OCT-27-1993 10:20

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# Dr. Kissinger's Tribute to Helmut Schmidt

The challenge with which all statesmen must learn to live is the ultimate permanence of their achievements. They serve their societies with the full knowledge that they may have to share the fate of others that had proved transitory. And a leader must conduct himself as if he were making policy of permanent validity. But compared to the full and active lifetime of an individual leader, his time in office is usually much shorter; its seeming transitoriness, therefore, gives rise to the fear of having made no significant difference.

Helmut Schmidt has transcended this dilemma. He had already made a major intellectual contribution to his society before he entered government - in the fields of foreign and finance

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policy - and became a distinguished Defense and, later, Finance Minister. As Chancellor, he managed his country's transition into partnership with the Atlantic democracies while at the same time becoming a seminal contributor to the East-West dialogue.

After leaving office, Helmut succeeded by dint of his extraordinary analytic ability and the force and integrity of his personality to continue making significant contributions to the life of our times.

But those who know Helmut and love him will always be moved even more by his human qualities than by all the others: by the strength of his character, his loyalty, and his great personal warmth. There is literally no political figure in the world whom I trust more on the human level, or whose judgement I find more penetrating.

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Speaking for all his friends, I can say that Helmut has not only made our lives better but that much more meaningful. And we count on him to continue to do so for a long time to come.

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Festschrift for Helmut Schmidt

In the period in which Helmut Schmidt and I each started our political apprenticeship--in the Fifties--the necessity for American leadership was axiomatic. There was an all-encompassing threat: much of Europe was suffering the effects of war and various forms of foreign occupation. Asia was just emerging as a significant factor. And major achievements in constructing the post-World War II international system are to America's credit: the recovery of Japan; the reintegration of defeated enemies into the community of nations; the global nature of the world economy, among others.

America, abandoning isolation, found its dominant position a heady experience. But the world, and with it America, is now in dramatically different circumstances in the post-Cold War period. And America must come to grips with them on the basis of historical experiences which are in fact unique. Populated almost exclusively by immigrants, the United States is the only country that has never experienced a powerful neighbor along its borders, and therefore has never had to face the security issues confronted by less favored nations. The Americans' perception of foreign policy was always one of nearly limitless choice and, above all, of having the ability to participate or to withdraw from international engagements at will. Every American initiative of the postwar period was presented to the American public as having a terminal date, after which America could again withdraw, allowing the postulated underlying harmonious pattern of the world to reassert itself.

Much of America's foreign policy has traditionally been presented in alternately psychiatric and theological terms: either as a means by which relations among nations could be conducted as they might be if they were relations among individuals, or when that did not seem possible, as a crusade to destroy or, even better, to convert antagonists to the American perception of international affairs. In that sense, the Cold War and victory in the Cold War were a culmination of America's perception of the special mission of international affairs.

How many historical examples, if any, can be recalled where a nation's leaders stated goals that, some forty years later, were practically all achieved? That is the position in which America finds itself at the end of the Cold War. But what Americans have not sufficiently understood is that the patterns of the Cold War are no longer applicable to the

world ahead of us. The classic maxim of American foreign
policy--the invocation of an overwhelming crisis transmuted
into large-scale enterprises--does not apply.

There is no historical precedent for the post-Cold War
world. Never before has every part of the world
participated simultaneously in international affairs.
Either they lived in ignorance of each other--in the same
sense that, in the 16th century, China and Europe in effect
lived in different worlds--or they had no significant
capacity to interact with each other. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, world history, indeed, until the middle of the
20th century, was dominated from Europe and then from the
north Atlantic. Today, every part of the world participates
in international affairs. Major powers are emerging in
different regions, and this presents new challenges. How
does one now define a major power under present conditions?
And how do we manage their interaction? For the first time
in history, events can be observed as they occur.
Communications straddle the globe in real time. The world
is linked integrally, not only by communications, but by
economics. A few years ago, the collapse of one of 2,500
hedge funds was believed to have the capacity to undermine
the entire financial system and sparked the intervention of
the Federal Reserve Bank.

This globalization is one of the fundamental challenges
to American leadership. Free-market capitalism remains the
most effective instrument for economic growth and for
raising the standard of living of most people. But just as
the reckless laissez-faire capitalism of the 19th century
spawned Marxism, so the indiscriminate globalism of the
1990s may generate a worldwide assault on the very concept
of free financial markets. Globalism views the entire world
as one market in which the most efficient and competitive
prosper. It accepts--and even welcomes--that the free
market will relentlessly sift the efficient from the
inefficient, even at the cost of periodic economic and
social dislocation.

But the extreme version of globalism neglects the
inevitable mismatch between the world's political and
economic organization. Unlike economics, politics divides
the world into national units. And while political leaders
may accept a certain degree of suffering for the sake of
stabilizing their economies, they cannot survive as
advocates of near-permanent austerity on the basis of
directives imposed from abroad. The temptation to seek to
reverse--or at least to buffer--austerity by political means
becomes overwhelming. Protectionism may well prove

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ineffective in the long term but, for better or worse, political leaders respond to more short-term cycles.

Even well-established free-market democracies do not accept limitless suffering in the name of the market, and have taken measures to provide a social safety net and to curb market excesses by regulation. The international financial system does not as yet have these firebreaks. Nor is there much of a recognition that it needs them. There is no more important task than to relate the economic to the political order and to give globalization a humane dimension.

Paradoxically this occurs while the United States is the only remaining military superpower. But military power by itself represents a simplistic assessment of the emerging international reality. For the issues susceptible to solution by military action are in decline. The kind of power in which the United States excels is less and less relevant to most foreseeable international crises. The current world contains six or seven major global players whose ability to affect nonmilitary decisions is essentially comparable. In such an international order, there are only two roads to stability: one is hegemony based on a country's dominance; the other is equilibrium, which is another way of describing the notorious balance of power.

The trouble is that the American body politic tends to reject both approaches. Hegemony will prove physically draining; the American public seems determined to reject the role of global policeman which hegemony implies, and the course runs counter to the moral convictions of the American people. But balance of power has been historically rejected by the American political and intellectual communities as a source of endless tensions--though at crucial periods, such as in deciding to enter the two world wars to preserve the global balance of power, Americans have been prepared to overcome their prejudice. Still, a call to rely on the national interest is considered by many a revolutionary, if not a reactionary, proposition. And even when an attempt is made to apply the concept, the national interest continues to be defined in sweeping, ideological terms.

But while post-Cold War foreign policy reflects some traditional patterns, there are important differences as well. For one thing, modern economics has changed the nature of incentives. Historically, nations could grow in influence primarily by conquest. In our day, technology permits quantum changes in a society's power by changes entirely within a nation's own territory. No conceivable

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conquest could augment a nation's power like the acquisition of nuclear weapons or the mastering of modern information technology. Thus the paradox: proliferation is a permanent temptation and a permanent danger while, at the same time, the cost of war, at least among major powers, has risen to near prohibitive levels.

Then, too, the elements of national strength are no longer homogeneous. Many economic powerhouses--especially in Asia and the Middle East--are politically fragile. Communications are instantaneous, and economies are global. Every day a trillion dollars moves in world financial markets, only 5 percent of which is generated by commercial transactions. Global well-being is becoming both interconnected and precarious: a bank clerk in Singapore managed to create $27 billion in derivatives in three days and bring down a major international bank. But political loyalties remain imprisoned in the nation state. And with the breakup of old empires, conflicts have even shriveled to the ethnic level where their intensity magnifies almost in proportion as their global relevance is shrinking.

Not just the United States but every major nation finds itself in a transitional stage. The traditional European nation state lacks the scale to deal with the entire spectrum of contemporary problems. Russia is living within borders it has not known since Peter the Great. China is emerging as a world power for the first time in several centuries while its leadership is changing. Japan is reversing a pattern of political withdrawal.

How is American foreign policy to be defined in such a period? Theoretically, the United States could pursue a pure interest policy in the manner of Britain throughout most of the 19th century: a posture of "splendid isolation," maintaining good relations wherever possible but throwing its weight to the side that confers certain advantages at a specific moment (which, in the British case, was generally the weaker side). This would be a latter-day version of the European balance-of-power diplomacy.

There are, however, huge, probably insurmountable, obstacles to such a strategy. The first is that, whereas Britain conducted its policy primarily in Europe, we would have to conduct it globally. Secondly, Britain had a leadership group that had trained itself in the conduct of public policy. America has neither such a leadership group nor any similar tradition of hard-headed, purely interest-oriented policy. Third, when communications are instantaneous, economics global, and politics democratic, it

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is probably not possible to conduct the same kind of cold-
blooded policy in every part of the world simultaneously.
Fourth, international stability is increasingly affected by
splinter groups with no interest in the global equilibrium
at all, usually ethnic groupings which, in fact, are using
the major powers' desire for global order to achieve their
own national objectives.

On the other hand, a nation founded by people who have
traditionally believed in the universal applicability of
their values cannot simply abandon the Wilsonianism that had
dominated 20th century American foreign policy.

Finding our way through this maze would be difficult
enough were Americans at one in assessing the international
situation. We are, however, divided, especially along
generational lines. The generation that won the Cold War
had its seminal experience in the Second World War and its
immediate aftermath. They believed in a constructive
American role and in the beneficent role of American power.
The generation whose seminal experience was the Vietnam War
holds a quite different view. They regard the Vietnam War
not only as a terrible mistake but as an indictment of
American power in general. Just as many who used the
outcome of America's role in World War I as rationale for
the nonintervention policy of the 1920s and 1930s, current
American policy debates--whether in the Balkans or the
Caribbean, in Africa or Asia--can best be understood in the
context of a generation that views the world through a lens
largely provided by a local and unsuccessful conflict.

That difference in perspective is sharpened by one of
the fundamental transformations of human consciousness
through which our period is living: the change of the
process of learning from books to pictures and from reading
to viewing, which roughly marks the borderline between the
generations I have described. To learn from books, one
requires concepts that relate seemingly disparate events to
each other; pictures, on the other hand, teach by
impressions which emphasize the mood of a moment. All this
foreshortens the policy perspective and makes it more
vulnerable to fluctuating sentiments and transitory
occurrences.

A larger vision is especially needed for European-
American relations. An extraordinary phenomenon is
occurring in Europe: the adoption of a common currency by a
group of nations that has not brought about, as yet, the
accompanying institutions by which this common currency is
going to operate; and the concept of a free-standing Central

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Bank not related to any political organization. The common
monetary policy is going to try to bring about coherence in
interest rates, labor mobility, and even our regional
disparities. A European currency will surely come into
being. After that, the difficulties I have described will
either cause it to implode or bring about strengthened
common political institutions.

For anyone following European developments in the
entire post war period, one can only hope that this project
reaches the fruition of its founders envision. And its failure
would create an extraordinary crisis, since it is the only
political project to which any really creative thought is
being given in so many European capitals. But if it
succeeds, the relationship between Europe and the United
States in the political field would become a serious
challenge. The conventional wisdom of the entire post-war
period has been that the two pillars, Europe and the United
States, can only benefit from the strengthening of each
other and that cooperation will emerge automatically from
this accumulation of power-as if transatlantic relations
were a kind of joint stock company in which the various
members vote in proportion to their shares in it. But in the
real world, it is not going to happen this way. In the real
world, if the common currency succeeds, there will be years
during which the inevitable political companion
organizations are elaborated.

When the United States had the dominant role in
security and when there was only one visible international
challenge, it made some sense to try to achieve European
identity by trying to wrest it from the United States. In
the current period, nothing is simpler than to convince
Americans that they have no special interest in Europe. The
tasks which Europe has before it now are so manifold that
they don't have to be granted by the United States-such
issues as the participation of the Central European
countries in the European Union. There is no need for the
United States to take a position or to involve itself.
Whether Europe should follow a multiple geometry or be more
closely integrated, it cannot and should not be affected
significantly by American pronouncements. What we
ultimately need is a dialogue between what has emerged in
Europe and what is beginning to emerge in America similar to
the one that had characterized the post-War period.

I served in government during the tragic period of the
Vietnam War, in which America had engaged itself in a
distant enterprise for what I believe were the noblest
motives. But we did not understand the limitations of our

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reach. We applied our principles to regions we had never studied on the basis of the belief that they had universal applicability. Having thus launched ourselves on the basis of universal principles, we found that universality is a dangerous claim. Those of us who wanted to extricate on the basis of the practicality of the situation were assaulted by others who wanted to turn extrication into a great moral issue on the failings of America.

Now, once again, there are many who believe that all we need to do is to restore the pristine innocence of our early period, when we were protected by two great oceans. But economics was not yet global then, and we could choose our involvements. Therefore, our political parties are now very split. In my day, difficult as it was, there was a coherent body of opinion which transcended parties and usually was able to achieve a great deal of support--whether the administration was Democrat or Republican. Today, every party is split into a radical and an extreme conservative wing. Neither administration nor opposition has found a clear intellectual foothold. Each is looking for some issue to turn foreign policy into an aspect of domestic politics.

What we must do is try to reestablish some national consensus. We must not be embarrassed to ask what our national interest is. Without it, we have no yardsticks. Of course, our national interests included the preservation of not just our well-being, but also of our values. All of life, including foreign policy, involves a balancing of various considerations, and it is important to have some convictions about one's society and its role in the world. The President and the Secretary of State get to deal with the 50.1% against the 49.9% cases, and they resolve them on the basis of assessments that cannot be proven at the time a decision is taken. Therefore statesmanship depends, in an ultimate sense, on moral convictions. A people can proclaim ultimate goals; a statesman, must achieve his goal gradually and in(?) stages. Every step is imperfect in relations to the absolute value; it is history that supplies the absolute. That is the dilemma. And that is what we now face. And therein will reside the ultimate test of leadership.

- Henry A. Kissinger

7

JUL 01 2002

Helmut Schmidt

Berlin

Saturday, June 8, 2002

InterAction Council

A Global Tour d'Horizon

Let me start out by devoting two minutes to a purely artificial, theoretical scenario. Let us imagine that some foreign terrorists abduct two fully occupied wide-body-passenger aircraft and crash them into the banking center in Frankfurt and into the Parliament building in Berlin, thereby killing a thousand people. What in such case would be the psychological and political reaction in the German nation? Or if it happened in Paris and destroyed Tour d'Eiffel - or in London White Hall? Or in Tokyo or in Beijing? Or in Moscow? Or in Cairo or Mecca or Islamabad? Or in Lagos/Nigeria or in Rio de Janeiro? What in such theoretical case would be the reactions in those nations? And what would the respective governments do?

Once we try to imagine the impact of such a colossal crime on any of our own nations and try to imagine the reactions of our own governments, we will probably derive some understanding for the American nation's psychological and domestic political situation, which obviously does at present dominate the American foreign policy.

The strategies of the U.S. are criticized by quite a few (and I for one am among the critics). But among my worries there is also the concern that quite many people (and many Muslims in particular) are criticizing America blindfoldedly but nevertheless harshly. They are thereby contributing to the possibility of a so-called "clash of civilisations".

One cannot categorically exclude the globally dangerous possibility of such general clash, which is as well enhanced by quite a few Westerners and western mass media. One cannot exclude the possibility that such impact might cause a considerable negative change in the global political situation. Obviously all governments concerned are aware of the thinkable eventualities. In so far the global situation already has changed quite a bit.

But the job of a "global tour d'horizon", which the two chairmen of our council have imposed on me, ought not to exclusively concentrate on the consequences of September 11th last year, however grave they may turn out to be. Instead I will try to sketch out some of the other present factors which foreseeably will have a heavy bearing on global developments over the next one or two decades. Of course, I am speaking on an exclusively personal basis and on nobody else's behalf.

1)

At first there is the present population explosion in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which has no precedent in the 19th or any earlier century. One hundred years ago we numbered 1 1/2 billion human beings; we have since quadrupled our numbers up

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to more than 6 billions. And within a few decades we will reach 9 billions. Already today, there is only one quarter of the space left, that had been available per person a hundred years ago. The space per person will shrink further and the growing density of population in those three continents will make the maintenance of social order, justice and peace ever more difficult.

2) Secondly. **Global warming will continue.** The factor role of our burning coal, petrol and gas is indisputable; but as yet it is not quantity-wise calculable. Our globe has seen ice-periods and warm periods since millions of year. We do not as yet have reliable forecasts as to the climatic and physical living conditions in various parts of the globe. But we do know that they will change. We do know f.i. that the level of the oceans will rise and will force millions of humans to move who today live only a few feet above sea levels.

3) Population explosion plus climatic changes, the shrinking of space on the earth, will **cause many more conflicts and wars** - inside of states and between states in Africa and Asia, possibly also in Latin America. They will result in growing numbers of people killed and in growing pressure of migration. We have been witnessing the gruesome examples in Ruanda, in Somalia and in other African countries, in South-West Asia, also in the Middle East. In almost all such conflicts ethnic and religious and also ideological factors do and will play an instigating role.

Most of the attempts to quell these armed conflicts by military intervention from the outside will at best have a temporary effect - like the militarily underpinned western protectorates on the Balkans peninsula - but they cannot of course eliminate the underlying causes.

In regard of the underlying cause of globally too high birth rates, one could theoretically dampen the population explosion. But with the noteworthy exception of China and India, most governments do not pay much attention to that. The same goes for most spiritual leaders of the great religions of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism. The same is true, more or less, of all official development aid (O.D.A.), whether by donor states or by the World Bank.

In regard of the underlying cause of global warming we cannot influence the physics of the earth; but we can diminish our additive human contribution to the foreseen greenhouse effect. Also in this field at present the perspectives are globally not encouraging, due to the recent repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol by Washington.

4) A global tour d'horizon must of course take account of the presently ongoing so-called **economic globalization**. It is in a way a misleading term and concept, because worldwide trade has been a part of human civilization already since centuries. The same goes of course for worldwide traffic - since the Chinese and the Arabs sailed across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and since the Europeans sailed across the Atlantic and into the Pacific.

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What is really new? New is the number of participants. During the last two decades the number of those human beings has almost doubled, whose lives are, directly or indirectly, under strong influence of the global markets – in the main due to the opening of China and of almost 30 states which hitherto had been dominated by the Soviet Union and thereby closed off from the worldwide economy. Altogether a quantum leap.

5)

On top of that we are witnessing at least four major qualitative leaps. Satellites, computers, television and internet have brought about a globalization of instantaneous information (and also some desinformation). Secondly: This has led to the globalization of almost all technologies. Most advanced scientific and technological know-how nowadays is available all over the world. Thirdly: At the same time instantaneous information plus a rather rapid process of financial liberalization in many countries has led to a globalization of financial markets, including very short-term capital.

As a consequence of these three qualitative cataracts, a quickly growing number of private enterprises and corporations in the industries of banking, of information and of manufacturing, but also in commerce have globalized their activities, including the spreading of a rather ruthless and extremely greedy capitalist ideology. This qualitative phenomenon no. 4 is inviting the criticisms of the anti-globalization movement and its transnational non-governmental organisations. The NGO's do have a point here although they are not capable to offer recipes for a cure.

6)

When we ask ourselves: „Who is winning under globalization and who is losing?“, the answer is threefold.

First:

The winners so far are almost all of the highly developed industrialized countries and their populations, certainly including the U.S., Canada, the European Union, Japan and Australia. By the way: The rather high rates of unemployment in Europe and also the growing unemployment in Japan do have nothing to do with globalization, they are in the main home-made.

Second:

Among the developing countries mainly those are the winners, who have been or still are being governed by economically enlightened governments, but governed in a strictly authoritarian way. China is the outstanding example, also a few of the smaller oil-exporting countries. One might as well point to the formerly so-called four little tigers: Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, all of which do not any longer fit into the category of developing countries. They have done well for their masses.

Thirdly:

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On the other hand a great number of developing countries, trying to establish
democracy, are failing socio-economically - and therefore in many cases politically
as well. In my view it is a shameful mistake to urge them to open their borders for the
import of manufactured goods whilst withholding the chances to export their
agricultural products. The U.S., the European Union and as well Japan still today are
very egoistic sinners. They preach free trade but they never so far are obeying their
own sermon, instead they are indulging deeply as ever before in protecting their own
farmers, steel makers and so on. On top of that many developing countries have
been persuaded to open their economies for foreign short-term credits and short-
term money, to liberalize their current account, thereby open their country for all
kinds of speculations from the outside and also getting deeply into foreign
indebtedness.

7)

The South-East Asian credit and currency crisis five years ago should have taught a lesson - also for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Most of their rescue operations - from Indonesia to Mexico, including even Russia! - have to a lesser degree bailed out the recipient developing countries but to a greater degree they have benefitted private western financial institutes, which thereby received the backlog of interests due and of dividends and got most of their money back.

There is a parallel between NATO and the IMF: Since the Soviet threat has
disappeared a decade ago NATO is searching for a new enemy. Likewise the IMF.
Since the Bretton Woods System of fixed parities between currencies was
abandoned three decades ago, the IMF has searched for a new mission, digressing
deeply into the socio-economic policies of sovereign states and as well into the field
of the World Bank.

It seems about time to redefine the tasks of the IMF (and for that purpose it would be
helpful if the 12 states of Euro-land would bundle their shares and their voting rights
in the IMF, because the influence of the largest shareholder hitherto has been far too
big). The enormous current volume of transnational flows of capital and of money,
the wave of psychotic speculationism, the spreading of the ridiculous ideology of
"shareholder value" plus the manifold fraudulent manipulations to boost share prices,
also the mergermania in the fields of private financial institutes, all that calls for
better surveillance and regulation.

It might be a good idea to give the IMF the major mission to develop a new concept for fair order and stability in the globalized financial markets. Almost all of our states and economies do need better and internationally compatible standards for financial systems, for regulations and surveillance, and compatible codes for banks, fonds, insurances etc. The IMF ought not to be regarded as an ever ready lender of last resort all over the globe. Instead its major role should be in monitoring, in providing transparency and in stabilizing the globalized financial markets. It is my impression that the present management of the IMF is indeed moving in that direction.

8)

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Before I leave the financial field I do have to mention the fact that the two largest economies are not in good financial shape. The U.S. are sucking in foreign capital in the order of about 400 to 500 billion Dollars every year; that is the net amount by which capital imports overshoot American capital exports. Or in other words: The annual deficit in the American current account steadily increases the foreign indebtedness of the American economy. Or in yet other words: In the order of 400 to 500 billion Dollars annually the impressive growth rates of the American economy are financed by foreigners; this capital, owned by foreigners, is not available for their domestic economy. At present this situation is a great advantage for America; but it implies some dangers, f.i. a threat to future Dollar exchange rates and thereby to stable global currency relations and to the stability of all globalized financial markets.

The case of Japan is quite different. Japan is the greatest net exporter of capital. But the Japanese banking system is in a shaky situation. And the domestic debt of the government has reached such high a volume that – if Japan was a European country – Japan could not be admitted to participation in the common European currency.

In about three decades' time China will have reached a share in global trade that meets the order of magnitude of the share of foreign trade of the European Union or of the USA. By that time we will have three world currencies: The American Dollar, the Euro and the Chinese Yuan. There might then evolve sort of an triangular equilibrium. But for the time being the looming volatility of the Dollar does require attention. Both the American and the Japanese governments are not only burdened with financial responsibility vis-à-vis their own nation and economy but as well vis-à-vis the global economy.

9)

Regarding the World Bank and official development aid (O.D.A.) as a whole, financial transfers alone will never overcome poverty and misery in great parts of Africa, also in parts of Latin America and Asia, except under two conditions: Only if the governments make planned parenthood practicable – by enhancing the status of women and the education of girls, by making condoms and the pill available and so forth. Otherwise the growth of population in many places is outpacing the growth of the gross economic product. Particularly the standard of living of the masses will not essentially be improved in such areas. Most politicians in developing countries and also the spiritual leaders of the world's religions still do refuse to understand and accept that inevitability.

The other condition is the reduction of military expenditure. In many poor developing countries, the military's share of GNP is six, seven or even ten times greater than the total amount of O.D.A., that the country does receive. And in quite a few cases parts of the received development aid are only a disguise for the financing of the purchase of weapons from the donor country. There still is a lot of idealism on the side of many donor countries but also a lot of interference and selfish meddling.

There is a lot of energy on the side of leaders and politicians in the developing world. For them to overcome mass poverty the need for sound economic and social

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concepts and activities is much more urgent than the effort to create a liberal
democracy.

The recently defined goal of the U.N., within the next 12 years to cut the percentage of mankind which lives in absolute poverty down to one half appears to me as a wishful declamation.

10)

All over the globe, including the developing countries, the emphasis of most
governments on strong military capabilities is still uninterrupted, despite the end of
the cold war. Arms trade and traffic, the proliferation of conventional means of
warfare, particularly of small firearms all over the globe, is going on as ever before. It
is today easier than ever for organized terrorism and for organized crime to get hold
of almost any kind of weapons.

It is true that we have seen reductions of forces and weapons in most parts of
Europe and in Russia – in most cases to the dismay of the respective military and of
their defense ministers. It is also true that a fortnight ago, at long last, Presidents
Bush and Putin have to some degree lived up to their obligations under the Non-
Proliferation-Treaty, which so far and since three decades their predecessors had
neglected, by agreeing to dismantle (not to destroy!) several thousands of their
superfluous nuclear weapons. This agreement has more of a psychological than of
factual importance.

But then the acute conflict in **Cashmere** reminds us of the fact that both India and Pakistan do possess rockets with nuclear warheads. One can only hope that outside mediation – possibly by Moscow and Beijing, despite their failure a few days ago, or by Washington – will help to dampen the danger. And the fear!

The tensions across the **Taiwan-Strait** recently appear to have mellowed somewhat, due to prudence on either side. The **East-Timor** conflict appears to be solved for the time being. The danger of **North Korea** provoking a war does appear to me to have been overemphasized by **Washington**. Pyongyang does make threatening gestures from time to time, but quite obviously this utterly poor country has nothing to gain by war; the assistance by the Soviet Union has ended and the assistance by China is not much more than nominal.

By the way: Only few people outside the U.S. do accept the wisdom of the phrase of an „axis of evil", reaching from North Korea via Iran to Iraq. The three of them have little in common and have almost no connection between them.

11)

Apart from Cashmere the greatest dangers of war appear presently in the <u>Middle East</u>. The conflict between Israel and her immediate neighbours in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, with terrorist activities on all sides, has dangerously escalated in recent months. It can eventually burst into open warfare. Already since years is it fuelling anger and emotions in Israel and in many Arab countries, particularly among the younger generations. They understandably resent the

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Israeli forces of occupation on the Westbank and in Gaza. And quite a few want to totally eliminate the state of Israel.

Of course, Israel does rely on the backing of the U.S. The U.S. has friendly relations with Israel and as well with Saudi Arabia and Egypt and some other Arab states. Therefore and also due to the American military and technological and financial leverage Washington is in a unique position to mediate. But since decades American policies in the Middle East are not very consistent, nor are they rigorous. The repetition of public threats against Iraq in the American media and the quest for a removal of Saddam by military force is not helpful either – except for the motivation of Islamist extremists and terrorists.

12)

It is noteworthy that the former war against Iraq, called Desert Storm, had been triggered by Saddam's attempt to conquer a neighbouring sovereign state, and that the war was authorized by a valid decision of the UN Security Council. Also the war in Afghanistan against El Qaida and their wilful Taliban-hosts is based on a Security Council decision.

But on the other hand the military intervention in Kosovo by NATO and the U.S.A. and the bombing of Belgrade was a clear violation of the UN's Charter. Such violation should not be repeated. The UN Charter permits the use of military force against another state in case of self-defense against attack – and otherwise only and exclusively in case of a valid decision by the Security Council.

After all it is the UN and its charter on which the rule of law in interstate conflicts is based – the world has no other globally binding constitution. Kosovo/Serbia was a dangereous precedent; it must never be repeated.

13)

Under this aspect the term „war against terrorism" can be misinterpreted. We will probably come back to that, when we tomorrow will discuss the subject of humanitarian interventions and international law.

Murder and other violent acts of terrorism for political purposes have been with us since millenniums. Terrorism has been carried out by legitimate princes or by their opponents, by tyrants and dictators, by guerillas and partisans, also by commanders of regular troops, by occupational forces as well as by resistance fighters against them, by revolutionaries and by suppressed minorities. Presently we are witness to several transnational terrorist activities across borders of sovereign states, from Manhattan and Washington D.C. to the Middle East, from the Basque region in Spain to Ireland, also in India, in some African regions and as well in Chechnya or on the Balkans peninsula. We Germans had to endure organized murderous terrorism, transnationally assisted, from the early seventies onwards, over almost two decades.

Most of all the various national, transnational and international terrorist activities are differing in their psychological and political origins. They differ in their motivations,

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but as well in their organization and mode of operation. One therefore needs quite
different methods and means to fight terrorists, dependent on the specific
circumstances in each case. One can fight El Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan by
military operations. But if for instance one would detect clandestine El Qaida-pockets
inside other states, the governments of which are not successful in eliminating it, you
will be utterly reluctant to interfere from the outside with military means or by
warfare. One as well cannot fight the IRA in London by military warfare against
Northern Ireland. One could not fight the RAF in Germany by warfare against a
country from whose soil they have been assisted.

In other words: Because there is no global conformity or homogeneity of terrorism, to
defeat terrorism no single general strategy can suffice. There is in particular no
general military strategy thinkable, that can hope to defeat all kinds of transnational
terrorism.

In the case of El Qaida the catchphrase „war against terrorism“ was to be
understood as an expression of the decisive will of the American government and
nation to use all of its capabilities and power in order to overcome the threat. It was
good that many leaders and the media in many other countries did express their
solidarity with America and in various ways are cooperating with Washington
(including NATO, when it declared the state of commitment to assist their alliance
partner U.S.A). But most of the members of this so-called anti-terrorist-coalition do
not have in mind to participate in military warfare.

I do know from my own experience that a government, which has to fight murderous
terrorists, must not lay open its plans, its preparations and all of its current activities,
because such openness would offer better calculability to the terrorists and thereby
would be self-defeating. But on the other hand one has to establish a high degree of
confidence between oneself and those whose active cooperation is indispensable.
Washington did so far not call up NATO, maybe to the dismay of NATO's general
secretary and of some military and diplomatic officers. I happen to think that this
American restraint was welcome! Because the text of NATO's underlying North
Atlantic Treaty does not extend the signatories' obligations into Central Asia.

Having said that I would add: The political and administrative cooperation of the
world powers China and Russia, of almost all the European states, of many states in
Asia and in the Middle East with America and its fight against El Qaida is in the
world's interest. But this so-called anti-terrorist-coalition will not be maintained for
ever; it will dwindle the earlier the longer America's further plans remain unclear. To
say that as an outsider is not too difficult for myself. But I understand quite well that
Washington's situation is indeed very difficult. And I remind this audience of my
hypothetical question in the beginning: What would our governments do in case that
the attack had not happened in Manhattan and Washington but instead in our own
capital? Would our leaders already have arrived on a grand strategy against this
monstrous case of terrorism? And how would they be able to succeed?

14)

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A few weeks ago I have once again visited the U.S.A., east coast and west coast. Most of my partners in conversation said: „September 11th has changed the world.“ I don't think this to be correct, but obviously has it deeply changed the perspectives under which the Americans do perceive the world outside. They had been told and did believe their country to be **the one and only superpower**, but despite all their power for the first time in their national history had they to suffer from a violent attack on their own soil.

One cannot disregard the fact that the notion of being the singular superpower did play a political role in America already earlier on, already since quite some time. Some have even talked of the one and „indispensable superpower“, which seems to offer unique opportunities and easily facilitates unilateralism. The tendency for unilateralism existed already before the present administration. President George W. Bush has reinforced the impression that America will not care too much about the U.N. or other institutions of global governance or about the obligations under treaties which the U.S. has ratified or about documents which do bear the American signature.

During the Clinton administration the term „rogue states“ had become fashionable. Already then did a new defense agreement with Japan and in 1998 the solemn declaration of a „New NATO“ convey the impression that people in Washington were eager to create instruments for policiing the globe. At that time one had to consider the possibilities of a new cold war, this time against China, and as well of a geographic extension of the military purpose of the formerly purely defensive Atlantic Alliance.

The recent visits which the American president has paid to various European capitals including Moscow were intended to assuage other nations' concerns, all of Bush's speeches were well done and also well received. But speeches are one thing, the reality today is: America is tending towards taking foreign political and strategic decisions unilaterally.

History tells us that unilateralism of a great power is by no means a new phenomenon. It also is not new in America; the isolationist Monroe Doctrine, which dominated America's foreign policy during the XIX. century, has in a way been a forerunner. The isolationist desire not be bothered by other states and by events outside one's borders is still strong today, in many quarters of America, also in the Congress. After World War I the nation rejected the League of Nations which had been created in the main by Wilson, who believed in an attitude of liberal and solicitous internationalism. By contrast this internationalism did prevail after the end of World War II. We do thankfully remember the creation of the U.N., the IMF, World Bank, development aid, the Marshall Plan etc., altogether an all embracing, well-meaning and relatively unselfish effort, aiming at a multilateral order of the world.

All these three basic trends, isolationism, internationalism and unilateralism have always co-existed in America, sometimes one of them, at other times another one did prevail. Most people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe would of course prefer American internationalism or multilateralism. They will try to influence America

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in that direction. My guess is that we will have to live with a considerable degree of American unilateralism for quite a while. But of course: Such a situation must not entice other nations to voluntarily instrumentalize themselves.

15)

If one looks at the recent engagement between the U.S.A. and NATO on the one hand and Russia on the other it could appear as if America thereby was extending its strategic influence into the East. Together with new American military presence in some Central Asian states it could irritate the Chinese leadership. Therefore Putin will have to pay cautious and friendly attention to his Chinese neighbours. My impression is that Moscow understands its recent agreements as a medium-term move to gain some strategic alleviation and thereby increase the room for domestic changes. If that assumption is correct neither China nor India or Pakistan do need to worry.

Over the longer run, I still do expect three world powers: besides the U.S.A. also China and Russia. Perhaps in approaching the middle of this century as well India as no. 4 and possibly also Brazil. It is also thinkable that the European Union by that time has emerged as an operational entity and thereby as a world power.

As regards China, the economic and technological progress over the last twenty years is almost unbelievable. I have first been to China at the time of the horrible cultural revolution and if I compare my impressions in the middle 70's with what I see today, then the achievements appear as almost incredible. If we consider the dignified age of the Chinese civilization, about four millenniums of history, and as well China's weakness and humiliations in the XIX. century and until the middle of the XX. century, then the sudden burst of vitality is phenomenal. Of course China does still have enormous problems inside her borders. The government will have to concentrate on them - which fact in turn makes any kind of Chinese aggression across her borders rather unlikely. (I would like to insert one little side remark here. I think any Japanese fear of China has little rational legitimation. Japanese relations with China - and as well with Korea and other Asian nations - do in my view depend in the main on Japan herself and on how the nation lives up to a realistic evaluation of the imperialist part of Japan's recent history.)

As regards Russia, her domestic economic and social problems, inherited structural, constitutional and cultural problems, are not smaller than those of China. But the enormous territory will, differing from China or India and others, prevent any overpopulation. The modernization of Russia may take one or more generations. It seems though that in recent years there is more progress under way than ever during former decades. Today Russia's importance to the world is not so much a consequence of its military and spacefare and nuclear capabilities but more so of its long borders in Europe and in Asia, its vast territory - 10 or 11 time-zones - and of course the hitherto unexploited riches of minerals and fossile fuel in Siberia.

16)

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I will at the end of this very personal presentation offer a few thoughts on the peaceful co-existence on our globe between different religions, different civilizations and different ideologies.

Fifteen years ago, upon the initiative of our founder, my friend Takeo Fukuda, a group of high-ranking spiritual leaders from all the major religions of the world and a group of elderly politicians of the InterAction Council met in a place called Civittà Cattolica in Italy. We were able to find consensus on quite a few basic insights, moral, political and socio-economic truths, as well as on some basic recommendations. From then on we have jointly been working together, on our way resulting ten years later in a draft for a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. I very clearly remember the thoughtful contributions by our deceased Canadian friend Pierre Trudeau and also by our American special guest Flora Lewis who passed away last Sunday. We have with great interest watched the efforts of Hans Küng and others in persuading personalities of all religions to establish a common or global code of ethics. One has to admit that all such efforts have not as yet reached the agenda of the actual political leaders.

When we were younger, some of us may have read Arnold Toynbee (or even Oswald Spengler's „Decline of the West“); rather recently many of us will have noticed Samuel Huntington's thesis on the „Clash of Civilizations“. But it seems to be a fact that only very, very few leaders do know about a religion other than his own and about other religiously moulded cultures or civilizations. This is at least true for Christians. I do not know about relations and tensions between Buddhism and Confucianism, or between Hinduism and Islam. But I do have understood that *there does exist a considerable, dangerous gap of knowledge and of understanding between Islam and the West as a whole* (whether western Christians or just nominal Christians or Jews or non-believers).

Given this western lack of knowledge in regard of the various Islamic civilizations and their different histories it is easy to mistake the activities of some islamistic extremists to be typical for the world religion of Islam. At least some important facts ought to be understood. Let me mention three facts:

First: The Quran and Islamic traditions do not distinguish between religious authority and political authority. The same is true of the Thora or the Old Testament, but in the course of more than a milliennium Christians and also Jews have come to accept a rather clear divide between the realm of the church or of the synagogue and on the other hand the realm of the political authority, be it formerly the hereditary emperor or king and nowadays the elected government. By contrast in many Islamic countries such divide is not established as yet; Iran is the outstanding example.

Second: Who is to blame in countries that do owe their borders only to the chances of western colonial conquest and do owe their existence as a state not to a long history of evolution but only to the fact that the colonial rule, two or three generations ago, was either voluntarily abandoned or – in most cases – was forced to leave by uprisings. That goes for Indonesia, for India or Pakistan, for Bangladesh, and for most states with Islamic majorities or considerable Islamic minorities. Never before

12

1945 existed for instance a Libyan or a Pakistani or an Indonesian nation (the same
by the way is true for almost all African states of today).

Thirdly: In many states of Arab islamic populations there does exist an Arab identity
but hardly a national one. There are great distinctions between an islamic state of
considerable historical legitimacy (like f.i. Iran) and on the other hand a state which
is the artificial creation of the victorious European powers who after World War I
divided the Ottoman empire between themselves - Iraq is one of those.

At present more than one billion Muslims are about one fifth or one sixth of mankind. They live in very different states and in areas that stretch from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific to the coasts of the Atlantic. It seems very unwise to me to urge all of them likewise to adopt western political and constitutional convictions and economic and social ideologies. After all the Quran, like the Bible, has in the main revealed and preached commandments and duties, but not basic rights of the individual.

The first democracy in Athens at the time of Perikles was based on slavery. Two thousand years later, the era of enlightenment led to the introduction of democracy, so in England and France, in the U.S.A. and in other western countries. But to abandon slavery in most western colonies did take the West even some more time! (For Thomas Jefferson f.i. slavery was obviously quite acceptable.) Given this western history it seems to me that the legitimation of the West to teach other civilizations and to push and thrust and force western basic values upon them is somewhat limited.

17)

My conclusion is this: Whilst the global shrinking of space per capita inevitably will go on, whilst the present globalization of information, knowledge and technology will go on, we have to expect growing frictions and growing interdependance almost all over the globe.

Growing interdependance means a growing potential for conflict. But it also means a
growing necessity for compromise. I do believe that the conscientious will for
compromise and for tolerance becomes much more decisive in the future. That
means: Nobody is entitled to exclusively pursue his or her rights, claims or interests
- anybody does as well have duties and responsibilities vis-à-vis others.

No leadership is legitimate without accountability. Whether one is a leader in a
globally operating bank or in an electronic or television network, whether he is
spiritually leading masses of religious believers or politically leading the government
of a sovereign state: In all cases one's responsibility reaches further out than just the
realm of one's corporation and its shareholders or one's church and its believers or
one's state and its electorate.

Helmut Schmidt

Association Jean Monnet
Houjarray

6. Juli 2002

Nachdem wir bisher so viele wichtige Fragen der EU im Detail erörtert haben, möchte ich einige Worte unter dem historischen und dem strategischen Aspekt sagen. Der Mangel an strategischer Erkenntnis und an strategischem Instinkt ist ja einer der mehreren Gründe dafür, daß die gemeinsame deutsch-französische Führung im Prozeß der europäischen Integration seit zwölf Jahren versiegt ist.

Als erstmalig 1946 Winston Churchill in Zürich von den „Vereinigten Staaten von Europa“ gesprochen hat (zu denen er übrigens England keineswegs einbezog) und als er an seine französischen Kriegskameraden appellierte, oder als in jenen Jahren unmittelbar nach dem Kriege Jean Monnet den Schuman-Plan konzipierte, der dann 1950 verkündet wurde, damals waren **zwei strategische Motive ausschlaggebend**: zum einen die Schaffung eines Bollwerkes gegen den drohenden expansionistischen Imperialismus der Sowjetunion, zum anderen die rechtzeitige Einbindung Deutschlands, von dem man eine ökonomische und politische Wiederherstellung erwarten mußte – damals Westdeutschland, einige 40 Millionen Menschen, die in einen größeren europäischen Zusammenhang eingebunden werden sollten, um eine Fortsetzung jener vielen deutsch-französischen Kriege auszuschließen. Endlich sollte jene seit dem Dreißigjährigen Kriege andauernde Kette der Tragödien abgeschlossen werden, die von Louis XIV und Napoleon über Bismarck und Wilhelm II bis zu Hitler drei Jahrhunderte überspannt hatte.

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Mit dem Zusammenbruch der weit über die eigenen Staatsgrenzen hinausreichenden Sowjet-Macht und dem Ende des kalten Krieges ist das erstgenannte strategische Motiv obsolet geworden, ebenso wie die raison d'être für die Nato. Der Wegfall dieses strategischen Prinzips ist *eine* der Ursachen für den Verfall der deutsch-französischen Entente.

Aber das zweitgenannte strategische Motiv der Einbindung Deutschlands hat infolge der Wiedervereinigung der beiden vorläufigen deutschen Nachkriegsstaaten an Bedeutung noch zugenommen – zumal, nachdem die Vertreibungen von Deutschen aus dem Osten Mitteleuropas heute zu einer niemals vorher gekannten Bevölkerungszahl Deutschlands geführt haben. Nach meiner festen Überzeugung liegt die Einbindung dieses großen Deutschland nicht nur im vitalen Interesse Frankreichs, sondern auch Polens, Hollands usw. – vor allem liegt sie auch im vitalen deutschen Interesse.

Naturgemäß konnte eine auf Kohle und Stahl beschränkte Integration auf die Dauer für die strategischen Zielsetzungen keineswegs ausreichen. Deshalb begann alsbald – unter dem überragenden Einfluß der konzeptionellen Kraft Jean Monnets – der Ausbau in Richtung auf eine Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft und auf eine Verteidigungsgemeinschaft. Zwar ist die letztere schon 1954 mit dem Plan Pleven gescheitert, sie wurde durch die Aufnahme Westdeutschlands in die Nato ersetzt. Aber die Idee der Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft und eines gemeinsamen Marktes hat sich in Messina in Gestalt der Römischen Verträge 1958 durchgesetzt.

Das Konzept eines die Produkte und die Dienstleistungen aller Wirtschaftszweige umfassenden Marktes – ohne Zölle und ohne

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Grenzen – erwies sich schnell als überaus erfolgreich. Dieser Erfolg wurde zugleich zum Magneten für weitere Staaten. Zwei Jahrzehnte nach dem Schuman-Plan trat England der EWG bei, wahrscheinlich überwiegend wegen der Besorgnis, ansonsten den eigenen Einfluß auf die Gestaltung Europas zu verlieren. Aber für Dänemark und Irland, ebenso dann in den 80er Jahren für Spanien, Portugal und Griechenland, war ausschlaggebend das strategische Motiv des ökonomischen Vorteils. Dieses neue strategische Motiv hat dann in den 90er Jahren zusätzlich den Beitritt Schwedens, Finnlands und Österreichs ausgelöst; es wird im ersten Jahrzehnt des XXI. Jahrhunderts zum Beitritt einer Reihe von Staaten im Osten Europas führen.

Fast alle der heutigen 15 Mitglieds-Nationen blicken auf viele Jahrhunderte nationaler Identität zurück, in Frankreich oder Italien, in Dänemark oder Polen oder Deutschland auf ein volles Jahrtausend oder noch länger. Zwölf nationale Sprachen und nationale kulturelle Eigenarten, vielfältig verschiedenes und auch gegenläufiges nationales Geschichtsbewußtsein haben fast überall zu innenpolitischen Widerständen gegen Souveränitätsverzichte zugunsten der EG und der Union geführt, sie haben vielerlei Krisen im Integrationsprozeß ausgelöst. Daß die Krisen immer wieder überwunden werden konnten, beruht auf der Einsicht der leitenden Politiker, die in jedem Falle letztlich begriffen haben, daß die Befolgung der strategischen Prinzipien im Interesse ihres eigenen Staates und seiner Bürger und Wähler schwerer wiegt als die meisten der jeweiligen taktischen oder opportunistischen Erwägungen, schwerer auch als manches Opfer, das man zu ertragen hatte.

Nun ist im Laufe der allerletzten Jahre ein weiteres strategisches Interesse zunehmend ins Bewußtsein getreten. Zunehmend wird verstanden, daß wahrscheinlich keiner der europäischen

5

gerichtete Wanderungsdruck erheblich verstärken. Nur eine gemeinsame Abwehr wird unerwünschte Zuwanderungen begrenzen können.

4. Die Globalisierung der Finanzmärkte ist nicht mehr umkehrbar. Habgier und Spekulationismus global agierender privater Finanzinstitute, weltweit unzureichend reguliert und beaufsichtigt, unterlaufen und konterkarieren die Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik unserer Regierungen. Der gemeinsame Euro und die Europäische Zentralbank sind ein wichtiges erstes Bollwerk dagegen; jedoch braucht die EU dringend eine gemeinsame Finanzpolitik nach außen (notabene so auch im IMF und in der Weltbank.).

5. Angesichts moderner Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten ist eine Globalisierung fast aller Technologien nicht aufzuhalten. Eine Proliferation verschiedenster neuartiger Waffen und Massenvernichtungsmittel steht vor der Tür. Vor allem werden aber in wenigen Jahren der hohe Lebensstandard und die Arbeitsplätze der Europäer gefährdet. Gegenwärtig und auf absehbare Zukunft sind die Amerikaner die herausragenden Gewinner des technologischen Wettlaufes. Europa hat deshalb einen wesentlichen Ausbau seiner Forschungsanstrengungen nötig.

6. Satelliten, Internet und Fernsehen werden zunehmend von privaten, weltweit agierenden Konzernen beherrscht. Sie könnten zukünftig alle Informationen manipulieren, sie könnten Desinformation en masse betreiben und der öffentlichen

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Meinung in unseren Staaten unerwünschte Ideologien infiltrieren; sie könnten unsere geschichtlich gewachsenen Kulturen untergraben.

7.

Keiner der europäischen Staaten allein ist schon seit langem mehr in der Lage, grenzüberschreitende Seuchen wie z.B. Aids zu besiegen. Ein Gleiches gilt für transnational und interkontinental organisierten Drogenhandel, für transnational organisierten Terrorismus verschiedenster Spielarten, für transnational organisierte Kriminalität, für Waffenhandel etc.

Keine der soeben aufgezählten Gefährdungen stellt im Kern eine militärische Bedrohung dar. Auch ist Europa auf absehbare Zeit nicht militärisch von außen bedroht. Deshalb hat - entgegen dem Druck aus Washington - eine generelle Verstärkung unserer Verteidigungsanstrengungen keineswegs eine Priorität. Vielmehr handelt es sich um ökonomische und politische, auch um ideologische Gefahren. Sie bedürfen gemeinsamer politischer Abwehr.

Dazu gehört auch eine gemeinsame bewußte Anstrengung, uns nicht in eine Konfrontation mit dem Islam hineinmanövrieren zu lassen. Der Islam umfaßt mindestens ein Sechstel der Weltbevölkerung, etwa 200 Millionen Muslime leben in geographischer Nähe zu Europa, in der Türkei, im Nahen und Mittleren Osten, in Ägypten, in Tunis, Algier, Marokko und weiterhin in Afrika. Wir Europäer haben ein gemeinsames Interesse daran zu vermeiden, daß es zu einem „clash of civilizations" mit dem Islam kommt. Gott sei Dank verstehen manche Europäer etwas mehr von islamischen Kulturen als die allermeisten Nordamerikaner.

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Seit Ronald Reagan, seit Clinton und seit dem Amtsantritt von George W. Bush hat sich der amerikanische Führungsanspruch innerhalb des westlichen Bündnisses immer stärker zu der amerikanischen Selbsteinschätzung entwickelt, die USA als einzige globale Supermacht brauchten den Rat ihrer europäischen Verbündeten nicht länger; sie bräuchten auch nicht allzu viel Rücksicht auf die Interessen anderer Nationen zu nehmen.

In den zwei Jahrhunderten bisheriger US-amerikanischer Außenpolitik haben immer drei Grundtendenzen nebeneinander existiert:

a) Isolationismus à la Monroe-Doktrin (diese Doktrin kann man auch als eine frühe Spielart von Unilateralismus ansehen);

b) Missionarischer Internationalismus à la Woodrow Wilson oder George Marshall und Dean Acheson oder à la Jimmy Carter (man kann hier auch das Wort Multilateralismus gebrauchen);

c) Unilateralismus à la Theodore Roosevelt oder heute à la George W. Bush.

Wie wir aus der Geschichte wissen, hat zeitweilig die eine, zeitweilig die andere Grundtendenz die Oberhand gehabt – heute also der Unilateralismus Meine Vermutung ist: Der gegenwärtige Unilateralismus in Washington wird mindestens zwei Jahrzehnte andauern. Wir Europäer werden das zu ertragen haben.

Möglicherweise wird später China zu einem äquivalenten Gegengewicht werden – eventuell sogar dann auch die EU.

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Das heißt aber nicht, daß wir uns inzwischen zu Instrumenten
amerikanischer Weltpolitik oder Weltpolizei machen lassen müssen.
Ein zweiter Krieg gegen den Irak könnte hier zur Wasserscheide
werden.

Es war selbstverständlich und richtig, daß die europäischen Nationen
und ihre Regierungen sich nach dem 11. September solidarisch an
die Seite der USA gestellt haben. Das gilt auch für den Kampf gegen
El Qaida in Afghanistan. Es gilt jedoch nicht für die unsinnige Formel
von der „axis of evil", noch weniger gilt es für die seit Jahrzehnten
inkonsistente und unklare amerikanische Politik im Mittleren Osten.
Tatsächlich haben die USA wegen ihrer überragenden militärischen,
technologischen und finanziellen Hebel eine einzigartige, eine
singuläre Position, im Mittleren Osten für Frieden zu sorgen. Dazu
gehören auch die guten amerikanischen Beziehungen zu Israel, zu
Saudi-Arabien, Ägypten und weiteren arabischen Staaten. Daß
Amerika aus vorwiegend innen- und wahlpolitischen Gründen von
diesen Möglichkeiten keinen Gebrauch macht, können wir Europäer
kaum ändern – selbst dann nicht, wenn die EU tatsächlich eine
gemeinsame Außenpolitik hätte.

Dagegen sind die mehreren Besuche europäischer Minister in
Jerusalem und in Ramallah nur hilflose Gesten ohne Bedeutung – sie
dienen zum Teil auch nur der jeweiligen innenpolitischen
Opportunität, ziemlich würdelos.

Schon die vor vier Jahren unter amerikanischer Initiative ausgerufene
„neue Nato“ ließ auf seiten der europäischen Teilnehmer wenig
Würde erkennen. Denn gegen welchen Feind sollte sich die „neue
Nato“ eigentlich richten? Etwa gegen die sogenannten „rogue
states“? Wenn neuerdings in Washington die Rede ist von der

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Einführung einer neuen Strategie des präventiven Erstschlages mit nuklearen Waffen, dann kann sich aus solcher kolossalen Revolution der seit Jahrzehnten einvernehmlich verfolgten Nuklear-Strategie eine ernste Krise ergeben. Jedenfalls muß man davon ausgehen, daß die alleinige Supermachtstellung und der Unilateralismus der USA zwei Jahrzehnte oder auch länger dauern kann. Wir Europäer müssen uns damit abfinden. Das sollte aber keineswegs bedeuten, daß wir uns zu Instrumenten der amerikanischen Weltpolitik und Weltpolizei machen lassen.

Schon seit Mitte der 90er Jahre reden unsere Regierungschefs und ihre Minister zwar von einer „gemeinsamen Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik“ der EU, aber tatsächlich ist sie nicht vorhanden – sie wird auch noch in Jahrzehnten bloß punktuell und in einzelnen Fällen erreicht werden. Statt dessen haben Jacques Chirac und Jospin, Blair, Schröder und Fischer, Prodi usw. uns in den letzten beiden Jahren eine Reihe fulminanter Reden über ihre Vorstellung von der „Finalität“ der EU gehalten. Tatsächlich ist aber seit Maastricht 1992 eine Stillstandskrise der EU eingetreten. Seitdem haben weder die Regierungschefs noch ihre Diplomaten und Bürokraten, weder das Europäische Parlament noch die Kommission etwas Wesentliches zustande gebracht. Man hat großzügig zwölf weitere Staaten und außerdem die Türkei zum Beitritt eingeladen, aber man hat versäumt, die Institutionen und die Verfahren der EU, die schon heute bei 15 Mitgliedsstaaten nur noch unzureichend funktionieren, auf einen Verbund von 27 Staaten umzubauen. Man hat auch die finanziellen Anpassungsentscheidungen bisher nicht zustande gebracht.

Weil aber das Jahr 2004 schon ganz nahe gerückt ist, wurde in letzter Minute ein Konvent erfunden. Er soll mit über einhundert Mitgliedern binnen zweier Jahre die Aufgaben lösen, die 15 Regierungschefs über

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ein Jahrzehnt lang nicht lösen konnten. Ich beneide meinen Freund Giscard nicht um seine Aufgabe – aber immerhin bringt er mehr Sachkenntnis und europäische Erfahrung mit als die meisten der heutigen Regierungschefs.

Für die Arbeit des Konvents will ich nur einen einzigen Gedanken aussprechen: Für die Zukunft der EU ist entscheidend wichtig, daß das Ergebnis des Konvents, der neue Grundlagenvertrag, ausreichend Bewegungsspielraum für zukünftige Entwicklungen läßt. Er muß insbesondere Raum lassen für eine engere Zusammenarbeit zwischen einigen der Mitgliedsstaaten, so wie ihn die bisherigen Verträge als Möglichkeit der „verstärkten Zusammenarbeit“ schon enthalten haben. (Nicht jedes Mitglied konnte oder mußte Schengen oder dem Euro beitreten.)

Oder, um es im Klartext zu sagen: Der neue Grundlagenvertrag darf die Möglichkeit der Bildung eines inneren Kerns der EU nicht verbauen. Ich vermute, daß sich ein innerer Kern, eine verstärkte Zusammenarbeit zunächst aus den sechs Gründerstaaten der Kohle- und Stahl-Gemeinschaft bilden wird.

Damit komme ich am Schluß auf die gemeinsame Rolle Frankreichs und Deutschlands. Vom Frühjahr 1974 bis in den Sommer 1989 ist das enge Einvernehmen zwischen Paris und Bonn das Rückgrat und zugleich der Motor des Fortschritts der EU gewesen. Nach der Krise des Winters 89/90 kam als letzter großer Erfolg noch 1992 die Einigung über den Euro zustande. Danach aber trat diplomatisch-geschäftige Routine an die Stelle der Europa vorantreibenden Zusammenarbeit. Die heutige Stillstandskrise ist wesentlich dem Einschlafen der engen Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Regierungen Frankreichs und Deutschlands geschuldet. Zwar hatten einige Regierungen anderer Mitgliedsstaaten in den 70er und 80er Jahren

11

des öfteren an der gemeinsamen Führungsleistung Anstoß genommen und Kritik geübt, jedoch waren sie im Grunde ganz zufrieden mit deren Ergebnissen.

Die über anderthalb Jahrzehnte erfolgreiche gemeinsame Führung, die danach auf den Kommissionspräsidenten Jacques Delors übergegangen ist, beruhte natürlich sowohl in Paris als auch in Bonn auf der Erkenntnis, daß der Fortschritt der Integration (EWG, später EG und heute EU) im richtig verstandenen langfristigen strategischen Interesse des eigenen Staates und der eigenen Nation liegt. (Dabei spielte auch der immer wieder erneuerte Eindruck eine Rolle, daß die englische Nation und die englischen Regierungen sich diese strategische Erkenntnis nicht wirklich zu eigen gemacht haben.)

Wenn ich es geschichtlich sehe, so haben die Franzosen eindeutig das größte Verdienst. Das gilt am Anfang für Schuman und Monnet. Es gilt übrigens auch für Charles de Gaulle, der zwar die europäische Integration nicht sonderlich gefördert, wohl aber durch seinen Elysée-Vertrag mit Adenauer die enge Zusammenarbeit zwischen den späteren Regierungen in Paris und Bonn sehr bewußt und erfolgreich vorbereitet hat. Es gilt sodann für Giscard, für Mitterrands erstes Septennat und zuletzt für Delors.

Frankreich besitzt völkerrechtliche und vertragliche und nukleare Trumpfkarten – denken Sie an den Sicherheitsrat der UN oder an den Non-Proliferations-Vertrag –, die wir Deutschen nicht haben und nicht haben werden. Darüber hinaus hat die französische Nation unter den Völkern der Welt ein enormes Prestige, begründet durch Frankreichs Geschichte und Kultur. Dagegen wird auf uns Deutschen noch generationenlang die Erinnerung an Auschwitz lasten. Deshalb bedürfen wir Deutschen auch in Zukunft der Franzosen, ihres Verständnisses und ihrer politischen Initiativen. Und heute hat

12

Chirac, nach seiner Wiederwahl und nach der Wahl zum französischen Parlament für ein halbes Jahrzehnt plein pouvoir für eine europäische Politik.

Selbstverständlich haben alle Franzosen recht - von de Gaulle und Giscard bis zu Chirac -, wenn ihnen ihr _Nationalstaat und ihre nationale Identität unverzichtbar ist._ Auch für uns Deutsche ist der Nationalstaat selbstverständlich und unverzichtbar. Für die übergroße Mehrheit aller Menschen zwischen Mittelmeer und Polarkreis ist ihre nationale Identität der wichtigste psychologische Ankergrund. Dies wird auch im XXI. Jahrhundert so sein.

_Wenn wir jedoch die Europäische Union verkümmern ließen, wenn die Union ein ähnliches Schicksal erleiden sollte wie vor Zeiten die europäischen Neuordnungsversuche durch den Westfälischen Frieden oder später abermals durch den Wiener Kongreß, dann würden unsere Nationalstaaten den globalen Gefährdungen nicht standhalten können. Im besten Fall würden wir dann uns auf die _übermächtigen USA verlassen müssen; wir würden in die Rolle _Athens zur Zeit des Imperium Romanum_ geraten._

Es gibt in der Menschheitsgeschichte viele Beispiele von Nationen und Kulturen und von Staaten, die durch fremde Überwanderung oder durch Eroberung untergegangen sind. _Es gibt aber kein Beispiel und kein Vorbild für den mühevollen freiwilligen Zusammenschluß von Nationalstaaten_, für den Verzicht auf Teile ihrer Souveränität aus _eigenem Entschluß_. Deshalb halte ich den bisher im Laufe von fünfzig Jahren erreichten Status der EU für einen stupenden, historisch einmaligen Erfolg! Ich halte es deshalb für realistisch zu sagen: Selbst wenn wir zur Vollendung einer handlungsfähigen Union noch weitere fünf Jahrzehnte benötigen sollten, so werden wir Europäer

HENRY A. KISSINGER

May 30, 2002

Dear Helmut:

I appreciated the opportunity to read the important
and very prescient lecture you gave shortly before
September 11. Had you had a crystal ball, you might
have been pursued to rearrange the order of the
list of factors that will have a major impact on
the future. However, I believe time will ultimately
prove your list to be correct as it stands.

Thank you, too, for your very generous comments
about the German edition of *Does America Need A
Foreign Policy?* As I am sure you know, your opinion
means a great deal to me.

I am hoping we will have a chance to get together
again soon.

His Excellency
Helmut Schmidt
Die Zeit
20079 Hamburg
Germany

TWENTY-SIXTH FLOOR · 350 PARK AVENUE · NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022 · (212) 759-7919
FACSIMILE (212) 759-0042

Helmut Schmidt

May 17, 2002

Dear Henry !

This letter is just to thank you for a valuable
conversation at the end of April. In the meantime I
have used the long air-trips to fully read the German
edition of your last book. I find myself to a really
very great deal in agreement. I am once again
astonished about your diligence and productivity.

I like to enclose a little lecture of mine which I gave
last year, a couple of days before September 11 - maybe
you find it worthwhile reading.

All the best ! Youssover
Milewski

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, personal
Twenty-Sixth Floor
350 Park Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10022
U.S.A.

Postanschrift: Die ZEIT • 20079 Hamburg • Tel.: 040-3280 220, Fax: 040-3280 510

Helmut Schmidt

# Who governs the world in the 21st century?

As regards the title-question in your program, let me try to be a bit more modest. No professor nor even the most advanced computer can give you a prognosis covering the globe over a full century. And I am neither a knowing-it-all-professor nor a computer, but only an ordinary citizen, just a has-been political leader and – even worse – a life-time economist. Therefore I will limit myself to touch upon some of the phenomena which I do expect for the next couple of decades.

## I.

Because any forecast, be it related to the weather or the economy or the tennis-tournament at Wimbledon, has to start from the facts and the tendencies of the present. Let me start by hinting to ten of the factors that foreseeably enough will have a major impact on the future:

1. You have to expect that the global population will continue to grow at the present pace which has no precedent in the 19th or any earlier century. Mankind did number 1 1/2 billion people in the year 1900, a hundred years later by the year 2000 the figure had risen to beyond 6 billion. Within a few decades into the 21st century we will trespass 9 billion human beings. The space that is available per person will further shrink. This population explosion is in the main happening in Asia, in Africa and in Latin America. We will therefore have to expect more local or regional wars, international as well as intrastate, so-called civil wars in these three continents.

2. Global warming is highly likely to continue, although we don't as yet have reliable forecasts as to the velocity of the increase of temperature. We do as well not have as yet reliable forecasts as to the climatic and physical living conditions in certain areas – for instance the rise of the level of the oceans or changes in the major oceanic currents. But we have to expect that global warming might in its effects intensify the afore mentioned conflicts.

3. Population growth plus climatic changes will cause growing tendencies for migration. Europe and North-America will ever more become attractive for potential immigration, whether legal or otherwise.

4. At the same time, globalisation of information and of technology will continue. During the last two decades the number of human beings, whose lives directly or indirectly are under strong influence of economic globalisation have doubled, due to the opening of China and to the liberation of almost 30 states which hitherto had been dominated by the Soviet leadership and had been closed off from the global economy. It is unclear, whether and to what extent quite a few of

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the developing countries will as well open up to fuller participation in the global economy.

5. But recent experiences appear to suggest that only strictly organized developing countries can economically and socially benefit from globalisation. South-Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong-Kong and as well the People's Republic of China did well under strict one-party-rule. One might – with some reservation – call these examples economically enlightened dictatorships. On the other hand a greater number of developing countries tried to establish democracy, but failed economically or politically – or both at the same time. The collapse of the Soviet Union was in the main due to the abrupt introduction of both perestrojka and glasnost over night.

6. Clearly a number of relatively new, non-traditional security problems are looming large over the horizon, like international drug traffic, international organized crime and also terrorism, small arms traffic, Aids, BSE, foot and mouth and other diseases.

7. The emphasis of national governments on strong military capabilities is still uninterrupted. This goes as well for the developing countries, were on average the military expenditure is many times higher than the development aid (ODA), which they receive. It is also true in the field of nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction; within the last 5 decades the number of nuclear weapons states has increased from one to presently eight – its further increase seems rather likely. The technologically far advanced countries are undertaking strong efforts to qualitatively improve most of their military capabilities.

8. At the demise of the Soviet Union some people, f.i. in the U.S., thought of a new era in the global power constellation; they foresaw an end of the balance of power-game, America remaining as the only superpower and even expected a so-called „peace dividend“. But today it is obvious China is to be respected as a worldpower, still Russia as well, maybe later on as well India and Brazil.

Japan will at least figure as an economic and financial world power. The same seems likely in regard of the European Union, although it will take at least all the three oncoming decades until we in the EU will truly arrive at one common foreign and security policy.

In other words: To maintain peace between the major powers of the world will as well in future necessitate the sense and will for balance and fair compromise – plus highly skilled diplomacy.

9. The globalisation of information will also need diligence. Beside its undeniable advantages we must as well expect new forms of crimes; also globally dominant or even monopolist networks are thinkable; they might become capable to originate worldwide political or ideological campaigns, also mass

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**psychoses.** The Europe-wide emotions at the car accident and death of a hitherto disputed English princess, created by the electronic mass media, has given us a foretaste, as well as the TV-pictures of injured and dead humans in Kosovo, the latter were useful for stimulating public opinion to agree to military intervention against Serbia. The most recent and by far the most powerful mass emotion was triggered by the horrific crime of private warfare, transnationally organized, in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

10. This leads me to my last example of existing tendencies which will have an impact on our common future, namely the forecast of a clash between civilisations. Certainly the danger of a general clash between Islam and Western civilisation cannot be ruled out as unthinkable. But it would be an unexcusable mistake to think of such a clash as being unavoidable and thereby make the forecast of a possibility into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In other words: Under the circumstances of the ever higher density of the worlds population and ever higher interdependence, religious and ideological tolerance and respect for the others beliefs becomes an indispensable necessity.

## II.

If we compare the beginning of the new century with the beginning of the 20th century we can observe new chances and new challenges at the same time. Some of the old dangers will continue to exist, others may wither away – like the danger of global war. A couple of decades ago the Club of Rome has lamented loudly about future catastrophies, many young people professed their „Angst“ and somebody called the whole era the „Age of Anxiety“.

Today we find a much more positive mood, particularly in Europe, in the US and also f. i. in China. But the dream of one common world governance has outlived the end of the student revolt of 1968. Historically the dream is much older. After World War I the League of Nations was one first attempt. After 1945, again under American leadership, the UN and its Security Council was a new start. The UN and all its affiliate organisations over more than half a century have not done badly; but they are all together far from what could be called „global governance“. The criticisms of the UN, of the Worldbank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation or the G8 are manyfold. Some criticisms are perfectly legitimate. Some of the Non-Governmental-Organisations (NGO’s) have good cases – like for instance Amnesty International.

But some NGO’s and some of the organized international protestors at Seattle or Genoa tend to evolve from theoretical idealism into violence; some may in the end even become terrorists. They blame multinational corporations and economic globalisation for all severe shortcomings in the world. But they have

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not so far come up with any realistic recipes. Their utopian proposals could only
be implemented by global dictates, not by democratic decisions within
sovereign states.

It must be understood, how difficult and delicate the task of democratic leaders
is, when they have to convince their national public and their electorate of the
necessity of transnational objectives, policies and institutions and entice
popular acception of the unavoidable losses of national autonomy and of the
necessary economic sacrifices. Take as an illustrative example the last Irish
referendum; the Irish gladly are receiving enormous financial help from the EU
but they have refused the further enlargement of EU because it would mean a
reduction of Irish net receipts.

Democratic leadership in the age of globalisation, particularly collective
international leadership towards Global Governance, is much more difficult
than democratic leadership has been in the age of the sovereign nation state.
For being successful as a collectively acting international leader in the era of
television, you may know your goal, you may know the necessary ways and
means, but you need to convince the majority of your national public, meaning
that you - on top of it all - have to be a fairly impressive television actor.

Often enough TV is enticing political leaders into opportunism. I was not
amused when I watched an American president siding with the protestors at
Seattle against WTO, an institution of global governance in which his own
country is exerting much of the leadership. And I as well think it was a bit more
of opportunism than realism when in September last year 187 heads of State
and of Government at the so-called UN-Millenium summit declared their
resolve „to halve by the year 2015 the proportion of the worlds people whose
income is less than one Dollar a day“.

High hopes at the beginning of a new century are quite normal. To achieve the
goals one will have to use the existing institutions and procedures plus their
improvement and reforms or replacement plus additional ones. So far the world
is governed in the main by national governments, only partially by global
institutions, partially by multilateral and also bilateral treaties. One might call it a
multi-level-governance or a governance of variable geometry.

### III.

The best working global institutions are still the international regulations of all
traffic in the air and on the high seas; they serve their limited purpose
outstandingly well.

The *by far most important global institution is the UN, including its Security Council* and the General Secretary. It has endured the long decades of cold war, serving peace reasonably well - despite and even with the help of the

5

inevitable right to Veto by a few big powers. But it has to be noted that not only
two powerful multilateral Alliance-Systems but also a great variety of bilateral
and multilateral treaties have served the abstention from hot warfare quite
successfully, for instance the Non-Proliferation-Treaty (NPT), also ABM (at least
so far), SALT, the Testban-Treaty and so on.

As yet there does not appear any necessity to change in principle the existing
system of the UN and of the global constellation of security institutions. But a
few recent events can lead to future complications. On the one hand the military
intervention by NATO against Milosevic's Serbia was a clear violation of the UN-
Charter. It was argued that for urgent and overwhelmingly imperative
humanitarian reasons one had to act, although the Security Council had not
taken a vote to do so. One can only hope that this action will not serve as a
precedent for the future; otherwise the Security Council may become obsolete
and the violation of international treaties may once again become fashionable.

On the other hand the US have announced their intention to build a National
Defense against Missiles (NMD). This requires either a re-negotiation of the
ABM-treaty or its termination. It will in any event change the security situation of
the world powers. It might contribute to a closer security cooperation between
China and Russia. In any event changes of the multifaceted global security
institutions seem inevitable.

It is forseeable that the US will for the next two or more decades have a
considerably greater weight in collective global governance than during the cold
war. It will require tact and skill to avoid the attitudes of hegemony. Most of the
existing global institutions stem from American initiatives and leadership (only
the OECD, the Helsinki final act plus OSCE and the G7/8 summits are
noteworthy exceptions). It could lead to a deplorable chaotic situation if the US
would choose to either abondon the institutions which they have instigated or
dominate them.

IV.

The World Bank has always been dominated by Washington, to a somewhat
lesser degree also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the GATT
(nowadays called WTO). These three institutions of world governance have
great influence over developing countries and countries in financial crisis. A
redefinition of the tasks of the IMF - which has lost its original purpose to
maintain a global system of fixed exchange rates already 30 years ago - into
the direction of supervision of the globalized financial markets and the highly
speculative behaviour of some of its participants appears desirable. Until today
the IMF mainly acts as an ever ready lender of last resort for sovereign states,
but indirectly as well as a rescue for related loans and credits by private
Western financial corporations. Such rescues are advantageous for Zürich,
London, Frankfurt and Wallstreet, but by no means is it perfect global financial

6

governance. It seems likely to me that the IMF can and will be reformed within
the next 20 years.

I am much less confident about the World Trade Organisation. It has done much to globally liberalize trade. But it has provoked also the creation of so-called Free Trade areas, which have chosen to efficiently protect some of their industries, particularly agricultural production. This is true for the USA, for the EU and for Japan – much to the disadvantage of a number of developing economies, which could offer cereals and other foodstuff at much lower prices. The still very powerful OPEC-Cartel, in collusion with a small number of globally active oil corporations, is another violation of the principle of free trade. On top of it you have a number of unilaterally imposed trade sanctions.

All the offences against the enshrined principle of free trade are due to national egoisms – committed either by national governments or by democratic majorities inside sovereign countries. As I am fairly convinced that democracy in the nations of Western civilisation will last in the 21st century, I cannot nourish great hopes that national egoism will wither away. But I like to register the fact that the Brussels Commission of the EU has recently been able to prevent a giant merger in a foreign continent that was threatening to create a market domination by one company. Nevertheless, there is no great hope for a global governance over fair competition in global markets.

The G7 summits, nowadays G8, have never really been an institution of global governance, although it may appear otherwise, which misconception is due to their overloaded agendas, their pompous statements and their ridiculous public relations- and TV-circus. They will also in oncoming decades not become a powerful institution, unless they come back to the original practice, namely meeting far away from press and television, at a secluded valley or island, just the chiefs plus their foreign and finance ministers. Such rather personal and intimate exchanges are indeed useful – because none of the heads of government is a seasoned diplomat, all of them will speak plainly, all will be left on their own. They will learn thereby and understand, especially those who are new in office. Of course it is highly desirable to include China, also India and as well Brazil.

V.

Summit-meetings do nowadays abound, whether as UN, G8 or WTO or NATO or every six month EU, a waste of effort. Much greater is the waste, the gap between costs and effectiveness, in most permanent global institutions. They abound of bureaucrats and bureaucratic red tape and are characterized by the absence of democratic control. The democratic deficit of any global body is in fact unavoidable. Therefore anybody who favors more powerful institutions for global governance, ought to be aware of the lurking Leviathan, namely the evergrowing selfish and tyrannical but de facto uncontrollable bureaucracy. But

7

still, many people do believe in additional global controls lest otherwise
*globalized capitalism* will emerge as the ultimate regent of the whole world.

Such fear is indeed plausible. In my view there are three areas in which
*potentially dangerous effects of transnational capitalism* are obvious:

1. The spread of the *ridiculous ideology* that elevates „shareholder value“ into the one and only principle of entrepreneurial behaviour can lead to deep going cultural changes. Mergers and takeovers normally lead to cutting jobs. Raiders do not feel guilt to put off tens of thousands of employees. The ideology of a managements natural right to hire and fire is indeed spreading. It goes against ingrained cultural traditions in Europe, in Japan and elsewhere. In the end at least the European democracies will resist a de-routing of our inherited principles of social civilisation. But the results in parts of Asia and Latin America and in most of Africa may be quite different.

2. The global financial markets are an area in which private corporations may become too powerful at the expenses of democratically elected governments. We have already seen, about one decade ago, how a privately owned, highly leveraged speculative investment fund could force the British government to devalue sterling. We more recently have witnessed how another highly leveraged fund could force the U.S. Federal Reserve System to come to its rescue in order to avoid a domino effect of collapses. The *financial markets and particularly the traffic in short term money do need globally applied regulations* — otherwise some big private financial houses and corporations may acquire too much political power. The big banks do not presently govern the world, but they do have the potential to bring a heavy political weight to bear on their national governments.

3. As an European I am also worried about the present advances and spreading of influence *of privately owned and managed global information systems*, from TV to the internet. We have witnessed f.i. how they created the global psychosis that made millions of people to believe in the wrongly so-called „new economy“ and buy new technology stocks at ridiculous prices. We are also witnessing an owner of TV-channels becoming the political head of 60 million Italiens.

Global information and propaganda-systems are indeed capable to exert economic and political and cultural influences far beyond their home country. There is a looming potential for usurption of parts of global governance. Not so much capitalism as such but specifically TV- and information-capitalism may become a global challenge. It may even develop into a challenge to democracy.

VI.

One might ask: *What kind and what degree of global governance appears desirable?* The answers might differ due to ones national and cultural

8

background. As an European I would mention seven points:

1. The desirability to maintain any nations ability to determine its constitution and to decide its own affairs by themselves. Only so far as their national means are not sufficient to solve a problem, due to the transnational specifics of that problem, only in so far is *subsidiarily transnational or even global governance desirable*.

2. Any kind of international and of global authority *should be based on consensus and treaty between sovereign states*.

3. The UN is to be maintained and also strengthened. Its Security Council ought to be the one and only authority that has the right to legitimate the use of military force outside national borders – except in cases of self-defense.

4. Among the most urgent of new or improved treaties and agreements is a *new concept for the World Bank and Official Development Aid: O.D.A.* ought to be made conditional on a recipient countries efforts to efficiently establish planned parenthood and on the countries limitation of its military armaments and budget.

5. A *new concept for the IMF* also is desirable; its main future task should be to maintain efficient rules of behaviour and fair order in global financial markets.

6. A *global compact* is desirable in order to limit the *emittance of greenhouse gas* and also other human activities that contribute to global warming.

7. A *worldwide system* of new or of improved treaties is desirable in order to *limit armaments*. This ought to embrace nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction, also means for warfare in outer space, also land mines, and — most important of all — curtail the export of weapons, particularly of small weapons etc. etc.

VII.

So far for the desirable goals. But what will happen in reality? It is an eternal problem of mankind that there always is a great gap between our wishes and hopes and on the other hand the ugly reality. Also in the oncoming decades will the desirable only to a very limited degree become reality. What is likely to, in reality, happen during the next 30 years?

My guess is, that we will see many geographically limited wars. Neither the UN nor NATO will be able to prevent them. In the contrary the charter of the U.N. will many times be violated by U.N.-member states. The afore mentioned desirable agreements will partially be realised but it will take long years, and several

9

crises will occur along the road. Any sweeping limitation of arms exports is
unlikely.

The population explosion will go on. Unsufficiently governed overpopulated
developing countries will suffer as hitherto. Well organized countries will gain
from globalization, as far as they enable themselves to adapt their economies
to new technologies and new competitors. The Americans will in effect
dominate in many fields.

<u>America</u> will for quite some time remain to be more equal than the other world powers. One cannot exclude the possibility that Americans willfully try to exert control over other countries. A cold war between the U.S. and China is becoming thinkable; in such case the EU would be faced with a difficult decision.

The EU has created one major crisis for itself by offering membership to a dozen countries without sufficient structural and financial preparation; disappointments are due to happen. It will probably take more than the next three decades until the EU develops into a world power – but this must not let the Europeans shrink back. After all the European integration process, starting with Jean Monnets Schuman-Plan, has so far taken 50 years – its completion might alltogether take 100 years. Don't be too impatient!

VIII.

My last remark is addressing you, the highly intelligent young women and men
at the Summer School. It is you, who will be faced with growing future problems
of global governance. Many of you will become leaders, be it in manufacturing
or commerce or financing, be it in academia or in the political arena. You will
need a good overview prior to make decisions which will affect others. They
may affect others even beyond your national borders. You may be confronted
with the tension between the interest of your corporation and on the other hand
the interest of the community or the society or country. You may even be
confronted with the dilemma of national sovereignty versus global governance.

Growing interdependance means a growing potential for conflict as well as for
compromise. Nobody is entitled to exclusively pursue his or her rights and
claims. Every human also does have responsibilities and moral duties. No
leadership without accountability!

And please, do not ever forget the ancient Roman wisdom which was relayed to
us by Cicero: *Salus publica suprema lex.*

Hans Merkle

Remarks by Henry A. Kissinger

October 4, 2001

Berlin

It is a great honor to be asked to deliver a speech in memory of one of the most remarkable men I have known. It is a daunting task as well. For those in this room who knew Hans Merkle, nothing I can say will be able to reflect his complexity and inspirational quality. For those who did not have the opportunity to encounter his extraordinary combination of dedication and authority, any description of him will, in this age of standardized norms, seem out of scale.

Hans Merkle was a man of seeming paradoxes. He was my friend, yet he rarely spoke a personal word to me. One knew one could always rely on him, yet he would have considered statements to that effect as an elaboration of the self-evident or a derogation from the nature of friendship. Merkle was an inspiring leader who moved people by his aura without having to insist on the prerogatives of hierarchy. Even while achieving enormous success in business (it is no exaggeration to describe him as the most influential German businessman for two decades), he spent much of his free time reading and developing an astonishing erudition in philosophy, history, even poetry – all without a university degree. He displayed this staggering knowledge only rarely in conversations; Hans Merkle would have considered that as so much unworthy ostentation. “One must never say all one knows,” he noted in his speech, “Service and Leadership” (Dienen und Führen).

The range of Merkle's interests is reflected in the titles of his speeches and essays: “The Art of Prediction;” “Man, Machines, and Technology;” “Rights and Duties in the Republic;” “Service and Leadership;” “Elites and How to Encourage Them;” “Profession as Experience;” “A Critique of Technology;” “Virtue and Trust,” among many others. How many modern managers would have thought of writing an essay on the meaning of Caesar going to the Capitol on the day he was assassinated even though he had received many warnings? Did it reflect the virtue of trust in republican institutions or the sin of arrogant self-confidence challenging republican norms?

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Merkle's essentially philosophical essays did not deal with the issues directly related to his company. But they do explain its extraordinary success under his leadership, growing from sales of DM 2 billion in 1964 when he took over the reins, to DM 21.2 billion in 1985, and to DM 60 billion in the year 2000. And the smoothness of the transition after he stepped down as chairman shows that Merkle achieved his highest aim of raising management beyond the personal and imparting to his successors the standard of meticulous attention to detail, insistence on a striving for perfection and, above all, on an ethic of decency and a selection based on character, which I consider the hallmark of Bosch.

I met Hans Merkle 24 years ago at a dinner of Chase Manhattan Bank's International Advisory Board, which took place in a New York museum. Sigmund Warburg had urged Merkle to introduce himself to me. That, however, proved easier said than done. Merkle did not want to impose himself, while I waited for him to approach me. Finally I introduced myself. And Merkle's first words to me were: "You should know that I worked in a responsible position in a military ministry in Berlin. I did not like the Nazis, but I served my country during the war. If that bothers you, you should have nothing to do with me."

That night at the museum laid the basis for permanent respect. For it was clear that Merkle wanted nothing less than to obscure the past. He once said that people who deny their history also reject their future. But the appropriate lessons had to evolve in the realm of conscience of the individual and of his society and not in comments to foreigners. Merkle took many actions to make clear where he stood, including the activities of the Bosch Foundation in Israel. But, true to his signature style, he never publicized them.

Hans Merkle was infinitely solicitous of his friends but became embarrassed when one acknowledged his concern as if that would destroy its moral significance as an act of grace. On the occasion of my being made honorary citizen of Fürth, the town in which I was born, Merkle appeared, having driven over two hours to get there. Only later did I learn that it had been the first day of radiation treatment for the illness that ultimately claimed his life and that he had come straight from this exhausting procedure to a formal ceremony and a boisterous lunch.

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So when one writes or speaks about Hans Merkle, one deals with the incarnation of intangibles. To him, the central quality of a society or of any organization was trust (Zuversicht). Confidence results less from deliberate policy than from the intuitive acceptance of personalities who inspire by example rather than articulateness. He quoted with approval a line from Alfred Tennyson: "And trust me not at all or all in all." The ultimate requirement of leadership was, as Merkle would quote Peter Drucker, to earn trust: "Trust is the conviction that the leader means what he says."

Merkle always meant what he said. In his view, leadership was service; it avoids self-satisfaction during periods of success and provides inner strength to persist in times of adversity. It consists in equal parts of delegating credit for achievement while assuming responsibility for failure. The chief executive must not only outline a direction but inspire its execution. And he must never rest on what has been achieved. Thus Merkle ended his speech at Bosch's centenary celebration summing up the achievements of the past 100 years with a warning against complacency: "We at Bosch know our worth. But this consciousness does not entitle us to lean back in our chairs in self-satisfaction. We see our challenge not in reaping what we have sown but in sowing what will be reaped tomorrow."

In his style of leadership, Merkle confronted the root dilemma of modern society: how, in a period of rapid change, to bridge the gap between a society's experience and its possibilities, between the preservation of what is valuable and the space needed for the emergence of the new? Societies grow attached to the familiar, but leaders must point toward what does not yet exist. Even if ideas or concepts originate with one or a few individuals, they must be internalized by those who execute them and become, as it were, their own convictions. The role of leadership is, in a sense, lonely, but the execution cannot be solitary; it must reflect a consensus. Democracy is therefore a mandate of modernity. The vitality of a society depends crucially on the interplay between the inspiration of the individual and the translation of it into the commonplace of the society or of the enterprise.

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A democracy whose leaders rely only on exploiting the mood of the moment will soon drift without direction and end in dictatorship. But, equally, leadership conceived as the expression of the arbitrary of an individual will turn power into a demonic enterprise. For that reason, a well-conceived concept of national interest is less an assertion of power than a limitation of it.

Hans Merkle feared an unprecedented form of tyranny as potentially inherent in the modern technological world. Permit me to quote from his essay, "The Demonism of Power:" "It is conceivable - and perhaps we have an obligation to face it - that the demonism of power in the future cannot be related to the individual any longer. Power becomes increasingly anonymous but no less dangerous for the free evolution of humanity. Falsification of concepts is the first step toward the development of concentrations of power of a new kind - impersonal, intangible, almost ghostly; one is reminded of Kafka. And because society so emasculated will not be able to deal with social processes without some mechanism, social tasks will be assigned to organs of a new kind. The despotism of tyrants will be replaced by the despotism of the apparatus."

Therefore, the individual's fulfillment must not be subordinated to the demands of politics, and politics must not be defined as the sole, or even the principal, purpose of social life. The ultimate goal of political life should not be imposition of a ubiquitous, interchangeable norm but to promote independence in enterprises and for individuals. Wherever it is forgotten that political duties are, in the end, based on political rights and that these rights must be revitalized in each period, politics turns into manipulation.

Real conservatives - among whom Merkle counted himself - are not opposed to progress; on the contrary, they create the condition for progress by preserving the foundations on which to build and by warning of those steps urged in the name of progress that lead into an abyss.

The executive is tested above all when adversity strikes. A prescient quote from Merkle from 1975 may be appropriate: "Too extended periods of unrestrained growth spoil both managers and workers, distort a sense of proportion, erase distinctions, and weaken the sense for the

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essential, for the necessary, for the possible. They obscure the peril that
threatens every society and every economy which prevails too easily
without having to prove itself. If the wind changes and storms threaten,
the hour of ultimate testing has come; then we will learn who can read
the weather map and who is able to navigate against the wind."

This is why for Merkle - as already for Robert Bosch - the fostering of talent was a primary preoccupation. The founder of the company had laid down in the guidelines of the Bosch Foundation, to which he had refused to give his name in keeping with the Bosch tradition of anonymity (it was so named only after his death by Merkle), that one of its principal goals was to prepare society for the adaptation of thought processes and procedures to the changes subtly latent in all societies. Foremost among these was the free and unhindered development of the human personality.

These fragmentary summaries of the thoughts of a remarkable man
explain what I would describe as the "Bosch style:" total reliability, an
unflagging sense of service, a dedication always to function at the
frontiers of knowledge, a notion of profit based on energetic enterprise
and insistent competitiveness with the proceeds always available to the
common good. "To belong to the elite," wrote Merkle, "brings with it
duties rather than rights. To be sure, the performance demanded of
leaders should not and does not remain unrewarded. But the goal of the
effort must never be material reward. Elites should not define
themselves by ruling but by serving - or better, they rule best by serving.
Those who belong to the real elite do not insist on being called elites.
Those who do insist on it do not belong."

This explains the seemingly anonymous, almost impersonal, and yet, in
its ultimate sense, deeply individual style of Hans Merkle. For his work to
be meaningful, it could not be the expression of a personal preference;
this would undermine its moral significance. It had to be a reflection of a
higher obligation which evoked the sense of duty. Merkle would quote
from Max Planck: "The ultimate good of which no power in the world can
deprive us is a pure way of thinking (reine Gesinnung) which finds its
expression in a conscientious carrying out of one's duties." To which
Merkle added: "No more can be expected of us but also no less."

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In this spirit, I want to say a few words about the contribution that Hans Merkle and some members of his generation – at least one of whom is here tonight – have made to the rebirth of Germany and its relationship to the international community in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Biographers make much of my German birth. And it is, of course, true that one's environment shapes one's attitudes even in difficult times (which is why I still take an active weekly interest in the four Bavarian football clubs in the *Bundesliga* – although Fürth is regrettably in the second *Bundesliga*). But my real connection with Germany stems from the end of the war. I arrived here with the army of occupation in 1945 after a seven-year absence. Few of you present will remember the devastation, desolation, and spiritual despair of those months; it belongs to the formative experiences of your fathers and grandfathers. There is no time now, and this is not the occasion, to review the political evolution of more than half a century – though it seems like only yesterday to me.

I want to pay tribute to those who had the moral courage to start again, to rebuild their country, and to bring it back to the community of nations by the very qualities I have called the Bosch attributes: reliability, steadiness, enterprise, and an abiding commitment to democratic values. Governments of both major parties established a steady policy tied to the democratic West. In the process, America and Germany together went through two Berlin crises, the building of the Wall, and finally reunification. Occasional disagreements in tactics have never undermined the underlying unity of purpose.

And just when, on both sides of the Atlantic, the end of the Cold War had evoked a seemingly endless debate about the continuing validity of the democratic partnership, the terrorist attack on New York and Washington has returned the democracies to fundamentals. Too many of us had been seduced by the siren song of the end of history, of the reduction of politics to psychiatry and social work, and of the predominance of narrow national concerns. We have learned that there are incompatible values rampant in the world around us and that there are those so eager to destroy our civilization that they will sacrifice their lives to do so and will not recoil before the murder of innocent civilians. It has obliged the West to relearn what it had nearly forgotten: that in its unity and solidarity resides its ultimate strength. So I want to take this opportunity to thank

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our German friends here for the many expressions of support and
compassion that reached us from all over Germany and for the highly
appreciated demonstrations of solidarity from the German government.

None of this would have surprised Hans Merkle. He was born in what was
then Baden, now Baden-Württemberg, but he incarnated some of the
best values of the Prussian ethos. One of these is, "Always be more than
you seem to be" (mehr sein als scheinen). Applied to Merkle and
adapting it to one of the quotes I mentioned earlier, I would rephrase his
own basic maxim this way: "Always say less than you know and always
do more than you say."

For all I have said, Merkle's posture of aloofness did not reflect a lack of
deep feeling. On the contrary, it was wrested from a deeply passionate
nature. He obscured this aspect of his personality because he did not
wish to impose his sentiments even on his friends. Like one of the heroes
of classical drama, Merkle took on himself the battles to which he thought
destiny had called him. Those of us whom he honored with his friendship
therefore felt as if we had been admitted into a chivalrous order.

The emotions from which Merkle's aristocratic conduct had been wrung
can be seen in a letter he wrote in November 1944, when his hometown
of Pforzheim had been destroyed in the war: "Fate would not pass this
town by. But for me this place is not of brick and mortar; it is founded on
quite a different kind of building block that cannot be reduced to rubble
so long as the heart does not allow it. And the heart will not acquiesce.
It clings to old scenes, to hills and trees, and to the memory of many
days which were gifts of God and of youthful dreams. For, in the end,
ideas are stronger than men and more long-lasting."

A few months after his death, Merkle's daughter Monika and Dr. Scholl
did me the honor of accompanying me to Hans Merkle's grave on a still,
verdant hillside, shaded by trees overlooking the city of Pforzheim which
had risen from the ashes, rebuilt by men and women whose dreams
overcame their reality.

After that occasion, Monika graciously let me see the letter I have just
read to you. I thought then how lonely a life this caring man imposed on
himself, how much of the travail of others he took on himself, and I

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wondered whether some of us might have broken through this solitude by
an act of grace.

But then I reflected that Hans Merkle lived just as he wanted. Duty was
his companion, honor his imperative. He expressed this best in his essay,
"Virtue and Trust:" "Confidence in the future - that virtue of the soul, as
the French put it - must be fought for every day. It involves permanent
exertion, a coming-and-going; yet, as we travel a path so strewn with
stones, a God occasionally consoles us with a smile."

Hans Merkle inspired many of us in traveling these stony paths and
thereby vouchsafed this world an occasional smile from a God.

SEP 04 2001

Helmut Schmidt

Summer School

Hamburg, 20.8.2001

## I.

Any forecast, be it related to the weather or the economy or the tennis-tournament at Wimbledon, has to start from the facts and the tendencies of the present. Let me start by hinting to ten of the **factors that foreseeably enough will have a major impact on the future:**

1. You have to expect that the **global population** will continue to grow at the present pace which has no precedent in the 19th or any earlier century. Mankind did number 1 1/2 billion people in the year 1900, but by the year 2000 the figure had risen to beyond 6 billion. Within a few decades we will trespass 9 billion human beings. The space that is available

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per person will further shrink. This population explosion is
in the main happening in Asia, in Africa and in Latin
America. In these three continents we will therefore have to
expect more local or regional wars, international as well as
intrastate, so-called civil wars.

2. Global warming is highly likely to continue, although we don't as yet have reliable forecasts as to the velocity of the increase of temperature. We do as well not have as yet reliable forecasts as to the climatic and physical living conditions in certain areas - for instance due to the rise of the level of the oceans or changes in the major oceanic currents. But we have to expect that global warming might in its effects intensify the afore mentioned conflicts.

3. Population growth plus climatic changes plus wars will cause growing tendencies for migration. Europe and North America will ever more become attractive for potential immigration, whether legal or otherwise.

4. At the same time, globalisation of information and of technology will continue. During the last two decades the number of human beings, whose lives directly or indirectly are under strong influence of economic globalisation have doubled, due to the opening of China and to the liberation of almost 30 states which hitherto had been dominated by the Soviet leadership and had been closed off from the global economy. It is unclear, whether and to what extent quite a few of the developing countries will as well open up

3

5. But recent experience appears to suggest that _only strictly organized developing countries can economically and socially benefit from globalisation_. South-Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong-Kong and as well the People's Republic of China did well under strict one-party-rule. One might – with some reservation – call these examples economically enlightened dictatorships. On the other hand a greater number of developing countries tried to establish democracy, but failed economically or politically – or both at the same time. The collapse of the Soviet Union was in the main due to the abrupt introduction of both perestrojka and glasnost over night.

6. Clearly a number of relatively new, _non-traditional security problems are looming large_ over the horizon, like international drug traffic, international organized crime and also terrorism, small arms traffic, Aids, BSE, foot and mouth and other diseases.

7. The _emphasis of national governments on strong military capabilities is still uninterrupted_. This goes as well for the developing countries, were on average the military expenditure is many times higher than the development aid (ODA), which they receive. It is also true in the field of nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction; within the last 5 decades the number of nuclear weapons states has increased from one to presently eight – its further

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8. At the demise of the Soviet Union some people, f.i. in the U.S., thought of a new era in the global power constellation; they foresaw an end of the balance of power-game, America remaining as the only superpower and expected a so-called „peace dividend“. But today it is obvious China is to be respected as a worldpower, still Russia as well, maybe later on as well India and Brazil.

In other words: To maintain peace between the major powers of the world will as well in future necessitate the sense and the will for balance and fair compromise – plus highly skilled diplomacy.

9. The _globalisation of information_ will also need diligence. Beside its undeniable advantages we must as well expect new forms of crimes; also globally dominant or even monopolist networks are thinkable; they _might become capable to originate worldwide political or ideological campaigns, also mass psychoses_. The Europe-wide

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10. This leads me to my last example of existing tendencies which will have an impact on our common future, namely the forecast of a clash between civilisations. Certainly the danger of a general clash between Islam and Western civilisation cannot be ruled out as unthinkable. But it would be an unexcusable mistake to think of such a clash as being unavoidable and thereby make the forecast of a possibility into a self-fullfilling prophecy.

In other words: Under the circumstances of the ever higher density of the worlds population and ever higher interdependence, religious and ideological tolerance and respect for others' beliefs becomes an indispensible necessity.

## II.

If we compare the beginning of the new century with the beginning of the 20th century we can observe new chances and new challenges at the same time. Some of the old dangers will continue to exist. But others may wither away – like the danger of global war. A couple of decades ago the

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Club of Rome has lamented loudly about future catastrophies; many young people professed their „Angst“ and somebody called the whole era the „Age of Anxiety“.

Today we find a much more positive mood, particularly in Europe, in the US and also f. i. in China. But the dream of one common world governance has outlived the end of the student revolt of 1968. Historically the dream is much older. After World War I the League of Nations was one first attempt. After 1945, again under American leadership, the UN and its Security Council was a new start. The UN and all its affiliate organisations over more than half a century have not done badly; but they are all together far from what could be called „global governance“. The criticisms of the UN, of the Worldbank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation or the G8 are manyfold. A few criticisms are perfectly legitimate. A few of the Non-Governmental-Organisations (NGO’s) have good cases – like for instance Amnesty International.

But some other NGO’s and some of the organized international protestors at Seattle or Genoa tend to evolve from theoretical idealism into violence; some may in the end even become terrorists. They are quite right when they deplore the unjust and unfair distribution of wealth and well-being on the globe. They are wrong in blaming multinational corporations and economic globalisation for all severe shortcomings in the world. But they have not so far come up with any realistic recipes. Their proposals could only be

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They still must learn how difficult and delicate the task of a
democratic leader is, when he has to convince his national
public and electorate of the necessity of transnational
objectives, policies and institutions and how almost
impossible it is to entice popular acception of the
unavoidable losses of national autonomy and of the
necessary economic sacrifices. Take as an illustrative
example the last Irish referendum; the Irish gladly are
receiving enormous financial help from the EU but they have
refused the further enlargement of EU because it would
mean a reduction of Irish net receipts.

Democratic leadership in the age of globalisation,
particularly collective international leadership towards
Global Governance, is much more difficult than democratic
leadership has always been in the age of the sovereign
nation state. For being successful as a collectively acting
international leader in the era of television, you may know
your goal, you may know the necessary ways and means,
but you need to convince the majority of your national
public, meaning that you - on top of it all - have to be a
fairly impressive television actor.

Often enough TV is enticing political leaders into sheer
opportunism. I was not amused when I watched an American
president siding with the protestors at Seattle against WTO,

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an institution of global governance in which his own
country and he himself were exerting much of the
leadership. And I as well think it was a bit more of
opportunism than realism when in September last year 187
heads of State and of Government at the so-called UN-
Millenium summit declared their resolve „to halve by the year
2015 the proportion of the worlds people whose income is
less than one Dollar a day“. (Let me add within brackets:
except in case that they did calculate the decay of the
purchasing power of one Dollar.)

High hopes at the beginning of a new century are quite
normal. To achieve one's goals one will have to use the
existing institutions and procedures plus their improvement
and reforms or replacement plus additional ones. So far the
world is still governed in the main by national governments,
only partially by <u>global</u> institutions, partially by multilateral
and also bilateral treaties. One might call it a multi-level-
governance or a governance of variable geometry.

### III.

The <u>by far most important global institution is the UN,</u>
—including its Security Council and the General Secretary. It
has endured the long decades of cold war, serving peace

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reasonably well – despite and even with the help of the
inevitable right to Veto by a few big powers. But it has to be
noted that not only two powerful multilateral Alliance-
Systems but also a great variety of bilateral and multilateral
treaties have served the abstention from hot warfare quite
successfully, for instance the Non-Proliferation-Treaty (NPT),
also ABM (at least so far), SALT, the Testban-Treaty and so
on.

As yet there does not appear any necessity to change in
principle the existing system of the UN and of the global
constellation of security institutions. But a few recent
events can lead to future complications. On the one hand
the military intervention by NATO against Milosevic's Serbia
was a clear violation of the UN-Charter. It was argued that for
urgent and overwhelmingly imperative humanitarian reasons
one just had to act, although the Security Council had not
taken a vote to do so. One can only hope that this action will
not serve as a precedent for the future; otherwise the
Security Council may become obsolete and the violation of
international treaties may once again become fashionable.

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It is forseeable that the US will for the next two or more decades have a considerably greater weight in collective global governance than during the cold war. It will require tact and skill to avoid the attitudes of hegemony. Most of the existing global institutions stem from American initiatives and leadership (only the OECD, the Helsinki final act plus OSCE and the G7/8 summits are noteworthy exceptions). It could lead to a deplorable chaotic situation if the US would choose to either abondon the institutions which they once have instigated or to dominate them.

#### IV.

The World Bank has always been dominated by Washington, to a somewhat lesser degree also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the GATT (nowadays called WTO). These three institutions of world governance have great influence over developing countries and countries in financial crisis. A redefinition of the tasks of the IMF - which has lost its original purpose to maintain a global system of fixed exchange rates already 30 years ago - into the direction of supervision of the globalized financial markets and the highly speculative behaviour of some of its participants appears desirable. Until today the IMF mainly acts as an ever ready lender of last resort for sovereign states, but indirectly as well it is acting as a rescue for related loans and credits given by private Western financial corporations. Such rescue

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is advantageous for Zürich, London, Frankfurt and
Wallstreet, but by no means is it perfect global financial
governance. It seems likely to me that the IMF can and will
be reformed within the next 20 years.

I am much less confident about the World Trade
Organisation. It has done much to globally liberalize trade. It
has provoked also the creation of so-called Free Trade
areas, which have chosen to efficiently protect some of their
industries, particularly agricultural production. This is true
for the USA, for the EU and for Japan – much to the
disadvantage of a number of developing economies, which
could offer cereals and other foodstuff at much lower prices.
The still very powerful OPEC-Cartel, in collusion with a small
number of globally active oil corporations, is another
violation of the principle of free trade. On top of it you have
a number of unilaterally imposed trade sanctions.

All the offences against the enshrined principle of free trade
are due to national egoisms – committed either by national
governments or by democratic majorities inside sovereign
countries. I am fairly convinced that democracy in the
nations of Western civilisation will last in the 21st century,
but I cannot nourish great hopes that national egoism will
wither away. Still I like to register the fact that the Brussels
Commission of the EU has recently been able to prevent a
giant merger in a foreign continent that was threatening to
create a global market domination by one company.

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The G7 summits, nowadays G8, have never really been an
institution of global governance, although it may appear
otherwise, which misinterpretation is due to their overloaded
agendas, their pompous statements and their ridiculous
public relations- and TV-circus. They will also in oncoming
decades not become a powerful institution, unless they
come back to the original practice, namely meeting far away
from press and television, at a secluded valley or island, just
the chiefs plus their foreign and finance ministers. Such
rather personal and intimate exchanges are indeed useful –
because none of the heads of government is a seasoned
diplomat, all of them will speak plainly, all will be left on their
own. They will learn thereby and understand, especially
those who are new in office. Of course it is highly desirable
to include China, also India and as well Brazil.

V.

Summit-meetings do nowadays abound, whether as UN, G8
or WTO or NATO or every six month EU, a waste of effort.
Even greater is the waste, the gap between costs and
effectiveness, in most permanent global institutions. They
abound of bureaucrats and bureaucratic red tape and are
characterized by the absence of democratic control. **But the
democratic deficit of any global body is in fact unavoidable.**
Therefore anybody who favors more powerful institutions for
global governance, ought to be aware of the lurking

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But still, many people do believe in additional global
controls lest otherwise **globalized capitalism** will emerge as
the ultimate regent of the whole world. Such fear is indeed
plausible. In my view there are three areas in which
**potentially dangerous effects of transnational capitalism** are
obvious:

1. The spread of the _ridiculous ideology_ that elevates „shareholder value“ into the one and only principle of entrepreneurial behaviour can lead to deep going cultural changes. Mergers and takeovers normally lead to cutting jobs. Raiders do not feel guilt to put off tens of thousands of employees. The ideology of a managements natural right to hire and fire is indeed spreading. It goes against ingrained cultural traditions in Europe, in Japan and elsewhere. In the end at least the European democracies will resist a de-routing of our inherited principles of social civilisation. But the results in parts of Asia and Latin America and in most of Africa may be quite different.

2. The global financial markets are an area in which private banking corporations may become too powerful at the expenses of democratically elected governments. We have already seen, about one decade ago, how a privately owned, highly leveraged speculative investment fund could force the British government to devalue sterling. We more recently

14

have witnessed how another highly leveraged fund could
force the U.S. Federal Reserve System to come to its rescue
in order to avoid a domino effect of collapses. The financial
markets and particularly the traffic in short term money do
need globally applied regulations – otherwise some big
private financial houses and corporations may acquire too
much political power. The big banks do not presently govern
the world, but they do have the potential to bring a heavy
political weight to bear on their national governments.

3. As a European I am also worried about the present advances and spreading of influence of privately owned and managed global information systems, from TV to the internet. We have witnessed f.i. how they created the global psychosis that made millions of people to believe in the wrongly so-called „new economy“ and buy new technology stocks at ridiculous prices. We are also witnessing an owner of TV-channels becoming the political head of 60 million Italians.

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VI.

One might ask: *What kind and what degree of global governance appears desirable?* The answers might differ due to one's national and cultural background. As a European I would mention seven points:

1. The desirability to maintain any nations ability to determine its constitution and to decide its own affairs by themselves. Only so far as their national means are not sufficient to solve a problem, due to the transnational specifics of that problem, *only in so far is subsidiarily transnational or even global governance desirable*.

3. The UN is to be *maintained and also strengthened*. Its Security Council ought to be *the one and only authority that has the right to legitimate the use of military force outside national borders* – except in cases of self-defense.

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5. A new concept for the IMF also is desirable; its main future task should be to maintain efficient rules of behaviour and fair order in global financial markets.

6. A global compact is desirable in order to limit the emittance of greenhouse gases and also other human activities that contribute to global warming.

7. A worldwide system of new or of improved treaties is desirable in order to limit armaments. This ought to embrace nuclear weapons and other means of mass destruction, also means for warfare in outer space, also land mines, and – most important of all – curtail the export of weapons, particularly of small weapons etc. etc.

VII.

So far for the desirable goals. But what will happen in reality? It is an eternal problem of mankind that there always is a great gap between our wishes and hopes and on the other hand the ugly reality. Also in the oncoming decades will the desirable only to a very limited degree become reality. What in reality is likely to happen during the next 30 years?

17

long years, and several crises will occur along the road. And sadly enough, any sweeping limitation of arms exports is unlikely.

**America** will for quite some time remain to be more equal than the other world powers. One cannot exclude the possibility that Americans willfully try to exert control over other countries. A cold war between the U.S. and China is becoming thinkable; in such case the EU would be faced with a difficult decision.

**The EU** has created one major crisis for itself by offering membership to a dozen countries without sufficient structural and financial preparation; disappointments are due to happen. It will probably take **more than the next three decades** until the EU develops into a **world power** – but this must not let the Europeans shrink back. After all the European integration process, starting with Jean Monnets Schuman-Plan, has so far taken 50 years – its completion might alltogether take 100 years. Don't be too impatient!

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VIII.

My last remark is addressing you, the highly intelligent
young women and men at the Summer School. It is you, who
will be faced with growing future problems of global
governance. Many of you will become leaders, be it in
manufacturing or commerce or financing, be it in academia
or in the political arena. You will need a good overview prior
to making decisions which do affect others. They may affect
others even beyond your national borders. You may be
confronted with the tension between the interest of your
corporation and on the other hand the interest of the
community or the society or the country. You may even be
confronted with the dilemma of national sovereignty versus
global governance.

Growing global interdependence means a growing potential
for conflict as well as for compromise. Nobody is entitled to
exclusively pursue his or her rights and claims. Every human
also does have responsibilities and moral duties. No
leadership without accountability!

Helmut Schmidt

August 3, 2001

The InterAction Council of former heads of government, established in 1983, has addressed long-term, global issues mankind is faced with and has made numerous recommendations to our successors throughout the world. The Council normally organizes three meetings every year, one annual plenary meeting and two high expert group meetings. Next year in April we are planning an expert meeting on the further evolution of the European Union and its role vis-à-vis the political, military and economic world powers. I am writing to you to ask for your advice as to whom we might invite as American experts. I am thinking of one person who is close to the present American administration and a second one I would like to call a EU-phobic. I would be thankful if you could confidentially name persons who in your eyes are specialists in our subject.

HELMUT SCHMIDT · 22419 HAMBURG · NEUBERGERWEG 80

2

well meant but unsuitable Western proposals and advice have so far been based on incomplete knowledge or even misconceived perceptions of Russian history.

Many of well meaning American and well meaning European advisers should have read some thousands of pages of Gogol or Lermontov, Turgeniev, Leskov, Pushkin, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. They should have read Gorky and Sholokhov and not just and only Solzhenitsyn, before conceiving their advice to our Russian neighbours. It does not suffice to be enthusiastic about the music of Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov or Tchaikovsky or more recently of Stravinsky, Prokofiev or Shostakovich. It does not suffice if we want to understand the psychological, cultural and political conditions of Russia's historical heritage or legacy.

3

If one ventures to give advice to Russia, even if
one only tries to understand Russia's problems, it
seems necessary to understand her socio-economic
and structural legacy from former centuries, to
understand how the legacy was partially transformed
by Lenin and Stalin up to Bresznev and to understand
how all the traditions were called into question by
Gorbachev. It does not seem to be necessary to go
back to the Kievskaya Rus about one thousand years
ago, or even more than that. But it is helpful, in my
view, to know about the orthodox church, since the
14th century centered in Moscow, and about the
orthodox church's self-evaluation and the self-eulogy
as being the Third Rome - "and a fourth will never
be", which is a phrase that the Russian church has
used over quite a long time. It considers Rome/Italy to
have been the "first", Rome, then Byzantium (later on
Constantinopel, today Istanbul) to have been the
"second", Rome, but Moscow being "the third and
ultimate", Rome.

4

I think the sense of mission, which has characterized all the great Russian leaders, stems from that clerical background. In a way, Ivan Grozny in the 16th century and as well Peter the Great in the 17th century, thought of themselves as having to carry out a great mission, a mission beyond the then boundaries of their state. So did several Czars in the 18th century and again in the 19th century, so did Lenin and other communist leaders in Russia.

The consequences of the self-inflicted breakdown of the Soviet Union, in approaching the end of the 20th century, do include the painful experience of the failure of Russia's mission, at least for the present and for the foreseeable future. This loss, it seems to me, does make it understandable that quite a few Russians in their present situation are suspicious of Western advice. There is at least a two hundred years old tradition of mistrust and of suspicion vis-à-vis-à-