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and 11%. Whichever of the major parties exceeds 10% can then typically combine with the Free Democrats to form a government. At the moment, the Christian Democrats have about 46%, the Free Democrats about 12%, and the Social Democrats about 36%. The ideal situation for the Free Democrats is when they can form a government with the other parties. For then they can live in a new era of politics that is, when both of them are around 40%. This has happened only once - in 1982.

At this moment, the Free Democrats can form a government in combination with the Christian Democrats. But if Genscher may calculate that his party stays in the current coalition until the 1994 elections, it will fall below 5% and thus be excluded from parliament. Switching to the Social Democrats is no longer an alternative because it would still leave the new coalition far short of a majority and hence capable of forming a government. In addition, Kohl might decide to continue as a governmental change.

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minority Chancellor and blame the Free Democrats for Germany's difficulties. On the other hand, the withdrawal of the most popular German leader, from the government may in time make it necessary a coalition of all the major parties to deal with the emergency - as it is reported the German President, Richard von Weissacker, says - without the Free Democrats being blamed for switching sides in the middle of a crisis.

After the 1994 election, this would almost surely be followed by a Social Democratic/Free Democratic coalition - much as happened in 1969, when a Great Coalition was formed the last time that might then bring Genscher back, if not necessarily as Foreign Minister, then perhaps as President in the elections to that office to be held in 1993. All this may well be the result of Genscher's resignation, even if it is not his intention. And it is a tribute to his extraordinary qualities.

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bridges. And his friends will not forget that his human
qualities and his personal loyalty matched his enormous
diplomatic skill.

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2341 WORDS

Dr. Kissinger LA TIMES Article 5/4/92

I received the news of Hans-Dietrich Genscher's resignation with a wrenching sense of almost personal loss. It was an odd reaction because, while I consider Genscher a valued friend, I have been sometimes disquieted by the foreign policies he represented. I met Genscher quite literally on his first day in office nearly 18 years ago. I was by then a veteran foreign minister and he a total novice; indeed, Genscher's grasp of foreign policy in those days can be most charitably described as minimal. With characteristic self-confidence, he came to southern Germany for a face-to-face meeting. I was in Salzburg, where President Nixon was resting for a day before starting a visit to the Middle East. Matters were complicated

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further because on the morning of our meeting I held an
emotional press conference threatening to resign over some
domestic flare-up.

Genscher was nonplussed by both the occasion and by what had
preceded it, conducting himself with extraordinary aplomb.
Without pretending to be yet on top of his subject, he
conveyed the conviction that existing tensions between America
and Europe over one of America's perennial efforts to
institutionalize Atlantic relationships would be rapidly
eliminated. And he was as good as his word.

Over the next few years, we worked as close colleagues;
there was no other foreign minister in whom I had more
confidence or for whom I had greater affection. In the next
decade and a half, we saw each other frequently - perhaps
somewhat less in recent years - while Genscher developed into
the dominant foreign minister of Europe. Throughout, I

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maintained a special affection for this clever, dedicated,
vulnerable, man so confident in his tactical skills, so
sensitive to personal slights, so prone to actions inviting
those slights. Passionate in conviction, reluctant to engage
in frontal battles, he approached his goals by an indirection
in which the maneuvers obscured the high purpose which in fact
animated them. In later years, I came to worry that these
tactics, which gave his country a diplomatic influence which
it could not have achieved without Genscher, might backfire.
But that one could identify that ambivalence with a solitary
individual representing (and not even leading) a small party,
is an extraordinary tribute to a remarkable man.

That ambivalence came to expression, too, in my second
thoughts on Genscher's resignation. Like the diplomat at the
Congress of Vienna who reacted to the death of a colleague by
saying, "I wonder what his motive could have been," I began to

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analyze the impact of the resignation on the political
situation in Germany, and possibly on the political career of
Genscher. In other words, was the resignation a withdrawal
from politics or a move into a new place?

I do not pretend to know the answer and perhaps Genscher
does not know it yet either. For the resignation certainly
occurs at a moment when German domestic politics is in a
turmoil unprecedented for two decades. Unification is
demanding ever greater sacrifices; the discipline of the labor
movement - or at least its willingness to sacrifice for the
common good - is eroding. If inflation and stagnation are to
be avoided, a measure of austerity seems inevitable. This
requires national unity at a moment when all of the political
parties are in shock from electoral results strengthening the
Right wing parties.

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The German constitution has provided extraordinary political stability for over four decades. The provision that a party must win at least 5% of the popular vote to be represented in Parliament prevents the emergence of many splinter parties, as for example in Italy or Poland. The requirement that the Chancellor stay in office unless there is a majority for an alternative combined with the small number of parties, works against the frequent government changes of some other parliamentary democracies. In fact, a Chancellor has been overthrown in Parliament only once and that was engineered by Genscher in 1982 - nearly a decade ago.

Throughout the greatest part of the new Germany's history, there have been three parties: two major parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, which in the past decade have each oscillated between 35% and 45%, and a relatively minor party, the Free Democrats, varying between 6%

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and 11%. Whichever of the major parties exceeds 10% can then
typically combine with the Free Democrats to form a
government. At the moment, the Christian Democrats have about
48%, the Free Democrats about 12%, and the Social Democrats
about 36%. The ideal situation for the Free Democrats is when
they can help either of the large parties to have a majority -
that is, when both of them are around 40%. This has happened
only once - in 1982.

At this moment, the Free Democrats can form a government
only with the Christian Democrats. But if Genscher may
calculate that his party stays in the current coalition until
the 1994 elections, it will fall below 5% and thus be excluded
from parliament. Switching to the Social Democrats is no
alternative because it would still leave the new coalition far
short of a majority and hence capable of forming a
governmental change; Kohl might decide to continue as a

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minority Chancellor and blame the Free Democrats for Germany's
difficulties. On the other hand, the withdrawal of the most
popular German leader from the government may in time make
necessary a coalition of all the major parties to deal with
the emergency - as it is reported the German President,
Richard von Weizsacker, favors - without the Free Democrats
being blamed for switching sides in the middle of a crisis.

After the 1994 election, this would almost surely be followed
by a Social Democratic/Free Democratic coalition - much as
happened in 1969, when a Great Coalition was tried the last
time. That might then bring Genscher back, if not necessarily
as Foreign Minister, then perhaps as President in the
elections to that office to be held in 1993. All this may well
be the result of Genscher's resignation, even if it is not his
intention. And it is a tribute to his extraordinary qualities

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that a solitary individual could have such an impact on the
political life of his society.

An understanding of German domestic politics is necessary to
grasp the nature of Genscher's foreign policy. He not only
represented a small party maneuvering between the political
superpowers of German domestic politics; he also was in a
sense a "foreigner" in the Federal Republic, being born and
raised in Halle, in former Communist East Germany. He was
therefore of necessity drawn into the German national question
with an intensity not shared by many West Germans and
certainly not by Germany's allies. And the Foreign Minster of
a rump, however powerful, country was somewhat in the same
position as his Free Democrats, placed between two superpowers
and bordered by suspicious European neighbors.

Even without the legacy of two world wars, the conduct of
German foreign policy is unusually difficult. Germany is more

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powerful - and has been for 100 years - than any other
European country and it has more neighbors than any other
European state. If it attempts to achieve security by its
national efforts, it frightens its neighbors and brings them
into coalition against it because it will be stronger than any
one of them. If it conducts a purely national foreign policy,
it disquiets other states because its geography gives it so
many more options. This inherently difficult problem has been
compounded by the fact that Germany was unified only in 1871,
later than any other major European state. Germany, it can be
argued, has spent so much energy on achieving unity that it
did not have energy left to address the issue of its national
interest.

No wonder that in German history the problem has been solved
only twice - at the beginning by Otto von Bismarck, and after
World War II by Konrad Adenauer. Bismarck opted for dexterity.

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He strove to arrange the relations of the nations of Europe in such a way that Germany always had more options than any possible rival; hence hostile coalitions against it became impossible. Adenauer chose reliability. He reasoned that Germany's past had created too much distrust to allow the fluidity of Bismarck's subtle combinations, and that Germany's Romantic tendencies would negate the sense of proportion and discipline needed for so free-wheeling an approach. He therefore sought to tie Germany so closely to the West that German temptations to exploit its central position would be subordinated to an Atlantic policy which, in turn, would keep the outside world from ganging up against Germany and organizing the international order around controlling it.

Chancellor Kohl today represents the Adenauer tradition.

Genscher seems to me to try to combine a pro-Western orientation with Bismarckian flexibility. He is in many ways

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the most similar to the German Foreign Minister Stresemann,
who won the Nobel Prize for his policy of reconciliation with
France in the Twenties but about whom the argument still rages
whether this was a prelude to freeing Germany's rear for
overthrowing the Versailles Treaty in Eastern Europe or
whether he in fact was aiming for a general settlement.

Stresemann died too early to permit a final judgement;
Genscher may have retired too soon for a definitive evaluation
of his ultimate goals. And, given Germany's inherent dilemmas
and temptations, definitive answers may be impossible even for
him.

Genscher's domestic experience had surely taught him that
the junior partner in a coalition runs the risk of losing his
identity if it automatically follows the senior partner and,
if it loses its identity, it abandons its reason for
existence. This was a particular problem for a divided

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country. According to strict Atlantic orthodoxy, Germany
should have waited for the collapse of Soviet Communism
foreseen in the containment theory. And this may well have
been what Adenauer had in mind. On the other hand, if Germany
was unified only by the efforts of foreign countries, what
would have become of the German nation? It was in any event
not a policy that could be pursued by a native of East Germany
and, as time went by, only by the majority of Germans. The
suffering of the East German population required some
specifically West German response which was initiated by
Chancellor Brandt and pursued by Genscher under two
Chancellors - Schmidt and Kohl.

Inevitably, a German national component to NATO policy
implied some attempt to give a special reassurance to Eastern
Europe and to the Soviet Union. For unless these countries
felt as safe as possible from a resurgent Germany, they would

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never agree to German unification. Nor could any German government permit that these reassurances would originate entirely with its allies if special discriminatory treatment by all surrounding states was to be avoided for a reunified Germany. On the whole, the Schmidt and Kohl governments navigated this passage with great tenacity and considerable skill. And to Genscher must go the major credit for the day-to-day handling of it - even if the final push was masterminded by Kohl. I did not always agree with Genscher's policies, especially on nuclear issues. But fairness requires the recognition that Germany needed some degree of dissociation from its Atlantic partners. Whether with a slower evolution of the Soviet situation Genscher's policy would have drifted into nationalism cannot be known. History will record as his monument a major contribution to the unification of his

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people and achieving that goal without sacrificing Germany's
Atlantic relationships.

The unification of Germany brought about a new state of
affairs not always fully understood either by Germany's allies
or by Germany itself. With Soviet armies 1000 miles further
east and the former Soviet Union in turmoil, the security
component of NATO was bound to weaken; no European nation,
Germany included, would subordinate itself to the same degree
to American priorities or pay the same price for America's
protection. The disappearance of the East German Communist
state made it less necessary for Germany to legitimize itself
by following West European, especially French, prescriptions.
European unity became less urgent.

No Atlantic country has yet come up with a solution to this
state of affairs, or with a policy appropriate to the new
circumstances. Genscher continued to operate within the

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existing system. By now the dean of Atlantic foreign
ministers, his tactical skill and intelligence reinforced by
the strong bargaining position of his country, gave him a
prominence that - perhaps unintentionally - emphasized
Germany's national role. Suddenly, there existed a plethora of
international institutions - NATO, the European Security
Conference, the Common Market, the West European Union - with
partially overlapping, hence competing, purposes which
permitted a master diplomat to shop around them to have his
way. I thought Genscher's analysis of the Yugoslav crisis
superior to that of most of his European partners. Still, I
found it worrisome that he dissociated from the European
Community mission - which had been approved by Germany - and
moved the issue into the European Security Conference, which
he had a better chance of dominating. And I could never share
his enthusiasm for the Europe from Vladivostok to Vancouver. I

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understood his desire not to isolate the former Soviet Union.

But I was worried - especially after the break-up of the
former Soviet Union - about introducing so many states with no
historic or geographic relations to Europe into a concept that
seemed bound to exclude the United States sooner or later -
whatever lip service is paid to the opposite argument. If
everybody is allied with everybody, no special obligation
exists to anybody and nationalism will reign supreme.

These doubts might well have been allayed as Genscher's
ultimate policy emerged. But it is perhaps just as well that
he decided not to manage what he did so much to create.

Statesmen often destroy themselves by staying too long.

Genscher will certainly go down in history as one of the most
significant statesmen his country has produced. The
democracies can thank him for his steady friendship; his
country's adversaries can honor him for his effort to build

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