1989- The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Read online

  These displays of masculinity in diplomacy are interesting not just because they add Bush and Baker to the long list of U.S. leaders–Johnson and Nixon were notorious in this regard—who enjoyed them, or for what they reveal about the memories cherished by the powerful.75 Gorbachev’s one-liner was more than just a random example of male bonding. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, it served as an expression of his feelings about the summit as a whole. To be certain, there were a number of significant accords signed, on chemical weapons, nuclear testing, and how to proceed in the CFE as well as the previously mentioned trade agreement. And the press conference afterward publicized the fact that Gorbachev had confirmed the Helsinki Principle.76 But despite subsequent claims of Bush era officials that this meeting was “the most important U.S.-Soviet summit ever held” and the “turning point,” the event had not really come to a satisfactory conclusion. As Zelikow and Rice remember, at the press conference afterward, there “was nothing to announce on Germany.” 77 And Matlock reported from Moscow that the summit had hardly even registered there. It could “not compete with concerns over food supplies and the election of Yeltsin to the … presidency” of the new Russian republic. Most people had written it off as part of a “Gorbachev political campaign to gain support at home.” 78

  In short, the U.S. team had not secured Soviet permission to build Germany into a new NATO, and its best chance for doing so was now past. They had made headway, but Bush indicated to Kohl that he would have to carry the ball now on that topic. The president and his team would focus on the important task of changing NATO while Kohl took over the lead on personal salesmanship to Gorbachev of a united Germany in the alliance.79 It was clear that until Kohl could go to Russia in July and make the sale in person, everything remained open.

  THE SECOND CARROT: NATO REFORM

  There were a large number of sideshows, rumors, and confusion in the time between Bush’s and Kohl’s respective May and July summits with Gorbachev. For starters, it was not apparent until three days before Kohl’s departure for Russia whether he was going to be favored with an invitation to Gorbachev’s hometown in the Caucasus or not. Such an invitation was an important signal as to whether or not the visit would go well. Bonn pushed hard for a Caucasus visit, but only succeeded at the last minute, just seventy-two hours before departure.80

  In the meantime, Baker and Shevardnadze saw each other frequently in June and July 1990, not least at the 2 + 4 meetings. Baker was repeatedly mystified at the Soviet foreign minister’s vacillations between harder and softer lines. Shevardnadze’s retreat on particular details in June infuriated the secretary. Baker reported to Bush that he went to see Shevardnadze to complain about this and “hit him hard.” Baker was certain that Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were zigging and zagging to dodge fire at home. “They were under attack for making unilateral concessions—e.g., for having lost Eastern Europe, for being soft on Germany, etc.” 81 Bush and Kohl concluded that the Soviet leadership was improvising from one day to the next, as the struggle between Gorbachev’s supporters and enemies raged on.82 The British came to the same conclusion. Reporting back to London on the same June meeting, the UK delegation discussed the talks in a telegram: “New and unacceptable Soviet paper tabled … probably with domestic Soviet factors principally in mind.” 83

  In short, in the run-up to the Caucasus meeting, there was a lot of sound and noise, but little of it was significant. What still mattered most were the two carrots offered to Gorbachev: money and NATO reform. The money carrot consisted of the credits offered to Gorbachev as a result of Teltschik’s secret mission, and the concessions being negotiated in response to Falin’s pressure on East Berlin.84 The biggest concern for all involved in the latter enterprise was, put bluntly, to make the Red Army happy. Soviet soldiers in East Germany were demoralized, living in deteriorating barracks, badly fed, and selling equipment for personal gain. Locals complained that they seemed hungry, helpless, and potentially dangerous. It was not clear whether they would continue to obey remote political leaders in Moscow. If they suddenly became penniless once a hard currency was introduced, the consequences could become unpleasant.

  In other words, participants in the talks understood, without saying so openly, that the goal was to prevent the military taking matters into its own hands, both in East Germany and at home in Moscow. There were even rumors floating around that the withdrawing Soviet troops from Czechoslovakia and Hungary might decide of their own will to relocate to East Germany because they faced such a terrible housing shortage back in the USSR.85 In Moscow, a plan by Ryzhkov for economic reform was going badly wrong in the course of June 1990, so there seemed little hope that conditions back in the Soviet Union would improve soon.86 The attitude of Soviet military leaders to events in East Germany therefore was a matter of great concern. Ryzhkov personally got involved to insist that the Soviet troops should be no worse off than East Germans as a result of monetary union.87

  Bonn saw the point. On June 25, the West German side agreed to pay 1.25 billion DM in stationing costs for Soviet troops in the second half of 1990. Moreover, Soviet soldiers and dependents would be allowed to exchange their East German savings (which were essentially worthless) at a rate of two to one into Western DM. There were also favorable terms set up for the exchange rate that would apply to GDR-USSR trade. On top of all this, both the West and East German governments agreed that legally held property confiscated during the initial wartime occupation—that is, during the initial Soviet occupation, before the 1949 founding of both the FRG and GDR—could not be subject to legal action in a united Germany. (The agreement did not cover property that was illegally expropriated under National Socialist rule.)88 This pronouncement would shield Moscow from legal challenges dating back to the early occupation period. In short, while the Soviet negotiators did not get everything they wanted, they got a lot, and they consoled themselves that Kohl would clearly still have to bargain with Gorbachev later, so they could presumably secure more then.89 For its part, the West German side made an attempt to limit future exposure by saying that these generous terms applied only to the second half of 1990, but that restraint would disappear in the final rush to unity.90

  The money carrot had grown as big as it was going to get, at least for the time being. Now it was time to focus on the military alliance. The NATO “public relations” relaunch—targeted at participants in the Soviet Communist Party Congress of mid-July 1990—depended on successful close U.S.–West German management of the process. First, the two countries had to make sure that their own allies did not derail their efforts. Thatcher remained skeptical about making dramatic changes, which the West German mission to NATO had already started proposing.91 In a speech to the North Atlantic Council in Turnberry on June 7, she declared that “you do not cancel your home insurance policy just because there have been fewer burglaries in your street in the last twelve months.” In her opinion, the discussion should be about “how to extend NATO’s role.” 92 Thatcher even told Gorbachev in mid-June of her worry about changing NATO to facilitate German unification. According to the Russian record, Thatcher informed Gorbachev that Mitterrand agreed with her, but would not say so publicly because of his need to work closely with the new Germany in the EC. In her opinion, Kohl was using the process of unification merely as part of his election campaign.93

  Meanwhile, to Kohl’s consternation, both the East German prime minister, de Maizière, and the foreign minister, Meckel, continued to contradict him. The chancellor sent a sharply worded letter to de Maizière at the end of May, complaining about independent East German contacts with Poland at a time when he was trying to resolve border issues.94 Poland wanted a border treaty before unification, and East Berlin was sympathetic to that desire, in contrast to Bonn. Feelings of solidarity among the newly elected leaders of Eastern Europe, many of whom had long shared the struggle against dictators together as outlaws and become friends, were hard for Bonn to suppress.95 Kohl did not want a border treaty before
the December elections for the same reasons that he had not wanted one before the March elections. Instead, the chancellor persuaded both the Bundestag and the Volkskammer to issue a joint declaration confirming that the existing border between East Germany and Poland was permanent.96 But the Poles were not satisfied; they wanted a treaty. Warsaw’s finance minister was also looking for a “radical solution to the problem of Polish foreign debt.” 97 Kohl would have preferred to postpone dealing with Poland until after unity, but he was under pressure not just from Warsaw but also Washington, Paris, and London to address Polish concerns. Teltschik worried that Polish demands might prove to be a major stumbling block when the unification process moved to its close.98

  Kohl became even more upset in June about comments, yet again, from both de Maizière and Meckel questioning the desirability of NATO membership (to the applause of the Soviet Union). Meckel mused to Baker, whom he was seeing regularly at the 2 + 4 foreign ministers’ sessions, that the former GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland should all become one big demilitarized zone.99 Meckel followed this up with comments to reporters to the effect that NATO had to compromise over Germany.100 As already discussed, Meckel, along with de Maizière and Eppelman, disliked both military alliances, and genuinely hoped for a future in which Central European nations would work together to become a kind of neutral, peaceful bridge between the East and West.101

  For his part, de Maizière was still promoting Gorbachev’s heroic vision of a pan-European security architecture as late as a Warsaw Pact summit in Moscow on June 7. This pact was now fatally weakened. Those still interested in reviving it—the Hungarian minister president would soon tell Kohl that he did not want the pact to dissolve—tried to beat NATO at its own game of transformation.102 At their urging, the Warsaw Pact summit announced that its “ideological image of its enemy” was outdated; it wanted to begin a new era.103 De Maizière also suggested to his fellow pact members that an updated NATO with a special military status for GDR territory would be just a transitional solution—one that would expire when a European security system was set up. Gorbachev echoed many of the same sentiments, telling the crowd that he was certain Europe did not want to tie its future to the existing block structure.104

  De Maizière subsequently accepted an invitation to Washington, and spoke at Georgetown University, where he repeated many of these views.105 He also indicated that these issues should be discussed in the 2 + 4 talks—something that Bush and Kohl were trying hard to avoid. When de Maizière went to the White House for a meeting with Bush and Baker, he heard how unhappy they were with these kinds of remarks. Presumably, the main reason he received the invitation to the White House was to give the two U.S. leaders a chance to persuade him to change his mind. They succeeded in convincing him to tone down his rhetoric, which followed the FRG line much more closely afterward.106 As de Maizière would explain to Gorbachev when it was all over, by summer 1990 he had decided to follow a German saying: “lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende” (better to end with horror than to have horror without end).107

  With East Berlin’s idealism diminishing, Kohl could focus on his upcoming meeting with Gorbachev. Just as he and Bush had met in Washington to strategize for the May U.S.-USSR summit, they met in Washington yet again to strategize for the July FRG-USSR summit. Without large delegations this time, they could discuss even the most sensitive issues. In a session attended only by Bush, Baker, Scowcroft, and Kohl, the chancellor explained how he and Teltschik had arranged for the five billion DM in credit for Gorbachev. The implication was that the United States should act similarly, but Bush and Baker remained consistent in their refusal to help Gorbachev in this way, saying that U.S. laws prohibited Soviet access to its capital markets as a result of outstanding debts from the revolutionary era of 1918.108 This reason was one of a number that they cited over spring and summer 1990; but if the reasons varied, the conclusion did not. The United States was not going to fund Gorbachev; that would be up to Kohl.

  The group then discussed the timing of the first all-German elections, which (as already mentioned) Kohl envisioned happening early in December and wanted to turn into the first all-German vote.109 Yet that would require unifying before December, and he was keeping quiet about that idea for now. The upcoming monetary union, just three weeks away, was the focus of his attention instead. He still needed the blessing of both the EC and his own parliament for it (and would secure both in June). In addition, he needed to reassure East Germans that they would survive in their new capitalist world.110 Kohl’s hope was that after they had DM in their hands, East Germans themselves would call for a quick unification and full elections, to seal the deal. His goal was to do everything that he could to promote unification, without obviously being the initiator of it. His behind-the-scenes orchestration of events demanded a public contrapuntal line of self-effacement.111

  And of course the issue of German membership in NATO remained unresolved, and that could derail everything. Kohl underscored that he would not sacrifice NATO membership for unification, but exactly what concessions he might need to make remained unclear, and push was coming to shove on that issue. The alliance had decided not to modernize the short-range Lance weapons in West Germany, designed to strike targets in East Germany and Eastern Europe, but that was not enough.112 The 2 + 4 talks were bogging down. Gorbachev kept speaking about Soviet membership in NATO and he seemed serious. Kohl felt that Moscow simply did not know what it wanted. The chancellor immodestly repeated a comment from Mitterrand: “Helmut, now everything is in your hands.” Bush and Baker did not disagree openly, although they knew that Kohl could not make deals on NATO without them.113

  As a result of this meeting, the Americans and West Germans began working even more closely and confidentially together to choreograph every critical part of the July NATO summit well in advance. Although NATO was de jure an alliance of many nations, de facto Scowcroft, Teltschik, and the advisers they called on sorted out its transformation between themselves, with the support of NATO Secretary General Wörner. They did so (with Bush’s and Kohl’s blessings) through an exchange of draft communiqués in late June. Bush specified that Wörner, along with Andreotti, Mitterrand, and Thatcher, might be personally consulted as needed, but no one else was allowed to have a hand in this drafting of the communiqué before the summit.114 The idea was to produce a press release unlike any preceding it—one that would make it clear that NATO was serious about transforming.

  Its main goal was to help Gorbachev over the domestic political hurdles that he was facing at the Communist Party Congress.115 Nothing was going to happen until it was evident that he had survived with his authority intact.116 The decision of Lithuania to revoke its troublesome declaration of independence at the end of June helped, but more was needed. To that end, Bush and Kohl saw the communiqué as utterly crucial, and wanted it nailed down well before the gavel fell on the first session of the summit.

  Scowcroft’s initial draft communiqué proposed extensive changes to the offensive structure of the alliance. It called for the introduction of more multinational corps to replace national ones; they would report to the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe. But Teltschik’s team thought that the U.S. draft did not go far enough and had a number of critiques. The White House draft linked its changes to the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops, which was still some indefinite number of years off. Moreover, it did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of CSCE. It also did not offer to limit the size of German conventional forces. It talked only about dealing with members of the Warsaw Pact, not directly with the pact itself as Gorbachev was indicating that he wanted. And it lacked some kind of immediate headline move, such as a promise to withdraw, say, a thousand nuclear artillery warheads when talks on SNF began.117

  Scowcroft agreed with some of these criticisms, but insisted that NATO and the Warsaw Pact were no longer equals, so it made more sense to talk to individual members of what would soon be a former alliance tha
n to the group as a whole. In a later interview, Zelikow suggested that this practice—dealing with individual countries rather than pact to pact—was a way of opening NATO’s door to Eastern European states, creating various opportunities for expanding in the future.118 Teltschik recognized the U.S. objection to dealing with the dying Warsaw Pact, but still sought at least some kind of joint declaration, since Moscow had hinted that this was strongly desired. The Americans pushed back on the idea of withdrawing nuclear artillery; they felt that it should only happen after all Soviet troops in Central Europe had gone home.119 Finally, the national security adviser also thought that it was too soon for Germany to make concessions on its overall troop numbers; that should be saved for later.120

  On the same weekend that Gorbachev’s Communist Party Congress opened, Bush assembled all senior members of the NSC and the State Department for a final briefing on the communiqué before the NATO summit. As it was the July 4 holiday weekend, they met at his vacation home on scenic Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport, Maine. Baker explained how the White House had successfully prevented the draft from going through the usual NATO bureaucratic machinery. Zoellick noted that since this was “NATO’s last shot” to impress and make an impact on the Soviet population, it was essential to get it right. Key points included the classification of nuclear weapons as an option of “last resort,” an invitation to Gorbachev to address the North Atlantic Council, and a new conventional force structure. Cheney interjected that the proposed draft was “a helluva lot” more important than any other arms control efforts the administration had yet headed. Zoellick agreed, replying that “we really do have to start changing.” Baker added that it served the primary goal, which was to get a unified Germany into NATO as soon as possible.121