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Introduction: A New Germany--a New Europe?
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17227 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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2 / 1990 |
909 Words |
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Eastern Europe is being transformed before our eyes. In a series of unprecedented actions, communist governments are turning over their power and authority to the people whom they have suppressed for more than 40 years. All the extraordinary events of the fall of 1989 deserve their place in history, but the most significant was the decision of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to allow East Germany to open its borders and effectively bring down the Berlin Wall.
When East and West Berliners emotionally embraced under the Brandenburg Gate last November, it was inevitable that the question would be asked: Has the reunification of Germany begun? Less than three weeks later, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl fueled speculation by proposing a 10-point plan for "a reunified Germany" within, he emphasized, "a new political structure" for all of Europe. While setting no timetable, Kohl outlined a series of possible economic, monetary, environmental, and other agreements that could lead to the creation of "common governmental committees" and even a common parliament.
Reaction to the Kohl plan was immediate and vigorous. East Germany's communist leader said flatly that a "unity of Germany isn't on the agenda." A Gorbachev aide reacted that the plan went too far and ignored East Germany's views about its own future. A Polish government spokesman asserted that any such plan would have to guarantee postwar borders and be approved by the four World War II Allied powers. President Bush stated the United States would back reunification it if stemmed from a free vote in both Germanys, was gradual, and resulted in a Germany that remained in NATO and the European Community. He also said any new Germany should be based on the "inviolability-of-borders" principle adopted in the Helsinki Agreement of 1975.
No other question affects the people of Europe so deeply as "the German question." No other development would have a greater impact on the politics and economics of Europe than German reunification. It is no exaggeration to say that what kind of Germany emerges in the years ahead will determine in large measure the kind of world in which all Europeans will live.
To put the tumultuous events of recent months into perspective and to examine what effect the emergence of one Germany would have on Europe and the world, THE WORLD & I went to leading authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Although Gorbachev has ceded final authority regarding the question of unity to the two Germanys, states Robert Hunter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Soviet leader has also made it clear that any merging Germany must "not pose a new threat to Soviet security." For both East and West, argues Hunter, the futures of Germany and Europe are inseparable: Both, in the words of President Bush, must be "whole and free." The United States has a vital role to play in the forging of the new global system, he says, although this country must adjust its instruments of foreign policy and national security from those of military power to economics.
What West Germany has been seeking for more than 30 years, declares Werner Kaltefleiter of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, is not reunification but self-determination for all Germans under the UN Charter. If the two Germanys should then freely decide to reunify, "no democratic country would
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