Musings on the Berlin Wall, American Military Bases & American Foreign Policy

At a dinner with Italians at which all the attendees were over 60 years of age except for my wife and I, we talked of our plans to head to Berlin for a few days to stay with a friend and see the World Cup up close. One of those at the table told us that soon after 1989 he went to Germany on business and while there he decided to hack off a piece of the Berlin wall which he has put under glass as a keepsake. This prompted me to ask him whom he thought was most responsible for the Wall’s collapse. He gave a judicious response, saying that it was a conflation of many people at just the right moment in history, but he felt justified in taking especial note of Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II. I was not surprised by either candidate, as I have some German friends who live in the US and who were just utterly annoyed and shocked at how during Reagan’s funeral week the American media and public had coalesced around a narrative of the Berlin wall’s collapse being primarily the result of Reagan’s military spending rather than Gorbachev’s perestroika. So, I told this 70-year old Italian businessman how in the US Reagan has been lionized and credited with the Wall’s collapse, and he gave the friendly retort, “Unless my memory fails me, I do not recall Reagan being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize as was Gorbachev.” It is of course a well-known phaenomenon that diverse cultures can, as a group, interpret the same event in starkly different terms and weave widely diverse narratives. On the other hand, it is hard to argue with the rest of the world: Gorbachev, not Reagan, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

The conversation turned to other items of Italo-American interest. Just the day before our dinner the local newspaper in Vicenza announced that the final details for the American army to convert the Vicenzan airport into an army air hub and double the American presence in Vicenza from 2,000 American soldiers to 4,000 had been worked out according to the stipulations of the treaty signed between the US and Italy after WWII. Per the treaty, the exact provisions of the expansion were to be kept secret. Rumors had been circulating for more than a year that the Americans were tired of having to airlift personnel and equipment to and from the northern Air Force base in Aviano to their army base in Vicenza, Caserma Ederle, before heading to Iraq or elsewhere, and they wanted to expand the Vicenzan airport to be able to do this directly. In return for this, the Vicentini will get an expanded airport along with a expanded public road connecting Caserma Ederle to the airport and the ensuing increase in business. At this table of 7 Italians and 1 American, where 2 of the 7 Italians lived during WWII in a city occupied by Nazis, whose relatives had been thrown in the town clinker by the Nazis and Fascists, and who had welcomed the American intervention, not a single one was happy about the expanded base, all wondered how long this treaty should reasonably apply, and all wondered if any of the others knew of or were interested in forming a group that might protest this move. Now, we’re not talking about a bunch of left-leaning college students here, but a group of older and fairly conservative business people. We’re also talking about a very respected family of Vicentini whose relative, Mariano Rumor, was once prime minister of Italy and was one of the partigiani, or “partisans”, who fought against the Nazis and Fascists. If you aren’t winning the hearts and minds of these folks in Europe, then this American at least must wonder whose hearts and minds are you winning?

The topic of conversation turned also turned to Iraq and the Bush administration. All thought Iraq a huge mistake. My favourite comment of the night came from the 89-year old matriarch of the family: “What does Condelezza Rice actually do? She seems to me to be sent by Bush all over the globe where she accomplishes nothing.”

A few days later we went to Berlin and stayed in an apartment with an Italian friend in East Berlin. It was a sturdy, no-nonsense apartment from the communist era whose form was replicated over and over in that neighborhood and the city. While that cookie-cutter, one-size fits-all mentality must have been horrible to live under, it now resonated with a certain charm of a by-gone era. That same neighbourhood also still had a dusty Trebant or two parked on every block. I asked a local who had lived through the Communist era why she thought the wall collapsed and she said it was because they could see how much better and affluent the lives were of the West Berliners and they just could not continue to be denied. We also visited Checkpoint Charlie with all the tourists posing for photos with guards decked out in American and Russian military garb. A few blocks away we visited the section of the Wall still standing and the offices of the Nazi party that had been excavated underneath now called The Topography of Terror. I have to say that I did feel a sense of pride as an American (I don’t know why since I wasn’t even born yet) for our country’s involvement in bringing down the Nazis and standing fast against the Soviets. I think one of the most impressive things about the collapse of both groups is how peaceful, prosperous and “normal” things are in Berlin now. Were Kennedy to stand there today and say once again, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, all urban legends of jelly doughnuts aside, a large segment of his audience would most certainly think he called himself a very good beer.

All of these diverse emotional and contradictory experiences made me reflect a bit on Europe’s and the rest of the world’s current view of America, which is decidedly negative. Is the current drop in American support around the globe merely the result of us being the world’s only remaining super power, or as the Germans sarcastically like to call us now the only “über-power” or “hyper power”, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, or are the current policies of the Bush administration exacerbating these feelings that have existed in one form or another ever since WWII? While I’d be the first to admit we have a real structural problem with Europe wherein they perceive that with the collapse of USSR they don’t need us as much, I think you would have to be sporting a rather thick set of blinders not to admit that Bush and the Neoconservatives are making things worse than they could or should be. These experiences have also led me reflect a bit more on the Bush administration’s responses to current threats (Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea...). Should we continue with the more aggressive policy of “rollback”, as Emery alludes to here, or should we go back to a policy that more closely approximates the policy of “containment” that won the Cold War? Either policy of course has its weaknesses and victims, and I won’t say, as some have, that no blood was spilled as a result of containment in Hungary or elsewhere (a lot was), but overall I think the policy of containment did, in the long run, work, and while it’s impossible to know for certain whether “rollback” might have worked better, the current policy of rollback and preemption in Iraq suggests to me, at least, that a very aggressive containment policy would be the wiser course of foreign policy for Al Qaeda, Iran and North Korea.