A Strategy to Help Harmony Break Out : Summit: By giving their support, the superpowers can bolster reformist institutions in Eastern Europe.

With each passing day, superpower planning for this weekend’s summit faces more of a challenge: how to promote a replacement for the Cold War order now dissolving in Europe?

Underlying the current debate are divergent sets of assumptions about what recent events in Europe portend.

Most misleading are the assumptions of the expansive “end-of-history” optimists. Like good Wilsonians, many Americans are naturally inclined to believe that the liberalization of authoritarian regimes and the retrenchment of Soviet power will make for a more harmonious international order. But this attitude is blind to the dangers of ideological messianism.

Meanwhile, Realpolitik pessimists both inside and out of government make a strong case against liberal optimism, but their “solution” doesn’t solve the problems they foresee. They warn the West away from the quagmire that might entrap us if reform in the Soviet Bloc turns to anarchy. Rather than leading to increased harmony, they see that increased pluralism may open a Pandora’s box kept sealed for 44 years by Soviet repression.

As the stalemate ends, the re-emergence of long-suppressed pressure for German reunification inevitably triggers fears in both East and West. Far from becoming a zone of happy Finlands and Austrias, Eastern Europe may break out in long-suppressed ethnic conflicts, aggravated as economies decay further and as feeble governments resort to nationalist demagoguery. Central and Eastern Europe may prove fertile soil for right-wing populism, just as before, and for the same reason: popular revolt against the disruptive impacts of the free market.

As perestroika flounders, nationalism nibbles at the Soviet periphery. As liberalism rolls back socialism in Eastern Europe, internal political change may play out against a backdrop of national upheaval in an increasingly surly, xenophobic Russia. While Mikhail Gorbachev will not use military force to re-establish the status quo, he is worried enough to have warned against precipitate German reunification or the “exporting of capitalism.”

Even if Gorbachev and President Bush agree to a mutual “hands-off” policy for Eastern Europe, the Atlantic Alliance cannot be isolated from anarchy in the East, not least because West Germany would never consent to remain indifferent to the fate of reform in East Germany.

Harmony will not break out without help from the superpowers.

Calls for a “new Marshall Plan” to brace reforms and prevent collapse are on the right track. A carefully crafted plan could help institutionalize liberal reform. The success of the original Marshall Plan was not due to its price tag, but because it created a cooperative international framework that overrode the fragmented domestic political interests of nationalists and protectionists.

An active Western role in fostering a new political order in Europe must be based on an understanding that the explosion of pluralism in Eastern Europe can have stabilizing consequences only if political institutions can channel its energy.

At the summit, Bush and Gorbachev should announce their support in principle for Eastern participation in well-developed institutions like the European Community and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. This could bolster reform in Eastern Europe and could also be a mechanism to manage the problem of German reunification. East German admission to the European Community, on condition of democratic and market reforms, would provide the social and economic benefits of reunification, under the Brussels umbrella, without inciting fears of a German superpower emerging from reunification.

Bush and Gorbachev should reaffirm support for continuation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The alliances can be transformed into organizations that cooperate in pursuit of arms control and European security; they would also reinforce the legal basis for the continued division of Germany.

The success or failure of the Bush-Gorbachev summit cannot be measured against the predictions of liberal end-of-history euphoria, which underestimates the delicacy and dangers of fostering a new, stable order.

Realpolitik pessimism understands those risks, but its “hands-off” prescription would simply be swept away by events. A stable peace in Europe requires a carefully crafted strategy that will foster institutions to contain the East’s exploding political pluralism.