AMERICA AND THE EMERGING EUROPE
643
membership in NATO. Fourth, it brokered a package of guarantees that
led the U .S.S.R. to accept the idea of a united Germany joining NATO.
That Germany's unificiation did not develop into a crisis of Western
political cohesion can be credited to the Bush administration. However,
President Bush and his administration
~ere
much less fortunate in shaping
what is somewhat euphemistically called the new world order. The con–
cept behind this notion, as used by the American government at the time
of the war against Saddam Hussein, appears to be a renewed version of
the one-world vision of 1944-1945, albeit this time considerably more
conservative. According to this concept, America was depicted as the
cooperative and benign number-one world power, supported by a
handful of number two's, among them Germany. This not very realist
picture was called co-leadership, a term with a slightly paternalistic fla–
vor.
Political scientists gave this notion their own distinctive intellectual
twists. In the summer of 1990, John Mearsheimer had already started a
debate in the journal
International Security
by predicting a rather bleak
future for the security of the European continent, focusing mostly on
ethnic and economic conflicts that might grow and develop into mili–
tary conflicts. For Mearsheimer, a regional hegemony would be needed
and this could only be Germany. In 1993, a similar, though less dramatic,
picture of Europe's future was drawn by Kenneth Waltz, who argued,
"The achievement of unity would produce an instant great power,
complete with second-strike nuclear forces. But politically the European
case is complicated. Many believe that the EC has moved so far toward
unity that it cannot pull back... . Especially in Britain and France,
many believe that their states will never finally surrender their sovereignty.
Germany may ultimately find that reunification and the renewed life of a
great power are more invigorating than the struggles, complications, and
compromises that come during, and would come after, the uniting of
Western Europe. If the EC fails to become a single political entity, the
emerging world will nevertheless be one of four or five great powers,
whether the European one is called Germany or the United States of
Europe."
The German political establishment officially, and with a certain
credibility, refuses such an alternative. The European option is based on a
broad political consensus. Furthermore, Germany would have to sur–
mount many hurdles in order to become an effective leading European
power. For example, there is the ill-timed attempt of Foreign Minister
Kinkel to win a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council.
In fact , it would be in Germany's interest to create European political
