Germany Proceeds With Bait-and-Switch Encouraging Sudeten Claims and Moves to Reschedule Syrian Debt

Tomorrow, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and Czech Foreign Minister Josef Zieleniec are scheduled to initial a possibly portentous bilateral declaration dealing with an issue that set the stage for World War II. As described in the Casey Institute’s recent Perspective entitled Watch on the Rhine: German Efforts To Extort the Czechs, Forge Relations With Rogue States Are Ominous Indicators, the ostensible purpose of this accord is to put to rest residual problems stemming from the Nazi invasion and occupation of the Czech Republic and the subsequent, involuntary removal of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovak territory.

Although the Czech coalition government has persuaded itself that the joint declaration will forestall financial and property claims by Sudeten Germans — whose welcoming of Hitler’s "liberators" was directly responsible for this ethnic minority’s subsequent relocation to Bavaria — it seems unlikely to have that effect. This view has been seconded by Radovan Suchánek, a distinguished lecturer at the Department of Constitutional Law at Charles University in Prague. On 12 December, he described the declaration to be "soft international law," essentially a political document with no legally binding effect.

The reaction of the Sudeten German-dominated Bavarian government is even more worrisome. As Alois Glück, leader of the Christian Socialist Union (the ruling Christian Democrats’ Bavarian faction) in the Bavarian Landsrat, put it: "The declaration does not fulfill all hopes and expectations. It could, however, become an important building block in the reconciliation process." CSU Chairman Edmund Stoiber went even further, announcing that his government insists that the joint declaration does not imply waiving of individual property claims on the part of Sudeten Germans against the Czech Republic or its citizens. He also demanded that Sudeten Germans be included henceforth in dialogues between the German and Czech governments and stressed that the Czech translation of the Joint Declaration must not weaken the impact of the term "expulsion" used to describe the Sudeten Germans’ fate.

Such statements suggest the seeds of future, potentially serious problems between Germany and the Czech Republic. If, in the future, the Kohl government is unable — or, more likely, simply unwilling — to deny predictable Sudeten German demands for restitution, Prague will come under withering pressure to provide compensation.

There is, unfortunately, a recent precedent for this sort of German bait-and-switch at Czech expense. The Czech state was induced to compensate those among its nationals who were victims of Nazi aggression in the expectation that Germany would reimburse it, even on an incremental basis. As recently as the Spring of 1996, the Czech Foreign Ministry asserted that reimbursement would be negotiated with Germany as part of the Joint Declaration. Yet it is nowhere to be found in the document that is to be initialed by foreign ministers tomorrow.

Bailing Out the Syrians

In addition to the ominous overtures being made by Germany to rogue nations from North Korea to Iraq that are itemized in the first Perspective published in the Casey Institute’s "Watch on the Rhine" series, the Institute has learned that Germany is participating in — if not leading — a bid by the European Union to reschedule Syria’s foreign debt.

According to the U.S. State Department, that debt amounts to roughly $20 billion — of which approximately $11 billion is owed to the former Soviet Union. The Department also believes that over 50% of Syria’s budget goes to military expenditures.

In short, Germany’s cooperation in a Syrian rescheduling will have several predictable consequences:

• First, it will free up resources that would otherwise be unavailable for Syria’s offensively oriented military build-up, provocative special operations forces maneuvers near the Golan Heights, drug trafficking, sponsoring of international terrorism, etc.
• Second, it will alleviate pressure on the military police state of Hafez Assad to engage in systemic economic reforms — to say nothing of political liberalization. In short, it provides an out for one of the most ruthless and ambitious totalitarians on the planet.
• Third, the Russians will probably not agree to reschedule the debt owed to the former USSR, improving the prospects of repayment to Moscow thanks to a Western taxpayer-subsidized debt-relief for Syria. Alternatively, Russia may simply seek to apply Syria’s outstanding debt to future arms purchases — thereby, bartering away an otherwise unrecoverable debt and helping to preserve the ex-Soviet military-industrial complex. Such an arrangement was recently brokered with Libya by one of international totalitarianism’s best friends — Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov.

As the Center for Security Policy warned in 26 January 1994 Decision Brief entitled Look Who’s Helping Underwrite the ‘Radical Entente’: Why are Tokyo, Bonn Bailing Out Teheran, Pyongyang?(2), Germany has already participated in unhelpful reschedulings to rogue nations. One of these involved deferring payment on Iran’s multi-billion dollar short-term debt in early 1994, despite repeated U.S. demarches urging them not to do so. At the time, the Center expressed its grave concerns about the larger pattern of which such German behavior was part:

"Unfortunately, such a prospect is par for the course for Germany, a nation that has not shrunk from selling poison gas manufacturing facilities to Libya or from serving as the principal supplier of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. In fact, Bonn has consistently demonstrated nothing but contempt for strategic export controls and refuses to exercise restraint even in instances where Germany’s own security interests may be put in mortal danger."

The Bottom Line

Tomorrow, many in Germany and the Czech Republic are going to believe hopefully that genuine reconciliation has been accomplished between two neighbors who share not only a border but a troubled history. Regrettably, the Casey Institute predicts that the good will that is supposed to be engendered by the joint declaration will be relatively short-lived as the Sudeten Germans look to the next pressure point — the Czech Republic’s candidacy for membership in the European Union — to reopen the issue of compensation and restitution.

It also seems likely that the German government will not adequately resist such pressures, much as it sought to reopen the border issue with Poland a few short years ago after a bilateral reconciliation agreement had been concluded between Bonn and Warsaw. Only an international outcry prevented Chancellor Kohl from pursuing such an odious gambit. Where will the international outcry come from next time?

At the very least, Germany ought to honor its responsibility to compensate the Czech Republic for outlays the latter has made to assist victims of Nazi aggression. An international outcry is no less in order now regarding the incipient EU rescheduling of Syria’s external debt. The United States and others who understand the true malevolence of Hafez Assad’s murderous regime must take immediate steps to interpose the strongest objections to such an action — cutting off debt rescheduling initiatives in the Paris Club of official creditors or elsewhere (e.g., the London Club of commercial bank creditors, multilateral institutions, etc.)

In the event that U.S. diplomatic protests are actually issued — and once again given short-shrift(3) — the need for more effective American means of securing allied attention and cooperation will be self-evident. In particular, such a response will only underscore the necessity of retaining and utilizing statutory tools provided by the D’Amato legislation concerning Iran and Libya and the Helms-Burton legislation on Cuba.

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1. This is the second in a series of periodic Casey Institute Perspectives designed to monitor and determine how best to respond to German activities inimical to U.S. and Western interests and propose corrective actions that should be taken by the German government and/or those of its allies.

2. In addition to this paper, (No. 94-D 08), see the Center’s other papers dealing with the Radical Entente papers on its Web site — www.security-policy.org

3. A distinguished member of the Center’s Board of Advisors once ridiculed these all-too-often ineffectual acts of diplomacy by referring to them as "demarshmellows."