|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Helmut Kohl and the German Question
| Article
# : |
15977 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1989 |
1,561 Words |
| Author
: |
Terry McNeill
Terry McNeill is chairman of the Department of Political
Science at the University of Hull in Great Britain. |
West Germany is at odds with NATO. The air is thick with recriminations. There is talk of a "soul mis-match" between Bonn and the rest of the Alliance. Three years ago Chancellor Kohl had to be arm-twisted into accepting the second "zero" of the INF agreement. Now he is moving rapidly in the direction of a third zero, egged on by his Free Democrat coalition partner and foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who appears more concerned with modernizing Western attitudes toward Gorbachev than with modernizing NATO's aging, West German-based, short-range Lance missiles.
Superficially, a third "zero" may seem a good deal. It would equalize a weapons category where the Warsaw Pact has a 1,400-100 advantage in launchers and a 6,000-700 advantage in missiles. But the downside is that it pushes a trend toward further zeros, which could eventuate in the denuclearization of Western Europe, before conventional asymmetries have been corrected. If the case is accepted that nuclear weapons have kept the peace, then the corollary that getting rid of them, in the wrong circumstances, makes the world safe for conventional war has to be pondered. Moscow is presently baiting the trail to a third zero, which has been made still more exciting by Gorbachev's latest offer of unilateral reductions in this category.
The Alliance position is that the Lance missiles must be retained and upgraded; if not, unilateral denuclearization will occur by default. London and Washington want it done soon. Kohl first said "yes." Now he says "sometime." It is feared that he really means "never." And as he prevaricates, his options are being foreclosed, for his foreign minister is telling the world that the weapons are unnecessary, and opinion-makers among his fellow
... (1998 of 9440 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
