In a SPIEGEL interview, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discusses America’s fight for German reunification, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s woes at the time, Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s merits and the later mistakes of his successor, Gerhard Schröder.


SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, European nations like Great Britain and France were very worried about the prospect of German unification. America was the only country that didn’t appear to be concerned. Why not?



Condoleezza Rice: The United States — and President George H.W. Bush — recognized that Germany had gone through a long democratic transition. It had been a good friend, it was a member of NATO. Any issues that had existed in 1945, it seemed perfectly reasonable to lay them to rest. For us, the question wasn’t should Germany unify? It was how and under what circumstances? We had no concern about a resurgent Germany, unlike the British or French.



SPIEGEL: Because a unified German was in America’s strategic interest?


Rice: If you were going to have a Europe that was whole and free, you couldn’t have a Germany that was divided. So, with the possibility that Soviet power was going to be receding from Europe, it made perfectly good sense to try to achieve reunification on terms that nobody would have thought thinkable, even four or five years before.