A Flawed View of Future Europe : Classic Exclusion of Soviets Weakens Security of Our ‘Home’

Henry A. Kissinger has begun to vigorously push a concept of a Europe extending from the Soviet-Polish border to the Atlantic. He is fuzzy in his public statements about the place of Germany in this Europe, but virtually everything he says implies that the division of that country would remain.

Kissinger’s notions need the deepest scrutiny and debate. The former head of Kissinger Associates, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, is now the top specialist on East-West relations in the State Department. The former head of the Washington office of Kissinger Associates, Brent Scowcroft, is President Bush’s national security adviser. Their general approach has been heavily influenced by Kissinger, and if the Bush Administration is guided by this vision, the result will be disaster.

The Kissinger view of the future stems from a clear perception of an obvious truth: The postwar period has been very good for the United States. The Great Depression of the 1930s was not repeated, and the Soviets were successfully contained during the virulent period of their history.

Most important, the divisions between England, France and Germany that produced two world wars in this century were ended. The Atlantic community, including the United States, ended 400 years of war and created a “common home” of 600 million Europeans from the Elbe to Los Angeles.

Obviously, the United States does have an interest in the preservation of this status quo--perhaps, if necessary, with a controlled increase in East European autonomy. The problem is that the Soviet Union has benefited far less from the postwar era. It is now determined to change things. Like it or not, we have to adjust.

Kissinger has always had a keen sense of 20th-Century geostrategy and a very weak sense of economics. He correctly understands that the Soviet Union today has a geostrategic interest in the continuation of European stability, even if this does require a North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a strong American military presence.

There are, however, two problems with his analysis. First, the 21st Century will be much different geostrategically. In 30 to 40 years, both China and India will be superpowers on the Soviet border with a billion people each. The Soviets have every interest to join with the other Europeans and create a “common European home” all the way from Vladivostok to Los Angeles as the nature of the potential threat changes.

Second, the division of Europe and the economic isolation of the Soviet Union has meant total protectionism for Soviet manufacturers--and protectionism has meant economic disaster. Moscow must have an export strategy, large foreign investment in the Soviet Union, large Soviet investment abroad and the international exchange of components found in the modern transnational corporation. This is incompatible with the foreign perception of Soviet threat--or the level of Soviet military spending found in the past. Mikhail S. Gorbachev will be ruthless in reducing both.

The Kissinger talk about a free Europe from the Polish-Soviet border to the Atlantic, but including a divided Germany, is not only hopelessly utopian; it also would lead directly to the instability he fears.

The Soviet Union is determined to integrate into Europe and will never accept its border with Poland as the dividing line for Europe. It will not be left isolated to face China and India alone.

An American policy designed to promote freedom for Poles, Hungarians and Czechs, but to preserve slavery for East Germans, will have disastrous propaganda consequences in West Germany.

The strong reluctance to have troop reductions demands that German youth continue to serve through a military draft even as Gorbachev seems to be ending the threat of East-West confrontration. That is simply unrealistic. Meanwhile, Americans have every interest in reducing military spending to reduce the deficit.

What must we do? First, we must insist that we (and Latin America) speak a European language and have a European culture. We must preserve the European home we have created over the last 40 years. Europe cannot end at the Atlantic, but at the Pacific.

We also must accept that Russians are Europeans. The Russian Orthodox religion comes out of the Judeo-Christian and Greek traditions. Their literary and artistic achievements in the tradition of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky are part of modern European culture. We cannot make them deny their tradition, and we should not.

Our policy should be of one Europe, from Vladisvostok to Los Angeles. It will be good to add the 350 million Russians and East Europeans to our 600 million and have a billion Europeans in a world in which the other superpowers have a billion people as well. Indeed, we should be struggling to get the Japanese in our common home, too.

The achievements of the postwar era were real accomplishments. The statesmen of that era, including Henry Kissinger, were very skilled. A new generation needs comparable skill to solve new problems, but the one recipe for disaster is simply to follow the old rules that worked in an era that has now passed into history.