Integration Is the Best Balm to Soothe Fears of Germany : Europe: Sunday’s election essentially unified the two Germanys. Now the West must engineer the East’s fit into the European Community.

Last Sunday, Helmut Kohl effectively became chancellor of the new Germany, and that country, though not yet born, became the dominant political power of Central Europe. It is now certain that Germany will be preeminent in the European Community and that America’s role as tutor to German democracy and master of Western diplomacy is over. The Germans are now lords of their destiny and unrivaled in shaping Europe’s.

German unification is in fact taking place under the best possible circumstances. Until Sunday’s parliamentary elections in East Germany, the West German Social Democrats dreamed of regaining power, either in December’s parliamentary elections in the Federal Republic or in the first vote to be held after unification. But the price of their pursuing that dream would likely have been political paralysis in the dying East German state and partisan bloodletting in the West.

Instead, when Kohl’s East German allies won an absolute majority, he gained dominance over the politics of both countries, thus reducing the chances that the new nation will be born amid partisan turmoil. He now has critical control over both the timetable for unity and most of the terms. Indeed, without a by-your-leave from the actual election winners, he promptly began prescribing Germany’s future.

The easy part of unification is over. Although Kohl and the two Christian Democrat-led coalitions are so far insulated from political onslaught, he cannot dally. The first free election in the eastern part of Germany since 1933 was a textbook case of voting based on economic self-interest. Most East Germans obviously want one thing: unity as fast as possible, because of the economic opportunity it seems to promise. Meanwhile, West Germans are waking up to the staggering costs of unification, which they must largely bear. Both attitudes argue for making radical changes quickly, before politics turn sour.

Even before the election, Kohl understood that he must rapidly replace East Germany’s discredited currency with the robust deutsche mark. And he gave electoral fortunes a shove by pledging that East Germans could swap at least some of their savings at par--a political boon for his party but economic nonsense if permitted above a modest amount.

Reforming the East German currency without creating a surge of inflation is only one of Kohl’s problems. He must also find unprecedented quantities of ready capital and a means for applying them to an economy that lacks a market system. Economists believe that higher interest rates must follow, with an impact on global credit that, most obviously, will affect the United States’ financing of its trade deficit through borrowing abroad.

German self-absorption also has implications for the European Community. Kohl asserts that East Germany should be welcomed, through adhesion to the Federal Republic, “without the necessity of any further amendments to . . . treaties.” He also wants “to speed up the process of European integration.” But he may not be able to have both, as Germany’s capital demands mount and the difficulties of unity force it to concentrate on its domestic agenda. Building Europe may again be set back, with the blessings of nay-sayers like Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and others who fear that the deutsche mark will dominate their economies.

Pressing on with European integration, however, remains the best, though imperfect, means for quieting fears about the new Germany, for binding it to its Western neighbors, and for giving them some influence over its future. Making the development of East Germany a European rather than solely West German project would be the best safeguard against insularity.

The European Economic Community should also revive a failed experiment of the 1950s: the European Defense Community, which was designed to submerge West German forces in a broader European identity. This course is likely to have more staying power than the U.S. blueprint for security in Central Europe, which is to keep American troops in a united Germany that is integrated within NATO.

Despite his current protests, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev might accept this latter arrangement, with its pledge that today’s East Germany would be kept free of NATO forces. Indeed, after the Christian Democrats’ electoral victory, the Soviets should be more confident that Western institutions can mitigate the risks of instability in Central Europe. But it is increasingly doubtful that a united Germany could exist half-armed, half-disarmed, that it would be willing to deal with nuclear doctrines that have been a key element of the U.S. presence on the Continent, or that it would keep enough men in uniform to assure Congress that Germans were doing more than Americans for Germany’s “security.”

More likely, the U.S. troop presence in Europe, and especially in Germany, will shrink apace with the withdrawal of Soviet forces. U.S. political influence will also continue shrinking, and it is clearly not being replaced by either diplomatic leadership or economic activity, especially toward the critical area of Eastern Europe.

In time, this might not matter, and the United States can play a secondary role in Europe’s security and political development. Today, however, virtually no one, from the Atlantic to the Urals, is comfortable with America’s passivity while the center of Europe is being reshaped. This includes a Germany that, despite its newfound potency, remains anxious to have the steadying influence of a strong and active U.S. partner.