The fall of the Berlin Wall might have brought forth a radically changed geopolitical landscape, but instead yielded a redux of the cold war status quo, according to this incisive history of German reunification. USC international relations professor Sarotte (Dealing with the Devil
) spotlights West German chancellor Helmut Kohl as the key figure, the man who seized the moment to annex East Germany while others dithered. Through adroit, sometimes misleading diplomacy and offers of aid to the collapsing Soviet economy, Kohl outmaneuvered Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, both unifying his country and advancing NATO's borders a long step eastward. East Germany's post-Communist leadership, who imagined an independent, quasi-socialist East Germany, come off as hapless idealists easily bulldozed by Kohl. The author embeds her interpretation in a sharp-eyed, fluent narrative of 1989–1990 that sees the realpolitik behind the stirring upheavals. Sarotte's claim that the outcome—a bigger NATO, still squared off against a truculent post-Communist Russia—might have been different feels more wistful than convincing, but she offers a smart and canny analysis of the birth of our not-so-new world order. Photos. (Nov.)
