who knows where Gorbachev's visit could lead? Will he urge them to liberalize? Will he urge Honecker to leave office? Will the population respond so overwhelmingly that it risks another Tiananmen Square?" After admitting its political illegitimacy, East Germany can either reform, repress or explode.

HARRY ANDERSON with MICHAEL MEYER and KAREN BRESLAU in East Berlin, MARGARET GARRARD WARNER in Washington and bureau reports

## Behind the Masks of Eastern Europe

In Eastern Europe last week, NEWSWEEK Executive Editor Stephen Smith and Bonn bureau chief Michael Meyer spoke with leading politicians and activists about the pace of change in their countries. Excerpts:

**Mieczysław Rakowski, Polish Communist Party chief:** The political situation is not stable. A new balance is emerging. The Communist Party is seeking an identity, as is Solidarity. As for reforms, there are no barriers, theoretically. In practice, you have to ask how much people are willing to see a decline in their living standards. In my opinion, Polish society is not prepared to make sacrifices of this kind. You have this horrible contradiction: you need radical moves but you have the resistance of the people.

The real challenge is to change people's mind-set. Poles would like to work in socialism but live in capitalism. We like the demands on us to be low. Most Poles are attached to the peaceful life. The greatest barrier to reform lies in people's psychology, what I call the "awareness barrier." Changing this is not a matter of a year or five years; it will take a generation. As it is, the system has demoralized people. I may be wrong, but after the first radical steps, and the subsequent social reaction, the new government will retreat.

**Imre Pozsgay, Hungarian Politburo member and a leading reformer:** A crisis prevails in Eastern

Europe. There is no political or even geographical unity. What you call the East bloc is an artificial linkage, a hybrid imposed after Yalta. The crisis of Europe lies in its division. Protracted problems here will lead to protracted problems in Western Europe as well. We have an unprecedented opportunity for creating a united Europe. It's not a matter of money. We want access to Western technology, to economic innovation and foreign investment. We want entrepreneurs who can teach us management skills as well.

We have seen no sign that Moscow wants to pull us back. To the contrary, Gorbachev's *perestroika* is a wind at our back. Hungary has reached a point where there is no going back.

The Hungary of the future will be similar to West European social democracies. The party state will cease to exist.

Dictatorial socialism will disappear. We must create a constitutional state ruled by law. The goal should be a parliamentary government freely elected from among competing parties. If defeated, the party will transfer power as in any democracy. Hungary is not an oligarchy: we should be able to change our leaders at any time.

**Milos Jakes, Czechoslovak Communist Party leader:** [Restructuring] certainly does not mean edging away from the ideals of socialism... We keep a close eye on those developments [in Hungary and Poland], which in many respects give us concern, and draw the necessary lessons—for example, that the party as the leading force in society must not lose control over the situation.

**Vaclav Havel, Czechoslovak playwright and political activist:** For

20 years socialism was deprived of the moral side. All was apathy and depression, a hopelessness prevailed. But over the last year we can see remarkable change. First, a new generation has grown up that did not go through the trauma of 1968. Second, developments in Hungary and Poland are stimulating our society. Third, the current policy of our leadership is growing sterile. The leadership is tired and growing old. It's becoming petrified.

A dictatorship in crisis typically makes contradictory moves. I can imagine a situation that one day my play will open in Prague, and the next day I'll be in prison. This may seem implausible, but at the moment of crisis, when power is shaken, anything can happen. For 20 years the communists exploited the future. Now come the results of this very dangerous policy. Within eight to 10 years, [we] will be like Poland—$40 billion in debt and no basic foodstuffs. We keep telling the regime that it is not necessary to wait until the bitter end before starting a social dialogue. A lot of suffering could be prevented.

But do not forget, in a totalitarian system we can observe an interesting phenomenon. People in power will speak out only when the time is ripe. Our leaders all wear a uniform mask and declare identical phrases. Perhaps at a moment of history, the masks will fall, and it is only at that moment that we know who is who. It is possible then that we may be surprised to find that the masks concealed an intelligent face.

BISSON—SYGMA

'The challenge is to change people's mind-set': Rakowski, Pozsgay

SHEPARD SHERBEL—SABA

46 NEWSWEEK : OCTOBER 16, 1989

INTERNATIONAL

# Facing Up to the German Question

One nation or two? Pro-Western or neutral? The answers are crucial to the future of a new Europe

The turmoil in Germany is another of the unpredictable events that are accelerating the pace of political evolution in Europe. The Soviet empire is breaking up, and as Western Europe reaches out to the East, a picture begins to emerge of what the continent could look like by the first decade of the 21st century. It is a scene full of both hope and peril.

Except for a nominal, tripwire presence, U.S. and Soviet forces will withdraw from Europe. The two military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, will begin to wither away, or will create a new mission for themselves by becoming more political in nature.

The European Community (EC) will move beyond its economic function and become a powerful political force promoting closer ties between East and West.

Moscow will allow the East European countries considerable independence, insisting only that they retain at least symbolic membership in the Warsaw Pact. Following the lead of Poland and Hungary, Czechoslovakia will abandon the Soviet political and economic model. East Germany will change, too, but Bulgaria and Romania will remain mired in authoritarian backwardness.

In the long run, the more reformist countries of Eastern Europe will become something like Austria: democracies with market economies, maintaining a formal, studied neutrality between East and West.

Any number of things could happen to prevent this realignment. If Mikhail Gorbachev fails with his political and economic reforms, the Soviet Union might revert to its old Stalinist ways and seek to reimpose iron discipline on Eastern Europe. If Moscow allows its empire to dissolve too quickly, the result could be chaos, causing instability throughout the region. Economic failures in Eastern Europe, or a severe global recession, could make further reform impossible. And even if such pitfalls are avoided, the picture of a new Europe remains disturbingly blank in one important respect. There still is no answer to the Ger-

man Question: one nation or two of them, pro-Western or neutral? A new arrangement for Germany will be the linchpin of the new Europe, and no one yet knows what shape that arrangement will take.

Until recently, the German Question was usually discussed in the most vague, perfunctory manner. But the tumultuous exodus from East Germany led to a new surge of enthusiasm among Germans for reuniting their divided country. In one sur-

vey, 79 percent of West Germans called reunification desirable, while 71 percent of the East Germans polled randomly by phone expressed the same sentiment. To many in West Germany, the flood of refugees also demonstrated the illegitimacy of Erich Honecker's regime in the East. "What's happening does demonstrate that there is one German nation and that this bizarre concept of a separate German socialist nation just doesn't fly, not even with its own people," said Robert Livingston of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. "The East Germans who are fleeing have lent credibility to Bonn's claim that it alone is the legitimate representative of this one German nation."

Now that reunification is on the open political agenda, some West Germans have claims that go even farther. The right wing, which may profit from the issue in next year's national elections, wants to revive the issue of Germany's eastern borders. Finance Minister Theo Waigel of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian ally of the ruling Christian Democrats, said last August that the German Question properly includes "the eastern German regions on the other side of the Oder and Neisse"—the territories ceded to Poland after World War II. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze complained that the forces of German "revanchism" were "seeking to revise and destroy the postwar realities in Europe." The West German government quickly recoiled. "The wheel of history will not be turned back," Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher assured the United Nations. "The inviolability of borders is the basis of peaceful relations in Europe."

**Slow going:** West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is not pushing for any rapid change in Bonn's relationship with East Berlin. "We are interested in those changes taking place in an evolutionary, not a revolutionary, way," says Claus Duisberg, who heads the working group on inter-German relations in Kohl's chancellery. "A revolutionary way might spark a reaction, including even a Soviet reaction, in East Germany." An official of George Bush's National Security Council says mainstream West Germans fear they will be pushed into making a choice "between a German national-

ist future and an integrated European one. They don't want to choose," says the U.S. official. "The West Germans have had a great deal for 40 years. They've had liberty, prosperity, democracy and long vacations. Do they want to jeopardize this? No. And they fear that all this premature talk of reunification may jeopardize it."

Certainly the Soviet Union is not ready for German reunification. As Moscow sees it, that is something to be settled by the Germans themselves at some point in the next century and in the context of what Gorbachev likes to call a "common European house"—a continent at peace, in which all peoples are brought closer together. Even in that utopian future, the Soviets

PETER TURNLEY FOR NEWSWEEK

East German soldiers practice their goose step

## The new flood of refugees demonstrated the illegitimacy of Erich Honecker's regime

NEWSWEEK: OCTOBER 16, 1989 51

INTERNATIONAL

probably would prefer to see two sovereign
German states, rather than one.

For years there has been speculation
that the price of German reunification
would be the removal of West Germany
from the NATO alliance. "What if Gorba-
chev offered the Germans unification in
exchange for neutrality?" asks Steve
Szabo, professor of German Studies at the
U.S. National Defense University. "How
would the West Germans respond?" Stalin
made that offer in 1952. "Germany was
weak enough in those days to make it credi-
ble," says François Heisbourg, director of
London's International Institute for Stra-

tegic Studies. "But [today] it's
incredible to imagine that a na-
tion of 80 million people, with
half the GNP of the Soviet
Union, could ever remain mili-
tarily and politically neutered.
If I were a Russian, I wouldn't
believe it, even if it were put on
paper." In any case, West Ger-
mans are unlikely to take the
bait, especially now that the ex-
odus from the East has under-
scored the differences between
the two Germanys. "Our young
people didn't really know how
important it was to live in a
democratic system," says West
German pollster Elisabeth
Noelle-Neumann. "They have
discovered that freedom here is
much more important than
they thought."

**Time frames:** Egon Bahr, a
leading theorist of West Ger-
many's opposition Social Dem-
ocratic Party, insists that unifi-
cation can be achieved only
through an evolutionary proc-
ess—"not in my lifetime," he
often says. Other Germans are

in more of a hurry. West German President Richard von Weizsäcker has said privately that he foresees a confederation of the two Germanys within a decade.

What form unification will take is no
clearer than when it will happen. In a col-
umn for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate
last Sunday, Henry Kissinger posited "a
step-by-step melding of the domestic struc-
ture of the two Germanys" leading eventu-
ally to "a confederation of the two states
with East Germany becoming essentially
demilitarized." The final stage, Kissinger
said, would be free elections in East Germa-
ny, after which it might join a "loose federa-
tion with West Germany." No one expects
full unification right off the bat, if ever.
Confederation would bring partial unity
and might last indefinitely. The catch
phrase is "1815, not 1871"—1815 being the
date of the German Confederation, a group-
ing of 39 states and republics, while 1871
saw Bismarck's unification of Germany.

There is widespread agreement that the
German Question needs a European solu-
tion. "If Germany moves toward unity in a
self-centered, neonationalist sense, that
would be disastrous," says Heisbourg.
"Conversely, it's quite different if it's Ger-
many, acting as part of the EC, acting in
consultation with the other 11 members.
The change can be managed in a peaceful
and benign fashion if the rapprochement is
handled as a collective European issue."
Many Germans agree. "Our goal is to bring
about Western European integration ...
with the idea that the German Question
will solve itself within a confederated Eu-

rope," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hanns
Schumacher says in Bonn. The Bush ad-
ministration also seems to favor that kind
of approach. At the NATO summit last
July, the president and Secretary of State
James Baker encouraged the EC to coordi-
nate Western economic aid to Poland and
Hungary, emphasizing a collective West-
ern response and discouraging West Ger-
many from going it alone.

Another unanswered question, howev-
er, is to what extent the United States will
be involved in the new Europe. Already it
is widely assumed that most American
and Soviet troops eventually will be with-
drawn from the center of Europe. It is
taken for granted that Washington's plan
to modernize the short-range Lance nuclear
missile is dead because of opposition in
West Germany, where the weapons are
based. Kissinger complains that NATO "is
on the way to losing its strategic doc-
trine." In an interview with NEWSWEEK

editors last week (page 45), he said the
allies need a new "political concept for the
future of Europe" to replace the withering
military alliance.

Even if the concept existed, it isn't clear
how a realignment of Europe would actual-
ly come about. When Kissinger suggested,
some months ago, that Washington and
Moscow should negotiate a new military
arrangement for the region, some West Eu-
ropeans felt left out, and NATO tradition-
alists in the United States accused the for-
mer secretary of state of proposing a second
Yalta agreement, under which the Soviets
would be able to retain some sort of hege-

mony over Eastern Europe.
Kissinger still bridles at the
"Yalta II" charge. "What I
want is to un-Yalta Europe," he
said last week. "The problem is
to get Soviet power out of Eu-
rope, not to get Soviet power
into Europe, which is what
Yalta did."

'It's a buyout': Some West Europeanys, and some members of the Bush administration, think no negotiations are necessary; events seem to be moving in a favorable direction without any talks. Other Europeans think they should take the lead in negotiations with Moscow. The EC is moving rapidly toward a single internal market by the end of 1992, and many West Europeans believe that their economic clout will have more effect on the East than any security arrangements the Soviets leave behind. They do not worry about a Yalta II. "It's not a sellout we're contemplating in Eastern Europe, it's a buyout," cracks a non-American

NATO official.

NATO may be a better agency, however,
for negotiating the future of Europe.
"NATO has once again become relevant—
not in terms of military hardware, about
which many argue, but as an instrument
for forging Europe's political future,"
Ronald Steel, professor of international
relations at the University of Southern
California, writes in Foreign Policy quar-
terly. "NATO, in the declining days of its
military utility, can assist the United
States in negotiating with Moscow a via-
ble conclusion to the Cold War in Europe."
The superpowers can no longer arrange
the future of Europe over the heads of the
Europeans. But they still must be involved
in Europe's security, as managers of the
change that lies ahead and as formal guar-
antors of the outcome.

RUSSELL WATSON with
MARGARET GARRARD WARNER and
JOHN BARRY in Washington, ANDREW NAGORSKI
in Bonn and bureau reports

GLOBE PHOTOS

Soviet soldiers raise the red flag over Berlin in 1945

The Kremlin says German unity
is an issue to be settled
some time in the next century

NEWSWEEK : OCTOBER 16, 1989

WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1989

Henry Kissinger

WASHINGTON POST

OCT. 10, 1989

Pg. 21

# Superpowers and the New Europe

*Don't expect stability and peace to just happen.*

The past year has seen an astonishing evolution in East-West relations. The Soviet Union is losing control of the political agenda in Eastern Europe at the same moment that the United States is losing control of its security agenda in Western Europe. But Western rhetoric is stuck in familiar categories relating either to the arcane catechism of strategic arms control or a diplomacy geared to "helping" Gorbachev.

Because it is peripheral to the emerging central danger, major progress toward a START agreement is probable by the time of next spring's summit. "Helping" Gorbachev contributes to peace only if the Soviet leader is prepared to help in building a more stable international system. And in that case we in the West are not helping him but ourselves.

Any analysis based on mutual interest must start from the recognition that the fulcrum of international tensions has returned to its historical place of origin at the center of Europe. A new design for Europe should end both Soviet political domination of Eastern Europe and potential super-power military confrontation in the center of Europe. During the next decade U.S. and Soviet ground forces should be progressively withdrawn from Central Europe in an orderly negotiated fashion, with Soviet offensive capabilities, especially tank forces, returned deep into Russia.

The most startling changes have occurred in Eastern Europe. After monopolizing education, propaganda and bureaucracy for four decades, the Polish Communist Party was able to win only one contested seat in the first nearly free election since World War II. The Communist Party in Hungary is likely to split into two groups at the next party congress; polls indicate that its popular support hovers around 40 percent. Though Czechoslovakia has not permitted free elections, its Communist Party is surely no more popular.

As a result, Moscow is on the verge of losing its grip on the political evolution of Eastern Europe. Historically, Communist parties have justified themselves as the advance forces of history destined to lead—and if necessary compel—the majority on the high road to Communist orthodoxy. Therefore, Communist parties tending with democracy face a philosophical dilemma: if they become true democrats they cease to be true Communists. If they remain Communist, they will act to undermine the new democratic system, for example shifting to Solidarity the blame for the austerity required to overcome the economic mess the Communists left behind. But whatever their motive, the leaders of the Communist parties of Eastern Europe face an overwhelming new fact: having lost the capacity to compel by terror, they must turn to public opinion, appealing to nationalism and challenging Moscow.

At least for the time being—and so long as membership in the Warsaw Pact is not challenged—the Communist monolith is weakening with Moscow's acquiescence. Proposing up Communist rule in Eastern Europe by military means apparently seems too risky to a Soviet leadership reluctant to hazard the carefully crafted new image. Moscow may be hoping that in the end calculations of the mutual national interest buttressed by geographic proximity can substitute at least to some extent for ideological conformity.

The jury is still out as to whether this strategy will work in Hungary or Poland. But it cannot work in East Germany. There the Communist Party is in no position to mobilize national feelings because these feelings run counter to the very existence of the East German state.

West Germany by definition, and increasingly by its policies, keeps the hope for reunification alive. East Germany faces the dilemma that opposition to reform will

turn it into an anachronism while liberalization will undermine its reason for being.

Disintegrative tendencies exist inside the Soviet Union as well. Gorbachev undoubtedly launched glasnost and perestroika in the belief that reduced repression from Moscow would enlist support for his reforms. But the non-Russian nationalities—especially those acquired as the result of the Hitler-Stalin pact—march to their own drummers. So strong is public feeling that even local Communist parties have felt obliged to challenge Moscow. Economic decentralization—essential for perestroika—liberates pressures for autonomy if not outright independence within the framework of glasnost.

Too many Western leaders seem to think that these trends need little response beyond judicious doses of economic assistance. I strongly favor greatly increased aid to Poland and Hungary. But this is no substitute for a concept for the future of Europe. An empire assembled over a period of 400 years by force will not disintegrate passively. And the Western alliance is bound to be shaken by the very events it is celebrating.

For 40 years the Atlantic Alliance has been held together by the fear of Soviet military aggression. Its response has been to build up integrated conventional forces augmented by European-based nuclear weapons and backed by an ultimate reliance on the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Now each of these elements is under attack. The ferment in the Communist world has made Soviet aggression seem less plausible while the personality of Gorbachev has given to Soviet diplomacy an almost benign aspect, most notably in West Germany.

A combination of budgetary pressures, arms control negotiations and general euphoria has already produced growing temptations to reduce NATO's conventional military establishment unilaterally. Not only is opposition to modernization of short-range nuclear weapons in West Germany becoming insurmountable, the entire nuclear deployment on German soil is being challenged. The denuclearization of Germany would threaten the political contract under which American forces have been deployed in Europe for four decades. Finally, a START agreement will weaken the rationale for initiating nuclear war, further reducing the credibility of the American nuclear deterrent.

Trends in both German states compound these divisive tendencies. Any West German government is bound to seek for the people of East Germany the same privileges already accorded the populations of Poland and Hungary. The result is increasing West German activism all over Eastern Europe. West German political figures are fond of repeating Germany's alleged historic mission in Eastern Europe—an amazing proposition for which history offers no evidence and which is likely to inspire premotion in Eastern Europe. Unless it keeps its foreign policy well within a European framework and its security policy closely tied to NATO, West Germany could repeat the historic German flaw of self-isolation and become the target of Western suspicions and Soviet attempts to stem the centrifugal tendencies in its empire.

Both East and West are being challenged to a new vision of Europe's future. The West must define for itself three concepts: for defense in an era of declining budgets and increasing opposition to U.S. nuclear deployment in Central Europe; for arms control policies that promote greater freedom for the people of Eastern Europe; and for devising political obstacles to Soviet pressure on Western Europe

KISSINGER...Pg. 8

POSTPONED...from Pg. 4

cause "there is a very high probability of an accident" that could spread deadly plutonium over central Florida.

One of the plaintiff attorneys, Edward Lee Rogers, said after the judge's ruling: "We thought we had a very strong case in terms of the violations of the National Environmental Policy Act."

Before the ruling yesterday, members of the groups threatened to "put people on the launch pad" if necessary to prevent the launch.

The three groups are concerned about the plutonium in two reactors that will be used to power Galileo on an ambitious mission scheduled to take it to Jupiter and its moons by December 1995.

NASA says it has cast Galileo's plutonium in ceramic and enclosed it in containers tough enough to withstand the stresses of re-entry from outer space. According to NASA, the plutonium fuel would not even be dispersed by an explosion similar to the one that destroyed the Challenger shuttle.

But the groups say the danger of the mission is increased by the fact that Galileo will be lifted by the space shuttle, which has a higher probability of an accident than an unmanned rocket. They are also concerned because the probe will make two swings by Earth as it loops through the inner solar system, building the speed to spring toward Jupiter.

"NASA is in effect playing ecological roulette with the people of Florida," who could be affected by an explosion during liftoff, said Andrew Kimbrell, one of the lawyers asking for a court order yesterday.

NASA says the chance of a shuttle flight having a serious accident is 1 in 78, while attorneys for the protest groups claim that figure is closer to 1 in 36.

Steve Frank, a lawyer arguing for the Justice Department, said NASA believes putting the plutonium on Atlantis creates a 1-in-10 million probability of 9.4 additional cancer deaths in the world over the next 70 years.

"All of the plaintiffs' tales of horror are all based on the expectation that this plutonium would be pulverized to the extent that the people of Florida would be able to inhale it," Mr. Frank told Judge Gasch.

Mr. Frank said the chances of the plutonium aboard Galileo being pulverized were virtually zero.

Attorneys for the protest groups said that they fear as many as 700,000 cancer deaths from an accident, and that the chances of that happening are greater than NASA believes.

* This story is based in part on wire service reports.

7

WEDNESDAY, October 11, 1989

FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM

OCT 4, 1989

Pg. 22

# Budget sham

## Gramm-Rudman not working; junk it

If the federal government — specifically, Congress and the executive branch — is not going to abide by the spirit of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act, then it should junk it and look at the alternatives.

"One alternative would be a public surrender to permanent deficit spending. A better one would be devising a new form of imposed discipline that would treat the deficit problem realistically.

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings has not worked. Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., one of the original sponsors, calls it a "sham." Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, wants to delay its zero-deficit deadline from 1993 (it was originally to be 1991) to the end of the century.

Gramm-Rudman has led to shortsighted chicanery, not statesmanlike stewardship. Congress and the administration resort to one-time asset sales, optimistic estimates and budget sleight-of-hand to evade year-by-year deficit targets. As a result, the actual payment of the cost

of government is put off to future years.

Gramm-Rudman originally called for a 1989 deficit of $72 billion. The law was revised in 1987, specifying a $136 billion target for 1989. The actual deficit this year is approximately $161 billion. That is not deficit reduction.

The old "tax, spend and elect" Washington mentality has been replaced by an attitude of "cut taxes, spend and elect." That is why Gramm-Rudman has become an exercise in evading spending limits rather than a means of matching income and outgo.

Polls indicate that the American people would consent to higher federal taxes if they had confidence that their money actually would reduce the deficit and the burgeoning public debt.

It is time to junk Gramm-Rudman and replace it with a mechanism that would tell the truth about the deficit and would begin building public confidence in the ability and sincerity of Washington leadership to eradicate it.

### YAZOV...from Pg. 3

Inviting Cheney to the Soviet Union, an offer Cheney accepted. Defense officials said that visit is likely to take place next year.

Yazov's comments revealed a Soviet military struggling under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's policy of *perestroika*, or restructuring, which he stressed "was not contrived to bring about the renewal of the military" in the first place.

"Perestroika was intended to bring about a renewal of the relations in the Soviet society as a whole," said Yazov. "Naturally, to a certain extent the renewal processes have touched upon the ways of the military and our armed forces."

The 65-year-old general said that in one recent instance, a military cadet challenged a general officer in an election to the Congress of Peoples' Deputies—and won. In another, he recounted, lieutenant colonels voted against a proposal of the minister of defense in the Supreme Soviet.

"So these are the rights being enjoyed by all the citizens of our society. So to a certain extent, the *perestroika* processes have already been practiced in the armed forces of the U.S.S.R.," Yazov said.

Yazov was the first candidate for his position to face the scrutiny—and scathing criticism—of Soviet legislators before he was narrowly approved last July.

Yazov praised the U.S. troops he met and watched in a series of maneuvers at bases across the country. "The power they showed struck us immensely," he said of the Army's elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers, who conducted a jump for Yazov at Ft. Bragg, N.C., Friday morning.

In a wide-ranging session with reporters, Yazov launched a peace offensive of his own.

"Let me ask you a question," Yazov challenged one questioner through an interpreter. "Are you serious about believing that the Soviet Union is preparing to go to war with the United States?

"It is the atmosphere of trust that should be put in the foreground," he added.

But Yazov turned prickly when he was asked to assess the American B-2 stealth bomber, an aircraft designed to breach Soviet airspace unobserved and deliver nuclear weapons on sensitive Soviet targets.

"We do not consider it to be a challenge on the part of the United States in regard to the Soviet Union. You keep perfecting your military hardware, we also keep

perfecting our military weapons systems," Yazov said.

"We don't have to modify the Soviet air defense system" in response to the plane, which is now being tested by the Air Force, Yazov said. "The Soviet air defenses have the capability today to

bring down any air threat," he added.

Yazov replaced Sergei L. Sokolov last July after an embarrassing incident in which a 19-year-old West German pilot flew into Soviet airspace unchallenged and landed in Red Square.

### KISSINGER...from Pg. 7

and Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, in part to replace the military obstacles in the process of being eroded.

The Soviet Union faces an even more profound challenge. Its massive troop presence in Europe is both a drain on economic resources and presents Moscow with a Hobson's choice between the humiliation of acquiescing in fundamental political change while its troops are present or repression with unforeseeable consequences. The test for stability is whether for the first time in history Europe can live in equilibrium with a Russian empire, with neither side fearing invasion by the other. If Gorbachev will work toward that goal, he deserves generous support. If he does not, his rule will have been an interesting psychological episode on the way to adventurism or repression or both.

Assuming he opts for the first course, a new security system could have the following components: Soviet ground forces in Europe would return to national territory; Soviet offensive capabilities—especially tank forces—in the area west of Moscow would be limited under international inspection. In return, the United States should be prepared to withdraw in stages throughout the '90s most of its ground forces from the European continent. Both nuclear superpowers could be allowed to maintain agreed air forces and material storages in Europe to make clear that an attack would involve an unacceptable risk of war.

Such military redeployments would inevitably project the future of Germany to the forefront of European politics because East Germany will face new internal pressures, especially once Soviet ground forces are removed. The German issue can in any case no longer be avoided. If Western cohesion is to be maintained, Germany's allies must come forward with a plausible program that meets Germany's aspirations without destabilizing Central Europe.

West Germany's contribution to such a program should be to accept the present frontiers of Germany as final and abandon the current ambiguous official rhetoric, which renounces force only in changing frontiers. This is the precondition for negotiations on an appropriate system of free elections for East Germany, perhaps at first on the Polish model. The almost certain outcome of such a process would be a step-by-step melding of the domestic structure of the two Germanys. At that point a plausible guarantee that the change would not extend the frontiers of NATO to the East is essential—perhaps by creating over time a confederation of the two states with East Germany becoming essentially demilitarized.

I envisage a three-stage process. The first stage would be the reduction of forces outlined in President Bush's proposal of last May. The principle of total Soviet withdrawal of ground forces should be established in this stage, for example by the complete withdrawal from at least one European country such as Hungary.

The next stage would establish four security zones: from the Atlantic to the Rhine; from the Rhine to the eastern frontier of West Germany; from that frontier to the Soviet-Polish frontier; from the Soviet-Polish frontier to the area of Moscow. The forces west of the Rhine and between the Polish-Soviet frontier and Moscow would be roughly equal, as would be the forces on both sides of the dividing lines in the central sectors.

The final stage—toward the latter part of the decade—would be free elections in East Germany, after which that territory would be under a regime along the Austrian model, perhaps in loose federation with West Germany.

Obviously, such goals cannot be achieved rapidly. But without some concept of the new Europe there is a great danger of sliding into a series of crises not in the control of the key countries.

8

Europe Returns to Center Stage
as the Fulcrum for World Tension

LA Times

Sunday

October 8, 1989

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

The past year has seen an astonishing evolution in East-West relations. The communist world is in turmoil; the Western Alliance is searching for a concept to accommodate new realities. But Western rhetoric is stuck in familiar categories, the arcane catechism of a strategic arms treaty or a diplomacy geared to "helping" Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Four factors underly this reality: the accelerating trend in Eastern Europe for independence from the Soviet Union; agitation for autonomy in many constituent republics of the Soviet Union; decreasing willingness to bear defense burdens in Western Europe and the United States, and growing pressures for German unification.

By the time of next spring's summit, major progress toward a START agreement is as probable as it is peripheral to the emerging central danger. "Helping" Gorbachev contributes to peace only if the Soviet leader is prepared to help in building a more stable international sys-

Any analysis based on mutual interest must start from a recognition that the fulcrum of international tensions has returned to its place of origin—the center of Europe. A new design for Europe should end both Soviet political domination of Eastern Europe and potential superpower military confrontation in the center. Over the next decade United States and Soviet ground forces should be progressively withdrawn from Central Europe in an orderly, negotiated fashion with Soviet offensive capabilities, especially tanks, returned deep into Russia.

The most startling changes have occurred in Eastern Europe. After monopolizing education and bureaucracy for four decades, the Polish Communist Party could win only one contested seat in the first nearly free election since World War II. The Communist Party in Hungary is likely to split into two groups at the next party congress; polls indicate that its popular support hovers around 40%. Though Czechoslovakia has not permitted free elections, its Communist Party is surely no more popular.

Moscow is on the verge of losing its grip on the political evolution of Eastern Europe. Historically, Communist parties have justified themselves as the advance forces of history destined to lead—and if necessary compel—the majority on the high road to communist orthodoxy.

Therefore, Communist parties toying with democracy face a philosophical dilemma: If they become true democrats they cease to be true communists. If they remain communist, they will act to undermine the new democratic system—for example, blaming Solidarity for the austerity required to overcome the economic mess the communists left behind. But whatever their motive, leaders of Communist parties in Eastern Europe face an overwhelming new fact: Having lost the capacity to compel by terror, they must turn to public opinion, appealing to nationalism and challenging Moscow.

At least for the time being—and so long as membership in the Warsaw Pact is not challenged—the communist monolith is weakening with Moscow's acquiescence. Propping up communist rule in Eastern Europe by military means apparently seems too risky to a Soviet leadership reluctant to hazard the carefully crafted new image. Moscow may be hoping that calculations of mutual national interest, buttressed by propinquity, can substitute to some extent for ideological conformity.

The jury is still out as to whether this strategy will work in Hungary or Poland. But it cannot work in East Germany. There, the Communist Party is in no position to mobilize national feelings because these feelings run counter to the very existence of the East German state.

West Germany by definition, and increasingly by its policies, keeps the hope for reunification alive. East Germany faces a dilemma: Opposition to reform will turn it into an anachronism while liberalization will undermine its reason for being. This ideological dilemma in Eastern Europe becomes the geopolitical dilemma of the Soviet Union.

Disintegrative trends also exist inside the Soviet Union. Gorbachev surely launched *glasnost* and *perestroika* in the belief that reduced repression would enlist support for reform. But non-Russian nationalities—especially those acquired in the Hitler-Stalin pact—march to their own drummers. So strong is public feeling that even local Communist parties have felt obliged to challenge Moscow. Economic decentralization—essential for *perestroika*—liberates pressures for autonomy, if not outright independence, within the framework of *glasnost*.

Ominous warnings from Gorbachev have so far proved futile. On Sept. 23, the Lithuanian parliament, by a 74-0 vote, declared the Hitler-Stalin pact void and Soviet annexation invalid.

Too many Western leaders seem to think these trends need little response beyond judicious doses of economic assistance. I strongly favor greatly increased aid to Poland and Hungary. But this is no substitute for a concept about the future

of Europe. An empire assembled over a period of 400 years by force will not disintegrate passively. And the Western Alliance has to be shaken by the very events it celebrates.

For 40 years the Atlantic Alliance has been held together by the fear of Soviet aggression. Its response has been to build up integrated conventional forces augmented by European-based nuclear weapons and backed by an ultimate reliance on the American nuclear deterrent. Now each of these elements is under attack. The ferment in the communist world has made Soviet aggression seem less plausible while the personality of Gorbachev has given to Soviet diplomacy an almost benign aspect, most notably in West Germany.

A combination of budgetary pressures, arms-control negotiations and general euphoria has produced growing temptations to reduce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's conventional military force unilaterally. Not only is opposition to modernization of short-range nuclear weapons in West Germany becoming insurmountable, the entire nuclear deployment on German soil is being challenged. Denuclearizing West Germany would threaten the political contract under which American forces have been deployed in Europe for four decades. Finally, a START agreement will weaken the rationale for initiating nuclear war, further reducing the credibility of the American nuclear deterrent.

Trends in both German states compound these divisive tendencies. Any West German government is bound to seek for the people of East Germany the same privileges already accorded to the populations of Poland and Hungary. The result is increasing West German activism all over Eastern Europe. Unless West Germany keeps its foreign policy well within a European framework and its security policy closely tied to NATO, the nation could repeat the historic German flaw of self-isolation and become the target of Western suspicions and Soviet attempts to stem the centrifugal tendencies in its empire.

Both East and West are being challenged to a new vision of Europe's future. The West must define for itself three concepts: for defense in an era of declining budgets and increasing opposition to American nuclear deployment in Central Europe; for arms control that promotes greater freedom for the people of Eastern Europe, and for devising political obstacles to Soviet pressure—on Western Europe and Soviet domination of Eastern Europe—in part to replace the military aspect of the process of being eroded.

(continued →)

The Soviet Union faces an even more profound challenge. Its massive troop presence in Europe is a drain on economic resources; more, it presents Moscow with a Hobson's choice: between the humiliation of acquiescing in fundamental political change while its troops are present, or repression with unforeseeable consequences.

The test for stability is whether for the first time in history Europe can live in equilibrium with a Russian empire, neither side fearing invasion by the other.

If Gorbachev will work toward that goal, he deserves generous support. If he does not, his rule will have been an interesting psychological episode on the way to adventurism, repression, or both.

Assuming he opts for the first course, a new security system could have the following components: Soviet ground forces in Europe would return to national territory. Soviet offensive capabilities—especially tank forces—in the area west of Moscow would be limited under international inspection.

In return, the United States should be prepared to withdraw in stages most of its ground forces from the Continent. Both nuclear superpowers could be allowed to maintain agreed-upon air forces and matériel storages in Europe to make clear that an attack would involve an unacceptable risk of war.

Such military redeployments would inevitably project Germany to the forefront of European politics because East Germany will face new internal pressures, especially once Soviet ground forces are removed. The German issue can in any case no longer be avoided. To maintain Western cohesion, Germany's allies must come forward with a plausible program that meets Germany's aspirations without destabilizing Central Europe.

West Germany's contribution should be to accept the present frontiers of Germany as final and abandon current ambiguous rhetoric, which only renounces force in changing frontiers. This is the precondition for negotiations on an appropriate system of free elections for East Germany, perhaps at first on the Polish model. The almost certain outcome of such a process would be a step-by-step melding of the domestic structure of the two states. At that point a plausible guarantee that the change would not extend NATO frontiers to the East is essential—perhaps by a gradual confederation of East and West Germany, with East Germany becoming essentially demilitarized.

The first would be the reduction of forces outlined in President Bush's proposal of last May. The principle of total Soviet withdrawal of ground forces should be established in this stage by complete withdrawal from at least one European country, such as Hungary.

The final stage—toward the latter part of the 1990s—would be free elections in East Germany, following which that territory would be under a regime along the Austrian model, perhaps in loose federation with West Germany.

Such goals cannot be achieved rapidly. But without some concept of the new Europe there is a great danger of sliding into a series of crises beyond control of the key countries. A new approach, on the other hand, would relate arms control to a political evolution, help develop stability, return Europe to its historic dimensions and base a relaxation of tensions on a more permanent foundation. ☐

LA Times, Sunday, August 28, 1989

# War Roared Into Vacuum Formed by a Sidestepping of Statesmanship

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 1, 1939, the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein shelled Polish positions near Gdansk—the beginning of World War II.

Conventional wisdom holds that appeasement—a pervasive failure to stand up to Adolf Hitler—rendered war inevitable. This is both true and superficial. Hitler started the war. But the interna-

tional order found itself at the mercy of a single maniacal leader because of an abdication of statesmanship spanning two decades following the Versailles settlement of 1919.

To have stability, an international system must have two components: a balance of power and a generally accepted principle of legitimacy. A balance of power makes the overthrow of international order physically difficult, deterring a challenge before it occurs. A broadly based principle of legitimacy produces reluctance to assault the international order. A stable peace testifies to a combination of physical and moral restraints.

Both these principles were ignored by

the treaties of Versailles and St. Germain that ended World War I. Before 1914, European policy was conducted by five great powers—Britain, France, Germany plus the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. The continental nations were contiguous and intertwined by complex alliances. But the Treaty of St. Germain dissolved one of the major countries—the Austro-Hungarian Empire—into constituent nationalities, producing a plethora of small states. The Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany and gave it no stake in the international order. Concurrently, the Russian Empire was first wracked by revolution and then ostracized because of its outcome.

Thus the European balance of power was in effect two countries: France and Britain. But Britain had rarely engaged itself on the Continent—especially not on the side of the strongest nation which, at least on paper, appeared to be France. France, on the other hand, had suffered the heaviest wartime casualties in relation to population. She lacked the means and will to be the arbiter of Europe, unable to face the prospect of maintaining the European balance alone. Hence France's idea of balance was to weaken the feared neighbor. Germany had to give up Alsace-Lorraine to France and territories in the East to Poland; the Rhineland was demilitarized and the German army severely limited in size and equipment. Finally, large and eventually unpayable reparations were imposed on Germany.

So long as Germany remained disarmed, there was a conceivable balance. But there was no precedent of a major country remaining permanently dis-

armed. Contrary to the victors' intentions, once arms limitations were jettisoned, the Treaty of Versailles left Germany stronger geopolitically than before 1914 when its eastern neighbors had been Russia and Austria-Hungary. After 1919 Germany bordered only much weaker countries in the East: on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, and behind them Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.

The Treaty of Versailles was too severe to be accepted by Germany but not severe enough to prevent Germany from challenging it. World War I, fought to prevent German hegemony over Europe, ended by leaving Germany in a better strategic position to achieve its eastern ambitions than it had been before.

Germany was not the only irredentist country. The Soviet Union, excluded from European diplomacy, was always prepared to play the capitalists off against each other. In the '20s, it facilitated secret

German army training on Soviet soil in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In the '30s, Stalin made overtures to Hitler; when rebuffed, he made an alliance with France, only to return to his first option in the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact.

Finally, when the borders of the Austro-Hungarian successor states were drawn, it became apparent that the principle of self-determination frequently **clashed with the requirements of security.** In the name of defense, Germans, Poles and Hungarians were incorporated into Czechoslovakia, Hungarians into Romania and still other minorities into Yugoslavia. In the end nearly as many people were living under foreign rule as had in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and most of the successor states had revisionist aims of their own.

In retrospect it is strange that no statesman at the time addressed the question of whether it was possible to maintain a settlement that excluded the two most populous continental countries: Russia and Germany. Britain probably would have preferred to placate Germany but could not get French support. France wanted to keep Germany impotent but could not obtain British support. The result was indecisiveness and evasion—a built-in policy of too little too late.

The faraway United States had championed the principle of self-determination while advancing the concept of collective security. A world community assembled in the League of Nations would deal with threats to peace and modify imperfect arrangements by consensus. This doctrine assumed that threats to peace were always unambiguous, that all nations had an identical vested interest in opposing them and that they would agree on appropriate measures. History, however, offers no support for any of these propositions. Nor did the subsequent history of either the League of Nations or the United Nations. In any event, the United States chose not to join its own creation.

Thus World War I, advertised as the war to end all wars, produced a peace treaty without either a balance of power or an agreed sense of legitimacy. The Versailles settlement was fated to collapse—either into war or into German hegemony over Eastern Europe.

(cont. on page 2)

-15-

Henry Kissinger

Don't Blame It All on Appeasement

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 1, 1939, the German training ship Schleswig-Holstein shelled Polish positions near Gdansk. It was the beginning of World War II. Conventional wisdom holds that the policy of appeasement—a pervasive failure to stand up to Hitler—rendered the war inevitable. This is both true and superficial. Hitler started the war. But the international order found itself at the mercy of a single maniacal leader because of an abdication of statesmanship spanning the two decades following the Versailles settlement of 1919.

Both these principles were ignored by the treaties of Versailles and Saint Germain, which ended World War I. Before 1914, European policy was conducted by five great powers—Britain, France, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. The Continental nations were contiguous and intertwined by complex alliances. But the Treaty of Saint Germain dissolved one of the major countries—the Austro-Hungarian Empire—into its constituent nationalities, producing a plethora of small states in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. The Treaty of Versailles humiliated Germany and gave it no stake in the international order. Concurrently, the Russian Empire was first wracked by revolution and then ostracized because of the revolution's outcome.

Thus, after the United States withdrew in 1920, the European balance of power was in effect composed of two countries: France and Britain. But Britain had rarely engaged itself permanently on the Continent—especially not on the side of the strongest nation, which, at least on paper, appeared to be France. France, on the other hand, had suffered the heaviest casualties in relation to its population of any combatant. It lacked the means and the will to be the arbiter of Europe. Aware that but for British, Russian and American help, the war would have been lost, France could not face the prospect of maintaining the European balance alone. Hence France's idea of the balance of power was to weaken the feared neighbor. Germany had to give up Alsace-Lorraine to France and territories in the East to Poland; the Rhineland was demilitarized and the German army severely limited in size and equipment. Finally, large and eventually unpayable reparations were imposed on Germany.

So long as Germany remained disarmed, there was a conceivable balance. But there was no precedent of a major country's remaining permanently disarmed. And once the arms limitations were jettisoned, it would become obvious that,

contrary to the victors' intentions, the Treaty of Versailles had left Germany stronger geopolitically than before 1914, when its eastern neighbors had been Russia and Austria-Hungary. After 1919 Germany bordered only on much weaker countries in the East: on Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, and behind them Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia.

The Treaty of Versailles was too severe to be accepted by Germany but not severe enough to prevent it from challenging the settlement.

Germany was not the only irredentist country. The Soviet Union, excluded from European diplomacy, was always prepared to play the capitalists off against each other. In the '20s, it facilitated secret training by the German army on its soil in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In the '30s, Stalin tried to make overtures to Hitler; when rebuffed, he made an alliance with France, only to return to his first option in the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.

Hungarian successor states were drawn, it became apparent that the principle of self-determination frequently clashed with the requirements of security. In the name of defense, Germans, Poles and Hungarians were incorporated into Czechoslovakia, Hungarians into Romania, and yet other minorities into Yugoslavia.

In retrospect it is strange that no statesman at the time addressed the question of whether it was possible to maintain a settlement that excluded the two most populous Continental countries: the Soviet Union and Germany. Britain probably would have preferred to conciliate Germany, but could not get the support of France. France wanted to keep Germany impotent, but could not obtain the support of Britain. The result was indecisiveness and evasion—a built-in policy of too little too late.

As for the United States, it had championed

the principle of self-determination and sought to overcome the imperfection of its application by advancing the concept of collective security. A world community assembled in the League of Nations would deal with threats to peace and modify imperfect arrangements by consensus. This doctrine assumed that threats to peace were always unambiguous; that all nations had an identical vested interest in opposing or rectifying them and that they would agree on appropriate measures. History, however, offers no support for any of these propositions. Nor for that matter did the subsequent history of either the League of Nations or the United Nations. In any event, the United States chose not to join its own creation.

So it happened that World War I, advertised as the war to end all wars, produced a peace treaty without either a balance of power or an agreed sense of legitimacy. The Versailles settlement was fated to collapse either into war or into German hegemony over Eastern Europe.

Of all the countries, France was in the most tragic position. Drained by the bloodletting, caught between its memories and premonitions, France had recourse to a diplomacy that sought to extract German assurances without quite believing in them. One result was the Treaty of Locarno in 1924, hailed at the time as a breakthrough toward peace. In it Germany guaranteed its western frontier with France, but refused to give the same guarantee to its eastern neighbors. In other words, in what appeared as an act of reconciliation, Germany was actually underscoring its challenge to the postwar system by implying that the Treaty of Versailles was not valid unless reaffirmed and establishing, with the acquiescence of Britain and France, two kinds of frontiers in Europe, some guaranteed by Germany, some not.

The next few years saw another step on the road toward substituting verbal assurance for strategic balance. The statesmen of the world

conceived the Kellogg-Briand pact, this time with U.S. participation. In it all nations abjured recourse to war, which, unfortunately, the actions had made structurally more likely.

All this meant that Eastern Europe was being left to its own devices—in fact if not yet theory—as evidenced by the second semimajor event of the '20s, the building of the Maginot Line by France. For the mentality behind the Maginot Line consigned the countries of Eastern Europe to German domination once Germany rearmed. France could prevent Germany from implementing a policy of revisionism in the East only if she had a credible option of invading Germany. But the Maginot Line signaled exactly the opposite, namely that France would resist, if at all, by conducting a war of attrition from behind its fortifications. Strategy and foreign policy had fallen totally out of phase.

Hitler relentlessly exploited both the weaknesses of the international system and the guilty feelings of his opponents. A succession of Western politicians returned from meeting with him repeating his professed desire for peace. With two years of coming to power in 1933 Hitler had abrogated the Versailles limitations on German arms with the argument that the other nations had not kept their promise to follow Germany the road to disarmament. In a world feeling guilty about analyzing peace in terms of equilibrium, this should have set off alarm signals. Instead, Europe took refuge in the belief that Hitler's challenges to the international order resulted from specific grievances rather than from structural defects of the system and the Nazi commitment to aggression. Hence, it was thought that alleviating or "appeasing" specific grievances would preserve the peace.

WASHINGTON POST, 9/1/89, p. A-27

PAGE ONE OF TWO

-16-

KISSINGER...

In my mind the turning point at which war became inevitable was not Munich in 1938 but the German reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936. So long as the west bank of the Rhine was demilitarized, Germany ran the risk that a move toward the East might lead to a French occupation of the Rhineland, the Maginot Line notwithstanding. But once Germany was in a position to construct fortifications on its western frontier, Britain and France could protect the East European nations only by the threat of a long war of attrition during which France's allies in Eastern Europe were certain to be overrun.

One reason for the fecklessness of the Western response was that the principle of the balance of power clashed with the democracies' moral convictions. The former counseled resistance; the latter produced restraint and reliance on Hitler's assertions of good will.

The shambles of the balance of power was accompanied by the collapse of the doctrine of collective security. When in 1935 Mussolini attacked Abyssinia, the League of Nations dithered. It applied sanctions, but so halfheartedly that it wound up demonstrating impotence rather than determination.

The combination of these two events sealed the fate of Eastern Europe. The only remaining issue was whether Hitler would be patient enough to accomplish the domination of Eastern Europe without war. But Hitler was neither patient nor anxious to avoid war. On the contrary, he sought it.

In March 1938 Austria was annexed. The democracies did not resist. Once again considerations of equilibrium counseled one course, legitimacy another. The so-called Anschluss further undermined the balance of power by extending Germany's frontiers toward the Bal kans and encircled Czechoslovakia, a French ally. On the other hand, Austria's population spoke German, and the vast majority favored joining the Reich.

A few months later it was the turn of Czechoslovakia. Munich has gone down into history as a term of special opprobrium, but in fact it applied the premises of foreign policy established for nearly two decades. Once again the principle of self-determination—the desire

of 3.5 million Germans inside Czechoslovakia to join their compatriots across the border—overrode the principle of equilibrium. A democratic ally was sacrificed.

In fairness, it must be stated that even strong and disillusioned leaders might have calculated that by then they would need time to restore their arms. The fatuous words of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain upon his return from Munich that he was bringing "peace in our time" have obscured the reality that he did not act on them. Instead, he spurred British rearmament, especially in air power. And when Hitler grabbed for non-German populations by dismembering the remnant of Czechoslovakia six months later, Britain did not flinch. With both the balance of power and the principle of legitimacy under assault, Britain reverted to its tradition of opposing Continental hegemony.

But by now the evasions of two decades had condemned the Western democracies to facing war alone. For Stalin saw no difference between the Western democracies and Hitler, and he had no stake in the existing system. His nightmare was that the democracies would deflect toward the east what he considered the inevitable imperialist civil war. For a while he feared that Munich had opened the gate for such a course. But he must have been relieved by the British guarantee of Poland. For Germany could not attack the Soviet Union without crossing Poland. Hence Stalin needed to pay no price for bringing Britain and France into a war to prevent German expansion eastward—the only war in which Stalin was prepared to

engage himself. The Hitler-Stalin pact sealed the fate of the precarious peace for which more than 20 million had died two decades before. The two countries that were ignored in the Versailles settlement made common cause in destroying it.

History is the only experience on which statesmen can draw. But it does not teach its lessons automatically. It demonstrates the consequences of comparable situations, but each generation has to determine what situations are in fact comparable.

It is possible to say that our generation faces a problem similar to that which engaged statesmen 70 years ago—how to construct a stable international order. Most of the postwar period has been characterized by a relatively stable European equilibrium. Now that two-power world is disintegrating—more in the East than in the West. If history is any guide, such a process cannot be left to chance, even less to protestations of good will. The contemporary leaders need a concept to relate structure to intentions, equilibrium to legitimacy.

One can only hope that the conventional wisdom of our period will not appear as shortsighted 50 years from now as that of the generation that managed the period between the two wars.

©1989, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

PAGE TWO OF TWO

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post Sun. June 11, 1989

# The Drama in Beijing

When a Communist country tries to make a REAL great leap forward.

Even the best friends of China—indeed especially its best friends—have been shocked by the brutality on Tiananmen Square. It is an event with international consequences as profound as its human consequences are tragic. And it poses a profound challenge to the conduct of American foreign policy.

Of the three possible outcomes, the only one compatible with long-range American interests is also the most difficult, perhaps the least likely, to achieve. If China descends into civil war or chaos, it will disappear from the international equation for the foreseeable future. If ferocious repression continues, any American president will be obliged to take actions that would chill or destroy the U.S.-Chinese political and strategic relationship that goes back nearly two decades. The outcome consistent with American values and interests is, however, also largely outside American control. This would be a return to economic modernization coupled with a political conciliation giving the groups generated by the process of modernization a sense of political participation.

The stakes could not be higher. For China's huge size, vast and diverse population and the talent of its people make it an indispensable component of global and particularly Asian stability. When it is removed from the scales they tip toward extremes. Turmoil in China could give the Soviet Union what Gorbachev's diplomacy could not have achieved: increased freedom of maneuver toward the West. To the extent that China is absorbed in its domestic affairs, Vietnamese ambitions in Indochina could revive. Surely negotiations over the future of Kampuchea have already become more difficult. Soviet influence in North Korea is likely to grow. Chinese restraint on Pyongyang could weaken. Japan might reconsider its priorities. China needs strength to be an international factor, predictability to become modern and internal conciliation to remain united.

It is therefore understandable that United States diplomacy should tread warily lest America become the target of everybody's frustrations. For the turmoil in China cannot be easily encompassed in simple slogans like democracy against dictatorship. Given China's history and culture, democracy is unlikely to have the same meaning in Beijing as in Washington. The student unrest started as a demand for greater political participation within the Communist system.

It seems to have merged since with a power struggle among key groups in the existing leadership structure. The occupation of the main square of a country's capital is not fully described as a peaceful demonstration. It is also a tactic to demonstrate the impotence of the government, to cause it to abdicate or to react. This does not detract from the validity of many of the demonstrators' grievances; nor does it excuse the ferocity of the response.

I have observed these events with the pain of a spectator watching the disintegration of a family to whom one has a special attachment. I have heard most of the key actors of the recent drama express their hopes for their country at times when the current anguish was inconceivable.

I met a tense and somewhat insecure Deng Xiaoping shortly after he was released from prison the first time in 1974. I watched his brave struggle against Mao and the Gang of Four. Two years later he was again in confinement, having been charged both times by Mao as a "capitalist roader" and a "party splitter."

A sense of proportion requires us to remember that had Deng retired a year ago, history would record him as one of China's great reformers. It was the reforms he initiated in 1979 that sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries, where they were exposed to values on which they are now insisting and that abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. It turned the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution into a country of greater consumer goods, a thriving construction boom, and—in the end—a challenge to the political system. The progress of the past decade has been dramatic; it is sad to see all this now in such jeopardy.

What Deng and his associates did not foresee was the political consequences of their successes. Perhaps the economic challenge proved too consuming. Mature communism suffers from the disease that its incentives are all wrong, rewarding stagnation and discouraging initiative. In a centrally planned economy, goods and services are allocated by bureaucratic decision. Over a period of time, prices established by administrative fiat lose their relationship to costs. In police states such as Stalin's Russia, the pricing system becomes a means of extorting resources from the population. However, as terror is eased, prices turn into subsidies and are transformed into a method of gaining public support for the Communist Party.

But communism is unable to abolish the laws of economics. Somebody must pay for real costs. The penalty of central planning and subsidized pricing is poor maintenance, lack of innovation and overemployment—in other words, stagnation and falling per capita income.

Enormous discretion in the hands of bureaucrats inevitably leads to corruption. Jobs, education and most perquisites depend on some kind of personal relationship. It is one of history's ironies that communism, advertised as bringing a classless society, tends to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

Deng and his associates chose to overcome this stagnation by embarking on market economics and decentralized decision-making. But the early stages of such a process tend to combine the problems of planning with those of market economics. The attempt to make prices reflect real costs inevitably leads to price increases, at least in the short term. In China last year, price reform caused a run on savings to buy up goods before prices went even higher, creating a vicious cycle of hoarding and greater inflation.

China has paid a huge price for being the only Communist country to have the courage of its economic convictions. The shift to market economics actually increases certain opportunities for corruption, at least for an interim period. The fact that two economic sectors coexist—a shrinking but still very large public sector and a growing market economy—produces two sets of prices. Unscrupulous bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are thus in a position to shift commodities back and forth between the two sectors for personal gain.

In addition, the marketplace creates its own discontent. It is the essence of a market economy that somebody wins and somebody loses. In the early stages of a market economy the winnings are likely to be disproportionate. The losers are tempted to blame the "system" rather than their own failure. Often they are right. Undoubtedly some of the profits in the private sector in China have been the result of widespread graft and nepotism.

Nepotism is a special problem in a culture as family-oriented as the Chinese. In times of turmoil, Chinese turn to their families. In all Chinese societies—whether it is mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong—ultimate reliance is placed on family members, who in turn benefit in ways unrelated to a strict evaluation of their merits.

In short, it is the relative success of economic reform which has produced the constituencies at the core of the discontent. A modern economy requires a degree of pluralism. There must be a sharing of information and an easy relationship with other technologically advanced countries. Otherwise investment will dry up and the most educated groups inside the country—the men and women most needed to sustain progress—will be at first passive and ultimately hostile.

Strangely enough, I do not think that Deng and his associates would differ very much from their critics about the causes of unrest. Where they disagree is not in their economic goals but over the political processes necessary to institutionalize them.

To Deng Xiaoping the demonstrations recall the Cultural Revolution, when thongs of students sought to purify Communist ideology by means that led to loss of his liberty, made his son a paraplegic and disrupted the lives of tens of millions. In the end the Cultural Revolution produced so many diverse factions that China was at the edge of chaos. And chaos is the nightmare of a leadership that grew out of the civil wars and still remembers colonialism and Japanese domination, which it believes was facilitated by China's internal weakness. Hence Deng thought the new groups should be satisfied with economic progress and be willing to forgo political change, at least until the economy was further along.

This is why his chosen successors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, ran afoul of their chief when they

SUPPLEMENT: FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1989

(BALTIMORE)

SUN

JUNE 5, 1989

Pg. 9

In the End,
It Was Fear
Of Chaos

NO GROUP of Communist leaders has been more courageous than the Chinese in tackling the twin problems of mature communism. First, its economic incentives are all wrong: they reward stagnation and discourage initiative. Second, the political system suffers from a declining legitimacy as the generation which made the revolution passes from the scene.

There is no mechanism to renew the claim to authority: only slogans about the infallibility of a party that claims a monopoly of power on the basis that its bureaucrats

By Henry Kissinger

act in the name of historical truth. In every Communist country this bureaucracy will sooner or later be challenged by the forces thrown up by the process of modernization.

Any analysis of events in China must start with the reality that Deng Xiao-ping has been for two decades the symbol as well as engine of China's reform. The upheavals of recent weeks were produced by forces unleashed by Mr. Deng. It was the reform he initiated in 1979 that sent tens of thousands of Chinese students to Western countries to study: abolished the agricultural communes and made China nearly self-sufficient in food. It turned the drab, gray, fearful China of the Cultural Revolution into a country of many colors, increasing the number of consumer goods, producing a thriving construction boom and — in the end — student unrest.

By the standards of contemporary market economies, China still is in the early stages of a consumption economy. But the progress of the past decade has been dramatic: it is far ahead of comparable efforts in the Soviet Union. It is in fact the only Communist country suffering from an overheated economy.

Mr. Deng sought to transcend the process of periodic purges by which Communist countries typically settle their leadership problems. Alone among Communist leaders, he established three lines of succession and gradually withdrew — at least formally — from his formal offices of state.

But history operates by its own momentum. Historians have often commented on the paradox that the French Revolution oc-

curred in the richest, not the poorest, country in Europe. Similarly, the turmoil in China took place in the Communist country farthest along the road to economic reform and over many issues on which the Chinese leadership is actually more or less united. Prime Minister Li Peng was not cynical when he said that the Chinese government intended to deal with most of the grievances put forward by the demonstrators. Where the Chinese leaders differ is not in their economic goals but in how to reach these goals and over the political processes necessary to institutionalize them.

In the end, it has been the success of the economic reform which has produced the very constituencies which are at the core of the present discontent in China. And the efforts of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Zhiang to build these constituencies into the decision-making process — which was indeed their original assignment — caused these two Deng proteges to run afoul of their formidable chief. For in the end Mr. Deng's generation, having known Japanese occupation, civil war and the Cultural Revolution, feared chaos above all else. And so his designated successors were consumed by the processes they had unleashed.

The economic challenge was difficult enough. Few tasks are more complicated than the transition from a centrally planned economy to one oriented toward markets. In a centrally planned economy goods and services are allocated by bureaucratic decision. Over a period of time prices which are established by administrative flat lose their relationship to costs. In Communist police states such as Stalin's Russia, the pricing system becomes a means of extortion from the population. However, as terror is eased, prices turn into subsidies and are transformed into a method of mobilizing public support.

But communism is unable to abolish the laws of economics. Somebody must pay for the real costs: for example, I was told in China last year that the real cost of housing is 10 times the rent. The penalty of central planning and subsidized pricing is poor maintenance, lack of innovation and over-employment — in other words, stagnation and falling per-capita income.

Such enormous discretion in the hands of bureaucrats inevitably leads to corruption. Jobs, education and most perquisites end up depending on some kind of personal relationship. It is one of history's ironies that communism, advertised as bringing a classless society, tends to breed a privileged class. It was to destroy a new privileged class — in addition to a personal quest for power — that Mao launched the Cultural Revolution.

Mr. Deng chose a more humane and less chaotic course to overcome the stagnation inherent in such a system. He embarked China on the road to market economics and decentralized decision-making. But the early

stages of such a process tend to compound the political difficulties. Price reform — the attempt to make prices reflect real costs — inevitably leads to price increases, at least in the short term. Inflation is nearly inevitable, and it feeds on itself. In China last year price

Paradoxically, the turmoil in China took place in the Communist country that is farthest along the road to economic reform.

reform caused a run on savings to buy up goods before prices went even higher, leading to hoarding and even greater inflation. China has paid a huge price for being the only Communist country to have the courage of its economic convictions.

Paradoxically, a shift to market economies magnifies the opportunities for corruption. For there will be two economic sectors, at least initially: a shrinking but still very huge public sector and a growing market economy. This produces two sets of prices. Unscrupulous bureaucrats and entrepreneurs are thus in a position to shift commodities between the two sectors for personal gain.

In addition the marketplace sets its own stage for discontent. It is the essence of a market economy that somebody wins and somebody loses. In the early stages of a market economy the winnings are likely to be disproportionate: such, certainly, was the experience of 19th-century capitalism. And the losers are tempted to blame the "system" rather than their own failure. Often they are right. Undoubtedly some of the profits in the private sector in China have been the result of widespread graft and nepotism.

Nepotism is a special problem in a culture as family-oriented as the Chinese. In times of turmoil Chinese turn to their families. In all Chinese societies — whether it is mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore or Hong Kong — ultimate reliance is placed on family members, who in turn benefit in ways unrelated to a strict evaluation of their merits. Through a historic irony, turmoil in Marxist countries has resulted from many of the same causes that produced Marxism in 19th-century capitalist Europe.

On the analysis of the causes of unrest, the Chinese leadership is unlikely to differ very much. The dispute concerns the means to accomplish the remedies. Deng Xiao-ping believes in the exercise of authority following the traditions of Chinese government.

CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

B 2

CHINA

The New York Times

JUNE 2, 1989

Pg. 1

# Political Sway of the Military Is Subtly Spreading in China

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Special to The New York Times

BEIJING, June 1 — While China's political leaders have removed themselves from sight to engage in a bitter struggle for power, there are signs that the military may be accumulating a larger role in the Chinese political process.

It is still too early in the power struggle to determine the consequences of the political crisis, but some scholars and diplomats see the outlines of two trends: a greater military influence during a prolonged period of political instability, and less certainty that the army will carry out orders from political leaders.

Some fear that the leadership may increasingly be vulnerable to military pressure, and even to a coup. But they say that the army is genuinely trying to become a more professional organization and that it may not be interested in taking advantage of weakness in the Government.

## Pattern of Strength

"The military gains strength whenever the political leaders depend on them to tackle unrest," said an Asian diplomat in Beijing. But he and other diplomats noted that there were competing trends and that the military may not necessarily want to play a pivotal political role.

Some Chinese are worried about hints of a greater military role because of suspicions that it could be misused by the family of President Yang Shangkun, the 82-year-old veteran military figure who took a hard line against student demonstrators.

Many students and intellectuals are suspicious of Mr. Yang and believe, without real evidence, that his next target is Deng Xiaoping, China's senior leader.

Mr. Yang is vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and subordinate to Mr. Deng, who is chairman of the commission.

In addition, Mr. Yang's younger brother, Yang Baibing, is head of the general political department of the People's Liberation Army. And Chi Haotian, the chief of the General Staff, is widely rumored to be President

Yang's son-in-law.

A young official at Communist Party headquarters said President Yang took his post in exchange for giving up his influence over the military, and that his younger brother was elevated as part of the arrangement. But the official said the Yang family was doing what it could to accumulate more control over the military, with an eye toward gaining more political power.

"By the time old Deng realizes what's going on, it'll be too late," the official said.

## Zhao as Obstacle

An obstacle to Mr. Yang would have been the Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang, who was also the first vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and the intended successor to Mr. Deng as chairman of the commission. But Mr. Zhao has already been stripped of his power to order the movement of troops, a senior party official said, and he is now being criticized in internal documents in preparation for an attempt to dismiss him as party leader.

With Mr. Zhao out of the way, only Mr. Deng would rank ahead of President Yang on the Central Military Commission. And only Mr. Deng has greater prestige and influence over the army than the Yang family.

Beijing is thick with intrigue these days, and the military fits into all of them. There are disputes about who has ordered some of the troop movements, and there are those who say that President Yang ordered some of the troops without informing Mr. Deng.

## What Role for Troops?

In addition, there are doubts about why the troops have been called to the capital. It was originally believed that they were summoned to intimidate and suppress the democracy movement.

Most officials acknowledge that that was one reason, but they say that it was at least as important to provide a show of force to intimidate Mr. Zhao and his supporters in the Beijing Military Region. A more important role for the army would reverse the trend of the last decade, in which the military has lost soldiers, money and prestige.

The People's Liberation Army, which includes all services, has seen its share of the national budget drop from

17.9 percent in 1979 to 8.2 percent last year, and about 1.5 million soldiers have been demobilized.

Few of the present Central Committee members are army officers, and none of the obvious candidates to lead the Government or the Party in the future have much military experience.

Yet whenever there has been unrest in recent Chinese history, the military has gained strength. In 1969, after three years of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, army officers composed a full 45 percent of the newly chosen Central Committee.

The influence of the military in those years was cut back after concerns about the army's reliability, and especially after a murky incident in 1971 that apparently was an attempted coup by the top military figure, Lin Biao. Now, too, there are growing doubts about the military's reliability, but in a different sense.

The fear used to be that the military might seize power for itself. That re-

> 'By the time old Deng realizes what's going on, it'll be too late.'

mains a concern, especially after Mr. Deng ultimately leaves the scene.

But the more obvious sign of unreliability has been the army's apparent reluctance to enforce martial law in any strict way.

## Orders Reportedly Ignored

The head of the 38th Army is said to have refused to march on Beijing, and the Beijing Garrison Command is also widely believed to have been unwilling to carry out martial law. "The army has proven itself a most unreliable tool of the Government," said a Western diplomat in Beijing. "It was a quasi-rebellion. This time it just refused. Next time, it might turn on the Government."

In fact, the army eventually did enter Beijing and take up positions in places like the train station and the airports, but only after clearly establishing that it was not going to harm citizens.

Some people think that was the result of a careful negotiation: the army effectively agreed to obey instructions if the instructions were amended so that they stipulated that no violence would be used against Beijing citizens.

"More and more of the military leaders are independent of the party and the leaders," said Thomas Chan, a China scholar at Hong Kong University. "They may not be so easily used in the future as the personal army of the leadership."

B

1

The New York Times

JUNE 7, 1989

Pg. 21

# China's Future: Four Scenarios

By Richard C. Holbrooke

Words are inadequate to encompass China's tragedy. But even while trying to comprehend what is happening, it is useful to look at what might be ahead. In greatly oversimplified terms, here are four possible scenarios for the future. Broadly speaking, one of these, or perhaps a sequence, seems likely.

The comeback-of-the-reformers-scenario.

The hardliners' bloody victory is short-lived. Within a year or so, the overwhelming opposition of the population and old age catch up with the veterans of the Long March who ordered the massacre.

After a power struggle, reformers, perhaps Zhao Ziyang himself, regain power. This culminates in the end of the one-party police state. A statue is built in Tiananmen Square to the martyrs of the June uprising.

The Hungarian scenario.

Just as Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian freedom-fighters in 1956 and installed Janos Kadar as Prime Minister, the Chinese hardlinersbrutally restore order and find a new prime minister.

Then, just as Mr. Kadar, originally a Stalinist stooge, gradually opened up Hungary's economy and even instituted a limited measure of political freedom, the new Chinese leaders reintroduce economic reforms and, over a period of time, a limited de-

Richard C. Holbrooke was Jimmy Carter's Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

gree of political activity — but all under the ultimate control of the Communist Party.

The people, having tried to liberate themselves from oppression by heroically but futilely challenging tanks in the streets, gradually gain some of their goals.

Note: There is, of course, one crucial difference between Hungary and China. In 1956, it was Soviet troops that killed Hungarians, but in Beijing it has been Chinese troops killing Chinese people.

Prime Minister Li Peng and his col-

Watch for a
Hungarian
solution.

leagues cannot evade the responsibility that goes with that inexplicable decision. Thus, the Hungarian scenario is plausible only if the new leader who emerges — the Chinese Kadar — has not been involved in the killing plazas of Beijing.

The Stalinist scenario.

Mr. Li or other hardliners win a brutal and bloody victory. They realize that only force can keep an overwhelmingly alienated urban population under control.

The apparatus of a police state is restored to the central place in Chinese life that it occupied under Mao Zedong. Purges down to the third or fourth level of Government decimate and paralyze the country's administrative and political structures.

Economic reforms become impossible in a climate of repression and fear. Foreign-educated students become a special target for exile to the countryside or imprisonment. Foreign investment and trade dry up.

The civil war or chaos scenario.

This scenario may have already begun. The army splits into factions, reflecting factionalism in the leadership of the Communist Party. The forces of repression and those of reform both find support within the army.

Fighting breaks out between military units. Chaos, even a limited form of civil war, follows. This continues until, in another of the endless cycles of Chinese history, a new "emperor" emerges from the power struggles, much as Chairman Mao did in the 1930's and Deng Xiaoping in 1977.

The contending forces are too volatile and the dimensions of the upheaval in China too vast for rational analysis. But I suspect that somewhere among these four scenarios China will find its destiny.

Even though there are signs of civil war right now, I suggest that, based on where the power lies today, it is probable that China will see some form of the Hungarian model and that it will bring reformers back into power in the party within a year at most.

The Chinese know their own recent history. Perhaps the memories of China's turbulent and tragic passage through the 20th century, still fresh in everyone's mind, will ultimately bring everyone back from the insanity and the even worse horrors that otherwise could loom just ahead. ☐

FEAR...CONTINUED

His critics urged the route of co-option of dissenting groups.

To Deng Xiaoping the student demonstrations undoubtedly recall the Cultural Revolution, when large crowds of students sought to enforce orthodoxy by means that led to his loss of liberty, made his son a paraplegic and disrupted the lives of tens of millions. In the end the Cultural Revolution produced so many demonstrations from such diverse factions that China was at the edge of chaos. And chaos is the nightmare of the leadership groups that grew out of the civil wars and remember Japanese domination, which they believe was facilitated by China's internal weakness.

But whatever theory is held about the causes of recent turmoil — whether it was a coup or spontaneous or most likely a combination — the new forces created by the successes of Chinese reforms are real. In the end they will have to be given a role commensurate with their new-found status and responsibility. For a modern economy requires a degree of sharing of information and a relationship with the economies of other technologically advanced countries; otherwise investment will dry up and the most educated groups inside the country will be passive.

I must believe that Mr. Deng understands this. I cannot believe that he will end his career by denying a lifetime of sacrifice and

returning to the practices of the Cultural Revolution. He has been one of the great reformers in Chinese history. He sought to transcend the rigidities of central planning and modernize a country which — priding itself on its uniqueness — through the millennia has resisted becoming like other societies.

Friends of China can only hope that the process of modernization will continue. History has shown that a weak and divided China produces instability throughout Asia. China is so enormous, its population so vast, its people so talented, that when it is removed from the scales they tip toward extremes.

B 3

SUPPLEMENT: FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 1989

Newsday
THE LONG ISLAND NEWSPAPER

JUNE 6, 1989

Pg. 51

# Grumman China Contract Interrupted

By James Bernstein
Newsday Aerospace Writer

A Grumman Corp. program to upgrade aging Chinese jet fighter planes, the largest military contract between the United States and China, was suspended by President George Bush yesterday after the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing.

Bush also suspended the three other U.S.-Chinese military contracts and ordered an immediate halt to the export of weapons to China.

Grumman in 1987 won a $245-million U.S. Air Force contract to develop modern electronic systems for China's F-8 jet, a fighter based on the 30-year-old Russian MiG 21. The company currently is modifying two prototype F-8s, one of which is in a hangar in Bethpage. The first of the upgraded planes is scheduled to be delivered next year. If the development contract proves successful, Grumman hopes to build the electronics for as many as 55 F-8s, which would bring the value of Grumman's work on the plane to $502 million.

The engineering-design work on the F-8 is being done in Bethpage. The electronic equipment is expected to be installed in China.

Weyman Jones, a Grumman vice president, said the company had not received a stop-work order. "Our contract is with the Air Force and we will do what the Air Force directs. It's possible the development contract will continue," he said, noting that the Air Force could have Grumman proceed with the engineering-design work but not deliver the planes to the Chinese.

Pentagon spokesmen said they did not know if a stop-work order would be issued. "The president just made his announcement this morning," Jim Cudla, a Defense Department spokesman, said yesterday. "That level of detail has not been addressed."

Although relatively small in dollars, the F-8 upgrade program is important for Grumman. Company officials hope it will lead to future aircraft-upgrade business in China and elsewhere in the region. Jones said. Wolfgang Demisch, director of research for UBS Corp. in New York, said the suspension hurts Grumman. "There's real business here. It's also a vehicle for Grumman to keep up its [engineering] skills."

The news comes at a particularly bad time for Grumman. Three of the company's Navy planes — the F-14 fighter, A-6 bomber and EA-6B electronic jammer — have been eliminated from the 1990 defense budget, although the company and its supporters in Congress are trying to have money for the aircraft restored.

Bush also suspended three other programs yesterday: a $28-million Army contract for sale of technology and assistance to build an artillery and ammunition plant; an $8-million Navy contract for sale of four Mk-46 torpedoes, and a $62-million Army contract for sale of artillery-locating radar sets.

Grumman isn't the only Long Island company with business in China. Pall Corp. of Glen Cove, which manufactures filters, does several hundred thousand dollars' worth of business, said Eric Krasnoff, the company's group vice president.

Satellite Transmission Systems and LNR Communications Inc., both of Hauppauge, are working on satellite ground stations in China. Sy Okwit, LNR's president, said he believed his company's work was unaffected. However, David Hershberg, Satellite Transmission's president, said he was concerned. "We just don't know anything right now."

## AVIATION WEEK
& SPACE TECHNOLOGY

MAY 29, 1989

Pg. 35

# Brazil, China Form
Space Launch Venture

EDWARD H. KOLCUM/COCOA BEACH, FLA.

Brazil's Avibras Aeroespacial and the China Great Wall Industry Corp. have formed a joint venture specializing in communications satellite launching, tracking and networking.

Called INSCOM, for International Satellite Communication, Ltd., the new company will combine the satellite launch vehicle experience of the People's Republic of China with Avibras' space tracking,

international marketing and management knowledge.

Avibras is the major South American weapons exporter and has developed considerable expertise with a long list of customers for its gun, rocket and missile systems that it has been marketing since 1975. INSCOM said it will sell its products and services to governments and private enterprises worldwide.

China has three launch complexes. Brazil has an operational complex at Natal

B 4

INTERNATIONAL

Seeking a New Balance in Asia

Gorbachev's trip challenges Washington to rethink its policy in the region

BY HENRY A. KISSINGER

Just as Gorbachev was beginning to show interest in a rapprochement with China about a year and a half ago, I had a conversation with a leading official in Beijing. I observed that China was probably doing less with Moscow than some Americans feared—but more than Beijing was letting on. My interlocutor replied: "In any event, we will stop well short of the world's record, which is held by Shultz and Shevardnadze." In other words, China did not propose to be the last combatant on Cold War barricades that had been abandoned by the original warriors.

That remark sums up why the United States should not be unduly alarmed by Gorbachev's visit to Beijing. Had a Soviet leader undertaken such a journey a decade ago, it would have seemed like a diplomatic earthquake—possibly even the beginning of a new Sino-Soviet alliance. We were still in the midst of the delicate process of restoring relations that began with my secret journey to Beijing in 1971. That process involved years of intensive political dialogue with Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai, then with Deng Xiaoping. When in 1979 the Carter administration established formal diplomatic relations, one of its senior officials referred to it as playing the China card.

Today we know that the Soviet Union is too preoccupied with its domestic affairs—and Beijing too wary of Soviet intentions—for such a reversal of relationships to be realistic. Gorbachev's visit to Beijing should provoke not a sense of crisis but a realization that the pieces on the diplomatic chessboard have been essentially rearranged:

* The political world is no longer bipolar. The United States and the Soviet Union remain military superpowers, but other centers of power have emerged in Asia and in Europe.

* In this new world the United States and China continue to have a mutual interest in keeping the Soviet Union or any other country from dominating the Eurasian landmass. But our policy must now become more flexible and more sensitive to shifts in the political and economic balance in Asia.

* The American interest requires careful orchestration of an emerging three-cornered diplomacy that will involve China, Japan and the U.S.S.R.

* These changes may create new opportunities—but also new risks—in old trouble spots such as Korea and Southeast Asia, especially Indochina.

**China:** In the '70s, the seemingly ineradicable hostility between Moscow and Beijing cre-

ated a classic diplomatic opportunity for the United States. All Washington had to do was position itself so that it was closer to each of the two communist giants than they were to one another (with a tilt toward China, since it was the weaker, more vulnerable and less expansionist of the two). That period of almost mechanical simplicity has ended. Beijing no longer fears an imminent Soviet attack. It calculates that the Soviet Union is too preoccupied with domestic difficulties and with the aftermath of the Afghanistan war to risk unpredictable adventures. Moscow is overcoming its nightmare—which was never realistic—of a Sino-U.S. alliance aimed at the Soviet Union.

In journeying to Beijing, Gorbachev is seeking to apply in Asia the strategy that has worked so well in Europe. He is trying to break up American coalitions by removing the impression of Soviet bellicosity. Yet he is doing little—indeed, he can do little—to alter an underlying strategic relationship based on the long Soviet border with China and Moscow's large armed forces. No doubt the visit to China will be followed soon by overtures to Japan.

None of this need be of fundamental concern so long as the United States analyzes the new relationships properly. For in Asia, Gorbachev's flair for dramatic gestures will have far less impact than in Europe. The Asian nations are less haunted by the two world wars and face less domestic pressure to respond to Gorbachev's bent for the spectacular. Arms control is not an opiate for them. In Asia, Gorbachev cannot ask for concessions to his personality; he must offer concrete concessions aimed at establishing a realistic equilibrium.

The reality in Asia is that none of the major nations will run the risk of separating itself from the United States in order to gain the good will of Moscow. Nor will any of them challenge the Soviet

Union simply to curry favor with the United States. These conditions limit the options for both U.S. and Soviet foreign policy in Asia.

No doubt Beijing's immediate fear of Soviet invasion has receded. China therefore sees less need for a rigid anti-Soviet stance than it did a decade ago. Gorbachev has also met most of Beijing's conditions for an improvement in relations: withdrawal from Afghanistan, a thinning out of Soviet troops in Mongolia, withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia.

But while China's short-term fears may have eased, its strategic concerns remain. Beijing cannot forget the history of Russian expansion across Siberia and into the maritime provinces throughout the 19th century. It knows that advance was well on the way to engulfing Manchuria and Korea when it was stopped by imperial Japan, which seized those

PICTORIAL PARADE

'A delicate process': Meeting with Prime Minister Zhou Enlai during the secret trip to China in 1971

NEWSWEEK: MAY 22, 1989 51

INTERNATIONAL

Japan but to contribute to conditions that will make such a role compatible with the aspirations of other nations.

The U.S. relationship with Japan has become extremely com-
plex. As Japan's ally, we are committed to responding to threats to
its security (though that role will diminish with the growth of
Japanese military power). Yet most other Asian nations see the
United States as a counterweight to Japan in the economic field.
Whether we can continue to serve that role will depend on our
ability to take measures outside the realm of formal foreign policy:
to make American industry competitive; to focus our economic
ingenuity on the creation of productive capacity rather than
financial manipulation; to control our trade and budget deficits.

The first step should be to accept that unfair Japanese practices
are not the sole—or perhaps even primary—reason for America’s
relative economic decline. Japan’s economy is extremely disci-
plined, and its trade policies occasionally discriminatory. But

the root of Japan's growing eco-
nomic power is its superior
competitiveness. By the same
token, the key to America's fu-
ture in Asia is to improve our
domestic performance.

The Soviet Union will play a relatively subordinate role in Japan's future. I expect a Soviet overture to Tokyo, probably even a compromise on the four northern islands that the Soviets annexed at the end of the war. But the historic distrust between the two sides is too deep, and their mutual interests too few, for a fundamental change in relations. No conceivable shift in Soviet policy will keep Tokyo from marching to its own drummer.

The rest of Asia: The new in-
ternational relationships will
also be reflected on the Korean
Peninsula. For a while, the Gor-
bachev visit may ease the com-

petition between China and Moscow for influence in North Korea. But Beijing will cast a wary eye on any increased Soviet or Japanese role in Pyongyang. Of the major players in the region, the United States is probably the only one with no historic reasons for opposing the emergence of a strong, unified Korea. The others would just as soon preserve the status quo, provided it maintains their relative influence on the peninsula and does not lead to unwanted conflicts. For that reason, South Korea has increased contacts with the communist world, and Pyongyang has reached out to Japan and a few other capitalist countries. Relations between them are likely to remain in uneasy equilibrium and may even ease marginally. But that process will require careful management, lest jockeying outside powers and the volatile Korean temperament combine to produce an explosion.

Over the next decade this should produce a less intrusive role for American forces on the peninsula. The U.N. command could perhaps be abolished and moved out of Seoul, and there may even be some token U.S. troop reductions—largely in response to growing South Korean nationalism. And the United States should stand ready to improve relations with Pyongyang symmetrically with any moves by Beijing and Moscow to establish ties with Seoul.

Sino-Soviet rapprochement may well enhance America's role in Southeast Asia. Countries like Indonesia—and to a lesser extent Malaysia—have always been wary of China. That apprehension is likely to be enhanced if they judge that China has less to fear from the Soviet Union. The United States should improve its relations

with these countries, but take care to avoid the appearance of
participating in an anti-Chinese cabal.

This process is bound to raise again the question that so tragically divided America in the '60s and '70s: what to do about Vietnam and the other countries of Indochina? Some countries in Southeast Asia would like to build up Vietnam as an obstacle to alleged Chinese designs on the rest of the region. Meanwhile, Soviet military bases in Vietnam serve as a reminder to Beijing that Moscow has options other than reconciliation—and a warning to Washington that it is still determined to project Soviet power onto distant oceans.

For the United States, there is no region in the world that is more difficult to view objectively. Too many groups are still driven by the passions of the war, even though they are largely irrelevant to the current problems of Southeast Asia. At a minimum, it is important for American policymakers to remember that China will always react neuralgically to the emergence of a major power

on its borders. The United
States must tread warily in its
relations with Vietnam, siding
neither with those who would
like to refight the battles of the
past nor with those that seek
expiation for sometimes imagi-
nary transgressions. My own
sense is that America should
not move faster than China in
improving relations with Ha-
noi—and that we would lose
nothing by staying a step be-
hind Beijing.

Cambodia remains Ameri-
ca's biggest nightmare in Indo-
china. Each decade, with the
best of intentions, we seem to
contribute to deepening the di-
lemmas. For a decade, Wash-
ington has correctly opposed
the Vietnamese occupation.
But it has concentrated on legal,
political and moral support for
opposition forces. Both Demo-
cratic and Republican adminis-

trations have refrained from supplying arms to the democratic forces fighting for independence. The result is that as Vietnamese troops withdraw, the only well-armed forces in the field are commu-nist: the army created by the Vietnamese and the murderous Khmer Rouge. The more democratically oriented military forces have received only humanitarian aid from the United States—an absurd evasion for which the price will now surely be paid.

Support is belatedly starting to grow for supplying military aid to the democratic resistance. But the proposed assistance is so timid—it would consist only of rifles—that the result would proba-bly be another American embarrassment. In any event, it is too late now for a U.S. military role. Of course the United States should support a broad-based government and maximum U.N. supervision. But we should have no illusions; our actions have consigned us to the periphery of decision making.

It has become commonplace to argue that the center of gravity in world affairs is shifting to the Pacific. It is certainly true that the Pacific Basin will gain in importance. But America's role in this process will be crucially affected by intangibles: by our ability to define our national interest consistently; by our willingness to keep domestic political changes from dramatically altering our international role; by our ability to sustain an economy that can support our global responsibilities. In that sense, Gorbachev's visit to Beijing should be viewed not as a distant drama that has turned America into a passive spectator. Rather it should be seen as a challenge to rethink our own role in shaping Asia's future.

'America's biggest nightmare in Indochina':
Vietnamese troops withdrawing from Cambodia

ANDY HERNANDEZ FOR NEWSWEEK

NEWSWEEK : MAY 22, 1989

Drive It, The Less
A Station Wagon.

the Legacy to a stop, and its computerized 4 wheel disc brakes will make the notion that you're in a wagon fade further from memory.

Should you experience its optional road holding computerized 4 wheel drive system in bad weather, you'll surely

stop comparing the Legacy to a wagon.

And when you see how much cargo space the Legacy offers, you'll realize the difference between a Legacy and other wagons is a big one. Literally.

In fact, the only thing

about the Legacy wagon that looks anything like ordinary wagons is the sticker price.

**Subaru Legacy™**

We Built Our Reputation
By Building A Better Car.

A President's Historic Opportunity
to Define a New World Destination

This Los Angeles Times interview with
former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was conducted by Anthony Day, editor of the editorial pages, and Jack Burby, assistant editor of the editorial pages.

The Times: There is much talk about
the Bush Administration getting off to a
slow start. Do you agree ? Do slow starts
matter?

Kissinger: We are living in a seminal
period of history in which a lot of things
can be shaped. What a national leader has
to do at such a time is to take his society
and the world, insofar as the issues are
international, from where it is to where it
has never been. That means he cannot
prove the destination is desirable until the
society or the world gets there. The great
leaders—I think of Churchill, De Gaulle,
Lincoln or Roosevelt—had that sort of
vision. That was their elemental quality.
They had a vision of the future not yet
accessible to their society.

Many traditional elements of interna-
tional affairs are in flux simultaneously,
and nations that oppose us ideologically
are absorbed with their own internal
dilemmas. The situation is malleable to an
unusual degree. And I think that is the
historic opportunity of the Bush Adminis-
tration.

But in order to reach the destination,
leaders have to assume responsibility for
the road they take. They will not have
universal approval on every step of the
road.

So I'm not bothered by the Administra-
tion reviewing all options. I don't think
that matters all that much, if at the end
there emerges a clear-cut compass course
that is not a compromise between various
positions. But a compass setting is not
something that can be chosen by consen-
sus in the bureaucracy.

In East-West relations, for example, we
have to decide how to deal with the Soviet
Union as ideology declines and it becomes
a national state. What is the relationship
between that huge empire as a national
state and its environment? And how do
we get it there?

We have to take care that on the one
hand we don't just settle for whatever
eases the immediate problems, and on the
other that we don't look as if we are on a
crUSAde to disintegrate that country. We
have to find a philosophical level that can

be conveyed both to them and to our own
people and that is not a mishmash
between every point of view in this
country, or excessively driven by what
have to be tactical Soviet considerations.

We have to come to grips with the fact
that our relations with Europe now
depend on acceptance of the fact that
Europe will become genuinely independ-
ent of us. We are not used to a Europe
defining its own objectives and then
reconciling our objectives with theirs,
which will not be identical.

I keep reading about non-discriminatory European policies. A common market is by definition discriminatory. Its external barriers are higher than its internal barriers. So that we're really talking about the nature of the discrimination—whether it will be bearable and what the trade-offs will be.

Politically, we have to encourage the
concept of a united Europe, both in West
Europe and in the relations of East and
West Europe, and we have to encourage a
European defense community. All of this
will require major adjustments in our
relations with Europe.

The problems in Asia are different. In
Europe at least there's the tradition of
cooperation, and we can use the Atlantic
Alliance and we're used to dealing with
the European community.

In Asia we are coming up against
something that can best be compared to
the British role vis-à-vis Europe in the
19th Century. In Northeast Asia, we have
the Soviet Union, Japan and China, in a
rough sort of equilibrium. In Southeast
Asia, the same applies to India, China and
Japan, with the United States and the
Soviet Union in the second line.

And what all of this requires is some-
thing that American intellectuals have
rejected and our policy-making apparatus
isn't well suited to: a definition of the
national interest that is permanent. We
need to think and talk, not about a final
condition called peace, but about a process
in which we ameliorate situations, move
them to more stable conditions, but never
pretend to ourselves that the process at
any one point is finished.

The area in which we are most in need
of creativity is the Western Hemisphere.
If we don't watch ourselves, we could
wind up in a situation in which so much of
our energy is absorbed that the argument
over "Are we shifting from the Atlantic to
the Pacific?" is subsumed in the question
of "Are we shifting all of our attention to
the Rio Grande?"

It is fundamentally a question of
whether the United States can identify
itself with the aspiration for growth in

Latin America, of whether America is
conceived as an obstacle to growth or as
an aid to growth. If we can get over that
hurdle, the technical solutions will be
easier to conceive. And therefore nit-
picking debates about who pays what
interest and what period miss the point
entirely. I think that the [Secretary of the
Treasury Nicholas F.] Brady Plan, how-
ever hesitantly arrived at, is the begin-
ning of an important step.

In government, somebody finally must
say, "I've now heard all the talk, and we
are going here." Nobody can lift that from
the shoulders of the President. But he
cannot avoid the curse of giving a sense of
direction by hedging. That's the most
important thing I learned in government.
The tendency is to try to do a little of
everything. Once you've decided, you pay
the same price for doing the thing
properly as for doing it halfheartedly. In
fact, you pay at the end less of a price.

By the time Bush goes to Europe for the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization sum-
mit in May and the economic summit in
July, he has to put forward, not necessari-
ly a concrete program, but a concept. He
needs to present an outline, like the
original presentation of the Marshall Plan,
of what needs doing, of something toward
which we should be working.

Q: You say this is a seminal period in
history. Do you think Americans are
ready to accept the great changes
that are going on? Only 45 or 50
years ago it was clear we were not
just one of the great powers of the
world but, for a while, the leading
power. Do you think we are intel-
lectually and emotionally ready for
the change?

A: The great American Presi-
dents have been educators. They
brought a vision to this country and
they have expressed its idealism in
a way that could mobilize support.

In the late 1960s, the early '70s,
we discovered many problems that
were not caused by the Soviets.
The international contests became
less and less two-power contests.

Now we are in the situation
where we run big risks involving
how Americans might react. One is
that they will ask, if there's no
Soviet danger, what the hell are we
doing in the world? Why don't we
just stick to our knitting?

That is the temptation. And this
is why just trying to balance con-
flicting approaches as they exist in
the bureaucracy will not get us
there. Now, what would happen if
an American President said, "We
are heading for a new age. Here is
the age. This is what we have to do.
It's our permanent role. It's not
only a Soviet problem, it's a struc-
tural problem of the world. There
will never be a point at which we
can say we can quit. All we can say
is we can improve the situation.
Here is what we have to do to
improve."

Will it work? I don't know. I
think the American people are an
idealistic people. But can you sell
them this paradox, that our ideal-
ism now requires a willingness to
stick to a concept of the national
interest with finite intermediate
goals but a long-term improve-
ment? Can you sell that to them?
We must try. I don't think we have
any real choice.

Q: When you've talked to Presi-
dent Bush, have you found him
interested in your concepts?

A: I think he is interested in a
realistic role for America, although
I do not want to give an impression
that the concepts are something I
am trying to sell to him or that I
play a significant role in his deci-
sions. The problem he will face, as
any President, is how to translate a
concept into operation.

I have great confidence in Bush's
basic approach. The problem now
is: Is he willing to stand alone long
enough to get it implemented? You
can never tell that about a Presi-
dent in the early stage. I have been
very well impressed with him.

Q: How does the future look to you now? Compared with, say, four years ago or even 40 years ago; are you more optimistic or less?

A: The immediate postwar period
was extremely exciting for the
United States. We emerged into
world affairs, we seemed to be able
to do everything we wanted and we
found a world very similar to what
we expected. We never asked our-
selves: How is this going to go on?
What happens if we succeed?

It's interesting, for example, that
in George Kennan's containment
policy there is no statement of what
we should do on the magic day that
the Russians appeared and said
that the United States now had a
position of strength and they were
ready to negotiate. Nor do you find
it in the writings of Dean Acheson
or John Foster Dulles.

Now, by God, here they are,
saying we have such a situation of
strength and they do want to
negotiate. And the West does not
know exactly what it wants.

But because we are at about the
point that everybody wanted in
1948, I'm fundamentally more opti-
mistic. It is a more normal world.
There will be other centers of
power, meaning other centers of
responsibility. We don't have to
make all the decisions, which is
another way of saying we should
make only those decisions of great-
est importance to us. We don't have
to mix into every pettifogging
problem around the world.

I am optimistic about this. I think
this could be the most creative
period in our postwar period, com-
parable to the 1948 period that
saved the world as we knew it.
There is an opportunity to shape a
world in which people can live
comfortably, although not a world
in which people can live effortlessly.

It comes at a time when we have
not had to do any heavy lifting for a
while. And after a presidency that
made the American people feel
good by not asking too much of
them in the foreign field, a presi-
dency that personalized everything
in the foreign field.

I've been talking, publicly and in
my columns, about philosophical
conversation with the Soviets. We
need one with the Japanese almost
as urgently. It's not a society that
lends itself greatly to philosophical
discussion, and we'd have to find a
method of talking to them, some-
thing for which no Western coun-
try is well prepared. But we must
try.

Japan is already the third-larg-
est military power in the world. It
is the premier financial power. It
will, with its credit policy, funda-
mentally influence the distribution
of technology, at least in the un-
derdeveloped world, and to some
extent even in our country, by the
support given to particular enter-
prises or withheld.

So what we need is some dialogue with the Japanese and some concept of whether we are going to deal with them as allies, or whether the relationship is going to be more and more confrontational.

Sorting out the relationship be-
tween Japan and the United States
is absolutely unavoidable. It's a
mistake, for example, to get them
heavily involved in Latin America
without having some understand-
ing with them about what happens
in the next phase. If they became
the dominant economic power in
Latin America, and if they then
started exporting to the United
States from there, and if we then
started protectionism against the
influx of Japanese goods from Latin
America, we would in fact be
wrecking our own relationship
with the Western Hemisphere.

In many ways it's harder to talk
to the Japanese than to the Soviets,
because the Soviets at least have a
concept of negotiation. The Japa-
nese culturally hate confronta-
tions. But they've got to get into
their collective mind a concept of
either cooperation or mitigated
confrontation with us.

Finally, on this whole matter of
optimism, I have to hand it to the
Reagan Administration. The White
House may not have done it delib-
erately, but at the end of the
Reagan Administration there is a
pregnant period in world politics.
How it came about we can argue
forever. But Bush has an open field
and a historic opportunity. I think
he can meet it. ☐

Henry Kissinger

1-17/89

# Reversing Yalta

## The opportunity exists for a newly independent Eastern Europe.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in a conversation with reporters, put forth two approaches to East-West relations in Europe: the first encourages the Soviet Union to reduce progressively its political domination over Eastern Europe in return for negotiated assurances that the Atlantic Alliance would not move militarily beyond present dividing lines; the second deems negotiations unnecessary because the Soviet empire in Europe—and perhaps the Soviet Union itself—is disintegrating on its own. Secretary Baker, while expressing sympathy for the negotiated approach, seemed to imply that he could pursue both options in sequence, with diplomacy needed only "if you had anarchy and a reaction by the Soviets...."

Matters might have rested on this essentially theoretical level had not the Baker remark evoked a flood of comments on both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from denunciation of any such negotiation as a second Yalta to arguments that Europeans, not Americans, should be the principal negotiators. I became involved in the debate because Secretary Baker at first seemed to endorse a fragmentary summary of a private conversation, a distorted version of which was then "rejected" by an unnamed administration spokesman.

It goes without saying that the goal of American policy should be the reversal of Yalta, not the revival of Yalta. The opportunity for this exists because of the increasing disillusionment of Eastern Europe, the policy of glasnost, which makes it possible to articulate this unrest, and perhaps a growing Soviet recognition that policing hostile populations drains resources and diverts energies from the imperatives of perestroika.

But it is not possible to ease the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe without Moscow's noticing it. Therefore the undoing of Yalta will surely be complex. The strategy should be to enable the countries of Eastern Europe to associate themselves—on a case-by-case basis—with the European Community while NATO and the Warsaw Pact continue at reduced levels in Central Europe. Existing forums could conduct the necessary negotiations: the European Community would design the framework for its association with the countries of Eastern Europe; the Vienna talks on conventional arms control would provide a security framework for that process.

partial withdrawal will have a seriously adverse psychological impact. Europeans—especially Germans—may complain about low-level flights and other irritations. But quite a different reaction is likely to develop when it sinks in that the remaining NATO forces will be stretched so thin as to complicate the establishment of a credible defensive line against an adversary able to concentrate at a decisive point. This would hit home at the precise moment that the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear forces combined with the reluctance of the Federal Republic to modernize the remaining nuclear forces was moving NATO toward a de facto denuclearization of Central Europe. In this scenario, Eastern Europe would not be the only part of Europe facing ferment.

The Soviet Union has put forward a formula to accelerate this ferment: the concept of the "Common European House" from the Urals to the Atlantic. Many European foreign ministers refer favorably to this idea, even though it relegates the United States to a secondary status, establishes a Soviet claim to economic assistance based on geography and provides a basis for Soviet domination of a denuclearized Central Europe. Moscow knows very well that if its notion of a European House becomes conventional wisdom, the Alliance structure cannot survive.

Two conclusions follow: a) arms control negoti-

For these reasons, a reassessment of Allied purposes and relationships and the elaboration of a coherent strategy are essential.

First, the Atlantic Allies must put forward their own concept of a united Europe. If the Soviet Union participated without the United States, it would dominate. If both the United States and the U.S.S.R. joined, Europe would lose its identity. To avoid both hegemonies and to achieve identity, the borders of this new Europe must run from the Polish-Soviet frontier to the Atlantic, not from the Urals to the Atlantic.

Second, there must be a concept of how to achieve the goal of reuniting Europe. In the real world, progress can be made without the risk of war only if the political freedom of Eastern Europe is somehow related to meeting legitimate Soviet military security concerns.

Neither America nor Europe can achieve this goal alone. The European Community must accelerate its political unification and at the same time develop a strategy for the association of interested countries of Eastern Europe with its economic institutions. The countries of Eastern Europe should know that this association is available to any nation prepared to meet the Helsinki requirements

BY BAS

> "Ironically, each of the alliances may be counting on the disintegration of the other. If both turn out to be wrong, there will be stagnation. If both turn out to be right, there will be chaos."

(over)

Kissinger cont'd

Precisely because such an evolution requires difficult—and for the Soviet Union painful—adjustments, its direction must be clearly understood by all key players. A confidential dialogue between Washington and Moscow will therefore be in the end not only unavoidable but desirable. Its purpose should be conceptual; to clarify the goals and methodologies of the process of unifying Europe. The European Community would participate as an integral partner.

To be sure, if the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe is disintegrating by itself, diplomacy might be unnecessary. On the other hand, once there is anarchy and the tanks roll, it is too late for diplomacy.

In reality the policy of watchful waiting for the disintegration of Eastern Europe is a paper option. For Western unity is highly unlikely to survive the process of coasting. Ironically, each of the alliances may be counting on the disintegration of the other. If both turn out to be wrong, there will be stagnation. If both turn out to be right, there will be chaos. If we are not careful, regional conflicts may be settled while the focal point of crises returns to Europe.

The Kremlin's reliance on centrifugal tendencies in the West can be found in many pronouncements to the effect that Western unity will evaporate once

attions can no longer carry the full weight of East-West relations; b) a political concept of a united Europe is needed to relate the many existing separate negotiations on arms control, trade and human rights to each other.

The internal cohesion of the West requires it to put forward its vision of a united Europe because without it the economically and militarily strongest nation of Europe—the Federal Republic of Germany—will surely pursue its own course.

For the turmoil in Eastern Europe falls directly on the fault line of the division of Europe which cleaves the German people; no German statesman can afford passivity. Even in normal times Germany has rarely found the means to reconcile the perils of its central geographic location with a sustainable concept of its own national interest.

In part this is because Germany, unified only in 1871, never managed to develop a coherent concept of the national interest. Except for the Bismarck period, Germany's diplomacy was based on a restless quest for status, which, by threatening each neighbor individually, brought about the very nightmare of hostile coalitions that it dreaded. Historically, Germany's ties were either in Central Europe with the Austro-Hungarian Empire or in the East with Russia. It was not until 1950 that a clear-cut decision in favor of the West was made.

In the last decade and a half that choice has been increasingly challenged. The truism of the postwar period—that America was essential to balance a genuine Soviet menace—has been shaken at both ends. American policy has come to appear opaque and less steady. The Soviet threat has diminished in German eyes; Gorbachev has in fact turned into a sort of German folk hero.

Friends of the Federal Republic do it no favor by muting a disquiet many Allied leaders feel but are reluctant to articulate. It is impossible to travel through Europe without becoming conscious of the deep concern of influential Europeans, not that the Federal Republic will leave the alliance but that by pursuing all of its options between East and West simultaneously it will repeat—with the best of intentions—the historic German debacle of self-isolation. Restless German unilateralism could thus wind up splitting either Europe or NATO or both.

The Federal Republic cannot by itself provide the necessary framework for healing the split of Europe. If Germany challenges the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe on a national basis, it would revive historic nightmares for the Soviet Union and tempt Moscow into a demonstration of its strength, perhaps over Berlin. But if the Federal Republic sought to avoid this danger by ever closer rapprochement with Moscow—as it would be tempted to do—it would lead almost inevitably to a cooling of relations with Washington. Bonn, in trying to be popular everywhere, could wind up forfeiting its hard-earned reputation for reliability.

of human rights and to make clearly defined progress toward democratic institutions. Credits to both Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union should be geared to similar criteria; without them, the effect of credits is simply to render Soviet political dominance more bearable.

Once the European Community has established such a political framework, NATO would be in a position to transform the conventional arms control negotiations from an esoteric numbers game into a systematic effort to accelerate greater political freedom for Eastern Europe.

The existing NATO arms control proposal foresees the continued presence of American and Soviet forces in Central Europe, albeit at reduced levels. This reflects the reality that no European government is prepared to see a complete withdrawal of American forces, without which a total Soviet withdrawal cannot occur. (I doubt that the Soviets would accept even such an offer, nor could such an offer be made without generating panic.) But to be compatible with greater political freedom for Eastern Europe, three limitations are necessary: a) the principle of nonintervention into the domestic affairs of all participants must be firmly established in binding international agreements; in other words, the Brezhnev doctrine must be ended; b) U.S. and Soviet troops should be confined to base areas except for a limited number of pre-announced maneuvers; c) troops withdrawn from areas of limited armaments must not be reintroduced.

Why should the Soviets agree to such an approach? They might do so if Soviet leaders are genuinely prepared to live in equilibrium with their neighbors. If Gorbachev wants to transcend the endless conflicts that have marred the history of his country, he should welcome an evolution that provides economic assistance and normal security guarantees in return for political freedom for nations whose restiveness would otherwise condemn the Soviet Union to policing endless and unforeseeable crises. The alternative to the course sketched here is that events could get totally out of control.

In such an evolution Europe would restore its historic relationships. The Soviet Union would have a military buffer, but Moscow would disembarrass itself of the costs and risks of sustaining unpopular regimes. The United States would continue as the guarantor of the security of its allies while they assume an increasing role in shaping the political future of their continent. History will not do our work for us. But it has given the Atlantic nations an opportunity to do it for themselves.

© 1989, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

> "Once there is anarchy and the tanks roll, it is too late for diplomacy."

the image of a common enemy has been removed. In that view the withdrawal of American strategic forces from the continent of Europe under the INF agreement will weaken the link between the nuclear defense of Europe and America. As START negotiations reduce overall numbers, recourse to strategic nuclear weapons based in America or at sea will seem less reliable or legitimate.

The probable trend of conventional arms control negotiations could accelerate the erosion of Western cohesion. The very effort of elaborating an appropriate balance to offset Soviet proximity, central geographic location and mobilizable reserves and of inspecting for violations in the vast spaces of Russia will surely be divisive. More important, the process cannot go very far without leading to a removal of some American troops, a redeployment that will probably accelerate with the passage of time.

The presence of American troops has become so much a fixture in European minds that even their

Untangling
Alliances

LA Times Sun. 4/16/57

By Henry A. Kissinger

NEW YORK

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, in a conversation with reporters, put forth two approaches to East-West relations in Europe: The first encourages the Soviet Union to reduce progressively its political domination over Eastern Europe in return for negotiated assurances that the Atlantic Alliance would not move militarily beyond current dividing lines; the second deems negotiations unnecessary because the Soviet empire in Europe—and perhaps the Soviet Union itself—is disintegrating on its own. Baker, while expressing sympathy for the negotiated approach, seemed to imply that he could pursue both options in sequence with diplomacy needed only “if you had anarchy and a reaction by the Soviets.”

Matters might have rested on this essentially theoretical level had not the Baker remark evoked a flood of comments on both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from denunciation of any such negotiation as a second Yalta to arguments that Europeans, not Americans, should be the principal negotiators. I became involved in the debate because Baker at first seemed to endorse a fragmentary summary of a private conversation, a distorted version of which was then “rejected” by an unnamed Administration spokesman—although it is far from clear precisely for whom this person spoke.

It goes without saying that the goal of U.S. policy should be the reversal of Yalta, not the revival of Yalta. The opportunity for this exists because of the increasing disillusionment of Eastern Europe, the policy of glasnost that makes it possible to articulate this unrest and perhaps a growing Soviet recognition that policing hostile populations drains resources from the imperatives of perestroika.

But it is not possible to ease the Soviet Union out of Eastern Europe without Moscow noticing; therefore the undoing of Yalta will surely be complex. The strategy should be to enable the countries of Eastern Europe to associate themselves—on a case-by-case basis—with the European Community while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact continue at reduced levels in Central Europe. Existing forums could conduct the negotiations: The European Community would design the framework for its association with the countries of Eastern Europe; the Vienna talks on conventional arms control would provide a security framework for that process.

Precisely because such an evolution requires difficult—and, for the Soviet Union, painful—adjustments, its direction must be understood by all key players. A confidential dialogue between Washington and Moscow will therefore be not only unavoidable but desirable. Its purpose should be conceptual: to clarify the goals and methodologies of the process of unifying Europe. The European Community would participate as an integral partner.

To be sure, if the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe is disintegrating, diplomacy might be unnecessary. On the other hand, once there is anarchy and the tanks roll, it is too late for diplomacy.

In reality the policy of watchful waiting for the disintegration of Eastern Europe is a paper option: Western unity is unlikely to survive the process of coasting. Ironically, each of the alliances may be counting on the disintegration of the other. If both turn out to be wrong, there will be stagnation. If both turn out to be right, there will be chaos. If we are not careful, regional conflicts may be settled while the focal point of crises returns to Europe.

The Kremlin's reliance on centrifugal tendencies in the West can be found in many pronouncements to the effect that Western unity will evaporate once the image of a common enemy has been removed. In that view the withdrawal of U.S. strategic forces from the continent of

Europe under the Intermediate Nuclear Force agreement will weaken the link between the nuclear defense of Europe and America. As negotiations under the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks reduce overall numbers, recourse to strategic nuclear weapons based in America or at sea will seem less reliable or legitimate.

The probable trend of conventional arms-control negotiations could accelerate the erosion of Western cohesion. The effort of elaborating an appropriate balance to offset Soviet proximity, central geographic location and mobilizable reserves and of inspecting for violations in the vast spaces of the Soviet Union will surely be divisive. More important, the process cannot go far without leading to a removal of some U.S. troops, a redeployment that will probably accelerate with the passage of time.

The presence of American troops has become so much a fixture in European minds that even their partial withdrawal will have a seriously adverse psychological impact. Europeans—especially Germans—may complain about low-level flights and other irritations. But a different reaction is likely to develop when it sinks in that the remaining NATO forces will be stretched so thin as to complicate the establishment of a credible defensive line against an adversary able to concentrate at a decisive point. This would hit home at the precise moment that the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear forces, combined with the reluctance of West Germany to modernize the remaining nuclear forces, was moving NATO toward a de facto denuclearization of Central Europe. In this scenario, Eastern Europe would not be the only part of Europe facing ferment.

The Soviet Union has put forward a formula to accelerate this ferment: the concept of the “Common European House” from the Urals to the Atlantic. Many European foreign ministers refer favorably to this idea even though it relegates the United States to a secondary status, establishes a Soviet claim to economic assistance based on geography and provides a basis for Soviet domination of a denuclearized Central Europe. Moscow knows that if its notion of a European House becomes conventional wisdom, the Alliance structure cannot survive.

Two conclusions follow: a) arms-control negotiations can no longer carry the full weight of East-West relations; b) a political concept of a united Europe is needed to relate the existing separate negotiations on arms control, trade and human rights to one another.

The West's internal cohesion requires it to put forward its vision of a united Europe, because without it the economically and militarily strongest nation of Europe—the Federal Republic of Germany—will surely pursue its own course.

For the turmoil in Eastern Europe falls directly on the fault line of the division of Europe which cleaves the German people; no German statesman can afford passivity. Even in normal times, Germany has rarely found the means to reconcile the perils of its central geographic location with a sustainable concept of its own national interest.

In part this is because Germany, unified only in 1871, never developed a coherent concept of the national interest. Except for the Bismarck period, 1871-90, Germany's diplomacy was based on a restless quest for status which, by threatening each neighbor individually, brought about the very nightmare of hostile coalitions it dreaded. Historically, Germany's ties were either in Central Europe with the Austro-Hungarian Empire or in the east with Russia. It was not until 1950 that a decision in favor of the West was made.

In the last decade and a half that choice has been increasingly challenged. The truism of the postwar period—that the United States was essential to balance a genuine Soviet menace—has been shaken at both ends. U.S. policy has come to appear opaque and less steady. The Soviet threat has diminished in West German eyes; Mikhail S. Gorbachev has in fact turned into a sort of West German folk hero.

Friends of West Germany do it no favor by muting a disquiet many Allied leaders feel but are reluctant to articulate. It is impossible to travel through Europe without becoming conscious of the concern of influential

Europeans, not that West Germany will leave the alliance, but that by pursuing all its options between East and West simultaneously it will repeat—with the best of intentions—the historic German debacle of self-isolation. Restless German individualism could thus wind up splitting either Europe or NATO or both.

West Germany cannot by itself provide the necessary framework for healing the split of Europe. If the Federal Republic challenges the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe on a national basis, it would revive historic nightmares for the Soviet Union and tempt Moscow into a demonstration of strength, perhaps over Berlin. But if West Germany sought to avoid this danger by ever closer rapprochement with Moscow—as it would be tempted to do—it would lead to a cooling of relations with Washington. Bonn, in trying to be popular everywhere, could wind up forfeiting its hard-earned reputation for reliability.

First, the Atlantic Allies must put forward their own concept of a united Europe. If the Soviet Union participated without the United States, it would dominate. If both the United States and the Soviet Union joined, Europe would lose its identity. To avoid both hegemony and to achieve identity, the borders of this new Europe must run from the Polish-Soviet frontier to the Atlantic, not from the Urals to the Atlantic.

Second, there must be a concept of how to achieve the goal of reuniting Europe. In the real world, progress can be made without the risk of war only if the political freedom of Eastern Europe is somehow related to meeting legitimate Soviet security concerns.

Neither America nor Europe can achieve this goal alone. The European Community must accelerate political unification while developing a strategy for the association of interested countries of Eastern Europe with its economic institutions. Eastern Europe should know that this association is available to any nation prepared to meet the Helsinki requirements of human rights and to make clearly defined progress toward democratic institutions.

Once the European Community has established such a political framework, NATO would be in a position to transform the conventional arms-control negotiations from an esoteric numbers game into a systematic effort to accelerate greater political freedom for Eastern Europe.

The existing NATO arms-control proposal foresees the continued presence of U.S. and Soviet forces in Central Europe, albeit at reduced levels. This reflects the reality that no European government is prepared to see a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces, without which a total Soviet withdrawal cannot occur. (I doubt that the Soviets would accept even such an

offer, nor could it be made without generating panic.) But to be compatible with greater political freedom for Eastern Europe, three limitations are necessary:

- The principle of nonintervention into the domestic affairs of all participants must be established in binding international agreements; in other words, the Brezhnev Doctrine must be ended.

- U.S. and Soviet troops should

be confined to base areas except for a limited number of pre-announced maneuvers.

- Troops withdrawn from areas of limited armaments must not be reintroduced.

Why should the Soviets agree to such an approach? They might do so if Soviet leaders are genuinely prepared to live in equilibrium with their neighbors. If Gorbachev wants to transcend the endless conflicts that have marred the history of his country, he should welcome an evolution that provides economic assistance and normal security guarantees in return for political freedom for nations whose restiveness would otherwise condemn the Soviet Union to policing endless, unforeseeable crises.

In such an evolution Europe would restore its historic relationships. The Soviet Union would have a military buffer but Moscow would disembarrass itself of the costs and risks of sustaining unpopular regimes. The United States would continue as the guarantor of the security of its allies while they assume an increasing role in shaping their continent's political future.

History will not do the work for us. But it has given the Atlantic nations an opportunity to do it for themselves. ☐

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post, Tues. Feb. 7, 1989

# Dealing With Moscow: A New Balance

Moscow in winter is a grim place. Icy rain and snow melt down on pavements that seem never free of puddles even in this, the mildest winter on record. Despite perestroika the face of the city has not changed since my last visit two years ago, when it struck me as curiously unaltered in a decade's absence. Today the stores are emptier than ever; the concept of service has not yet reached the fatherland of socialism. It remains a mystery how a people of such apparent lassitude expanded in just four centuries from a trackless plain surrounding Moscow to the Elbe in the West and to Vladivostok on the Pacific, a distance of 6,000 miles; how they achieved superpower status and kept the world in thrall for the better part of this century.

And yet it has been that way throughout history. Russia's peculiar backwardness has been noted by all observers, only to be belied by extraordinary achievements brought about in a sudden coalescence of energy, discipline and heroism. Russia, Communist or not, marches to its own drummer.

On the invitation of the Soviet government I visited Moscow with former French president Giscard d'Estaing and former Japanese Prime Minister Yasu Nakasone, co-authors with me of a report on East-West relations to be published in April by the Trilateral Commission.

While Russia had not changed visibly since my last visit, the psychological atmosphere had subtly altered. Two years ago the Soviet leadership radiated optimism and confidence, as if reform could be accomplished by changing a few procedures. This time the mood was far more somber. Perhaps it was the impact of the tragedy in Armenia; perhaps a sudden sense that time for Gorbachev's reforms is running out. Gorbachev appeared less ebullient, more reflective—actually more thoughtful than on earlier occasions, and, as far as I was concerned, more attractive. Clearly perestroika has come up against the intractability of its own system. The question has boiled down to whether existing Soviet institutions are compatible with modernization.

One reason is that a planned economy knows no accountability. The network of administrators have a vested interest in concluding nonaggression pacts among themselves. While theory postulates a central plan, reality produces collusion among managers, planners and ministries, each with incentives to understate their capacity and inflate their achievements to protect themselves against blame for failure. Attempted administrative changes therefore tend to collapse beneath the dead weight of the entrenched status quo, while attempted political changes are muffled by an army of administrators and party officials.

The country clearly needs a new managerial class capable of getting a grip on the costs of production and of establishing realistic prices for goods. Since 25 percent of the national budget goes to subsidize prices—an official estimate almost certainly too low—an objective yardstick for efficiency is absent. Because the marketplace does not allocate goods, they are allocated by administrative fiat or corruption or black markets.

Soviet leaders recognize that they must introduce a system of incentives and that they cannot

remain a world power so long as their economy lags in international competition. But outside Gorbachev's own circle the Soviet system has no organized power group to support the needed reforms. Gorbachev may tell horror stories of tens of thousands of pairs of Soviet shoes rotting in warehouses because they are of such poor quality nobody wants to buy them even in a country of chronic shortages. But the Communist Party as an institution cannot possibly have its heart in dismantling its own supervisory role. Nor is the governmental machinery likely to welcome a reduction of its administrative dominance. The group most apt to understand the need for reform is the secret police, because its job requires it to take the measure of the outside world. But its enthusiasm will stop at the point where reform undermines civil discipline. And the military establishment will favor modernization only so long as it does not have to pay for it by too sharp a reduction in the armed forces.

Gorbachev's courageous assaults on existing institutions moreover exact a psychological and political cost. Some weeks ago a young Russian visitor remarked to me plaintively about the public attacks on all Soviet leaders since Lenin: "This suggests that every Soviet citizen over 70 has wasted his life." The eruption of nationalistic passions from the Baltic states to Central Asia shows that to some extent glassnost—democratization—clashes with perestroika—economic reform.

No wonder Gorbachev grows almost wistful when he contemplates his prospects. "At any rate," he told our delegation, "things will never be the same again in the Soviet Union." This would be a modest result for so Herculean a task.

The decisive changes in the economic management of the Soviet system await the consolidation of Gorbachev's power. And for him this year will be decisive.

Gorbachev is in fact accumulating unprece-
dented personal power—in constitutional terms
exceeding even that of Stalin. Heretofore the
highest Soviet rank has been that of general
secretary of the Communist Party, which has
dominated governmental, economic and military
life through a system of parallel hierarchies. But
Gorbachev has no intention of giving the major
operational responsibility for reform to the
group most in need of reform. He therefore has
endowed the heretofore ceremonial office of
president with real, perhaps even dominant,
powers. The new Supreme Soviet, a body
emerging from a complex electoral process
dominated by Gorbachev, elects the president
and will be in permanent session in order to

discourage party coups. The president is guaranteed a five-year term and controls foreign and security policy. This domination finds expression in the personalities of Anatoly Dobrynin and Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, who serve as foreign and defense advisers to Gorbachev as president while the heretofore all-powerful equivalent Communist Central Committee secretaries have had their powers reduced.

When this process Gorbachev is engineering is completed, the Soviet Union will be governed by a hybrid pluralistic system in which Gorbachev as president sits amid a maze of huge bureaucratic structures and alone has access to all of them. At that point—within a year—time will start running out for perestroika; Gorbachev will have to deliver on his economic reform program.

Such political and economic change cannot be carried out under conditions of international tension; the Soviet leadership is under pressure to husband the time and energy it devotes to foreign affairs.

It is therefore unnecessary to debate the issue of whether there has been a basic conversion of the Soviet leadership or to gear one's policy entirely toward one particular Soviet leader. Domestic conditions impose a respite on Soviet foreign policy, but in the end so does the international environment.

Russian and Soviet expansionism has been possible because on at least one of its fronts the Russian empire has always faced impotent neighbors, and Russian and Soviet foreign policy has promoted this state of affairs. But for the first time the major neighboring countries—China, Japan, India, Western Europe—are growing faster than the Soviet bloc, as is the other superpower, the United States. Moreover, these countries, with the exception of India, are more or less allied in their determination to resist Soviet expansionism.

Gorbachev's first reaction has been to launch very skillful peace offenses to break up this tacit coalition. But the price he has to pay is the muting of traditional pressures the Soviet Union had put on its neighbors. If Soviet expansionism were to reappear, his considerable achievements in refurbishing the Soviet image would. be at risk. What started as a tactical device may thus develop its own momentum.

The Soviet Union's Asian neighbors are immune to sentimental appeals. They will insist on a settlement of the issues of most concern to them.

(continued →)

Europe is more vulnerable. Its domestic politics lends itself to seduction by changes in the international climate; the division of Germany gives the Soviets a carrot for stimulating German nationalism. Many recent Soviet moves can be interpreted as attempts to harness Europe's economic assistance while reducing its military capacity with a subtle assault on NATO's cohesion. But in the end, unless Western leaders abdicate their responsibility, such a policy will either run into the sand or prove too dangerous.

Whatever shortsightedness European leaders commit in the pursuit of domestic politics, they will refuse to trade American protection for Soviet goodwill, especially if America conducts a coherent Atlantic policy. And a neutralized Germany—were it achievable—would present growing problems for the Soviet Union since Germany's unfulfilled aspirations are all in the East. Thus the Soviet Union—if it is realistic — is condemned by circumstances to seek a realistic accommodation, provided always that the West is able to give a concrete content to its concept of peace through a series of precise political arrangements.

Were foreign policy a science and not an art, this is what would happen. But it remains to be seen whether Americans can be brought to see foreign policy in terms of equilibrium rather than as a struggle between good and evil, or whether Russia can abandon its historical expansionism. Americans have always sought to punish the wicked, but also to redeem them by conversion. This is why former president Reagan went from belligerent anticommunism to the reiteration of the change of heart of the Soviet leadership as the principal assurance of a peaceful future. Such an approach neglects the realities of power, ambition and national interest.

On the Soviet side the obstacle to progress is exactly the opposite; it is not rejection of the role of power but an obsession with it. Russian history justifies a fear of foreign invasions. But so long as that fear can be assuaged only by the impotence of neighboring states and the Soviets' political domination, peace will be at risk.

> "Western Europeans...
> must not tempt the
> Soviet Union to divide
> the Western Alliance."

As for the Western Europeans, they need to face the fact that if they really want a political settlement, they must not tempt the Soviet Union to divide the Western Alliance.

Finally the West needs to put arms control into a better perspective. What started as an understandable preoccupation with controlling weapons of mass destruction has turned into a cult administered by a priesthood of esoteric technicians advancing arcane formulas leading to agreements which they rationalize to their parliaments on the astonishing ground that they will leave existing military capabilities unaffected. The review ordered by President Bush provides an opportunity to elaborate an overall design.

The imminent opening of conventional arms control negotiations will in any event generate the imperative of a European political settlement. Any Soviet withdrawal that significantly reduces Soviet offensive capabilities and offers guarantees against reentry must increase the political turmoil in Eastern Europe. Any partial American withdrawal, which will be the inevitable result of a significant Soviet retreat, will revolutionize the historic assumptions of the Western Alliance.

Thus side by side with an unprecedented opportunity there is an unprecedented challenge to Western statesmanship: (a) The Western Alliance must transform the existing numbers game of arms control into a political concept including a European political settlement. (b) Western Europe must develop with American encouragement its own defense and political organization. That is the only meaningful form of burden sharing and the key to a European settlement. (c) The United States must make clear that no scheme involving the complete withdrawal of American forces from Europe can be considered. (d) The Soviet Union should reflect about the trap in which it now finds itself: it has tied its military security to regimes in Eastern Europe whose instabilities create their own momentum. Is it possible to separate political evolution from military security? (e) Fifteen years ago attempts to establish global rules of conduct foundered over Soviet expansionism and American domestic divisions. Is it possible to resurrect such a dialogue in the new circumstances?

A new American president with a generous spirit and a Soviet leader who has shown a willingness to challenge historic preconceptions now face a challenge essentially at odds with the missionary bent of America and the expansionist tendency of Russia: to advance peace by balancing their national interests.

Kissinger's World View

*He sees massive shifts, with Europe back on center stage*

These comments were compiled from a recent dialogue between the Monitor's editorial board and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

I BELIEVE that the '90s, whatever we do, will be a period of tremendous structural change in international relations and it is a mistake to ascribe it all to Gorbachev or even primarily to Gorbachev - in fact it is selling the situation short to ascribe it to Gorbachev because that implies that it is an idiosyncratic change.

And if you look at Soviet history, every general secretary has disavowed his predecessor and therefore it isn't even in our interests to say that Gorbachev is the only solution to our problem since he's mortal and will leave sooner or later. In fact the term of office of the president, if he sticks to it, is only 10 years - so by the late '90s he would be out of office. And much better for us to think in terms of structural changes that any sensible Soviet leader would want to follow. Even if he has a less dynamic personality than Gorbachev's.

Now, I think that the dominance of the two superpowers will erode in the '90s. You will have various powers. You will have the US, Soviet Union, China, India, Europe. All of which will be simultaneously economic, political, and military powers, and a little later I wouldn't exclude that Brazil and Mexico could be at least at the second rank of such a world.

This requires that we look at the world in a different way than we did in the post-war period. The Soviet Union will still be a major country; it will still have a major influence in world affairs. But we are very close to the goal of containment as it was defined in the 1940s.

Economic reform for the So-

viet Union is not a favor they do to us. It's not something for which we should pay a huge price; it is something that they almost have to do. An aggressive Soviet policy would unite all of these powers on their borders against it and therefore they have reasons quite beyond Gorbachev to move into a period of conciliation.

So our task is to do something that Americans have not ever done before: namely, to think of a world of equilibrium. Not of a world in which we like to think of foreign policy as conversion - that Gorbachev comes along and he ends 70 years of communist history. He'd really have to end 400 years of Russian history.

How should he come to that view? What is it in his experience that would lead him there? There's no Jefferson in his past. There's no American tradition. But there is the compulsion of circumstance.

If we want to disengage ourselves from the front line of every confrontation, we have to learn to think of the structural balances that exist in the world and to decide whether we want to back whom we back.

It's sort of a balance of power concept, which in a modern global world is much more complicated. In that context, I think we can negotiate with the Soviets much more reliably than by being so obsessed about whether the President and the Soviet leader get along. And incidentally, I would also think that it also means that the emphasis on pure arms control gets us off the subject.

I'm not opposed to arms control as one of the many negotiations to conduct, but take Europe for example. In many ways Gorbachev is conducting a traditional Russian policy. He's trying to separate Europe from the US. And he has had major success in

Germany in getting this German romantic feeling that they've got to have some sentimental attachment to somebody focused on the Soviets. That's a short-term victory if the world is bipolar.

In the process, however, Eastern Europe is becoming fluid and what we may see is a simultaneous disintegration of Western and Eastern Europe, with Eastern Europe disintegrating faster and in which even the seeming victories of Gorbachev are double-edged. Because to the extent that he gets the Germans more active in foreign policy, the place they have something to gain is in the East not in the West, and so he may be resurrecting the contest between the Teutons and the Slavs.

Now, that's what we've got to get beyond. And it's sensible that negotiation with the Soviets

would be unavoidable in the next administration, and, in my view, the big issue will be Eastern Europe. Because whatever *perestroika* does in the USSR, it is undermining the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. So long as the Soviets identify their security with the maintenance of unpopular regimes, therein is a trap of their own making. If they go into one of these countries they will undermine everything that they have achieved with their policy of apparent moderation. And if they don't go in they start a process which may spill over into the Soviet Union.

THEREFORE, I believe an important subject of negotiation with them on a quiet basis, is whether it is possible to create a political framework in Eastern Europe which separates the security issues from the political issues, in which we can be very far-sighted and generous. You know, something like Finland in which the peoples of Eastern Europe are free to choose

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR,

1/6/89, p. 19

1 of 2

47
Kissinger's World View...

their own government and there
are clearly defined limitations on
military capabilities.

In such a framework, then,
one could approach conventional
arms control, which in my view is
totally insoluble in the Warsaw
Pact-NATO context. Well, to-
tally insoluble is exaggerated, but
incredibly complicated. It will
turn into a numbers game that
will feed on itself.

I think the fundamental nego-
tiation with the Soviets should be:
what kind of a world do we visual-
ize? How can we avoid sliding into
a war which neither of us want
and which we can't settle by just
technical rearrangement of arms?
For the first time now since the
war there is a real danger that
some explosion could occur in
Eastern Europe like prior to
World War I. We are so focused
on Hitler, and we forget that
Sarajavo produced a world war.

I don't think the Soviets will
ever march into Western Europe
to occupy it as Hitler marched
into neighboring countries. But
what could happen instead, as an
act of desperation we could face a
Berlin crisis. The one way they
could demonstrate the fact that
they're the one who runs Eastern
Europe is to make us knuckle un-
der on something in Berlin. And
you notice that even as they are
courting the Germans they will
not agree to have West Berlin a
German state, which would be the
easiest way to settle it. They insist
on treating it, as close as they can
get away with it, as a free city.

I'm writing a book on how na-
tional cultural patterns and values
affect the perception of foreign

policy. And you really find in
many countries a very consistent
pattern. But Germany didn't be-
come a nation until 1871, then
for 19 years they had a foreign
minister - a genius who juggled
all the competing forces in Eu-
rope in such a complicated way
that it couldn't be continued.

We Americans got to know the
Germans *after* the war. And so we
thought that the pro-Western ori-
entation of Germany was a natu-
ral thing. The fact is if you look at
German history, Germany has
never had alliances in the West -
all its alliances have been in the
East, when they had any alliances.
So the Adenauer-tradition, pro-
American group has been demor-
alized as a result of many factors -
including some of the recent ne-
gotiations with the Soviets.

And so you now have a kind of
restless activism, almost for its
own sake. The West Germans
give a billion marks to Hungary in
order to ease the fate of the Hun-
garians, but what they are also
doing is to increase the freedom
of maneuver of the Hungarians
vis-à-vis the Soviets, and there is a
limit to this. So German romanti-
cism and sentimentalism without
any evil intention could be a very
real problem. It sort of triggers
everybody else.

The French are running to
Moscow now because they don't
want the Germans to be there
alone. The French are quite cyni-
cal in their conduct of foreign
policy. And in Gorbachev's
*perestroika* and in all the Soviet
public statements - nobody pays
much attention to this in this
country - they keep talking about

the European house that goes
from the Urals to the Atlantic.

On the face of it, it is already
an absurdity, because what hap-
pens to the Soviet Union on the
other side of the Urals? Will that
be cut off?

NOW, a Europe from Mos-
cow to the Atlantic will
lead to one of two things:
either the Soviet Union will be
the permanent drain on its re-
sources if its economy doesn't im-
prove or the Soviet Union will
become so strong that all of Eu-
rope will become Finlandized and
America will be gradually sepa-
rated from Europe.

The logical dividing line is on
the Soviet-Polish border, with
Moscow and Washington having
equal status legally in Europe. In
such a context you could think of
arms control agreements. But no-
body is picking the Soviets up on
this. And once this gets estab-
lished in people's minds that Mos-
cow is part of Europe but Wash-
ington is not, the '90s could get
very uncomfortable.

PAGE TWO OF TWO

Henry Kissinger

The Washington Post
Tues. Dec 20, 1988

# Gorbachev and the West's Wishful Thinkers

Since Mikhail Gorbachev's premature departure from New York, the question most frequently put has been: Is Gorbachev for real? Is he sincere?

The answer is as clear as it is irrelevant: Gorbachev is formidably sincere; he is dedicatedly real. But the key issue is what he is sincere about and what reality his often-masterful diplomacy is seeking to serve.

Most of the media and many leaders in America and in Europe seem to have made up their minds: Gorbachev is a new phenomenon who has rejected all previous Soviet history. His speech has been compared to Wilson's Fourteen Points and the Atlantic Charter. Congressional figures have spec-
ulated about what cuts in the U.S. defense budget the speech may allow. European leaders and media are clamoring for a response. President Reagan has certified the Soviet leader's good faith. Mikhail Gorbachev has fulfilled the Western yearning for some automatic nostrum promising relief from tension.

The question is not whether he is serious, but whether the West is.

A serious treatment of Gorbachev would pro-
ceed from the premise that, like any responsible
leader, he seeks to maximize the interests of the
society entrusted to his care.

He faces a period of internal weakness. New
power centers are emerging all around the Soviet
Union—in Japan, Europe, China—raising the
prospect that containment, the Western goal for
40 years, is becoming a reality. All this should
create the basis for a comprehensive negotiation
about the very basis of peaceful coexistence: a
respect for the vital interests of both sides. This
means that those interests should be defined, their
compatibility negotiated and means found to re-
duce or to eliminate threats to them.

But such an approach runs counter to long-held
American predispositions against thinking of for-
ign policy in terms of balancing national interests
instead of universal reconciliation. Nor has Gorb-a-
chev shown any inclination to venture into such a
dialogue. And, in any event, it makes sense from
his point of view to weaken the unity of the power
centers at or near the Soviet Union's borders and
undermine their resolve so that the Soviet Union
can benefit from their economic assistance without
risking their political ascendancy.

The problem is not his challenge but the West-
ern response, which threatens to jeopardize the
opportunities that may be represented by the
conjunction of a Soviet internal crisis and a realistic
Soviet statesman.

But even the most realistic statesman will be
tempted by the line of least resistance. He will try
to capture the agenda of diplomacy; he will seek to
increase his options while constricting those of
potential adversaries.

These objectives Gorbachev has brilliantly
served in his spectacular performance in New
York. He dealt with a president with only six
weeks to go in his term, hence in no position to
commit his successor, and a president-elect whose
national security team is not yet in place. Even
after he is inaugurated, Bush will need several
months to organize his government, analyze his
options and develop a strategy. In all that time

Gorbachev—and his Western sympathizers—can
dominate the agenda to a point where, in the end,
the outcome may evolve into modalities of what he
has put forward.

But such an outcome is foreordained only if the
West substitutes wishful thinking for analysis.
Why, then, the present euphoria? It cannot be
because of the provisions regarding Afghanistan
and the illegal radar installation at Krasnoyarsk.
The proposal for a cease-fire in place in Afghani-
stan would perpetuate Communist control of all
key towns and lines of communication. The "inter-
nationalization" of Krasnoyarsk would maintain in
existence an installation in flagrant violation of the
ABM treaty, from which international inspectors
could always be expelled in times of crisis—grant-
ing even the dubious premise that it would be
possible for them to check on what the installation
is used for in normal periods.

Nor is euphoria indicated by the passages in
which Gorbachev renounced $50 billion of un-
collectable foreign debts and invited the United
States to match it by abandoning the $700 billion
of its own loans to more responsible debtors. And
the sections addressed to Beijing reflect the Krem-
lin's version of the "China card"—though Beijing
is too sophisticated to become a card for either
nuclear superpower.

But what aroused the imagination of the West
was Gorbachev's arms-control proposals. The sig-
nificance of the projected reduction of Soviet
armed forces by 10 percent cannot be judged—in-
deed cannot be verified—unless one knows the
composition of what is being reduced. A reduction
of 500,000 in a total of 5 million could be an
efficiency move—for example the merging of
supply functions. Similar proposals were made by
other Soviet leaders; the nature of this is at this
point inconclusive.

The announced withdrawal of six tank divisions and 5,000 tanks from Central Europe is significant, even though the proposal is not as novel as it sounded. In 1979 Brezhnev, intent on stopping the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe, announced the withdrawal of 1,700 tanks and 20,000 men—a withdrawal that in the event proved stillborn.

The full significance of the latest proposal de-
pends on a clarification of some of the following
ambiguities:

(a) Gorbachev said that the troops withdrawn would be disbanded; he was silent on the fate of their equipment. What will happen to the tanks and artillery being withdrawn from Europe? Where are they going to be repositioned? How close to the boundaries of Western Europe?

(b) What tanks are being reduced? It is generally accepted that some 15,000 of the Soviet tank inventory are Korean War vintage. Are they the ones to be removed? If so, Gorbachev may be selling a modernization scheme in the name of disarmament.

(c) What exactly is meant by defensive dispo-
sitions of the forces in Central Europe? Will the
actual Soviet capacity to launch offensive opera-
tions be reduced, or will Western warning time be
increased by a few days? Are we seeing a signifi-
cant change or a skillful exploitation of the West-
ern internal discussions?

Of course, the advantage of unilateral schemes is that it is difficult to raise such questions and even harder to verify the answers.

In any event, the general perception that Gorbachev has put forward unilateral concessions is nonsense, or true in only a highly formal sense. Since his proposals will surely generate pressures for counterconcessions all over NATO, they must be weighed against the predictable responses they will evoke.

For example, the modernization of the short-range nuclear weapons based in West Germany has become highly controversial—partly for fear of disturbing German-Soviet relations. The German government has tried to finesse the issue by stating that it would modernize unless there was progress in conventional arms control. Will the promised withdrawal of Soviet forces from Central Europe be deemed to constitute such progress?

The obstacles to the modernization of conventional weapons and burden-sharing are likely to grow even faster. The Intermediate Nuclear Force agreement has removed U.S. strategic missiles stationed in Europe, and the START talks on long-range nuclear weapons plan to eliminate half the strategic nuclear warheads stationed elsewhere. The frequently heard argument that such reductions leave existing nuclear strategy intact is self-delusion. All students of the subject agree that conventional defense should be strengthened. But which NATO country will build up or share American burdens while Gorbachev is unilaterally reducing his?

The Gorbachev speech also has pulled the teeth of the argument that nuclear reductions envisaged under START should be somehow linked to conventional reductions. But with strategic weapons reduced, modernization of battlefield weapons questionable and a conventional buildup hamstrung, NATO could easily wind up with no military strategy at all.

Gorbachev's offers give him a wide range of options. Soviet withdrawals are announced as taking place over a period of two years; the probability is that the bulk will come close to the end. The response in the West, on the other hand, is likely to be immediate and irrevocable. If, however, modernization of NATO's conventional and nuclear forces should unexpectedly proceed, Gorbachev can always stop his withdrawals and blame the West for having rejected his initiative, thus generating a storm of protest against Western governments.

This does not have to happen. The West could avoid these consequences by taking the time to put forward a major program of its own, including both political and arms control elements. But so far no Western leader has felt strong or confident enough to inquire what the Gorbachev proposals actually mean, much less to advance an alternative.

In the end, Gorbachev's speech will be significant either because it was a stage in a process of disarming the West or as the opening move of a complex negotiation. It is the West's interest to turn it into a serious dialogue. But a negotiation requires clarity about purposes and a willingness to subordinate domestic politics to long-term goals.

For years, NATO has been advocating asympmetrical conventional cuts without defining what it means by it, partly because the Alliance has been afraid to face the question of the relationship between nuclear and conventional defense. If conventional reductions are negotiated, how will they be allocated among the Allies? How does one deal with the geographic reality that some part of the Soviet Union will always be outside the area of arms control and thus available as a source for reinforcement? How does one take into account the fact that American forces in Europe serve not only a military, but a psychological and political role? How can any foreseeable scheme be verified?

Above all, is the basic premise of conventional arms control correct? Does equality of forces enhance stability? Every European war would seem to prove the opposite, since almost all victories were achieved by numerically equal, and sometimes inferior, forces, on the basis of better generalship or a greater capacity to concentrate forces.

If these issues are not dealt with, a temporary respite will be purchased at the price of a gradual slide toward crisis. Gorbachev may be betting that his policy will disintegrate NATO more rapidly than the same policies plus perestroika will dissolve the cohesion of Eastern Europe. But if he is right, there will be a crisis, because America will not be pushed out of Europe without a reaction. And if he is wrong, there will be a classic East European blow-up of the type that produced World War I.

The Bush administration, therefore, faces a seminal choice before it has even taken office. It must not let itself be stampeded, but must define its own agenda and timetable.

Together with its allies, it needs to clarify NATO strategic and arms control doctrine. It must develop a common negotiating strategy. It must make sure that China and Japan understand that strategy, lest they be hurried into preemptive moves toward Moscow based on the misinterpretation of American intentions.

The Bush administration should insist on clarity about Soviet withdrawal schedules before putting forward its own schemes. It needs a policy that deals with the political future of Europe, not just security issues.

In the end, peaceful coexistence must be based not on public relations spectacles but on a reciprocal respect for the other side's vital interests. That will be Gorbachev's and Bush's ultimate challenge.

For 400 years the Russian Empire—under czar and commissar—has been expanding. Since the days of the Duchy of Muscovy, Russia's sphere of influence in Europe has advanced from the Dnieper to the Elbe, a distance of some 1,500 miles, in part because Russia has sought absolute security, which means absolute insecurity for all its neighbors.

Can Russia, for the first time in its history, be brought to a concept of equilibrium? Can we define what we mean by it?

The answer depends on many intangibles and a wrench in the practices of centuries. Such a negotiation must be conducted in a careful exploratory manner focusing on the long-term objectives of the two sides, for example, how they visualize the world at the turn of the century. This requires a confidential forum—perhaps trusted emissaries—not yet in existence.

If that should be its result, Gorbachev's speech may yet prove to be a watershed. But it means that both sides must give up some of their operating procedures. Gorbachev must abandon his impetuous tendency to hoist the West by its own petard, as at Reykjavik. And the West must recognize that long-range policy cannot be judged by satisfying insatiable demands for progress without criteria. To build truly it is more important to be right than to be fashionable.

©1988, Los Angeles Times Syndicate