Russia entices West Germany
Timothy Garton Ash
With an election in view, Mrs Thatcher flies to the Falklands, celebrating the triumph of British arms. With an election Imminent (on 6 March), Mr Vogel, Social Democrat candidate for the West German Chancellorship, flies to... Moscow. Moscow repays the compliment, sending Mr Gromyko hot-foot to Bonn and making Plain its support for Mr Vogel's can- didature. In any other Western country this would hardly be an advantage. Imagine the effect of explicit Russian support for Mr Foot in a British general election. (Remember the `Zinoviev letter'?) But it is a measure of the sea-change in West German Public opinion over the last decade of detente, and of the fears aroused in that country by the threat of 'limited nuclear war', that this Soviet Support could indeed ne an advantage to the Social Democrats. If the 'Falklands factor' may prove decisive in the British election, what we could call the 'Pershing factor' is central to the West German election. If the British Conservatives will do their utmost to keep Public attention focused on the South Atlantic, rather than the dole queues, the German Social Democrats are equally in- ei_nt on keeping public attention fixed on (ne Cruise and Pershing missile sites, rather than the dole queues or the national debt — o
°r which the Schmidt government might be field responsible. At present, only one party has a clear answer to the question: will you support the stationing of Cruise and Pershing II missiles
West Germany at the end of this year? The 'Greens' say, `No — whatever the Rus- sians do or do not do with their SS2Os'. The ?ther four parties are engaged in the StaMiliar Political game of covering a silent shift „ of position with the loudest possible sProtestations of consistency. So far the 0elal Democrats are coming off best in this soft-shoe shuffle. ,zMr Kohl has nailed his colours to the er°. Option' mast, and only the b'Arnericans can really get him off that mast, shIfting their own position. It is a ques- ',TR if he will do as well out of the visit of of Shultz as Mr Vogel may have done out upl Mr Gromyko. His Christian Democratic rtY was Profoundly embarrassed by the atla.neicli Times report that he had told estdent Reagan West Germany would 41(e the missiles even if nobody else did. eoea.n.while his Foreign Minister and FDP soalnion partner, Mr Genscher, (as expert a h,r(,-shoe shuffler as ever trod the PloMatic parquet), has broadly hinted rn,at he would favour an intermediate agree- _ red shortshort of the `Zero Option' — perhaps 'b_ uction in the number of Pershing Ils to " stationed, against the withdrawal of
some SS20s — and his party endorses this proposal. The governing CSU/CDU/FDP coalition is thus in fair disarray on the cen- tral issue of the forthcoming election.
Mr Vogel, by contrast, returns from his flying visits to Washington and Moscow with enhanced stature and credibility as a middleman between the superpowers. Mr Kohl came back from Washington saying he now sought a mandate from the elec- torate to approve the stationing of the missiles. Vogel seeks a mandate from the electorate 'so that we, in the name of the Federal Republic, can do everything to avoid the stationing' (my italics). He said this in an interview with the West German news magazine Der Spiegel, conducted in a Soviet government guest house in Moscow. He would not say explicitly that he thought the West should accept a Soviet reduction of their theatre nuclear force to rough parity with the British and French total of 162 missiles, obviating the need for Cruise and Pershing II on German soil — but the reader was free to draw this conclusion.
These noises are nicely calculated to draw votes to the SPD from right and left, from `social liberals' already dismayed at the FDP's change of coalition partner, and from `Greens' who do not think their party is yet serious enough to take on the business of national government. A recent opinion poll suggested that 70 per cent of FDP voters want the stationing postponed; and opposition to the missiles is still the most important plank in the 'Greens' platform. Yet there is a special irony in the SPD's position. The fact is that it was not Mrs Thatcher or Mr Kohl, but the Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt who pressed for the new generation of American missiles (starting with a speech at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London in 1977). It was Schmidt who led the way to NATO's December 1979 `twin-track' decision. He did so with two main purposes. The first was purely strategic: to make some response to the enormous lead which the Soviet Union appeared to be stealing in theatre nuclear armaments. The second was political: to cement the alliance by winning a further concrete, visible American com- mitment to the nuclear defence of West Germany — and what could be more con- crete or visible than Cruise and Pershing II missile sites on German soil?
In the first of these purposes he has arguably succeeded. Would the Soviet Union have offered these spectacular reduc- tions in their theatre nuclear force had it not been threatened with the new American missiles? But the political purpose has hor- ribly backfired. Instead of drawing the United States and West Germany closer together, the missile issue has imposed new strains on an already fragile relationship. Schmidt clearly did not anticipate the reac- tion of West German public opinion, in which Angst, national sentiment and distrust of the current American leadership are mixed in roughly the same proportions as were revealed for British public opinion by the recent Guardian and Sunday Times opinion polls. But if the proportions are roughly the same, each component is stronger: Angst, because the West Germans have been told that the first battlefield of any 'limited nuclear war' would be central Europe; national sentiment, because as a nation the Germans have more to lose than anyone else from a general worsening of East-West relations (e.g. the relationship with East Germany); distrust of American leadership, because the Federal Republic seems anyway to be going through a kind of adolescent rebellion against the country which is, in so many ways, its stepfather.
So Mr Vogel is trying to get his party off the hook on which his predecessor has hung it. He might just succeed. In the most recent polls the rallying SPD was given 42 per cent of the potential vote against the CDU/CSU's 48 per cent, with the 'Greens' still above the 5 per cent needed to enter the Bundestag, and the FDP still below it. If that is still the balance in March then it will be a photo-finish. Either the CDU/CSU could just win an absolute majority in the house, or the 'Greens' plus SPD could just have more seats between them. In the latter case it is thinkable that the `Greens' would tolerate a minority SPD government on condition that it refused — or 'postponed' — the stationing of Cruise and Pershing II, and that Mr Vogel would accept this condi- tion.
The Soviet leadership sees this chance. Until 6 March its peace propaganda will be as fulsome as its real concessions in the Geneva negotiations will be scant. If the result of the West German election hangs on the missiles issue, the future of the missiles negotiations hangs on the election result. That is why the 'Pershing factor' in West Germany concerns us as much as the `Falklands factor' in Britain.
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