ANALYSIS / THE KREMLIN’S ‘GERMAN QUESTION’ : Specter of Historic Foe Unified--and in Rival NATO--Rekindles Old Fears

When Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev visited West Germany a year ago, he was asked the inevitable question: How long would the Berlin Wall stand, when would the two Germanys be reunited?

This was a question for the future, Gorbachev replied, showing some new Soviet flexibility on what had been a “No, never” issue for the Kremlin. “Let history decide,” Gorbachev told the West Germans.

Suddenly, that future is almost here, and Moscow is searching for an answer to a much more urgent question: not when East and West Germany will be unified, but how.

That issue has been boiled down in frank East-West discussions to the future military status of Germany. Will it be a full-fledged member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an associate member, neutral or nonaligned or even, as Moscow has proposed, a member of both NATO and the rival Warsaw Pact?

The question is now the most immediate and, in many ways, the most important foreign policy issue facing the Soviet Union, and its satisfactory resolution is crucial for the country and Gorbachev himself.

Proposals are “ripening,” Gorbachev said after returning earlier this month from his talks in Washington with President Bush. But he cautioned that whatever formula is agreed on, it should be realistic and “keep interests in balance.”

The Background

This is an entirely different approach to the “German question” than the West’s--and not surprisingly, for Moscow views with deep ambivalence the changes under way in Eastern Europe.

With perestroika bringing a sweeping political, economic and social transformation to the Soviet Union, Gorbachev became the missionary of reform throughout the socialist world, and he personally promoted many of last year’s historic changes in Eastern Europe.

At the same time, however, Moscow sees itself losing a security buffer, which it built after World War II, in which the Soviets lost an estimated 27 million people. The buffer was to ensure that never again would the Soviet Union be threatened--militarily, ideologically or economically--from the West.

The Warsaw Pact this week discussed plans for dissolving itself, and Soviet troops are pulling out of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland and reducing their numbers in East Germany. The only other Communist-led government among Moscow’s old allies is in Bulgaria; and Comecon, the socialist trading bloc, does more and more of its business on a cash-and-carry basis, paid in dollars rather than rubles.

The impact here of all these changes is great, but the Communists’ loss of power in East Germany was perhaps the greatest jolt. The East Germans were regarded as the best Marxists of all, a nation that proved socialism worked.

The existence of a socialist Germany, moreover, ensured, as Soviet officials put it, that “war and the threat of war will never again arise from German soil.” Put simply, with East Germany as a key member of the Warsaw Pact and 380,000 of its troops stationed there, the Soviet Union felt secure from attack, not only from a now-divided Germany but also from the West. And a divided Germany eased the historical Russian fear of the domination of the European continent by any single nation.

What Gorbachev Wants

Gorbachev, initiating a new approach to international affairs five years ago, had maintained that political understanding could replace military might in ensuring Soviet security--and do it better.

But the impending unification of East and West Germany--which was accepted as inevitable by Moscow last year and is now characterized here as “the moral right of the German people”--has put Gorbachev’s “new political thinking” to its hardest test. “When we cut back on nuclear arms with the Americans, it is through negotiation . . . and still leaves us with enough to retaliate a thousand times over,” a Gorbachev foreign policy adviser explained this week.

What Gorbachev Fears

“But German unification in the context of everything else in Eastern and Central Europe means laying ourselves bare. That is why we find it so difficult to accept a unified Germany in NATO. It means a historical enemy in a powerful rival alliance. It comes with no counterbalancing guarantees for our security. On the contrary, the West’s approach is that of a diktat. “

Gorbachev, speaking this week to the Supreme Soviet, the country’s legislature, stressed his willingness to consider seriously almost any Western proposal--even associate status for unified Germany within NATO--that ensures Soviet security.

But knowing how deep Soviet emotions run on this issue and how vulnerable he will be politically if Soviet security is not assured, Gorbachev reiterated his warning that the West, if it pushes too hard, could jeopardize its whole relationship with the Soviet Union and place at risk all the reforms of perestroika.

“I am not bluffing,” he said.