The thorn in America's side ' The Democrat — a
new
Timothy Garton Ash
APresident Reagan flies into a barrage of peace protest, he may ruefully reflect how the West German stepchild of American democracy has come of age. Some of the most powerful attacks on the „.'keagan Administration have come from West Germany's only news magazine, Der Spiegel (The Mirror), an outsize, glossy, Germanic Time. Over an excellent fish lunch in this most anglophile of German cities, Rudolf Augstein, Der SpiegePs Pugnacious chief editor and publisher, recalls with relish how in January 1947 he took over what was then a slim newssheet Published by British officers in the British "'one of Occupation. The original transfer contract provided, rather naturally, for the continuation of British military censorship. Augstein protested to a friendly sergeant- major, who advised him to `Go and tell the Major to cross that sentence out . . . he doesn't understand a word of the lingo arlYwaY1' Augstein, with some trepidation, did as he was advised; the major cheerfully erased the offending passage; the censor- shin was no more. 'The English behaved 'verY decently in their way', Herr Augstein Muses, 'more decently than the Americans or the French — not to mention the Rus- sians!'
Certainly American blood boils today, 011, reading the outspoken commentaries Waich Der Spiegel estimates reach five to six !!illion readers each week. Augstein, with his snide remarks about the Reagan ad- „Ininistration's 'amateur theatricals' and his Europe, at their talk of a limited nuclear war in _1”' is seen in Washington as a leader of1.; west European `anti-Americanism'. "err Augstein agrees that there is an ele- ,nienr of anti-Americanism among the them, in the Peace Movement. Many of s''cul, he observes, are anti-American in the ,atue way that they are anti-parliamentarian those anticapitalist. He, however, is none of Ilose things. He was a Liberal (FDP) member of the Bundestag in the early Seventies; the son of a Hanover businessman, he runs Der Spiegel like a u,,,ardnosed capitalist; and he is happy 'clout the massive presence of American arms in the Federal Republic. Moreover, he accepts the necessity of nuclear deterrence. a What he does not accept is the 1979 Nato missiles to site Cruise and Pershing II eir'ssiles on German soil. These missiles, he cieglic es, are not militarily necessary for the chancellor of Western Europe — and Schmidt knows it. The decision c introduce them was the result of a tragi- eitin,!clY of errors, which began with the cie,7`ucellor asking for them in a speech livered in London in 1977. Augstein con- siders that the Chancellor — exceptionally — did not think through his position, and is now hoist with his own petard. In 1978 David Aron, then a top aide to the American National Security Adviser, com- mented that if America's allies, 'for psychological reasons and the sake of political solidarity, wanted further proof of American reliability in the form of further weapons in Europe, the US would seriously and favourably consider this desire'. And so it came to the Nato decision. The Russian deployment of SS-20s, Augstein insists, does not require this answer. The Russians have no desire to at- tack Western Europe, which is one of the most stable areas in the world. If they want to apply pressure on Western Europe they always have a hostage in West Berlin. Anyway, there is absolutely no military reason why the Nato missiles should be land-based. This makes Germany the most likely • first battlefield of a nuclear war. Moreover, the Cruise missiles by their very nature embody a dangerous shift in Nato's strategic posture, since they only make sense as part of a first-strike 'counterforce'. Worse still, through the cacophony of voices which West Germany has heard from Washington since January comes the message, even from the President, that it is thought to be possible to fight a limited nuclear war. Augstein agrees with the por- tion publicly stated by Mr Brezhnev (to Der Spiegel): It is impossible to limit such a war between the superpowers. The fact that some of America's leaders are talking as if this were feasible makes them currently the more dangerous of the world's bosses. Augstein concludes: 'We are moving towards war.'
At best he would like to see the Nato decision nullified, or a 'zero-option' negotiated at Geneva. At the very least the new missiles should be deployed at sea, not on German land. For he states categorically that it will not be possible to station them inside West Germany, as planned, in 1983. The popular protest would be immense, and the confrontation violent. Chancellor Schmidt has tied his own political future to the Nato decision. Well, Chancellor Schmidt will go. Indeed heis likely to go anyway before that date, an impression strengthened by the SPD's electoral reverse in this, the Chancellor's home city, last Sunday.
In making the case against Cruise and Pershing II Augstein leans over backwards to give the Russians the benefit of the doubt. This leads to some outrageous jour- nalistic overstatements, which he hastily qualifies in private conversation: 'Ronald Reagan has already declared Saudi Arabia
an American protectorate. That is an act towards war.' Or, defending the. Soviet Union's record of non-aggression: 'The Soviets began the war against the Finns in 1939-40 to secure Leningrad against Hitler, not an entirely senseless undertaking'. Not a word about the Hitler-Stalin pact or the Soviet invasion of Poland and the Baltic states! Alas this base polemical metal is taken as pure historical coin by West Ger- many's younger historical ignoramuses.
Augstein nonetheless represents and forms a growing body of mainstream West German opinion, which must be distinguished from the youthful 'Peace Movement'. If it is 'nationalist' not to want your country to be incinerated, then he is `nationalist'. If it is 'neutralist' to want our nuclear armoury limited to the absolute minimum necessary for our defence, then he is 'neutralist'. If it is 'treachery' for a West German editor to write what he thinks .. . then why did we bother to set up a free press in the first place? (Albeit ap- parently, like acquiring our empire, in fits of absence of mind.) The .freedom of the press has always meant the freedom to be wrong.
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