Europe Returns to Center Stage as the Fulcrum for World Tension

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.

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.

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 system. And in that case we in the West are not helping him but ourselves.

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 Over the next decade United States and Soviet ground forces should be progressively withdrawn from Central Europe in an orderly, negotiated fashion with Soviet offensive capabilities, especially tanks, returned deep into Russia.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.

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 materiel 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.

I envisage a three-stage process.

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 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 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.

EDITORS’ NOTE: The Los Angeles Times published an article by Henry A. Kissinger on July 30, 1989, in which he supported Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. He wrote, among other things, that “no government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks” and criticized the June 4 suppression in Tian An Men Square as “shocking.”

The Wall Street Journal published a story on Sept. 15, 1989, saying that Kissinger had economic ties in China, notably a limited partnership called China Ventures to pool $75 million raised from U.S. investors for joint ventures with the China International Trust and Investment Corp., a merchant bank established by the Chinese government.

Kissinger says that in early June, China Ventures was still not operational and had made no investments. On June 6, China Ventures canceled the announcement of its formation planned for June 15 and on July 24 its board voted not to consider any investments “at the present time.” Further, Kissinger canceled a speech to an investment conference in Beijing sponsored by CITIC, scheduled for Oct. 2. He remains a partner in the investment group.

“The reason for these actions,” Kissinger said, “was to enable me to comment free of any implication of self-interest on events in China. I have a special regard for this relationship, which I helped to establish and which has been supported by five administrations of both parties.”