” With so many crisis at the same time and all over the globe, we need a fresh, creative, and well planned foreign policy World 3.0. It is based on a clever double strategy of power and reconciliation to win. Or we will loose again and again, and peace is in real danger in our global village.”
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Dr Hubertus Hoffmann – the founder of globalo.com, the independent World Security Network (www.worldsecuritynetwork.com) and the The Global Tolerance Initiative (www.loveistolerance.com) – is promoting since five years peaceful resolutions and action-based politics with a double-strategy of power and reconciliation and tolerance in a fresh active and more successful foreign policy.
GLOBALO documents his main arguments in the video above and the full text below, which are based on the wisdom of his long-time mentor Dr. Fritz Kraemer and the needs in the 21st century in a globalized world.
Hubertus Hoffmann demands to start a new foreign policy, he calls Word 3.0, based on a double-strategy of power and reconciliation, hard and soft factors of peace-making.
It must include fresh ideas and many actions and less talks to contain the radicals, promote freedom and tolerance and safe peace in our global village.
He argues:
- What is a World 3.0? Our world is in chaos right now. How can we make the world better, and contain the threats?
- Needed is a new smart foreign policy, in all 195 member states of the United Nations:
- We must better plan and coordinate our foreign policy
- Bureaucracies are our biggest enemy
- We do crisis management, but that is not enough and too late
- Must be self-critical: what needs to be done to be better?
- We burn too much money for too little output
- Main Achilles heel is our inability for efficient and creative foreign affairs
- We talk, but don’t act
- Few people dare to make options and proposals
- Fill the action vacuum with provocative new ideas.
- We are not supporting the silent majorities of the other countries
- We need a preventive Stabilization Policy: Deterrence and Defense and a better Crisis Management
- We have to avoid “Provocative Weaknesses” (Fritz Kraemer) as well and need credible deterrence and defense capabilities too to contain the radicals wherever, whenever. Word 3.0 is based on the classical foreign policy of Realpolitik Word 1.0. But this one important pillar of peace is never enough. We need a second pillar of reconciliation. We need both at the same time: hawk and dove, power and diplomacy.
- The foreign policy brain drain must be stopped. The smartest minds are not going into foreign policy, they go into business. Foreign Policy does not attract the creative entrepreneurs that it needs. We need more desire for fresh new ideas from active people
- We need a new Global Elite Responsibility. Global leaders need to act in the interest of the future. More responsible elites who enact good policies
- We have to fill the vacuum, otherwise the radicals do.
- Mentorship programs to link talented youths with Global Leaders. Don’t just award scholarships, engage in knowledge transfer
- In our Global Village we have to Incorporate the global youth
- The Western foreign policy is still too much Washington-centric. In NATO everyone waits for what Uncle Sam does
- Needed is the use of Western creativity. Why are the creatives in marketing, not foreign affairs? The West markets things well, but they do not get these people to engage in foreign policy
- The policies lack substance. We need to offer solutions
- We need a better planning. We ought to learn from the mistakes of the past. We need papers detailing the mistakes of the past wars, so we can learn from these past errors and successes
- We must learn from NGO’s, Creative people, and people on the ground.
- Where is the knowhow from the war in Iraq that can be passed on?
- Always have a plan B and an exit strategy before you invade in a foreign country
- Better estimate the costs of wars
- We have to think and act locally
The video above is highlighting his main arguments.
What elements should a new, promising foreign and security policy – which I would like to call World 3.0 following Microsoft’s developing steps – include in order to make it capable of deterring enemies, strengthening the forces of freedom and making the world safer and more peaceful?
A policy corresponding with the national interests of 21st century freedom-loving, democratic nations while also meeting the needs of billions of people in impoverished and underdeveloped countries for food, jobs, and human dignity.
A smart and effective policy capable of mastering the global challenges and changes.
Moreover, a policy we can afford as highly indebted nations with limited financial means.
A smart foreign policy meeting the desires and dreams of the new Facebook generation, the new young and active elite from Cape Town to Seattle or Beijing.
An active foreign policy which does not remain stuck in administrating the status quo and defense of national interests through deterrence as does World 1.0.
One which does not continue the weakness of our current mainstream World 2.0; a foreign policy which fails to offer coherent and creative action plans for crisis management, with little deeds and much talk which does not deliver feasible results and staggers from one media-friendly conference to the next.
A better foreign policy shaping the globe for our children – Networking a Safer World 3.0.
World 3.0 is the upgrade of World 1.0 and World 2.0. The historical maxims and wisdom of the importance of power and national interests as described by Cardinal Richelieu or German Chancellor Bismarck and the needs of Realpolitik a la Hans J. Morgenthau and Henry A. Kissinger are still the solid base of World 3.0, but these are no longer sufficient for a successful foreign policy in the 21st century.
World 1.0 and Word 2.0 are no longer enough to serve our national interests in the new atomized, non-polar world where there are many more new players, instant mass communication tools, demand from billions of people for quick improvements, and limited resources.
What kind of priorities, double-strategies, and actions do we need in our globalized world to promote peace, stability, and human rights in our time?
How can our foreign policy in this fragmented world, with many of its seven billion individual inhabitants struggling for food, shelter, and human dignity, achieve positive change?
What can it achieve in the fight against terrorism, nuclear weapons in the hands of mullahs, famine in East Africa, pirates and greedy politicians pillaging their impoverished countries and installing themselves comfortably in authoritarian structures?
Have we reached the limits of what is possible, but are unwilling to admit it?
Are we not just puffing ourselves up like a vain rooster unable to lay eggs?
Dozens of books could be and have been written about different good ideas, concepts, and problem-solving approaches. Admirable suggestions are to be found in experts’ periodicals, books, and speeches.
I would like to outline just a few ideas prompting the reader to further discussions and publications. It is up to everyone to join this important discussion process with creative ideas. Sometimes a young student in Cairo has a better idea than Henry Kissinger in New York. Kindly address your own ideas to president@worldsecuritynetwork.com or to the Facebook site of the World Security Network Foundation.
A Tool-Box and many craftsmen
Let me start with a simple metaphor.
Think of yourself as a plumber with a tool-box full of hammers, screwdrivers, and twenty other different tools. As a good craftsman you will first look at what you have to repair and then choose the tools which serve you best – job done – quickly, easily, and effectively.
This is not the case in foreign policy as yet. We must address this weakness and change it.
Many “craftsmen” are on hand to address hot spots in foreign policy. Politicians in parliaments and parties with different views, the media, public opinion, the foreign office, the defense ministry, the UN, as well as many actors from other countries. That amounts to several dozen people with strong egos, national perceptions and sometimes arrogance and ignorance. Sounds like chaos and a big mess – and it will almost certainly start like that. Fritz Kraemer used to say “Great interests are at stake, but small interests govern.”
In the end action comes too late, it is mostly uncoordinated, and costs the tax payer a lot of money. This is the negative experience of Iraq and Afghanistan.
No foreign minister, ministry, or respected institute predicted the Arab Spring, nor the fall of the Berlin Fall and re-unification of Germany, or the collapse of the USSR. How embarrassing if you compare this with the strong egos and pompous speeches of many diplomats and politicians who were involved. The track-record of World 2.0 is frustratingly poor after the Cold War and the golden times of the European Spring.
Our bureaucracies are our main adversary- endless diagnosis replaces therapy
We should never merely blame the bad guys, jihadists, or dictators for what they do. We must instead be self-critical, examining what needs to be improved to make us smarter as well as stronger than our enemies. We need a continually adapting decent foreign policy avoiding any ignorance or arrogance.
Our own bureaucracies, including weak politicians in cabinets and parliaments, constitute our main adversary. Experience shows that at the end of a frustrating, grinding decision-making processes we usually burn too much money for little output and are too slow, uncoordinated, and inefficient. This red tape monster is harder to fight than any enemy. It is our main Achilles Heel in foreign affairs, causing us to win on the battle field but lose in the end and produce one “lost victory” after another. Our enemies do not constitute the main threat, but rather our system´s inability to deal effectively and creatively with them.
Worlds of difference lie between the dynamics of the actual movers and shapers of today’s world, such as the young Egyptian bloggers, the young Palestinians and Israelis or Syrian and Libyan activists willing to risk their lives for freedom on the one hand, and the planning staffs of the State Department, the Foreign Office, or the Auswärtiges Amt on the other.
On the whole the foreign policy establishment is unable to keep up with such rapid developments, barely understands the complex new world, and hardly exerts any influence on the course of events. Foreign policy officials have become onlookers.
The powerful are attempting to shape the world with pep talks, international conferences, and state visits, but mostly end up splashing in their own bathtubs.
Political rhetoric carries the day, while actual plans and deeds are rare.
A year ago, the ousted rulers in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt were openly courted. No foreign minister predicted what would follow so soon.
Almost all of the much vaunted international conferences produce nice TV images for the electorate but no concrete options, proposals, and plans at all. They consist of exhaustive speeches with many buzz words, but an “action vacuum”.
Today, a nearly endless diagnosis replaces therapy.
The usual discussions and international meetings dealing with foreign policy mostly end with the demand “We ought to do something”, but without considering consequences, plans, and precise implementation.
Hardly a single politician or leading civil servant asks the hard questions about the where, when, and how. But this is where effective work starts. Success or failure will be determined in this realm of plans and options.
Listening to politicians conveys the impression that they confuse their speeches with implementation according to the platitude: “But that is what I said.”
Proactive policy is the missing asset in the foreign affairs of the mainly bourgeois politicians and diplomats who are pleased to have a nice position and title but avoid fighting for values and a better future of our children.
We need proactive White Revolutionists for World 3.0 – otherwise we are destined to fail.
The subjunctive has taken over.
Foreign policy is no longer shaped and conducted; instead it is geared toward the media saying what should, could, and must be done.
A growing number of problems are being merely described, even by research institutes, but none are being processed and mastered. The books published by well known foreign affairs institutes describe the different positions and problems but almost never dare to make any clear proposal with options.
This creates a huge traffic jam and pileup of too many problems on the foreign policy motorway.
We are leaving the initiative to a few radical activists – who represent a tiny minority of around one percent of the global population – and through our passivity we are creating an action vacuum full of provocative weaknesses.
We are not acting, but instead becoming the object of action.
We are not shaping, but instead reacting to new developments.
We are not actively stimulating and effectively supporting the silent majorities of 99 percent plus in specific countries, but remaining passive bystanders.
We are not helping with deeds, only advertising our interest with empty words.
Thus we lose influence and reputation.
In view of today´s paradigmatic shift in foreign policy, what is needed is a new preventive stabilization policy, transcending traditional deterrence.
We must systematically neutralize the numerous time bombs large and small, before it is too late and they get out of control. Pure crisis management no longer suffices.
We must address the roots of tensions such as ethnic conflicts, hunger, poverty, population growth, water shortage, or underdeveloped agriculture.
We must collect, evaluate, strengthen, and implement best practice on a global scale. Until now this learning process appears overly bureaucratic, slow, unprofessional, and lacking in dynamism.
We must analyze well beyond the existing limits of military thought, and begin to deliberate in new international networks and coalitions as exemplified in Libya.
In an age of towering debts and limited budgets, we are obliged to calculate precisely what we can afford and which funding mix will enable maximum output with minimum input.
We must convince the affluent oil countries in MENA, as well as new powers like China and Brazil, to join more active as our partners the development process particularly in Africa and take over a part of the global burden.
Brilliant foreign secretaries and talented foreign policy personnel – where are they?
Fritz Kraemer´s demand for a brilliant foreign secretary as a mover and shaker in foreign affairs with a touch of musicality and talent is permanently and systematically ignored in most countries. This damages the quality of foreign policy enormously, because it remains anaemic.
Most Foreign Offices do not care who serves as their foreign secretary. This prestigious position is part of a political bargain and a candidate is not selected on the basis of specialized knowledge, experience, or qualifications. Tactical political power and a minimum consensus favor smooth personalities lacking charisma and vision dominating the field in too many countries.
Do we not require personalities with more experience and vision, as the world becomes more complex and their tasks more difficult?
The present results of this personnel policy are mediocre and disappointing, remaining stuck in old-style crisis management.
Foreign policy cannot be learned in a few weeks, just as flying a jumbo jet cannot be learned quickly by someone used to driving a car. Extensive experience, solid specialized knowledge, and real talent are indispensable. Consequently, foreign policy frequently lacks the necessary personal foundation. This makes it incapable of shaping new facts, but able only to administer problems.
Must we allow this to continue or are there still heads of government heeding the quality of foreign secretaries in their respective cabinets and members of parliament assuming responsibility for suggesting the best?
Worse, in most countries foreign policy is reduced to an insignificant area for very few specialists, avoided by politicians striving to reach the top. It promises no credit in public, because the area ranks low in public opinion polls. In an exemplary survey in the German Bundestag of 2005, 109 new Bundestag members were asked about their preferred areas of politics. Only one chose foreign policy. Do we not require more and better foreign policy experts in parliaments? Who recruits and supports them?
This foreign policy amnesia is an alarming sign; foreign policy expertise is dwindling while a growing number of challenges are emerging in our atomized world order. Simultaneously foreign policy is undergoing a brain-drain, preventing the creative, entrepreneurial conduct customary in private business.
A possible solution could lie in politically independent and influential personalities fostering the careers of selected young, passionate, and qualified politicians in the field of foreign policy over many years. This would enable paving their way into parliaments from outside the existing, stultifying system of partisan politics.
A Holy Flame – Passion and devotion needed
Apple Founder Steve Jobs opened new horizons to foreign and security personnel and civil servants. In his famous Stanford 2005 Commencement Address he offered the following insights: “The only thing that kept me going was what I loved what I did. You´ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven´t found it yet, keep looking. Don´t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you´ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it.”
World 3.0 means foreign policy with love and passion – a Holy Flame – aiming at changing the world for the better. Fritz Kraemer wrote in his memo On Elitism, “A life of contemplation, active missionary work for a cause, is infinitely more desirable than an existence earnestly geared to the making of money.” We need politicians and young people with passion and devotion for foreign policy shaping the world.
A mission is needed essentially promoting a just order with greater respect for the dignity of the individual.
The credibility and moral integrity of political actors offering Western values and standards to other peoples and countries truly matter.
The very soul of our democratic foreign policy must not be risked. We must preserve it wisely and carefully, as something of the highest worth, like a fragile egg.
I agree with the plea of Professor Hans Küng from the University of Tübingen in his book World Ethos for World Policy and World Economy that ethos must be better integrated into foreign affairs as an important policy factor. The influential book of the German Jewish emigrant from Coburg Hans J. Morgenthau, Politic Among Nations (1948), promoted a so called realistic power policy. I agree. But power only in the old-style World 1.0 is not enough. A soul is also necessary, combined with a solid power for diplomacy and peace, thus a merger of power and ethos. Where power thinking and immoral deeds are damaging the strong flame of freedom and democracy it perverts our Western foreign policy, producing weakness and reducing the influence and vital powerbase as well. Soft factors are power too, as Harvard Professor Joseph Nye has established, and play an ever more important role in the new world.
For these reasons all factors damaging the reputation of any state should be carefully analyzed, avoided, and better ceased. In the case of the United States overreactions like Guantanamo Bay or water-boarding of suspects cross the red line and produce several negative consequences for morality, recruitment of supporters and terrorists, credibility and reputation as global moral leader. They reduce the U.S. hard-soft power base and must therefore be banned.
Those states which are still power-centric like China and Russia have to consider if their cozy alignments with brutal dictators like North Korea, Iran, or Syria, or the suppression of minorities and human rights activists at home reduce their hard and soft power sum in global politics and should therefore be better ceased to become stronger.
We need politicians actively and passionately promoting the soul of Western foreign policy every day. Fritz Kraemer regretted: “My fear regarding the inner corrosion of the very successful politician is that he will leave part of his soul on every rung of the ladder leading him to the top. The harsh school of upward struggle may, in fact, have made him a master tactician, but the Holy Fire, the inner passion, the vision has gone, had to go.
Good-Bye Doomsday, Welcome Optimism
Foreign policy ought to be conducted with crisp and self-confident optimism. Pessimism and doomsday scenarios merely have a paralyzing effect. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the USSR, integration of all Eastern European countries in EU and NATO, the dismantling of the SS-20 IRBM, or the youth rebellion in North Africa deliver examples of positive surprises in world politics. The glass is half full and a better world is possible. We must be active shapers instead of administering the crises – optimism via self-fulfilling prophecy.
More young responsible elites needed to promote progress and values
The foundation of every sensible policy following Kraemer as well as regeneration itself consists in educating a new, responsible generation. The systematic quest for and permanent support of manifold young elites in all the world´s countries in politics, economy, and culture is crucial for a new foreign policy World 3.0.
All existing programs are very laudable, but much too small and underfunded. We are working with tweezers and need a vacuum cleaner.
We ought to multiply existing education and talent enabling programmes as well as numerous creative mentor programmes particularly for countries undergoing radical changes in Africa and Asia.
We must identify many more new talents, support them on-site, and invite them to join us, providing necessary know how and life-long contacts as well as nurturing mutual trust.
We have several best practice examples, including The Harvard International Summer Seminar, directed by Henry Kissinger from 1951 to 1971, where 800 Europeans and Asians were made familiar with American thinking within a few months. Another example is provided by Sandbox, a global community of 600 young leaders from 48 different countries, founded in 2008, comprising extraordinary achievers below the age of 30 who have already had an impressive impact creating value for the community. Under the direction of Professor Peter Neumann of King’s College London, 20 Atkin Fellows from Israel and the Arab world gather annually at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence for four months to develop new ideas for better understanding in the Middle East. Cosmopolitan inspirer and networker Lord George Weidenfeld welcomed the first cohort of young scholars in 2007 for the Weidenfeld Scholarship and Leadership Programme from Eastern Europe, Russia, North Africa, and the Middle East organized by his excellent London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Philipp Missfelder, the young and talented CDU/CSU spokesman for foreign affairs in the German Bundestag and chairman of the Junge Union, underlines the importance of a fresh and active friendship policy with the yet unknown young people in the Arab Spring, building new connections to support their fight for freedom. The Atlantic Bridge brings together young individuals from the U.S. and Germany every year. Its chairman Friedrich Merz has contributed an article to this book. In 1991, I was one of the Young Leaders and fascinated by the programme. The active trans-Atlantic networker Professor Werner Weidenfeld supports young talents with his Munich-based C.A.P. institute since many years. The largest Women as Global Leaders Conference, with 1,800 female young leaders from more than 60 countries, does not take place in emancipated Sweden, but every two years in Dubai under the direction of the Zayed University of the United Arab Emirates. The brilliant Higher Education Minister Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak al Nahayan invited me in 2008 to deliver the conference dinner speech on The Human Codes of Tolerance with the American actress Jane Fonda as an emancipated listener in the first row. I like to remember with a smile the start of my speech when I welcomed her: “Testosterone has arrived at the Women as Global Leaders Conference, dear Jane…”
Their example should be maximised by nations such as the U.S., Canada, the European nations, Japan, and South Korea agreeing upon a new large Global Leadership Program and splitting the costs. This fund should be brought into a foundation providing different non-governmental organizations with the opportunity to support a variety of special programmes in politics, agriculture, culture, media, religion, justice, education, or industry for say 100,000 young individuals per year, creating one million in ten years. Qatar with its superb Qatar Foundation and the United Arab Emirates could be included. Both Gulf states have provided outstanding examples with first-class universities and renowned institutions. The programme should support the new elites particularly in MENA, Africa, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. At the average expenses of USD 50,000 per scholarship the required funding would amount to USD 5bn per year split between the U.S., E.U., and Japan with one billion dollar each, and Canada, South Korea, Qatar, and U.A.E. with USD 500mn each. I can think of no better investment because it creates the responsible elite in crisis areas, addresses the future of youth and their countries, providing a considerable stabilizing effect.
We should not simply award scholarships and convey knowledge, but develop mentor programmes following Fritz Kraemer´s example. For this task we require thousands of experienced personalities capable of conveying guidelines for life to the most talented young individuals and devoting much time to them.
Crisis regions urgently need know-how in all areas. Their political and economic decision-making processes are frequently inflexible, antiquated, and too slow. Their judicial systems may be inoperative. Crisis regions lack competitiveness providing a basis for the future.
Suitable mentors can be found in the enormous world-wide pool of the retired in every walk of life. We should recruit mentors for the elites from different countries, and through skilful personnel policy, create a permanent foreign policy network with a million new knots. We will provide assistance for self-help and regeneration through responsible elites as propagated by Kraemer.
A systematic effort to bring together young people and experienced mentors is necessary in Western countries as well. Why don´t foreign and defense secretaries regularly invite young super-talents to meetings with former ambassadors, state secretaries, and generals, who, acting as mentors, support those young individuals, as did Fritz Kraemer? Is that not a large untapped resource with huge potential?
Mentors should not be confused with superiors, looking after their employees. The young talents will be able to articulate their concerns and ideas and incorporate the wisdom of Senior Advisors without the constraints of employment.
A section for mentoring should be created within the personnel departments of foreign and defense ministries, systematically focusing on this process, recruiting mentors and bringing them together with young talents. It should become an integral part of personnel planning in foreign and defense policy. Guidelines ought to systematize the quest for talents, providing permanent support.
Creativity, character, and special involvement as well as self-confidence and innovative thinking must be taken into account more prominently in official assessment and promotion guidelines than previously. We do not need more plain and conformist administrators, but instead additional independent thinkers and shapers, those often discarded by bureaucracies as non-conformist and unpopular, according to the studies of Fritz Kraemer. Innovative thinkers are crucial for truly nurturing creativity in rapidly clogging bureaucracies, and thereby for providing the prerequisites for the effective conduct of a new foreign policy.
Traditional networks and conventions should include the young elites and professionals as well. If the inspiring Facebook Generation is incorporated into the frequently outmoded meetings of foreign policy elites it is bound to enrich them.
These young individuals are looking for a field of action away from the now-dominant world of super materialism. They want to fight for the good and they have a global vision. Their friends come from many countries. They are active. There are bound to be future Henry Kissingers or Alexander Haigs among the teeming youth of Africa, China, Europe, or the United States. It is up to us to become acquainted with them, filter them out, and support them.
Integrate the new international NGO networks
A generation ago, the world was still divided into regions which seemed near or far away. As early as September 29 1969, Fritz Kraemer described the march of globalization in his memorandum The Modern World, A Single ‘Strategic Theater’, which he presented to the former U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who in turn submitted it to President Richard Nixon. “It is one of the truisms of our time that because of the sensational development of communications and transportation, the globe has shrunk with distances between formerly far-away countries having been reduced to mere hours in flight time. The hallmark is interdependence rather than independence among states. The whole globe has become a single theater,” the prophet forecast 41 years ago.
Today we have finally arrived in a global village. The Dalai Lama put it in a nutshell during a meeting of the World Security Network: “There is no me and they – the whole world is me.”
International organizations and action groups, such as the World Economic Forum, Amnesty International, the Open Society Institute of George Soros, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, the Young Presidents Organization, the Catholic lay person organization Sant’Egidio from Rome and its successful peacemaking efforts in Mozambique in 1992, or the World Security Network Foundation inspired by Fritz Kraemer – all these organizations via the worldwide web provide a permanent network for hundreds of thousands of active individuals from dozens of nations with entirely different ideas.
These people frequently have a closer relationship with distant acquaintances on the other side of the world than with their neighbours at home. Such affinity groups share similar thoughts and have identical interests and notions of the future regardless of whether they live in New Delhi, Washington, Berlin, or Cairo.
The international outlook as well as the commitment to freedom demonstrated by these influential movers and shakers is already changing the world for the better and having an impact on the foreign policy of national governments. This is what the innovative thinker Parag Khanna suggests in his excellent book How to Run the World (New York, 2011): “a fresh, mega-diplomacy with inclusiveness by involving governments, NGOs, and companies, decentralization and mutual accountability.”
This new diplomacy goes far beyond the traditional foreign affairs techniques of diplomats and states, instead offering maximum flexibility with new public-private partnerships in a fragmented world – as already practiced by Bernard-Henri Levy. Vice Admiral Charles Style, Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies in London and member of the Advisory Board of the World Security Network, comments that “the interaction amongst future high national leaders from over 40 countries at the College each year points the way: there is an overriding and urgent requirement to build mechanisms by which understanding can be built cross-culture, cross-sector, and cross-nation. This is needed both to avert the repetition of past catastrophic mistakes and also to get onto the front of the white water wave of international change, by thinking afresh about inclusive internationalist strategies. Most of us at present do little more than gasp for air in the turbulent water astern of its unstoppable progress. I am thus personally convinced of the need for something like the international exchange, learning, and networking of the type which this chapter suggests”.
These new approaches for a World 3.0 reinvigorate foreign office meetings and stimulate creativity as well as new networks among innovative young people.
However, they are not meant to be the exotic PR garments of classic power politics used for decoration by politicians.
The new networks should not limit themselves to promoting the appropriate soft factors, but must exert direct influence on the politicians and their plans as well as stimulating young politicians in different regions and parties. Consequently, the networks must design concrete action plans and initiate parliamentary resolutions.
Calling for political action through the medium of public criticism, warnings, or demands usually fizzles out or gets stuck in red tape. These soft-policy networks should fashion their ideas in a dual strategy of power and diplomacy, because nothing can be implemented without power. This was demonstrated in Libya.
The new networked foreign policy is no longer inter-governmental but inclusive.
Its several centers of gravity are located not only in the governments of countries but in the global networks of this world´s movers and shakers as well.
Parting from eccentric materialism – Turning to values
The networks reflect a re-orientation of human individuals. The trend in elites is shifting away from excessive materialism aiming at maximum profit and high-class consumption to a more fulfilled life, as described by Fritz Kraemer in his chapter On Elitism.
Foreign policy can benefit from contemplation of values, active support for the environment and for people.
Increasingly individuals around the world bring their vision and ideas to bear in foreign policy.
Split Global Leadership – Distribute Responsibilities from the U.S. towards Allies
Most importantly, the effective foreign policy of any nation should analyze its national interests and have clear aims, demonstrating an eagerness and ambition to design its own distinctive foreign policy and not only to act in the trail of Washington; a regular evaluation is needed as well and adaption to realities on the ground, demands Dr August Hanning, the former German BND President and member of the International Advisory Board of the World Security Network Foundation.
The approach of the (Western) world is still Washington-centric, which does not fit the reality of a globalized world and is also overburdening the U.S. Our alliance still reminds me of a family enterprise where father Uncle Sam has more than 20 grown up sons and daughters but still makes all decisions and treats them as his children. They wait to see what bid daddy makes in the lazy back seat of NATO. The same is true in the E.U. where smaller nations should lead in some areas, not only Germany and France.
It is time to give the allies real global responsibilities where they take over leadership for the alliance supported by Washington. Main allies should take the lead-position in hot spots of foreign affairs, get more involved and take over special tasks in a new diplomatic burden sharing.
Here are some examples: Estonia is the master pupil of the E.U. and has established a booming nation out of the ruins of the smallest republic of the USSR within only 20 years. It could take the lead for the reform process in Greece for the E.U. and also in Tunisia and Egypt on behalf of the E.U. Commission. Denmark could take care of the reconciliation process in the Western Sahara conflict between Morocco and Algeria. Norway can lead in the Israel/Palestine talks for the E.U. France may coordinate the peace process in the Caucasus and Syria together with Turkey. The United Kingdom could lead the anti-piracy mission. Germany has the best image of all NATO countries in Pakistan and its dominant military as it has provided a lot of crucial weapons to Pakistan in their two wars with India under the Hallstein Doctrin in 1965 and 1971. Berlin should therefore take the lead in all peace negotiations for Afghanistan including Pakistan and ask for good will from the ISI and the Pakistani generals in return under Pashtun friendship customs. Japan could coordinate a reconciliation process for Kashmir with India and Pakistan.
Washington must provide leadership and back those negotiations with its power-projection, but should use its allies to get hot potatoes out of the fire.
The chief negotiator should represent the E.U., NATO and Washington with the U.S. and other nations represented in a Joint NATO- E.U. Team.
Until now this process is almost paralysed as all allies look for decisions from the U.S. and do almost nothing without a plan from Washington (exception Libya in 2011) as this is an easy low-profile position for the passive administrators.
Creativity, creativity, creativity
The West knows how to market perfectly Apple´s iPhone, Big Mac, Porsche, Facebook, or Gucci. Hundreds of thousands of talented people deal with marketing strategies developing new ideas every day on a global level. In foreign policy, we are light years away from that. This realm is dominated by unimaginative administrative policy focusing on crisis management, mere analyses, and administration of problem areas. Form and style are highly regarded, not, however, substance and result. Renowned institutes and large conventions analyse problems, but do not offer creative solutions. This approach needs a fundamental re-orientation shifting the new focus to creative actions and comprehensive planning.
Just one example by August Hanning: We know the backers of piracy and the money-flow, including their houses in Dubai, but do not put them on a black-list like terrorists; instead our ships patrol the Indian Ocean at a high cost. It is a clear interest of trading countries like Germany, China, Japan, or the U.S. to guarantee free global trade on the oceans, but where is an effective joint action plan against pirates as in the Strait of Malacca where land-bases where destroyed ?
We urgently require more creativity as an important element of World 3.0. It ought to be guided by the wisdom of creative geniuses such as Albert Einstein, who often repeated: “Imagination is more important than knowledge” and “We can´t solve problems by using the same level of thinking we used when we created them.”
Options and planning
Most important in crafting a foundation for a new approach in foreign affairs are the following steps: analyzing all available options, carefully integrating them into strategy, and considering the entire range of opinions at home as well as abroad, thereby avoiding manipulation in one direction.
We need volumes of option papers with price tags and time schedules from all departments of defense, foreign affairs, international development including NGOs, research institutes and associations leading to a common action plan for implementation. Best start with the Afghanistan mission.
We ought to collect systematically the experiences of crisis countries with civil development and military interventions during the last decades, discuss them among the allies and devise a framework plan for the most effective support in future.
We should not invent the wheel again and again, but collect experiences from the past, and truly learn from history.
Better planning of international missions – no ignorance and arrogance please!
For every international mission, we require precise and comprehensive planning of all details as well as a screen play for a period of at least ten years. The missions in Iraq and Afghanistan lacked that.
Success depends on hard and soft factors: military, diplomatic, forms of government and federal concepts, economic development, agriculture, energy and water supply, education, supporting new elites and the important social groups.
Planning must be conducted by regularly monitoring funding as well as implementation of objectives in a comprehensible and manageable way.
We always demand both an entry and an exit scenario as well as a realistic time frame and contingency plans detailing what we would like to do and what can and must be achieved.
We must therefore be able to estimate mission expenses and what we are willing to spend.
We must avoid any ignorance and arrogance which allows us to underestimate small undeveloped countries and shift our perceptions from the Potomac or the Thames to the Tigris or Khyber Pass. All planning must begin with analyses of what individuals in foreign countries require and what satisfies their specific needs. We have to think and act locally. This corresponds with Fritz Kraemer´s demand to know the psychology of the nations involved. Too often we find ourselves in a Western perception trap ignoring the local situation.
Get away from the mania and mantra of huge international peace conferences, state visits, and UN debates and return to earth by asking what the local population thinks, needs, and wants.
Interventions only make sense if it is possible to set up an acceptable, reliable, and just government supported by the country´s population; otherwise everything is built on quicksand.
Wasting tax revenue due to corruption undermines the confidence of both the local people and one´s own electorate in our political actions. Hence all funds must be linked to liability and punitive clauses permitting international courts impartial examination of corruption accusations. Previously the monitoring of funds has resembled a toothless tiger, more or less encouraging abuse. When I complained to a high-ranking advisor of the former Russian President Yeltsin that individuals close to the Kremlin had misappropriated USD 400m of Western aid in the late 1990s, he frankly replied: “Who is responsible: the bear who eats the honey pot, or the farmer who put it into the woods.” He was right, blame us, not them.
Cost efficiency
Every option needs a price tag. We need to know the cost of action or non-action as precisely as possible. Currently in foreign policy vagueness prevails. Ultimately wars cost trillions of dollars and Euros, with the U.S. having already spent an estimated USD 800bn in Iraq and USD 440bn in Afghanistan alone. An additional USD 400bn had been spent for other purposes in the war on terror.
Every foreign affairs craftsman knows well: never use expensive military tools if you can reach the same goal with less expensive, softer ones. How much more security did we get for so much money?
Timing and action control
Each item in the action plan needs realistic short- and long-term time labels. Every six months the governments concerned must regulate the efficiency of actions using a check list; just like any craftsman or entrepreneur monitoring the progress of their business activities.
Reporting and open debate
In open and democratic societies, politicians must make public their intentions and objectives as well as when and how they intend to achieve them. Nothing should be concealed. Each government should provide a detailed annual report to their parliament concerning international hot spots such as Afghanistan. In 2010, working with all political parties in the German Bundestag, the World Security Network promoted the publication of an annual Progress Report on Afghanistan for the first time after nine years in combat. Democracies are strong if they permit open debate and weak if everything is covered up and not carefully discussed in parliaments as well as in public.
Smart double strategies needed
For all hot spots we need sophisticated dual strategies combining power and reconciliation, military and diplomacy, economic development and stabilization.
Unfortunately too often chaotic crisis management and the fragmented parallel planning of the military, diplomatic corps, and development aid agencies prevent achieving maximum output with minimum input. This must change quickly, because we must achieve more with less money.
With all the facts, different opinions, and options available and knowing the costs as well as the local human needs, the drafting of a dual strategy paper begins by including all the soft and hard factors of peacemaking. The best and most efficient as well as the less expensive operative options are part of the detailed master plan. The prevailing approach of holding one conference after another is ineffective. The expertise outlined in papers must take into account all the economic and social aspects of interventions including energy supply, jobs, agricultural production, food supply, and educational opportunities.
Only a dual strategy with two equally important pillars consisting of hard and soft elements, power and reconciliation, is capable of addressing these challenges. More than ever we need such smart power policies for each global hot spot. This worked excellently with the NATO Harmel Report of 1967 which combined defense and deterrence capabilities with détente. This concept provided the foundation for NATO´s Two Track Decision in December 1979 linking the deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles with a zero-option should the Soviet Union destroy its SS-20 missiles.
Let us not be naïve: we need hard and soft elements. This was made very clear by Fritz Kraemer who taught us that raw power is needed to check wild fanatics. Diplomacy requires the threat of power to back it up and nothing works without this strong fundament of World 1.0.
Carl von Clausewitz tried to show in his famous book On War that war is the continuation of politics by other (hard) means. Therefore (soft) political factors prevail over weapons which are merely tools of politics. This political thinking, favored by Clausewitz, is too often pushed aside by a purely technocratic, military-oriented planning process. Weapons and their use must be part of an over-arching political approach embedded in a clever political master plan. Devising it and discussing all available options require time – as Kraemer pointed out.
We must be aware of the fact that soft factors are not the same as weakness, and hard factors should not always be confused with strength. Soft factors can turn out to be strong if employed intelligently and hard factors can ultimately result in weakness where they are not backed by a smart political concept. Therefore a merger of soft and hard factors is needed in new double strategies extending the basis of power by employing the smart new approaches of World 3.0.
We need a new, larger toolbox – a Manual World 3.0 – encompassing the best practices from all conflicts as well as scholarly compendiums of lessons learned from all echelons of political and social life, such as diplomacy, think tanks, military, economy (jobs, water, energy, agriculture), education, as well as recruiting and setting up an elite. Thus we can draw lessons from the mistakes of the past and implement an effective foreign policy to shape a safer world in the age of globalization.
We must stick to our perpetual principles and maintain sufficient military power as a basis of foreign affairs. Simultaneously we must strive to be innovative, creative, flexible, and cost-efficient, master-minding and creating a better world for our children.
Appropriate and sensible defense efforts vital
The Europeans continue to waste too much money on the development of different national defense products such as tanks or aircraft. The Pentagon is still pumping funds into antiquated military projects pressed into budget planning by influential lobbies. These outdated procurement procedures require urgent scrutiny: the results are not convincing, too much money is wasted, and some of the equipment plans originate in the Cold War. New methods of attack, such as cyber warfare, require innovative defense methods as well.
Sufficient and credible defense capabilities must be maintained. Europe in particular has needlessly neglected its defense expenditures instead of working to pool capacities with less money and to reduce rampant bureaucracy. Why not produce one European submarine with a unified command, or two EU aircraft carriers? Why is there no united air lift but national structures? Why can 2.1 million soldiers in Europe only send 60,000 troops abroad? European foreign policy is impotent and impossible without sufficient investment in defense and smart joined European structures.
Human rights and UN-concurrent constitutions
The protection and support of human rights as well as the implementation of the UN Charter on a global level constitute the soul of foreign policy We consider human dignity inviolable and the essence of politics. In authoritarian countries, the president and his family clan or the ruling political party are the measure of all things to which millions of people are subordinated. The free people are contrasted with the subjected people.
The UN Charter of June 26 1945 proposes a broad security approach resting not only on the concept of deterrence or military power. Its objectives are more timely than ever, because they reflect the understanding of life of today’s elite in almost every country as well as their desire for self-determination.
“We the people of the United Nations determine to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in large freedom, and for these ends: to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”
The freedom-loving, democratic societies succeeded in the struggle against two powerful totalitarian ideologies, National Socialism and Communism. These societies paid a high price with a great number of victims and the active involvement of numerous individuals such as Fritz Kraemer from the beginning of World War II in 1939 to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. In hot and cold conflicts spanning 42 years with more than 50 million victims and endless suffering for millions of human beings, the democracies finally prevailed. This was an enormous endeavor covering two generations. The dictators nearly prevailed. We were successful, however, because our ideology corresponded with the true needs and values of individual people who won their liberties in a heroic struggle.
Currently we are involved in a new phase of a struggle with the two large authoritarian countries, the People’s Republic of China and Russia, as well as the remaining small dictatorships of Iran and North Korea. They are intent on preserving state power and rejecting the full implementation of democratic UN principles as well as respect for all human rights. Will the system of free democracies or the concept of state-managed development with politically deprived citizens prevail?
Once more we require an active and prudent policy focusing on the courageous implementation of UN principles as well as clear advocacy of these values in a friendly dialogue with China and Russia.
American and NATO interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan helped develop fragile democratic structures whose survival appears uncertain. The erection of democracies in the underdeveloped countries of North Africa and the Middle East must be achieved through a prudent, phased policy. The first step ought to be the elaboration of democratic constitutions adapted to local conditions as well as their protection through an independent constitutional court. The UN Charter, as well as best practices proven by the successful and phased erection of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1945 to 1949 on the ruins of the Nazi dictatorship, serve as an example. Constitutional conventions endowed with all the authority of the country´s political and ethnical forces and factions are able to provide the basis of a positive development. We must build and support thousands of partnerships with the different elements of freedom as was done with the democratic movements in Eastern Europe.
Instabilities and uprisings spring up all over the world from a lack of justice and freedom and the conscience of poor living conditions as seen in the Arab Spring. Any ally of the West must improve both or it will be a source of conflict. Peace-making without justice, freedom, and fair living conditions is a mission impossible.
A focus on centralized presidential constitutions, which the U.S. mistakenly forced upon Afghanistan or Iraq, must be avoided. Instead decentralized, indigenous structures should be fostered on the local levels. This enables fair participation of different tribes and the different regions in the development of their country.
I agree with the sentiments of my friend Professor Friedbert Pflüger in his Kings College speech in London in 2009: “Human rights should be one cornerstone of a democracy’s foreign policy. The spread of individual freedom, democracy, and justice enhances also the security of free nations. Human rights can only be protected and safeguarded at home if they are also a serious issue abroad. A democracy, which enjoys rights at home, but does not care about rights abroad, will lose the support of its own people. Different cultures, historical backgrounds, or religious traditions do not allow us to apply the concept of a Westminster democracy everywhere at any time. Therefore human rights policies should concentrate on gross violations of rights such as torture. Its aim should be to fight the hell, not to create heaven. Accordingly not preaching, a we-know-better attitude, arrogance, or self-righteousness should be avoided. Human rights policy may not come about as moral imperialism.”
If freedom movements in one country are being cruelly suppressed by a dictator, the revolutions could be supported by founding and assisting Free Parliaments in exile in specific cases, such as done for Syria, and needed as well for Iran, Belarus, or Cuba. These institutions could draft UN concurrent constitutions and represent the will of the oppressed peoples while the UN Charter and human rights are not respected in their home countries. The recognition of the National Transitional Council in Benghazi, Libya, by many countries and the establishment of a Syrian National Council in Istanbul in 2011 were steps in this right direction.
Promote the Human Codes of Tolerance and Respect
Tolerance and respect are the lifeblood of peaceful coexistence and crucial elements of the soft powers of peacemaking.
As the American philosopher Eric Hoffer once said, “a war is only won after you have turned the defeated enemy into your friend.”
The German philosopher Emmanuel Kant wrote: “The state of peace among men and women is not the natural state – a state of peace must be established.”
A key recognition in achieving this is that a successful strategy for any crisis which demands international intervention must aim to give all the actors involved what World Security Network UK Trustee Major General ret. Sir Sebastian Roberts has called “a golden bridge to the future, of realistic hope and self respect”.
These wise sayings are truer today than ever before. The soft factors of peacemaking are often sidelined in favor of harder military instruments. Moreover, the focus on the promotion of stability by military means and homeland security has led to an unbalanced approach.
The human soul – which Fritz Kraemer considered important in politics – the needs of the victims of oppression, as well as their suffering at the heart of peacemaking have almost been forgotten. Instead cold power policy has prevailed, unable to produce real stability and perpetual peace.
World 3.0 must integrate the wisdom of experts in reconciliation like my friend Archbishop Alfons Nossol from Opole/Oppeln in Upper Silesia in Poland who over decades has made an immense contribution to reconciling the Germans and the Polish people – so called ‘archenemies’ for hundreds of years, teaching: “Only a real, honest policy of reconciliation can bring about long-lasting peace and create the foundation for a thriving coexistence between former enemies. Power politics is a necessary complement to this peace policy, to the extent that it helps protect human rights and human dignity and checks the powers of evil. Power politics as such is, however, insufficient: its effect is too limited; it leads in the wrong direction. It must subordinate itself to the primacy of the “thinking heart” and “loving mind.” Power politics is only justified in the service of peace. We must give a strong voice to the Christian message of peace in order to provide it with significance in all countries, cultures, and religions. Only then will we eliminate the deep-seated roots of terrorism, war, and displacement and bring about a world with less hatred and less violence. A Christian peace policy means: We must see our enemy as a person and as our neighbor possessing individual dignity. We must approach him with an open heart and express convincingly our will to reconciliation and a new beginning. An active policy of reconciliation shatters the encrusted shell of ideology from darker years; through intensive work it melts away traditional prejudices and stimulates the will on all sides to end the tragedy of animosities.”
Nossol demands that we should not merely tolerate others; rather, we should accept them with all their differences. This does not mean self-abandonment, but respect for the special features, characteristics, and traditions of a world with seven billion people, so richly diverse in cultures and ideals.
We now need a global promotion of tolerance as well as a new state of peace and balance for our global village encompassing all religions and other positive forces on Earth. We need a global vision and a soul. We need globally respected moral values and their continuous promotion. Then we shall be able to avoid the often proclaimed clash of civilizations, and demonstrate that the real clash is that between the perversions and prejudices of civilisations: the clash of barbarisms.
We own this world intellectually – we have influence – we have the power – we have a vast pool of creativity and optimism.
I am calling for an elite capable of taking over the promotion of tolerance and respect as the common soul of our global village now, without having to wait for politics.
I am calling for the impeachment of the few extremists by empowering in all countries a responsible elite to work for a better world of moral values, particularly for our children.
We already have Human Codes of Tolerance and Respect (for details see www.codesoftolerance.com; which is a focus project of the World Security Network Foundation) in all religions and cultures. We have only forgotten our common roots. They can be found in Christianity, in Judaism, in Hinduism, and in Buddhism – the respect for creatures as well as the promotion of human dignity and love.
We all must promote our common values very actively and stand up as the no-longer silent majority in all 192 states against the propaganda of hate.
Contain and unmask the radicals
Most Muslim as well as Western countries are bound to be involved in struggles against Islamist militant movements, including al-Qaeda, within and beyond their own borders over the next decades.
The hard factors of security are essential and play a dominant role, but will not be enough to win. Insufficient attention is still being paid to the soft factors of peace-making, comprising two elements:
First, a roll-back policy aimed at de-radicalizing, demobilizing, and re-integrating individuals and groups involved in insurgency and terrorism.
Second, a smart containment policy aimed at preventing fresh recruitment of young Muslims to kill fellow-Muslims as well as Western individuals “in the name of Allah”.
Several national governments, such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, or Somalia, will also be confronted with the task of demobilizing and re-integrating former terrorists and insurgents.
More than a dozen countries – including Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Algeria – have already successfully established so called de-radicalization and disengagement programs aimed at facilitating the social re-integration of enemy combatants, ensuring they will not return to violent jihad.
An important part of the effort is to convince the former radicals of Islam´s true character.
Terrorist criminals and hate preachers around the world justify their deeds with commandments from Islam, both from the Qur’an and the example of the prophet, the Hadith.
In their view, these acts are justified; they are in fact part of their duty as Muslims and thus not evil but good. This distorted interpretation of Islam motivates and instigates their crimes and must be the focus of any containment and roll-back policy. The containment of and struggle against Islamic extremism and criminals should therefore direct its focus on the ideological level of Islam.
If there is convincing evidence that neither the Qur’an nor the Hadith justify acts of terror, then Islam-based terrorism can be denied the oxygen required for its survival, limiting its attractiveness for followers and de-masking the perpetrators as pure criminals.
One can even go a few steps further: whoever claims to kill in the name of Islam, yet does not have actual justification from Islam, places himself outside the Islamic community (Ummah), isolates himself, degrades Islam, and sins against the conscience of the prophet himself. He is guilty according to the Sharia and must therefore be punished in accordance with Islamic law. Consequently the following approach is proposed.
The Higher Ifta´ Council, established by the organization of Islamic Conferences with representative councillors from throughout the Muslim World issuing fatwas on all pertinent issues, should be institutionalised as the main clearing committee for Muslim as well as Western countries in cases of terrorism with the purpose of benchmarking their actions against true Islam. The King of Saudi Arabia should establish a new Council of Islamic legal experts. Foreign courts, public prosecutors, and government departments could turn to such a council to obtain binding expert opinions for the judgement of crimes justified by Islam (“Royal Sharia Council of the Custodian of the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina”).
When invoked, this Council would quickly decide Islamic legal questions presented to it and deliver its expert opinion. Since terrorist crimes resemble one another, the Council can treat numerous cases with the same formulation. The committee should include the Imams of the two holiest sites of Islam, since their opinions carry particular weight. According to Islamic law, killing of civilians in Jihad is principally forbidden; moreover, terrorist acts and the preaching of violence are violations of the Qur´an and the Hadith.
Terrorists should be excluded from the Community of the Believers by a formal Sharia-ruling as non-believers and should be no longer allowed to visit Mecca or any mosque for many years or even their life-time.
The expert opinions of this Council would deprive both preachers of violence and terrorist criminals of their “ideological oxygen”. Furthermore expert advice serves as an important instrument against the recruitment of further terrorists.
These expert opinions can be used in ongoing criminal trials in Muslim and Western countries for the purpose of evaluating possible means of justification and the degree of personal guilt.
This measure underscores the particular characteristics of terrorist guilt. Expert opinions increase the effectiveness of court rulings in non-Muslim countries that have suffered Islamist extremist terrorism, such as the U.S., the U.K., or Spain and Germany and strengthen the deterrent effect of the penalty.
We have to contain and impeach all radicals, whether they are Koran-burning fanatics in Florida, extremist and violent Israeli settlers on the West Bank, or right-wing Neo-Nazis in Germany. The so-called silent majorities in all countries must stand up, articulate their demands and fight for our vision of a free and better world.
Red line for XXL-Greedies who ruin the capitalistic fundament of democracy
The American-dominated West was capable of winning the war against Adolf Hitler´s inhuman Nazi totalitarianism as well as against Communism during the Cold War because it had an enormous economic power potential at its disposal.
Without economic power, the sword of military power remains dull.
Just imagine that the economies of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR had prospered like those in the West. In this case the Communists would be ruling Russia and Europe. We prevailed in the Cold War because the centrally controlled communist economies failed, resulting in the implosion of Communist societies.
The Communist Party of the People´s Republic of China learnt these lessons and has consolidated its power with economic reforms and an annual growth of ten percent during the past 30 years.
The United States and its European allies urgently need a solid economic base in order to afford sufficient armed forces, current modernization programs, development aid, as well as economic support for underdeveloped countries.
Moreover, they face the challenge of avoiding destabilization caused by high unemployment (which paralyzed the Weimar Republic in Germany during the 1920s and 30s) and preserving the attractiveness of liberal political orders in competition with authoritarian concepts practiced in the People´s Republic of China and Russia. Until now we have taken the West´s economic supremacy for granted. China´s rise will fundamentally alter this power balance.
The XXL-Greedies are sawing away at the branch on which we all are sitting in the West. Excesses created by the exaggerated greed for profit, developed at Wall Street in the 1990s and spread throughout the entire world, endanger the credibility of our capitalist democratic orders and considerably weaken the attractiveness of the U.S. in the system competition with authoritarian countries.
The negative impact on state budgets additionally undermines our ability to finance our defense capabilities as well as our foreign and development policies. Moreover, they substantially endanger the stability of several countries and thus pose a new national threat.
Capitalism is good, but excessive greed destroying the foundation of our democratic societies is lethal.
Simple hard-working people have been driven into debt by the large credit card oligarchs, families ruined by debt for their housing, and whole states by many billions of too cheap money with wrong ratings of all risks involved. Banks and funds made commissions and profits pushing global debt over the cliff. Having placed several billions in large corporations as an investor and adviser for hedge funds, I know outstanding, responsible founders, but I am also familiar with unscrupulous speculators who only attach importance to money, not caring about the political impact of their business activities. Those excesses cannot be accepted any longer since they destroy the foundation of our democracy. This is capitalistic terrorism of the majority by a few greedies.
It’s the banks, not the tanks: The large banks – particularly Goldman Sachs which has been said to rule the world – carry great responsibility for this budgetary foundation of our common security. The American President, Congress, and the E.U. must remind banks and large hedge funds of their patriotic responsibility and must remove the weeds of subversive speculation through stricter regulations.
Simultaneously the governments of the U.S. and Europe must bring their budgets in order within the next ten years and reduce their excessively high deficits to an upper level of 60 percent of GDP. Then we can avoid the permanent paralysis of capitalism and authoritarian systems prevailing over democracies. It appears ironic and objectionable that China is both the United States´ most powerful adversary and its largest creditor and banker.
The annual meeting of the economic elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, founded by genius global networker and fresh thinker Klaus Schwab, reveals a growing responsibility of this peer group for positive global development including climate protection and support for underdeveloped countries.“Capitalism, in its current form, no longer fits the world around us. We have failed to learn the lessons from the financial crisis. A global transformation is urgently needed and it must start with reinstating a global sense of social responsibility,” said Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum 18th January 2012. The 60 year-old German model of the Social Market Economy with a domesticated capitalism, economic growth, stable and human workings conditions, good healthcare, high protection of the environment, and a maximum of freedom is very successful and a global benchmark, not perfect but worth learning from and copying as a best practice.
More needs to be done to promote the responsibilities of the economic elite for ethical standards and human progress as well. Or as Friedrich The Great already demanded 220 years ago: successful leaders must be an example of living values for their people or fail. Prussian values like integrity, honor, discipline, and service to the country need a revival in many nations best combined with a fresh American spirit and a zeal for individual liberty, a splendid combination of the good old and the new.
Fair trade relations with the developing countries
“International trade and investment are the most important drivers of economic growth in the developing world,” explains Ambassador Frank Lavin, former Undersecretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “It can also be an important socio-politico integrator, helping less-developed societies connect with ideas, talent, and markets around the world. However, not all nations are equipped to benefit from this opportunity. The developed nations must work with the developing nations to help the needy countries develop investment codes and a regulatory environment to make prosperity as easy as possible to attain.”
Peace policy must keep an eye on the roots of conflicts. In numerous countries millions of people are struggling for survival. Food production is insufficient. Small farmers have been abandoned by the national governments. While a billion people in the industrialized world have too much to eat and are suffering from obesity, another billion people in impoverished countries are undernourished. The West must provide fair sales opportunities for commodities from conflict regions and developing countries and boost agricultural production in partnership with national governments. Creative and innovative approaches are necessary in order to defuse simmering conflict potential. Otherwise the germs of terrorism, piracy, and hatred can settle in open wounds.
To make matters worse, the international prices of important commodities such as wheat, corn, rice, and cooking oil have been driven upwards over several years by a few greedy hedge funds. Although it is not the only and maybe not even the main factor, as weather conditions, higher demand and other factors have an important impact, this speculation adds to price increases substantially. In 2010, the price of food increased by a third. Investment in food derivatives such as futures and options have increased greatly with larger investors coming in. The website of the Chicago Board of Trade even encourages speculators to “speculate based on expectations of directional price or spread movement in rough rice.” Large banks are indirectly involved in these investments. Millions of investments from pension funds and life insurance companies nurture this speculation with agricultural raw materials.
It should be an international principle that one should never speculate with the food of millions of impoverished people. In the Horn of Africa alone, 12 million people suffered from famine in 2011, destabilizing the countries of East Africa and Ethiopia and in turn spurring chaos and terrorism in Somalia. There is a transgression of capitalism´s red line. A stop sign is necessary. We must not tolerate this decadence. The UN as well as individual nation states ought to develop instruments to curtail this dangerous and unscrupulous capitalism. Speculators must be committed to a socially responsible market economy. Effective instruments to contain destabilizing speculation could comprise a variety of measures: introduction of obligatory disclosure by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and different stock exchange monitoring commissions, a ban on so called empty sales as well as investments of pension funds and life insurances, a high special tax on such food speculation as well as ruling out public orders and trading with government bonds by all banks and funds directly or indirectly involved in such transactions.
Each of us carries a responsibility for our Global Village
This first draft of just a few new foreign policy ideas for today´s world must be further enhanced and refined. We should all add to the discussion to improve our foreign policy and get actively involved.
World 3.0 depends on sufficient defense capability, which must be preserved. Without it the shell would lack a core and the forces of progress would be naked and defenseless. World 3.0 rests on the classic World 1.0 of power and national interest but continues its development. It provides a link between the indispensable hard factors and the important, manifold, and often overlooked soft factors of peace-making aiming at tailored, innovative double strategies for peace and liberty. It is responsive to the will of the local population and does not force our values and ideas onto others. It activates the new global elites for a responsible improvement of the world in all areas on the moral foundation of the UN Charter and human rights. Its instruments are global networks, knowledge transfer through mentoring programs, creativity, passion, promotion of the Human Codes of Tolerance and Respect, containment of radicals, improved planning and control as well as large personal commitment. This new designed foreign policy is preventative, action-oriented, extensive, profound, and widely responsible for the peaceful development of billions of world citizens. At the same time it is a rejection of the moral relativism characterizing extremists of all kinds and an appeal to the civic spirit of the mostly silent majorities of 99 percent currently leaving the stage of world policy to the very few loud radicals.
In the Global Village everyone – the smart politician, the wealthy hedge fund manager, the poor student, the brave soldier, the elegant diplomat, or the prudent housewife – carry part of the responsibility in a global puzzle, whether they live in China, or the United States, South Africa, Norway or Egypt.
For what?
For more respect and harmony. For a safer and better future for our children and grandchildren as well as seven billion other human beings next to you in peace, liberty, and human dignity.
Don´t wait for the UN, for your President, or for a miracle.
Seize your opportunity – get involved now in Networking a Safer World 3.0 with the World Security Network Foundation and join!
Dr Hubertus Hoffmann is President and Founder of World Security Network and globalo.com
