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see Professor von Bredow mention the role of George Bush and James
Baker. I think historians will look back on this episode as one of the
most impressive chapters in American diplomacy in many, many decades,
because they managed to bring about the peaceful reunification of Ger–
many - at the same time that the Soviet Union had lost the Cold War,
suffered a humiliating defeat - and did so while assuaging Russian fears
about a reunified Germany. That was done by keeping Germany within
the Western alliance, and by seeing to it that a unified Germany would
not be a neutral Germany.
The second issue that I would like to raise concerns the question
about Germany's role in international affairs. I would call it the damned–
if-they-don't or damned-if-they-do issue. This regards John Mershiemer's
arguments about conflict and war in Eastern Europe and the role of
Germany. It also gets back to issues that were raised by the first panel
yesterday, about guilt. The lessons of the German past and reflections on
it are not clear. They don't point to anyone particular response. The
response to the war in the Balkans is a good example. For those of us
who think that we have witnessed a genocide, an aggression in the
Balkans, one can argue that because of the Nazi past Germany had a
special responsibility to do something and, with the United States, to
put an end to this. But when Germans made that argument, they were
denounced as aggressors who wanted to bring about the Fourth Reich,
who wanted to revive German influence in Europe. They revived these
nightmares in Paris and London. I have no easy and clear solution to this
dilemma. I'd be interested to know what Professor von Bredow thinks
about it. Because I imagine that in the coming decades peace and light is
not going to shine on Eastern Europe and that there will be more
problems. The question of how the German past relates to German re–
sponsibilities in the present and the future is going to come up again and
again. The answers that have been given for the last three decades,
namely that the Germans should always be inward-looking, pacifist, mul–
tilateral, and not do anything to offend anybody are not the kind of an–
swers that are necessarily going to be conducive to the preservation of
human rights and peace.
Wilfried
von
Bredow:
I think this is a fair description of the difficult
situation of German foreign policy. One of the reasons why, for
instance, the Germans were so assertive about the Balkan wars was that
we just had gone through the experience of the non-intervention in the
Gulf War. Everyone had pointed to the Germans and asked, "Why are
you sitting back and letting other people fight this war against a
dictator?" This was regarded as immoral. Now the Germans wanted to
