My first encounter with Karl Kaiser dates back to 1973. That year, he took over as head of DGAP’s Research Institute. It was also the year that the Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision (CAP) was established in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs – the counterpart to the Planning Staff (Planungsstab) of the German Foreign Office and the Policy Planning Staff (PPS) of the US State Department – where I served as inaugural director. It was then that we first met. This marked the beginning of half a century of Franco-German cooperation and friendship in the service of international relations.
In 1973, only 28 years had passed since the end of the Second World War. From today’s perspective, half a century later, it is difficult to imagine that time. Georges Pompidou was President of the French Republic, and Willy Brandt was Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Franco-American relations were strained, but Pompidou, De Gaulle’s successor, had overseen the first enlargement of the European Community to include Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The latter’s entry radically altered the balance of the Community’s political system. Yet, the European economy was thriving, and on a broader scale, East-West relations were experiencing détente. Specialists in international relations divided the world into three parts: the West, socialist countries, and the Third World. Apart from the two oil shocks of autumn 1973 and 1978, the 1970s now seem, in retrospect, almost idyllic.
The major debates of the time – on “The Year of Europe” declared by Henry Kissinger, the creation of the International Energy Agency, the intricacies of nuclear-age strategy, burden-sharing between the US and European pillars of the Atlantic Alliance, the “new international economic order,” or international trade relations amidst a resurgent Japan – did not fundamentally disrupt Franco-German harmony. The foundations of their relationship were clearly European integration, built on the twin ideas of reconciliation and economic integration. The mandates of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, who both assumed office within days of each other in May 1974 after serving as finance ministers, nearly coincided and were pivotal to deepening the Community economically (notably through the European Monetary System) and politically (such as the European Parliament elections by universal suffrage starting in 1979).
At the beginning of 1979, as I launched the Institut français des relations internationales (Ifri), Karl and I were determined to expand our collaboration beyond the already well-established Comité d’études des relations franco-allemandes (Cerfa). By then, our mutual understanding and friendship were firmly rooted. We began by instituting annual meetings, alternating between Paris and Bonn, with delegations of political and economic leaders, researchers, and journalists. At the time, we could not have foreseen that the international system was on the brink of profound transformations. Throughout the year, this was first manifested in the USSR’s new activism in the Third World, in the Iranian revolution, and then, at the end of 1979, in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The year 1979 also saw the outbreak of the Euromissile crisis, whose origins illustrate the role of think tanks in structuring certain debates. The Solidarność turning point marked 1980. Western countries feared Soviet intervention in Poland, but also in Yugoslavia (Marshal Tito died in May 1980). Added to this was the amplification of the economic crisis caused by the two oil crises. In the West’s situation of dependence on the Middle East, the spectre of major conflicts quickly became very real.
Four Directors’ Report
This was the international context at the start of an intensifying collaboration between the nascent Ifri, already boasting a solid research team, and its older sibling, DGAP. Faced with such fundamental changes, Karl and I conceived the project that became the so-called “Four Directors’ Report” on security and the West. Karl discusses this extensively in his Erinnerungen. ¹ The report involved the directors of DGAP, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, Ifri, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).
The challenge was to arrive at a shared diagnosis and recommendations on the strategic framework for transatlantic relations as a new decade unfolded, marked by a technological revolution and politically dominated by Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK. The CFR president enthusiastically supported us. Karl, with his background, was a respected figure in transatlantic circles in the US. I had carved a niche on the East Coast as CAP director, forging strong ties with Winston Lord, my counterpart at the State Department under Kissinger. With such backing, we easily enlisted David Watt, then director of Chatham House. Much of our report’s quality owed itself to the competence of our advisors, particularly Pierre Lellouche, who later became minister and was then a young researcher already recognized for his expertise in strategic issues.
The most original aspect of our report highlighted the need for a broad conception of Western security and the importance of NATO cooperation in the Third World. Our concept of collaboration among “core states” found success under various labels (e.g., coalitions of the willing).
In his memoirs, Karl recalls the report’s immense impact and the criticism it faced in Germany. In France too, at a time when historic Gaullists were still presenting themselves as the guardians of the temple. For them, the idea of extending transatlantic security cooperation to the Third World was sacrilege. Distrust was no less strong on the Socialist-Communist Left, as it was then known. In fact, the report was published a few weeks before François Mitterrand was elected President of the Republic, and his first government included Communists.
The success of this report encouraged us, two years later, to undertake a similar project on the future of the European Community. This time, DGAP, Ifri, and Chatham House (now under William Wallace) joined forces with the Istituto Affari Internazionali (led by Cesare Merlini) and Edmond Wellenstein, a renowned Dutch expert. Published as The European Community: Decline or Renewal?, the report enjoyed success and, over forty years later, remains strikingly relevant.
The Role of the Largest European Think Tanks
The cooperation between Ifri and DGAP continued throughout Karl’s tenure, as he details in his memoirs. Yet, in this modest contribution honoring Karl’s 90th birthday, I wanted to focus on these reports for two reasons. First, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union, neither of which we anticipated, major think tanks naturally turned to emerging countries like China and India, as well as Russia.
When Karl retired from DGAP in 2003, relations between the West and Putin’s Russia were marked by mutual mistrust, but the future could still be viewed with cautious optimism. The gap only began to widen seriously after Ukraine’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” Perhaps European think tanks underestimated the risks of the “end of history” ideology, which encouraged regime change ambitions among Western neoconservatives and many Europeans. Today, the risk of the European Union’s collapse within decades is far greater than in 2003, due to various factors: climate change, COVID-19, an assertive China, Islamic terrorism, the war in Ukraine, the prospect of trade wars, uncontrolled EU enlargement, or the return of Donald Trump in the White House.
How should we rethink transatlantic relations? How should we approach the future security architecture in Europe? Because the war in Ukraine will come to an end, and relations between Europe and Russia will be rebuilt one way or another: will Europeans be united or disunited?
In his life and in his work, Karl Kaiser accustomed us to seeing the world as it is, without ever despairing of a relatively peaceful coexistence even between countries with economic and social systems as different as in the Soviet era. Along these lines, cooperation between Germany and France is more necessary than ever.
In the constructive spirit in which Karl and I have worked together for so many years, I hope that DGAP and Ifri will together make a significant contribution to the reconstruction that lies ahead.
This text is a chapter from the book “Paths to the Future: Perspectives on Foreign Policy: On the 90th Birthday of Karl Kaiser” and contains no footnotes. You can access the full version including footnotes in the PDF above or via the e-book.
