1. Contrast Kissinger (II: 167): Détente was a “strategy,” “never an end in itself.”

2. Genscher, , Rebuilding, 154, 164–65, 188–89Google Scholar; Gorbachev, , Memoirs (New York, 1995), 443–44.Google Scholar

3. In 1983, Günter Gaus and Karsten Voigt (both SPD) had spoken of a “Peace of Augsburg” or “Westphalia” between the two Germanys (Garton Ash, 211, 318); joint working groups of the SPD and SED had subsequently issued communiqués and proposals (“like a true believer supping … with heretics”: Garton Ash, 320). Interestingly, the East German semidissident Communist Walter Janka, who had languished in jail and internal exile since the 1950s, also found fraternal socialist significance in the events of 1989: for Janka, history had decided the argument between Stalinism and reform communism! Janka, , Spuren eines Lebens (Berlin, 1991).Google Scholar

4. Avril, Pittman, From Ostpolitik to Reunfication: West German-Soviet Political Relations since 1974 (New York, 1992), 138Google Scholar. See my separate review, pp. 457–59 in this issue.

5. Schmidt II: 77–78, 36. Schmidt is remarkably generous in assessing his Eastern interlocutors. Though he writes that Brezhnev in 1989 would have called in the tanks (II: 17), the Soviet leader was nevertheless a man of peace “of whom I was fond” (I: 56); to the dour and irascible Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko “I felt equally attached” (I: 56). Despite East German violations of the Helsinki accords, Schmidt deems Honecker “a reliable contractual partner” who responded when informed of human rights abuses (II: 47–48). Schmidt's affection for Polish leader Edward Gierek is well known (Schmidt II: 537, 543, 552, 567–68, 585, and Garton Ash, 303–4, 576); his defense of the “misunderstood” “Polish patriot” who authored martial law, General Wojciech Jaruzelski (II: 569, 573), echoes Brandt's (Brandt, 439–40, discussed in Cary, “Part 1”).

6. Schmidt II: 85–86; similarly 569. “Even in retrospect,” Schmidt writes, “it would have been a serious mistake to snub the GDR because of the events in Poland and … absurd to push the communist authorities in Eastern Europe together at a time when they had begun to move apart” (II: 87). East Berlin, however, had even more reason to fear the impact of its Polish policy upon its German policy than did Bonn. If Schmidt understood his incremental advantage, he did not seem to know how to leverage it. Moreover, Schmidt chose not to “snub” the Polish government, either. Again confounding people with their oppressor, he resisted joining American sanctions against either Poland or the Soviet Union with the argument (I: 254–55, II: 568) that German-Polish economic ties aided Polish victims of martial law. Since sanctions would have let the Polish government cite “German revanchism,” Schmidt claimed to be aiding the cause of German-Polish reconciliation (1: 254–55; II: 296–97, 545). The irony was that this course earned Schmidt the enmity of jailed Solidarity activists who understood that they were being sacrificed to save German-German détente (see Garton Ash, 304–5).

7. Schmidt II: 85, 297. For Foreign Minister Genscher's irritation with such statements, see Genscher, , Rebuilding, 125, 183.Google Scholar

8. To be sure, whereas Bonn after 1969 pursued a synchronized policy that aimed to reassure Moscow, Kissinger contrastingly offered “rewards” (I: 144–45, 154–56) for Eastern European states that demonstrated independence. Still, the asymmetry between multiple (if uneven) power loci in the West and the far more centrally-dominated East gave Moscow greater leverage for a policy of divide and conquer than Washington had. Even Kissinger prioritized the indirect behavioral effects of his Eastern European stratagems on Moscow, whereas Moscow had to be more concerned with direct Western European reactions in their own right. This made for greater Western strength in the long run, and greater Soviet mischief in the short run. Whereas Western assets favored the predilection to offer (or withhold) economic carrots, the nature of Eastern assets favored the predilection to concentrate on sticks.

9. Genscher, , Rebuilding, 154, 162–66Google Scholar; Kissinger 1:422, 964, II: 146, 731.

10. Schmidt I: 75, 77. Sodaro also intermittently suggests Soviet haplessness rather than sinister intentions behind the SS-20 deployments: Sodaro, 232, 264, 269, 278–83 (but compare 250–52, 266–67). For Schmidt, Soviet haplessness was due also to American ineptitude, obtuseness, or selfishness. At Guadeloupe, in January of 1979, the Europeans reminded President Carter of the significance of the SS-20s, and the emerging “two-track” negotiating strategy was discussed. Yet, during the Soviet-American summit that wrapped up the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) six months later, the president mentioned the SS-20s only during a moment of banter in an elevator. To Schmidt, this was an act of betrayal. For the Soviets, the message could only have been that they need not take the Europeans' security pronouncements seriously. Schmidt 1: 73–77, 184–87.

11. Kissinger insists that the anti-Soviet constellation issued largely from his own diplomacy in the era of détente. Its effects, he maintains, were delayed by a strange covey of Western doves and hawks. By cutting military expenditures and abandoning Western geopolitical positions, the doves tempted the Soviets into new adventures; by withholding trade concessions via disingenuous manipulation of the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration, the hawks removed Soviet incentives for reform without advancing human rights. This combination undermined the Kissinger-Ford strategy of engagement and led to the Carter-era refreeze. In short, according to Kissinger, the reforming impulse in the Soviet Union was unnecessarily set back as a result of Western attacks on Kissinger's policy of détente-plus-deterrence. Kissinger's bold conclusion is that the Soviet Union might have collapsed earlier had his version of détente been allowed to continue. But once the refreeze did set in, the West under Reagan made the correct moves to resist Soviet adventures and bring things to a head. See, e.g., Kissinger III: 110–11, 269, 283, 306–8, 846, 867.

12. For an analysis of how the waxing and waning of different political tendencies within Soviet history does not compromise the distinction between totalitarianism and pluralism, see Martin, Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York, 1994).Google Scholar

13. An extreme illustration of the dangers of overstated continuity is the alarmist book by former National Security Council analyst Constantine Menges — one of the most simplistic examples of the “unitary actor” approach that Sodaro rejects. Writing in 1991, Menges still depicted Gorbachev's relentless and increasingly hopeless retreat as a clever Communist drive to render domestic German neutralism triumphant. Gorbachev's refusal to use force in Eastern Europe, his consent to German unification within NATO, his humiliating dependence on German economic aid, even the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact — all are made to fit into “the pattern of [Soviet] actions over the past forty years” (p. 152) leading to Germany's “self-demilitarization” and NATO“the Soviet use of civility” (p. 143).

14. In 1988, the perceived dangers of SEA led the new Soviet ambassador to Bonn, Yulii Kvitsinskii, to the striking prophecy that unless the Eastern bloc democratically vitalized its own institutions of economic integration, “more and more European states will be sucked into the EEC, and via the EEC into NATO.” Quoted in Sodaro, 333.

15. Gorbachev's memoirs are not very enlightening here. Shevardnadze's claim that he understood as early as 1986 that Germany would be reunified (The Future Belongs to Freedom [New York, 1991]. 131)Google Scholar has been challenged by a leading rival in the Politburo, Yegor Ligachev (cited in McAdams, A. James, Germany Divided: From the Wall to Reunification [Princeton, 1993], 4)Google Scholar. Nor did Shevardnadze try before 1990 to exact a price. Philip Zelikow and Condoleeza Rice convincingly downplay the conspiratorial “hidden hand” thesis: Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (Cambridge, 1997), 82–90Google Scholar. They portray Gorbachev, from at least the fall of 1989, not so much shaping events as responding to them. For a further discussion, see Gary, , “‘Farewell without Tears.’”Google Scholar

16. “Do you realize,” the Hungarian Interior Minister now asked the Foreign Minister, “that of the two German states we are choosing the West German one?” No, came the answer, “we are choosing Europe.” Quoted in Garton Ash, 371.

17. See the discussion of McAdams, , Germany DividedGoogle Scholar, in Cary, “Part 1.”

18. Again, compare Kissinger's portrayal of his own version of détente. “Brezhnev's gamble,” he quotes himself as telling President Nixon in the spring of 1973, “is that as these policies gather momentum and longevity, their effects will not undermine the very system from which Brezhnev draws his power and legitimacy. Our goal on the other hand is to achieve precisely such effects over the long run.” Kissinger III: 100.

19. Accordingly, in the fall of 1989, not only Kohl hut also Brandt — to Gorbachev's surprise — abandoned the policy of reassurance in favor of pressuring East Berlin to implement drastic reforms. See Zelikow, and Rice, , Germany Unified, 65–66, 88, 95Google Scholar. Bonn in the 1970s and 1980s, writes Garton Ash (p. 161), continued to “give its kind of fraternal help” so that Moscow “would not be called on to give its kind.” But once Moscow eschewed “its kind,” Bonn could choose to cease being blackmailed and to impose its own terms for what it gave.

20. Pittman, , Ostpolitik, 137–38.Google Scholar