Two-Plus- Four Treaty,"* has extended its commitment to European integration by taking a leading role in helping the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe on their way toward membership in the European Union and NATO. Unification has also provided Germany with the opportunity to address long outstanding issues in its relations with the Eastern European nations arising from the war. The Federal Republic now enjoys relations with Poland nearly as close and as comprehensive as its ties with France. Substantial progress has likewise been made toward German-Czech reconciliation. More generally, recognition of the change in Germany's international status that came with the end of the Cold War and unification underlies the broad popular support for recent government and Bundestag decisions to have the German military take a more active role in international peacekeeping missions. The government of this more vigorously engaged Germany is scheduled to relocate from Bonn to Berlin in the autumn of 1999. This move - another example illustrating that unification did not occur all in an instant - has spurred much talk about the demise of the old "Bonn Republic" and its replacement by a more assertive "Berlin Republic." President Roman Herzog, for one, has voiced doubts about such arguments. In early September 1998, looking back fifty years to the deliberations that ultimately produced the Federal Republic's constitution, Herzog dismissed the notion of a Bonn Republic and of the imminent arrival of fundamentally new political order. The Federal Republic, the president stressed, was never a purely Rhineland institution: its commitment to democracy was not dependent upon geography. Much has undoubtedly changed since the east's peaceful revolution of 1989-90 and political unification, Herzog acknowledged, and many more changes certainly lie ahead. "But ...
