From Euphoria to Neurosis

There are some things that signify entire historical processes and eras.

The Berlin Wall is perhaps the most glaring example. What could better symbolize the pision of Europe and the world into two ideologically, militarily, and politically irreconcilable blocs? A massive, technologically advanced fortification, cutting through the soul of a leading city of the Old World. In January 1989, East German leader Erich Honecker proclaimed that the “anti-fascist protection barrier” would stand for another hundred years. Less than a year later, it fell—not coincidentally, along with Honecker’s government and soon the entire East German state.

Germany’s unification, following the 3 October 1990 agreement, was a turning point. A major state, which had generated tensions and wars for 150 years, reemerged on the map of Europe. But, more than that, the principles of German unification came to define European politics for the next thirty years, culminating in the Ukraine conflict, which erupted in 2014 and escalated into a large-scale interstate war in 2022. These events, no matter how they are assessed, were set in motion by the 1990 agreements (or lack thereof).

There are some things that signify entire historical processes and eras.

The Berlin Wall is perhaps the most glaring example. What could better symbolize the pision of Europe and the world into two ideologically, militarily, and politically irreconcilable blocs? A massive, technologically advanced fortification, cutting through the soul of a leading city of the Old World. In January 1989, East German leader Erich Honecker proclaimed that the “anti-fascist protection barrier” would stand for another hundred years. Less than a year later, it fell—not coincidentally, along with Honecker’s government and soon the entire East German state.

Germany’s unification, following the 3 October 1990 agreement, was a turning point. A major state, which had generated tensions and wars for 150 years, reemerged on the map of Europe. But, more than that, the principles of German unification came to define European politics for the next thirty years, culminating in the Ukraine conflict, which erupted in 2014 and escalated into a large-scale interstate war in 2022. These events, no matter how they are assessed, were set in motion by the 1990 agreements (or lack thereof).

Losing in Quantity, Winning in Quality

Eighty years after the end of World War II, the abolition of Germany’s previous statehood (the Third Reich) seems more ambiguous than it did after the war. On the one hand, Europe, as a community of states, rid itself of its main source of instability: Germany, which was too strong, ambitious, and incapable of integrating into deep alliances. On the other hand, Europe failed to do this on its own. The two interconnected world wars, initiated by the Old World, could not resolve its contradictions. It took full-scale involvement of external forces (albeit ones culturally and historically rooted in Europe)—the Soviet Union and the United States—to finally straighten out the mess. But the price was high: Europe lost its centuries-old central role in world politics. Furthermore, WWII directly accelerated the dismantling of European colonial empires in Asia and Africa.

Having lost in quantity (international predominance and strategic autonomy), Europe won in quality (of its own life).

Firstly, the ‘German Question’ was gone, and with it the fear of a new war between major European nations. Europe could thus focus on self-improvement, economic recovery, and growth.

Secondly, leading Western European states no longer had to worry about possible surprises from historically restless Eastern Europe. The Iron Curtain allowed the West to rant over the Soviet Union’s totalitarian control of Eastern Europe, but totally relieved the West of any responsibility for it.

Thirdly, the Old World’s western periphery outright relinquished, to its North American patron, the right and duty to think strategically. Never before had Europeans enjoyed the luxury of shifting responsibility for their own security onto someone else. This was especially favorable for Germany, strictly prohibited from strategically thinking ever again.

All this made European integration possible. At the peak of its prosperity, it was perhaps the most successful political project in European history. A happy combination of several circumstances—the presence of an undeniable external enemy (the USSR) that consolidated the European community, the security patronage of a senior partner (the U.S.), and practical benefits of value homogeneity—allowed Europe to build a unique system of interstate relations in the 1950s-1990s.

Importantly, Europe’s ideological split, epitomized by the existence of two German states, facilitated rather than impeded this project.

Not If, But How

Yet changes in Europe came abruptly. When Ronald Reagan assured Mikhail Gorbachev in Red Square, in the early summer of 1988, that he no longer considered the USSR an evil empire, no one could have imagined that a non-communist government would be formed in Poland just a year later, and that the European socialist camp would vanish half a year after that. The fall of the Berlin Wall and of the GDR’s communist government raised the question of German reunification, which no one was prepared for. These developments took the West German leadership unawares, while the leading European powers’ delight at the weakening of their sworn adversary (the USSR) mixed with instantly reawakened fears of a powerful Germany.

When discussions about German unification began, key European politicians—François Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher, Giulio Andreotti, and Benelux leaders—were unenthusiastic, to say the least, about the idea. The phrase attributed to Andreotti “I love Germany so much that I would even prefer if there were two of them” reflected the general mood. Across the ocean, George H. W. Bush and his team of realists were trying to figure out how to arrange the unification in a way that would be most beneficial for the U.S.

Paradoxically, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev seemed to be the most optimistic of all.

Unlike the Europeans, the Kremlin saw no reason to seriously fear Germany reassuming its great-power status, and it was precisely Russia’s stance that contributed most to Germany’s rapid and generally quite smooth unification. Nowadays, Gorbachev’s position is considered naïve, to say the least. Of course, it is easy to see the ramifications of the decisions hastily made back then. But it would be a simplification to blame everything on the Soviet leadership’s lack of professionalism. Leaving the (quite fertile) details to the historians, I will try to summarize the motives of Gorbachev and his associates, and assess their soundness using present-day knowledge.

First of all, the Kremlin believed that the German people would eventually unite in any case, and thus it was pointless to resist an inevitable historical process. In retrospect, this is not so clear: 35 years on, the West-East German border is still almost perfectly reproduced in maps of German electoral results. But, while this clearly indicates the limits of Germany’s integration policy, which has cost it hundreds of billions of dollars, it does not mean that the two states could have been preserved in the 1990s. In any case, in late 1989 and early 1990, the leadership of the USSR (and other states) believed German unification to be inevitable. It was not a question of ‘if,’ but ‘how.’

And here one can more concretely criticize the Soviet leadership.

World Order in Lieu of Internal Order

Gorbachev and Honecker disliked each other. Gorbachev blamed the GDR’s collapse on its stubborn unwillingness to accept perestroika, which probably led to his emotional perception of things.

But the West applauded Gorbachev’s New Political Thinking, and the Cold War’s end (proclaimed by Reagan) permitted a cooperative approach.

This did not mean that the Kremlin was starry-eyed about the future. After all, Gorbachev was molded by the Cold War (although he also had a liberal streak from the 1960s political thaw), and was surrounded by people of various views, including deep suspicion of the West. But by 1990, he had developed enough self-confidence to dismiss unwelcome opinions and follow his own views, grounded mainly in the New Political Thinking that he had nurtured since 1986, which would undergird a ‘new world order.’

The architects of perestroika were focused on international matters—not because domestic ones were unimportant, but because it seemed logical and rational to reshape foreign policy and away from the confrontation that had reached an impasse by the mid-1980s. Also, there was no consensus or clear plan as to what should be done domestically. As a result, foreign policy increasingly predominated, necessitating close cooperation with former opponents.

A Bad Bargain?

Complaints against the Soviet leadership can be roughly pided into two categories: material ones, which were immediately evident, and conceptual ones, which only gradually came to the fore.

The first sort contends that Russia received too little money (12 billion Marks) for consent to German unification and withdrawal of troops. The Germans were probably willing to pay more. German leaders, including Helmut Kohl, subsequently admitted that they were surprised by Moscow’s modesty and had been preparing themselves for much larger amounts. But they did not say so to the Soviet negotiators. Finance Minister Theo Waigel bargained as only a German could, and eventually cut the price further from the initially requested 15-16 billion.

Moscow could probably have haggled for a better deal, but that money, even if it had been ten times greater, would also likely have disappeared without a trace into the black hole of the USSR’s systemic crisis.

Gorbachev later wrote that he had considered hard bargaining to be unacceptable in principle, as the idea had been to build a qualitatively new relationship based on trust. Maybe such claims were made only to save face. But it is more likely that Gorbachev truly believed in a new world order based on trust between former adversaries. And here we return to the second type of complaint, regarding how the European security system, emerging from German unification, was handled.

NATO as the Main Condition

For Germany’s Western allies, its status in NATO acquired fundamental importance. The U.S. was naturally concerned with maintaining its strategic presence in Europe, since German unification formally ended the entire postwar period. Europeans were alarmed by the ‘German Question’—the rebirth of a powerful country with a frightening track record. On both sides of the ocean, NATO was seen as the solution. The classic formula of Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general—“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”—remained relevant, despite dramatic geopolitical transformations.

Washington, Bonn, and other capitals were aware that Moscow would be unhappy with a united Germany in NATO. It all looked like an undisguised retreat: the part of Germany, previously controlled by the Soviets, simply came under NATO control.

The USSR suggested that Germany remain outside the blocs, its neutrality reassuring everyone. But this did not suit the Western allies at all.

To persuade the Kremlin, the Americans and Europeans argued that NATO would prevent possible relapses, especially if the Germans some day reacquired their inconvenient historical memory. NATO simply would not allow them to get rolling. And NATO, in any case, was no longer hostile to Russia, since the Cold War was over… (A few years later, they would similarly respond to Russia’s warnings that NATO’s admission of Eastern European countries would render it anti-Russian. Brussels hurried to reassure Moscow that, to the contrary, the alliance’s senior members would keep in check any anti-Russian inclinations of the new arrivals. There is no need to explain now who was right.)

No Commitments

NATO was preparing for a long dispute, but to the pleasure of stunned Western negotiators—and the horror of at least some of Gorbachev’s associates—Gorbachev agreed to Germany’s NATO membership quite quickly. In the process, the Soviets were assured that there was no talk of NATO expansion, and that it was only a matter of one country for the sake of everyone’s calm. Various politicians, led by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, promised that NATO infrastructure would move “not one inch” eastward. But no treaties were signed—or, indeed, requested by the Kremlin—to that effect. So, when Russia, as the USSR’s successor, three or four years later began protesting, NATO enlargement into the former Warsaw Pact (the first wave included Poland, Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia), Moscow was told: no one promised anything, it was just a general conversation.

Gorbachev, who was subsequently strongly criticized for the lack of binding agreements, usually spoke of plans to establish a fundamentally new atmosphere of trust within a ‘new world order.’ Indeed, if one had materialized, no specific agreements on NATO non-expansion would have been needed. But things went differently, due to the USSR’s collapse. Citing this, Gorbachev shifted responsibility onto his opponents who aspired to the Soviet Union’s disintegration.

There is some truth to that. In any case, many years later, when NATO had almost tripled in size, the Americans began to openly say what had previously been only implied: verbal promises were made, but in a certain geopolitical situation; with the Soviet Union gone, the situation had changed dramatically and made those conversations irrelevant.

One can fantasize about what would have happened if the Kremlin had secured written guarantees of NATO’s non-expansion in 1990. But this would hardly have changed the logic of events in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

After all, Atlantic institutions expanded not because there were no signed memorandums, but because the West’s nemesis and counterweight had disappeared, opening a vacuum that would be inevitably filled by Western influence until the opponents of Western dominance (re)gained sufficient strength.

In any case, the last Soviet leaders thoughtlessly disregarded the strategic consequences of German unification at a time when they could have influenced it. Consent to a united Germany in NATO, and to the formula (later included in the Charter for a New Europe) that each state is free to choose its own security arrangements, paved the way for NATO’s unlimited enlargement. After all, everyone has the right, and it must be respected.

The Sacred Status Quo

People born in the year of Germany’s unification have already grown up. And the past 35 years have been so eventful that unification seems to have been in the distant past. Europe followed Germany in unifying, a process that peaked in the second half of the 2000s, but eventually plunged into an increasingly palpable crisis related directly to global developments.

Leading Western countries struggled to pull through the global financial turmoil of 2008, which affected the EU especially severely. The eastward shift of international gravity, driven by China’s rise, has affected transatlantic relations. Russia, having regained its strength, has begun to resist Euro-Atlantic pressure, now by force.

In Europe itself, expansion and integration have clashed, producing problems without long-term solutions.

The European authorities have generally switched to autopilot, avoiding serious thinking about the future, but still sometimes managing to paper over cracks by further intensifying their chosen policies.

This approach was personified by Germany’s long-term chancellor (2005-2021) Angela Merkel, an authoritative leader and skillful tactician who scurried away from any strategic issues. She is symbolic of the status-quo policy that benefited Europe and Germany since the early 1990s. It is also symbolic that this policy collapsed almost immediately, in February 2022, after Merkel left her post.

From Unity to Disarray

Germany now celebrates the 35th anniversary of its unification in a state of socio-political confusion: the ruling coalition, with a weak chancellor, lacks the trust of most Germans; anti-systemic forces are gaining popularity; structural economic problems are mounting; the authorities openly admit that the current economic and social models should be revised; no one knows what the new ones should be like. All this is happening amid the transformation of relations (extremely unpleasant for Europe and Germany) with the U.S., which is persistently shifting all possible costs to the Old World and demanding complete loyalty from it. And on top of it all, election after election reveal persisting socio-political difference between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ federal lands.

The euphoria of the early 1990s has long since dissipated. It arose less from geopolitical triumph or prosperity (although both came to pass), and more from the conviction that the international system had reached its final and proper level of development. The feeling of absolute moral rightness and corresponding irreversibility of victory (achieved, importantly, without the use of force) completely obliterated the capacity for doubt in the Germans, who are naturally prone to moralizing and unable to turn from a chosen path until they meet an insurmountable obstacle.

After 1991, Europe came to consider itself the prototype of the sort of international relations that would eventually reign everywhere. Now the world, led by Europe’s American patron, turns out to have gone in a completely different direction—the one which Europe had proudly declared to be irretrievably gone. It is not clear what the European Union should do in this situation.

Unlike states, which can rapidly change course if necessary, the EU is too complex for that.

All this generates frustration, manifested in societal confusion and the elites’ increasingly aggressive desire to unite the continent on an anti-Russian basis. Something that started so well has now gone off the rails, and Russia is exclusively blamed. One can dismiss this as a symptom of neurosis. But history shows that neurosis in Europe, and especially in Germany, spawns disaster far beyond its borders. History is heading for another sharp turn.