ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

Soviet domination. They had historic distrust of Western Europe and really looked to the
United States as their new ally. So all of this made it difficult for the French to be too
assertive in trying to limit U.S. influence.
Q: Did you have good moles within the European caucus?
PERINA: Yes. We did. We had a lot of good moles and that helped us in dealing with the
EU. As I mentioned earlier, we had these scenarios where the European Union would
come out of its caucus and say that it took them 5 hours of negotiations to reach
agreement on some text, and if we changed a single dot it would all come apart. Well,
then of course, we changed the dot. And then the whole thing came apart and then there
was a new negotiation where we could be genuine players and not just recipients of what
the EU had devised. Generally the Europeans were too tired to go back into another EU
caucus so we just thrashed it out in the NATO caucus.
Q: While you were doing this was it becoming apparent that the new newly-independent
states would at some point come into NATO and the EU? Was that on your minds at all?
PERINA: That came a little bit later. As I said, in our time we were just amazed that
Germany was able to reunify and remain in NATO but it was too difficult to envision at
the time that the other states would be coming into NATO and the EU in the near future.
In fairness, I think thought was being given to this at NATO fairly quickly because these
NATO partnership programs for the newly-independent states began appearing. In some
circles, this again led to the unfortunate view that there was some sort of competition
between NATO and the OSCE. This perception has plagued OSCE from the very
beginning.
Q: Was there concern among other European delegations about Germany unifying and
again becoming a threat to its neighbors?
PERINA: I think there was a little concern among some delegations like the Poles but it
was not significant. I think most people felt that the U.S. presence in Europe and
Germany’s integration into NATO and the EU really mitigated any German threat to the
continent. A much greater fear of these countries remained Russia. It was not seen as a
democratic country, it still had a lot of military power, and the danger of its resurgence
was perceived as the real threat by the Central and Eastern Europeans.
Q: Did Austria play a special role as the host of the OSCE?
PERINA: The Austrians were good hosts but did not have an exceptional diplomatic role
in this period. What Austria did provide just thanks to its location was the first glimpse of
the West for many East Europeans. In the first few weeks after the borders opened, it was
fascinating to see on weekends these convoys of hundreds of buses bringing Hungarians
and Czechs to Vienna just to stroll for the day. The buses would park in stadiums because
there were so many of them and literally thousands of these people would walk up and
down Mariahilferstrasse and other streets looking at the shops, and I mean just looking
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