The loss of the Soviets’ East European buffer has left them feeling vulnerable and has reinforced old fears of an aggressive Germany. Gorbachev can’t afford to look soft on the issue. His only bargaining chip: the 380,000 Soviet troops on German soil. What is the price for removing them? Bush signaled Gorbachev that while the West won’t budge on German membership in NATO, it is ready to accommodate Soviet security concerns. Some options:
NATO radically changes into a more political alliance. This would mean altering both structure and doctrine–including the possible abandonment of “flexible response”–NATO’s option to go nuclear if Germany were threatened by East-bloc conventional forces. This would include NATO’s agreeing to immediate talks aimed at removing all short-range nuclear weapons from German soil. American sources say Gorbachev is looking for a formal NATO commitment something more than verbal assurances that NATO is changing.
A still-undefined Soviet observer status in NATO. “That would be a powerful symbol that NATO is no longer an anti-Soviet organization,” said Soviet analyst Andrei Kortunov.
West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s plan, in which no NATO troops would move into what is now East Germany, and Soviet troops would remain for two or three years-paid for by a united Germany.
An expanded role for CSCE, including a risk-reduction center, perhaps in Berlin, and a conflict resolution forum. This would provide the Soviet Union a permanent toehold in Europe without troops. “There are all kinds of creative ideas out there for changing NATO and the security face of Europe,” said a U.S. official. “But we have to get the Soviets to engage.”
Time is short. The two Germanys adopt one currency on July 2. By early fall, East Germany is expected to reinstate the historic five East German Lander, or separate states. By early December, freely elected state parliaments could quickly vote to join West Germany. All-German elections could soon follow. Political union–save for Berlin–would be complete, but Germany would not be a fully sovereign state. Most of all, it would lack Soviet blessing. “What’s wrong with this picture . . . is that the baby would be born without a birth certificate,” says Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the Brookings Institution. Like any illegitimate birth, it may set the families once more at odds.
