The New Germany: Engine For Democratic Change In The East Or Moscow’s Trojan Horse In The West?

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev goes to Bonn today, searching for fresh economic and technological assistance from Germany and seeking to divide the Germans from their Western allies. Timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, the Gorbachev visit will be the occasion for the signing of the first Soviet-German non-aggression treaty since the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 1939.

The Center for Security Policy believes that German reunification has created new opportunities for a Europe free of communism and the growth of personal liberties and economic prosperity throughout the continent. Unfortunately, the emerging German-Soviet relationship has also produced new openings for the Soviet Union to advance its longstanding foreign policy agenda: the demise of NATO, the neutralization of Germany, the diminution of the U.S. presence — and influence — in Europe and unencumbered access to Western financial and technological resources.

The Center today released an analysis of these opportunities and risks entitled Reunified Germany, the New Europe: Opportunities and Challenges. This analysis concludes that the United States must play an active, engaged leadership role if the considerable positive potential of a unified, democratic Germany is to be realized. The Center recommends that:

• NATO must be preserved as the preeminent political and military organization charged with, and capable of, contending with the actual military capabilities — as opposed to the professed or perceived intentions — of the Soviet Union. Specifically, the United States must resist attempts (whether emanating from Moscow, Bonn or elsewhere) that would supplant NATO as the guarantor of West European security with a new arrangement under the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).

 

• Germany must make full, timely and good-faith disclosure of all of its agreements with the Soviet Union. This is especially true of those of an economic, financial or technological nature that might bear on larger Western security interests.

 

• Germany — like all Western nations — must channel and constrain its economic and particularly its high technology assistance to Moscow so as to avoid a situation in which such assistance enables anti-reform forces in the USSR to prevail over those seeking democracy and free markets.

Copies of the paper Reunified Germany, which has benefitted from a forthcoming book by Senior Associate Dr. Constantine Menges entitled The Future of Germany and the Atlantic Alliance, may be obtained by contacting the Center.