America Vamps as the Old Order Disintegrates : Europe: The United States must stop improvising foreign policy and develop a long-term strategic response to the new reality on the Continent.

The revolutionary changes in Europe have left some immense problems in their wake. For the United States, the task will require foresight and circumspection equal to that of the late 1940s, when we created the postwar order we now see collapsing. But Washington has so far reacted with diplomatic improvisations, failing to develop a strategic response to the disintegration of the postwar Soviet empire and the concurrent reopening of the German question.

We persist in this failure at our peril.

For some in Washington, the events of 1989 signal the final demise of communism, both as an odious ideology and as a repressive system of governance--hence a triumph of Western political, economic and moral values. Others either distrust the reformist intentions of Soviet leaders or their capacity to implement them; they see in the evolution of the new Europe a dangerous loss of political stability and diplomatic predictability. Most important, they fear that the era of post-containment brings with it not only the weakening of Soviet power, but also of American power.

Both sets of attitudes are understandable. Both are misguided.

So much of America’s influence in the postwar world was predicated on the Soviet threat, so much of America’s self-definition as an imperial power required an adversary relationship, that we find it difficult to accept our reduced power status in a more benign international environment. But this is the way of the world. The sooner we recognize that we have overburdened our diplomacy with military-strategic matters while stripping it of a sound economic base (at a time when economic rather than military capacity translates more readily into political power), the sooner we can arrive at a realistic calibration of American strengths and weaknesses and at a policy that safeguards long-range U.S. geostrategic interest in Europe.

An essential step toward that policy is to recall that the success of our postwar European diplomacy stemmed from the way our Soviet and German policies complemented each other. The Soviet Union was contained at arm’s length, the Federal Republic with an embrace. The military, economic and political institutions of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Community served both purposes, lending a compelling political logic to postwar American diplomacy.

Both elements of that double-containment strategy eroded over the decades, and they are now hopelessly outdated. What is not outdated, however, is the continuing need to craft complementary Soviet and Germany policies. Should we fail in this task, our position in Europe will be insecure, our diplomacy unsteady.

The most effective way to restore this complementary relationship is for the United States to support the creation of institutions that reflect the evolving concert of Europe--institutions that both the Soviet Union and Germany can support. For a solution of the German issue, the United States should back an all-European security compact, which would first augment and later supplant the Cold War alliances, creating a stable and mutually acceptable framework for the legitimate interests of Germany, the Soviet Union and their European neighbors.

The end of U.S.-Soviet dominance and the beginning of a new Europe has brought to the surface problems of a much older Europe: competing nationalisms, ethnic strife, the German question and other issues that are the legacy of the two world wars, only temporarily hidden underneath the even heavier burdens imposed by the Cold War. The common historical lineage of Europe’s unresolved problems requires a common institutional framework for their belated resolution. The United States must aid in this process and desist from opposing--or half-heartedly endorsing--a pan-European forum, such as that provided by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Helsinki process, ostensibly because it would further legitimize Soviet borders but in reality because a multilateral, all-European diplomatic setting would dilute American influence.

The recognition that we can no longer act as a European superpower applies with special urgency to our dealings with West Germany, particularly in matters of German unification and American nuclear diplomacy. Over the decades many Germans have come to suspect that our verbal support of German unity was just that: lip service given freely so long as there was little chance that unity could come about. To confirm these suspicions now with a hesitant or otherwise hedged commitment to unification would destroy the partnership with our most important and loyal ally and break the backbone of our involvement in Europe.

The Germans themselves show no inclination to sever that historic bond. Although preoccupied with the pressing issues of East Germany, they consistently reaffirm loyalty to the transatlantic and West European communities. To accuse them of harboring “neutralist” tendencies is both insulting and absurd--insulting because it questions their consistently demonstrated commitment to Western values, absurd because the concept of neutrality has lost real meaning in the modern world. The Germans are an integral part of a fully interdependent global economy, and of a fully integrated regional economy. If we are worried about their growing power, let us say so, but let us not fudge the issue with talk about neutrality.

There is also irritation in Germany over the outdated American inclination to use nuclear diplomacy--not only for managing the East-West conflict, but also for managing the alliance. On such issues as arms control and the modernization of nuclear weapons in Europe, Washington has found it difficult to resist the temptation to exercise political leverage over an ally with the disposition of weapons that obtain little military or strategic leverage over the opponent. But this kind of diplomacy divides the alliance because it inevitably emphasizes the different security interests of its members and their different political or legal status in NATO. This applies especially to the Federal Republic, which is full of nuclear weapons but devoid of nuclear control.

By pointing the way toward ridding Central Europe of nuclear weapons, Soviet diplomacy under Mikhail S. Gorbachev not only appeals to deeply held sentiments, especially in Germany, but obtains for Moscow maximum external leverage at a time of minimal internal strength. This raises the danger that the Soviet Union may profit doubly from the realities of the nuclear age: first, reaping advantage from having gained nuclear parity with the United States, thus undermining the credibility of the American nuclear guarantee to Europe; second, reaping advantage from the scaling-down of nuclear weapons, undermining the confidence in American diplomacy.

What remains at stake in the East-West conflict cannot be won in a bilateral contest with the opponent, in which the gain of one is automatically the loss of the other. It can only be won among America’s partners, whose continued confidence in U.S. diplomacy is itself the stake. If America were to lose that confidence and the support which attends it, the ironic consequence would be that the weakening of Soviet power and influence we witness in Europe would be matched by a concurrent weakening of American power and influence.

Soviet failure and American success in the Cold War would become entwined in a paradoxical dialectic of gain and loss, of power and purpose. In that case, what may ultimately emerge is a community of interest between the former Cold War antagonists, based on mutual vulnerability to nuclear destruction, on compensating economic-political strengths and weaknesses and on the possibility that they may face similar geostrategic challenges that require cooperation.

The powers that divided and thus stabilized postwar Europe may yet in the new century distance themselves from it, turning former enmity into political and economic partnership.

CONCERNS: Europeans are ambivalent on German reunification, says Jeane Kirkpatrick. M5