Berlin playground features MOSQUE with minarets and crescent moon

“Why was the reunification of E & W Germany such a hot button priority? It would be like uniting N & S Korea today knowing that North Korea would walk all over the south.”

That’s a ridiculous comparison.

All of Korea could and should easily have become a united republic after initial American tutelage, identically to Japan itself, (but without the recriminations regarding prior actions as an independent state, since Korea had been ruled by Japan.)

During WWII the northern zone of Korea was allocated to the Soviet Union’s temporary control, foolishly in retrospect, prior to American knowledge that atomic weapons would soon force Japan’s immediate surrender. But Soviet forces entered Korea, by the prior treaty with us, only after that surrender.

The point is that Stalin gained access to Korea without having to fight for it or contribute anything to the Korean people, whereas American forces entered southern Korea after hard-fought campaigns in 3 Far Eastern theaters of WWII, and having liberated the Korean people from the rule of their historical overlords, the Japanese.

Korea had been ruled through much of history as a province or colony of either China or Japan. Its various periods of independence were always under rulers of a hereditary or military character, never under republican popular self-government.

Given its geographic location, wedged between China, Japan, and the Russian Pacific coast as it is, Korea was well beyond the boundaries of traditional Western political influence. Its greatest mineral resources, and nearly all its mines and factories were in the north, seized by Stalin, and benefitting only the Communist powers and the puppet ruler in his own image that Stalin placed there.

Yet America was extremely successful in its experiment of giving birth to a republic in the previously poor and crowded south.

Had WWII ended normally, without secret Communist infiltration into Washington, Tokyo, and the Chinese Nationalist government, all of Korea would certainly be a prosperous united republic today. And, if Communist power collapsed in the North today, the South would undoubtedly succeed in achieving the same goal in the future, after an initial period of showing the northerners that everything they have been taught about the South, about America, and about the world in general is a lie.

The German case is completely different.

Germany had spent decades- or centuries-long periods as a united sovereign kingdom or empire, most recently since 1872. When it was not united, it was a patchwork of sovereign states under German rulers.

While Germany never experienced the Renaissance and never joined Western Europe in the sense of political culture, as did its Germanic neighbors Holland and the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland, it did experience both the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution in a big way, and has strong historical economic and scientific ties with Western Europe.

Though German philosophy is extremely backwards and hostile to popular sovereignty (Kant, Hegel, Nietsche, Marx, etc.,) the Germans did have some experience, albeit fleeting and limited, with voting and a parliamentary system. Though of course they did not use the opportunity well, some prior knowledge on the part of the people is extremely useful for establishing a republic.

The experience of West Germany, created by the Western Powers from the ashheap left by Nazi Germany, was Germany’s greatest and most successful experiment in republican government, and did the best of any time in history of pulling Germany into Western Europe culturally.

So Germany could and should have been united under the West German government. And the Soviet Empire, so hostile and dangerous to us, and so obsolete in its intellectual basis, should have been dismantled.

It was Reagan’s responsibility as Commander-in-Chief of the United States’ military to attempt such, if indeed it was possible. His greatness was that he was the only individual who realized it was possible.