In From the Cold, but Where to Go? : East Germany: One prospect is that, after some agonizing, the country will find an equilibrium between democratic socialism and liberal capitalism.

“We are the people.” When demonstrators shouted those words, it was an ironic and bitter indictment of 40 years of the German Democratic Republic.

So far, mass demonstrations have been acted out with a subtlety and finesse that flatly contradicted all speculations that after 12 years of totalitarian Nazism and 44 years of totalitarian communism, the human mind would be utterly deformed. A great chapter of history is taking place right at our doorstep. The German question, instead of being posed in terms of power politics, is translated into human rights and the pursuit of happiness. Finally, the East Europeans refuse to go on losing World War II. The nations of Eastern Europe are coming in from the cold. This is not only a human concern. It is also a question of what kind of Europe we want in the 21st Century.

East Germany, situated in mid-stage, is going through a crisis that can only be described in terms of a revolution. Economic decline, so far conspicuous only in other Communist countries, is now dramatically exposed--the infrastructure run down, inner cities crumbling. The environment is in a ruined state. A loss of legitimacy has caused part of the Politburo and the entire cabinet to resign. The petty bureaucrats and functionaries of the ruling party are mending their ways and finding out that it is better to side with reform. Institutions no longer perform as expected. East German television has suddenly become part of the drama, no longer the drab ritual of party rhetoric but a scene where anything can take place, including indictment of the Socialist Unity, or Communist, Party. Unless a new social contract can be formulated, indeed a new political constitution framed, East Germany is not going to last.

The independent variable is, of course, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. There was no love lost between today’s men in the Soviet Union and yesterday’s men in East Germany. Both sides suspected each other of wanting to bring the other side down. Gorbachev, when visiting East Berlin in early October, had a few things to say to Erich Honecker, then still East Germany’s No. 1. Although this was done in the closet, the message was sensed by everybody, and it had two parts: You had better get on with a German version of glasnost and perestroika ; and if you don’t, our troops will not save you.

Egon Krenz, when looking for reassurance in Moscow four weeks later, must have received a revised version. It could have read as follows: You must go ahead with reform, and we will not put relations with the West at risk if you go astray; however, if the very existence of East Germany is at stake, we will be on your side. This is indeed the ambiguity that has left Krenz in a tense and difficult situation. What he did would have been extravagant only two months ago. Now he is behind the psychological schedule of the country, and even the Communist Party faithful tell him so.

Why did Krenz not anticipate the inevitable and announce on nationwide TV that, as the border with Czechoslovakia and from there into West Germany was open anyway, the Berlin Wall would be taken down? Why did he not say that the planning bureaucracy would be sacked and service industries would be freely admitted in the form of private enterprise? Why did he not invite foreign investment into East Germany, where it would find a first-rate work force and--sooner or later--healthy returns? Why did he not say, right away, that authentic political parties would be admitted, following Hungary’s example, and that unrigged elections would follow in the next six months--with an apology for fumbling the last elections? Why did he not add that a constitutional court would be set up to make sure the East German constitution, the United Nations charter and the Helsinki final act are respected by the authorities? Why did he not close by saying that legislation would follow soon to restore the historic parts of what is now East Germany?

He could have added a patriotic appeal that, given the challenge of the future and the admission of failure on the part of the Communist Party, would the people not, please, reconsider and give him a fair chance to preside over the transition to democracy? He would have gone down in history not only as a man of Realpolitik , but probably as the man who saved the existence of East Germany for the time being and helped to stabilize the Central European chessboard.

Unfortunately, Krenz did almost none of the above. And what he did was received by the subsequent mass demonstration with a devastating comment: “Too late, too late.”

What is to come next? If there is no evolutionary transition between yesterday’s neo-Stalinism and tomorrow’s liberal democracy, East Germany may glide into limbo for awhile, with the revolution from below conspicuously lacking bite, vision and credibility. Return to the status quo is no option--an explosion would be the answer. So we are in for a long period of unrest, turmoil and uneasy compromise.

The security framework of the Warsaw Pact will have to stay in place, but--as the Hungarians insist--it must be transformed from a military into a politico-military alliance. The North Atlantic alliance is going in that direction anyway. The notion of cooperative security will have to graduate from being a slogan to becoming a process. Most important of all, the two nuclear superpowers will have to agree on a formula that would help to prevent a pre-1914 situation from arising. Summitry will not be enough. The East-West Helsinki process, which has taken on so many roles during the past 16 years, would have to provide the arena for face-saving solutions, retreats and compromises.

But what would be a sustainable, long-term solution for so much drama and so dangerous a place like Central Europe? Every successor to Egon Krenz must try to regain the initiative and will probably have to go even beyond what Krenz failed to say on TV. Otherwise, East Germany will not overcome the state of turmoil it is in. The exodus of the young generation will not be halted, and a major East-West crisis will ensue, putting at risk not only the reform of East Germany but East-West detente and perestroika in Moscow as well. Some big thinking is needed.

It has not sufficiently been appreciated so far that the consequence of deep cuts in conventional arms, now being discussed in Vienna, will be a different strategic architecture in Eastern Europe. Soviet troops, if they are indeed reduced in large quantities, will no longer bolster Communist oligarchies, now mostly out of office anyway (witness the resignation Friday of Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov), or hold the West hostage. What will remain in place in Eastern Europe will, however, still be enough to keep the glacis for the motherland. But the stabilizing role for Communist regimes will have gone, perhaps forever. This in itself will be a major force for change.

As to the West, the excitement about instant reunification of Germany is premature. It is much more important to think about Western teamwork for associating the East Europeans with cooperative efforts in Western Europe. After the silent demise of the East European trading bloc and the gradual decline of the Warsaw Pact, together with the conspicuous weakening of Soviet hegemonial will and muscle, what structure is there to keep Eastern Europe in balance? At present, it is a collection of poor houses in a super-rust belt stretching from the Baltic to the Danube Valley, with a host of bitter conflicts ranging from the suppression of minorities to environmental feuds. No one except the European Community offers any chance of being the federateur of Eastern Europe, through tailor-made forms of long-term association. A Marshall Plan has often been advocated. What is needed now is something on an even grander scale, a political design of peaceful change through economic means and political encouragement.

The perennial German question will be at the center of all this, and this is at the same time part of the problem and part of the solution. Two countries, one the size of Ireland, the other one the size of Britain, 16 million and 60 million Germans respectively, are in search of a very special relationship whose shape, nature and name will affect all of Europe and, for that matter, Canada and the United States.

The Federal Republic is firmly anchored in the West, NATO and the European Community, and the firmer the better. It needs both the confidence of its partners and the negotiating power offered through the Atlantic alliance to handle a problem that is potentially fraught with strategic imbalances and dangerous misunderstandings. The integration of West Germany in the European Community is, incidentally, also to be seen as an element of reassurance for the East Europeans.

If the East German government, despite its reform and its willingness to open the Brandenburg Gate, cannot regain the initiative, the place could slide into an unmanageable state and be deeply destabilizing for its strategic environment as well as for the East-West relationship. An unmanageable state is at present the most undesirable scenario.

A more likely outcome is that, after a period of agonizing reform, the country will emerge at the other end of the crisis in a different shape, perhaps having found a new equilibrium between democratic socialism and liberal capitalism, between its Western heart and its Eastern raison d’etat , and perhaps even arrive at an identity that is not entirely dependent on rejection or imitation of the Federal Republic of Germany.