38. THE NEW GERMANY
The American administration had no plan for how to break the dead-
lock. Gorbachëv too was bereft of new ideas, and the cards in his
hands for the next round of bidding were the weakest he had ever
held. Being committed to military withdrawal from Eastern Europe,
he could not recant without loss of political credit around the world.
He also depended on America’s cooperation in order to make savings
through agreements on arms reduction. The Soviet Union was hurt-
ling towards financial dissolution. The need for external assistance was
no longer disguisable, and Gorbachëv projected an appeal to the capi-
talist powers. In early summer 1990 he sent out his officials on a
mission to obtain emergency financial credits.^1
The Americans wanted his assent to their ideas for Europe’s polit-
ical and territorial future. They oiled the diplomatic machinery that
might bring Gorbachëv over to their view on the German question.
The West Germans were delaying the process by omitting to promise
that NATO forces would never operate on the territory of East Ger-
many. Baker wrote to Genscher asking him to make a clear declaration
that would assuage the USSR’s objections. Washington and Bonn, he
avowed, had to cooperate in lightening the atmosphere.^2 When Baker
met Gorbachëv in Moscow on 11 May, the new Germany headed the
agenda. They also discussed how to reduce the size of conventional
forces. Gorbachëv’s ideas were geared towards a gradual sequence of
measures that might last nine whole years; he also thought it might
take three years to achieve an agreement. He wanted numerical
equality between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; he suggested that each
side should retain no more than 1,350,000 troops and 20,000 tanks.^3
Kohl’s aide Teltschik flew to Moscow for secret talks on 14 May.
Ryzhkov made no attempt to disguise the economic disaster that was
looming. He made a request for financial assistance in the form of
credits that could be repaid over a period of fifteen years. Teltschik had
brought along a couple of leading bankers.^4 The questions of German