Skybird
06-15-07, 11:07 AM
A week ago, Helmut Schmidt was awarded the first of the newly created Henry A. Kissinger Award by the American Academy in Berlin. Kissinger and Schmidt are said to be very close friends since 50 years now, so it was no surprise that the name-giver of that award held the laudatio. Both men's speeches were interesting, with Schmidt's speech maybe more interesting than that of Kissinger. Here are the links.
http://www.americanacademy.de/index.php?id=485
(...)
All of us ought to accept these enormous changes as facts of life. It is as well a fact of life that a fleet of aircraft carriers or of submarines, of nuclear-equipped rockets plus some troops do not suffice to economically and politically stabilize the globe.
The world power US will always find quite a number of countries joining their policies out of opportunistic calculation. But more important is that the American nation does have many true friends out of inclination and affection. I am just one personal example for thankful affection. After the colossal terrorist crime against the twin towers at Manhattan six years ago the wave of sympathy and solidarity with America all over the globe was almost overwhelming.
It is a pity that today some of that sympathy has vanished; some friends and allies today are puzzled and anxious. This deplorable change was triggered by strategic and foreign political decisions which the present administration in Washington has made. The second Iraq war has created additional tensions and enemies. The men who started that war had, by the way, never personally fought themselves, confirming the wisdom of Erasmus of Rotterdam: “War is sweet to those who have no experience of it.”
This philosophical insight of Erasmus does apply to quite a few contemporary governments. The present generation of political leaders in all the five continents in their majority they have no personal experience of war nor of the Soviet Gulag system nor of the Holocaust or Shoa nor of any dreadful war nor of any genocide with uncounted victims. They find it relatively easy to interfere by military force in the internal affairs of a foreign sovereign state – even under the headline of “humanitarian intervention” and thus hiding their national interest.
National egoism and national egotism is a fact all over the globe – in this respect America has many companions. The second war against Iraq was a war of choice, not of necessity. But here again America was not alone, many sovereign countries and many leaders have joined that war. The main reason for them was, that they were used to accept American leadership since decades.
I am convinced that the United States of America will overcome its present internal crisis of confidence and also overcome the international crisis of confidence. It may take time. But all governments do make mistakes and errors since historiography is being written and being read; but none of us because of such errors would deny the ancient Greeks or the Romans, the ancient Egyptians or the Chinese our admiration and respect. Nor will we Germans blame the American nation for the mistakes of their present administration. We will in the contrary thankfully remember the help and assistance which we have received from 1945 onwards – and again when the decay of Soviet power and supremacy over the Eastern half of Europe opened up the chance for Germany’s reunification. And we will also teach German students also in the next generation that the US and their Declaration of Independence, their Constitution and their Bill of Rights have laid the spiritual foundations for the political break-through of the era of enlightenment throughout the Western world, a breakthrough, which has reached my country only with a delay of nearly two centuries – and which needed help from America.
(...)
http://www.americanacademy.de/index.php?id=483
(...)
There is no other statesman I have trusted more and few whom I have trusted as much as Helmut. When he was Defense Minister, he played a decisive role in overcoming President Nixon's and my reservations about Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. When he was Chancellor, I stayed with him at the Bungalow in Bonn to exchange ideas whenever I traveled to or through Europe. Convinced as he was that Germany and America shared a common responsibility, Helmut did not confine his advice to matters of the German national interest narrowly defined. He did not hesitate to telephone me, on the occasion of the accession of Giscard d’Estaing to the French presidency, while I was on an official visit to Algiers with an injunction to avoid sliding into traditional Gaullist- American quarrels and a warning that he would keep an eye on both sides.
Throughout all of Helmut's conversations on politics has [been] a profound moral concern. "Politics without a conscience tends toward criminality," he said on one occasion. “I understand politics as pragmatic action for moral purposes." Typical was a conversation I had with Helmut a few weeks after a German commando unit undertook a daring raid to rescue German hostages held captive on an airplane hijacked to Mogadishu. Helmut recounted his anguish in the hours before he knew the raid had been successful. If he could be so moved, he mused, about the fate of eighty-six hostages and the commando unit that rescued them, how would he ever be able to bring himself to implement a NATO strategy involving nuclear weapons? And yet, a few years later, Helmut agreed to deploy medium-range American missiles on German soil -- because he thought it was his duty in the defense of freedom -- even though he knew it might end his political career.
(...)
A word must be said about Helmut's special relationship to America. When I was in government, I knew no more reliable a friend of the United States. The Presidents [whom] I served and I relied on him as on few others, American or foreign. As the decades went by, Helmut became increasingly critical of certain tendencies in American politics and life. Superficial observers have interpreted these observations as anti-Americanism. His friends know better. Helmut is part of the immediate postwar generation that looked to America for special qualities of leadership as the best, at first, the only hope of the free peoples. He therefore has tended to judge America by special standards and has found American shortcomings more difficult to accept than those of societies toward which his expectations were lower. And, in the process, he has considered it an act of trust to call attention to challenges in need of urgent attention. Helmut's relations to America are those of a somewhat strict uncle intolerant of intellectual or moral sloth, insistent on high performance, convinced that Europe and Germany contribute more to the common good by assuming their own intellectual responsibility than by simply becoming spectators or executors of the design of others.
(...)
Official press release:
http://www.americanacademy.de/fileadmin/_temp_/Kissinger_Prize.pdf
http://www.americanacademy.de/index.php?id=485
(...)
All of us ought to accept these enormous changes as facts of life. It is as well a fact of life that a fleet of aircraft carriers or of submarines, of nuclear-equipped rockets plus some troops do not suffice to economically and politically stabilize the globe.
The world power US will always find quite a number of countries joining their policies out of opportunistic calculation. But more important is that the American nation does have many true friends out of inclination and affection. I am just one personal example for thankful affection. After the colossal terrorist crime against the twin towers at Manhattan six years ago the wave of sympathy and solidarity with America all over the globe was almost overwhelming.
It is a pity that today some of that sympathy has vanished; some friends and allies today are puzzled and anxious. This deplorable change was triggered by strategic and foreign political decisions which the present administration in Washington has made. The second Iraq war has created additional tensions and enemies. The men who started that war had, by the way, never personally fought themselves, confirming the wisdom of Erasmus of Rotterdam: “War is sweet to those who have no experience of it.”
This philosophical insight of Erasmus does apply to quite a few contemporary governments. The present generation of political leaders in all the five continents in their majority they have no personal experience of war nor of the Soviet Gulag system nor of the Holocaust or Shoa nor of any dreadful war nor of any genocide with uncounted victims. They find it relatively easy to interfere by military force in the internal affairs of a foreign sovereign state – even under the headline of “humanitarian intervention” and thus hiding their national interest.
National egoism and national egotism is a fact all over the globe – in this respect America has many companions. The second war against Iraq was a war of choice, not of necessity. But here again America was not alone, many sovereign countries and many leaders have joined that war. The main reason for them was, that they were used to accept American leadership since decades.
I am convinced that the United States of America will overcome its present internal crisis of confidence and also overcome the international crisis of confidence. It may take time. But all governments do make mistakes and errors since historiography is being written and being read; but none of us because of such errors would deny the ancient Greeks or the Romans, the ancient Egyptians or the Chinese our admiration and respect. Nor will we Germans blame the American nation for the mistakes of their present administration. We will in the contrary thankfully remember the help and assistance which we have received from 1945 onwards – and again when the decay of Soviet power and supremacy over the Eastern half of Europe opened up the chance for Germany’s reunification. And we will also teach German students also in the next generation that the US and their Declaration of Independence, their Constitution and their Bill of Rights have laid the spiritual foundations for the political break-through of the era of enlightenment throughout the Western world, a breakthrough, which has reached my country only with a delay of nearly two centuries – and which needed help from America.
(...)
http://www.americanacademy.de/index.php?id=483
(...)
There is no other statesman I have trusted more and few whom I have trusted as much as Helmut. When he was Defense Minister, he played a decisive role in overcoming President Nixon's and my reservations about Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. When he was Chancellor, I stayed with him at the Bungalow in Bonn to exchange ideas whenever I traveled to or through Europe. Convinced as he was that Germany and America shared a common responsibility, Helmut did not confine his advice to matters of the German national interest narrowly defined. He did not hesitate to telephone me, on the occasion of the accession of Giscard d’Estaing to the French presidency, while I was on an official visit to Algiers with an injunction to avoid sliding into traditional Gaullist- American quarrels and a warning that he would keep an eye on both sides.
Throughout all of Helmut's conversations on politics has [been] a profound moral concern. "Politics without a conscience tends toward criminality," he said on one occasion. “I understand politics as pragmatic action for moral purposes." Typical was a conversation I had with Helmut a few weeks after a German commando unit undertook a daring raid to rescue German hostages held captive on an airplane hijacked to Mogadishu. Helmut recounted his anguish in the hours before he knew the raid had been successful. If he could be so moved, he mused, about the fate of eighty-six hostages and the commando unit that rescued them, how would he ever be able to bring himself to implement a NATO strategy involving nuclear weapons? And yet, a few years later, Helmut agreed to deploy medium-range American missiles on German soil -- because he thought it was his duty in the defense of freedom -- even though he knew it might end his political career.
(...)
A word must be said about Helmut's special relationship to America. When I was in government, I knew no more reliable a friend of the United States. The Presidents [whom] I served and I relied on him as on few others, American or foreign. As the decades went by, Helmut became increasingly critical of certain tendencies in American politics and life. Superficial observers have interpreted these observations as anti-Americanism. His friends know better. Helmut is part of the immediate postwar generation that looked to America for special qualities of leadership as the best, at first, the only hope of the free peoples. He therefore has tended to judge America by special standards and has found American shortcomings more difficult to accept than those of societies toward which his expectations were lower. And, in the process, he has considered it an act of trust to call attention to challenges in need of urgent attention. Helmut's relations to America are those of a somewhat strict uncle intolerant of intellectual or moral sloth, insistent on high performance, convinced that Europe and Germany contribute more to the common good by assuming their own intellectual responsibility than by simply becoming spectators or executors of the design of others.
(...)
Official press release:
http://www.americanacademy.de/fileadmin/_temp_/Kissinger_Prize.pdf