Helmut Kohl - RIP

As the cliché goes, some are born to greatness, while others have it thrust upon them.  Helmut Kohl became German Chancellor in an unusual way.  In most parliamentary democracies, a successful “no-confidence” vote forces the government that lost the vote to call for a new election.  That government is forced to resign but continues in office as a caretaker government until the newly-called election determines the make-up of the new government.  In Germany, there is what is called a Constructive vote of no confidence.  This allows a parliament to withdraw confidence in a government and allow a new government to take over immediately if there is the prospect of a majority to support a new government to take its place.  Article 67 of the German Basic Law states:

Article 67. (1) The Bundestag can express its lack of confidence in the Federal Chancellor only by electing a successor with the majority of its members and by requesting the Federal President to dismiss the Federal Chancellor. The Federal President must comply with the request and appoint the person elected.

(2) Forty-eight hours must elapse between the motion and the election.

This was how Helmut Kohl became chancellor in 1982.  At that time, the ruling Social Democratic Party [SPD - the chancellor was Helmut Schmidt] was in a coalition government with the Free Democratic Party [FDP – led by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Schmidt’s foreign minister].  By the fall of 1982, the FDP disagreed with the SPD over economic policy.  This disagreement prompted the FDP to leave the SPD-FDP coalition and join with the Christian Democratic Union [CDU].  The FDP switched sides, Schmidt lost the vote, and Kohl was immediately sworn in as Chancellor.  Helmut Kohl remained Chancellor of Germany until 1998.

Helmut Kohl died on June 16, 2017.  He was 87.  He was Germany’s longest-serving Chancellor since World War II.  He played a significant part in ending the Cold War.  His part in that was to allow the US to base Pershing II missiles in West Germany.  At the time, the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear-capable SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic missiles.  Chancellor Schmidt argued the Europeans needed a similar weapon to deter possible Soviet use of the SS-20 [and any other aggression].  Ironically, Chancellor Schmidt’s own party was deeply divided over whether to allow US deployment of such a deterrent on German soil.  Helmut Kohl’s CDU party had no such divide.  Over the course of two years of negotiations, it boiled down to the Soviets desiring to keep almost 600 nuclear warheads in Eastern Europe if the US canceled the deployment of the Pershing IIs and the ground-launched cruise missiles in other NATO countries.  The US didn’t like the Soviet idea and deployed the Pershing IIs in November 1983.  The Soviets walked out of the INF negotiations.  In 1987 on his own initiative, Kohl decided to remove older Pershing Ia missiles.  The Soviets eventually came back to the bargaining table. Because Helmut Kohl allowed the Pershing II deployment, and demonstrated good faith by getting rid of the Pershing Ia missiles, the US and the Soviets eventually agreed to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons in September 1987.

Helmut Kohl will be remembered as the “Reunification Chancellor”.  He made the reunification of Germany happen despite misgivings from the Soviets, the French, and the British.  How did he do it?  I found this nugget from a National Public Radio article published the day Kohl died:

"For 70 percent of the time that he was in office he looked like he was semi-asleep,"

John Kornblum, U.S. ambassador to Germany during Kohl's final years in power, told

NPR's Eric Westervelt. "He wasn't one of these people out ordering people around. He

spent much more time talking with people on the phone and getting a feel for what

was going on. He schmoozed all the time. But when it came time to do something, he did something."

He was a politician, and from what the article implies, he was a pretty good one.  He listened more than he spoke.  When Francois Mitterrand voiced his skepticism of German reunification, Kohl persuaded him the Germans had learned from World War II, and that the best way for Germany to be a good neighbor was to be integrated with the rest of Europe – financially, economically, and politically.  Kohl saw German reunification and European integration as being two sides of the same coin.  He earned goodwill of Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher [albeit grudgingly] by renouncing German claims to Polish land, by recognizing the Oder-Neisse line [set after World War II] as the permanent German-Polish border.  He won over Mikhail Gorbachev by pledging to pay billions of German Deutschmarks to pay for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany.  Some would call that a very expensive bribe, but it did the trick.  Gorbachev used to make references to a “common European home”, and Kohl’s desire for a unified Germany in an integrated Europe echoed that theme.  Cynics would think that was telling Gorbachev what he wanted to hear, but Kohl followed his own rhetoric with concrete action.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 took all of us by surprise [it happened the day before I turned 27].  Helmut Kohl was on a visit to Poland.  He was just sitting down to eat dinner when he got word of the events of November 9^th.    He cut short his visit and rushed to Berlin.  His critics thought Kohl lacked the vision to make reunification a reality, but in less than three weeks he proposed a 10-point plan for reunification.  In presenting this plan, it included economic assistance, a kind of confederation between the two German states, a wish to strengthen the European Community [“We see the process of regaining German unity as a European matter…”].  He called for a more-democratic East Germany with free and fair elections that included opposition parties.  He sent a personal letter to the Francois Mitterrand, which included a time-line for further steps at the EC level regarding the economic and monetary union. 

As travel between East and West Germany became more routine, the East German political structure began to erode.  This wasn’t due to anything Kohl himself did – that credit goes to the people of East Germany, and to the people of the former Warsaw Pact countries that threw off the Communist yoke in 1989.  But to his credit Helmut Kohl saw his shot and he took it.  The East German Christian Democrats [the sister party to Kohl’s own CDU] and their allies made reunification the major issue for their campaign in the upcoming March 1990 elections.  The East German Christian Democrats won the election and got to form the first freely-elected government in East Germany.  Helmut Kohl had an ideological twin in East Germany - Lothar de Maizière.  Two months after de Maizière formed his government, he and Kohl signed the German Treaty on the Creation of a Monetary, Economic and Social Union, which entered into force on 1 July.  To keep East German workers in East Germany [and to keep them from overwhelming West Germany], Kohl introduced the Deutschmark in East Germany, and allowed East Germans to swap their weaker East German Marks at a through a 1-to-1 conversion rate.  He did this despite warnings from the German Bundesbank.  Once the monetary and economic union happened, the political union followed very quickly.  The four post-World War II occupying powers [US, UK, Soviet Union, and France] agreed to let Germany to regain total sovereignty.  East Germany reconstituted itself into five Länder, and each Länder joined West Germany under the Basic Law.  The reunification of Germany took effect October 3, 1990.  Helmut Kohl was the last chancellor of West Germany, and the first chancellor of a post-war united Germany.  None of this would have happened had not the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe crumbled.  But, Helmut Kohl saw an opening, adapted to events on the fly, and accelerated events to such a point that something I thought would not happen in my lifetime [the reunification of Germany] became a reality.  I believe his ability to schmooze with other world leaders was key to the reunification.

As I mentioned before, Kohl renounced any German claims to Polish lands east of the Oder-Neisse line.  He went one step further and did the same with the Czech Republic.  Kohl made a treaty with them where Germany renounced any claims to the Sudetenland.  Once Germany reunited, Kohl turned his attention to the European Community.  Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand were the prime movers to make the Maastricht Treaty a reality.  Now most European countries have the same currency [the Euro], and travel between member countries is as easy as travel between states within the United States.  While Europe doesn’t always speak with one voice, the European Union that resulted from the Maastricht Treaty is a more-unified Europe, where we are seeing more coordination between the member countries.  The most recent example of this coordination and cooperation is the economic sanctions imposed by the EU on Russia in the wake of their illegal annexation of Crimea.   

More important than the entity that is the European Union, there is the ideal of the European Union.  The EU is a strong pillar of the post-Cold War order.  To borrow a phrase from RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore, the EU stands for a world where small countries have the same rights as big countries.  The sovereignty of smaller countries is no less sacrosanct than those of the larger countries and is, therefore, unconditional.  All countries are created equal.  That belief has brought peace and stability to Europe.  This contrasts with countries like Russia, who believe that smaller states must be subservient to the larger states.  Countries like Ukraine and Georgia want to join the EU, and desire to leave behind their past when they were vassals of the Soviet Union.  Eugene Rumer’s June 30, 2016 piece on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace website lists the EU’s values as:

1.      Respecting the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of all nations;

2.      Refraining from using force to settle international disputes;

3.      Allowing freedom of choice by all states to pursue their foreign policies and enter into alliances;

4.      Demonstrating respect for fundamental human rights and personal freedoms in states’ domestic political arrangements.

Since late 2013, thousands of Ukrainians have died for this ideal.  They want to be part of Europe and not to be subservient to Russia.  They desire to chart their own course, and not to have their course charted by someone else.  In no small way, THAT is Helmut Kohl’s legacy.

Helmut Kohl hung around German politics a little too long.  Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder unseated him as German chancellor in 1998.  Two years later, it was revealed that Kohl had a secret slush fund he could use to help fellow CDU politicians.  The scheme of illegal campaign financing did not enrich Kohl personally, but it did tarnish his reputation to the extent that Angela Merkel, once a Kohl protégé, took advantage of to become the CDU leader [and now German chancellor].  Over the passage of time, this one scandal has receded from memory while Kohl’s legacy – the reunification of Germany and the foundation of the European Union as we know it – remains intact.  At first it seemed that Helmut Kohl had greatness thrust upon him.  But given his performance on the world stage, it appears that Helmut Kohl was instead “born to greatness.”  His place in history is secure. 

RIP Helmut Kohl. 

Helmut Kohl at the gate he opened...