My topic concerns not only Europe but generally the Western powers, including the United States, but I am focusing on Western Europe for three reasons. First, the decline o f totalitarian system in the Soviet Union and the emancipation o f Eastern Europe more directly affect Western European nations and thus require European decisions, and second, now in the process o f political unification Western Europe inevitably is to become the main attraction and the main partner o f the form erly Communist countries. This role is preordained to it geopolitically as well as econom- ically and culturally. The third reason has to do with the post-cold war America.
W hile many o f us hope that the United States will continue its role in European affairs commensurate to its status as a super power, the debate in the U nited States since 1988 indicates a wish, expressed both by politicians and intellectuals, to draw inward fo r the purpose o f concentrating on America's own accumulated domestic problems. I f this eventually happens, it w ill leave more room for European initiatives and solutions.
The collapse o f communism creates an opportunity for the various calls fo r a united Europe voiced after the second world war. Though many Western Europeans have “ put on sad faces” 1 while looking at the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe fo r fear they w ill endanger European stability and create economic and political difficulties, it is now generally assumed that what used to be called the Soviet bloc must in one way or another be brought into the European system o f states. The German Democratic Republic has even lost its political personality through unification with West Germany. The Conference on Security and Coopera- tion in Europe, repainted with a democratic brush, includes all sovereign European states in an A tla n tic alliance with Canada and the United States. If developed along the lines proposed by the Soviet Union or by some West European leaders - an unlikely prospect - it may become a X X century version of the Vienna Congress dominated by Western European powers, first of all Germany, together with the Soviet Union and, at least for the immediate future, the United States. A n economic and political integration o f East European states into the European Economic Com- munity remains o f course a question of selective and more distant future.
In this European arrangement the Soviet Union is expected to play an important part. Some Western leaders, particularly the Germans, first, have called for an increased Soviet role in international affairs generally - for example, President von Weizsäcker in March o f 1991.2 Soviet participation is considered to be essentially required as a stabilizing factor regionally as well as globally. Germany’s Foreign M inister Genscher in his Davos speech in Switzerland repeated his long held thesis that “ German-Soviet relations are of central importance for the stability in Europe
1 Foreign Minister Genscher quoting Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, speech at Davos, February 3, 1991, Statements a n d Speeches. vol. X IV , no. 3, February 3, 1991, p. 3.
2 D eutschland Nachrichten. March 8, 1991, p. 3.
00063454 general European development, albeit without any hegemonic position” so it does not feel it has been “ cheated out o f the foreign policy achievement of perestroika.,'4Dif- ferences must exist, I am sure, on how close should the German-Soviet relationship develop in the new regional European order, whether this regional arangement can be separated from the global and how this German-Soviet relationship should be cali- brated with Germany’s A tlantic ties. For example, M ikhail Gorbachev's vision of
“ common European home,” articulated in his Perestroika, focuses upon European ties with the United States which he considers to be a kidnapper o f Western Europe.
Am erica, according to him merely exercises corrupting political and cultural hegemony over Europe which he would break.5 However, it is generally agreed that the Soviet Union should not be isolated, that as Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Jiri Dienstbier, his Czechoslovak colleague, said in a jo in t statement on A p ril 11, 1991, the Western Soviet border should not constitute a new line dividing Europe as in the past.6
The prevailing view on the continent seems to be that the Soviet Union under Gorbachev is an important partner for regional stability in the prospective common European home. Germany, one has the impression, has promoted arid paid for the inclusion o f the Soviet Union into Europe almost as much as it has nursed and nudged the Economic Community’s move toward the West European political union. As some astute American observers have said, “ Genscher’s primary objective is to find a place for the Soviet Union in the new European system that w ill reassure Moscow without threatening Western interests."7 The view that the Soviet Union is an essen- tial player in maintaining European stability is founded, I am sure, on diverse considerations, among them the fact that the Soviet Union remains a relative threat: it still is a heavily armed superpower and it has not yet withdrawn its m ilitary forces from East Germany nor from Eastern Europe.
There also exists fear that, left alone, the 40 Soviet nuclear power stations of Chernobyl design might cause great physical harm to the European population, and additionally, that if the Soviet Union is not aided by the West, its collapsing economy w ill produce many refugees who will inundate Western Europe. The Germans, more specifically, feel latent guilt for the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and gratitude to Gorbachev for allowing German unification in 1991. German attitudes need to be understood in the perspective of their historical love and hate relationship with Russia. Finally, there enters into consideration a vision o f an enormous economic market in the giant empire which Germany or Western Europe could exploit.
3 Speech at Davos, op. cit., p. 5.
* Jürgen Nötzold and Reinhardt Rummel. “ On the Way to a New European order." Außenpolitik* III, 1990, p. 215.
On the other hand, Gorbachev's “ new thinking” in relations with the West give Europeans a hope tht a genuine partnership with Moscow is possible. European policy toward the Soviet Union is motivated by the search for stability and fo r economic gain in the post-Communist world.
The Western powers, however, seek stability with the Soviet Union which itself has become unstable. Perestroika has shook up the Soviet system. Despite domestic conflicts and disruption, the Soviets seek admission to the European system as an empire Gorbachev inherited from his predecessors. The Europeans and the A m eri- cans seem to accept and even to desire it, as if the maintenance o f the empire was o f vital interest to Europe or to the United States. This was visibly demonstrated at the meeting o f the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe held in Paris on November 19—21, 1991, from which the hosts expelled the foreign ministers o f the Baltic States even though they had attended as invited guests. By doing so Western European powers and the United States meekly submitted to Gorbachev’s threatened veto.
Among the Western powers. Germany seems most committed to the survival of Soviet empire within its current borders. In the German Soviet treaty o f Good Neighborliness, Partnership and Cooperation, the German and Soviet governments state that “ they regard and w ill continue to regard as inviolable the frontiers o f all states in Europe as they exist on the day o f the signature o f the present treaty” . David Scheffer, an international lawyer and senior associate o f Carnegie Endow- ment for International Peace, correctly asks whether making such declarations Ger- many has not “ abandoned the Helsinki principle o f peaceful methods fo r altering borders, and has [not] sealed the fate of the Baltic republics and any other Soviet republics that seek their own independence” .8 In legal terms, according to Scheffer, it is true that “ inviolable” is not “ immutable” but the statement certainly causes concern for its political ramifications.
The question arises what is the concept o f Europe? Were its political boundaries expanded only by the emancipation of Eastern European states? Does political Europe end at the Western borders o f the Soviet Union? Is the European commun- ity o f nations to be closed to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - once sovereign states and members o f the League o f Nations - or to Moldavia, Georgia, Arm enia, Ukraine or Byelorussia, indead to Russia itself as an independent sovereign state? A re these nations to be allowed access to Europe, to its political, economic and security system only under the red flag with hammer and sickle waved by the ruler o f Moscow?
I suggest that stability is not identical with status quo and that status quo does not necessarily mean peace. Peace requires stable partners who nevertheless are open to change. Peace in modern times relies on freely arrived at and just accommodation and is founded on profession and practics o f shared values. These, in our era, are democratic values. Commitment to democracy, indeed, is a new element in the concept o f stability.
As presently constituted, the Soviet empire does not meet those requirements.
The key problem upon whose solution hinges Soviet stability, future and the The Future o f the Soviet Union and Europe 59
* Paper, “ Legal Strucutre for Security in Europe," (convention of American Society of International Law, Washington. D C., A p ril 15, 1991).
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60 V. Stanley Vardys
realm’s association with Europe is the national question, that is, the question o f nationality, national sovereignty and nationalism. In 1991 it probably is even more important for Gorbachev than it was for Lenin in 1917-22. Both Western scholars and politicians, with the possible exception o f De Gaulle, have considerably under- valued the importance o f national factor in East European politics. The reason for this lack o f appreciation in recent decades has been, I think, our loathing o f ethnic conflicts and revanchism in Eastern Europe, and the experience with the Fascist and Nazi systems. Nationalism became a bad name. Yet we still live in the age o f nation- alism. W hile religion has been depoliticized, at least in Europe and America, nation- alism has not and w ill remain an overwhelmingly potent and simultaneously creative as well as dangerous force. The question is not how to get rid o f it - you really cannot — but how to control and manage it for human progress. In modern times, only democracies have more or less been successful in its management.
As much as the Soviet Union is concerned, the significance of both non Russian and Russian nationalism for Soviet development has been grossly underestimated.
For example, a prominent American scholar of Soviet affairs, w riting just before Gorbachev came to power, concluded that “ rising nationalism, in the absence o f a major m ilitary conflict on Soviet territory, is unlikely to pose a serious threat to the stability o f the Soviet system” .9 To be fair about it, until very recently Gorbachev himself failed to understand the relationship between reform, nationalism and sta- bility in his empire.
The importance o f nationalism in the Soviet Union is so crucial to its current development that at the recent meeting of Gorbachev, Yeltzyn and eight other republic presidents it was identified as the very top problem without whose solution neither economic reforms nor political stabilization are possible.10 A t the meeting, republic leaders and Gorbachev acknowledged the increasing intensity of “ crisis in our society” . “ Society is being torn asunder,” they said, threatening even the supply o f people with basic necessities. The “ top priority for overcoming this crisis," the leaders said, was “ concluding a new treaty among sovereign states,” in other words, solving the problem of nationality, national sovereignty and nationalism.
It must be stressed that the national problem in the Soviet Union is not o f temporary nature, resulting from the unforeseen consequences of Gorbachev's glas- nost and democratization. In the realm of the empire it has been perennial and most likely w ill so remain. In the X X century, nationalities which at one or another time were conquered by the Tsars have tried to escape the empire in 1905, 1917—20, 1941 and again 1989-90. The Lithuanians, for example, first demanded autonomy in 1905. A fte r the Bolshevik revolution, a string of independent states rose from Armenia through Ukraine to Estonia. In 1941, there was an insurrection against Soviet empire in Western Ukraine and the Baltics. It is safe to reason that if a more or less oppressive regime in Moscow, headed either by Gorbachev or a m ilitary colonel, succeeded in supporting the current Soviet nationality search for independ- enee or commonwealth status, new generations would rise with new demands, again
י Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, "Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: The Soviet Case," World Politics, vol. 36, no. 4, 1984, p. 580.
10 Excerpts from Gorbachev-Yeltsyn et al. declaration. The N ew York Tim es, April25. 1991, p. A8.
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destabilizing the empire and endangering the peaceful condition o f Europe. The current movement toward national sovereignty was joined by the Russian republic itself, thus transforming the political dynamics of conflict between Russians and non Russians to a struggle between central empire and sovereign national republics. This adds a new and important dimension to the process o f change in the Soviet Union.
Because the national problem is not going to disappear, it better be resolved now if long term stability is desired.
For the West, it is particularly important to realize that national emancipation in the Soviet Union is inextricably interwoven with the chances o f market economy and democracy in the realm. Free market development requires creation o f a legal framework which specifies the jurisdiction, rights and responsibilities of each level o f government. The main condition for a free market in the Soviet Union is decentrali- zation, devolution of powers of central government. Similarly, democracy cannot take hold in a political system in which regional and local governments are powerless and, most of all, in which the legitimacy of power is not derived from the local population. In the Soviet Union, the Communist party is still in charge, together with the KG B and the Arm y. Progress toward free market and democratization must therefore go hand in hand with the sovereignty o f the people, that is, popular consent, which in the Soviet Union means republic sovereignty or even independ- enee. On the opposite end, if decentralization and devolution of power do not take place, central government in Moscow w ill need to use force to keep the republics together. Milovan Djilas is right when he says that “ without unequivocal recognition of the independence of the non-Russian nations there is not, and cannot be, any democratic freedom within the Russian nation its e lf’ . " Use of force w ill mean the funeral of the yet unborn democracy. The Soviet empire is structurally and p o liti- cally an obsolete organization for modern, aspecially for a democratic, world. It promotes neither domestic stability nor accommodation; it certainly does not encourage democracy thus denying the opportunity for finally developing a shared value philosophy with the West - a precondition for a lasting peace.
Therefore, instead of shoring up an unstable that has no prospects o f long term survival and that still represents a potential threat to Europe, Europeans as well as Americans should support and even encourage political and social change. The status quo in the Soviet Union represents false stability. Germany, France, the United States and other industrial democracies should invest in republics, not Mos- cow, with the purpose of facilitating the emergence of a commonwealth o f nations on the West European model; they should support instead o f hindering the search for independence by the Baltic nations or by others. The West needs to support democratic forces o f Russia more than it supports Gorbachev.
Europe, in other words, should be open to new arrivals. Indeed, it should not only open the doors but facilitate the entry. This is a historical time for reshaping the old continent for peace, stability, and democracy.
The Future o f the Soviet Union and Europe 61
11 Milovan Djilas, "A Revolutionary Democratic Vision of Europe," International A ffa irs, vol. 6 6, no. 2, 1990, pp. 270-71.
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