Begegnungen26_Diczfalusy
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 26:133–147.
EGON DICZFALUSY
Contraception and society
Lorsqu’une idée correspond ŕ la nécessité de l’époque,
elle cesse d’appartenir ŕ ceux qui l’ont inventée
et elle est plus forte que ceux qui en ont la charge.
Jean Monnet, Mémoires (1978)
History: What is it?
As John R. Seeley remarked in a lecture more than a century ago (Growth of British Policy), ‘history is past politics and politics present history’. Such a consideration makes it easier to understand why Elias Canetti divides humankind into two groups: ‘those who accept history and those who are ashamed of it’. He may be right and he may be wrong, depending on our definition of history.
‘There is history in all men’s lives…’ says Shakespeare (King Henry IV, Part II, III i. 80) and some 15 years before the publication of Canetti’s magnum opus, Karl Popper emphasizes that ‘there is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world’. Let us consider just for a moment the history of ideas. Are ideas not more important in shaping human destiny than kaleidoscopically changing political power? Jean Monnet is right in his statement selected as a motto for this paper: when an idea meets the exigencies of an epoch, it becomes stronger than political power; it becomes the common property of humankind and it may resist the historical forces of destruction for a long time. I am convinced that such an idea was that of contraception.
In a paper published in 1898, Sigmund Freud remarked that ‘Theoretically, it would be one of the greatest triumphs of humanity… if the act responsible for procreation could be raised to the level of a voluntary and intentional behaviour in order to separate it from the imperative to satisfy a natural urge’. A naive dreamer? In 1898, certainly yes, but in 1959, no longer! This is the year when the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first oral contraceptive pill, Enovid®. Two years later, in 1961, the Bundesgesundheitsamt in Berlin approved another oral contraceptive, Anovlar®, and in 1962 the FDA approved a third one, Ortho-Novum®. The contraceptive revolution had arrived to stay…
Every revolution has its adversaries and the contraceptive revolution was no exception in this respect. In my Gregory Pincus Memorial Lecture at the 5th International Congress on Hormonal Steroids in New Delhi (1978), I tried to characterize the early history of the ‘pill’ by saying that ‘The first oral contraceptive was marketed in 1959 in a hostile atmosphere controlled by restrictive and conservative societal forces influenced by traditionalism, strong taboos and the persistent belief the technological progress can be stopped by ideological forces and political determination’. Like many strong beliefs, even that belief proved to be wrong and, by 1993, the United Nations estimated that some 550 million couples around the world were using specific contraceptive methods; a third of them resorted to female sterilization, 22% had intrauterine devices, 17% were using oral, injectable and implantable steroidal contraceptives, 8% were condom users, 7% adopted male sterilization, 6% practiced withdrawal, 5% used the rhythm method and 2% used vaginal barrier methods and other technologies.
In my opinion, the invention of contraceptives was just as fundamental for the evolution of humankind as the invention of the wheel; it triggered the most powerful social revolutions in reproductive health and gender equity and significantly contributed to an unparalleled demographic change (the demographic revolution of the 20th century) in the history of humankind.
The demographic revolution and the tyranny of numbers
Some historical estimates together with recent estimates and projections of the world population by the United Nations Population Division (2001) may provide an idea of the magnitude of the demographic changes witnessed by humankind in the course of two millennia in general, and during the 20th century in particular. To start with, the year AD14 was a memorable one, particularly in the history of the Roman Empire: Emperor Augustus died and was followed by Tiberius. Population historians estimate that the global population at this time was around 256 million and that there was little, if any, increase in the number of people living on this planet during the subsequent 1000 years.
It was the second millennium that brought about dramatic changes in the world population; it is estimated that global population exceeded 400 million by the year 1500 and 1600 million by the year 1900. Then population growth further accelerated and by the end of the 20th century it had exceeded 6000 million people (Table 1).
The global population reached the 3000 million level in 1960, a fact that resulted in major anxiety at the international level; the prophets of ‘gloom and doom’ predicted that soon there would be only standing room on this planet, which would be unable to support a world population of more than, say, 5000 million people. Several so-called experts also predicted that (with unchanged growth rate) the ultimate population of the world might reach 20 000, or 25 000 million people. Hence, it is understandable that, from the 1970s on, less developed countries came under enormous pressure from the more developed countries to establish nationwide family planning programs. India took the lead in 1951 and by 1996 more than 90% of all developed countries supported such programs – albeit mainly for reasons of human rights, reproductive health and gender equity rather than demographic concerns.
Table 1 |
|
Year |
Millions |
14 |
256 |
1000 |
280 |
1500 |
427 |
1900 |
1668 |
2000 |
6057 |
Where do we go from here? The United Nations projects that rapid population growth will continue for at least another 50 years and that global population will exceed 9300 million people by the year 2050, corresponding to an increase of 55% in just 50 years time (Table 2).
Table 2 |
||
Region |
Year |
|
|
2000 |
2050 |
All regions |
6056 |
9322 |
Less developed regions |
4865 |
8141 |
More developed regions |
1191 |
1181 |
However, as indicated by the data of Table 2, practically all the increase will take place in the less developed regions and the total population of the more developed regions will remain unchanged. Between 2000 and 2050, the population of North America is projected to increase from 314 to 438 million and that of Australia/New Zealand from 23 to 31 million people, but these increases will be counterbalanced by marked decreases in European (from 727 to 603 million) and Japanese (from 127 to 109 million) populations.
Those who like to view demographic history in terms of migratory pressures may be particularly interested in the numbers shown in Table 3, representing the estimated and projected evolution of European and African populations during the 100-year period between 1950 and 2050.
The United Nations projects that, between 1950 and 2050, the population of Europe (with its ups and downs) will increase by some 10%, whereas that of Africa will show a nine-fold increase from 221 to 2000 million people.
Table 3 |
||
Year |
Europe |
Africa |
1950 |
548 |
221 |
2000 |
727 |
794 |
2050 |
603 |
2000 |
Growing older and (hopefully) wiser?
A common denominator of the demographic evolution, both in the less developed and in the more developed regions of the world, will be population aging. Estimates and projections of the percentage of elderly persons (people aged 60 years and over) in the world and in selected regions between 1975 and 2050 are indicated in Table 4. The United Nations projects that, between 1975 and 2050, the percentage of elderly persons will increase worldwide from 8.6% to 21.1%. By the year 2050, almost 30% of the Chinese population, more than 36% of the population of Europe and more than 42% of the population of Japan will be elderly.
Table 4 |
||||
Years |
World |
China |
Europe |
Japan |
1975 |
8.6 |
6.9 |
16.4 |
11.7 |
2000 |
10.0 |
10.1 |
20.3 |
23.2 |
2025 |
15.0 |
19.5 |
28.8 |
35.1 |
2050 |
21.1 |
29.9 |
36.6 |
42.3 |
Persons aged 80 years or more are called the ‘oldest old’; this part of the elderly population is receiving more and more attention, since it exhibits the fastest growth rate. Today the oldest-old number some 22 million in Europe, around 12 million in China and almost 5 million in Japan. The United Nations project that, by the year 2050, some 99 million oldest-old will live in China, 60 million in Europe and 17 million in Japan. The oldest-old as a percentage of the total population in these countries is indicated in Table 5.
Table 5 |
||||
Year |
World |
China |
Europe |
Japan |
1975 |
0.8 |
0.6 |
1.8 |
1.1 |
2000 |
1.1 |
0.9 |
3.0 |
3.8 |
2025 |
1.9 |
2.1 |
5.2 |
10.0 |
2050 |
4.1 |
6.8 |
10.0 |
15.4 |
Between 1975 and 2050, the oldest-old population of the world and also that of Europe is projected to show a five-fold increase, whereas the oldest-old population of China will increase 11 times and that of Japan 15 times.
The dramatically increasing elderly population will have a major impact on the population structure of most countries in the 21st century; however, that impact will be compounded and further accentuated by a simultaneous worldwide decline in the population of children, as shown in Table 6.
Table 6 |
||||
Year |
World |
China |
Europe |
Japan |
1975 |
36.7 |
39.5 |
23.7 |
24.3 |
2000 |
29.9 |
24.9 |
17.5 |
14.7 |
2025 |
24.3 |
18.4 |
13.6 |
12.1 |
2050 |
21.0 |
16.3 |
14.0 |
12.5 |
As late as 1975, more than 36% of the global population and more than 39% of the population of China were children, i.e. younger than 14 years. According to the projections of the United Nations, there will be a rapid decline in the proportion of children in all regions and, by the year 2050, children will constitute only 21% of the world population and 16% of the Chinese population. In the European and Japanese populations, the proportion of children will be even lower: 14% and 12.5%, respectively.
The data shown in Tables 1–6 contain both estimates and projections. The reliability of projections, particularly long-term projections, can always be questioned. Obviously, projections – which are complex, multivariate extrapolations of past and present trends to the future – are uncertain. However, some of them are less uncertain than others and it may be worthwhile to remind ourselves that projections are not predictions; in fact, the elderly and oldest-old populations of the year 2050 (shown in Tables 4 and 5) are not figments of imagination; those people are already around us today as teenagers or middle-aged persons.
It also stands to reason that, in a population, if the proportion of elderly persons increases and simultaneously the proportion of children decreases, there will be a marked increase in the median age of that population, as a consequence (Table 7). In 1975, the median age of the global population was 22 years and that of China only 20.6 years. Now the United Nations projects that, by the year 2050, the worldwide median age will exceed 36 years and that of China 43 years. In Europe it will be close to 50 years and in Japan it will be 53 years. Hence, of the projected total European population of 600 million people, approximately half will be aged 50 years and over.
Table 7 |
||||
Year |
World |
China |
Europe |
Japan |
1975 |
22.0 |
20.6 |
32.1 |
30.4 |
2000 |
26.5 |
30.0 |
37.7 |
41.2 |
2025 |
32.0 |
39.0 |
45.4 |
50.0 |
2050 |
36.2 |
43.8 |
49.5 |
53.1 |
The long-term perspective of humankind’s aging is perhaps best shown by the changing population structure. A hundred years of change in the population structure of the planet Earth is illustrated in Table 8. In 1950, some 34% of the global population consisted of children; this percentage is projected to decrease to 21% by the year 2050. In 1950, the number of the world’s octogenarians was less then 13 million; today it exceeds 60 million and in 2050 their number will exceed 380 million.
Table 8 |
|||
Age group (years) |
1950 |
2000 |
2050 |
0–14 |
34.3 |
29.9 |
21.0 |
15–59 |
57.0 |
59.0 |
53.8 |
60–79 |
8.2 |
10.0 |
21.1 |
> 80 |
0.5 |
1.1 |
4.1 |
Population (millions) |
2519 |
6057 |
9322 |
The aging process is most advanced in the more developed world; its estimated and projected past, present and future population structures are shown in Table 9. The data indicate that in 1950 some 8 million octogenarians were living in the more developed regions of the world; their number is projected to exceed 113 million by the year 2050.
Table 9 |
|||
Age group (years) |
1950 |
2000 |
2050 |
0–14 |
27.3 |
18.3 |
15.6 |
15–59 |
60.0 |
59.2 |
41.1 |
60–79 |
11.7 |
19.4 |
33.5 |
> 80 |
1.0 |
3.1 |
9.6 |
Population (millions) |
814 |
1191 |
1181 |
‘O brave new world that has such people in ‘t’ exclaims Shakespeare’s Miranda (The Tempest, V.i. 183); we could perhaps paraphrase it by saying: O brave new world that has such a brave old human kind in ‘t…
Our fertility: What has happened?
Data presented in Table 10 indicate that a marked and rapid decline in our fertility occurred during an unexpectedly short period of time, between 1965 and 1995. The global fertility rate was almost five children per woman as late as 1965. By 1995, it had declined to 2.8. By 1975, the total fertility rate in Europe and Japan had diminished below the replacement level and remained so during the subsequent 25 years, or even longer. It would thus appear that never before in history have birth rates fallen so far, so fast, so low and for so long all around the world. Although the implications – for good or for ill – are as yet unclear, some of them are more clear than others. If fertility remained below replacement level for a longer period of time, that would result in a decline of the population in question. For instance, the United Nations projects that, unless fertility rates dramatically increase in the not too distant future, the population of Europe will diminish from the present 727 million to 603 million people and that of Japan from 127 to 109 million.
Table 10 |
|||
Year |
World |
Europe |
Japan |
1965 |
4.9 |
2.4 |
2.0 |
1975 |
3.9 |
2.0 |
1.8 |
1985 |
3.3 |
1.8 |
1.7 |
1995 |
2.8 |
1.4 |
1.4 |
What is behind the rapid fertility decline? It appears that a somewhat simplistic and emotion-loaded public debate is going on as far as the demographic impact of contraception is concerned. The ‘friends of contraception’ sometimes question, or tend to minimize, this impact, whereas its opponents (and they are not so few) are convinced that the worldwide use of contraception is the primary reason for the rapid decline in worldwide fertility. In fact, some of them are so concerned that they would be prepared to advocate a general ban on every form of contraception.
There have always been wishful thinking and naive people who refuse to accept that revolutions – like the contraceptive revolution – never go backwards. At any rate, it stands to reason that, in a world where more than 550 million couples are using various contraceptive technologies, contraception should have some impact on fertility rates. In fact, a highly significant correlation between fertility rate per woman and contraceptive prevalence has been found in more than 120 developing countries. However, contraception is only a means of achieving low fertility, not its cause. The causes underlying the demographic revolution are much more complex and manifold; in fact they reflect major societal changes of historical dimensions.
Among the key determinants of low fertility, one may mention inter alia increasing female autonomy, major gains in female education, increasing labour force participation by women, the rapidly changing pattern of union formation and the increasing instability of such unions and some strong, but rather diffuse, ideational changes in the public perception as to the new roles of women in society and in the family. In fact, there is considerable concern – particularly in Europe – about the decay of the family and the decline in its institutional quality.
There are some classical ingredients of this demographic change, e.g. the spectacular rise in life expectancy, the extensive use of contraceptive technologies, the urbanization and densification process, the elimination of illiteracy and a fundamental structural change in society worldwide, in the course of which uncertainty and instability more and more replace tradition. Among the new ingredients, Jean-Claude Chesnais mentions ‘social atomization’ and related feminism, collectivized pension benefits, ‘globalized nomadism’, the youth loss of majority and the ‘end of work’ syndrome.
What is ‘global nomadism’? A (perhaps not entirely theoretical) example: if the herring population around Ireland would be decimated again because of the overambitious activity of a Chinese, or Japanese fishing fleet, that would be a classical case of global nomadism.
What is ‘social atomization’? An example is shown in Table 11. The data indicate that, between 1975 and 1995, the proportion of Japanese women who never married markedly increased. Another example of ‘social atomization’ is presented in Table 12. It appears from the data of Table 12 that, in Italy, the share of women and men who did not live in any kind of partnership significantly increased in the cohort born in 1966–70, compared to that born in 1946–50.
Table 11 |
|||
Age (years) |
1975 |
1985 |
1995 |
20–24 |
69 |
81 |
96 |
25–29 |
21 |
31 |
48 |
30–34 |
8 |
10 |
20 |
35–39 |
5 |
7 |
10 |
40–44 |
5 |
5 |
7 |
Table 12 |
||
Born |
Women |
Men |
1946–50 |
31 |
24 |
1956–60 |
40 |
35 |
1966–70 |
60 |
44 |
Modern social atomization also affects ‘non-contraceptive’ age groups. In a recent study of ‘repartnering’ at the age of 50 and over in the Netherlands it was found that, whereas before 1974 some 77% of the study population remarried and only 3% lived ‘apart and together’, in 1985–92 only 24% did remarry and 52% lived apart and together.
What about our common demographic future? That future is not written, nor can it be written, since it will be created in the brains of the next generations. The general principle of uncertainty also applies to our demographic future, since some of the factors impacting on it – particularly fertility rates – are not irreversible. There is still a strong demand in many societies for a family policy of two children. Some decapitalization mechanisms make their appearance on the global economic scene, reforms of the welfare system are now in progress in many countries and a slow shift to post-materialistic values can be sensed in several cultures.
The name of the game: Institutional reform
There is an increasing realization of the fact that some of our institutions do not serve us well any longer; many of them were designed more than a century ago to cater for the needs of a population structure (with many children and few elderly persons) that no longer exists. Examples are social security, health care, housing, education and our sacrosanct nation states which, today, are too small to do the ‘big things’ and too big to concern themselves with the important ‘small things’. There is a need for institutional reform in several areas. What will be the biggest obstacle to those much-needed reforms? The usual one is political inertia.
What about some of our venerable basic institutions? Are our governments at a pleasant distance from reality, when they assume that, in the population at large, erosion of confidence in our basic institutions is rather rare? A number of surveys conducted during the past few decades indicate that this is not so. One of these, based on a sample of some 1000 interviewed individuals in each of some 20 countries, was conducted in 1990.
The proportion of people who expressed a negative opinion on courts and justice in a few selected – mostly European – countries (shown in Table 13) varied between 68% (Italy) and 35% (Germany).
Table 13 |
|
Country |
Percentage |
Italy |
68 |
Portugal |
59 |
Spain |
53 |
Britain |
46 |
USA |
44 |
Sweden |
44 |
France |
42 |
Germany |
35 |
The percentage of people interviewed who had little, if any confidence in the Church is indicated in Table 14. In this context, it should be borne in mind that the surveys measured attitudes about the Church as an institution and not religion as a belief. Although it is likely that the people interviewed attached different meanings to the word ‘church’, the data suggest that, in most countries, the majority of adults say they have ‘little’ or ‘no’ confidence in ecclesiastical institutions. As pointed out by Dogan, this finding is one of the most astonishing in these international surveys on values, since it raises an embarrassing question: what is the Church’s real audience in Western Europe today?
Table 14 |
|
Country |
Percentage |
Japan |
89 |
The Netherlands |
69 |
Sweden |
63 |
Germany |
60 |
Britain |
57 |
Spain |
51 |
France |
50 |
Italy |
40 |
USA |
33 |
Finally, the proportion of people who said they have little, if any confidence in Parliament, is presented in Table 15. The data shown in Table 15 are perhaps perplexing, since many surveys indicate that a massive majority of Europeans are deeply attached to democracy as the only acceptable political system for their country. The lack of confidence in this crucially important founding institution of democracy seems to reflect its real decline in the functioning of representative democracies. Perhaps nothing is wrong with our institutions, only with the people representing them?
Table 15 |
|
Country |
Percentage |
Japan |
71 |
Italy |
68 |
Spain |
63 |
Belgium |
57 |
USA |
55 |
Britain |
54 |
France |
52 |
Germany |
49 |
Sailing from doubt to mistrust
It is not necessarily detrimental that people are critical and express doubt in the functioning of some of our basic institutions; rather, it may be a healthy sign. As Louis Mencken pointed out: ‘For Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt’. In fact, few scientists need to be convinced about the fundamental importance of doubt for stimulating investigation and achieving progress. However, the sailing may become more perilous when it proceeds from doubt to mistrust, since mistrust may cost more to society in terms of lost opportunities than misplaced trust would cost from losses suffered through deception.
The mistrust of institutions indicated in Tables 13–15 should be interpreted in the context of a high level of distrust in large sectors of the society: a general distrust toward others and a reflection of a decaying moral space. In fact, when discussing progress in the three Kantian spheres (science, art and moral), contemporary intellectuals are in broad agreement that, during the past couple of centuries, progress has been spectacular in both science and art; the negative views are centered on our moral development since the times of Immanual Kant. We live in a period frequently labelled ‘late modernity’, which has brought to the extreme both the achievements and the costs of modernization. The great pioneer in theoretical sociology, Piotr Sztompka, points out that a crucial item on the negative side of the balance sheet is the decay of the moral space. He singles out three areas of empirical facts where such a decay seems evident, namely crime, collapse of trust and depleted social capital.
In addition to common crime, there is also a major increase in ideological crime, terrorism and ‘pure’ violence, committed for no obvious reason. The collapse of trust can be observed as growing litigiousness, increasing formalism in business deals, rapidly expanding vigilantism and a general ‘culture’ of distrust. Under the heading depleted social capital, the factors frequently mentioned are the erosion of the family, disappearance of networks of association, partnership in connivance, globalization of corruption and the collapse of cohesive communities (‘people in the US are now bowling alone’ says Robert Putnam). The final result of all this is growing egoism, rampant individualism, solitude and distrust.
Is the situation hopeless? Not really. Even a technologically more and more developed humanity needs an authentic, universal and inclusive morality and there are some traits of late modernity that generate hope for the reconstitution of the moral space. In a rapidly increasing segment of the world population, there is an accelerated perception of a global destiny, and the concept of ‘humankind’ is no longer only a textbook reality. Among the young people of today, there is an increasing revolt against the moral void and a reawakening of the moral impulse, resulting in a stronger and stronger demand for an increased transparency in public affairs.
In addition, and most importantly, new social ties are being established and various global communities are assuming a growing importance. At least five types of such communities have been identified: professional communities, value communities new ecumenical movements, integrative political movements and so-called virtual communities linked by contacts through the new technical media.
Indeed, in this new world, a brighter future can be predicted for international professional communities such as the European Society for Contraception. Such communities will embrace many specialties and will be increasingly multigenerational, trans-sectoral and transpolitical. They will play an increasingly crucial role in influencing health policies, because of their profound commitment to the improvement of the human condition all over the world by the judicious use of new scientific information.
New realities but old value systems
We are living in a world of new realities and it is not too difficult to see that, in a world in which the amount of new scientific information doubles in every 6–7th year, the value systems of our various societies (based on historical tradition, parochial identities and religious dogma) are more and more in conflict with the new realities. No wonder that our contemporary history gives the impression of a stormy sea, where the fragile vessel of rationalism is constantly threatened by the high waves of passion, fanatic faith and emotion. A major challenge confronting us is how to convince our fellow men and women that fundamentalism and obscurantism cannot improve the human condition and that only science has the proven ability to do so. Would it help to remind our fellow men and women that for millions of years nature was shaping humankind, but today Homo sapiens is shaping nature and sets the boundaries between what is considered biologically possible and biologically impossible? In fact, contraception, assisted reproduction and genetic manipulation are just a few examples of those new realities. Not even scientists can always grasp the full potential of genomics for improving health care how can we then expect that lay people will be able to do so?
At the other end of the spectrum, there is a naive belief that science knows no limits, that it is omnipotent. Obviously, science is not omnipotent. Human knowledge is imperfect and it will remain imperfect forever. However, it is indefinitely perfectible. Research is indefinitely perfecting human knowledge and constantly improves health and the human condition in general. In times when, of the world’s 6000 million people, 1200 million live on less than $1 a day and 2800 million live on less than $2 a day, there is an enormous need to improve the situation of billions of human beings stricken by poverty.
What should be the message to all members of the European Society of Contraception? It comes from a speech delivered by the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland to WHO staff members in 1998: ‘We can combat ill-health. We can do our part to combat poverty and suffering. Nothing in life as I see it has more meaning’. And nothing in life as I see it has more meaning than the professional activities of the members of this Society that are directed towards the continuous improvement of the human condition.
What is past is prologue
In an address delivered to the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1944, Winston Churchill remarked that ‘The longer you can look back, the further you can look forward’. It would appear that – some 20 years later – two American atomic physicists, Lesher and Howick, have followed this advice and looked back into our history some 50 000 years: ‘Eight hundred life spans can bridge more than 50 000 years. But of these 800 people, 650 spent their lives in caves or worse; only the last 70 had any truly effective means of communicating with one another, and only the last 6 ever saw a printed word or had any real means of measuring heat or cold. Only the last 4 could measure time with any precision; only the last 2 used an electric motor; and the vast majority of the items that make up our material world were developed within the lifespan of the eight hundredth person’.
May I add to this – as a rather personal note – that, in my own lifetime, I have witnessed more progress in science and technology than all scientists of all preceding periods together, since the dawn of history. It is not difficult to see this, given the fact that the acquisition of new scientific information occurs by and large on a geometric scale. In fact, when I graduated from medical school in 1944, the ‘crude size’ of the medical sciences was probably 5% or less of that today. The assessment of Shakespeare was (again) correct: ‘what is past is prologue’ (The Tempest, II. i. 261).
Travelling without arriving
In his poem, The Rock (1934), T. S. Eliot asks three rather disturbing questions:
Where is the Life
we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom
we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge
we have lost in information?
In fact, we are living in a world overwhelmed by information. However, information does not constitute knowledge, unless it is critically assessed and integrated into the body of knowledge. I profoundly believe that knowledge does not constitute wisdom, unless it can be used to improve the human condition. The discovery of the atomic bomb was anything but wisdom, whereas the discovery of the ‘pill’ really was. It has fundamentally improved the situation of millions and millions of women all around the world. The enormous social significance of the ‘pill’ is rather self-evident; this was recognized shortly after its approval. In the 1960s in a letter to the New York Times, D. Cameron wrote: ‘Few contributions to medical knowledge have done so much to bring to women everywhere a sense of worth and dignity’.
Some representatives of the drug industry sometimes tell me that today they have a limited interest in the development of new contraceptives, because it is a mature market. Is it really? The WHO underlines that, in 1990, at least 100 million couples had an unmet family planning need and about 300 million couples were using contraceptive methods with which they were dissatisfied, or which they considered unreliable. A mature market? The WHO also emphasizes that up to 40% of all pregnancies – estimated at 210 million per year – are unplanned and about 45 million abortions are carried out each year.
Some 25 years ago, I wrote that ‘steroidal contraception is not a finished chapter in history, but rather an ongoing act in the big drama of technological, cultural and social change called evolution’. Sometimes, it is rather difficult to distinguish between evolution and revolution. To me, the development of a variety of specific methods of contraception was a revolution, but – at the same time – a powerful catalyst of the social evolution of the 20th century.
In retrospect, it is easy to see that the discovery of the ‘pill’ and the contribution of Gregory Pincus was a monumental achievement. However, as Albert Camus remarked more than half a century ago, ‘An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement’. Now a new generation of scientists is challenged by our unfinished research agenda; there is a major need for the development of contraceptives for the male, improved emergency contraceptives, new vaginal microbicides and improved female and male condoms.
During a long life, I have learned that travelling is more important than arriving and, if one reflects a moment or two, it is easy to see that in your professional life, be it patient care, laboratory research or clinical research, there is never any final destination, only travelling and more travelling. That travelling should provide much professional satisfaction, because it will result in diminished suffering, better health and an improved quality of life for hundreds of millions of women and men.
Begegnungen26_Busek
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 26:80–83.
ERHARD BUSEK
Dankesrede anlässlich der Verleihung des Corvinus-Preises
Festvortrag
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren!
Es ist eine außerordentliche Auszeichnung nach István Szabó, Árpád Göncz, Gabriel Andrei Pleşu und Paul Lendvai den angesehenen Corvinus-Preis zuerkannt zu erhalten. Ich bedanke mich beim Laudator, Senator Dr. Herbert Batliner, beim Direktor des Europa Institutes Prof. Ferenc Glatz, beim Wissenschaftlichen Beirat, beim Stiftungsrat und allen Mitwirkenden, aber auch bei den vielen Freunden, die ich hier sehe. Matthias Corvinus, Hunyadi Mátyás hat mich immer tief beeindruckt. Er war in einer Phase Europas ein Herrscher in der Mitte des Kontinents, der vom aufgeklärten Humanismus dieser Zeit geprägt war und eine Art des Regieren vorweggenommen hat, die sich leider erst später generell durchgesetzt hat. Was mich auch fasziniert hat, und das als Wiener, war, dass er von den Wienern freudig aufgenommen wurde, sehr akzeptiert war, was man uns im Geschichtsunterricht immer verschwiegen hat. Dass sich Kaiser Friedrich III. nach Wiener Neustadt zurückziehen musste, die daher den Titel „die allzeit getreue” trägt, war nur die eine Seite der Medaille, wobei es gerade wieder das strategische Denken dieses Kaisers war, dass die Heiratspolitik dazu geführt hat, dass Ungarn und Österreich, damals die habsburgischen Erblande, durch eine lange Zeit einen gemeinsamen Weg gegangen sind. Gerade diese Gemeinsamkeit – ohne Nostalgie – war es, die mich immer sehr beeindruckt hat. Als Jahrgang 1941 gehöre ich einer Generation an, der es in Österreich geschenkt war, nach den Schrecken des Krieges und der Nazi-Zeit in ein Österreich hineinzuwachsen, das zu sich gefunden hatte, jedes Jahr besser lebte und heute ein Teil der europäischen Familie ist. Mir wird es unvergessen bleiben, als nach der Freude über die Freiheit von den Alliierten und dem Staatsvertrag 1955 wir die Flüchtlinge aus Ungarn im November 1956 erlebt haben, junge Menschen, die sich in Sicherheit bringen mussten vor der sowjetischen Macht und der Unterdrückung eines Freiheitswillens, der uns damals ungeheuer beeindruckt hat. Die letzten Worte im Rundfunk, der Appell an Europa, bleibt mir ewig im Gedächtnis. Auch unvergesslich bleibt mir, dass mich mein Vater über die für wenige Tage quasi nicht existierende Grenze zum Nachbarland Ungarn bis nach Győr geführt hat und von Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben in dieser Region sprach, die für mich fremd geklungen haben. Man soll es auch heute deutlich sagen: Für den Westen Europas, auch für Österreich haben in der großen Zahl der Bürger die Nachbarn auf der anderen Seite des Eisernen Vorhangs eigentlich lange nicht existiert, nur mehr in der Erinnerung der älteren Generation.
Nach 1956 war es der Prager Frühling 1968 und später in den 80er Jahren Solidarnosc und das Kriegsrecht, die uns in unserer westlichen Sattheit aufschrecken ließen und zeigten, was auch Europa ist. Es waren Erinnerungsspuren, die Großeltern und Eltern in mich hineingelegt hatten, und das direkte Erleben des August 1968 in Prag, das mich Mitteleuropa für mich entdecken ließ. Ich habe erkannt, dass man kein guter Österreicher und schon gar nicht ein Europäer sein kann, wenn man auf die Nachbarn vergisst. Viele haben auf diesem Weg geholfen, etwa die Historiker Wiens und Graz, die gerade hierher nach Ungarn einen lebendigen Kontakt aufrechterhalten haben. Es war Péter Hanák, Ferenc Glatz und andere, die ihre Partner waren. Es war aber auch die aus der Literatur wie etwa György Konrád, Figuren des Geisteslebens, etwa Nemeskürty, Kosáry und Niederhauser, die in dieser Zeit nicht nur für ihr Land eine große Bedeutung gewonnen haben. Es war István Szent-Iványi, heute EU-Abgeordneter, der mich – als von den Kommunisten von der Universität relegierter Student – durch Ungarn führte und mir sogar ein Bulgakow-Stück lang ins Ohr auf Deutsch übersetzte, übrigens eine Inszenierung von István Eörsi.
Es ist heute die Stunde, dafür Dank zu sagen, dass mir alle diese Menschen hier in Ungarn, aber auch in den anderen Ländern, die heute Mitglied der EU sind oder hoffentlich bald sein werden, beigebracht haben, was wirklich Europa ist. Unvergesslich bleibt mir, dass ich mit wenigen und bescheidenen Risken für Menschen etwas tun konnte, die mit vollem Risiko sich für Demokratie und Europa eingesetzt haben. Für mich war es eine Form des Pfadfindertums, Manuskripte für György Konrád zu schmuggeln, eine Druckmaschine für Gábor Demszky und László Rajk von Wien über die Grenze nach Budapest zu bringen, damit sie die Samisdat-Zeitschrift „Beszélő” drucken konnten und einiges mehr. Mir wird unvergesslich bleiben, dass ich bei der zweiten Landesversammlung von Magyar Demokrata Fórum in Esztergom ein Referat halten durfte, wo angesichts der Bedrohung der Naturlandschaften an der Donau in Ungarn und Österreich erst recht wieder Gemeinsamkeit sichtbar wurde. Wir haben damals den Schlachtruf „Gegen Nagy/burg und Hain/maros” geboren, wobei in unserer beider Länder der Kampf gegen diese Donaukraftwerke eine katalytische Wirkung hatte, in Ungarn vor allem in Richtung Demokratie. Damals habe ich József Antall, den späteren ersten demokratisch legitimierten Ministerpräsidenten kennen gelernt, der durch die Jahre hin bis zu seinem frühen Tod für mich ein Freund geblieben ist. Der ungarischen Schriftstellervereinigung verdanke ich viele Einsichten, aber auch die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Zeitschriften „Europai Utas" und dem „Wiener Journal” ist einer dieser Marksteine. Árpád Göncz wieder gab mir wichtige Einsichten in das Geistesleben dieses Landes, wobei ich mich auch an die Aufführungen seiner Stücke in Wien mit Freude erinnere. Es ist ein reicher Bogen von Erlebnissen, der von Konfrontationen anlässlich einer Jubiläumspräsentation der „Europäischen Rundschau” von Paul Lendvai mit dem damaligen Regime über TV-Diskussionen wie „Café Central” aufgenommen im Café New York bis hin zu Veranstaltungen des Europa Instituts reicht.
Viel wäre noch zu erzählen, das längst Geschichte geworden ist. Es ist aber eine europäische Geschichte, die uns zeigt, dass wir in diesem Raum nicht nur ein „Laboratorium für Weltuntergänge” sein können, sondern auch eine Versuchsstation für die Zukunft Europas. Das gibt Hoffnung, besonders in einer Zeit, wo es offensichtlich nicht gut um das Verständnis Europas in einigen Ländern steht.
Ein solcher europäischer Weg ist von Ferenc Glatz schon gegangen worden, als er 1989 sein Amt als Erziehungsminister antrat. Auch ich war damals frisch in einer ähnlichen Aufgabe. Über Vermittlung der Wiener Historiker (Arnold Suppan) haben wir uns in Österreich unweit der ungarischen Grenze getroffen, wo mir Ferenc Glatz mitteilte, dass er den verpflichtenden Russisch-Unterricht suspendieren werde und als Ersatz dringend 40–50 Lektoren für die deutsche Sprache brauche. Wir müssen es zugeben: das was wir Westen genannt haben, war auf die Veränderungen im damaligen Osten wirklich nicht vorbereitet. Umso mehr habe ich heute noch Respekt vor allem vor den jungen Leuten, die sich in Österreich entschlossen haben, diese Herausforderung anzunehmen und innerhalb weniger Wochen als Lektoren in den verschiedensten Schulorten Ungarns antraten. Optimistische Perspektiven hatten wir, zu denen auch die Weltausstellung Budapest-Wien zählte, wo ich in enger Zusammenarbeit mit Ferenc Glatz und Károly Manherz ein Projekt betrieb, das an der mangelnden Einsicht in Wien gescheitert ist. Wir hätten damals der Welt ausstellen und zeigen können was Mitteleuropa für Europa bedeuten kann. Daraus ist leider nichts geworden, wohl aber aus dem Europa Institut, das uns heute hier zusammengeführt hat und sich vor allem der Aufgabe, Geschichte und Dialog zu vermitteln, gewidmet hat.
An dieser Stelle möchte ich dem Laudator und dem Benefaktor dieses Institutes Herbert Batliner meinen Dank sagen. Ich betone immer wieder, dass er eine Persönlichkeit ist, die nicht nur in den materiellen Voraussetzungen, sondern auch in den geistigen Bedingungen Grenzüberschreitung betreibt und ermöglicht. Ich habe das hier in Budapest schätzen gelernt, genauso wie beim Europainstitut Salzburg, bei der Schaffung des Kleinstaatenpreises und der Ermöglichung beachtlicher wissenschaftlicher Werke. Es ist ein umfassendes Opus, ein Lebenswerk, das Herbert Batliner mit seinen Stiftungen und unter persönlichem Einsatz geschaffen hat. Es wurde dadurch nicht nur viel möglich, sondern es war immer auch eine kritische Partnerschaft, wobei das Kritische im Sinne der Unterscheidung der Geister verstanden werden muss. Herbert Batliner ist nicht nur ein großzügiger Partner, sondern auch ein drängender, dem Qualität am Herzen liegt. Grillparzer lässt seinen Rudolf II. im „Bruderzwist in Habsburg” zu einem Freund davon reden, dass er eine Auszeichnung trägt: „Unsichtbar ist sie zu tragen”, nämlich im Herzen. Das gilt wohl unter europäischen Perspektiven für Herbert Batliner – es ist eine Auszeichnung für Europa, ihn zu haben.
Fünfzehn Jahre habe ich die Freude, im Europa Institut tätig zu sein. Gerade die gegenwärtige Situation der Europäischen Einigung verlangt es, auch dazu einige Bemerkungen zu machen. Was sich rund um die europäische Verfassung abgespielt hat und noch abspielen wird, ist im Moment kein Anlass zur besonderen Freude. Ich glaube aber, dass man mit ein wenig Distanz den gesamten Vorgang sehen muss. Europäische Integration ist eine Geschichte des Auf und Ab, wobei Europa seit den Römerverträgen 1957 das Talent hat, auch aus seinen Niederlagen zu lernen. Wir sind mit der neuen Situation von 1989 Schritt um Schritt fertig geworden, obwohl es viele Katastrophenszenarien gab. Der letzte Erweiterungsschritt ist uns eigentlich sehr rasch zur Selbstverständlichkeit geworden, weil es eine Rückkehr in die Normalität eines Kontinents darstellt, wo Nachbarschaft und gemeinsame Verantwortung die leitenden Gesichtspunkte sind. Hoffentlich lernen die 25 Staats- und Ministerpräsidenten, dass Europa keine Kopfgeburt sein kann, sondern verlangt, dass man die Bürger auf diesem Weg mitnimmt, Europa erklärt und so dem Civis Europaeus schafft, den Citoyen, der sich als Teilhaber dieses Geschehens auffasst. Das verlangt Kenntnis, Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte, der Gegenwart und den Entwürfen zur Zukunft. Gerade dabei ist es verständlich, dass immer wieder die Nachfrage nach der Identität Europas, nach den europäischen Werten gestellt wird. Dass es keine Angelegenheit der Regierenden, sondern muss aus dem Bereich der Wissenschaft, der Öffentlichkeit, der Zivilgesellschaft und wie ich aus persönlicher Überzeugung auch sagen möchte, aus dem Glauben kommen. Der Kriegsgeneration hat nach 1945 der Einigungsprozess Hoffnung auf Frieden gegeben, aus der in der späteren Folge eigentlich mehr und mehr ein europäischer Wirtschaftsprozess geworden ist. Das ist notwendig, aber zu wenig. Wir haben in vielen Gesichtspunkten die Teilung Europas noch nicht verwunden, wir wissen in Wirklichkeit noch nicht genau, wer unsere Nachbarn sind und müssen uns die Tiefe der Geschichte aneignen, denn darin sind Schätze verborgen, allerdings auch Erfahrungen wie wir es nicht machen sollen. Wir reden von europäischen Perspektiven, Werten und was Europa ist. Darin liegt die Bedeutung des Hinweises auf Matthias Corvinus, den dieser Preis gibt. Die Welt der Renaissance von damals war eine, die nicht aus den Grenzen lebte, sondern zur Grenzüberschreitung aufgefordert hat. Wie selbstverständlich sind damals gelehrte Künstler und Architekten, Studenten und Handelstreibende durch Europa gezogen und haben ihre Spuren hinterlassen. Der Geist des Matthias Corvinus ist in Europa notwendig, grenzüberschreitend und umfassend.
Von Herzen danke ich dem Europa Institut und allen, die an diesem Werk beteiligt sind, für die Auszeichnung, die ich durch sie erhalten habe. Für mich ist das eine bleibende Verpflichtung.
BEgegnungen26_Borhi
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 26:41–46.
LÁSZLÓ BORHI
Amerikanische Pläne zur Regelung der Situation in Osteuropa 1953–1955
Das Jahr 1953 versprach nicht nur in der sowjetischen Außenpolitik nach Stalin, sondern auch in der Außenpolitik der Vereinigten Staaten bedeutende Veränderungen. Während Moskau Schritte unternahm, um die internationalen Spannungen zu lindern, kündigten Präsident Dwight D. Eisenhower und sein Außenminister John Foster Dulles einen Bruch mit der als „unmoralisch und passiv” beurteilten Osteuropa-Politik der Vorgängerregierung an und setzten sich die friedliche Befreiung der „Satellitenstaaten” der Sowjetunion zum Ziel. In der Tat war die Truman-Regierung in den Jahren von 1945 bis 1948 – mit Ausnahme des unter Vier-Mächte-Verwaltung stehenden Österreichs – schrittweise davon abgegangen, Einfluss auf die Angelegenheiten der unter sowjetischen Besatzungen stehenden Staaten in Europa auszuüben. Der westliche Nachbar Ungarns war in einer glücklicheren Lage, denn die amerikanische Außenpolitik betrachtete es wegen der strategischen Bedeutung Österreichs als besonders wichtig, das Land nicht unter vollständige sowjetische Oberhoheit geraten zu lassen. In diesem Falle wären nämlich auch die militärischen Positionen des Westens in Süddeutschland und Norditalien in Gefahr geraten. Der Wiener Regierung wurde daher besondere politische und wirtschaftliche Unterstützung gewährt. In diesem Zusammenhang verdient es erwähnt zu werden, dass Österreich pro Kopf gerechnet die höchste amerikanische Hilfeleistung erhielt.
Zwar hatte der einflussreiche Staatssekretär im Außenministerium Dean Acheson Anfang 1947 die Idee, dass Präsident Truman in seiner Rede, die Griechenland und der Türkei eine amerikanische Garantie in Aussicht stellte, auch Ungarn erwähnen sollte. Wie wir wissen kam es dazu allerdings nicht. Die Vereinigten Staaten waren weder stark genug noch dazu entschlossen, wegen Ungarn in einen Konflikt mit der Sowjetunion zu geraten. Derartige Bestrebungen in Richtung Osteuropa wurden überdies von Großbritannien besonders heftig abgelehnt. Das Interesse der Truman-Regierung an Osteuropa begann paradoxer Weise erst dann zu wachsen, als die Eingliederung dieser Region in den sowjetischen Machtbereich zu einer vollendeten Tatsache geworden war. Unter Aufsicht eines geheimen Regierungsgremiums wurden subversive Aktivitäten in den unter sowjetischer Oberherrschaft stehenden Gebieten unternommen. Im Falle Albaniens gingen diese sogar so weit, dass die Vereinigten Staaten den Versuch unternahmen, das dortige Regime zu stürzen. Ziel war es, die kommunistischen Systeme zu unterminieren und möglicherweise zu zersetzen. Hierzu hätte die amerikanische Führung sogar das Risiko eines Krieges in Kauf genommen.
Veränderungen traten erst ein, als die amerikanischen Analysten zu der Schlussfolgerung gelangten, dass die Sowjetunion zum Schutze ihrer existentiellen Interessen – und zu diesen zählte auch Osteuropa – bereit sei, auch einen Krieg gegen den Westen zu führen. Oder anders betrachtet: Die aggressiven subversiven Aktivitäten der USA begannen im Lichte der Entwicklung der sowjetischen nuklearen Schlagkraft gefährlich zu werden. Nach damaligen Analysen hätte die Sowjetunion nämlich mit einem Atomschlag den Vereinigten Staaten nicht wieder gut zu machende Verluste zufügen können. Insbesondere war Moskau aufgrund der schnellen Entwicklung der sowjetischen strategischen Luftwaffe nun dazu in der Lage, Atombomben auf amerikanisches Gebiet abzuwerfen. Da die amerikanische politische Führung aber der Auffassung war, dass die Präsenz der Sowjetunion in Ostmitteleuropa „eine Gefahr für die Sicherheit Westeuropas und mittelbar auch für die der Vereinigten Staaten” darstelle, formulierte sie die Beendigung der dortigen sowjetischen Anwesenheit auch weiterhin als Ziel. Die grundlegende Frage war, mit welchen Mitteln eine derartige Politik verwirklicht werden könnte. Die Rhetorik Eisenhowers versprach zwar die Befreiung, nach Analyse der Risiken aber kehrte er stillschweigend zur – mit dem Namen Truman verbundenen – Politik der Eindämmung zurück.
Die Periode nach dem Tode Stalins wird oft als Zeit der verpassten Gelegenheiten bezeichnet, in der die Vereinigten Staaten die Ost-West-Spannungen hätten mildern können. Es scheint, dass diese Möglichkeit die amerikanische Regierung unvorbereitet traf; Eisenhower antwortete weder auf eine Entspannungsinitiative von Georgi M. Malenkow, noch auf den Vorschlag Churchills, ein Gipfeltreffen abzuhalten. Die amerikanische Führung reagierte auch nicht, als Moskau seine Besatzungspolitik in Österreich entschärfte. Die Eisenhower-Regierung war allerdings keineswegs so passiv, wie viele behaupten. Für die amerikanische Führung zeichnete sich nämlich die Möglichkeit einer neuartigen Lösung der osteuropäischen Frage ab: Eine Regelung auf dem Verhandlungsweg, die auf gegenseitigen Vorteilen basieren sollte. Dulles riet Eisenhower, den Vorschlag eines gegenseitigen Abzugs der sowjetischen und amerikanischen Streitkräfte aus Europa sowie einer internationalen Kontrolle der Nuklear- und Raketenwaffen zu unterbreiten. Obwohl Dulles bald eine Kehrtwende vollzog, begann das amerikanische Außenministerium, d.h. die damals als einflussreich geltende Politische Planungsgruppe (Policy Planning Staff) des Außenministeriums, im Jahre 1953 damit, sich mit einer Verhandlungslösung bezüglich des Ost-West-Verhältnisses zu befassen. Ein Mitglied der Politischen Planungsgruppe, Louis Halle, trat mit dem Gedanken hervor, dass man der Sowjetunion wegen des dortigen politischen Chaos mittels kleinerer Konzessionen bedeutende Zugeständnisse abringen könnte. Halle war der Meinung, dass sogar der „Eiserne Vorhang” hochgezogen werden könnte, wenn sich die Europäische Verteidigungsgemeinschaft (bzw. die gemeinsame westeuropäische Militärorganisation, die sich damals noch zu verwirklichen schien) nicht bis zu den Grenzen des sowjetischen Machtbereichs ausdehnen würde. Verschiedene Vorlagen der Politischen Planungsgruppe gingen von der Annahme aus, dass die Sowjetunion die östliche Hälfte des Kontinents aus Sicherheitsgründen besetzt halte, dass ihr also der Raum vom Baltischen Meer bis zur Adria als „Sicherheitszone”, als „cordon sanitaire” diene. Wenn man also die Sicherheitsbedenken des Kremls zerstreuen könnte, sei auch ein Abzug der Sowjetunion aus dem ostmitteleuropäischen Raum möglich.
Die im August 1953 angefertigte Analyse „Mögliche Übereinkunft zwischen den Westalliierten und der Sowjetunion hinsichtlich Europas” sah die Möglichkeit einer Einigung darin, dass die sowjetische Führung „den Eindruck erwecke, sie sei zu ernsthaften und umfassenden Gesprächen mit dem Westen bereit, und weil Vorschläge über die Abhaltung einer Konferenz mit besonderer Hinsicht auf Österreich und Deutschland ausgetauscht würden.” Die Politische Planungsgruppe hegte also die Hoffnung, den Zweiten Weltkrieg nach einer rund zehnjährigen Verspätung auch politisch beenden zu können und aufgrund einer Vereinbarung zwischen den Großmächten eine umfassende Lösung für die Gestaltung des Kontinents zu finden. Diese sollte die Unabhängigkeit der osteuropäischen Völker und die Sicherheit der Sowjetunion bei gleichzeitiger Regelung der „deutschen Frage” berücksichtigen. Als Problem wurde aufgeworfen, dass der Westen keinen einheitlichen Standpunkt zu Osteuropa entwickelt habe, ja sogar, dass „das Vereinigte Königreich und Frankreich in der Sache bzw. hinsichtlich der von den Vereinigten Staaten bevorzugten aktiveren Politik keine Begeisterung zeigen” würden. Obwohl sie sich zugunsten des Rechts der „Sklavenvölker” auf Selbstbestimmung aussprechen würden, sei es „ungewiss”, „wie weit sie im Falle internationaler Verhandlungen gehen [würden], um die praktische Anwendung dieser Rechte zu fordern.” Gemäß der Analyse war „der Abzug der sowjetischen bewaffneten Kräfte aus Polen, Ungarn und Rumänien” das Ziel des Westens. Die Verfasser hielten es für eine mögliche Form der Übereinkunft, dass die Vereinigten Staaten die Frage des sowjetischen Abzugs und der freien Wahlen so aufwerfen, dass sie erklären, die fraglichen Länder werden keine militärischen Beziehungen zum Westen aufrecht erhalten und können „im Falle ihres Wunsches” an ihren militärischen Abkommen mit der Sowjetunion festhalten. Gleichzeitig würde „der Eiserne Vorhang zwischen ihnen und der westlichen Welt [fallen], wodurch sie ihre wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Beziehungen frei gestalten könnten. Die Idee ist die, dass die Satelliten einen Status erhalten, der dem des heutigen Finnlands ähnlich ist […]”. Zugleich erscheine es aber als „unwahrscheinlich”, dass die sowjetischen Führer eine solche Lösung akzeptieren würden, denn diese „würde das Ende der kommunistischen Ordnungen der Satelliten bedeuten” und „einen schweren Schlag” für die innere Stabilität der Sowjetunion bedeuten. Übergangsweise sei die Unterbreitung von „bescheidenen Vorschlägen” zweckmäßig, um herauszufinden, wie weit die sowjetische Führung gehen würde. Als mögliche „Vorschläge” wurden eine Amnestie für politische Gefangene, Erleichterung von Reisen und des Kulturaustausches oder die Normalisierung der diplomatischen Beziehungen zum Westen angesehen.
Eine Analyse, die im März 1954 fertig gestellt wurde, schlug – vorsichtig formuliert – vor, dass die Vereinigten Staaten „trotz des großen Risikos […] als Gegenleistung für die Beendigung der sowjetischen Kontrolle in den Gebieten der Satelliten gewisse Zugeständnisse auf der Ebene der Rüstung und der Kräftepositionierung in Europa machen” sollten. Bezüglich des osteuropäischen Problems müssten die Vereinigten Staaten den Standpunkt ihrer europäischen Verbündeten berücksichtigen, denn „die gegenwärtige osteuropäische Gefahr” bedrohe diese Länder. „Die Kriegsgefahr berührt sie unmittelbar und die Einheit Europas ist in erster Linie ein europäisches Problem.” Noch weiter ging die „dialektische Annäherung” des Politischen Planungsausschusses in seiner Analyse „Arrangement zwischen der Sowjetunion und der Freien Welt auf dem Verhandlungsweg”, die Sicherheitsgarantien für Moskau vorschlug. „Wenn man [der Sowjetunion] feste Garantien zur Verhinderung des Wiedererstehens der deutschen Gefahr und hinsichtlich des Verhaltens der europäischen Staaten entlang ihrer Grenze geben könnte”, dann wäre eine Rückkehr der Sowjetunion hinter die Grenzen von 1939 „mit der sowjetischen Sicherheit vereinbar.” John C. Campbell ging auch darüber noch hinaus. Er warf auf, dass sich die Vereinigten Staaten als Gegenleistung für den Abzug der sowjetischen Truppen aus Polen und der Tschechoslowakei aus allen NATO-Mitgliedsstaaten mit Ausnahme von Großbritannien zurückziehen könnten.
Voraussetzung der nur undeutlich umrissenen Regelung wäre auf alle Fälle die Anerkennung der „legitimen Sicherheitsansprüche” der Sowjetunion gewesen. Hierzu sollte gewährleistet werden, dass die Staaten, die an die Sowjetunion grenzen, keine „offenen oder aktiven Feinde ihr gegenüber” seien dürften „und nicht an Aktivitäten beteiligt seien dürften, die die Sicherheit der Sowjetunion nachteilig berühren.” Es gab auch die Vorstellung, Moskau solle seine Truppen aus Osteuropa zurückziehen und nur „auf Einladung einer frei gewählten Regierung” wieder zurückkehren. Obwohl die neuen Regierungen frei über ihre Außen- und Innenpolitik entscheiden sollten, hätten sie ihre Sicherheitspolitik den sowjetischen Interessen unterzuordnen. Es wurde gar die Idee aufgeworfen, im Interesse der sowjetischen Sicherheit von der Forderung nach der Vereinigung Deutschlands abzusehen.
Ende 1954 begann sich auch das höchste Organ der amerikanischen Entscheidungsplanung, der Nationale Sicherheitsrat, mit der Möglichkeit von Verhandlungen zu befassen. Während die Generalstabschefs, die an der Arbeit des Gremiums beteiligt waren, auf die Inkaufnahme eines höheren Risikos im Interesse der Befreiung der Satelliten drängten, empfahl Dulles, der die Meinung der Mehrheit vertrat, eine Politik des Mittelweges: „Wir haben anzuerkennen, dass es einen gangbaren Weg dazwischen gibt, dass wir militärische Schritte zur Befreiung dieser Nationen vom Kommunismus unternehmen und dass wir diese hinsichtlich des Kommunismus völlig auf sich gestellt lassen.” Es müsse auch mit der Möglichkeit gerechnet werden, dass das sowjetische System infolge der allmählichen Verselbständigung der Osteuropäer von selbst zusammenbrechen könnte. Diese Möglichkeit hatte George Kennan, der geistige Vater der Eindämmungspolitik, bereits 1947 aufgeworfen.
Die Unterzeichnung des österreichischen Staatsvertrages (15. Mai 1955) eröffnete plötzlich eine neue Möglichkeit dazu, um eine Vereinbarung zwischen den Großmächten zur Regelung des Schicksals des von den Sowjets besetzten Raumes zu treffen und um den Kalten Krieg – trotz der Tatsache, das die Sowjetunion einen Tag vor der Unterzeichung den Warschauer Pakt ins Leben gerufen und damit auch rechtlich ihre militärische Präsenz in Ostmitteleuropa gefestigt hatte – zu beenden. Trotz der Gründung des Warschauer Paktes veranlasste die flexible Haltung Chruschtschows in der österreichischen Angelegenheit das Außenministerium dazu, sich erneut mit einer Lösung auf dem Verhandlungsweg zu befassen. Hierzu schien das Genfer Gipfeltreffen, das am 18. Juli 1955 stattfand, eine günstige Gelegenheit zu bieten. Die Amerikaner wollten dabei vorsichtig vorgehen, weil sie nicht den Eindruck erwecken wollten, dass sich die Vereinigten Staaten mit dem Schicksal Osteuropas abgefunden hätten. Die Politische Planungsabteilung rief das Außenministerium in einem Memorandum dazu auf, einen Plan zur Vereinigung Deutschlands zu entwerfen. Nachdem die Vereinigung stattgefunden hätte, könnte die Sowjetunion aus Ostdeutschland und Polen abziehen, dann, nach dem Inkrafttreten des österreichischen Staatsvertrages, auch aus Ungarn und Rumänien. Und der Nationale Sicherheitsrat erklärte, dass der österreichische Staatsvertrag als eine Station auf dem Weg zu weiteren Abkommen genutzt werde.
Hinter der Planung von Initiativen, die sich auf Osteuropa bezogen, verbargen sich neue Vorstellungen im Hinblick auf Deutschland. Die Amerikaner wurden immer stärker von der Idee angezogen, sich von Deutschland loszulösen und einen Vertrag über die Vereinigung außerhalb des Rahmens der NATO zu schließen. Eisenhower und Dulles glaubten daran, dass Amerika in absehbarer Zeit seine Truppen aus Europa, das dann selbst für seine Sicherheit sorgen sollte, zurückziehen könne. Dulles war 1955 dazu bereit, der Vereinigung Deutschlands auf der Grundlage der Neutralität und irgendeiner Art der internationalen Kontrolle, an der auch die Sowjetunion beteiligt sein sollte, zuzustimmen. Zudem reifte in ihm auch die Vorstellung, dass die Vereinigten Staaten, sollte die Sowjetunion angegriffen werden, ihr beistehen würden. Es ist offensichtlich, dass ein möglicher sowjetischer Abzug aus Osteuropa die Verwirklichung eines amerikanischen Abzugs aus Europa erleichtert hätte. Es zeichneten sich also die Umrisse einer europäischen Ordnung ab, die die Sicherheit der Kontinentalmächte und die Wiederherstellung der Unabhängigkeit der besetzten Länder in Betracht zog.
In Gesprächen, die dem Gipfeltreffen vorausgingen, empfahl Dulles dem Präsidenten, die osteuropäische Frage gegenüber der sowjetischen Führung in informellem Rahmen aufzuwerfen. Hierzu kam es auch: Sowohl der Außenminister als auch der Präsident sprachen das Problem im Zuge eines inoffiziellen Gedankenaustausches mit dem sowjetischen Ministerpräsidenten Nikolai A. Bulganin an. Sie teilten ihm mit, die Vereinigten Staaten würden der Situation der osteuropäischen Staaten große Bedeutung zuschreiben, teils wegen des Einflusses der Emigrantengruppen aus diesem Raum, teils aus anderen innenpolitischen Erwägungen. Zugleich versicherten sie dem sowjetischen Regierungschef, dass die Vereinigten Staaten nicht beabsichtigen würden, „die Sowjetunion mit einem Ring von feindlichen Staaten zu umgeben.” Dulles schlug einen Mittelweg vor, nämlich die Anwendung des finnischen Modells für die fraglichen Staaten, ohne jedoch irgendeine Gegenleistung anzubieten. Wie mehr oder weniger zu erwarten war, wollte Bulganin von der ganzen Sache nichts hören. Das Aufwerfen der Frage war sowieso nicht zeitgemäß: Die Veränderungen, die nach dem Tode Stalins in der sowjetischen Außenpolitik eintraten, wiesen auf keine neue politische Denkweise oder Strategie seitens des Kremls hin. Die Entscheidung der inneren Machtkämpfe war für die sowjetische Führung noch immer viel wichtiger, als die Verkündung neuer außenpolitischer Ziele. Chruschtschow selbst war der Meinung, dass die sowjetische Expansion in Mitteleuropa „die Träume des Kommunismus erfülle” und den Raum „vom kapitalistischen Joch befreie”. Darüber hinaus hegte er – im Lichte der späteren Ereignisse auch nicht ohne Grund – die Befürchtung, dass sich die NATO in Richtung Osten weiter ausbreiten werde. Dementsprechend genoss die Konsolidierung der im Zuge des Krieges besetzten Territorien auch weiterhin besondere Priorität in der sowjetischen Außenpolitik.
Im Jahre 1956 überprüfte der Nationale Sicherheitsrat erneut die Osteuropa- Politik der Vereinigten Staaten. Wiederum wurden die alten Ziele formuliert, einschließlich der Spaltung des Sowjetblocks und der Anstachelung der dort lebenden Völker zu passivem Widerstand. Zugleich wurde nun aber die Möglichkeit einer Regelung der osteuropäischen Frage auf dem Verhandlungsweg, d.h. die Umgestaltung der Region nach dem finnischen Muster, verworfen. Zur Regelung des Status von Osteuropa gemäß dem finnischen Modell hätten die Revolution und der Freiheitskampf in Ungarn im Jahre 1956 – so hoffte zumindest die amerikanische Führung – eine Möglichkeit geboten. Die Chance, hierüber zu verhandeln, verflog durch die sowjetische Intervention am 4. November 1956.
Begegnungen26_Bischof
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 26:13–19.
GÜNTER BISCHOF
Cold War Miracle: The Austrian State Treaty at 50
The Austrian State Treaty of 1955 is to Austrians of the post-World War II Second Republic what the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 is to Americans. It is something of a sacred foundation document. The State Treaty was signed by the foreign ministers of the four occupation powers (Dulles/ United States, Molotov/Soviet Union, Macmillan/Great Britain, Pinay/France) and the Austrian foreign minister Leopold Figl in the glorious old Baroque Palace Belvedere on May 15, 1955.
It provided for the withdrawal of occupation forces from Austria and thus returned Austria to complete independence and full sovereignty after the ratification of the treaty by the four powers. Once this legal process was complete in late October 1955, the Austrian Parliament pronounced Austria to “eternal (“immerwährend”) neutrality.” The long period of authoritarian/fascist governments and foreign occupations had at last ended, first five years of homemade “Austro-fascism” (1933-1938), then seven years of Nazi occupation (1938), and then ten years of four-power Allied occupation (1945-1955). Few countries in the modern Western world have suffered such a prolonged period of both domestic dysfunction and foreign tutelage.
The State Treaty is part and parcel of a triad of Second Austrian Republic foundation documents. Firstly, the Allied Moscow Declaration of November 1, 1943, declared Austria as Hitler’s “first victim” and promised the reestablishment of an independent Austria after World War II, after its annexation (the “Anschluss” of March 1938) and occupation by Nazi Germany during the war. Secondly, Provisional Chancellor Karl Renner’s “Declaration of Independence” of April 27, 1945. This document proclaimed the re-establishment of an independent Austria along the lines of the Allied promise in the Moscow Declaration in the final days of World War II in Europe. And thirdly, the signing of the State Treaty on May 15, 1955.
The State Treaty is not written in soaring Jeffersonian language (“we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”), but in the dry yet precise legalese of international law and peace treaties. It is too long to be reprinted in the annex of history textbooks. It contains 38 articles and 10 annexes full of crucial provisions that few Austrians apart from a few international lawyers and even fewer historians know or care to remember. Austria’s territorial borders are determined in the State Treaty, minorities protected, an Anschluss prohibition inserted; Austrian democracy is enshrined on egalitarian principles, Nazi organizations are prohibited, the return of the last POWs (in Russia) is provided for; on top of it numerous military restrictions are featured – as if small Austria ever was a military threat to the world. But the vast majority of the treaty text deals with very complex property issues such as who will be legal successor of pre-war, and World War II “German property” in postwar Austria, including oil assets of Western oil companies. The “German assets” issue constitutes the impenetrable German reparations problem in the Austrian context. Some of the Treaty provisions have been declared obsolete after the end of the Cold War.
This clearly is not the stuff that moves a nation and inspires the people of the world as Jefferson’s Declaration did and still does. It is a legal document that finally releases Austria into independence. Its anti-German provisions eventually even allowed for the establishment of an Austrian identity.
What is edifying about the “Austrian treaty” (as it was usually called by the powers at the time) is not the text but its unexpected conclusion in the spring of 1955 in the wake of Stalin’s death in 1953, after a negotiating marathon. Eight years of seemingly incessant diplomatic negotiations and political jockeying provide a rich field of both drama and melodrama for the historian. Few historians besides Gerald Stourzh have ventured to delve into these endless rounds of diplomacy. Diplomats from the four powers gathered for no less than some 400 meetings to negotiate the details of the Austrian treaty. The Austrian treaty was on the agenda of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow (1947), London (1947), Paris (1949), and Berlin (1954) in dozens of sessions. The special deputies of the Foreign Ministers on the Austrian treaty met 260 times between 1947 and 1950/1953. A special Treaty Commission gathered for 65 rounds meetings in Vienna in the summer of 1947 to establish exact lists of “German assets” in Austria. A special Ambassadors conference met for a fortnight to put the final touches to the treaty in Vienna in late April/early May 1955. And this is not counting the innumerable meetings that the Austrian government had with the four powers to discuss Austrian treaty details, as well as the regular meetings of Western diplomats coordinating and aligning their treaty strategy vis-à-vis the Soviets.
What amounts then to a miracle in the midst of incredible East-West Cold War tensions and the beginning nuclear arms race is the fact that a treaty was agreed to by all parties during a curious window of a Cold War “détente” of sorts and the occupation powers withdrew their military forces. The Americans were prepared to sign a treaty in 1946 and pull out of Austria. However, what the Red Army conquered in the defeat of Hitler’s Wehrmacht it usually did not give up in the Cold War. Eastern Austria is the only territory in post-World War II Europe that the Soviet Red Army evacuated. The outcome of this advance of the Red Army into Central Europe was either control through establishment of native Communist regimes (such as all over Eastern Europe), or division along lines of occupation (such as in Germany). We know today that the Austrian Communist Party wanted to establish a “people’s democracy” too after 1945, and urged a division of Austria and Communization of the Soviet zone in Moscow after the Communist electoral defeat in November 1945. But Stalin opted against it, feeling that the Soviet zone was too small to be economically viable, while the rest of Austria would have been incorporated into the anti-Soviet Western defence system. So Austria and/or the Soviet zone was not “Sovietized.”
Given the keen participation of “Ostmärkers” in Hitler’s war of aggression and the holocaust, Austria could not have been luckier. In the end, Austria was not divided by an iron curtain along East-West lines such as Germany; Austria received Marshall Plan aid, which allowed it to rebuild its economy and become prosperous (in fact, the Americans roughly invested as much economic aid into Austria as the Soviets extracted in reparations after the war); Austria was not forced to purge the tens of thousands of its native “Austrofascists” and Nazis from public life, or at least not for very long; Austria regained its full independence; it managed to stay out of the postwar military alliance systems set up by the superpowers to control their respective spheres of influence and thus did not face prohibitive rearmament costs; Austria’s neutrality and Austrians’ neutralism during the Cold War allowed it to build one of the most generous social welfare systems the world has seen; the severest restriction that came out of the State Treaty provisions and the attendant neutrality law was that Austria could not join the “European Economic Community” during the Cold War and thus was a latecomer to full European economic and political integration. Given this Cold War “miracle” it behoves us to ask how did the Austrians get away with it? How did the Austrians do it?
Often ignored by Austrian “Nabelbeschaulichkeit” – that curious isolationism of the mind — the complex history of Austrian treaty negotiations is closely tied to the ups and downs of the early Cold War in Europe and the world. The open and the hidden agendas of Austrian treaty negotiations cannot be understood other than in the context of the growing East West tensions. The “tempo and temperature” (Karl Gruber) of growing Cold tensions defined and circumscribed all progress of Austrian treaty negotiations. Moreover, the larger “German question” continuously hovered over an “Austrian solution”, namely the future shape of Germany, united or divided and with the Eastern territories (East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia) already cut off and incorporated into Poland and Russia (Königsberg enclave).
The Austrian treaty talks, then, offer us also a fascinating window into the development of the Cold War in Europe. They can be broken down into an early phase (1946/47); a phase of maturation and progress (1948/49); a phase of complete stalemate during the “ice age” of the Cold War (1950-53); and a final phase of breakthrough after Stalin’s death and West German NATO integration (1953-55).
After World War II the “big four” did not meet for an extended peace conference like they did in 1919 in Paris. The treaties with the Germans and its satellites were negotiated one by one and in a piecemeal fashion. Disagreements were so vast over the postwar treatment of Germany that the powers were at loggerheads by 1946 and heading towards division. The first drafts of the Austrian treaty were prepared in the State Department and the Ballhausplatz in Vienna early in 1946. But Kremlin refused to allow Austrian treaty talks onto the agenda of the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) in the summer of 1946. Molotov insisted that the peace treaties with Hitler’s satellites (Italy, Finland, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary) be signed before negotiations started on the German and Austrian treaties. Molotov, who in Paris became famous as “Mr. ironpants Njet”, was so truculent that the last traces of wartime cooperation between the powers were wasted. Molotov kept refusing negotiations for an Austrian treaty as long as the Austrians were not seriously denazifying their people. What the Austrians tried to hide – their Nazi past – Molotov put into the forefront of the Kremlin’s agenda. The deep divisions over the satellite treaties carried over into German and Austrian negotiations and contributed much to the outbreak of the Cold War in 1947.
During the New York CFM late in 1946, special Deputies were appointed to prepare an Austrian treaty draft for the next CFM. The Austrian Deputies met in London in January and 1947 and began their arduous task of preparing an Austrian draft treaty. Initial disagreements focused on Yugoslav territorial and reparations demands against Austria, supported by the Soviets. The Soviet Deputy kept insisting on pointing out the vital role Austrian soldiers played in the Wehrmacht on the destructive Eastern Front during the war. Austrian foreign minister Karl Gruber played an undignified numbers game in trying to minimize the number of Austrian soldiers who fought in Hitler’s armies (800,000 rather than the 1,4 million). The Austrian delegation was seriously embarrassed when a delegate had to be sent home from London because of the surfacing of his Nazi past (predictably, one is tempted to say today, it was the governor of Carinthia).
During the crucial Moscow CFM in March/April 1947, which contributed so much to spark the Cold War, the property issues came to the fore. Whereas the Soviets insisted on an expansive definition of German assets, Mark Clark, the American High Commissioner in Vienna and leader of the American delegation on Austria, insisted on narrow definitions. The Soviets included everything the Germans had owned before the war, seized in 1938 and built during the war in Austria. The Americans refused to count the property seized by the Nazis through “force and duress” after the Anschluss (such as “Aryanised” Jewish property and Western oil assets and drilling rights). Gruber was prepared to make any concession necessary to get an Austrian treaty and had to be whistled back by the Americans. A special commission was set up in Moscow to meet in Vienna in the summer of 1947 and establish specified lists of German assets in Austria rather than haggle over broad definitions.
Based on the Vienna Treaty Commission deliberations, the Americans sent the French treaty deputy to the fore with an omnibus plan of valuing the German assets at 100 million dollars and for the Soviets to receive compensations over such an amount for returning to Austria the German assets in their zone of occupation they had seized in 1945/46. During the London Deputies meetings in the spring of 1948, the powers agreed to a 150 million dollars “lump sum” cash payment to the Soviets. At this point, it was ostensibly the Kremlin’s support of Yugoslav territorial and reparations demands that stopped the powers from finalizing the Austrian treaty. So Stalin could be easily blamed for not signing a treaty.
We should remember, however, this was also the time when the temperature of the Cold War was rising and the tempo of tensions quickening. In May/June of 1947 the Communists had seized sole power in Budapest and in February 1948 in Prague. In the spring of 1948 the Soviet representative walked out of the Control Council in Berlin, the Western powers launched a currency reform in the Western zone, and Stalin answered with a year long blockade of Berlin. These events finally set the train in motion towards a “two Germanies” solution of the “German problem.” The U.S. launched the Marshall Plan in 1948 and thus completed the economic division of Europe. The Western powers initiated the “North Atlantic Treaty” defence alliance in 1948/49 to contain Communism. Now the Cold War quickly became militarized.
The militarization of the Cold War had its inevitable repercussions on Austria, too. The West perceived Vienna to be in an especially vulnerable situation and to be the most likely next victim of the Soviets (“Prague is west of Vienna”). Now the Pentagon insisted on a secret rearmament of Austria. Shades of Iraq today — no treaty must be signed before Austria did not have sufficient defence forces to resist internal subversion on its own! The Americans also began preparing for a potential blockade of Vienna ŕ la Berlin and secretly poured a 90-day food reserve into Vienna warehouses in the Western sectors of the embattled city (code-named “squirrel cage” and “jackpot”). The American occupiers also prepared secret lists of Austrian leaders to be evacuated to Salzburg in case of a blockade to allow for continuity of government (a quasi government in exile in their own land). The Pentagon began rearming the Austrian police forces. When Communist riots in October 1950 in Vienna – in the midst of the escalating Korean War – were interpreted by the Austrian government as a “putsch attempt,” the U.S. military began with the training of a special police force (“B-Gendarmerie”) that would one day constitute the core of a future Austrian Army. At the same time the CIA distributed some 90 arms caches throughout the Austrian Alps for a future guerrilla war against Soviet invaders. The French prepared Alpine passes and bridges for demolition in their zone to stop Soviet advances. No facts better explain the red-hot temperatures of the Cold War in Central Europe during the Korean War than the extent of this secret rearmament of Austria, which only recently has become fully known to historians. Starting in 1948, it was above all the Pentagon, then, that quietly refused behind the scenes to sign an Austrian treaty. Publically, Soviet intransigence was blamed for Cold War psychological warfare reasons.
This became harder to do, once Stalin gave up supporting Yugoslav demands against Austria in 1949 after his break with Tito. In fact, many historians think that the Kremlin was prepared to sign a treaty in the fall of 1949, were it not for Pentagon resistance. During the Korean War it seemed like the West was losing the initiative against world communism. The Soviets had their own atomic weapon, Mao won the civil war in China, and with the North Korean attack in June 1950 the Kremlin seemed to go on the offensive. Many feared that the Korean conflict was a diversion and the real attack would come on the Central European Cold War front. Consequently, West German and Austrian rearmament became more important than ever. However, for propaganda reasons, the Kremlin still needed to be blamed for not signing an Austrian treaty to give the Austrian people some hope.
In 1952, Washington initiated a propaganda manoeuvre to keep the blame on the Soviets and to give some hope for treaty progress to the Austrian population. Against the advice of the Ballhausplatz and their Western allies, they presented an “abbreviated treaty draft” of ten articles to the Kremlin for signature. Since it contained no provision on the “German assets”, the Kremlin predictably ignored it and refused to resume negotiations on the treaty before the withdrawal of this “skeleton treaty”, as communist propaganda called it, in the fall of 1953.
The changes in the Kremlin after Stalin’s unexpected death in March 1953 and the decision for West German rearmament within the NATO framework in 1955 precipitated the final breakthrough in Austrian treaty talks. Molotov, losing control over Soviet foreign policy to the hated Nikita Khrushchev, announced the decoupling of the Austrian from the German question against an Austrian guarantee of no “future Anschluss.” Austrian neutrality became the deus ex machina agreed on in bilateral Austro-Soviet talks in Moscow in April 1955. The bilateral memorandum also contained provisions for Austria paying the 150 million dollar “lump sum” for the Soviet return of the German assets they controlled in their zone of occupation. The Soviets accepted payments in kind (goods) rather than cash. The Austrian economy had recovered enough due to the Marshall Plan to make these payments.
The Western powers viewed these bilateral Austro-Soviet negotiations from the sidelines with a certain amount of disgust. By the spring 1955 Austrian diplomacy had emancipated itself sufficiently from Western tutelage, to dare such bilateral talks. These bilateral parleys led to the final breakthrough and the Western powers had to accept the Moscow fait accompli with a reluctant show of support. In a meeting of the National Security Council CIA Director Allen Dulles called the Soviet action “the most significant action since the end of World War II,” and added that the Kremlin showed flexibility and made “the first substantial Soviet concession to the West in Europe since the end of the war.” Even though the Pentagon was very reluctant to withdraw its forces form Austria and accept Austrian neutrality, it could not stop the treaty. As John Foster Dulles had predicted in a 1953 NSC meeting, if the Austrians desire to be neutral the West cannot stop them. The secret efforts to train and arm the core of a future Austrian Army had matured sufficiently to replace the Western forces for the defence of Austria. After military considerations had trumped diplomacy during the Korean War, after Stalin’s death patient diplomacy came to triumph over military concerns.
After a final round of four-power negotiations with Austria in early May, the Austrian treaty was signed on a beautiful spring day on May 15. Austria was “free again”, proclaimed Foreign Minister Figl. The powers also agreed to miraculously free Austria from the burdens of its World War II past. On Figl’s dogged insistence, Austrian culpability stemming from participation in Hitler’s war was struck from the treaty preamble. Figl also had signed a secret memorandum with the Western powers promising future compensation to Western oil firms for their properties and rights within the “German assets” the Austrian government nationalized. So everybody got his pound of flesh.
With the conclusion of the Austrian treaty the new leadership in the Kremlin had shown that it was prepared to make concessions. The Eisenhower White House could no longer resist Western and Soviet pressure for a summit meeting. When the world’s leaders met in Geneva 1955 during a brief Cold War respite, they failed to manage ringing in a genuine period of détente. Cold War tensions had progressed too far with the division of Germany and Europe and the heating up of the nuclear arms race to step back from the diplomatic impasse and nuclear brink in spite of the miracle breakthrough on the Austrian treaty. For that reason the Austrian treaty is just an episode in the larger Cold War history. But it is the major chapter in Austrian Cold War history and the Austrians rightly commemorate it as the completion of their difficult postwar journey towards independence. They were lucky not to end up divided like Germany.
Begegnungen26_Bedo
Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 26:123–132.
ZOLTÁN BEDŐ
The Development of Agrarian Technologies and Genetically Modified Plants
The Advance of Genetically Modified Plants in Agriculture
The aim of the improvement of agricultural plants has always been the increase of their genetic diversity and the consequent utilization of new plant species. With the emergence of gene technologies and the possibilities of DNA manipulation, new dimensions have been created for plant improvements. These include the following:
– the determination of the complete sequence of genomes;
– the definition, isolation, and application of important specific genes for agricultural production, with the use of micro-array technologies;
– the definition and assembly of DNA-collections and the establishment of DNA banks;
– the inducement and creation of genetic diversity by the injection of alien genes or blocks of genes into agricultural plants.
During the past two decades, fundamental changes have occurred in plant genetics and improvements, as the result of DNA researches; within these processes a special role was assumed by transformation technologies that developed as one of the areas of molecular plant-improvements. At the arrival of the new millennium, every third hectare of soybeans, every seventh of cotton, every ninth of colza, and similar ratios of corn, had been produced in the world through genetic modification. This was the result of the “green revolution,” that, in the course of the second half of the 20th century, reduced starvation [in certain regions of the world] through increasing plant productivities and intensive, industrial-type production of foodstuff. However, new ways and means have become increasingly necessary, since agricultural growth had apparently reached its maximum in the 1990’s in the developed countries, and the worldwide growth of the production of cereal crops had also slowed down.
It has become necessary to re-think conceptions in agriculture everywhere, providing for the following;
1. priorities for sustainability;
2. maintenance of ecological balances;
3. increase in the safety of foodstuff and promotion and improvement of healthy consumption.
All these requirements represent new challenges for the further improvement of plants. The needed changes cannot, in all probability, be achieved through the traditional methods of plant improvement. Therefore, the aim of molecular improvement is to bring about favourable changes by the application of gene technologies that cannot be achieved by traditional methods, or that could be only partially, and to a lesser extent, be realized by the latter. Through the genetic transformation of plants, their agricultural productivity, their efficacy and safety, can all be increased and, as a consequence, the variety of their usefulness can also be multiplied.
Molecular improvement includes the application of methods of plant transformation; this can be an important means in the future for the creation of a multifunctional agriculture. In such a process, agrarian production includes the preservation of the balances of natural ecology, the development of the countryside, and the promotion of healthy consumption of foodstuff. These factors would all have to be considered as priorities. Molecular improvement, using transformation technology, therefore, may be useful not only in the creation of intensive-, (high input) or precision plant-production technologies, but also in extensive (low-input) processes. The goals of complex plant improvements are the combination of molecular improvements and the application of traditional methods, usable at production under various conditions, and through them the creation of new plant varieties. Such tasks that must be completed (among others) are as follows:
The increase/decrease of global cereal production (in %)* |
|||||
Year |
Total |
Rice |
Wheat |
Corn |
Other |
1950-60 |
2.0 |
1.4 |
1.7 |
2.6 |
|
1960-70 |
2.5 |
2.1 |
2.9 |
2.4 |
2.3 |
1970-80 |
1.9 |
1.7 |
2.1 |
2.7 |
0.4 |
1980-90 |
2.2 |
2.4 |
2.9 |
1.3 |
1.7 |
1990-95 |
0.7 |
1.0 |
0.1 |
1.7 |
–0.8 |
* Source: L. R. Brown, et al., The State of the World, 1998 (New York-London, 19888.) |
1. the reduction of pesticide use in ecologically sensitive regions; for instance, improvement of types that are herbicide resistant, resistant to virus and bacterial infection, and also resistant to pests;
2. improvement of the stability of production, the improvement of cold-, drought-, and alkaline resistant genotypes;
3. production of foodstuffs promoting healthy consumption, including the increase of vitamin contents, the improvement of the production of essential amino-acids;
4. improvements in living standard, including the production of macro-molecules in medicine through bio-farming, and the reduction of allergens.
The technological improvement of the so-called first-generation trans-genetic plants had as its goal the increase of efficiency and the reduction of the damage caused to the agricultural environment. This was proved by the survey conducted by the USDA in 1999, according to which the production increase of corn and cotton, created by the use of Bt genes, and the so-called “roundup ready” soybeans came only to 4.4-10 %; however, at the same time, the application of herbicides and insecticides decreased by 22-90 % in comparison with traditional technologies. All this proved advantageous for the protection of the environment.
Transformation-technology and the Integrated Improvement of Plants
The significance of gene-technology is that it is part of the creation of new plant species. From the point of view of plant improvement, it is necessary for the production of transgenic varieties that
1. a gene or a section of genes be isolated for the purpose of transformation;
2. have a homozygote plant or genome available that had already been improved through traditional methods;
3. the preparation of a protocol for the transformation by using an applicable promoter for the production of the transformed plant;
4. the creation of a valuable breeding stock which will eventually result in the emergence of improved plant.
The production of transformed plants is not the same as the creation of a transgenic variety. This is the reason for the necessity of the integration of traditional- and molecular- plant improvement processes, because before molecular improvements could begin, first we must create agriculturally valuable homozygote genotypes that can be modified later through the infusion of a gene or group of genes by gene technology. After the transformation of the selected genotype that is improved through a traditional method, we will select a transgenic plant, also improved through traditional methods of selection. This will have;
1. stable genomes and these are inherited by later generations; corresponds to internationally required legal norms, introduced by the international association for the protection of varieties (UPOV);
2. stability of the alien gene, and useful in agriculture as a new, transgenic variety;
3. the biology of its flowering must be stable and its seeds must be available to be produced economically;
4. it must be produced safely without risk, in a given agricultural region;
5. in comparison with the donor species, the injection of the gene should bring about advantages for the producers and better value for consumers.
Molecular improvements contribute to the spread of new technologies in agriculture. It is possible that each laboratory will produce thousands of new genotypes or even more in the future, but the number of useful plant varieties will undoubtedly be much less numerous. Transformed plants that are valuable and answer the requirements of further improvement, will have less useful characteristics that are favourable for economic requirements. The phases of selection seem to prove that only transgenic plants that are useful from every point of view, will be introduced into actual production.
Researchers dedicated to the successful improvement of plants will be able to employ the results of transformation technologies only if their products contribute to the tasks whose fulfilment are expected by society.
To achieve such results, useful technologies that can be routinely and safely used must be created. At the present time, there are important differences in the application of various technologies employable for the improvement of various cereal species. While the transformation of rice can easily be accomplished, the improvement of regular wheat and durum wheat is difficult at the present time. It is therefore extremely important to create and apply a system of transformation independently of genotypes for the purpose of their improvement.
A direct method employed for the improvement of transgenic cereal plants is to use them directly as a goal of improvement. This is a practical method, even if the species in question is easily transformable. (Not all species of cereals can be transformed equally well and be used for improvement.) In a case of heavy dependence on one particular genotype – as it certainly is the case with common wheat – we suggest the use of the best transformable genotype; in turn, it can be crossbred for the introduction of a new gene to achieve an agriculturally important variety.
The success of applied transformation technology is also dependent on other factors. The technology will be optimally successful if its result is a stable transformation – through the introduction of a gene – that will not impact on the agricultural characteristics of the other genomes. In the case of cereals, there are two gene transformation methods currently in use:
1. Gene injection techniques (cell- or tissue-electroporation, methods of micro-injection, gene-inclusion by a gene-cannon, etc.) The last of these is the most widely used.
2. Transformation through Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This method is currently in an experimental stage, used for the routine transformation of common wheat in most laboratories, and it promises to be a simpler, more effective technology.
One condition of successful plant improvement is the effective injection of the alien gene in the appropriate tissue of a plant. However, in most cases, only accidental success can be expected because the places of integration are randomly distributed. It is possible that the receiving genome (DNA) integrates with the alien gene only in the presence of partial, short homologies; however, at the present time, we do not have a complete understanding of this. Apparently, a process of repairs is taking place at the point of the meeting place of the alien and the local DNA.
Attention must be paid to the possible or real risks that the transgenic technology may represent for the environment. This includes the “marker” for the selection of herbicides or antibiotics. Although we do not have as yet scientifically supported evidence, the potential dangers – including concerns formulated by certain segments of public opinion – their application must be avoided. The solution is being offered by several other techniques, including;
1. excluding selective marker-genes through a natural process;
2. the application of technologies free of marker-genes; the application of positive selection of markers (for instance, the mannoze-system.)
An organic part of the technology is a tissue culture process, applied in order to regenerate the transformed plants. The evolution of the tissue culture method has a long history; researches had begun long before the beginnings of transformation research. The use of an effective system of regeneration could be varied according to plant species. The process used for various cereal species requires an appropriately experienced researcher. The time and method used for transformation are largely determined by the selection of the system of transformation, the choice of whether diploid- or haploid-level cells are being used at its beginning. Following transformation that had started with somatic cells, there will be need for the application of a selection method that will help the creation of transgenic, homozygote genotypes. The application of a system of regeneration, starting with a protocol of haploid cells, that will raise homozygote transgenic plants after re-diplodization, is a simpler method. Time and expenses can be saved by this method.
Production of Gene-modified Plants in 1996 (in 1,000 acres) |
|||||
Plant |
USA |
Canada |
Europe |
Other* |
Totals |
Corn |
470 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
470 |
Cotton |
2,000 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2,000 |
Colza |
0 |
350 |
0 |
0 |
350 |
Soybeans |
1,000 |
0 |
0 |
375 |
1,375 |
Tomatoes |
11 |
0 |
0 |
50 |
61 |
Potatoes |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
Tobacco |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2,000 |
2,000 |
Totals |
3,481 |
350 |
0 |
2,426 |
6,257 |
* In this category are included China, Mexico, and Argentina. |
|||||
Source: Biotechnológia; lépéstartás Európával. Magyarország az ezredfordulón (Budapest, 1998), MTA. Page 25. |
A problem exists (during the application of various tissue culture practices) by the genotype dependence of various plant variety. One indirect solution for this problem is the use of model plant species that are easily transformable and can be regenerated. The gene transformed in a model variety that can be re-transplanted in other variety useful for agriculture may be accomplished through the traditional method of re-crossing it; however, this increases the time for the development of a transgenic type.
The promoter used for the improvement of plants significantly influences the transformation. This is especially important for cereal species because particular promoters have less impact on them than others. The promoter could be important for the stability of the injected gene, for the full development of desired agricultural characteristics. Experts working for improvement must consider environmental risks related to the use of the promoter, even if the risks represent only possible problems, because they may influence the practical use of the species. For this reason it is important to consider the choice of applying a constitutive, a selective, or an inductive promoter. All these promoters have their own characteristics; however, potential dangers created by plants used by the producers must also be considered. The choice of a promoter may also be influenced by the possible existence of intellectual property rights that could make their purchase problematical.
A gene-transformed plant created in a laboratory may not possess all expected qualities; it may have to go through other selective processes before it can be used for agriculture. One of the most important requirements is the presence of stable transplanted genes in successive generations. The selection serves the purpose of producing homozygote transgenic genotypes in the following generations, when we are creating lines that have stable expressive trans-genes. During continuous checking of the trans-gene’s presence, we must be satisfied that the trans-gene
1. can be determined to exist in appropriate plant tissues and its influence in the appropriate stage of the plant’s growth can be observed;
2. it induces only the required characteristics;
3. it does not negatively influence other agricultural characteristics.
Continuing the selection process during several generations, we may discover not only the stability of the transmitted genes, but also the possibility of mutations, and we may also sort out the so-called “gene silencing” effects. The latter may prevent the practical application of the transgenic variety. As for the undesirable consequences caused by mutation, the negative influences they possibly produce may be eliminated by the application of traditional cross-breeding methods. Therefore, the transitional gene will be present in a stable condition in the new generations. In examining the succeeding generations of the lines of transgenic plants, we must be convinced not only of the stability of the transmitted gene – in order for the plant to be useful as a new species – but we must examine
1. every one of its agriculturally useful characteristics in comparison with the original species that had not been transformed ;
2. its ability to assimilate to various agro-ecological circumstances;
3. the ecological risks of its production;
4. the safety and economy of the production of its seeds for planting that may influence the competitiveness of the species.
Arguments For and Against Genetically Modified Plants
The technology for future plant production-methods advances along several avenues. Of these, the so-called “high-yield farming” (or precisions technologies for production) provides one possibility. One of the basic elements of high input technology agriculture may be the use of transgenic plants. Through this technology
1. the average yield and quality of production may be increased and as a consequence,
2. the size of land used for agriculture may be reduced, and
3. the remaining lands may be returned to their natural conditions,
4. in the case of lands worked by modern methods, the danger of environmental damage will be reduced.
However, environmentalists, together with a sizeable segment of public opinion in the European countries, are sceptical about the utility of producing new plant varieties by transformation methods, and they are worried about possible risks for the environment. They fear the wide spread use of transformed plants. This is the reason for wide-ranging support for so-called “extensive” technologies, — free of all chemicals — and for the organic production of plants, in which plants are produced by traditional methods, or through organic improvement of plant varieties. They support methods for plant production for sustainable development.
In our opinion, a place and role can be found for every technological system within a multi-functional agriculture. We consider complementary functions more important than confrontational approaches. Genetically modified plant species may indeed serve environmentally safe production, but it is also true that they may include some risk factors. For instance, living organisms in the environment may be directly or indirectly exposed, and they may contribute to the creation of new genotypes of weeds. In the presence of related wild species, they might also easily cross-breed and contribute to the emergence of unfavourable environmental conditions and change biodiversity. In order to avoid such a possibility in Europe, a directive was introduced for genetically modified systems (GMO-s) in 1992, entitled 90/220/EEC. The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) declared the principle of substantial equivalence, according to which gene-modified products must be comparable to the original — or correspondingly close-standing — non-modified products. The generic plant used as the basis of comparison is considered to be a standard, environmentally safe product. In Hungary, a law enacted in 1998 to regulate activities for gene-modification was itself modified by Parliament in 2002.
During the production of seeds by the gene-modified plants they must be examined in order to discover whether the injected (or infused) alien gene could be accidentally transferred to other non-gene modified, or other species that are found in the environment. Theoretically, the spread of the alien gene could take several forms; in the first instance, there is a sexual method of transmission.
We have relatively little information about the sexually transmitted trans-genes. The person doing the improvement of specific plants must consider public opinion while formulating plans for his research. This is especially important for European researchers, because here we find the widest divergence in consumer behaviour. As a consequence, European researchers have certain disadvantages in the application of gene-modification technology in comparison with researchers working in other regions of the globe. According to a survey conducted in 2000, the European researchers are making great efforts to overcome their disadvantages. Of 99 European companies currently working on plant-improvement projects, (surveyed in 1999), 33% worked on research in gene-technologies, besides studying traditional improvement methods. They were planning to increase this number to 49 % by 2002. Further 31 % of the companies in question were planning to employ marker-technologies and the “sequenation” of genes in contrast to 23% in 1999.
Every four out of five European companies conducting improvement research, employ molecular-methods in addition to traditional approaches, but this does not mean that they produce gene-modified, trans-genetic plant species every time. Their activities are mostly based on the practical application of scientific results of genome-research.
However, direct and indirect dangers and obstacles to progress continue to exist. Among others, they include;
1. the fact that agricultural production in Europe is going through a difficult period; it is comparatively expensive and over-bureaucratized;
2. capital needs of plant improvement continue to increase rapidly, competition is fierce, concentration has been increasing, the number of improvement-programs is declining, and the consequences might lead to the decrease of genetic diversity;
3. in addition to the increase of expenses for plant-improvement research, further increases will probably occur, because of the introduction of ever stricter safety regulations;
4. as a result of the practical application of improvements, appropriate profits are gained by seed-producers through raising hybrid plants. Consequently, the improvement and production of self-pollinating plant species, raised on medium- and small plots, (the production of monocultures) is continuing; further, the increase of the number of patented plants (IPR) restricts genetic diversity and this might bring about potential dangers of genetic vulnerability in the future;
5. the accessibility of gene-banks continues to be restricted world-wide, as well as those of genetic resources, the life-blood of agriculture; the consequences may be natural catastrophes if epidemics of plant diseases would occur;
6. classical methods of plant-improvements had been restricted in various regions of the globe, that traditionally produced new gene-types necessary for molecular improvement, and provided starting points for improved plant species for the future; state support for such activities have also been drastically reduced (this is especially true in Europe);
7. negative views of gene-modification in Europe continue to obstruct the potential for the exploitation of gene-modified plants, and applications of gene-technology for the improvement of plant species;
8. there is no uniform, required standardization for the results of gene-technology, and no rules exist for their practical use.
These problems directly influence Hungarian projects of plant improvement. Besides the difficulties of a transitional period, we must also be prepared for Europe-wide regulations and challenges. Therefore, we need a complex research program in which plant-improvement researchers, familiar with gene-technology, could work conjointly with molecular geneticists who are also familiar with the thinking of the traditional plant breeders.