Germany: Unity and Rearmament

As this is being written, Bonn’s parliament is voting for German rearmament. This caps the policy of “restoration” pursued during recent years by the U.S. in Western Europe; at the same time it introduces additional elements of rigidity not merely into German society but into the complex of European relationships as well. The new army, by its very existence, will sharpen the parochial nationalisms of Western Europe, and thus accentuate its inner rivalries. It will exert strong pressures on domestic policies for it constitutes not so much a potential danger as a factor of immense power, hence a competitive challenge impossible to evade. This must clearly limit whatever elements of fluidity, whatever “elbow room” still remains in West European society and politics.

Though on the face of it the ratification of the Paris agreements by Bonn fulfills the conditions by which Germany is to regain full sovereignty, in actuality, Germany will be less, not more free. For its new army will not be the freely disposable instrument of Bonn used on behalf of an independent foreign policy; rather, it will be an adjunct to the U.S. military apparatus. It will be useful in policing Central and perhaps Western Europe and in denying to the Russians the great industrial resources of the area; useful also in supplementing the manpower of NATO—but it is not to be regarded as more than a junior partner in America’s military enterprise.

There have been expressions of anxiety over the possibility that this new army will enable the Germans to turn against NATO and pursue a “pro-Russian” policy. However, there are a number of safeguards in the covenants which place considerable obstacles in the way of such independent policy changes on the part of the Germans—if indeed the latter would regard them as desirable. First, the new army will have a base of continental supplies incomparably narrower than that of its predecessors, and for this reason alone must depend upon the Allied navies. Secondly, strong Allied contingents will remain at its side, and “absolute” (atomic and bacteriological) weapons will not be available to its command. These two factors strictly limit its bargaining power with either side.

The difference between EDC and the Paris agreements was hardly more than a difference in legal techniques, important though these were in veiling the true loci of actual and potential power. EDC was a diplomatic attempt at introducing German rearmament without endangering the French-American •alliance. However, this is not to question Adenauer’s and Schuman’s sincerity in devising a French-German rapprochement, with EDC as the shaky initial basis of a future alliance of West European Catholicism. Whatever the merits and perils of such a policy, the alternative to it was and is fraught with grave dangers to the Adenauer regime.

A West Germ...