SIX YEARS AGO, Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his vision of the future of Europe: a “common European home” from the Atlantic to the Urals. Founded in a “common cultural and historical heritage,” this new Europe would integrate its economies and cooperate to guarantee peace and security and would unite a continent divided by fifty years of cold war tensions. Yet as attractive as many observers found his proposal, it was significant less for what it included than for what it omitted: a major role for the United States. By drawing the boundaries of the common European home at the eastern shores of the Atlantic, Gorbachev implicitly excluded America from the continent’s future.
In reality, the idea of a common European home was simply an updated version of Moscow’s traditional policy of seeking to divide the United States from its European allies. Though he claimed to have no such ulterior motive, Gorbachev clearly sought to achieve through diplomacy and propaganda what his predecessors since Stalin had failed to achieve through missile flexing and intimidation. In doing so, he casually overlooked the fact that the real bonds of culture and history extend from Europe to America, not from Sverdlovsk to Brittany. The values of the Western tradition, the steadfast adherence to democratic principles, and the belief in the fundamental dignity of the individual create philosophical ties that bind more strongly than the happenstance of the continent’s geography.
The West, however, cannot afford to dismiss Moscow’s gambit as empty rhetoric. This concept appealed to many because new realities in Europe demand new approaches to the problems of Europe. A liberated Eastern Europe and a vastly diminished threat from the former Soviet Union doom to failure policies based on the cold war status quo. This does not mean the United States should declare victory and disengage from Europe. It does mean that U.S. policymakers must articulate a new vision for Europe and recast America’s role to meet today’s problems.
The Soviet Union lost the cold war in Europe. But this does not yet mean that the West has won it. We must still consolidate the victory. The countries of Eastern Europe lack a security structure. Massive economic problems threaten their fragile new democratic systems. Germany, uncertain of its proper role, has drifted from its geopolitical moorings. With new noncommunist governments in Moscow and in many former Soviet republics, the rationale for a strong NATO with a major U.S. military presence has eroded. To cope with these new conditions, we need policies that renew existing transatlantic institutions such as NATO and that build bridges to integrate Eastern Europe into the West. While Gorbachev spoke of a common European home, we should dedicate ourselves to building a common transatlantic home.
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Since World War II, U.S. policy in Europe has been based on four fundamental geopolitical facts:
Soviet military presence in the heart of Europe. World War II brought Soviet troops to the banks of the Elbe. On June 4, 1945, Winston Churchill sent an urgent message to Harry Truman, the new President of the United States. He warned, “An iron curtain is coming down on their front. We do not know what lies behind it. It is vital that we have an understanding with the Russians now, before our armies are mortally weakened, and before we withdraw to our zones of occupation.” Unfortunately, his advice was ignored. When the United States reduced its armed forces from 12 million to 1.6 million troops by 1947, the West accepted Soviet conventional superiority and thereby lost its leverage to force a Soviet pullback. After Moscow neutralized the U.S. nuclear advantage by developing its own atomic weapons in 1949, the East-West standoff in Central Europe was frozen into place. With 380,000 crack Soviet troops in East Germany alone, deterring further Soviet aggression or intimidation became the central U.S. preoccupation in Europe for half a century.
Soviet imperial domination over Eastern Europe. Within three years of the end of World War II, Stalin had installed puppet regimes in every East European country. Moscow exercised ironclad control over their Communist leaders. When the Kremlin told them to jump, they only asked how high. These countries were dominated militarily and geopolitically by the Moscow-controlled Warsaw Pact, which sanctioned the presence of as many as 800,000 Soviet troops on East European soil, and economically by the so-called Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. When Hungary and Czechoslovakia stepped out of line in 1956 and 1968, the Kremlin brought the full weight of the Red Army upon them, providing an object lesson of the consequences of the expansion of Soviet domination westward.
Soviet-imposed division of Germany. In the immediate postwar years, Germany lay in ruins, its territory divided between Western and Soviet occupation forces, its industrial infrastructure in shambles, and its population decimated by the wartime loss of 6 million people. But free-market economics and democratic politics—both made possible by NATO’s protective shield and by the Marshall Plan’s economic aid—produced the “German miracle.” After forty-six years apart, the 62 million people in West Germany enjoyed a per capita income of $20,440, while the 16 million in East Germany languished with one of less than $5,000. Yet a profound tension remained. The unnatural division of Germany highlighted the unnatural division of Europe. Bonn’s dependence on NATO for security pulled it toward the West. But Moscow continually exploited its control over East Germany to try to pull West Germany to the East.
Fragmented and vulnerable Western Europe. The end of World War II left Western Europe politically and militarily vulnerable. The nations of Western Europe had common interests and values, but no common political structures. Divided by traditional rivalries and preoccupied with rebuilding their economies, these countries needed the United States to forge a common Western strategy to cope with the Soviet threat. Only the United States had the economic and military power to advance Western security through NATO and to push Western Europe to take the first timid steps toward unity through the European Economic Community. Europe’s great powers had become medium powers, relegated to the second tier of states by their size, their dependence on the U.S. nuclear guarantee, and their inability to coordinate their defense and foreign policies.
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None of those conditions is valid today. Yet U.S. policies are to a great extent still premised on them. The deployment of over 300,000 U.S. troops in Western Europe, the expenditure of $180 billion per year on European defense, the reluctance to provoke Moscow by developing security ties with Eastern Europe, and the advocacy of European economic integration even at the price of accepting protectionism all were policies well suited to coping with the challenges of the past. But today they are as obsolete as a Model T Ford.
As we revise our policy toward Europe, we must address five new realities:
Security vacuum in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The termination of the Warsaw Pact in March 1991 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in August 1991 have left half of Europe without even a shadow of a security structure. These changes, though overwhelmingly positive, have created two new challenges. The first is the vacuum of power created in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The fact that during the postwar period virtually all European states were members of NATO or the Warsaw Pact created a certain geopolitical stability. While acute tensions divided the two sides, the lines between the blocs were clearly drawn, thereby decreasing the risks of adventurism and reducing the chances of a miscalculation leading to war. Today, however, Eastern Europe faces a period of unprecedented instability without any functioning security organization.
This would not matter if the East European states and the western former republics of the Soviet Union were strategically insignificant or had strong, stable governments. But neither is the case. Eastern Central Europe has been the focal point of the continent’s political struggles for two hundred years. Both world wars were triggered in the region, and the four partitions of Poland between Germany and Russia attest to its geopolitical importance. The new East European democracies are weakened by ethnic divisions, hobbled by economic chaos, and unpracticed in the art of self-government. Moreover, compared to the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe is a pillar of geopolitical stability.
The second challenge strikes at the heart of NATO and the U.S. presence in Europe. Many believe that with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the Soviet Union, no compelling reason exists for the deployment of U.S. troops in Europe. Even though informal agreements will reduce U.S. forces to approximately 150,000, pressure will grow from West Europeans to phase out our forces totally and particularly our nuclear weapons. Among Americans across the political spectrum, budgetary pressures will focus increasing attention on slashing the amount spent annually on European defense, especially as our NATO allies trim back their own military expenditures. Without a renewed mission, the most successful alliance in history will become a footnote in history.
Fragile new democracies in Eastern Europe. Since their liberation from Soviet domination, the people of Eastern Europe have learned a chastening lesson: tearing down a corrupt old regime has always been easier than building a just new order. As Tocqueville observed, democratic government does not ensure good government. While no one would suggest turning back the clock, the central issue in Europe today is whether the new East European democracies will have enough time to implement reform before their economic problems overwhelm them.
The euphoria of revolution has been dampened by the hard realities of government. The economic and political transformation these countries must attempt is unprecedented. Handicapped with suffocating bureaucracies, worthless currencies, obsolete technology, globally uncompetitive goods, inefficient state-owned industries, and unproductive workers, even radical reforms will not remake their economies with the wave of a wand. Moreover, despite already low standards of living, conditions will inevitably get worse before they get better. Politically, the lack of tested leaders, established parties, and democratic traditions combined with potential ethnic rivalries and deepening economic chaos create fertile ground for demagogues. No democratic regime in history has ever weathered a storm of such overwhelming magnitude.
Unified but drifting Germany. Unification has put Germany at the pinnacle of its potential political and economic power in Europe. With 78 million people, it is the most populous country in Europe. If workers in east Germany were to match the productivity of those in the west—which is inevitable over time—the united country’s GNP would today total at least $1.5 trillion, almost double its closest European rival. Though their size will be reduced, the current unified German armed forces number 590,000 troops, twice the size of Britain’s and the largest military establishment in Central Europe except Moscow’s. With its geopolitical weight, Germany potentially can dominate not only European economic institutions but also its political and security structures.
None of these facts has been lost on Germany’s neighbors. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not sound the death knell of traditional anxieties about Germany. France and Britain were profoundly ambivalent about unification. Other members of the European Community voiced concerns about Germany’s inevitable preeminence in the region. Poland, embroiled by Bonn in an unnecessary dispute over ratification of their common postwar border, feared German revanchism. East European governments implored U.S. firms to invest on their territory in order to avoid German economic domination. For many Europeans, the unification of Germany harkens back to a time fifty years ago when Germans rode through European capitals not in Mercedes limousines but in Tiger tanks, expanding influence not through economic cooperation but through military domination and terror.
While Germany’s power will inevitably grow, the key question is how it will be used. Germany is not a potential rogue state or threat to its neighbors. The changes wrought by forty years of democracy and close association with Western institutions have transformed its society. But Germany must undergo a profound adjustment. During the cold war, free Germany lacked the power and confidence to chart an independent foreign policy and felt compelled to maintain a tight alliance with the West. With the waning of the cold war, that has changed. While still limited by the legacies of World War II, Germany is now tentatively staking out its new European and global roles. Our challenge lies in helping the Germans define constructive ways to use their new power.
There are two key concerns. The first centers on the reemergence of Germany’s geopolitical tradition of keeping one foot in the East and one in the West. The cooperation between Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia, the covert rearming of Germany after World War I, Germany’s role in the industrialization of Soviet Russia under the Rapallo Treaty, and the division of Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin marked the darkest chapters of that tradition.
In the Gorbachev era, signs of an emerging special German-Soviet relationship were troubling. German leaders fell victim to the myth that close economic ties would inevitably lead to amicable political relations. In October 1990, Chancellor Kohl stated in a major speech, “The extensive development of German-Soviet relations plays a key role in pan-European responsibility. It must be borne in mind that the united Germany lies at the heart of a no longer divided but merging Europe. This bridging function will obviously yield tangible economic benefits for us and our partners.”
Although he played a courageous and historic role in achieving German unity, Kohl’s policy of pandering to Gorbachev was wrong. Germany has given or promised to give $35 billion in government aid to the Kremlin in the period from 1989 to the August 1991 coup. This was at a time when Moscow’s ability to service its foreign debt had become doubtful at best and when Gorbachev not only continued to challenge Western interests but had also entered a tight alliance with Communist hard-liners. Unless targeted to help legitimate nationalist and democratic forces in the republics rather than the discredited structures of the center, German aid could prop up a dying system and seriously undermine Western interests.
The second concern about Germany focuses on its blatantly irresponsible technology-export policies. Because of its constricted political role during the cold war, Germany threw its national energies into the economic sphere, particularly world trade. This evolved into a practice of selling anything to anyone who had the money, regardless of the potential political or military consequences. German firms designed and built the plant in Rabta, Libya, that has given Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi the capability to build chemical weapons. They were the principal contractors for Saddam Hussein’s network of hardened command bunkers. Apart from Jordan, more firms from Germany sought to break the U.N.-sanctioned blockade of Iraq than from any other country. In the area of technology transfers, rising German power needs to be matched with a greater sense of strategic responsibility.
Gradually unifying but protectionist Western Europe. After World War II, many observers remarked that the best Europeans were Americans. U.S. enthusiasm for achieving West European unity, expressed through the Marshall Plan and its advocacy of the European Economic Community, exceeded that of all our major allies except Italy. The breakthrough came with the signing of the Single European Act by the original twelve EC members in 1986. Economic integration is to take place in 1992, with a common currency to be introduced in the late 1990s. By shifting so many economic policy issues to Brussels, the influence of European political institutions has grown. And the desire to carve out a world role for Europe has increasingly led to coordination of foreign and defense policies.
A united Europe has not only advantages but also disadvantages for the United States. We clearly benefit from the rise of a stronger and more cohesive political unit to balance Russia, thereby permitting a reduction in our military role in Europe. We will also gain from having more active partners in Europe to grapple with regional crises around the world. But unfortunately, a united Europe, with a greater GNP than that of the United States, is becoming a “fortress Europe.”
The closer post-1992 Europe comes, the more protectionist the European Community becomes. European companies received an average of $115 billion a year in state subsidies during the 1980s, a practice that shows no signs of abating. Today, the annual subsidy for state-owned steel companies is $225 million. If a ship is built with subsidized steel, the builder can get an additional 13 percent in shipbuilding subsidies from the community. Airbus, the European aerospace consortium, receives an estimated $20 billion in subsidies, while Air France raked in $400 million and the Belgian airline Sabena requested $1 billion. Unless the European Community starts to open its domestic markets, it is inevitable that the rest of the world will close theirs.
Some observers have questioned whether European economic integration has become incompatible with U.S. interests. On the whole, the strategic benefits continue to outweigh the economic costs of rising protectionism. But as European security concerns are reduced and as economic issues assume greater relative importance, the United States can no longer automatically support unity at any price.
Collapse of Soviet communism. The August 1991 revolution has created an unprecedented opportunity to base peace not on the balance of military power but on the foundation of common Western values.
Since the end of World War II, all Communist Soviet leaders consistently pursued four objectives in Europe. They wanted the United States out of Europe. They wanted a denuclearized Europe. They wanted NATO dissolved. And they wanted a neutral Germany. It is ironic that despite the Soviet defeat in the cold war, Gorbachev came closer to achieving these objectives than at any point during the cold war. While Americans love checkers, Gorbachev knew chess and played to win. In the new Europe, he played for position, thinking ahead ten moves in the hope of boxing us into moves that would inevitably have led to a Soviet checkmate.
In the Gorbachev period, the Soviet Union tried to seduce Germany into a middle ground between East and West and hoped that the United States—unsure of its security mission in a Europe that no longer recognizes a Soviet threat—would lack the domestic support for spending tens of billions of dollars on Europe’s defense. A gradual U.S. disengagement would have opened the path for the Soviet Union—the strongest conventional power and the only nuclear superpower in Europe—to dominate the continent. Moscow would not have attacked the countries of Western Europe militarily but would have exercised a silent veto over their security policies and could have used its military dominance to extract economic assistance from them as tribute.
Today, the question is how much has changed. In the past, Russian and Soviet tsars sought to borrow ideas from Europe in order to try to acquire the power to dominate Europe. The new Soviet revolution represents a historic opportunity to break with that imperial tradition. The new governments in Moscow and the former Soviet republics can now borrow from Europe’s free-market and democratic traditions in order to become part of Europe philosophically, as well as geographically.
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With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the traditional rationale for the U.S. role in Europe has been dealt a fatal blow. In 1971, the Mansfield amendment—which would have halved the U.S. military presence in Europe—was defeated by only one vote in the Senate. It is only a matter of time before a modern-day Mansfield amendment calling for a total withdrawal is introduced in Congress. Some on the American left argue that our new emphasis should be on domestic issues and that our victory in the cold war allows us to shake off old commitments. Others on the American right argue that a Europe fully recovered from World War II should not need the assistance of the United States and should pay the bills for its own defense. Many Europeans, tired of NATO low-altitude training flights and exhausted by forty years of brinkmanship, simply want the Americans to pack up and go home.
All of these arguments are flawed. First, two world wars have proved that the United States ignores events in Europe at its own peril. Had we been engaged in Europe, rather than sulking in isolation after World War I, we could have tipped the balance of power against the aggressors, possibly deterring rather than fighting World War II. Despite the waning of the cold war, the United States has major political and economic interests in Europe. Our commitment to Europe is based not on philanthropy but on interests. The U.S. role in NATO is not only needed on its merits but also gives us significant indirect leverage in addressing such issues as the Persian Gulf crisis and trade disputes. Without a military presence in Europe, we will have no voice in Europe.
In a historical perspective, Europe has been an even less stable place than the Middle East. The rigid stability of a Europe divided into two cold war camps has been the exception for a continent buffeted by centuries of war and instability. With the end of the cold war, Europe will not descend into fratricidal war, but the possibility for conflict and armed clashes will persist and even increase. Yugoslavia’s civil war is a case in point. It is astonishing that the return of open warfare in Europe has not set off alarm bells in every European capital. The intermingling of scores of ethnic groups and the myriad competing territorial claims throughout the continent create endless possibilities for conflict and particularly as the relationships among the newly independent Soviet republics are sorted out. We have a profound stake in preventing the return of armed conflict to Europe. If we abandon our major role in Europe, we will relegate ourselves to the position of supporting cast, effectively writing ourselves out of any significant part in Europe’s new geopolitical script.
Second, though more self-reliant, Europeans still need a security relationship with the United States. The two major reasons for the creation of NATO forty-four years ago were to deter Soviet aggression and to provide a secure home for the Germans. Those reasons are still valid today. While the threat of aggression by the newly independent former Soviet republics is now minimal, the idea that four centuries of Russian and Soviet expansionist tradition will instantly evaporate might be comforting but cannot be counted upon. The former Soviet Union still has thousands of strategic nuclear warheads targeted on the United States, the most powerful conventional army in Europe, and a modern blue-water navy. Yeltsin has already made some welcome changes in Moscow’s foreign policy. But Russia is a major world power, and the Russians are a proud people. We should not automatically assume that a democratic Russia will be an international pussycat.
Europe needs a security structure. A NATO with a major U.S. leadership role has played an indispensable role not only in shielding Western Europe during the cold war but also as an example to the nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Today, no alternative security structure exists. Until a viable substitute evolves and proves itself, we would be making an irrevocable error in dismantling NATO or disengaging from NATO. In a period of massive instability in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we should be exploring ways to preserve NATO rather than looking for ways to eliminate it.
Some observers argue that a post-1992 superstate can unify the cacophony of European views and speak with one voice in addressing all these concerns. But that vision has become a pipe dream. Concrete national differences over policy, not petty parochial disputes over procedure, have kept Europeans divided. And they will continue to do so. In the Persian Gulf crisis, our European allies scattered like a flock of quail. A few, particularly Britain and France, fought side by side with our troops in the Kuwaiti deserts. But most, especially Germany, stuck their heads in the sand. In Yugoslavia’s internal crisis, mediators from the European Community responded like Keystone Kops. During the initial phases of the crisis, European powers split over whether to support the Communist Serbian and central government or the democratic secessionist republics of Slovenia and Croatia. The community sent teams to act as ceasefire observers but did not marshal its massive political and economic leverage to demand a nonviolent resolution based on democratic self-determination. In its first major political play in the post-cold-war period, Europe fumbled the ball.
No single locus of decision-making exists among our European allies. Aristotle was profoundly perceptive when he wrote that government by the many or government by the few cannot act as efficiently as government by one. In foreign policy, a single point of executive authority is indispensable for decisive action. The premise of those who foresaw the emergence of a European superstate was that Germany would become its natural leader. But the Germans, hamstrung by pacifist tendencies during the Gulf crisis and preoccupied with the costs of unification, forfeited the role. In the meantime, the rest of Europe no longer views German leadership as the answer. Britain and France—who performed decisively in the Gulf—do not wish to defer to Berlin. And the rise of a unified Germany, which dwarfs all other European countries in size, has prompted fears that German leadership will inevitably mean German domination.
The question is not whether but how the United States should maintain its presence in Europe. If we seek to build a common transatlantic home, we must find ways to include those nations in Eastern Europe and among the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union who accept our democratic values. We must also define common purposes and missions with our traditional allies that will give direction to our partnership. While much will depend on the direction of change in the former Soviet republics, a common transatlantic home should be built on five pillars:
1. NATO guarantees for Eastern Europe. Soon after their liberation, the East European democracies began casting about for new security arrangements. At first, they sought to elevate the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) into a new all-European collective security arrangement. Then, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary discussed the formation of a trilateral partnership of their own. Later, all three began floating the idea of creating some kind of “associate status” with the NATO alliance. While NATO has welcomed observers from the new democracies at its headquarters, no concrete security commitment has been expressed or implied. A common transatlantic home requires us to be more responsive to East European security needs.
Collective security through the CSCE is a nonstarter. It has thirty-five diverse members even before the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union are added to its ranks. Its rules requiring unanimity for action create insurmountable hurdles for collective defense. It would recreate the days of the League of Nations, when aggressors could veto collective actions designed to stop them. Moreover, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe is just that: a conference, a diplomatic process, not a real bricks-and-mortar institution. It cannot provide tangible security arrangements, such as the integrated military structure of NATO. Unless institutionalized and bolstered with well-trained and well-equipped forces, the CSCE can never contribute more than added confidence-building measures and a forum for discussion. In a major crisis, it will never be capable of doing more than adopting nonenforceable, wrist-slapping resolutions.
While we should encourage the creation of a trilateral security organization linking Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that alone such action suffices. It is tempting to assume that the defeat of communism will leave peace in its wake and allow all the nations of Europe to focus on economic development. With the profound political instability and dire economic situation in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the region could still become a geopolitical demolition derby. In any wrenching economic crisis, the potential exists for the rise of demagogues, who might play not only on the pain of the transition to the free market but also on virulent nationalism. In Yugoslavia, Serbian Communists have traded on ultranationalism both to keep power and to launch a civil war. While current Russian leaders have combined their nationalism with democracy, we cannot exclude the possibility that others might later emerge who might vent its darker side. If concern still exists about Germany, which has had a democratic government for forty years, there will be even more reason for concern about Russia, which has had a democratic government for less than one year. To put the East Europeans up against Russia would be like fielding an Ivy League football team against the Washington Redskins.
As Europe’s only time-tested security structure, NATO should seek to find ways to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe, particularly over the next decade when the uncertainty centering on instability within the former Soviet Union will run the highest. This does not mean that NATO members should immediately extend its full Article 5 commitment—“an armed attack on one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack on all of them”—to the new democracies. But it does mean that we should think in more subtle terms than an all-or-nothing guarantee. NATO, after all, functions at various levels, including political consultation, military cooperation, and participation in its integrated military command. Because they share our values and because the current vacuum creates an incentive for adventurism, the East European democracies must be brought into NATO’s security sphere without granting them immediate full partnership.
In the short term, while Soviet troops complete their pull-out from Eastern Europe, NATO should foster political ties with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, the only former satellites that have become full-fledged democracies. The United States and its Western European allies should unambiguously declare that NATO has a critical interest in the survival and security of these new democracies. With the collapse of Soviet communism, there is no reason to withhold such a commitment. While the June 1991 NATO statement of concern for Eastern Europe’s security was an excellent beginning, we must go further, putting down a marker that no potential aggressor could ignore. By linking our commitment to democratic rule in East European countries, it will give added incentive to these nations to avoid a reversion to authoritarianism.
In the longer term, NATO should develop formal security links with the East European democracies. Our goal should be their full integration into NATO. In the interim we should take concrete steps in that direction. Historically, almost no previous alliance comes close to matching the level of cooperation inherent in NATO. Its integrated military command stands as the exception, not the rule. Much can therefore be done to build a security relationship with Eastern Europe without bestowing the full rights of NATO membership. For example, formal ties could be developed between NATO and a new trilateral pact between Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In a treaty, the two organizations could agree to respond to threats and attacks on the other, though leaving the choice of specific counteractions to each side’s constitutional and alliance procedures. At the same time, cooperative programs could train the new East European officer corps at NATO institutions, as well as seek eventually to achieve a degree of interoperability in military equipment.
A whole range of possibilities exists to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe through measured NATO actions. There is no magic to any particular combination of policies. But we will never build a common transatlantic home if NATO forces the East Europeans to live outside its protective walls.
2. U.S. activism in Eastern Europe. Interests, not altruism, lead states to cooperate. We must recognize that in the coming decades the thrust of our policy in Europe should center on those states that most need the U.S. connection: the new democracies in Eastern Europe. The United States should make its new relationship with Eastern Europe as important as its traditional ties with Western Europe.
With the receding Soviet threat and advancing integration, Western Europe’s need for close links with the United States will precipitously diminish. But the countries of Eastern Europe, struggling against enormous economic odds, have a great interest in fostering U.S. ties, especially to help them emerge from the shadow of Western European economic domination. Also, as the European Community grants associate-member status to the East Europeans, a close economic relationship could give the United States a potential back door into an increasingly protectionist post-1992 Europe. Although the Bush administration has sketched a credible blueprint for such a relationship, we need to expand its efforts.
We should urge broader implementation of the Polish “shock therapy” model. A clear bottom line has emerged from the experience of transforming command into market economies: faster is better. Trying to phase in the market or build a halfway house between the two systems produces more problems than it solves. Poland, which adopted key macroeconomic reforms almost overnight, experienced the jolt of 200 percent inflation and a 40 percent drop in real income. Even though the Poles still face a long and difficult road to recovery, the mainsprings of the market—free prices, fiscal- and monetary-policy restraint, and international currency convertibility—have begun to turn the situation around. In Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union, where leaders temporized, a vicious cycle developed. Gradualism, far from easing the transition, created protracted agony. That, in turn, generated political pressure to retreat, thereby compounding economic problems and dislocations. Reform through half measures means all pain and no gain.
After helping achieve macroeconomic stability, we should focus not on big-ticket government-to-government aid but on jump-starting the system at the microeconomic level. Before the East Europeans can set the wheel of capitalism in motion, they have to reinvent it. Private property—the link between work and reward—is the key. While Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary have moved quickly, if haltingly, to develop programs to privatize state-owned enterprises, the United States should help on a parallel track by channeling funds into their private sectors, not only through direct investment, but also through infusions of capital by U.S.-sponsored “enterprise funds.” Already operating in Poland and Hungary, the funds train local bankers in sound lending practices and provide them with money for loans to entrepreneurs, which average about $15,000. Unlike the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development—whose bureaucrats seem determined to reproduce clones of West European interventionist economic systems—the enterprise funds will foster competitive market-oriented economies at the grass-roots level.
Though the initial response of Western nations to the needs of Eastern Europe was generous, our financial commitment has yet to match our geopolitical stakes in the success of free-market economics in the nations of the former Soviet bloc. In 1991, for example, the city of Denver paid more money for an expansion baseball team than the United States gave in aid to the people of Poland. This is intolerable. If the Polish people are willing to suffer the transition pains inherent in moving from a command to a free-market economy, we should be willing to invest enough resources to ensure that their cause has the best possible chance of success.
We should help the reformist governments of Eastern Europe to privatize small-scale enterprises. Since 1989, investors have promoted the sale of Eastern Europe’s economic dinosaurs—those industrial monoliths representative of prehistoric times in Eastern Europe’s development. But while these dinosaurs are becoming extinct, little has been done to stimulate the growth of small firms, already an endangered species in Eastern Europe. To make this process more effective, the privatization of small firms must be accompanied by the privatization of the banking, agricultural, and housing sectors.
We should open American business schools in each East European country to teach skills required to make the nuts and bolts of capitalism work. These nations need not only financial but also human capital. Those who advocate a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe are totally unrealistic. While the nations of Eastern Europe, like those of Western Europe after World War II, are democracies, they do not have a management class capable of effectively using such aid. Forty-five years of Communist “peace” in Eastern Europe were far more devastating to the management class than were five years of war in Western Europe, despite its enormous casualties.
The nations of Eastern Europe lack the tens of thousands of managers, accountants, and other specialists needed to work the levers of capitalism. The U.S. schools would focus not on the esoterics of econometrics but on teaching basic skills on a massive scale. In view of the modest facilities required—just classrooms and books—these institutions could be established quickly and cheaply. In addition, we should not ignore the need to train government regulators, particularly in the banking and antitrust fields. Without strict but sensible regulation, reforms can become a transition not to a market but to anarchy. East Europeans should learn lessons about the S&L disaster from the books rather than from experience.
We should open Western markets to East European exports. Trade represents the major hope for rapid economic development. With Moscow demanding hard-currency payment for its exports, East European energy costs soared by $20 billion in 1991. Foreign debts limit their credit. Because of the current uncompetitive quality of East European goods, the 30 percent of Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian exports that went to the Soviet Union or East Germany—markets now closed or vanished—has few buyers. It is imperative that the European Community grant them associate status as soon as possible and that the United States immediately liberalize trade by increasing the list of imports given duty-free entry. Since sustained economic growth depends not on aid but on trade, the West must lift these counterproductive obstacles.
In order to prevent potential ethnic conflicts, we should work with the continent’s leaders to channel the new East European nationalism in constructive directions. Those who look with dismay at nationalism’s reemergence should remember that only their sense of distinct identity enabled these peoples to resist and triumph over forty-five years of Soviet indoctrination and repression. Yet, while we should not begrudge natural expressions of nationalism that all Western nations take for granted, we cannot ignore the new potential for ethnic-based conflicts within and among East European states. National borders do not neatly divide separate nations. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania all have significant national minorities, while Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia actually are not nation-states but multinational states.
In Yugoslavia, the United States should come down unequivocally in favor of independence for Slovenia and Croatia. Those who contend that they are too small to be independent countries should be reminded that Slovenia, with its two million people, has a larger population than fifty-eight current members of the United Nations. In the year before the current crisis, both republics consistently expressed the willingness to stay within Yugoslavia if its structure was transformed into a confederation. Their calls for reform were rejected out of hand by the Communist leadership of the federal government and the Serbian republic. Tragically, on the eve of the current armed hostilities, officials from the United States and the European Community made ill-advised statements in support of Yugoslavia’s central government, thereby appearing to give a green light to the use of force by the Communists. It makes no sense to try to maintain the artificial unity of Yugoslavia. The United States and Western Europe should have backed up their demands for an end to Serbian aggression against Croatia with a resolution in the U.N. Security Council calling for the immediate dispatch of peacekeeping forces to Yugoslavia. In this civil war—the first critical test of the post-cold-war European order—the West has so far earned a failing grade.
In the longer term, we should encourage Europe’s leaders—from both west and east—to develop a formal charter of national minority rights. The international community has articulated individual human rights in the U.N. Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and other documents. But apart from the Genocide Convention of 1948, it has not stipulated the legitimate rights of national minorities. While the issue arises also outside of Europe—the Kurds and the Tibetans, for example—Europe’s democratic consensus might enable its leaders to address the question forthrightly. A new European charter must not shift the basis of law from individual to group rights. But it could set guidelines for guaranteeing legitimate national rights in such areas as language use in education and respect for religious freedom, thereby helping to reduce the danger of civil strife or even war resulting from Eastern Europe’s and the former Soviet Union’s potentially explosive national mosaic.
All these steps are needed to integrate the new East European democracies into the common transatlantic home. None is a question of charity. Our interests, as well as theirs, will be advanced by making Eastern Europe the focal point of the U.S. political and economic presence in the region.
3. Close U.S.-German partnership. While the United States should continue its traditional special relationship with Great Britain based on a common heritage and similar assessments of world problems, we need to develop a close working partnership with Germany because of the scope of our mutual power. Our two countries account for 60 percent of NATO’s GNP and its defense spending. Just as Chancellor Kohl and President Bush secured rapid German unification by closely coordinating their actions vis-à-vis Moscow, working together—which will require both sides to compromise—our countries can achieve far more than by working at cross-purposes.
Not only in Europe but also around the world, enduring memories of World War II still limit Germany’s ability to play a role commensurate with its economic power and geopolitical importance. In the Persian Gulf crisis, both internal and external anxieties about greater German activism produced a confused and ineffective policy, with Bonn’s ultimate military contribution amounting to a paltry 720 troops deployed in the inactive Turkish theater. To allay suspicions about a wider global role for Germany, its leaders must work with the other Western powers, particularly the United States. In view of our mutual interests, we should develop a common agenda, with the United States providing the needed “political cover” for a more active German foreign policy.
At the same time, the United States needs a European partner dedicated to expanding opportunities for world trade. Since Germany’s exports account for 35 percent of its GNP—one of the highest totals in the West—Berlin has a profound interest in keeping markets open. We should therefore work in tandem to avoid a post-1992 “fortress Europe,” because higher tariffs will lead to a cycle of retaliation. In addition, we must resolve the outstanding disputes in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) talks. While the West Europeans bicker about retaining $81.6 billion in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, we risk losing an estimated $5 trillion of additional global economic growth over the next decade that a Uruguay Round agreement would bring. A U.S.-German partnership could not only overcome the pleadings of Europe’s and America’s special interests, but it could quiet catcalls from pundits on both sides of the Atlantic who support the “go it alone” approach.
In coordinating fiscal and monetary policies among the major industrial democracies, the United States should at times follow Germany’s lead. U.S. Presidents have repeatedly tried to “jawbone” the Germans to lower interest rates to stimulate the world economy. But we need to concede the wisdom of Germany’s approach. Our looser monetary policies have produced an inflation rate of 6 percent, while Germany’s stands at 3 percent. As a result, U.S. interest rates on long-term loans—which are critical for capital development—run significantly higher than those in Germany. We should therefore think twice before pressing the Germans to ease up on the money supply after every momentary blip in the index of leading economic indicators. While their approach might limit growth in the short term, it recognizes the need to eliminate inflationary expectations in order to enhance the prospects of growth in the long term.
Another issue on our mutual agenda should be controlling the transfer of key technologies to the developing world. The activities of German firms in Libya and Iraq have given Berlin a black eye. Germany does not need a reputation for moral indifference or irresponsibility as it tries to reemerge on the world stage. Unless Germany reins in its freewheeling arms exporters and unless the West clamps down on technology exports to rogue states such as Iraq and Syria, we will someday confront a new Saddam Hussein armed not with SCUDs but ICBMs. To create the impression that Germany is a geopolitical chameleon would not only undermine U.S.-German relations but also would reinforce the historical anxieties about a wider German world role.
A U.S.-German partnership does not mean that our interests will always coincide. But our profound stake in such mutual cooperation will override our differences. Working together, President Bush and Chancellor Kohl achieved something Moscow repeatedly vowed it would never accept: a united Germany fully integrated into NATO. While Germany may not be fully comfortable with its growing world role, it is still the undisputed economic heavyweight of Europe. In the future, our partnership should become ever-more pivotal in advancing our common interests and values.
This partnership will take time to develop and will only work if Germany remains a responsible Western power rather than a country jockeying for position between East and West. At the same time, a special relationship with Germany does not imply the United States putting greater distance between itself and Britain, France, Italy, and other NATO nations. Not only will close relations with our traditional European allies check Germany’s drift to the East, but they also make strategic sense. Britain’s and France’s support, both political and economic, represented a linchpin of success in the Persian Gulf War. Moreover, together they represent a major economic counterweight to Germany within the European Community, as evidenced by the fact that France’s advances in integrating communications and computer technologies lead the world.
4. An open-door policy vis-à-vis the newly independent republics of the Soviet Union. The purpose of the common transatlantic home is not to exclude any nations but to include those nations committed to free-market and democratic values. Before I met with Khrushchev in 1959, British prime minister Harold Macmillan told me that more than anything else the Soviets wanted to be treated like “members of the club.” Now that the nations of the Soviet Union have rejected communism, their credentials for membership are in good order. Before the coup, most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, in the name of stability, decried nationalist movements that opposed Gorbachev. They were wrong. Stability at the cost of individual freedom and national independence is too high a price to pay. We should not condemn nationalism but only the excesses of extreme nationalists. We must find ways to integrate into the West those former Soviet republics that establish democratic institutions, adopt freemarket reforms, and respect the rights of national minorities within their borders.
For most of its history, Russia has been pulled by two traditions—one to withdraw into an insular existence and the other to join the Western world. The defeat of communism following the August 1991 coup signaled a decisive move away from the tradition of Asiatic despotism that dominated Russian foreign policy for over four hundred years and particularly since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Much remains to be done to undo the legacies of the Russian imperial tradition. But under Yeltsin, Russia has placed its relations with the non-Russian peoples of the former Soviet Union on a new and just footing. If he succeeds in creating a nonimperial, noncommunist Russia, the West should roll out the red carpet of freedom in welcoming his Russia into the common transatlantic home.
5. Restructuring NATO for new missions. Alliances are held together by fear, not by love. When fear of a common threat fades, allies tend to drift apart. To paraphrase Mac-Arthur, old alliances never die, they just fade away. Today, NATO must adapt or risk irrelevance. To survive, the alliance must redefine its missions and sense of purpose.
Many observers believe that NATO should become a political rather than a military alliance. In view of the massive changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, they argue, the focus of NATO should shift from common defense to diplomatic conferences, from force planning to crisis management, from calculating logistics to drafting cables. This view concludes that only by radically overhauling its basic purpose can NATO play a meaningful role in the future.
If adopted, this view would eventually consign NATO to the historical scrap heap. No alliance has ever survived for long after security ceased to be its core function. No political substitute exists for the bonds of collective defense. Moreover, in the hardheaded world of power politics, no diplomatic or political initiative can succeed unless backed by credible military capabilities. This does not mean that NATO cannot add new political missions. But it does mean that we must not confuse NATO’s raison d’être—forging a transatlantic security link—with other important but secondary goals. A political function for NATO is useful and even essential. But it cannot replace mutual security as the glue that keeps the alliance together. In this new setting, the key task for the United States is not to disengage from NATO gracefully but for NATO to adapt skillfully.
In the fog of public debate, two options have begun to emerge. The first—the NATO option—centers around a continuing U.S. commitment to a major force presence in Europe. While the numbers of U.S. troops in Europe would substantially decrease, the centrality of our role in the alliance and its integrated military command would remain unchanged. The second—the European Community option—seeks to develop a principally European security structure, though with continued U.S. participation. Ultimately, our allies will coalesce around the latter. While they understand the need for our nuclear guarantee—and accept the voice that gives America in Europe’s security decisions—they will object to a U.S. policy that supports European political unity but demands a security relationship in which Washington retains its dominant leadership role.
Our approach should welcome increased West European self-reliance. When we brought our forces to a peak deployment of over four hundred thousand troops in the mid-1950s, I vividly recall a meeting of the National Security Council when President Eisenhower said that he intended this to be only a temporary measure needed until our allies in Europe recovered from the war. We should not allow it to become a permanent crutch. If the Europeans develop the capability of speaking with one voice on political and security matters—which is possible but not inevitable—we should embrace the European Community option.
This does not mean that we should withdraw all of our ground forces from Europe. But it does mean that our function should involve a conventional and nuclear deployment much smaller than today but still large enough to create the essential link of mutual security and to preserve the military infrastructure for any U.S. intervention that might become necessary in a crisis. Forces in Europe are also indispensable for contingencies elsewhere, including the Persian Gulf War. NATO should not cut back on its joint exercises, though their nature and location should take into account sensitivities about disrupting civilian life. Exercises not only iron out glitches in contingency plans but also enhance our ability to work together in areas outside of Europe, such as the Persian Gulf.
NATO must also reevaluate the role of nuclear weapons in its defense plans. Since nuclear artillery and short-range missiles were deployed principally to neutralize massed Soviet armor concentrations in East Germany, we can safely phase them out as President Bush has chosen to do. But as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO needs a nuclear option based in Europe, though air-based and sea-based missiles should be sufficient to cover all required missions. As a result, we should reject out of hand any proposal to eliminate these systems—a proposal designed to achieve Moscow’s traditional objective of a denuclearized and vulnerable Europe.
As NATO finds its footing in the new Europe, it should also expand its mission. In Europe, it should focus not just on common defense but also on pressing for just solutions to such conflicts as the Yugoslav civil war. It must also look beyond Europe. Its creators did not envision that by specifying that the NATO commitment applied to Europe and North America, the alliance would operate only within a strict boundary. Instead, they simply sought to exclude Europe’s colonies from security guarantees requiring an automatic response from other members. Today, as demonstrated in the Persian Gulf, challenges to Western interests can arise half a world away. If NATO adheres mindlessly to artificial geographical restrictions, we will simply be shooting ourselves in the foot, compromising our interests to legalism. For example, an effort to cut the oil lifeline of Western Europe is as great a threat to the security of NATO nations as a military attack against a NATO member. While European defense must remain NATO’s core mission, so-called “out of area” security cooperation must become its cutting edge. Unless we adopt such a policy, the American people—whose commitment to NATO has depended on the perception of a Soviet threat—will inevitably seek to disengage from Europe as the alliance increasingly speaks of Moscow not as an adversary but as a “partner in security.”
While we already cooperate in distant crises, our solutions tend to be ad hoc. To improve NATO’s capabilities to cope with out-of-area conflicts, we need to move forward in three areas. First, the European members of NATO should develop a joint rapid deployment force that would function, depending on circumstances, independently or under an integrated command with similar U.S. forces. Second, the United States should welcome European activism in parts of the underdeveloped world where their historical experience exceeds our own. For too long, Americans have assumed that our superior military power gave us superior political wisdom. In addition, because the next crisis will likely take place in the underdeveloped world, the United States should open its overseas bases outside Europe to our NATO allies. Our current policy restricts foreign military powers from using our bases, but we should be more flexible in order to facilitate greater European activism in critical parts of the underdeveloped world. Third, NATO should develop better mechanisms for more coordinated crisis management. Working together, the members of the Atlantic alliance—which control over half of the world economy—wield power that no potential adversary can afford to ignore. In addition, if the Western allies back a common course of action in the U.N. Security Council, potential aggressors will have to take notice.
NATO must loosen, not tighten, its structure. To grow, it needs greater flexibility to be able to respond not only to military but also to political contingencies. This does not mean that either the United States or Western Europe should have a strict veto over the other’s actions. Each will have interests that the other will not share. But they must develop ways to arrive at common policies to out-of-area conflicts when possible, as well as equipping the alliance with the needed military, economic, and political instruments to carry them out. Unlike other alliances, which have dissolved as the threat of a common enemy wanes, a renewed NATO can survive the test of victory.
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These five pillars provide a framework for a common transatlantic home. The new Europe is not a problem-free Europe, and these objectives cannot be achieved without commitment and resources on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet if we succeed, we will advance Europe’s unification, ensure its external security, buttress its internal stability, and protect its key interests around the world.
Europeans need an active U.S. presence. Eurocommunism has been replaced by Eurocriticism of America’s role, but our allies inevitably turn to the United States in any crisis and even count on us to mediate disputes among themselves. The United States has been—and continues to be—the indispensable catalyst for cooperation among Europeans, who often trust us more than they trust each other.
The critical issue for Europe is whether economic unity will produce a parochial or an open Europe. Critics wrongly scorned former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s position on European unification. Her warnings about a unified but inward-looking and protectionist Europe were misinterpreted as opposition to any unity at all. She understood that the rush to create the mechanisms of unity had clouded the need to craft the meaning of unity. In her vision, European economic unification should serve as the necessary precursor to Atlantic economic unification. On the eve of post-1992 Europe, its leaders must understand that unity will serve European interests only if it represents the first step toward moving out into the world and not toward retreating behind the cloistered walls of a fortress Europe.
History’s most devastating wars have been fought in Europe. For the past forty-five years, the cold war has ironically kept the peace in Europe. Our challenge is to see that the end of the cold war does not open the door for future hot wars. Beyond that goal, the nations in the common transatlantic home can lead the way to unprecedented economic progress and the victory of freedom throughout the world.
As we build the transatlantic home, the reach of our vision should not stop at the former Soviet border. Instead, the doors of a common transatlantic home should be open to newly independent republics of the Soviet Union that meet the economic and political requirements for membership. The former Soviet government—established on Leninist, not democratic, principles—did not measure up to those criteria. But if free-market and democratic reforms continue under the noncommunist governments in the newly independent Soviet republics, we should seek their participation in building a common transatlantic home from California to Kamchatka.