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The $2T cited in the book does not refer to the direct costs paid to Russia but to the total amount spent on reunification which came out to something like $100
by cpleppert 6y ago
The $2T cited in the book does not refer to the direct costs paid to Russia but to the total amount spent on reunification which came out to something like $100 billion per year for twenty years.
The opposition of the rest of Europe and Russia has to be put in context. Russia would not have been able to support the East German economy nor would it have been able to afford to maintain a pointless troop presence that would no longer have local support. The rest of europe might have been opposed because of historical reasons having to do with security but not allowing unification would have created a massive roadblock for the european economy. Short of reunification, there was not an acceptable legal regime to end Germany's limited sovereignty(which the rest of europe supported).
Given that Germany strongly supported reunification and the US was in support for obvious geopolitical reasons there was no way for any other power to stop the process. Russia could either be paid to leave or get nothing and spend money it doesn't have to maintain the troop presence to boot. Poor relations with Germany would have had a catastrophic impact on the Russian economy. The UK was never really serious about stopping reunification and barely tried to bluff. Similar reasons apply to France which could not oppose reunification and support European integration.
For all these reasons I find the the focus on contingency to be rather overdrawn. It was not inevitable in the sense that it had to happen(you can come up scenarios where the soviet union continues into the 21st century) but given the collapse of the Warsaw Pact it's hard to understand how unification could have been ultimately prevented.
You can see a similar dynamic taking place in South Korea where unification is broadly supported by the younger population in the face of titanic security and economic concerns. German unification has been supported for hundreds of years for comparable reasons.
- quietbritishjim 6y ago> UK was never really serious about stopping reunification Why would the UK have even pretended to want to stop it? Weren't their foreign policies, at least towards communism, heavily aligned with the US?
- HeckFeck 6y agoReunification meant that Germany's power in the EU increased. Becoming a bigger country with a larger population got more seats and pushed the bloc more in its direction. Thus reducing Britain's influence there.
- iggldiggl 6y agoAnd ‘Yes Minister’s take’ on the UK’s foreign policy: https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE?t=106 https://youtu.be/ZVYqB0uTKlE?t=106
- cuillevel3 6y agoEast Germany only had about 15 million people. West Germany 65 million. So yes, it was an increase, but not like Germany doubled in size. Also noteworthy, the Soviet Union dissolved shortly after, at the end of 1991.
- runarberg 6y agoWas German reunification setting a president for Irish reunification never a concern for the UK government, like how e.g. today Scottish independence is today a concern for the Spanish government setting a president for an independent Catalonia?
- sfRattan 6y agoPerhaps, but I don't think it was much of a realistic concern for any who held it in the UK government. Whereas Germans, East and West alike, had largely thought of themselves as Germans in varying senses since Bismark (and both the DDR and BRD claimed to be legitimate successors to the same historical state), the peoples who lived (and live) in Northern Ireland didn't all think of themselves in the same way. Some thought of themselves as British, some as Irish, and many as some mix of both. A big reason why historians mark the Good Friday Agreement as the end of The Troubles is that it recognized the right of each person in Northern Ireland to identify with the nationality they chose (self-determination), in a way that both the British and Irish governments cooperated to recognize in administrative affairs where nationality mattered. There wasn't a separate ethnoreligious East German identity. There were (and are) conflicting identities in Northern Ireland with ethnic, religious, national, and historical dimensions. The two situations on-the-ground were extremely different.
- murderfs 6y ago> You can see a similar dynamic taking place in South Korea where unification is broadly supported by the younger population in the face of titanic security and economic concerns. German unification has been supported for hundreds of years for comparable reasons. The younger population of South Korea is generally opposed to reunification: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pyeongchang-olympics-korea-unification-1.4520151 http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pyeongchang-olympics-korea-unif...
- skissane 6y ago> Short of reunification, there was not an acceptable legal regime to end Germany's limited sovereignty(which the rest of europe supported). Ending Germany's limited sovereignty did not require reunification. It required (a) the Four Powers renouncing their residual authority over Germany, as they did in 1990's 4+2 Treaty (b) an agreement about what to do with West Berlin. The obvious options for removing occupying power control of West Berlin without reunification would have been (i) West Berlin becomes an exclave of West Germany; (ii) West Berlin is integrated into East Germany; (iii) West Berlin becomes independent as a third German state.