Honestly, I have no words. That’s so thoroughly fucked up and cynical I have a hard time even coming up with a hyperbolic analogy.
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Uh huh. Thatcher wasn’t Reagan - as much as she was a Cold Warrior she was more of an international relations realist than he was. And while she was pressing for a freer East Germany, and indeed all of Eastern Europe, that did not necessarily mean, to her, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the integration of many former Communist countries into NATO and the EU and much of what followed, good and bad.
I don’t think this was exactly a mystery at that time.
Does that mean she wanted an East Germany under Honnecker? Absolutely not. But she could have lived with one as a separate multiparty democracy alongside West Germany - indeed, that seemed to be the preference for most other countries until events proved that only reunification was going to be a viable option.
The reunification of Germany scared a *lot *of people in Europe and elsewhere.
Not arguing, just curious:
Does your take on the issue leave out Britain’s fear of a unified Germany as an economic competitor, or even a military power?
Was it just a question of maintaining a balance in international relations, avoiding destabilization? Or were there specific fears about Germany?
Let’s not forget that she told President Gorbachev this shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. With the Warsaw Pact disintegrating, the Soviets were probably uneasy about the West using this event as an opportunity to stick it to Russia. I believe she told Gorbachev this as an way to assuage Soviet fears and prevent them from getting their fingers closer to the nuclear launch button.
I don’t think she wanted to upset the applecart with Russia - things were improving with Gorbachev and agreements were being worked out. As it was when things started to really fall apart Gorbachev was ousted by Communist hardliners - had they remained in power the ensuing events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would have been a lot more bloody, and confrontation with the West that precipitated this crisis (in their eyes) would have been assured.
Realpolitik’s a bitch, innit?
Every so often I forget to be cynical about this kind of thing.
I’m sure Thatcher and Reagan would have liked to see the collapse of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe becoming free, but they would have wanted a managed collapse, over two or three decades, so that eastern European countries and especially Russia could have gradually set up liberal democratic mechanisms and institutions and avoided the potential of gangsters/fascists/neo-Communists etc. setting up shop in various countries. For such a thing to happen overnight is great for your personal legacy if it goes well but a total disaster with a bunch of nationalistic nutjob rogue governments possibly armed with nuclear weapons if it goes wrong. I think Britain would have been worried by Germany only from an economic angle and that while not minding reunification being delayed for two or three decades for economic reasons would have been essentially fine with the whole thing.
I would love it if Britain wanted to screw the EU up, but unfortunately they don’t. Against the will of the public, Britain is being gently managed further and further in by both political parties. The decision has been made and the British public don’t get a say in it.
I thought it was part of The Big Game.
IIRC Germany took a good decade or so to recover from its reunification. I suppose that Thatcher (and no doubt others) were wary of the risks and instability that ensued with the USSR’s rapid implosion. A preferred model may have been a controlled, paced reform of the constituent states of the USSR, in order to ensure the emergence of stable (both politically and economically) states and economies.
What we got with the implosion was a gaggle of chaotic states, many of which took up the old pre-USSR conflicts, dispersed pockets of nuclear weapons, a power vacuum in the East, hollowed-out soc/com economies replaced by unregulated markets and a reversion in many cases to equally totalitarian regimes.
I’d argue that it may have been in Europe’s interest to execute something like a Marshall Plan, only aimed at eastern Europe, but that’s all water under the bridge.
I don’t see that Thatcher did anything wrong, and it’s worth pointing out that in addition to the potentially explosive instability of a rapid collapse of the USSR, German reunification can easily hold a particular lack of appeal to someone who saw her county getting clobbered during the Blitz. I’m sure many Britons of Thatcher’s generation would happily have seen Germany broken up into even more pieces.
“I view the reunification of Germany in much the same way I view a possible Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis reconciliation: I haven’t really enjoyed any of their previous work and I m not sure I need to see the new shit right now…” - Dennis Miller
Remember the context of the times. Many people were very afraid that hard-line elements in the Soviet Union would view the reunification of Germany – within NATO – as an extremely aggressive act by the West.
Like Thatcher they were assholes.
Why? Would it be a good thing if Pakistan and India were reunified?
WTF are you talking about?
Your post indicates that people in Europe who opposed reunification were in your terminology “Like Thatcher they were assholes”.
I am saying all reunifications are not a good idea. Or don’t you understand the history off Pakistan and India?
I do not understand stupid comparisons.