It is in Bonn’s and will continue to be in Berlin’s self-interest to promote stability in central Europe. Any disaster there, whether military, political or economic, will have an immediate impact on Germany which would be all the more acutely felt in Berlin. Furthermore, as the most influential player in the region the new capital will enhance Germany’s claim that it deserves a greater role in international affairs, including a seat on the UN Security Council. Since 1989 Germany’s priority has been to create a western-oriented Europe stretching as far to the east of the Polish border as possible. Berlin’s claims that it is already a vital link, a ‘bridge between east and west’ take on a new meaning when seen in this context; the city seeks to become both the ‘future capital of the European community’ and the capital of Schaukelpolitik – the ‘fulcrum politics’ between east and west. As a working paper prepared by the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) in November 1994 put it, Germany will be the ‘pivotal power in Europe, involved in an eternal balancing act between east and west, seeking to reconcile and integrate. It will do so with one hand still tied behind its back. For it will still be loath to lead, and merely seek to react to the initiatives of others.’46
So far this malleable German foreign policy has been a success. The nation was fortunate that unification took place during a period of relative stability and peace. True, its first foray into international politics in the form of the hasty recognition of Croatia and Slovenia proved to be a disaster, but since then there have been no other major crises.47 The United States remains a close and trusted ally. Unlike the French or the British, the Americans were positive about German unity from the beginning; it was George Bush who overruled other western leaders and advocated reunification, while Bill Clinton has let it be known that Helmut Kohl is his key ally on the continent. As if to give credence to this strong bond Henry Kissinger said in 1994, ‘I consider Kohl one of the seminal leaders of our period. He has been a guarantee of Germany’s Atlantic and European orientation and a shield against the nationalistic or romantic temptations from which his people have suffered through much of modern history.’48 Kohl, now the longest ever serving German Chancellor, has not been nicknamed the ‘Bismarck of the Twentieth Century’ without reason. Furthermore the Americans have assumed Germany’s historic role of supporting Russia, leaving Germany free to pursue its interests in central Europe and in the west. It seems that Berlin’s first years as capital will be marked by a delicate balancing act between the United States, western Europe, east central Europe, Russia and other regions. But what will happen after Helmut Kohl’s departure? What will the situation be in five or ten years’ time? And what kind of legacy will Berlin look back on when it celebrates its first centenary as capital of the ‘Berlin Republic’?
Konrad Adenauer referred to any attempts to deviate from the western Uberai democratic tradition as ‘experiments’ which were to be avoided at all costs. The strength of post-war Germany resulted from its strict adherence to the Anglo-American model of government, which was nurtured in the new Federal Republic by the western Allies. It resulted in a democracy which was stable precisely because concern for the political, economic and general well-being of its citizens was put before self-aggrandizement or aggressive wars. Berlin owes a great deal to the United States, from its rescue during the blockade to support over the reunification of Germany. One hopes that Berlin will continue to look westward, retaining the United States as its primary ally, and will not succumb to the cheap anti-Americanism which permeated West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s. Given the crucial role played by President Bush it is pathetic to see the likes of Willy Brandt’s widow Brigitte Seebacher-Brandt, Heinrich Lummer, Klaus Rainer Röhl (at one time a Communist married to a Red Army Faction terrorist leader) and others of the so-called ‘generation of 1989’, or the members of the ‘New Right’ attack the United States and portray the ‘Bonn Republic’ as a rather unfortunate episode which destroyed German national pride or made the Germans ‘too western’.49 The road away from the United States is the road to disaster.
Germans today have been told to suppress their national ambitions in favour of the European Union, but it is stretching the bounds of credibility to think that united Germans are any more loyal to faceless Brussels bureaucrats than East Germans were to the Soviet representatives of the ‘Communist International’. Germans cannot rely solely on a supra-national identity, or indeed on vague notions of regional identity or Heimat for a stable future; they must accept that they have, and need, a national identity. Stability does not result from the signing of treaties and contracts alone, it also comes from the creation of a culture which people actually believe in. The Utopian visions and political Romanticism of Berlin’s past have caused chaos; the dreamy environmentalists, the radical relativists of 1968, the neo-Nazis, the self-pitying ex-Communists of the GDR, the anti-American ‘1989 generation’ and the New Right who want so desperately to forget the terrible lessons of Germany’s history all pose their own kind of danger. The only way to prevent these, or indeed some other radical force from taking hold in the new Germany is to stop pretending that Brussels is a substitute for history, and to create a national framework in which the vast majority of people can find some measure of financial, political and spiritual security, in short, to form a nation which its citizens believe in and want to protect. The surest way to prevent radicalism in a future Berlin is to nurture and support the capital as the seat of a sound, stable, democratic government which will reflect the values espoused by Bonn, values which were so clearly rejected by the GDR’s Berlin. Helmut Kohl’s notion that without European integration or the single currency there will be another war is bizarre; it implies that he does not really trust his own citizens or the democracy of which they are now so rightly proud.
If Berlin may eventually re-evaluate its dependence on the European Union the same is true of its ties with the east. Berlin will always be involved in central Europe but there is still a danger of falling back into the old stereotypes and prejudices which lie deep in German culture. Eminent politicians, journalists and academics continue to justify Germany’s violent past by calling it the vulnerable ‘Land der Mitte’, ignoring the fact that other countries in ‘the middle’ have avoided such a fate. They speak of ‘Polnische Wirtschaft’, dismissing Poles as incapable of working to ‘higher’ German standards despite the fact that the Polish economy grew faster than any other in Europe in the 1990s.50 Lingering resentments resurface against Poles and Czechs for the loss of the eastern territories with no thought as to how they came to be lost in the first place, and countries like Ukraine are referred to as mere ‘buffer states’ between possibly troublesome Russia and the west. Berliners tactlessly proclaim themselves the ‘capital of central Europe’. As Adam Krzeminski, the editor of the Polish weekly Polityka, has pointed out: ‘In Vilna they will tell you that you are in the very centre of Europe, in Ukraine they will take you to the Carpathians and show you a granite phallus erected by the Habsburgs. It has a German inscription which states that this is the centre of Europe. In Bohemia you will hear that the centre is near Prague and in Poland that it is near Lódz.’ Berliners are still extraordinarily ignorant about countries to the east; as the novelist Hans Magnus Enzensberger has put it, some members in the Berlin Senate clearly do not possess a map of Europe as they ‘persist in their belief that Milan is closer to Berlin than Warsaw’.51 The new relationships between these countries are still very fragile, as witnessed by the ugly accusations hurled between Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland across the Oder during the terrible floods of 1997. Berlin will not counter the historic fears about Germany – particularly the accusation that it is achieving with the chequebook what it failed to do with tanks; or, put another way, that it is pursuing Hitler’s ends by peaceful means – merely by declaring that it has changed or by explaining that it has only good intentions. Only time and experience will show that it is worthy of the trust of other nations. Nothing in central Europe can be taken