From Germany, With a World of Commitment

On Commencement Day in June, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall addressed Harvard graduates and alumni, America and the world. His speech has gone down in the history of nations. Let us try to picture the situation then.

Two disastrous world wars lay behind us. America had decided both of them. At the end of the second world war, Europe lay in ruins. Inconceivable human pain, injustice and slaughter had occurred. Millions of Jews had become the victims of an unprecedented crime. The Poles, the Russians--and the Germans, too--were deeply suffering, as were other nations. Though there were winners and losers, they all shared the terrible burden. Europe was devastated and exhausted.

In this situation, we young people who had miraculously survived the war set about building a new life. What we wanted most were fundamental ethics. We had witnessed what happens when the human mind is distorted by manic racism, terror and violence. We had discovered that man cannot live by bread alone. Without bread, however, man cannot survive either. “First food, then morals,” as Brecht said in “The Threepenny Opera.”

Misery prevailed in Europe: expulsion, displacement, hunger, no production, no material resources, no prospects, little hope. In this situation Marshall announced his program. He proclaimed it without pathos, rather succinctly and soberly. His plan is unparallelled in the history of world powers in generosity, selflessness and vision. It was the work of a farsighted, highly responsible American Administration. Europe was called upon to regain its life and its political role, the decisive impetus being provided by America’s material assistance.

The plan was generous: It was intended for everyone, including the enemies defeated in the recent war, not least us Germans. It was addressed to the whole of Europe, including the East. As Marshall stated, it was “directed not against any country or doctrine.”

The plan was selfless: The assistance was provided with no political strings. The recipients themselves were free to decide on the distribution and use.

The plan was visionary. Great victors seldom are; they tend to carry on with their war objectives even in peacetime. They seek to ensure that defeated adversaries or weakened allies remain dependent. The happiest times in history, however, occurred whenever victors assisted everyone to recover and helped the defeated to regain their self-esteem.

America did not misuse its superiority by moral arrogance or political coercion. It did not seek to maintain dependence. Instead, the aim of the United States was to restore the confidence of the Europeans in their own strength, in their own political future. The Marshall Plan bears testimony to the strength of a great and free nation to define its own legitimate interests. America gave expression to its own dignity by respecting the dignity of other people.

Marshall was not an ideologist, but a realist. He was all too familiar with the temptation of nations to adhere to mutual prejudices instead of seriously trying to understand others. In history, this has proved to be dangerous time and again. We are facing similar dangers today.

What has become of the Marshall Plan in these 40 years? What has been achieved? What is still unfinished? What is our task ?

The first answer is quite clear: The Marshall Plan laid foundations for new life in Europe. The nations that benefitted from it are free and sovereign. They experienced an unprecedented recovery. The Marshall Plan is the most successful example to date of a policy aimed at assistance for self-help.

The plan simultaneously acted as a trigger for cooperation and growing unity. It gave rise to the European Community. It focused attention on global tasks; worldwide forms of cooperation, such as the International Monetary Fund, are the product of its economic momentum. The Marshall Plan is and will remain the most fundamental achievement of the Western world since the war.

The plan also gave decisive impetus to transatlantic partnership. George Marshall was not only concerned with practical cooperation between America and Europe. His thoughts were deeply rooted in the common stock of ideas of Europeans and Americans. They include universal human rights, cultural openness among nations, free world trade. It is these common values and goals, and not missiles, that give the North Atlantic Alliance its identity and permanence.

The alliance has worked well over the last four decades. Yet there are misgivings between America and Europe. Many Americans regard us Europeans not only as strong economic rivals, but above all as affluent egotists who constantly criticize America, but are not able or willing to think in global dimensions, to bear our fair share of burdens or to discharge our political responsibility properly. They view us as wavering partners with a provincial outlook as “Euro-wimps.”

Looking in the other direction, Europeans believe that their American partners are marked by erratic confusion: On the one hand, Americans supposedly claim a rather unilateral leadership role in the world. On the other hand, an inward-looking mentality prevails. Many feel that the Americans are living beyond their means. They point out that the Americans produce less than they consume and save less than most other countries, but as the world’s richest nation draw on a disproportionately large share of the world’s savings to offset this deficit.

I am neither able nor willing to render judgment on such allegations. More important, in my view, is the perception that our societies have fairly similar weaknesses. Our democracies function well, but they do not educate us to pay attention to the problems of other countries, although our own destiny depends on their destinies. On the contrary, people here and in Europe have above all learned to organize their own interests, to strengthen their domestic position and to increase their personal prosperity. Our societies are marked by a tight network of expectations and entitlements.

To be sure, politicians--my own guild--often reinforce this trend instead of opposing it. They are not a club of selfless saints. Their performance in resolving problems rarely matches their excellence in fighting for power. Yet all too often they are captives of local and regional interests and demands, tied down like Swift’s Gulliver by countless little ropes and chains.

Must we accept that democracy trains us better to exercise our rights than to perceive our duties? Have we really divorced freedom from responsibility? Do young graduates from Harvard or Heidelberg really want to enter a society of affluence which begins to stutter when asked to specify what its goals are, what it believes in and what it is inspired by? I think not.

Two challenges stand out today. The first concerns the Third World. Marshall spoke out against “hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” His plan helped the recipient countries to overcome their need. Vast sections of his speech might almost have been conceived today, if you only replace the word “Europe” by “Third World.” America’s thoughts and deeds to the benefit of Europe were immensely generous. However, many developing countries feel it is precisely the prosperity and current practices of America and Europe which are among the main causes of their own poverty.

Do we really understand the impact of our trading and financial system on those countries? Are we ready to stop damaging their vital needs by forcing our agricultural surpluses into the export markets at subsidized prices? Have we not time and again misinterpreted the social struggle of those nations primarily as a problem of our own security? How long will we carry on seeking and supporting military solutions there? When will the East and the West put an end to their wretched proxy wars on the soil of third countries?

This brings me to the second challenge of our time, a matter particularly close to our heart and responsibility as Europeans and Germans: East-West relations.

The purpose of the Marshall Plan was to assist and unite the whole of Europe. At the time, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in particular wanted to participate. But Stalin distrusted the American offer. For his own designs, he expected a weak Europe to be more useful. As a result, the division of Europe grew worse. Today the Continent is divided into two seemingly irreconcilable systems with the world’s largest military arsenals.

Is the division final? Do the Europeans accept it as an immutable lot?

No. Europe is politically divided, but is not and will never be divided in spirit. We have not only a common history based on closely related national cultures, we face a common fate on a small continent. There is once again a growing awareness among Europeans in East and West that they belong together. The people in the Warsaw Pact countries have had to live in forced isolation. But they have never ceased to be Europeans. Theirs is the greatest contribution toward keeping the spirit of a united Europe alive.

Among Western Europeans is a growing perception that we harm ourselves if we try to convince ourselves that the East does not concern us. As Vaclav Havel put it, “How ambivalent our Western happiness would be if it were obtained permanently at the expense of Eastern misery.”

For you here in America it may be difficult to appreciate such European feelings. Many of you may perhaps even regard this as a source of estrangement between America and Europe. But what is the essence of our partnership? Surely, it is the concept of freedom. Freedom is inseparable from responsibility. We would not only be disloyal to our own ideals, we would in fact destroy them if we were to claim freedom only for ourselves and not others.

Any one of you who visits Berlin will appreciate what I mean. For 26 years now, a wall has sliced through the middle of the city. It separates people who belong to the same family, are of the same spirit, have the same hopes, breathe the same air, face the same future. But it has failed in its true purpose: It has not made people become resigned to division. On the contrary, this dead structure is a vital and daily reminder of what it was intended to make us forget: our feeling of belonging together.

Anyone who looks at the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin at the wall will feel with his own heart what we mean: As long as that gate remains closed, the German question remains open.

This is not any neutralistic yearning or nationalistic nostalgia. It is a very simple human feeling. We do not want new conflicts about borders. We have learned painful lessons from history. This is the crux of the open question for all Europeans, a question concerning human rights and human dignity for everyone, not just for one nation or solely for the West.

What we need is a consistent policy of East-West understanding. This does, of course, not imply acceptance of the other system. Faith-healing is no policy. Opposing convictions and divergent interests will persist. Nor must we neglect our security. Anyone who can no longer defend himself will fail politically.

However, politics does not serve defense, but defense serves politics. For all too long, East-West relations were dominated merely by the concept of security. It seemed as though deterrence was the only language in which East and West could communicate with one another.

In actual fact, security itself necessitates a policy of confidence-building and interdependence. It was the policy of Henry A. Kissinger’s SALT negotiations which first drew the inescapable conclusion that security by dominating modern weapon systems can be ensured only through cooperation. That was the first step; we must find “currencies” other than just military power for dealing with one another.

At present, the Soviet Union is making great efforts to gain ground. Its program is designed to bring about fundamental changes in domestic structures and mentalities. To this end, it seeks to widen cooperation with other countries. Of course, the Soviet Union wants to serve its own purposes and not to do us a favor. Is this a disadvantage for us? The deficiencies that the Soviet Union is trying to correct arise from a closed system providing no incentives, no co-determination, no free information. The people are the losers, not only in material terms. If there is a chance for further opening steps is this a risk for us? Should we respond with rejection, new containment and confrontation?

The Soviet Union is neither a mere public-relations system founded exclusively on ideology nor a blindly obsessed world revolutionary. At the top of the East-West agenda is not the final apocalyptic struggle between good and evil, but a growing number of problems which neither East nor West can solve on its own: the population explosion and hunger in the world, the progressive destruction of nature, coping with the ethical aspects of scientific and technological progress--and above all, ensuring peaceful relations between our neighbors.

In the East-West context today we do not have to provide loans and grants as in Marshall’s time, but cooperation of a new quality. We should recall the late Sen. J. William Fulbright who so ably introduced the vital concept of international educational exchanges. This is the way to replace prejudice with knowledge. Science requires openness. Industry needs trained employees and managers. Telecommunication promotes technology and widens people’s horizons. The greatest friend of mutual understanding is culture, its greatest enemy is isolation.

In these areas we need East-West transfer in both directions. The concept of coexistence as a class struggle is antiquated and reactionary. Coexistence must imply the capacity to settle conflicts by political means without either side claiming to possess the absolute truth.

Disarmament is important. But history teaches us that it is usually not disarmament which leads to peace, but peaceful cooperation into disarmament.

Today we have a truly historical opportunity to engage in cooperation which can lead to greater openness and responsibility between the two political systems. We must make vigorous and responsible use of this opportunity. We want to--and must--do it together with you, with our American friends.

We should complete what George Marshall was prevented from finishing. Fifteen years ago my country set up the German Marshall Fund of the United States as a token of gratitude for the American assistance given to us. This fund is intended as a transatlantic institution serving to meet the challenges of our time. Would it not be in line with the spirit of Marshall to include prominently in the fund’s projects those countries which were formerly prevented from participating in the Marshall Plan?

We are, all of us, called upon to live up to the legacy of the message Marshall gave the world 40 years ago, and, by meeting the challenges of our time, to fulfill it anew.