Word: bismarck
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...borders, which now include parts of Poland. Kohl reassured Germans across much of the political spectrum as well as Germany watchers around the world by emphasizing the term confederation. With its explicit echoes of the Zollverein, the customs union of German states that existed during the 19th century before Bismarck's unification of the nation, the word summoned an image of a large but unthreatening German entity...
KOHL is no Bismarck, and his movement will never gather the same force or militancy as that of his 19th century counterpart. Keep a close eye on central Europe, though, and you're bound to see continued politicking and constituency-building towards one Germany. If it comes, the 20th-century reunification will be built not with blood and iron, but with consensus and politics...
...unified Germany has been the single most destructive power in the world during the last century. The last time Germany unified, after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, surging nationalism under Otto von Bismarck caused changes in the balance of power that eventually led to World War I. And we all know of the horrible forces German nationalism produced...
That account dated back not just to the murderous offensives on the Somme in 1916, but to 1870, when Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck provoked Emperor Napoleon III into declaring war, then smashed him at Sedan, annexed the iron- rich provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and imposed on France a heavy financial indemnity. But the Germans had their own view of this account, in which they had repeatedly been attacked and despoiled by the French, by Napoleon, by Louis XIV. Indeed, this conflict went back beyond the birth of either nation, to the time when the Romans subdued the Gauls...
...sound, it could endanger the armed balance that has kept the peace since 1945. The cold war was also a cold peace: now in its 45th year, the era that historian John Lewis Gaddis calls the "long peace" is surpassing the stable stretches imposed by Metternich and then Bismarck in the 19th century. One reason is that nuclear weapons made localized wars and territorial disputes too dangerous to allow. They also made a direct confrontation between East and West or a Soviet invasion of Central Europe unthinkable...