14 | FORBES INDONESIA AUGUST 2017
FACT & COMMENT STEVE FORBES
Cold War’s
Unheralded Hero
Historians often cite the trio
of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul
II and Margaret Thatcher as hav-
ing played critical roles in bringing
down the evil empire of the Soviet
Union. A fourth name should be
added: Helmut Kohl, who died re-
cently at age 87.
When Kohl became chancel-
lor in 1982 of what was then West
Germany, the So-
viet Union was
engaged in an
ultra-high-stakes
political offen-
sive to shatter the
Western alliance
and win the Cold
War. Moscow had
developed and
then positioned
intermediate-
range nuclear
missiles that were
aimed primarily
at Germany. The
goal: to blackmail
West Germany
into fatally weaken-
ing its ties to NATO, which would
enable the Soviet Union to domi-
nate Europe. The threat looked all
too real. If Moscow fired its missiles
at Germany, would the U.S. retaliate
with a nuclear attack on the Soviet
Union, risking its own nuclear anni-
hilation? After all, even if we made
such a response, the Soviets would
still be capable of firing off enough
of their missiles to obliterate us.
Moscow was betting that its target-
ing of Germany with shorter-range
rockets would, for all intents and
purposes, emasculate our nuclear
deterrent and force the West Ger-
man government to cut a deal with
Moscow, effectively becoming a
neutral nation à la Finland.The obvious response was for the
U. S. t o st a t i o n i t s ow n i n t e r m e d i a t e -
range nuclear missiles in Germany
that could then reach Russia. (We
once had shorter-range missiles sta-
tioned in Turkey, but we had quietly
pulled them out as part of the deal
that settled the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis.) But would Bonn (then the
capital of West Germany) allow those
weapons on German soil? Opposi-
tion—stoked with plentiful amounts
of Soviet cash and fueled by an elabo-
rate Soviet-orchestrated propagandacampaign—was fierce: “Don’t let our
country become a nuclear wasteland!
Keep American missiles out!”
Chancellor Kohl was having none
of it; there was no more equivocation
like that of his predecessor. He was
firm: Those U.S. missiles would be
placed on German soil. Period. De-
spite intense pressure, domestically
and from Moscow, Kohl wouldn’t
back down.
Moscow lost its great gamble, a
setback that was even more damag-
ing than its blinking during the Cu-
ban missile showdown, because this
was a crucial factor in setting the
stage for the fall of the Berlin Wall
several years later.
Kohl had two other majorachievements during his time in of-
fice. One was the peaceful reunifica-
tion of his country after the fall of
the Berlin Wall. The U.S.S.R. wasn’t
keen on Germany’s coming togeth-
er again, nor was France or Britain.
But Kohl’s determination and skill-
ful diplomacy won the backing of
the U.S. and substantially softened
French resistance (Kohl had worked
hard for years to establish a close
relationship with France’s president,
François Mitterrand). In the end
Kohl not only merged East Germany
with West Germa-
ny, but he also got
Moscow to acqui-
esce in the new
country’s remain-
ing in NATO.
The chancel-
lor also pushed
hard for the cre-
ation of the euro,
even though Ger-
mans wanted to
maintain their
beloved deutsche
mark. Kohl be-
lieved a unified
currency would
help further inte-
grate Germany with
the rest of Europe. He wanted to do
everything possible to avoid a repeat
of what had happened in the first
half of the 20th century. He can’t be
blamed for the fact that most Euro-
peans today (and almost all econo-
mists elsewhere) are embarrassingly
clueless about what constitutes an
effective monetary policy.
Kohl was Germany’s longest-serv-
ing chancellor (1982–98) since Otto
von Bismarck. Kohl reunited Ger-
many by peaceful means in 1990. Bis-
marck achieved the original German
unification through “blood and iron,”
that is, by cynically engineering a se-
ries of wars with his neighbors.
May Helmut Kohl’s legacy be the
one that triumphs in the future. FSF with Helmut Kohl, 1984. It was clear the German leader wouldn’t buckle under to
pressure from Moscow or domestic demonstrators.