The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

F O C U S 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 T he most compelling event during my career was the crum- bling of the Berlin Wall, which marked a sharp change in the thrust of FCS interests during my tour in Germany. Pre- fall Germany, with a technologically advanced economy, had a legitimate interest in being able to import the latest in American know-how and products. But the country also bordered the Warsaw Pact, and diversion was a major worry. No one wanted to sign off on a recommendation for approval of an export license without visiting the end-user, but the funds for inspection tours were just not there. The end-users, at least the legitimate ones, didn’t want to make a mistake that would render them inel- igible to buy U.S. technology. This convergence of interests actually carried FCS Germany through a very bleak budgetary period. In cooperation with Amerika Houses, business associations, and some large German companies, we embarked on a series of seminars for which we charged admission to cover staff travel and lodging. Three senior FSNs became widely-recognized in- country experts on the export control regime. Our bureaucratic justification for staging these events (somehow the reality of the situation was not persuasive!) was that they actually constituted an export promotion activity because we were helping firms to legally import American products. The revenues enabled us to combine objectives and visit companies at a time when our offi- cial budget would have kept us office-bound. In 1987, for budgetary reasons, State closed Consulate General Duesseldorf and moved activities to Embassy Bonn. FCS faced the loss of our largest operation, along with some positions, and the prospect of abandoning one of Germany’s most commercial regions. My proposal to keep most of the FCS staff in Duesseldorf, under a senior FSN, in a rented facility was accepted and worked fairly well for six years. But I doubt that anyone was more pleased than I when, in 1993, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke reopened Consulate General Duesseldorf with an FCSO, then as now, as principal officer. The embassy was going to move even- tually to Berlin and Commerce wanted its own post, but I tell myself that this would not have happened if the FSN cadre had not already been in place. It is easy to forget that German reunification did not immedi- ately follow the fall of the Wall. Between the two events, a sort of never-never-land existed in the East. Factories continued to produce for a while, though the influx of Western goods soon eliminated customers for their products and Eastern Europe could no longer pay in currency of value. Producers who did have a market in the West had no idea how to price their output (with the exception of bratwurst, a delicacy whose price reached the Western level overnight). What was readily visible to the eye made it all the more difficult to understand why East Germany’s collapse had not been widely foreseen. After reunification, the Bush (George H.W.) administration gave strong support to an American private-sector role in the modernization and integration of the economy in the New States, as the Laender of the former East Germany were known. This emphasis brought FCS Germany into what was to be the most exciting activity in my career. Western German business tended to view the region as a preserve, which they could cartelize into uncontested opportunities for profit. They were sometimes encouraged along those lines by former Western politicians, who had moved in carpetbagger fashion into executive slots in the governments of the New States. Washington’s aims and those of strong forces in German industry were obviously at odds. Electric power generation became a key battleground in the competition. Tipped off to the opportunity by Commercial Attaché Steve Craven and FSN Volker Wirsdorf, a Midwestern U.S. firm went head-to-head with one of the FRG’s strongest and wealthiest industrial powers. It was a competition lasting most of a year that included, inter alia, a secret strategy session in a vine- yard restaurant; a ton of cables; phone calls beyond count; media interviews to counter false press releases about the financial sta- bility and labor relations record of the American contender; foot- dragging in honoring requests for bid documents; and lots of reminding various officials of the benefits of competition. Ambassador Robert Kimmitt beat the drum at the cabinet level, and USIS helped get the true picture of the U.S. firm before the public. Secretary of State Baker was also said to have done some “reminding.” An acquaintance of mine and no fan of monopoly was, as president of a major German trade associa- tion, a member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s group of private sec- tor economic advisors. (We had been told that the chancellor tended to support in principle international participation in the economic development of the New States but was under con- siderable domestic counterpressure.) My contact made available to other members of the advisory group accurate information about our candidate’s plans for the area and work force should they win the bidding. In Berlin, FCS officers Lee Boam and, later, Jim Joy, monitored thinking at the German institution responsible for disposing of once state- owned enterprises. Shortly before my tour in Bonn ended, the American company’s bid was allowed, and it was successful. The sum in question was well into the billions, and the activity represented a trade promotion experience only a few commer- cial officers get to enjoy. I doubt that any area of FS work could have provided more personal and professional satisfaction. — Jack Bligh Germany: Excon and Reunification