Introduction: An Unlikely Pair 🇩🇪🇦🇺
East Germany & Australia both cultivated robust sporting cultures, a love of beer drinking and blue eyed, blonde haired women. History remembers East Germany as a certified sporting juggernaut, achieving the most Olympic gold medals per capita in human history with 153 gold medals for a tiny population of about 16 million. However, this superficial similarity gives way to a profound lesson about the nature of international partnerships.
The Security Guarantee: Ironclad vs. Conditional
East Germany
Its security was underwritten by the Warsaw Pact, featuring NATO Article 5-level defense commitments with neighboring Poland. This was a hard military guarantee.
Australia
Its new security agreement with Indonesia is, by contrast, a consultative pact—a promise to talk in a crisis, not a promise to fight.
The Unraveling: Absorption, Not Merger
The fragility of such alliances is revealed not in their creation, but in their collapse. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, East Germany was not an equal partner in unification. It was annexed by the West. Its political institutions, economy, and identity were systematically dismantled.
The Ally’s Reaction: Celebration, Not Mourning
Crucially, East Germany’s formal ally, Poland (a country much wealthier per capita even back in the 1990s than Indonesia is today), did not lift a finger in protest. Instead, it celebrated the demise of the Warsaw Pact and the fall of its communist neighbor. This demonstrates that pacts built on mere convenience lack the solidarity to survive a true geopolitical shift.
Conclusion: The Question for Australia
History presents a sobering question. If Australia’s strategic environment were to dramatically change, would Indonesia stand as a firm ally, or would it, like Poland, see an opportunity in its partner’s vulnerability? The story of East Germany suggests that not all agreements are created equal, and some promises are easier to break than to keep.
