Enoch Powell on the balance of power
The Balance of Power Helmut Schmidt (William Kimber £2.50) In a Britain which is debating — if it is debating — membership of the European Economic Community, this is a timely book. First published in Germany in the summer of 1969, before the author became defence minister in the Brandt administration, it was hurriedly translated into English at the end of 1970, and the author provided the translation with a new introduction. "The political unification of Western Europe," he writes in that introduction, "remains a fundamental goal of our policy." Those who are in any doubt what the major member of the Community believes the Community is about, should ponder those words: some of us, too, have been trying to get our countrymen to take the fact seriously before it is too late. Helmut Schmidt then continues: "The Federal Government cannot agree with the contention that you cannot simultaneously pursue integration in Western Europe and rapprochement with Eastern Europe." Maybe not, but that depends on what is meant by ' rapprochement '; for if that includes German reunification, or is regarded as leading towards it, then the assertion that it can be combined with 'political unification in Western Europe ' becomes highly debatable.
The interest, and even importance, of the book lies in the author's reasoning about just that dilemma.
He assumes throughout that the desire of the great majority of Germans "for unification of the divided nation" is indefeasible; whether the Federal Republic wishes it or not, reunification must be the most profound objective of its policy, short of survival itself. He accepts further, that Germany's allies in NATO do not share that objective: "Neither NATO, time, nor the EEC have worked for the reunification of our nation. They will scarcely do so in future." Consequently,. "our hopes lie in the opposite direction from the status quo strategy of other countries." Accordingly a new balance of forces has somehow to be devised and contrived within which Germany can be peacefully reunited. What that new balance is, let alone how it can be realized, is a crux with which the Minister struggles manfully, but in vain, because he is duty bound to purport to reconcile it with the 'political unification of Western Europe' to which the Federal Government is committed.
There are, roughly speaking, four possible patterns, or classes of pattern (V (1) EEC including reunited Germany v the Warsaw powers.
(2) EEC v Warsaw powers including reunited Germany.
(3) Reunited Germany v an entente between the EEC (less West Germany) and the Warsaw powers.
(4) United Europe including reunited Germany v one or more extra-European blocs. There are two variants of this, where ' Europe' (a) does, or (b) does not, include Soviet Russia (from its border with Poland to the Pacific).
Of these alternatives, no. 2 is not open to serious discussion: quite apart from any reaction on the part of West Germany's allies, her own vested interest in the retention of the capitalist system, as well as the economic and physical preponderance of West over East Germany, rule it out. The mirror-image no. 1 looks equally intolerable, viewed from the East: a political unit extending from the North Cape to Sicily and from Ireland to East Germany's eastern frontiers would appear from the East to be a monster, threatening both in itself and in the magnetic attraction it would exercise over the Danubian countries. The natural deduction from this dilemma is that the embodiment of West Germany in a politically unified Western Europe is irreconcilable with German reunification; and this train of thought points to pattern no. 3, with German reunification'disinfected' and deprived as far as possible of dangerous potential by her not forming , part of any large political unit.
To the Germans, however, this train of thought is, officially at least, denied by West Germany's commitment to the EEC and the political unification of Western Europe, and the belief that this commitment is still on balance beneficial ("West Germany's agreement to the Schuman Plan, out of which the EEC developed in 1957, and to the European Defence Community, out of which arose its accession to NATO in 1955, has perhaps impaired its chances of reunification, but it has also given the Federal Republic a capability for action in external matters "). Schmidt notes with approval the candid appraisal of Kiesinger: "A reunited Germany is too big to play no part in the balance of forces, and too small herself to hold these forces in balance around her." This led Kiesinger to the conclusion that " the growing together of the two separated parts of Germany can be seen only as part and parcel of the process of overcrowding the East-West conflict in Europe."
In the same sense, but with more emphasis, Schmidt opts for pattern no. 4. Apparently he envisages form 4(b) — without Russia — rather than 4(a), and locks forward in imagination to Europe from Ireland to the Western frontier of Russia as a political unit, with Russia on one side and the US on the other holding aloft over it the arch of their mutual nuclear deterrence : "Europe as a whole must grow together into an entity that is big enough to absorb and counterbalance an all-German state within itself " (my italics).
However, this conclusion, arrived at by patient elimination, is unsustainable, and indeed unimaginable, for two separate reasons, one internal, the other external. If a political unit comprising Western Europe strains credulity, a political unit comprising all Europe bankrupts it: there is not going to be a united Europe in this sense. Schmidt recognises this himself: "Supra-national grouping and organisations are scarcely likely to appeal greatly to Eastern Europe. Whether we like it, Or whether we most cordially dislike it, this new embodiment of the idea of a political Europe is going to mean, if it gets anywhere, a Europe des patrieso' A Europe of separate states and nations." How true; but then bang goes the political unification of Western Europe from which we started, and bang goes the entity which will absorb the reunited Germany within itself. We are back to 'square one '. The external reason is the impossibility of conjuring a united Europe between the US and the USSR as guarantors, out of two counterbalancing blocs or alliances. Schmidt himself recognises this too: "A more probable solution would be for the two military pacts to remain in being . . it would leave the German question open for any future developments: the possibility that the two mutual assistance pacts might later on become redundant would also remain open." That is an admission that the house of cards has collapsed while we were looking at it.
A logical contradiction can be lived with, long and sometimes happily, in real life, and that is what Germany is doing with the objectives of a political integration of Western Europe and a reunification of Germany; but it cannot be rationalised, and that is what Helmut Schmidt, as a working politician writing a book, attempted to do and failed. In the end, however, the contradiction has to get itself resolved in real life: one imperative drives out the other. My bet is that German reunification will drive out Western Political unification and the EEC: some day, I don't know how, or when, I think we are going to get pattern no. 3.
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