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

  213. “German Unification: Official Level Two Plus Four, Bonn, 22 May,” released by the FCO via FOI; Stent, Russia and Germany, 139–40.

  214. “Vorlage des Vortragenden Legationsrat I Kaestner an Ministerialdirektor Teltschik, Bonn, 7. September 1990,” document 416, DESE, 1531; “Vorlage des Ministerialdirektors Teltschik an Bundeskanzler Kohl, Bonn, 8. September 1990,” document 417, DESE, 1532–34; “Vorlage des V.L. I Kaestner an Ministerialdirektor Teltschik, 10. September 1990,” document 420, DESE, 1538.

  215. “Schreiben des Staatssekretärs Köhler an Bundeskanzler Kohl, Bonn, 9. September 1990,” document 418 and document 418A, DESE, 1534–35.

  216. Zelikow argues that there was no serious assessment whatsoever of how the money would help Russia; the evidence available to date does indeed suggest scanty analysis. Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 326. The British were particularly appalled at this omission; see Percy Cradock, In Pursuit of British Interests: Reflections on Foreign Policy under Margaret Thatcher and John Major (London: John Murray, 1997), 118–19.

  217. Baker with DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy, 291.

  218. Kohl did not release a transcript of the September 10 phone call, but Gorbachev did: “Из телефонного разговора М.С. Горбачева с Г. Колем,” September 10, 1990, МГ, 563–66. Gorbachev also discusses this call in “Из беседы М.С. Горбачева с Г-Д. Геншером,” September 12, 1990, МГ, 571. A later German document describes it as well: “Gespräch des Ministerialdirektors Teltschik mit Botschafter Terechow, Bonn, 15. September 1990, Betr.: Kreditanfrage der Sowjetunion über den sowjetischen Botschafter,” document 422, DESE, 1541–42. See also Teltschik, 329 Tage, 362–63.

  219. “Die Zwei-plus-Vier Regelung,” in Vereinigung Deutschlands, 167–73; “Zum Abschluß der Zwei-plus-Vier-Gespräche in Moskau am 12. September 1990: Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland mit vereinbarter Protokollnotiz,” in Auswärtiges Amt, Aussenpolitik, 699–705; GDE, 4:601–2; Genscher, Erinnerungen, 870–73; Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, 355–63. See also the later “Deutsche Note zur Vereinbarung zwischen der Regierung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den Regierungen der Französischen Republik, der USA und des Vereinigten Königreichs Großbritannien und Nordirland über die Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und den Drei Mächten vom 27. September 1990,” in Auswärtiges Amt, Aussenpolitik, 699–705.

  220. “Erklärung der Vier Mächte über die Aussetzung ihrer Vorbehaltsrechte über Berlin und Deutschland als Ganzes in New York vom 1. Oktober 1990,” in Auswärtiges Amt, Aussenpolitik, 715; on the extention of NATO guarantees, see the paperwork in Wilson Files, NSC, FOIA 2001-1166-F, BPL.

  221. “Из беседы М.С. Горбачева с Г-Д. Геншером,” September 12, 1990, МГ, 570–73.

  222. Hurd, Memoirs, 389.

  223. The various USSR-FRG bilateral accords were signed in October and November, the last on the anniversary of the collapse of the wall, November 9, 1990; for details, see DESE 1540n8. Shevardnadze began trying to sell the completed 2 + 4 accord to the domestic market right away; see “Выступление Э.А. Шеварднадзе на заседании комитета по международным делам ВС СССР,” September 20, 1990, МГ, 575–81; “Постановление Комитета Верховного Совета СССР по международным делам,” September 20, 1990, МГ, 582–83. For an insightful discussion of the period immediately after unification, see Klaus Larres, ed., Germany since Unification: The Domestic and External Consequences (London: Macmillan, 1998).

  224. “Докладная записка А.С. Черняева о предстоящем телефонном разговоре с Г. Колем и возможной поездке в Германию 3 октября,” September 10, 1990, МГ, 562.

  NOTES TO CONCLUSION

  1. W. Szymborska, “Under One Small Star,” reprinted in view with a grain of sand, trans. Stanislaw Barancak and Clare Cavanaugh (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995); Vladimir Putin, Putin, Vladimir, with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Putin, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 69 (translation by the editors).

  2. “Из беседы М.С. Горбачева с Г. Колем один на один,” November 9, 1990, МГ, 599–609. See also the other paperwork in the same volume from the same visit. Above and beyond the agreements about troop stationing, a larger treaty resulted; see “Vertrag über gute Nachbarschaft, Partnerschaft und Zusammenarbeit zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken vom 9. November 1990,” in Auswärtiges Amt, ed., Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Dokumente von 1949 bis 1994 (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1995), 738–49.

  3. “Vorlage des Ministerialdirektors Teltschik an Bundeskanzler Kohl, Bonn, 25. September 1990,” document 427, DESE, 1549–50; “Заявление Верховного Совета СССР,” March 4, 1991, “Телефонный разговор М.С. Горбачева с Г. Колем,” March 5, 1991, МГ, 637–40. On the deteriorating conditions in the Soviet Union, see the CIA assessment “The Soviet Cauldron,” April 25, 1991, released by the CIA via FOIA.

  4. On the CFE, see Richard A. Falkenrath, Shaping Europe’s Military Order: The Origins and Consequences of the CFE Treaty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), xi; see also “Quentin Peel, ‘Moscow Report Tells How Thousands of Tanks Avoided CFE Count,’” Financial Times, January 10, 1991, reprinted as document 103 in Vojtech Mastny, ed., The Helsinki Process and the Reintegration of Europe, 1986–1991: Analysis and Documentation (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 295–96. A fact sheet about the CFE treaty and its signing is available at http://www.state.gov/t/ac/rls/fs/11243.htm. On the CSCE, see the paperwork related to the CSCE meeting in folder 7, box 109, 8c monthly files, series 8, BP; “Gemeinsame Erklärung der 22 Staaten der NATO und der Warschauer Vertragsorganisation in Paris vom 19. November 1990,” Auswärtiges Amt, Aussenpolitik, 755–57; “Die ‘Charta von Paris für ein neues Europa,’ vom 21. November 1990, Erklärung des Pariser KSZE-Treffens der Staats- und Regierungschefs,” in Auswärtiges Amt, Aussenpolitik, 757–71.

  5. Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Textausgabe, Stand: Juni/Juli 1994 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1994); Gerhard A. Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit: Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats (Munich: Beck, 2006), 81–83; Werner Weidenfeld and Karl-Rudolf Korte, eds., Handbuch zur deutschen Einheit (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1996), 349–62. See also Rödder, Deutschland Einig Vaterland (Munich: Beck, 2009), chapter 5.

  6. Former socialist leaders in eastern Germany were also complaining that they were being persecuted unfairly for what they saw as their service to their state. See “Из беседы М.С. Горбачева с О. Лафонтеном,” September 21, 1990, “Докладная записка А.С. Черняева и проект письма Г. Колю,” September 24, 1990, МГ, 584–94; “Schreiben des Präsidenten Gorbatschow an Bundeskanzler Kohl, 26. September 1990,” DESE 428, 1550–51.

  7. Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit, 54–55. For more on the assassination attempt, see Wolfgang Schäuble, Der Vertrag: Wie ich über die deutsche Einheit verhandelte (Munich: Knaur, 1991).

  8. Vladimir Putin, with Nataliya Gevorkyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Putin, trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 79; Putin was dismayed that the military support that he was requesting did not come immediately, complaining that it lacked instructions from Moscow; but it did eventually show up. On the issue of Stasi agents inciting violence, see Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet U
nion (Part 2),” Journal of Cold War Studies 6, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 3–64; Anne Worst, Das Ende des Geheimdienstes (Berlin: Links, 1991).

  9. The exact timing of Mitterrand’s decision to support Kohl is a matter of speculation; Frédéric Bozo thinks that it was already in place before the wall came down, whereas I see it evolving in early 1990. See Frédéric Bozo, Mitterrand, la fin de la guerre froide et l’unification allemande: De Yalta à Maastricht (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005).

  10. GDE, 2:431–33, tries to estimate the price of unity at 57.3 billion DMs, but this sum is limited to amounts given to the Soviet Union in 1990–91, which is not sufficient; for a more nuanced discussion of why the “price of unity” depends on what you consider to be the costs, see Rödder, Deutschland Einig Vaterland, chapter 5. Evidence that Gorbachev’s ideas seemed plausible to leading thinkers elsewhere at the time may be found in Harold James and Marla Stone, eds., When the Wall Came Down (New York: Routledge, 1992); see in particular the reference to a 1990 article by John Lewis Gaddis suggesting that Germany should go into both military alliances, 29, and Henry Kissinger’s idea that Central Europe should be neutral, 199.

  11. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), 283.

  12. Although I have studied only 1989–90 in detail above, I believe that speculation about its broader significance remains worthwhile. Readers who have made it this far into the fine print will not be surprised to learn that I think we can learn larger lessons from a small number of, or even one, significant event. Those who believe that broad applicability results only from a large number of cases will obviously disagree. I support Edward Ingram, however, when he says that the “historian’s single example may be more representative than the political scientist’s cluster.” As Ingram argues, it is not at all obvious that “a cluster of lightly researched, detached—at best semi-detached—cases, often written up by different scholars, is likely to advance the argument any better” than a thorough analysis of a crucial event. Edward Ingram, “The Wonderland of the Political Scientist,” International Security 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997): 56. I am grateful to Andrew Moravcsik for drawing my attention to this quotation.

  13. “Прощальное письмо М.С. Горбачева Г. Колю,” December 25, 1991, МГ, 650–51. The scholar quoted in this paragraph is Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3),” Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 3–96. For more on this topic, see also Andrei Grachev, Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (London: Polity, 2008).

  14. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 483. J. D. Bindenagel was the U.S. deputy chief of mission in East Berlin in 1989; J. D. Bindenagel, interview with author, June 28, 2008. Valentin Falin, Konflikte im Kreml: Zur Vorgeschichte der deutschen Einheit und Auflösung der Sowjetunion (Munich: Blessing Verlag, 1997), 151. As one article in Der Spiegel put it, the 1989 revolution was producing headlines that in normal times, would have occupied “actors and consumers for months or even years,” but now disappeared in days, pushed aside by even more spectacular events. See “‘Die Macht liegt auf der Straße,’” Der Spiegel 50, no. 89, December 11, 1989, 22–26.

  15. Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit, 13.

  16. Richard H. K. Vietor, How Countries Compete: Strategy, Structure, and Government in the Global Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007), 204; Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit, 104–20.

  17. Andreas Wirsching, Abschied vom Provisorium 1982–1990: Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2006), 679; Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit, 9.

  18. Kennan made this remark to the Clinton administration’s main Russian expert, Strobe Talbott; it is quoted in Talbott’s memoir, The Russia Hand (New York: Random House, 2003), 220.

  19. James A. Baker, “Russia in NATO?” Washington Quarterly (Winter 2002): 95–103.

  20. See Talbott’s The Russia Hand for his (not altogether pleasant) memories from the Paris summit, 246. See also James M. Goldgeier, Not Whether but When: The US Decision to Enlarge NATO (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1999), 108–16; James M. Goldgeier and Derek Chollet, America between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, the Misunderstood Years between the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Start of the War on Terror (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 124. I am grateful to Ambassador John Kornblum and an expert who wishes to remain anonymous for discussions on this point.

  21. George Friedman, “Georgia and the Balance of Power,” New York Review of Books 55, no. 14 (September 25, 2008): 24; Mark Kramer, “The Myth of a No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia,” Washington Quarterly 32, no. 2 (April 2009): 39–61.

  22. Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), passim; Goldgeier, Not Whether, 58–59.

  23. I have filed an FOIA request for this document, and I am grateful to Asmus and Kornblum for discussing it and emailing about it. See also Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door, 307–8n7.

  24. Angela Stent, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 140–41; Philip Zelikow, “NATO Expansion Wasn’t Ruled Out,” International Herald Tribune, August 10, 1995.

  25. Putin, with Gevorkyan, Timakova, and Kolesnikov, First Person, 81, 169. In making these remarks, Putin said that he was agreeing with an analysis offered by Kissinger. Putin also recalls Kissinger talking about how he (Kissinger) got his start in intelligence, just like Putin (81).

  26. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Door, 4–6; Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Ignatius, and Brent Scowcroft, America and the World (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 172; first Medvedev quotation, from speech of November 5, 2008, cited in Sergei L. Loiko, “Russia to Counter U.S. Antimissile System in Eastern Europe,” Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2008; Mikhail Gorbachev, “Russia Never Wanted a War,” New York Times, August 20, 2008; Medvedev’s idea of new architecture cited in Steven Erlanger, “NATO Duel Centers on Georgia and Ukraine,” New York Times, December 1, 2008. For more on the 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia, see Bill Keller, “Cold Friends, Wrapped in Mink and Medals,” New York Times, August 17, 2008; Charles King, “The Five-Day War: Managing Moscow after the Georgia Crisis,” Foreign Affairs (November–December 2008). For broader history and context, see Talbott, The Russia Hand, 382.

  27. “Russia Suspends Arms Control Pact,” BBC News, July 14, 2007, online. The quotation from the secretary general is cited in Steven Erlanger, “NATO Chief Defends Engaging with Russia,” New York Times, December 4, 2008. My assessment here agrees with an earlier insightful investigation by Angela Stent, Russia and Germany, 140–41. The literary reference above is to the poem “Homage to a Government” by Philip Larkin, which refers to the British experience with retreat from empire: “Next year we shall be living in a country/That brought it soldiers home for lack of money.” Philip Larkin, “Homage to a Government,” reprinted in Collected Poems (London: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989).

  28. Scowcroft worry noted in chapter 4 above; Robert Hutchings, “The United States, German Unification, and European Integration,” in Europe and the End of the Cold War, ed. Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow, and Leopoldo Nuti (London: Routledge, 2008), 121.

  29. Bush quoted in chapter 4 above; Hubert Védrine, Les mondes de François Mitterrand (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 443; Goldgeier, Not Whether, chapter 2. I am also grateful to Hubert Védrine for an email on this subject, in which he pointed out that he made this comment to highlight the differences between American priorities (NATO) and French priorities (European integration); Védrine emphasized that the two were in no way incompatible.

  30. See the discussion of alternative outcomes in Stent, Russia and Germany, 145; Stephen Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unif
ication (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 121–22.

  31. Discussion of this topic may be found in Robert D. Blackwill, “The Three Rs: Rivalry, Russia, and ‘Ran,” National Interest (January 2008); Stephen F. Cohen, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: US Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003), 13; Stephen Sestanovich, “What Has Moscow Done?” Foreign Affairs (November–December 2008); and Dimitri K. Simes, “Losing Russia: The Costs of Renewed Confrontation,” Foreign Affairs (November–December 2007).”

  32. Horst Telschik, interview with author, June 13, 2008, phone conversation.

  33. Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 89; Sestanovich, “What Has Moscow Done?”

  34. Archie Brown, Seven Years That Changed the World: Perestroika in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 330.

  35. See Simes, “Losing Russia”; Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). Gorbachev is quoted in Baker with DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy, 529.

  36. I have adapted this concept from a passage in Volker Berghahn and Charles Maier, “Modern Europe in American Historical Writing,” in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 410: “Europe offers the clearest view of the dialectical conflict … between a restless deterritorialization and the claims of the local, the provincial, the national and the regional. Just as Herzen in 1849 claimed that western Europe was the pre-eminent battleground between liberalism and reaction, one might claim that Europe today—eastern as well as western—is the major arena for the contest over territorially based identity.”