What future for Ostpolitik? F117 10 thy Garton Ash

West Berlin

They had a dream. They saw a world in which the Soviet Union felt secure r,nough to relax its stranglehold on Eastern "tope; in which Western economic sup- ,..,1301/ strengthened the hand of those Eastern uroPean communists who anyway wished to liberalise their regimes; in which, slowly, °h .so slowly, a thaw would set in from Berlin to the Urals; in which the iron and barbed wire divisions of the post-war settle- ment would be replaced by normal frontiers between states; in which, finally, Hitler's work could be undone. They called it QT/Polltik.

It was a noble dream. But where could they point to as evidence that it might be turned into reality?

Czechoslovakia could only be passed over in mournful silence.

Romania repaid the West for its credits with maverick statements on foreign policy. home, however, it remained a highly repressive Stalinist state.

Bulgaria — well, you can't really win a world political argument with Bulgaria, can You?

East Germany, despite the massive West German investment in political and economic ties with its poor relation, was stilt very clearly under the permafrost of a from state. True, the people. benefited r°tri the inflow of Western goods, and more of them were able to travel to the 'vest. Yet the dictatorship of the proletariat reniained, if anything slightly more repressive at the end of the Seventies than at the beginning, with at least three thousand Political prisoners. Hungary? Yes, there is a case to be made '°1 the Hungarian example, and I will return to that country in a few weeks' time. But the prime example, the country to which the German advocates of detente 'always pointed, was Poland. Here was a c,°trunurtist state genuinely prepared to listen to the West. Here were communists talking the language of pragmatism, ,econornie reason, and even, in private Preferably in Bonn or West Berlin), of social democracy. Here was a regime with n° Political prisoners at all! Ihe protester who confronted Chancellor htnidt outside the White House a fort- nr;ght ago with a banner admonishing :,"°n' Trade Human Rights for Gas' had story back to front. For a decade now west Germany has been trying, with far ,Illore consistency than the Americans, not L sell the East Europeans' rights in return i() ,,°r Soviet gas (they are not theirs to sell), but rather to buy East Europeans more h "-Ian and civil rights in return for the Political and economic goods which West

Germany does have to sell. A primary ob- jective of détente was and remains for the West Germans, as the Chancellor reiterated in a fighting speech in the Bundestag last Thursday, gradual political change in Eastern Europe. In this sense the problem of the West German government's position has not been that it was too cynical, but that it was too idealistic.

For détente did profoundly affect developments in Poland, but it affected them in ways which the West could neither predict nor control. For a start, the West German guarantee of the Oder-Neisse fron- tier robbed the communist authorities of the bogey of West German revanchisme and therewith of their last sure reserve of popular support. The increased flows of in- formation from and visitors to the West further acted as catalyst for the Poles' discontent with their circumstances. The pressure of Helsinki, and the desire to preserve his good name with Western creditors at a time when he badly needed their money, do much to account for Gierek's tolerance of the intellectual op- position in the years 1976 to 1980. Those Western credits were responsible for a revolution of rising consumer expectations in the early Seventies; their monumental abuse by Polish industry (uncontrolled by Western bankers) in its turn caused the economic collapse of the late Seventies. If August 1980 saw 'a lighted idea thrown into a powder keg', then there is an important sense in which detente was responsible for both the continued burning of the fuse and the size of the keg.

Thus, as in the dream, a thaw began at the heart of central Europe. But when the snows begin to melt then the rivers flow faster, and soon you have the full flood of revolution. That is what happened in Poland. Of course it was an exceptional coincidence of circumstances which gave birth to Solidarity. But even without the heat-wave of the Pope's summer pilgrimage in 1979 it is very doubtful if the thaw could have continued slowly, slowly, as the West Germans hoped. And if it could not succeed in Poland, where can it succeed?

The fact is that the West German govern- ment is being compelled to rethink one of the fundamental premises of its Ostpolitik. It is being compelled to reassess both the goals of detente and the means which are appropriate to attaining them. On paper the 80-billion-dollar indebtedness of the Soviet bloc to the West, and the dependence of many of its key industries on Western technology, look like a powerful lever in Western hands. But is it a lever which we are able to pull effectively? For the 16 mon- ths of Solidarity's existence the West failed to use its economic power to force the Polish authorities to work constructively with the authentic representatives of their people. In the month since the military takeover we have failed to agree a coor- dinated economic response. Meanwhile Pravda commentators are standing the Ger- man theology of detente on its head by war- ning Western countries of the cost to their economies of sanctions against Poland and the Soviet Union.

Which brings us to base national self- interest. Some 6.5 per cent of West Ger- many's exports went to Comecon countries in '1980 — the largest involvement of any West European country, followed by France with 4 per cent (for Britain, the figure was 2.3 per cent). The trade with Eastern Europe is worth about $200 per West German head per year. Some 70,000 jobs depend on business with. East Germany alone. Officials in Bonn like to play down the significance of this trade. 'Why, the total figure for the whole Soviet bloc is less than our trade with Switzerland,' they pro- test. Well, try stopping West German trade with Switzerland...The lobby for Eastern trade is powerful. If all Eastern trade stop- ped tomorrow the unemployment figures would probably exceed two million. Of course the trade will go on. But in this the West Germans are not alone. The French, always more Machiavellian, have this very week received a Soviet delegation to discuss their share in the gas pipeline deal — while President Mitterrand publicly talks of 'get- ting out of Yalta' and officials privately de- nounce the Bonn government. And what about an American grain embargo? This is the only sanction which would really hurt American economic interests.

Trade is not the only key to West Ger- many's 'national' interest. The well-being of the 17 million German hostages in East Germany is quite as important in the view of the Social and Liberal Democrats who are making policy in Bonn. And the over- riding concern of public opinion is increas- ingly to reduce the risk of another war in the centre of Europe. The mushrooming concern, you might call it an obsession, with nuclear arms control means that the West Germans will have to keep talking to the Russians.

Yet it would be wrong to dismiss the West German theory of detente as just the intellectual superstructure built on this in- frastructure of material self-interest. The Ostpolitik was also an attempt to find a ma- jor, constructive role for the 'economic giant, political dwarf' of central Europe in world politics. The West German response to General Jaruzelski's coup was probably as much motivated by personal concern for Poles as President Reagan's was. After all, the Pope's initial reaction was also cautious. The responsibility for the lack of a coordinated Western response lies as much in Washington as in Bonn (as well as in Brussels: why on earth were there no clear contingency plans for this emergency? It has been clear since December 1980 that the Soviet intervention would not take the form — initially at least — of Red Army tanks rolling over the frontier). The solidarity of individual West Germans, in- cidentally, has been demonstrated by a flow of food and medicine parcels much larger than that from Britain.

Now, according to a senior political ad- viser to the Chancellor, the government is working out what sanctions will be the most effective against Moscow and Warsaw (though not against East Berlin). If the Military Council does not fulfil three basic conditions — the ending of martial law; the release of most of the internees, including the leaders of Solidarity; and the resump- tion of a genuine dialogue — in 'the next few weeks', then these sanctions will come into effect. The Foreign Minister, Herr Genscher, hopes to deliver a strong speech of protest at the Madrid review conference (on Security and Co-operation in Europe) on 9 February. The arms control talks, they agree with the Americans, should continue.

In the longer term they will surely con- tinue to pursue an Ostpolitik, but pursue it with lowered sights. The Polish experience throws doubt on the efficacy of economic instruments for achieving the goal of political change inside the Soviet bloc. It throws doubt, indeed, on our ability direct- ly to influence the internal political development of the Soviet empire at all. When this empire changes, as change it must, it will probably do so in ways which we cannot predict — and can only very remotely control. Meanwhile, perhaps the best service we can do the suffering peoples of Eastern Europe is to ensure the con- tinued health of our own societies. And nowhere is that more critical than in West Germany.