Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Human Rights in History) by Young-sun Hong

Author:Young-sun Hong [Hong, Young-sun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.2

The SED hoped that this piece of propaganda would convince the East German people to reject the foul-smelling

geopolitical soup being cooked up by Adenauer out of a mixture of dollars and bayonets over the heat collectively provided by Mein Kampf, West German revanchism, and the European Defense Community.

Source: Zentralkomitee der SED, Abt. Agitation und Propaganda. Courtesy of Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, Bonn.

By 1956, negotiations over the European Common Market were already well advanced.

However, the process of integration forced the countries of Western Europe, and West

Germany in particular, to rethink their relation to both their colonies and the wider Third

World; they had to do this at a moment when the continued existence of formal

colonialism seemed increasingly unlikely, especially in the face of militant national

liberation movements in Algeria and elsewhere in Africa; and they had to make it possible

to integrate the Third World into the economic and geopolitical structures of the Western

bloc while at the same time marking the difference between West and South in ways that

would enable the former to define the terms on which this integration took place.

The French wanted overseas-dependent territories of member states be considered as

“associate” members of the community, who would be allowed to trade with the

community on a tariff-free basis. 833 In addition to the formal colonies of the member states, this policy of association would have also applied to UN trust territories, including

Belgian Ruanda-Urundi, the French Cameroon and Togo, and Somalia. However, it would

not have applied to Algeria, which was regarded as an integral part of France, rather than

as a colony. This proposal would have simultaneously cemented French power in Africa,

France’s influence within the Common Market, and the country’s status as a global power.

In many ways, the policy of association embodied the interwar idea of Eurafrica, and

the integration of the colonies of the member states into the continental economic

community tended to perpetuate colonial rule, rather than bring it to an end. 834 The West Germans were ambivalent about the policy. A number of politicians (especially in the

SPD) expressed reservations about being drawn into the controversial colonial policies of

their European allies, especially those of France, because they worried that West German

foreign policy would be tarred with the brush of colonial rule. Others supported the idea of

association. For example, Christian Democrat Hans Furler called on his colleagues to

ratify the treaty because he feared that otherwise competition among the superpowers for

influence in Africa would deprive Europe of that “natural” supplementary space that was

crucial for its economy. 835 However, virtually everyone involved believed that the Europeans exerted a positive influence on Africa and that they had a moral obligation to

help the Africans by promoting development. As Carlo Schmid (SPD), a longtime

member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, explained to his

colleagues, the French were taking important steps to promote development in Algeria,

but they alone could not bear the costs of “transforming Algeria…in such a manner that its

inhabitants can achieve a humane standard of living and thus be freed from the communist

temptation.” He also argued that the increase in private sector investment in the region

made possible by the policy of association represented an indirect way of investing in the

defense of free Europe. 836

These beliefs regarding the beneficent influence of Europe in Africa were shaped by

a misunderstanding of the nature of the Algerian conflict. Many West Germans regarded

the Algerian war as a conflict between European civilization and extra-European

barbarism. The vice president of the Bundestag publicly announced that his own moral

conviction about the superiority of white European civilization meant there was a natural

solidarity between West Germany and France with regard to the Algerian conflict. 837 This belief in the superiority of white Occidental civilization helped smooth over many of the

everyday conflicts that arose as the European powers jockeyed for position in Africa.

Virtually the only person to criticize association was Willi Birkelbach (SPD). He argued

that the community had to rest on solidarity among genuinely equal countries and that it

should not become “a kind of compensation at the cost of those developing countries

seeking their independence.” 838

One purpose of the Treaty of Rome was to reaffirm the solidarity “which binds

Europe and the overseas colonies” and “ensure the development of their prosperity.” 839 As a tangible sign of this commitment to the well-being of the extra-European world, the

Common Market development fund was established in 1958, with a third of its budget

coming from the Federal Republic. It is important to bear in mind that these programs and

the benefits they promised were intended to contain communism as much as to serve

humanitarian ends. However, their ability to function in this manner was predicated on a

subtle reconfiguration of the logic of civilizational difference, which allowed the peoples

of Asia and Africa, whose backwardness was often seen as an opportunity for communist

subversion, to reemerge as potential allies of the West in the struggle against the

ideological enemy. 840 As Adenauer explained in his presentation of the party program in 1957, his fellow Germans had to be willing to make sacrifices to assist all of those

countries that were capable of modernizing and that had a genuine will to freedom. 841

Furler echoed these sentiments and argued that European involvement promised to spare

the Africans from the evils of communism, which he insisted would be much worse than

colonial rule. 842

Although politicians and the Western media praised the policy of association as a

“Eurafrican Monroe doctrine” and a “New Deal” for Africa, 843 many Africans regarded it as a form of neocolonial rule. In 1957, the First Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity

Conference declared that the arrangement served as a means of subverting and rolling

back decolonization. 844 Guinean president Ahmed Sékou Touré criticized the community in more sophisticated terms, arguing that the logic of Western geopolitics invariably

reduced Africa and the Africans to the means for the realization of ends that were defined

by the Europeans and that ultimately benefited only them: “For Africans it concerns

people, not Europe or America, Asia or the Orient, not a ‘ Großraum’. Our natural

Großraum is Africa, not Eurafrica or Afro-Asia. ” 845 In contrast to Western-educated evolué nationalist leaders, many younger Africans felt that the policy of association would

solidify the structural dependence of their countries on the European economy and that the

benefits of metropolitan trade would accrue primarily to the urban elites who profited

from cheaper imports. For its part, the Soviet Union argued that the Common Market

represented a last desperate attempt to preserve the “colonial system of exploitation and

oppression,” while the East Germans took the opportunity to argue that West German

membership in the organization transformed it into a de facto colonial power. 846

Even after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the West German government had to

tread lightly in Africa to avoid offending its allies. 847 Businessmen and diplomats were asked to be discreet in their dealings with African countries. For example, when

Germany’s former colony Togo gained its independence from France,

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