One Germany - in Both Alliances

By John Lewis Gaddis

• March 21, 1990

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Two hundred and one years ago last August, the nobles and clerics of the French
National Assembly, in a single memorable night of revolutionary zeal, voted to
divest themselves of the rights and privileges they had accumulated under the
old regime.

In their eagerness to demonstrate solidarity with ''the people,'' there had arisen
among them what the historian Simon Schama has called a cult of self-
dispossession.

''Like nervous acolytes made giggly with the thrill of initiation,'' Mr. Schama
wrote, ''successive ducs, marquis, viscomtes, bishops and archbishops stripped
themselves down to the happy nakedness of citizenship.''

Something like that is happening, only slightly less dramatically, to the old cold
war superpowers.

The Soviet Union is withdrawing troops from Europe faster than the Americans
can get around to requesting that they do so; they are thereby removing the
most credible justification the Americans have had for maintaining their own
military presence there.

The East German elections last Sunday dashed whatever hopes Americans and
their NATO allies may have had for slowing the process of German
reunification. Accommodation to self-determination is leading to self-
dispossession, and it is no clearer now than it was in 1789 what the ultimate
consequences are going to be.

This abrupt erosion of superpower authority has created unexpected

opportunities for geopolitical ''grand designers,'' whose services, until recently,
have not been much in demand. The grand designers have risen to the occasion,
producing a bewildering array of proposals for a new European order.

What we have not had, though, in this frenzy of improvisation, is a calm and
careful look back at what kept the peace of Europe for so long.

It was, most historians agree, precisely the imposition of Soviet and American
spheres of influence after World War II. A global ideological and military rivalry
had the effect, for the four and one-half decades that followed 1945, of
suppressing the regional rivalries that had propelled Europe into two world
wars in the three decades that preceded 1945.

The cold war was therefore for Europe also a ''long peace.'' Although the stability
that resulted was not achieved by morally equivalent means - Americans were
invited to stabilize Europe, but the Russians invited themselves - it was a
distinct improvement over the way Europeans had managed their own affairs.

Why should we not, therefore, consider the one option for resolving the German
question that would preserve a semblance of superpower bipolarity while
accommodating what are now clearly irresistible pressures for reunification?
Why couldn't a unified Germany hold simultaneous membership in NATO and
in a reorganized Warsaw Pact?

There is ample historical precedent - not least in the history of Germany itself
under Bismarck - for membership in multiple alliances; the U.S., after all,
currently functions within three formal alliance systems (NATO, the Rio Pact
and Anzus), not to mention additional bilateral alliances with Japan, South
Korea and the Philippines. Simultaneous membership in antagonistic alliances
is a rarer phenomenon, to be sure, but why should NATO and the Warsaw Pact
be antagonistic in a post-cold war Europe? Why shouldn't alliances outlast the
enmities that gave rise to them, and then go on to find new roles?

For neighbors nervous about the dangers that may reside in German
reunification, a simultaneous NATO-Warsaw Pact membership should provide
greater reassurance than would a unified Germany linked solely to NATO. How
do we know, for example, that NATO itself will survive in the presence of a
unified Ger-many but in the absence of a Warsaw Pact?

Certainly, it is of critical importance that the Soviet Union and the newly
liberated states of Eastern Europe have as little reason as possible to fear a
resurgent Germany. And given their disastrous history between 1870 and 1945,
the Germans themselves have a strong interest in not being feared.

Joint NATO-Warsaw Pact membership would provide a face-saving way to

maintain some Soviet and American troops on German soil, should future
negotiations make that a desirable option. At a minimum, the current rights of
inspection growing out of the postwar four-power occupation could easily be
maintained under such an arrangement.

Joint membership would also provide a powerful incentive to continue and

expand the NATO-Warsaw Pact military staff contacts that began earlier this
year. These offer one of the most promising frameworks yet devised for dealing
with future European security issues.

And there would be another advantage as well. The unique status of holding
membership in these two alliances might be a way of compensating a unified
Germany for not acquiring the ultimate symbol of national sovereignty: a
nuclear capability.

The obvious difficulty with this approach is that the Warsaw Pact in its present
form seems about to become extinct; its Eastern European members
understandably would shed few tears over its demise. But a Warsaw Pact
without Soviet troops stationed in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary would
look very different from the current one.

Eastern Europeans should also recall that it was the Russians themselves who
encouraged (and in some cases perhaps even helped to engineer) the
revolutions of 1989. Those who benefited from them might well consider their
freedom (and the withdrawal of Soviet troops) to be a fair trade for a continuing
Soviet role as the titular head of a restructured Warsaw Pact.

A liberated Eastern Europe will not necessarily be a peaceful place. Irredentist

grievances, ethnic rivalries and religious antagonisms abound. Once these begin
to manifest themselves, the Helsinki process, if that is the only structure we
have in place to deal with them, is apt to have all the authority of a voluntarily
enforced 55 mile-per-hour speed limit on America's interstate highways.

If the Warsaw Pact is allowed to expire, it will almost certainly become

necessary, at some point in the not too distant future, to reinvent it.

But a reorganized Warsaw Pact that maintained safeguards against the possible
dangers of German reunification would gain a new legitimacy in the eyes of East
Europeans. And a Warsaw Pact that maintained order in Eastern Europe would
attract support in a reunified Germany. Complementarity can sometimes arise
in odd places; the benefits it offers ought not be overlooked.

It is a principle of enlightened conservatism that one ought to retain what

history shows to have worked, even as one accommodates to the changes history
is bringing. In an age in which, we are told, liberalism is triumphant, it might
not be a bad idea to provide ''equal time'' for a few of the habits of enlightened
conservatism. Call it a ''fairness doctrine'' for managing geopolitical upheaval.

John Lewis Gaddis is professor of history at Ohio University.

A version of this article appears in print on March 21, 1990, Section A,

Page 27 of the National edition with the headline: One Germany - in Both
Alliances. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe