Former German Foreign Minister, Mr. Joschka Fischer, currently Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Visiting Professor and Lecturer in Foreign Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, elaborates on security issues in a world that is both unipolar and globally interdependent. Not only is one power, the United States, still dominant, representing one dominant ideology -- the Western market economy, but the problems are increasingly global and lend themselves only to global solutions: pollution does not respect state boundaries, terrorism can only be defeated with dependable and enduring coalitions and strong international institutions. In the post-Cold War order, there are, says Fischer, no more forgotten conflicts.
-- The editors

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JB: Let's start with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's notion of the coalition of the willing, in which Germany did not participate, to describe post-Cold-War forms of alliances. Is this Unsinn [nonsense]?

JF: In general I wouldn't deny there might be situations where this would be the right tool. But I don't believe that you can run a world with 7 billion people or more, with more than 190 states - a world which is globalized and everybody is more or less dreaming the same private and political dreams - without institutions, legal and binding commitments, international law, or without balancing competing interests through cooperation.

For example, during and after the second world war American foreign policy understood very well that we need international financial institutions to avoid future imbalances in the markets; for a free market economy, an extreme imbalance is a nightmare, as we experienced together in 1929. Furthermore, American foreign policy was committed to a long-term alliance with Europe and thus NATO was founded, along with the idea that the new world order should be based on the multilateral institutions; the UN was created and the international law got a key push by the Nuremburg trials. So there was no contradiction between strong alliance, strong military force, and very wise financial or security policy, the rule of international law and democracy building. If you look back at history, this was the finest hour of American foreign policy and it served the interests of this country.

JB: From your experience as a foreign minister, would you characterize states as rational players, whose motives and therefore strategy can be understood by other states?

JF: All human institutions are not more rational than the human beings in these institutions. In the academic framework it might help to look for interests, for the rationality of states and positions, just for the sake of analysis. But in the end there is still a strong human factor - human beings are always a combination of rational and irrational decision making. Do you really believe we would be in the same situation if Bush the elder were governing this country together with Baker and his team when 9/11 took place? Compared with his son? You'll have to give this answer.

JB: But the dominant paradigm here in the department of politics is rational choice theory. And they use, for instance, game theory, to explain your behavior and the behavior of states. In your experience, did this theory prove useful to predict your own strategic positions?

JF: No, I don't think so. Theoretical background, especially historical background, is very important. History in foreign policy matters very much: interests, institutions, motives, self-perception, ideologies, goals, instruments, the whole set. There is the risk that you can miscalculate and end up being locked up in history. For instance, in the present political debate there is Munich 1938, it's all about Munich and fighting against totalitarian threat. There is a new war, nobody protects us, neither FDR nor Churchill as in the Forties. Well, the present assumptions in the so called "War on Terror" are all based on history. But are they correct? If you go to a big war, you don't cut but you increase taxes, you mobilize all the strengths of your country. So history can also mislead you. But in 9 out of 10 cases in foreign policy, understanding the actors, their goals, the dynamics and the historical background of the situation is very important.

JB: What about the shift of global distribution of power away from Europe and the US to India and China? Does Europe still have a major role to play?

JF: First of all, this shift is a consequence of the unipolar economic system. Everybody believes in the Western market economy, which creates economically a unipolar world not based on the dominance of one power, but based on the dominance of one system. When we talk about fighting poverty, this means development, especially in East, South and Southeast Asia, where the nations are very successful. This will be their success story and it will create, of course, new superpowers, given the size of China and India. One of the challenges in international politics is therefore the integration of these powers without serious stress into the international system. We need - and this is the core of UN reform - stronger international institutions.

The major challenge will be the distribution of resources. It is only a matter of mathematics: if you move forward 20 years with the growth rate of India or China, what does that mean for exhaustion of global resources and the pollution of both the global and regional environments? Do you really believe the world economy in the 21st century will work, with the US defending its energy resources and China having a shortage? This would immediately lead to a collapse of the global economy with great consequences, and only losers as a result. In my assessment, we are forced to cooperation in the 21st century. This will have tremendous consequences for the international system and I don't think that with alliances of the willing you can fix this problem.

An additional challenge will be the balance-of-power interests. And you have irrational forces of non-state-actors: terrorism. There are many elements which are challenging global and regional peace and stability on one hand but also reflect the need for a new order on the other. Today the United States depends in economic terms on communist China. Still communist China! 10 or 15 years ago, if someone would have suggested that, everybody would say "Go to the doctor."

JB: The current ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said, and I quote: "The Secretariat building in New York has 33 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of a difference." Is there an effective diplomacy going on behind closed doors that suggests that, in your opinion, the UN, or specifically the Security Council, have adapted to the post-cold-war issues?

JF: Institutionally no. Politically, maybe sometimes. I will not comment on John Bolton's few words... maybe from the perspective of the US there would be no need for these 10 stories, but how is it from the perspective of other nations? Bureaucratic shortcomings and compromises also result when you have to deal with 191 or 192 sovereign states. Clearly, this demonstrates the need for a basic overhaul of many institutions and procedures, but this would be to strengthen the UN, not to weaken it. Because the major burden is on the shoulders of US as the indispensable global power; for the time being, a strong UN can share the burden. The price of the leadership is that you are not always applauded and hugged and kissed. An American said that to me one day when I complained that we [Germany] are always paying the EU and that everybody wants something, that we were badly treated and so on. My American friend smiled and said: "Well, Joschka, this is the price of leadership. We know that very well."

JB: There is always a tradeoff between liberty and security. Do you see this tradeoff made differently in Europe and the US today and do you think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction, towards security?

JF: I don't know, I was always in favor of stronger and tougher security, knowing the threats. We have to make security compromises and I am ready to do so. But what are we fighting for? Are we fighting for a high-security society with absolute powers, saying farewell to habeas corpus, to the rule of law? This would not be our world. America, from the very beginning, was always a combination of interests and values; of power, but also moral high ground, and your brightest moments were when you could combine both together in a decent way, which contributed a lot to the progress in the world. We used to know absolutist powers in Europe and this is not something we are fighting for. Fighting for liberty means that you preserve liberty. We are fighting for the rule of law and this means that you abide by the rule of law, and this is the difference between us and those who believe in dictatorial regimes and the rule of force. One needs to be clear about the distinction that we have to make compromises, especially when we are under fire, but we should never compromise on our values, not even under fire. We should give the terrorists the impression that they can hit us and we will strike back, but they can never hit our morale and change our values.

JB: Can you comment on an apparent paradox concerning contemporary security, namely that while there is an increased militarization of many conflicts around the world, there are also attempts to privatize the delivery of security.

JF: History might help you. When the Romans started to hand over their security to others, I think it was an essential part of their decline. When we think we are attacked by a serious enemy, we have to defend ourselves, it's about us, and handing this over to someone else will in my opinion not have any good consequences.

Secondly, my assessment of the terrorist threat is a double-track one. If you look at the subjective factor, you see a totalitarian ideology and instruments and mass killings without any differences - all the elements of a serious threat. On the other hand, it's a bunch of mass killers hidden somewhere in caves. They don't have the resources of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or Soviet Union. There is this huge gap in objective power. We should take terrorists very seriously and promote a strategy that will isolate them and bring the majority of Muslim populations and states onto our side. From a European perspective this is key given our large Muslim population everywhere in the EU; we are also a direct regional neighbor to the Middle East. You are far away, the whole Atlantic is between.

The reliance on the use of force for solving problems is a perception which will lead us into great difficulty. You have to fight down the terrorists and destroy their structures, limit their options by intelligence, cooperation, international coalition of security services, police force, military, whatever might be the proper instrument. But to dry out the roots, you need a political strategy.

JB: Toward the end of your service as a foreign minister you invested a great deal of time and effort into reaching a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. But you failed. And your successor in responding to the recent Israeli-Hezbollah war in Lebanon seemed to follow the sentiment expressed by the Frankfurter Rundschau "No German soldier should even theoretically be brought into a situation in which he has to aim his weapon at an Israeli." Could Germany potentially play a role in the settlement of this conflict?

JF: Germany can contribute as a member of the European Union, but the main actors are the United States, the EU, regional powers, and the other, non-European, permanent members of the Security Council. One of the key factors of our foreign policy is our special relation to the state of Israel. The historical and moral responsibility of my country cannot be denied, consequently German foreign policy defends the right of existence and the security of the state and people of Israel. All of our Arab friends know that perfectly well and it has not contributed negatively to the perception of the German position in the Middle East. It is clear, nevertheless, that since the very beginning of the founding of the state of Israel there is a conflict about its existence. In the end the UN decided on the partition of the Mandate Territory of Palestine, saying that having two states is the only way out. Given this, my personal assessment is that in the end it will be the borders of '67, because only these borders have legitimacy on both sides, but I would have serious doubts about whether both sides are ready to accept that. We said after 9/11 to our American friends that after the war in Afghanistan, they should use all their might and influence to broker sustainable peace between the Israelis and the Arabs, the Palestinians in particular. Then you use the legitimacy you create as such an honest broker for the next steps in transforming the Middle East via a political and economic strategy. Unfortunately they did not follow our advice. But nowadays in the Middle East all conflicts are more and more interconnected. The transatlantic community needs a common answer, a common strategy and implementation for Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinians. I think Syria will be key at the moment.

JB: Would you agree to the plea for the nuclear-free zone in the Middle East?

JF: Yes, but without the serious feeling on behalf of the Israeli population that this means security for them you cannot move on. You could imagine a nuclear-free Middle East with the consent of Israel, if the underlying conflicts will be settled and the security guarantees will be given in viable form.

JB: But Iran feels the same way.

JF: No. The Iranian nuclear program is a very different one. Of course they are concerned about regime change intentions but this is only one element. The other element is that they have hegemonial ambitions. The discussion in Iran, I was in Tehran on August 1, is whether they should take the risk and try it. The underlying idea is that they will be the dominant power in the region. A very risky strategy, by the way. Because if you look at the map and analyze the situation in a very objective geopolitical way, Iran is very lonely in the region.

JB: Like Israel?

JF: Yes, but Israel has strong ties to the West. If you look at Iran, the Russians are in the north, Pakistan in the east and behind Pakistan the big power in the region, it will be the awakened India in 20 years; if you go to the Gulf, there are the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and the Turks are in the West. Based on the interests you would say the perfect ally for Iran would be the West. But the ideology is against that. Iran, once again, has not even once mentioned Israeli nuclear arms during our negotiations, because then they would have given us the evidence that they are not looking for peaceful use but for the prestige, protection, and the consequences of regional domination. Neither Syria nor Saudi Arabia nor Turkey (Turkey and Egypt now announced civil nuclear programs) will stand on the sidelines when Iran goes nuclear. There will be a nuclear arms race in the region. And this will completely change the security posture of Europe. Completely.

JB: The two major issues of the Green Party in Germany, which you were central in directing, were redressing human relations to each other (today perhaps centered in debates on human rights) and questions of environment (today perhaps centered in debates on climate change). Do you see any progress on these issues?

JF: Yes. First of all, there is an ongoing historical change in what you call human relations in international politics. Since, for example, 1945, the right of the individual became more-and-more important, which I think is a secular process that cannot be pushed back. You can suppress it and there might be setbacks, but in the long term sovereignty is more-and-more limited by the individual, by human rights. This is also part of the globalization of culture and it was US foreign policy that brought this key factor of individual responsibility into the European concept of sovereignty. In Europe it used to be quite clear that how rulers treat their own population is their own sovereign right and that they can make them live in paradise or in hell as long as they are not interfering in the interests of another state. So non-interference was very important. Beginning with the Charter of the United Nations and also with the Nuremburg trials, non-interference is no longer a sacred cow. From my point of view this is tremendous progress. As for our relations to nature. For me the biggest challenge of Western civilization is the globalization of our model: the transformation of the minority model of Western culture into a majority model. In the old days of the environmental movement in the Club of Rome report, we had the 20-80 formula, whereby 20 percent of mankind are part of the global economy and the consuming reality of the Western societies, and create 80 percent of the environmental problems using 80 percent of the energy. This formula is history. We are now moving forward: before 1989 we had around 800 million to 1 billion people who took part in the world economy, now there is 3 or 4 billion, in China alone 300 to 400 million people are part of internal economic progress. The rest will of course do anything to be also part of it, and rightly so. They want excellent education for their children, they want a decent life, they want a life where dreams come true. But what if everybody has such a nice huge car as Americans, wonderful heating, wonderful housing, excellent living standard?

JB: Isn't that precisely the problem: the globalization of the model?

JF: But we have to answer on that! The environment will be a core issue of the future industrial or post-industrial society, an issue that has to be solved by cooperation and not by power. The solution is not an alternative to the markets. You have to create the framework in which the markets can still work. If the oil price explodes, the regimes around the world could collapse and the economy will suffer a lot. I believe that in a similar fashion to the financial institutions we need imaginative ideas about new global institutions for the environment; once again, not a price-fixing or any such kind of alternative to the markets, but a framework that prevents major environmental imbalances which would then have tremendous negative consequences for the markets.

JB: Mr. Fischer, you have indicated only the consciousness about these two issues. But has real progress been made?

JF: I have been here in the US for a few weeks now. In these few weeks I read a lot of articles: for example a Republican governor in California is acting like a member of the German or Austrian Green party. Look at Toyota, one of the most successful, or from a short-term perspective the biggest, car producer. These are not environmentalists, these are cool calculating businesspeople. And they understand that environmental protection is not something only for environmentalists, it's also a big economic success story. If you go to Beijing, or to India, you will understand that the growing middle class will not accept bad living conditions, not for the next decade. The pressure on their governments and lawmakers will be tremendous.

From a European point of view, America is still an underpopulated country. Asia, however, is once again another dimension. In modern China or India the pressure for the most sophisticated environmental technology will be one of the basic facts in development of future markets and will be a great business. Toyota, as I said - compare it with some other car companies that I won't mention - understood that very well. If I compare my American middle-class household with my German middle-class household: our technology is much more energy efficient, much more developed and sophisticated than here in the US. Why is that so? Because price is a reasonable incentive for improving the energy efficiency and development of new technologies. It seems to me that even Republicans in the US now understand that the environment is not a partisan issue. It's nothing about left or right, it's about the future, so I am quite optimistic.

I also wouldn't underestimate a third element: social justice. One of the lessons of 9/11 and Afghanistan was that in the world of tomorrow, there will be no more forgotten conflicts. In the old days it would have been impossible that a group of mass murderers from Afghanistan would attack the most powerful nation, but not so in a globalized reality. For example, I say this to my countrymen in Europe: "When Africa will start to export its conflicts in the 21st century we can build walls and do what we like and it won't help us." There is a new interdependency between the basement and the belle-etage in the globalized world. We must understand that it is about education, about market access, about the balance between the rich and the poor, it is a give-and-take. This was agreed by the UN under Kofi Annan and all the world community in the Millennium Summit, but unfortunately not implemented.

JB: During your term as the Foreign Minister, the Goethe Institute, which was so instrumental in shaping the image of Germany abroad by publicizing the German culture in the broadest sense, but specifically in its critical voice, has been cut back internationally, severely. In Tripoli they eliminated the office and reduced the Beirut office to a shell. And in many ways this has been the most effective instrument of German foreign policy. Do you think the US could use it as a model to reform its own image? And was the Goethe Institute a special reaction to the location of Germany in the international community after WWII? Is that over, or in other words, Germany does not need to address its own image any longer and therefore the Goethe Institute is expendable? And is this an example of the reduction of foreign policy to an apparatus of professional diplomats?

JF: In my seven years of tenure as a Foreign Minister, I only had one year of growth in my budget, and in six years I had to deal with cuts. We were in a very unpleasant situation that the foreign policy was more and more important but the resources were in decline. The situation has unfortunately not substantially improved. We therefore closed many Goethe Institutes in Europe, for example. It was very painful, because in a city like Genoa there was an outstanding tradition, very important for the people-to-people and the intercultural relations. On the other hand we had to open new Goethe Institutes, especially in Central Asia, in the Caucasian area and in some other countries. We now have an office in Cairo, which is very successful in public diplomacy with the Arab world. Some of the institutes we closed might have been a mistake, not only Lebanon but there are one or two more. But we had to transform the structure. I agree fully, though, I am criticizing myself that I was not able to create an increase in our budget for the Goethe Institute.

JB: Our final question: some people say that you came to Princeton to escape what I read are your five marriages. Is there any truth in this claim?

JF: It's nonsense. There is nothing to escape from. It's my life and there is no need to escape from it. I came to Princeton to open a new chapter in my life. I said farewell to domestic politics, it is over. I am now 58, which sounds very old, but is still young enough to open a new chapter. It's the first time I live outside of my own country, I now have the experience of being a foreign alien, and it's very interesting to experience the differences in everyday life between Europe and the US. It is also a challenge to be in a university and to teach, and to experience the most powerful nation from inside.

JB: Thank you very much.