India, Nov. 9 -- The fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 years ago on Saturday, was one of the best parties I ever went to, and certainly the longest. But when I finally sobered up, it was also quite frightening, because nobody knew what was coming out of the box next. There had been scary moments in Germany during the Cold War, of course, with Soviet troops in the eastern part and troops from practically every Western country in the western part, but a divided Germany had become part of the landscape.
For many people on both sides, in fact, it was a quite satisfactory landscape. As Francois Mauriac once said: "I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them."
For the older generation of Europeans, Germany had always been the problem (two W...