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he accept that German reunification should take priority over everything else. He complained that the Germans treated any talk of caution as criticism of themselves. Unless you were whole-heartedly for reunification, you were described as an enemy of Germany. The trouble was that in reality there was no force in Europe which could stop reunification happening. He agreed with my analysis of the problems but he said he was at a loss as to what we could do. I was not so pessimistic. I argued that we should at least make use of all the means available to slow down reunification. The trouble was that other governments were not ready to speak up openly — nor, I might have added but did not, were the French. President Mitterrand went on to say that he shared my worries about the Germans’ so-called ‘mission’ in central Europe. The Czechs, Poles and Hungarians would not want to be under Germany’s exclusive influence, but they would need German aid and investment. I said that we must not just accept that the Germans had a particular hold over these countries, but rather do everything possible to expand our own links there. At the end of the meeting we agreed that our Foreign and Defence ministers should get together to talk over the issue of reunification and also examine the scope for closer Franco-British defence co-operation.

The fact that little or nothing in practical terms came of these discussions between me and President Mitterrand about the German problem reflected his basic unwillingness to change the direction of his whole foreign policy. Essentially, he had a choice between moving ahead faster towards a federal Europe in order to tie down the German giant or to abandon this approach and return to that associated with General de Gaulle — the defence of French sovereignty and the striking up of alliances to secure French interests. He made the wrong decision for France. Moreover, his failure to match private words with public deeds also increased my difficulties. But it must be said that his judgement that there was nothing we could do to halt German reunification turned out to be right.

In February Chancellor Kohl — again without any consultation with his allies — went to Moscow and won from Mr Gorbachev agreement that ‘the unity of the German nation must be decided by the Germans themselves.’ (The quid pro quo would soon become clear. In July at a meeting in the Crimea the West German Chancellor agreed to provide what must have seemed to the Soviets a huge sum, though they could in fact have extracted much more, to cover the costs of providing for the Soviet troops who would be withdrawn from East Germany. For his part, Mr Gorbachev now finally agreed in public that the reunified Germany should be part of NATO.)

On Saturday 24 February I had a three-quarters-of-an-hour telephone conversation with President Bush. I broke with my usual habit of trying to avoid detailed factual discussions over the telephone and tried to explain to the President how I thought we should be thinking about the future of a western alliance and a Europe which contained a reunified Germany. I stressed the importance of ensuring that a united Germany stayed within NATO and that United States troops remained there. However, if all Soviet forces had to leave East Germany that would cause difficulties for Mr Gorbachev and I thought it best to allow some to stay for a transitional period without any specific terminal date. I also said that we must strengthen the CSCE framework, which would not only help avoid Soviet isolation but would help balance German dominance in Europe. One had to remember that Germany was surrounded by countries most of which it had attacked or occupied on mainland Europe in the course of this century. Looking well into the future, only the Soviet Union — or its successor — could provide such a balance. President Bush, as I afterwards learnt, failed to understand that I was discussing a long-term balance of power in Europe rather than proposing an alternative alliance to NATO. It was the last time that I relied on a telephone