Hubert Védrine: ‘1989 wasn't the real beginning. The true departure point was much earlier’

Project 1989

To gain a clearer sense of our temporal contours, the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics is going back to the previous turning point of 1989. Francis Fukuyama famously asserted that we were experiencing not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of History as such. While it is easy to question such collective illusions today, it is another challenge to undo them. Is it possible to experience the ‘Return of History’ as an opportunity, a trigger to redefine our relations with the rest of the world and to reposition ourselves in time, as Europeans? 

In collaboration with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), BIG is publishing a series of witness interviews about this historic moment in time, the ‘Project 1989’. It is supported by the European Cultural Foundation.

Hubert Védrine (b. 1947) is a French diplomat and political advisor who was the diplomatic advisor and spokesperson for President François Mitterrand in 1989. He was at the heart of France’s response to the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the question of German reunification. Védrine helped formulate Mitterrand’s cautious approach: while acknowledging the inevitability of reunification, he sought to ensure it would proceed within a European framework that preserved the Franco-German equilibrium and European stability. 

LvM: First, can I start by asking what memories the events of 1989 conjure up for you?

HV: I am happy to talk about it. First of all, I'd like to remind you that I have a personal, independent and free point of view, which is neither right nor left-wing. I'm a Mitterrand man, originally of course, but I was in power for 20 years. Not in politics, but in power, with Mitterrand and with Chirac. I lived through three cohabitations. In fact, I've worked just as much with the right as with the left. What I say here is absolutely personal.

Second, I lived through all these events [of 1989] with Mitterrand. I had my own ideas, I had traveled, etc. But his vision left a deep impression on me. He was expecting German reunification from [as early as] 1981. …. He had told Helmut Schmidt in October 1981, in his home, that the German aspiration to unification didn't shock him, that it was [to be expected], and that when the time came, it would have to happen peacefully and democratically. … . We lived through Mitterrand-Schmidt and then Mitterrand-Kohl from 1981 to 1989 in this frame of mind. We knew it was going to happen, and in Mitterrand's mind it wasn't a conflict of good versus evil, of democracies versus communism, rather, it was a historical and geopolitical process that would change the balance of power in Europe, with Germany once again becoming central… . When Mitterrand and Schmidt were talking, … Mitterrand said to him in October 1980, ‘You're too pessimistic. In fifteen years maximum, maybe less, the Soviet Union will be so weakened that it will no longer be able to prevent reunification.’ And Mr. Schmidt says, ‘I'd like to believe you, but I can't’. … It was going to happen, and we needed to prepare for it as well as possible. Mitterrand got on well with Reagan and with George H. Bush even more, they were very close; but they thought that we had to ‘win’, that it would be the defeat of a communist regime, and that NATO would then have to be strengthened. Whereas Mitterrand said that Europe had to be strengthened. That is the state of mind we were in [at the time of German reunification].

LvM: Was this also discussed during the Franco-American summits, or were these ideas kept in isolation?

HV: No, because… in the early years, it was more a French or Franco-German reflection [on the issue]. The Mitterand-Kohl relationship was exceptional. … [unification] became a real discussion point from 1988 onwards. Because Mitterrand’s reasoning, based on an immense historical [knowledge], had no concrete way of translating [this into action], in fact, until the arrival of Gorbachev. When Gorbachev arrived [on the scene] in 1985, the idea was able to be developed, and the whole thing became possible. In fact, Mitterrand was a great supporter of Gorbachev. He didn't really believe in perestroika. He didn't see how a modern country could be built from the ruins of communism. In 1988, Mitterand spoke with George Bush Senior, which was when the idea [takes hold] that [reunification] is going to happen. It was not linked to German demand. It had nothing to do with the history of the [Berlin] Wall. …. It was to do with the weakening of the Soviet Union and the fact that Gorbachev initially accepted it. By the end, he [Gorbachev] panicked. So Bush and Mitterrand talked about it frequently: how to deal with it, because things had to go well. Remember that for decades in Europe, the idea of German reunification was seen as a case for war, war with the USSR. So it was not the desire of the Germans, nor a German policy. The fundamental element was the weakening of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev's consent. I experienced it all from the cockpit. It was a major geopolitical event. …From 1988 onwards, we knew that reunification was going to happen. Why? Because the USSR was too weak and Gorbachev accepted it. Gorbachev wanted to keep the Soviet Union, even the Balkans and the Caucasus, but not Eastern Europe. So he was ready to let go of the whole that Stalin had set up. …it was inevitable.

And in fact, when Mitterrand arrived in 1988, Helmut Kohl suggested that there should be a joint French-German policy in Eastern Europe. And Mitterrand told him that France no longer had any cards up its sleeve in Eastern Europe, so [he would go] and tour the whole of Eastern Europe to redevelop contacts, … [to] have a joint Germany-France approach. At the time, we told Mitterrand that we did not want to wait for the regimes to fall, because we, as Mitterrand's team, in 1988 were convinced that they were all going to fall, there was no doubt only a question about the date. And Mitterrand said, ’Yes, I'm going to go everywhere. And if I have to, I'll go twice. Once now, once later.’ Hence the famous meeting in December 1989 in East Germany.

LvM: That meeting was by prior appointment?

HV: Yes, of course, as part of a general tour. But he went to Prague twice, for example. Before and after the fall [of the Wall]. In the middle of summer, we wanted to go to Romania. So we were doing the tour… to prepare for the fall, you see. …It was a matter of course. Will Gorbachev succeed? Maybe. We did not know, but what he was doing was going in the right direction.

So, [with regards to the] Wall, Mitterrand talked to Kohl every month. I attended 115 Mitterrand-Kohl meetings myself. Every day, the Élysée Palace and the Chancellery talked to each other. Kohl was very cautious at the time, which has been forgotten, and he said that a process of cooperation, perhaps of confederation, could be envisaged for years to come. So Mitterrand … went to East Germany, on a general tour. At the time, East Germany was still negotiating agreements with West Germany. George Bush wanted to help Helmut Kohl during the transition. He sends James Baker, the Secretary of State, to the East the following week to say the same thing as Mitterrand. And everyone said ‘bravo, that's very good’.

Mitterrand and Bush’s approach was the same. Let me return to what we might call the Wall affair. It was already clear that the Honecker regime was collapsing. The ‘famous wall’ was, in a way, already open. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia that summer, there were reports of people removing border fences, cutting through the iron curtain. East Germans could already leave through those countries.... As for the sequence of events around the Wall, it was quite astonishing. The new East German government was completely on the defensive. Eager to appear open and responsive, they decided to announce a liberalization of travel. At a press conference, they tried to spin it positively. Then a journalist asks: ‘From when?’ The spokesman stammers: ‘I don’t know… I suppose... from today.’ People hear this. They jump into their beat-up old cars and head to the Brandenburg Gate. The border guards are caught completely off guard. One of them asks: ‘What are we supposed to do? There's no one left in charge. We can’t shoot them. So... what now?’ And so, they opened the border. … Mrs Merkel took her old car, drove west, and bought a chocolate éclair. Then she went back home. For years, I gave seminars at Sciences Po. I used to show my students photos of the Wall. I told them: people attacked it with pickaxes. Such courage! But then I’d pause and say, no, that was the next day. They were just collecting souvenirs. So yes, there's irony in what I’m saying, but it’s also serious. I believe the fall of the Wall is sometimes exaggerated. It was, of course, a deeply emotional event for Germany. But it would have happened eventually. It wasn't the real beginning. The true departure point was much earlier. Nor was it the final destination. After all, Germany was still a co-agent with the USSR.

LvM: If I understand you correctly, you're saying that 1981, or the end of the USSR, was ultimately more decisive than 1989?

HV: At the very least, things began earlier. The key year is 1991. It is a process. I say this because the narrative promoted by the media reflects a kind of European naiveté. If you're asking about the naiveté of the future, you have to start with the naiveté of the past. After WWII, the Europeans essentially begged the Americans for protection. …They wanted an alliance as early as 1945. At Yalta, Stalin signed the Declaration on Liberated Europe at Churchill and Roosevelt’s urging, promising free elections in countries liberated by the Red Army. He did the opposite. We know this now from the archives. The Marshall Plan was designed to avoid a military alliance, but the Europeans panicked. They pleaded for protection. At the time, the US Senate was still staunchly isolationist—especially when it came to Europe. The Senate's answer was, ‘No permanent alliance, ever.’ It was Truman who finally forced their hand. But even then, the Americans weren’t in Europe in any meaningful way. Then came the Treaty of 1949, still in force today. And by 1950–51, with the outbreak of the Korean War, the Europeans were begging them to return, fearing another war was imminent. At first, the Americans were reluctant. Eventually, they agreed. That’s when NATO was born as treaty organization. The Americans said, in effect: ‘Look, there have been two world wars in Europe. If we’re coming back, we’re in charge. We call the shots. And the general in command will be American.’ The Europeans said, ‘Yes, thank you very much.’ That power dynamic hasn’t changed. I say this as a Frenchman, and I admit my country made many mistakes on this issue. France never fully understood that this American protection remains vital for Europe. We’ve lived in peace for two or three generations and we’ve forgotten what that really means. So we invented this slogan: ‘Europe is peace.’ It is a false slogan. It wasn’t Europe that brought peace. Peace was made at Stalingrad by the Soviets. Europe is not the mother of peace; she is the daughter of peace. She has benefited from peace but she did not create it. And that is part of the European naiveté. People have heard this slogan repeated a thousand times and have come to believe it blindly. It was a kind of Fukuyama logic, before Fukuyama. So the famous naiveté was already there, long before 1989. Europeans thought: ‘We’re protected by the Americans, we’ve forgotten that, and now we can build a perfect society.’ And even before 1989, there is a history of European political responsibility shaped by egalitarian ideals that Americans admired—but others did not, aside from the British.

LvM: The Germans would not have agreed.

HV: No, the Germans were pushing in another direction. So it is not surprising that when the USSR collapsed, Gorbachev departed too. The USSR was gone; it was just Russia again. And it is no surprise that Europeans resonated with Fukuyama’s vision. For the Americans, the interpretation was: We’ve won. We’re the leaders now. That’s what I called the ‘hyperpower.’ In the 1990s, it was: ‘We’ve won, we’re the masters of everything. We can do anything, sanctions, speeches, bombings, whatever we want.’ For Europeans, it was much more naive: ‘We’re part of the international community’. But there is no ‘international community.’ History was not over. There were still confrontations, questions of power, balance, identity. Yet Europeans were convinced they had entered a post-history era. The Schengen Agreement is typical of this mindset. It was a great idea initially, proposed by three Secretaries of State for European Affairs, essentially minor ministers, on a boat on the Moselle. They decided to abolish internal borders. But they said nothing about external ones. The asylum-immigration pact we finally adopted this year, after ten years of discussion, should have been implemented back then. Once internal borders disappeared, external ones should have been properly managed. That doesn’t mean closing off – Europe needs immigration – but managing it. That naïveté was reinforced by the symbolism of the Wall falling. The idea took hold: We are tearing down all borders. A kind of illusion, or delirium, really.

RK: Did you warn anyone at the time? Was there anyone who recognized this blind spot?

HV: I was in power until 1995, under Mitterrand. I was Secretary-General of the Elysée at the time, essentially the boss of the system, but during cohabitation with Balladur and Juppé, it wasn’t customary to speak publicly. I spoke out later, in 1997, when I became minister of Foreign Affairs. No one had made an overly optimistic statement. The media, think tanks and public emotion drove that narrative. There was no real warning. Only a more reserved, realistic tone.

LvM. When do you think this feeling of inevitability set in?

HV: I had hoped that by the 1990s people would see things weren’t working. The Americans were treating Russia almost like a colony. There were some modest initiatives. For instance, Mitterrand’s idea of a European Confederation proposed on 31 December 1989. He anticipated the Soviet Union’s collapse and believed Eastern European countries would seek to join Europe and NATO, which was understandable, but they could not join right away. It would take 15 years. That delay would be humiliating. So he proposed a body in which all Europeans, including the USSR, would be represented. But it was a mistake to include the USSR. Eastern European countries didn’t want to join a confederation with the USSR, they had just escaped from it. What they wanted was NATO. For them, the EU was simply a part of NATO. Mitterrand made the right diagnosis, but too early. He was portrayed as an old man clinging to Communist allies. But he was ahead of his time. Had he proposed a confederation without including the USSR, and only discussed a future partnership, it might have worked. I’ve defended Mitterrand against false accusations, like those about Rwanda, but here, I admit there was a mistake in strategy and timing. Afterward, progress was slow. Laurent Fabius and I, for example, shared a view when I was at the Quai d’Orsay: there was no reason to impose brutal shock therapy on Russia. They lost 40% of their purchasing power. We criticized it, made weak counter-proposals, but the dominant narrative prevailed: Russia lost, the Americans won, maybe Germany too. And while some voices, Mitterrand, Chirac and even I myself spoke of treating Russia as a partner, it was never formulated as a coherent policy. In the US, this was a period of hubris. They’d won and believed they were above it all. They were on Olympus. Later, Obama would say Russia was just a regional power. So, in my opinion, it makes it essential to examine not only the roles of countries like France and Germany, but above all, the American position.