The lack of fear is a tribute to Kohl’s greatness. But it also says a lot about the stability of Europe’s richest and most powerful country. Germany in 1998 does not need Kohl the way the young German Empire needed Bismarck more than a century ago–as a restraining force to keep a giant in check. The significance of a victory by Social Democrat Gerhard Schroder–with or without a grand coalition–will be more symbolic than genuine, even in terms of its economic impact. It would represent above all a generational turning point. A Germany without Kohl will be a Germany that for the first time is led by someone who has no personal, direct, emotional link to World War II. It means that the head of a country with too much history, and one whose political center will again be located in Berlin will be a man with too short a memory, a man without a past. Germany can withstand this.
Yet the removal–after 16 years in power–of such a reassuring and predictable leader as Chancellor Kohl can only trouble Germany’s neighbors. The French, for example, do not explicitly fear a Schroder victory. What bothers them, though none have articulated it, is the closing of an exceptional period in German history. Kohl had managed a double feat: he accelerated the process of German unification while at the same time controlling, if not delaying, the potentially negative consequences of the newfound German sovereignty on the national psyche.
Some say Kohl presided over a period of German national masochism. Its demise has special meaning for France, and for the future of Europe. Can Europe survive with two Frances, that is, with a Germany that increasingly behaves as France does today, confidently asserting its rights and cultivating an air of national self-righteousness? In the early 1990s, many in Europe were afraid of the excessive potential strength of the newly reunified Germans; cartoons of Kohl wearing Bismarck’s helmet appeared on many a magazine cover. The fear of being bullied by Germany has greatly receded, if only because the Germans are clearly in the same boat as the rest of their fellow Europeans in terms of unemployment, public debt and a variety of other socioeconomic vulnerabilities. The uncertainty about Germany now is domestic: who will be able to impose the unpopular reforms necessary for a society that still lives beyond its means?
A week before the elections the answer is far from clear. Kohl, the European, needs to reinvent himself while Schroder, the pragmatist, must decide who he really is. Schroder may campaign like Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, and compare himself with Tony Blair, the U.K. prime minister. For the French Socialists, though, deep down he is closer to Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister. Neither Germany nor France had a Ronald Reagan or a Lady Thatcher; the next chancellor will have to grasp the nettle of reform.
That might be Kohl. A combination of deepening crisis in Russia and political uncertainty in the United States, added to clear signs of economic recovery in Germany, could push him over the finish line ahead of Schroder. Moreover, the Germans may sense that this is no time to dispense with the reassuring presence of the chancellor and to experiment with a modern-type politician whose emphasis on style and communication–to the detriment of content–is too evocative of the successful yet vulnerable Clinton style of politics.
The stakes for Europe are not that high. Germany after Kohl would most likely be just as pro-European as Germany under Kohl. It would not be significantly more arrogant or more nationalistic; it would not be either more inward- or more outward-looking. Still, most French cannot help but grow uneasy if, someday, Germans no longer are haunted by fears of their past. In fact, that day may have already come, but Germany is so decentralized and its Lander so powerful, that a new Bismarck is unthinkable.
At a time when the clouds over the horizon look darker than at any moment since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, many in Europe are looking for stability, consolidation. That’s not surprising; look at what’s happening around the world: a knock-down, drag-out political clash in America, chaos in Russia, Asian economies in distress. In January 1999, Germany will take over the presidency of the European Union. Between a largely spent force and an unknown one, many reasonable people would probably stick with the reassuring, familiar man who has become the old and wise incarnation of Europe, Helmut Kohl. But the Germans will vote for themselves and not for the stability of Europe and the world.
