Two Germans
A Peace Policy for Europe.
by Willy Brandt.
Translated by Joel Carmichael. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 225 pp. $5.95.
Herausforderung und Antwort—Ein Programm fur Europa (Challenge and Response—A Program for Europe).
by Franz Josef Strauss.
Foreword by jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. See-wald Verlag, Stuttgart. 205 pp.
With elections in Germany approaching this fall, books are blossoming forth by prominent politicians who regard themselves as candidates for the chancellor's chair, currently occupied by Kurt Georg Kiesinger. Two notable examples are A Peace Policy for Europe by Willy Brandt, Germany's vice-chancellor, foreign minister, and chairman of the Social Democratic party, and Challenge and Response—A Program for Europe by Franz Josef Strauss, finance minister and head of the Christian Social Union.
Nobody in his right mind would think of putting these two leaders, representing the left- and right-wing factions of the Grand Coalition, in the same political pot. Yet it is surprising in how many respects the liberal, Kennedy-quoting, ex-mayor of West Berlin and the conservative ex-defense minister, remembered for the Der Spiegel incident, appear to agree on key issues. To be sure, they differ greatly in the means they employ and the reasons they advance for achieving similar goals. Nevertheless, together they lend credence to the charge leveled by a meager opposition, and by intellectuals and students, that the Establishment's foreign policy lacks alternatives.
Brandt and Strauss both emphasize that a good German is also a good European, a thesis that grows out of the fear of being tagged nationalistic. As Strauss puts it, “In order to remain Germans, we must become Europeans.” Both leaders are unhappy with the congealed European status quo. Brandt terms the present peace insecure, and calls for a new “peace order” for Europe. Strauss also warns that Germans are no longer willing to accept the status quo, but where Brandt modestly complains about the unresolved question of German self-determination, Strauss boldly asks for a voice in creating and shaping world politics. Germany, he writes, cannot forever remain an economic giant (it is second in world trade) and a political dwarf.
Both politicians have the reunification of Germany on their minds. In view of the American engagement at home and in Asia, and the “ambivalence of American politics—its vacillation between deterrent and detente” (Strauss), both have concluded that it is up to the Europeans, and especially to divided Germany, to solve the problems of Europe. Instead of the concept of the 50's, which aimed at the political integration of Western Europe within the framework of the Atlantic Alliance, they envision a strengthening of existing relations among the six Common Market nations—such as the Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community, Euratom, and the Franco-German friendship treaty—into solid political, economic, social, technological, and, in the case of Strauss, military ties. The ultimate goal is the creation of a Europe that speaks with a single voice. Both Strauss's European federation and Brandt's peace order are directed to this end.
The authors, however, evade and gloss over the heart of the problem—Germany itself—by holding that the division of Germany can be dealt with only by curing the division of Europe, toward which end each of them offers his own somewhat utopian designs.
Brandt visualizes a long-range policy of tension-easing rapprochement. He is convinced that a conscious cooperative effort of peaceful coexistence is bound to grow in strength over the years and loosen up the rigid power blocs. As a foundation for his European peace order he proposes a collective security system that vaguely resembles certain Soviet proposals. In order to reduce the perilous military confrontation in Europe, such a security system would include not only NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations but the United States and the Soviet Union as well.
The improvement and normalization of East-West relations, the development of mutual trust and confidence, along with measures for arms limitations and balanced disarmament, to be followed by renunciation of force, are all essential items in the complex catalog of the Foreign Minister's program. In view of the obstacles so far put up by Bonn, it is heartening to learn that Brandt considers the nuclear nonproliferation and test-ban treaties as valuable milestones on the painfully long road to reconciliation.
_____________
It is at this point that Brandt and Strauss part company. Strauss, by nature a suspicious man, likes to imagine a plot against the Federal Republic whenever the superpowers schedule a conference, and he profoundly distrusts political concepts involving good will and faith. Always an outspoken opponent of the nonproliferation treaty—he interprets the possession of nuclear weapons, as well as the power to dispose of them, as a symbol of sovereignty—he plans to reorganize NATO into a West European defense community which would gradually develop its own nuclear weapons system while simultaneously maintaining a cooperative partnership with the United States. A strong, independent “union of free European countries,” he argues, can be expected to have an enormous magnetism and fascination for the Eastern Bloc countries. It could be counted on to attract them till their “national striving for self-determination flows into the wish for a political unity of all of Europe.”
Equally aware as is Strauss of the problem of American economic and technological influence in Europe, Brandt is less alarmed about it, and points to a growing European independence and self-awareness. Yet he recognizes the population explosion and the scientific revolution as the two great moving forces of our time and submits that the magnitude of modern technology transcends the powers of individual European states. Europe has fallen back and must catch up: “In disunion our continent would sink still further, but in cooperation it will have a great deal to offer mankind.”
Strauss, always the astute politician, takes no such philosophical view. One of his critics has said of him that he is the only politician who knows how to instill dissatisfaction in the prosperous Germans. Inspired by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber's The American Challenge, he sounds the alarm button and tells the other members of the European community that they are dwarfs. “Our continent threatens—politically and economically—to degenerate into an underdeveloped territory,” he states dramatically. Only when Europeans make up their minds to unify their countries can self-determination prevail. Otherwise, he warns, their lot will be, at best, a modest right of co-decision.
The “Europeanization of the German question,” as Strauss calls it, is not a new idea. For many years he has stressed that the demand of the Germans for unification, if it is to be met, will have to become the responsibility of the West European community as a whole. But in the technological gap Strauss has found the ingredient of urgency missing from his earlier military-oriented solution to the German question. Now, skillfully blending the two elements, he suggests a response to the fact of American superiority in the fields of space technology, computer and airplane building, electronics, and management, that is a pragmatic compound of European cooperation, fusion, and integration.
_____________
Although both party leaders favor the continued friendship and protection of the United States, they also express interest in a dialogue with Moscow. Brandt believes that the “Soviet Union does not wish to speak of German unity for the time being,” but is possibly ready to discuss peace in Europe, and he is prompted to lay the groundwork for such discussions. “Our policy with respect to Eastern Europe,” he emphasizes, “cannot be separated from the shaping of our relationship to the Soviet Union.” With considerable pride the Foreign Minister describes the accomplishments of his Social Democratic party, which was the first to initiate an effective open policy toward Eastern Europe. As a result, after establishing diplomatic relations with Rumania, the Bundesrepublik now “figures” in all Eastern European countries, except Albania. Unfortunately, Brandt sheds little light on events in Czechoslovakia—the “Prague Spring,” forcibly reversed by the intervention of Soviet troops—for which the German embrace could well have been partly responsible.
Strauss is less squeamish. “The overexaggerated manifestation of the West for a detente at any price has made easier the decision of intervention on August 21, 1968 by the Soviets,” he charges. As a result, the Soviets have been deluded into thinking of themselves as the greatest force in Europe, and no longer present any hope for a policy of detente, Strauss believes. He assures us that when he talks to Moscow, it will be from a position of economic as well as military strength. Coexistence and rapprochement, furthermore, in Strauss's opinion, merely serve the purpose of obstructing the formation of a powerful European community, and: “In reality the consequences of a bipolar East-West detente amount to a weakening of the free world.”
Both politicians stand firm on non-recognition of the East German Democratic Republic, which Strauss refers to as the Soviet Zone, and the Oder-Neisse line. Even though the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany have repeatedly explained that they regard agreements on those issues as a precondition to talks on the German question, neither Brandt nor Strauss is willing to discuss them. It is Brandt's opinion that recognition of the German Democratic Republic as a “foreign country” would only cement the de facto split, while any decision on the Oder-Neisse line must be left up to an all-German government when a peace settlement is concluded.
The difference between Strauss and Brandt comes down to one of attitude: Strauss is the skeptic, Brandt the optimist. Yet it is interesting to see how Brandt's non-military approach to European integration, which at first glance seems the more utopian, appears to be the more possible after an analysis of Strauss's Realpolitik.
Strauss chooses to ignore the truth in de Gaulle's remark that there is not one European nation but many, and presumes that the political decisions necessary to his program will be approved by the European peoples just as if they were already the homogeneous unit he would have them become. Yet even in Eastern Europe, for decades held together by a tight uniformity of ideology, such homogeneity has not developed. Does Strauss seriously believe that France, Italy, or England, who maintain excellent relations with the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc countries, and Red China, would be remotely interested in the type of defense community he proposes, especially when the German Federal Republic, whose division inherently presents a highly explosive situation, is dissatisfied with the status quo? Strauss is disenchanted with NATO. But there is no guarantee that a European defense community, which will no more represent the will of one people than does NATO, would not also be plagued by troublesome considerations of priorities. The unhappy fact is that certain sectors of vital national interest, such as defense, food, and energy, are indivisible and therefore cannot be decided by a supranational authority as long as the homogeneity of its participating nations remains undeveloped.
In the past Strauss's concept of a united Western Europe, based primarily on a European defense community, has been received with a marked absence of enthusiasm, especially outside of Germany. It is doubtful whether his addition of the technological gap as another argument for unification will increase its popularity or erase the suspicion that the idea merely disguises a plan for German reunification and a more powerful German position.
In his foreword to Challenge and Response, Servan-Schreiber does not minimize the dangers in Strauss's power politics, but he sanctions them on the chance that they may accomplish the desired end. However, neither Servan-Schreiber, Strauss, nor Brandt takes cognizance of the fact that quite spontaneously an integrated European community is already under way and growing. In the absence of special treaties or pacts, students, artists, film makers, scholars, and others have been creating their own united Europe. It would appear that these already existing forces could be made a significant element in building a United States of Europe; they require, however, an alert and imaginative leadership, one not obsessed by power politics, defense systems, ideologies, and recognition of East Germany or the Oder-Neisse line.
Compared with the obstacles the Strauss plan presents, Brandt's grand design for bringing together East and West by means of friendship and mutual trust seems to stand a better chance for survival in this day and age, notwithstanding setbacks such as Czechoslovakia. “Today, Communism,” Brandt writes, “even in its own realm, is anything but a strictly hierarchized and undisputed world religion. It has been transformed, and it will be transformed still further. Transformation happens to be the destiny of systems in this age of ours.” It is in this light that the power politics of Strauss and others seem strangely anachronistic.
