September 12 marked the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most significant moments in modern German history. In the Two Plus Four Agreement, the Four Powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, allowing Germany to reunite and become fully sovereign the following year. However, Germany’s reunification did not occur without European reservations.

The Treaty on Final Settlement

The Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany – also known as the Two Plus Four Agreement – was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990. It was an epochal day for Germany. The signatures resulted in nothing less than the end of the occupation of the four victorious powers of the Second World War in Germany but simultaneously overcoming the division of Europe and, thus, the end of the Cold War, whose front line ran right through Germany. 

Ronald Reagan’s military build-up in the US and Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union had created the conditions for what appeared inconceivable for more than four decades: representatives of the two German states and the four victorious powers sat down at one Table and established a consensus.

Skepticism About German Reunification

Early in 1990, considerable reservations still existed about Germany’s reunification, especially in France and Great Britain, had still existed. The latter became apparent when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared indignantly at a meeting of the heads of government of the European Community in the presence of Helmut Kohl that the Germans had been “beaten twice” but had now returned, nonetheless. 

In February 1990, at the beginning of the Two Plus Four negotiations, she warned again that Germany would dominate Europe in the future. The French President François Mitterand also registered with a particular fear of what was occurring in the neighboring country. However, unlike Thatcher, he never opposed the German reunification ab initio. 

Kohl’s Strong Relationships With Foreign Leaders

However, what worked in Germany’s favor was a significant relationship between Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU), Gorbachev, and President George H.W. Bush. Particularly Bush has been widely considered as one of the premier architects of Germany’s reunification. 

France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States decided on the format two-plus-four in Ottawa at the beginning of February 1990. The aim was to regulate “the foreign aspects of German unity, including questions of the security of the neighboring states with both German states”. The first round of negotiations between the six states began in Bonn in May, followed by others in East Berlin and Paris in the summer and finally in Moscow in September.

The decisive issue was the final recognition of the Oder-Neisse border between Germany and Poland, the extensive withdrawal of the Allied forces from Germany, the waiver of the victorious powers of their reservation rights, and the restoration of Germany’s full sovereignty under international law. In addition, the future membership of a united Germany, the strength of its army, and security guarantees for the neighboring states played a role.

The Final Treaty

The treaty ultimately comprised ten articles in which united Germany recognizes its current borders and undertakes not to raise any territorial claims and forego nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and reduce the Bundeswehr to a maximum of 370,000 soldiers. At the same time, Germany, the GDR, and the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw all Soviet armed forces by the end of 1994.

Finally, Article 7 contains what is probably the most important passage: the termination of all occupation rights and responsibilities of the Allies in Germany that have existed since the end of the war in 1945 and the dissolution of their institutions. The latter enabled East Germany, which belonged to the eastern military alliance “Warsaw Pact,” to become a NATO member in unified Germany, just as the Federal Republic of Germany.

Not Officially a “Peace Treaty”

While the Two Plus Four Agreement is essentially a peace treaty, the governments of both German states avoided this designation at all costs, as the negotiations with all 60 opponents of National Socialist Germany in World War II would have resulted in extensive reparation claims.

After only six months, the foreign ministers of both German states and the four allies signed the agreement on September 12, 1990, in Moscow. The Allies immediately suspended their rights; on October 2, the treaty was also presented to the CSCE states, who took note of it “with great satisfaction.” 

The way to German unity was formally sealed on October 3 – which, to this day, is celebrated as a public holiday.

However, the treaty only came into force six months later on March 15, 1991. The Soviet Union was the last of the six signatory countries to ratify the agreement, just in time for the coup against Gorbachev in the summer and against a volatile mood in the Soviet Union against reunification of Germany. 

This day and the efforts of the parties involved to bring about German reunification will be remembered forever not only in Germany but all over the world.

L'articolo Against All Odds: the Two Plus Four Agreement and Germany’s Reunification proviene da InsideOver.

Relations between Washington and Berlin have been mediocre as of late. Sadly, so has the public’s opinion about the US in Germany. Accordingly, the public’s reaction to the American troop withdrawal announcement was naïvely positive and marked the latest example of a change for the worse in German perception of the United States.

Details of the Troop Withdrawal Still Unclear

Albeit the extent of the withdrawal remains uncertain and, in fact, may be scrapped after all if Joe Biden wins on November 3. Still, the ongoing discussion appears to have had an impact on the German image of America nonetheless. Specific ideas German used to have about the US have, indeed, shifted significantly as of late.

Gone seem to be the days in which Germans were grateful for America, which has been liberator and protector of the whole continent in the past. While the older generations in Germany have remained cognizant of the latter — at least outside of the former East German GDR states — the current generations of Germans, millennials, in particular, appear to have gotten lost in between a  leftist ideology and a shocking degree of ignorance and lack of geopolitical understanding when it comes to America’s role in the world.

The Lessons of History are Being Forgotten in Germany

The ever-increasing distance to the end of World War II and the subsequent period of rivalry between West and the Soviet Union has increasingly weakened the image of the American soldier as a representative of freedom. It coincides with an already drastic withdrawal of US soldiers in Germany in the past 30 years. In 1985 the strength of the American contingent in West Germany was just under 250,000. The current figure is at a seventh of it: only 35,000. The plan now is to withdraw another 11,000 troops.

The latter is apparently no issue for many Germans. In a recent survey, a relative majority of 47 percent of respondents in Germany supported the partial withdrawal.

However, such a shrug of shoulders or even negative attitude towards the presence of American allies in Germany is not new. In an autumn 2019 survey only around half of those questioned answered that they considered an American troop presence in Germany to be an essential contribution to national security — which can be considered the perhaps best IQ test to date.

Anti-Americanism on the Rise

The anti-American sentiments that speak in these numbers also find political resonance in Berlin. The opposition parties Left and Greens, but also Merkel’s coalition partner, the SPD, responded in different ways to the withdrawal announcement with comments and suggestions intended to be confrontational and delimiting instead of cooperative or characterized by efforts to limit the damage.

While the Left Party, the successor party of the GDR’s SED, demands withdrawal of all troops, the Greens favor removal of all US nuclear weapons stationed in Germany. The SPD’s parliamentary group leader, Rolf Mützenich, meanwhile, who had previously also suggested that nuclear weapons needed to disappear from German soil – and thus set himself in opposition to his party colleague and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas – now proposed that Germany should cease purchasing armaments from the United States in return for the withdrawal of troops.

Domestic Implications of the US Troop Withdrawal

The troop withdrawal is thus likely to have domestic implications also. With his intention to withdraw, Trump may have strengthened the formation of a political will, which in Germany could at least turn against some elements of the American presence that are strategically important in terms of military strategy — and may be used as a foreign policy wedge issue against the CDU during the elections in 2021.

Maas, meanwhile, still holds the argument against the demand for the withdrawal of nuclear weapons. He is cognizant that there are states in Europe that feel that they are far more threatened from a security policy perspective – from Russia. If Germany now foregoes the ability to target tactical nuclear weapons together with the United States, that would also weaken the European security architecture.

However, these geopolitical implications are far off the horizon for Germany’s (young) general public, who seem inclined to say tschüss to realism and guten Tag to naïveté.

L'articolo America’s Troop Withdrawal and Germany’s Naïveté proviene da InsideOver.

As Angela Merkel’s tenure as Germany’s Chancellor ends, many journalists and historians will rush to write about her legacy. Politico’s Matthew Karnitschnig recently produced a piece on how Donald Trump is not entirely to blame for the German-American ‘affair’ ending. Equally, neither is the current Chancellor. When she was elected in 2005, she revived the alliance between her nation and the US.

Before her 2005 victory, the relationship between George W. Bush and Gerhard Schröder, Merkel’s predecessor, reached an all-time low during the 2003 Iraq War. In Oliver Stone’s film W, Bush criticises Schröder for supporting the conflict and then betraying his word to the then US President during Germany’s 2002 federal election. Karnitscnig said Germany’s opposition to the Iraq War left a wound that was never completely healed between both nations. Merkel’s predecessor also disagreed with the US over Guantanamo Bay.

But circumstances changed when Merkel was elected. Although she disagreed with Bush over Kosovo’s entry into NATO in 2008, he later described the Chancellor in his memoir, Decision Points, as one of his ‘closest allies.’ She even attended George H.W. Bush’s funeral last year as she met Bush Senior during his 2009 trip to Berlin to commemorate twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When Barack Obama succeeded Bush in 2009, the German-American alliance grew stronger. Reuters produced a series of photos that captured how close the former President and the Chancellor are to this day. When Obama visited Cologne and Berlin earlier this year to discuss Trans-Atlantic relations, Merkel hugged her former colleague. During his last international trip in November 2016, Obama described the Chancellor as one of his ‘favourite partners’ during his time in office.

Following Trump’s election, this partnership has strayed into new territory. During last week’s UN General Assembly meeting, both the Chancellor and the current President seemed to avoid each other. Trump has been persistent from the start of his presidency that Germany must meet its NATO defence spending targets, and Merkel’s heir-apparent, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, will not escape scrutiny over this matter considering she has presided over defence since her appointment in July.

According to Politico, Berlin is so terrified about the deterioration in the ties with its biggest trading partner that the German Foreign Office is sponsoring a special initiative called ‘Wunderbar Together’, a yearlong series of events across the US intended to remind Americans how much the two nations truly like each other. DW discovered that the Germans they polled universally dislike Trump whilst most Americans quizzed by Fact Tank were mostly positive about Germany.

With the Trump administration engaged in preventing refugees from entering America, Merkel is perceived among some in the White House as a villain who enabled ‘floods of immigrants’ to enter Europe. Washington and Berlin disagree over trade, Iran, climate change and defence spending. Considering the current President is also an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit compared to his German counterpart, his offer of a UK-US trade deal has also caused a rift between both sides.

Both the Bush and the Obama administrations urged Germany to increase its defence spending, but Trump’s efforts have gotten Berlin’s attention to a certain extent. Recent suggestions by US officials that Washington might transfer its German-based troops to Poland were met with no resistance. Some joked it might mean this would keep them off Trump’s radar. It makes strategic sense to relocate American soldiers closer to the Russian border, but with the threat of Putin looming, Germany still requires protection.

Tragically, the American-German relationship has reached a new low, but neither Trump nor Merkel are entirely to blame for that. For years, Germany has been refusing to increase its defence spending and Berlin has made no effort to meet Washington halfway here. Policy differences between the Chancellor and the current President were inevitable given they are polls apart on many issues. But the Iraq War caused this partnership to deteriorate, and Merkel can say she revived it albeit briefly between 2005-16. With Russia and China growing stronger, the world needs this alliance to survive, especially when both countries are influential NATO states.

L'articolo Is Merkel Really To Blame For The fractured German-American Alliance? proviene da InsideOver.