America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

The revolution of 1989 short-circuited history, jolting the late 20th century with some vexations that everyone thought would wait until the 21st. In no time at all, German unification went from almost unthinkable to all but unstoppable. Last week's hints out of Bonn that citizens of both Germanys will vote for a single parliament later this year was just the latest reminder that from now on, there will be German answers to the German question in all its complex and troubling dimensions. The four wartime Allies that crushed the Third Reich in 1945 can still consult, negotiate and harrumph to their hearts' content, but they cannot dictate on any matter. That includes the most sensitive and controversial of all: whether a united and fully sovereign Germany will eventually become a nuclear power.

During a visit to Camp David in February, Helmut Kohl was asked whether his country would "see fit to develop an independent nuclear-weapons capability."

"No," said the Chancellor. "This discussion is over in Germany. We are not at all longing to be an atomic power."

That was an artful dodge. The question pertained not to any current debate going on in Germany but to a dilemma that could arise years from now. By then the U.S.S.R. may have shrunk and changed its name, but it will doubtless still be a large country armed with far too many weapons of mass destruction for the comfort of its neighbors.

Tomorrow's Germans may not be "longing" for a nuclear status symbol any more than today's are. They may have followed the example of Japan, that other phoenix risen from the ashes of World War II, and learned to be an economic superpower without wanting, or even needing, commensurate military might. But like everyone else, the Germans will certainly want safety. They will want to know who is going to deter whatever threat they still feel from the missiles and bombers of others.

Kohl's answer is NATO. His Camp David host, George Bush, agrees. They both < believe in the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." NATO has kept the peace for 40 years, and there's no reason to believe it can't do so for another 40.

The trouble is, NATO is broken, at least conceptually. Its reason for being was to deter the Soviet Union from launching an invasion through West Germany to the English Channel. With that danger diminished to the vanishing point, NATO is already undergoing its own deconstruction, more subtle, dignified and gradual than that of the Warsaw Pact but in the long run just as relentless.

Whatever Kohl says now, it is highly unlikely that after unification his citizens or their parliamentary representatives will welcome either American nuclear weapons or soldiers on their soil at more than token levels and for more than a transitional period. For their part, U.S. Congressmen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are unenthusiastic about sending combat units overseas to serve as political symbols -- and temporary ones at that. So the only real suspense in the next stage of the drama may be whether Germany says Danke and auf Wiedersehen to American troops or the U.S. brings them home first.

Once the last American trip-wire battalion is gone, Germany will feel liberated in some respects but vulnerable in others. Then what? Will the government in Bonn -- or perhaps by then Berlin -- ask for help from Britain and France, which have their own independent nuclear deterrents? German pride would make that expedient unattractive.

At that point the Germans will be sorely tempted, for reasons that have nothing to do with the poltergeists of national character, to want their own nuclear deterrent. Never mind what Kohl told Bush at Camp David in February, or what Bush told Mikhail Gorbachev at the same mountaintop retreat earlier this month, or what Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet two weeks ago when he seemed, with much ambiguity and no enthusiasm, to accept the idea of the West German army remaining in NATO. Never mind what agreements were signed as a result of the Two-plus-Four talks back in the early 1990s. Germany will do what it thinks necessary to protect itself against the clear and present dangers of the day.

The alternative to a nuclear-armed Germany is not to try to breathe new life into the aging NATO alliance, conceived as it was in the cold war and dominated as it is by the U.S. More promising would be for Europe to move quickly beyond a monetary and customs union to acquire not just a political * identity but also military muscle. That way there may be a European defense umbrella over the Germans' heads by the time Uncle Sam folds up the American umbrella and takes it home.

When the issue of German unification burst out of nowhere late last year, it initially distracted attention and drained political energy from 1992 and greater European integration. As the world faces up to the nuclear corollary of the German question, Europeans may realize they have more incentive than ever to get on with the business of building supranational institutions on the Continent, including ones that will obviate the need for there ever to be a German bomb.