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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 02/04
Trans-Atlantic Relations: Challenges and Opportunities
Wolfgang Ischinger
October 16, 2002
I would like to share some observations about German-American relations, about Afghanistan, about Iraq and the war on terrorism, and about power and the global system.
Where does Germany stand today? The recent elections in Germany have brought about a number of significant developments.
First of all, remember that united Germany is only twelve years old. We have had a difficult job not only in creating the same standards of living in the former East German "Länder" as in the West, but we have also had the enormous challenge of uniting two societies that had been separated not only by a wall but by two very different political systems. The September 22 parliamentary elections demonstrated that, today, East Germans vote more or less like West Germans. The disappearance of the PDS [Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus] as a party from the German Bundestag is an indication of convergence of voter behaviour. That's good news because it helps to complete the difficult process of unification.
At the same time, this has produced a situation where there is neither an extreme right nor an extreme left party in the Bundestag: Germany continues to be governed in the middle. The election result is thus a demonstration of maturity and stability that is good for the country, good for our neighbours, good for Europe, and good for our international situation. Germany will continue to be committed to European integration, to EU [European Union] and NATO enlargement, and to German-American partnership as well as to the close German-Israeli relationship we have been able to create over the past five decades.
On this basis of continuity, I am optimistic that we will rapidly over- come difficulties in the bilateral relationship, which arose in the context of the German election campaign. This relationship is so deeply anchored and so broadly based that disagreements about specific issues cannot and will not make us "drift apart."
Let me talk about some of these substantive issues.
