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It all looked so rosy in 1989. What happened?

An impressionistic take on certain developments in the


world since 1989.
Those old enough will recall the euphoria which took hold not only among
Germans but throughout the world on that day, the ninth of November in
1989, when the wall dividing west and east Berlin came tumbling down
metaphorically speaking. Aa new world was about to arise. The forces of
democracy and enlightened capitalism were triumphant over doctrinaire
soviet communism. Thank you Mr. Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut
Kohl and the longsuffering and courageous citizens of eastern Europe. The
good news spread to the Middle East . Suddenly, I remember it well, Israeli
Jews trusted Palestinian Arab taxi drivers to take them as passengers over
long distances. Germany was the happiest nation in the world and all
because an East Berlin functionary made an announcement for which he
had no official backing to the effect that East Berliners could visit West
Berlin that very evening. A similar hasty act of making a statement that
should have been cleared by the relevant authority also occurred on the
ninth of November when Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the new German
Republic in 1918.
The breathtaking end of the Cold War was not the end of the story. So Kipling
was wrong after all when declaring that East is East and West is West and
neer the twain shall meet. The chasm separating East and West since the
era of Constantine was no more. Russia was part of Europe again, just as
General Charles de Gaulle had so forcefully advocated. Russia would surely
know her place as a moderately powerful and influential nation that would
have much to gain by being a cooperative and pliant partner of the West,
which entertained no aggressive or hostile designs to curtail Russias
legitimate needs. Russias concessions on the status of Berlin and its realistic
acceptance of its diminished role in Eastern Europe deserved a measure of
gratitude. Russias retreat would not invite NATO to move into the province
formerly dominated by the Soviet Union and perish any thought that NATO
would adopt an adversarial posture against Russia herself! Moscow, in any
case, had too much to munch on to think of reviving its past glory as the
victor over Napoleon and Hitler.
Everybody was invited to the great celebration of rebirth, or almost
everyone. One fairy was not on the invitation list, and that fairy was History.
it was wrong to slight her, as subsequent events were to prove. Mind you,

this oversight was altogether understandable at the time as it was generally


assumed in those days that History had taken ill and was probably dead
already. Notable academics and highly regarded pundits said so and they
were surely the ones to know.
On October the third 1990 Germany was reunited. In the April of that year I
remember driving with a friend to East Germany in the spring of 1990. It was
eerie. Everything seemed to be suspended in a state of limbo. The massive
system of high fences and barriers dividing the two parts of German bore
witness to the futility of trying to hold back the tide of history. We stopped
for a moment at the check point where an officer with a distant dazed look
casually beckoned us to move on without so much as a glance at our
papers. We visited Weimar and Jena, where as former students of German
literature we delighted in visiting Goethes house and other locations linked
to the life and work of Goethe and Schiller. A short drive to the site of the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp changed our mood understandably
enough. History again. We managed to benefit from the highly favorable
exchange rate of five East German marks to one Deutschmark. privately of
course. Only one person I met was unhappy at the prospect of reunification.
At Jena and Weimar the vista presented by beautiful architecture in the
classical style found no olfactory equivalent in the ubiquitous and
penetrating stench produced by the fuel of East Germanys answer to the
peoples car, the Trabant.
Problems started to arise very early and it was obvious they would. It was not
going to be easy to unite two populations, the one schooled in economic
freedom and the Western sense of democracy, the other subject to the
restraints of Marxist ideology as applied by a secretive and oppressive
political elite. Then the structures of industry and administration were
different in fundamental respects. Here was no time to waste evidently,
standing idly by while evolutionary forces would gradually do their work.
The East-Mark achieved parity with the Deutschmark on a one to one basis.
How wonderful, or so it seemed to a great many East German citizens who
had amassed fat savings accounts. Apart from saving it, what else was
there to do with what was to all intents and purposes funny money in a
hermetically enclosed economy where prices, wages and rents were pegged
at artificially low rates and stringent controls were in place banning genuine
convertibility and purchasing power on the open market? Corn in Egypt!
What a windfall! There was helicopter cash too to the tune of a hundred
Deutschmarks per citizen. You could now get real money in exchange of
your East-Marks. The result was - unsurprisingly enough a short-lived but

massive binge. What seemed so good to consumers was poison for the
greater part of East German industry (which, all things considered, had done
okay despite the burden laid on it by the Soviet Union). Totally uncompetitive
with West German industry on the one-to-one basis mentioned above,
segments of East German industry were palmed off for an apple and an
egg as a common phrase in German goes, to astute Western bargain
hunters, some of whom might be more pertinently described as
unscrupulous exploiters and predators.
East Germany had a good side too, particularly in providing for free preschool care of children, a great benefit to working mothers. All that went by
the wayside. The United Germany did retain from East Germany a handy
traffic sign, a green arrow that showed drivers they could turn right when the
traffic lights were at red. Too many young people in former East Germany
may have understood this as a subliminal message in the wrong way.
The man most widely reputed to have been the architect of German unity
was Hans-Dietrich Genscher, popularly known as Genschman, depicted in
caricatures as a figure rolling into one elements drawn from Batman,
Superman and Grandpa, an elderly benign vampire that figured in The
Munsters, a popular TV series, in recognition of his large pointed ears. Like
Talleyrand years before him, Genscher as West Germanys Foreign Secretary
was sure to turn up at many a major international conference or summit
meeting on the winning side of changes in government. His most
characteristic article of clothing was his yellow v-neck pullover declaring
his allegiance to the Free Democratic Party, the FDP, with its liberal
economic agenda. Though small in terms of its command of seats in the
Federal Diet, it exercised totally disproportionate decision-making powers by
being the slight weight that tipped the scales, thus deciding who would
govern for the next four years. As Home Secretary and later Foreign
Secretary Genscher himself held the levers of power like no other, even the
Chancellor. In effect he was the kingmaker or unmaker. Some have
surmised that Genscher in his competence as Home Secretary was
somewhat lackadaisical in efforts to alarm Willy Brandt about the danger of
retaining Gnter Guillaume, a suspected East German spy, as his personal
aide in the chancellery. The Guillaume affair led to Brandts resignation in
November 1974. There was, however, no shadow of doubt in 1982 that
Genscher in league with Count Otto von Lambsdorff deserted Helmut
Schmidt in support of Helmut Kohl, who had lodged a constructive vote of no
confidence at the Federal Diet in the November of 1982.

Genscher pleaded that throughout all the vagaries of politics he had only the
true interests of the German people at heart. He was born in the vicinity of
Halle on the eastern side of Germany and emigrated to the Federal Republic
in 1952. With this background he was well placed to understand attitudes
that prevailed in both parts of Germany as he labored to reconcile their
differences. Furthermore, he was a skilled negotiator on the public stage and
a shrewd wheeler-dealer behind the scenes. Always at the right place at the
right time, he played a cardinal role in guiding developments in 1989 that
culminated in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Of course, there were others who deserve the title of an architect of
German unity, Egon Bahr, Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl, but Genscher, if
anyone, remained the architect of German unity. Strange then that in 1991
the same man unleashed the process that led inexorably to the
dismemberment of Yugoslavia. Why did the unity of one nation have to entail
the dismemberment of another? Genscher explained this paradox quite
simply. German unity was based on the universal principle that every people
had the right to establish its independence and sovereign nationhood. What
was true for Germans was equally true for Slovenians, Croats and Bosnians.
To begin with at least, Germanys allies and friends in the EC , the USA and
the United Nations were not quite so sanguine as Genscher himself about
recognizing Slovenia and Croatia by Christmas in 1991, that is to say, before
the establishment of a general internationally agreed framework for the
settlement of the Yugoslavian question scheduled for discussions to take
place in the following year. Forebodings of troubles ahead were entertained
by Lord Carrington and Warren Christopher, who later referred darkly to
Genschers war. The real crunch came with Bosnian independence in the
March of 1992. Croatia and Slovenia were relatively well defined entities in
terms of cultural and religious homogeneity. Bosnia was not, as the very
mention of the word Sarajevo broadcasts to all and sundry. But Sarajevo was
for history books, being no longer relevant for the purposes of the new age.
Yugoslavian diplomats, correctly enough, pointed out that the provinces of
Yugoslavia were subject to a constitution that allowed for the secession of
any province on the condition that this was approved by all the other
provinces of the nation. It now meant that national constitutions could be
overruled by a caucus of powerful nations, not just by the United Nations, if
any portion of the populace legitimized their wish for independence on the
basis of a referendum. The significance of this precedent was not lost on the
Russian president years later. It is right and proper to condemn the cruel and
inhuman actions of rabid nationalists, tin pot dictators and war criminals, but

such harsh criticism is best voiced by those who have had no part in creating
the conditions under which the same atrocities they so vociferously
condemn are predictable and next to inevitable.
The aftermath: the briefest summary. When we compare the situation in the Balkans
in 1991 with the state of affairs in that area in 1999. we may well wonder at the
radical changes that occurred in the meantime. "The West," by which I mean the
USA, Britain, France and Germany, had become aggressively hostile to SerbiaYugoslavia, the former ally of these countries, except for Germany of course, during
the world wars of the twentieth century. No doubt, Serbia-Yugoslavia had incurred
the understandable wrath of its opponents by its inflicting or condoning atrocities
again defenceless civilians, though the Serbs were not the only ones to do so. Even
so, we note a certain asymmetry between the punishment meted out to Serbia and
the official justification for this punishment. Take Kosovo. The motive behind the
decision to separate the Kosovo from Serbia was to protect innocent civilians at a
certain crucial juncture in the Balkan conflict but this separation was permanent and
irreversible. The bombardment of Belgrade by NATO certainly struck the Russians as
a provocation, but not only Russians were taken aback by so drastic a measure.
Taking a broad view of the situation at this time we can see the final stage of the
Balkan war as part of a wider process involving military intervention ostensibly for
the sake of a humanitarian cause that also happened to bring about the fall of a
regime, a notable case of this phenomenon being the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi.
Such interventions produce an asymmetric effect in that the largely
predictable aftermath of such interventions produces at least as much suffering as
they were intended to prevent, if not very much more. From the point of view
of ordinary citizens in Europe and America precipitate military interventions of the
kind mentioned above are counterproductive, to say the least. Guido Westerwelle,
the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, was harshly criticized for not wholeheartedly
backing Germany's NATO allies during the campaign against Gaddafi. NATO
solidarity: good, suppressing qualms of and firm principles: bad. The process of
homogenizing NATO and the EU has contributed greatly to the stalemate in the
Ukraine and Syria. Let us pray that the good fairy will not only save the life of the
sleeping princess but also awaken he (see opening lines). I seem to have been
much affected by reading fairy stories to my granddaughter. Then aagain,I have
her life to consider not only the few years that may be granted to me.

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