It would be nice to think that Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia could coordinate their “return to Europe,” supporting each other’s fledgling democracies. But, despite the goodwill of the new leaders, symbolized by the Bratislava summit in April, the present reality is as much one of competition as it is of cooperation. In almost every field, at almost every international gathering, one finds the Polish, the Hungarian, and the Czechoslovak representatives quietly pushing their own particular claims for the special attention of the West. This competition is not unhealthy, but it underlines the new-old dependency of these countries—on the West.
Part of the attraction for Czechoslovakia and Hungary of the so-called Pentagonale cooperation between them, Yugoslavia (especially Slovenia and Croatia), Austria, and Italy may be the sentimental revival of old Habsburg ties. But there is also the more vulgar charm of being closely involved with two highly developed Western countries—one a leading member of the EC, the other trying hard to get in. In their different ways, the Czechoslovak, Polish, and Hungarian foreign ministers have all observed that if these three countries are to achieve a new democratic partnership, it will be only in the context of belonging to a larger European community—and by that they mean, above all, a larger European Community.
The responsibility of the West in general, and Western Europe in particular, is therefore immense. A cartoon on the front page of the leading Czech independent daily, Lidové Noviny, expressed a sentiment about the West that can be encountered in Budapest and Warsaw as well as in Prague. It showed a rather gloomy man saying, “The European Home is shut. If we want to get in, we have first to solve all our key problems.” At times, the attitude of some Western leaders does still recall Dr. Johnson’s famous definition of a patron: “Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help.” Of course, Western investors have no moral obligation at all to invest unless the conditions are right. But Western democracies do have a moral obligation and, what is more, a hard political interest in helping the man while he is struggling in the water—provided, of course, he is really trying to swim and not just shouting about swimming.
Perhaps the greatest risk of the kind of superdemocratization that I have suggested is possible—with more shouting but less swimming—is that it will diminish the overall Western interest in the transitions in East Central Europe, an interest which may yet prove to be as shallow as it is currently broad. “Why should we help them if they cannot help themselves?” will be the cry.
There are two sides to this coin too. The West, if it is to help, has a right to ask for certain rigorous, consistent economic policies—let us call them, in shorthand, a Balcerowicz or Klaus plan—and for the kind of governments that will be able to sustain such policies. The political desideratum may, I have suggested, be summarized as strong, freely elected coalitions. But, if the countries of East Central Europe produce such governments, then they must be confident that the help will really be there. For without it, such policies are simply unsustainable.
West Germany is currently reckoning to pay something in the order of three hundred billion marks over the next three years for the transition in East Germany. As with all building plans, the final bill will almost certainly be higher. And that is for a ready-made transition—a turnkey democracy, so to speak—for just sixteen million people in the most prosperous country of the former Eastern Europe. How much larger then would be the bill for homemade, trial-and-error democracies for sixty-three million people in three rather poorer countries?
There is, to be sure, a general consensus among Western governments and political elites that “we should help” the transition to democracy in East Central Europe. But how many politicians are prepared even to contemplate action on a scale comparable to that which West Germany, after a very sober examination, considers to be necessary for East Germany? Above all, how many politicians are prepared seriously to make the case to their own electors for such help? If presented with such a prospective bill, most West European electors would, I fear, say, “Sorry, no!” Ironically, the kind of West European consumer democracy to which East Central Europeans so passionately aspire may be the kind least likely to help them. If West German taxpayer electors are so reluctant to pay even for their fellow Germans, who would seriously expect them to cough up for Poles?
Nonetheless, the challenge of democratic leadership would be precisely to make this unpopular case as eloquently and convincingly as possible, stating plainly that this is a moment when short-term personal and material interests should be sacrificed to long-term national and European ones. What we are witnessing is therefore not just a testing time for the fledgling democracies of East Central Europe but also a testing time for the established democracies of Western Europe.
Finally, my exclusive emphasis on just three countries of East Central Europe may raise an objection. What about all those other Europeans to the east and to the southeast who are also crying out for democracy? My answer is a purely pragmatic one. Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia are the countries where the fate of democracy hangs in the balance today and where the weight of the West can make the difference between success and failure. You cannot do everything at once. With German unification, the eastern frontier of democratic Europe has already moved from the Elbe to the Oder. I sincerely hope (against hope) that in ten or fifteen years the frontier of democratic Europe maybe at the Urals and the Black Sea. But the question for today is, Will democratic Europe end on the Oder or on the Bug?
THE CHEQUERS AFFAIR
IN JULY 1990, IN THE MIDST OF FAR, FAR MORE IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS, such as NATO’s London Declaration, the Twenty-eighth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Stavropol accord giving Soviet approval to the full sovereignty of a united Germany, Anglo-German relations suffered a little shake. The first part of this little shake was an interview given to The Spectator by Britain’s then secretary of state for trade and industry, Nicholas Ridley, in which, after lunch, but only one glass of wine, Mr. Ridley talked about the proposed European monetary union as “a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe,” and declared that, if you were prepared to give up sovereignty to the Commission of the European Communities, “you might just as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly.” Saltily written up by the new editor of The Spectator, Dominic Lawson, son of former chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson, and adorned with a characteristically vivid cartoon by Nicholas Garland showing a schoolboylike Mr. Ridley daubing a poster of Chancellor Kohl with a Hitler mustache, this “outbreak of the Euro-hooligan Ridley,” as the normally restrained Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described it, caused a political storm and the resignation of the trade and industry secretary.
The second part of this little shake was the publication in The Independent on Sunday and Der Spiegel of a leaked, highly confidential memorandum of a meeting between Mrs. Thatcher and a small group of historians held at Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, on 24 March to discuss Germany. The memorandum, which I had not seen until its publication, although I participated in the Chequers meeting, was written by Mrs. Thatcher’s private secretary for foreign affairs, Charles Powell. “Ver-bloody-batim” was how one British minister reportedly described this singular document. But ver-bloody-batim is precisely what it was not. Rather it was a report, with no views attributed specifically to anyone but some by implication to all. And, like all good Whitehall rapporteurs, Mr. Powell managed to flavor this rich cream soup with a little of his own particular spice.
One sentence was particularly rich: “Some even less flattering attributes were also mentioned [at the meeting] as an abiding part of the German character: in alphabetical order, angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality.” Well, perhaps in the course of a long discussion those attributes were mentioned by some participants, along with many more positive ones. But plainly
they were never listed like that by anyone; nor, indeed, was there anything like a collective view of “the German character”—if such a thing exists. Still, as one might expect, this was the sentence that made the headlines, whether in London, Paris, or Frankfurt.
What really happened was this. Mrs. Thatcher invited six independent experts on Germany to give their views at a private meeting in which the foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, also participated. Besides two leading American historians of Germany, Fritz Stern of Columbia University and Gordon Craig of Stanford, there were four British historians and commentators: Lord Dacre (Hugh Trevor-Roper), Norman Stone, George Urban, and myself. This was no ideological cabal. The guests had different views on Germany and different views on Europe. Thus, for example, Norman Stone is a member of the Bruges Group, named after Mrs. Thatcher’s Bruges speech, which opposes further steps of federal integration in the European Community, while I have repeatedly criticized Mrs. Thatcher for not going farther in that direction. Fritz Stern is not only an outstanding authority on German history but also an outspoken defender of the “I word” (liberalism). All spoke their own minds. Fritz Stern said nothing that he has not said already in his published work; I said nothing that I have not said in mine.
Yet the most remarkable feature of this quite diverse group was the degree of unanimity that emerged in answering the central questions of whether and how Germany has changed and what we might expect from the new, united Germany. As the main body of Mr. Powell’s memorandum fairly indicated, the weight of the argument was overwhelmingly positive. We explained why 1945 was a great caesura in German history. We described how, self-consciously but increasingly self-confidently, the democratic West Germany differed from its predecessors; and how the unification of Germany in one democratic state, bordering on East Central European states that were also choosing their own governments, was a development heartily to be welcomed. And we argued that it should be, precisely, welcomed.
Of course, concerns were also expressed about this new Germany. Historians will always find continuities as well as discontinuities. But almost every doubt or question that was raised by the guests around the Chequers table could also have been heard in Bonn from distinguished German historians, commentators, and, indeed, leading politicians. For, as several participants pointed out, one of the signal strengths of West Germany has been its capacity for constant, relentless, sometimes almost masochistic self-examination and self-criticism, based soundly on a strong, free press and an exemplary historiography. Neither Japan nor Italy, nor indeed Austria, could match this. Thus, I think it is fair to say that if Chancellor Kohl himself had sat in on that meeting he would have agreed with, or, at the very least, accepted as fair comment, 90 percent of what was said around the Chequers table.
For a private, no-holds-barred brainstorming session, that is not a bad percentage. After all, everyone but everyone speaks slightly differently about his neighbors than he does to them. Auden says somewhere that if men knew what women said about them in private, the human race would cease to exist. The same might almost be said about the nations of Europe and the European Community. (Men as much as women, of course.) If we had a completely frank account of, say, President Mitterrand’s discussions with some French intellectuals on this issue, would the score even be as high? Or, for that matter, in a comparably frank discussion between Chancellor Kohl and some German specialists about Britain?
The remaining 10 percent was as much a matter of style as of content, of tone rather than analysis. This was, of course, the problem a fortiori with Nicholas Ridley’s remarks, as presented in The Spectator. As it happens, Mr. Ridley’s analysis was wrong. (If there is a danger, it is not Germany’s commitment to further West European integration but rather a weakening of that commitment as a result of the new possibilities opening to the east.) But, even if he were right, he would have been wrong for the way he said it. I have thought a good deal about this particular British tone and style in discussing Germany and Europe—a tone and style reflected outrageously in Mr. Ridley’s remarks, somewhat also in The Spectator’s representation of them, but also, to a much more limited degree, and in a more defensible way, in the personal spice of Mr. Powell’s memorandum.
I am told this is a matter of age and personal experience, and no doubt it is easier for someone of my generation, born after the war, to come to like and admire present-day Germany and to make friendships unburdened by the past. Yet the generation gap does not quite account for this peculiar British tone—a unique mixture of resentment and frivolity. It may, I think, be explained partly by geography and history. America is far enough away and still big and powerful enough to be relaxed about the reemergence of Germany as a great power in Central Europe. France is too close, too small, and relatively too weak to be anything but deadly serious about it. But Britain is somewhere in between: close enough to be worried and weak enough to be resentful (“Who won the war anyway?”), yet also far enough away, and still self-confident enough, to be outspoken and outrageous.
This slightly resentful insouciance is, like so many national weaknesses, the flip side of a strength. With a few notable exceptions, most German political speeches and commentaries are still so earnest, learned, scrupulous, and responsible that they are better than any sleeping pill. British political speeches and commentaries, by contrast, are still often amusing, original, and uninhibited—to a fault. But the fault in this case was a serious one.
It is not just that it is profoundly offensive to the leaders and people of a democratic Germany to paint Hitler on the wall (or on the remnants of the Wall). It is also consummately counterproductive. Such sauce does not make the meat of substantive criticism more interesting. It means that the whole dish is pushed away. It does not mean that Britain’s voice is listened to more attentively in the councils of Europe. It means that it is listened to even less.
In a sense, the July crisis was just another chapter in a much longer story: the story of how numerous responsible British policy makers, including successive foreign secretaries, have worked extraordinarily hard to produce a positive yet still distinctive British contribution to the development of Europe, and how this work has again and again been frustrated. There are many reasons for this frustration—in the EC itself, in the legacy of past mistakes, in the Labour Party as well as in the Conservative Party—but some of the responsibility must plainly lie with Mrs. Thatcher. The buck stops there. A large part of this most persistent problem lies in that 10 percent region of tone and style: in the failure to find a distinctive language of British Europeanism—a language in which criticisms do not automatically become accusations and praise does not sound like blame.
The very fact that Mrs. Thatcher invited six independent experts for a day’s seminar, and listened, shows a genuine wish to come to a serious, informed judgment on these extraordinary developments in the center of Europe and hence to find an appropriate response to them. There are those, including some in Bonn, who say that her interventions on these issues were more obviously measured, informed, and helpful in the second quarter of 1990 than perhaps they were in the first. Yet the effect of the leaked Powell memo, coming on top of the Ridley affair, was to set things back once again.
Chancellor Kohl took it all very sportingly, saying that Mr. Ridley was not the only person to have made tactless remarks, recalling his own gaffe a few years ago when he compared Gorbachev to Goebbels. In Britain, an investigation was ordered into the source of the leak. Few thought the culprit would ever be found. Questions were asked in the House of Commons. The prime minister defended Mr. Powell. The foreign secretary invited his counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, to the Glyndebourne Opera. Then the Germans went on uniting and the British went on holiday.
However, the “Chequers seminar” has entered the mythology of Anglo-German relations. For several years after 1990, I was tackled by people in Germany who started by telling me that of course they hadn’t taken the incident at all seriously, and then talked about it very
seriously for hours. In 1996, George Urban published a very extensive account of the meeting, drawn from his diaries. He records Mrs. Thatcher saying at the end of the meeting, “Very well, very well…I promise you that I shall be sweet to the Germans.” Now I vividly remember her sitting up like a schoolgirl and saying, “All right, I shall be very nice to the Germans.” I wonder how many of the other participants (including Douglas Hurd, well-known as a diarist) have recorded slightly differing versions of the same event.
CHRONOLOGY
1990
1 AUGUST. Noncommunist philosopher Zhelyu Zhelev becomes president of Bulgaria.
2 AUGUST. Iraq invades Kuwait.
3 AUGUST. Árpád Göncz is elected president of Hungary.
17 AUGUST. Beginning of a Serb insurrection in the Croatian province of Krajina.
23 AUGUST. The East German “People’s Chamber” votes for East Germany to join the Federal Republic under Article 23 of the West German constitution.
31 AUGUST. Signature of the Unification Treaty between the Federal Republic and East Germany.
7 SEPTEMBER. Ethnic Albanian delegates of the recently dissolved Kosovo assembly meet secretly in Kaçanik and adopt a constitution for their “independent republic.”
11-12 SEPTEMBER. The concluding “2 + 4” meeting and signature in Moscow of the “Final Treaty with Respect to Germany”—informally known as the “2 + 4 treaty.”
17 SEPTEMBER. Lech Wałȩsa declares that he will stand for the presidency of Poland. The European Community agrees on arrangements for the former East Germany to join the EC.
1 OCTOBER. Britain joins the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European Monetary System at a central rate against the deutsche mark of DM 2.95 to £1.
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