Andrä Gärber

The Political Situation in the Middle East and North Africa Following September 11, 2001

The Middle East and North Africa (the Mashrek and Maghreb) are often viewed as a homogeneous region. This fails to make necessary differentiations. This is also true of the reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11. There are certain commonalities, though. The attacks were condemned almost throughout the region, there were no mass demonstrations - even after the war began in Afghanistan; almost everywhere, there was criticism of the "double standards" of the West's evaluation of the developments in the Middle East; and almost everywhere, there has been a lack of a broad debate in society about the causes of the Islamist movement. But there are differences too: the authoritarian presidential regimes (Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria) saw the events of September 11 as a confirmation of their policy of tough repression of Islamist movements. The monarchies which are willing to reform but lacking in capital (Jordan, Morocco), in contrast, saw the events as a confirmation of their policy of integrating Islamist forces into the political process. Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the US and yet, as a funder of a fundamentalist version of Islam, not disengaged from the rise of Islamism, reacted with horror to the terrorist attacks. The states designated "rogue states" by the US (Yemen, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Sudan, Iran) fear that they themselves could become the targets of military attacks or continuing international isolation and - like Libya and Iraq - be subjected to international sanctions. In Palestine and Israel, the attacks have resulted in deep uncertainty, whilst Turkey sees another opportunity to manifest its unreservedly pro-Western stance. If the events of September 11 are to result in an opportunity for the Middle East, both the external players - primarily the US and the EU - and the local regimes will need to change their policies. The US would have to rethink its policies on both Palestine and Iraq, and revise its schematic categorization of the Middle Eastern countries as allies and rogues. In the countries of the region, the only response to the crisis in society can be to increase democracy.

Johannes Kandel

Islam and Muslims in Germany

Following 11 September 2001, Muslims in the Western world were under particularly great pressure. The stereotypical reactions were: "it's all the fault of Islam"; "it's got nothing to do with religion"; "it's a perversion of Islam"; and "religion generally causes violence". 3.2 million Muslims live permanently in Germany: Sunnis, Shiites, Alevites and Ahmadis. They have increasingly become the focus of public attention as a minority in recent years, as they have publicly proclaimed their religious needs - including Islamic religious instruction in schools. The secular German state presents a challenge to the Muslims living here. Whilst little is known about how the non-organized majority deal with this challenge, there are two basic positions taken by organized Islam. One rejects the secular state and integration into it. It pursues a proactive policy of Islamic identity and aspires to a large degree of autonomy for an Islamic community living according to its own standards in Germany. It puts pressure on people who think differently. The second position puts the focus on the religious freedom which this state grants to Muslims amongst others. But, internally, the conservative representatives of this majority position also experience the secular state as something foreign. They do not advocate it, they just see it as a fact with which one can live as a Muslim. It is indeed the case that the civil freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution do place limits on protecting religious feelings. Also, whilst minorities can call for tolerance, they themselves are called on to give consideration to the feelings of the majorities. This also affects the public practicing of religious rites. The principles governing co-existence of different cultural groups which do not wish to relinquish their respective identities are at present unclear; there is a need for a public debate. The concept of a "multicultural society" with different rights and duties for different groups should be rejected, since it leads to escalating conflicts. In contrast, a policy of recognizing cultural differences should be welcomed, if it rests on universalist standards applying to all. Our model should be the ethnically differentiated, religiously and culturally pluralistic society based on the values of the Constitution.

Robert Christian van Ooyen

The New World of War and the Law The Need for a Constitutional Regulation of Out-of-Area Bundeswehr Operations

Traditional international law contained a clear definition of war and peace and drew a distinction from civil war. The German Constitution is still based on this traditional delineation. However, it has long since become clear that war, in the sense of a military conflict between states, is now the exception and has been replaced by a range of conflicts stretching from internationalized civil wars to the current attacks by groups of terrorists based in no particular state and operating transnationally. Since the political changes of 1989/90 at the latest, this new confusion has reached Germany in relation to out-of-area operations. Previously, the uniform constitutional and security-policy view seemed to be that these were excluded, but since then it has been possible to observe how the conditions for Bundeswehr operations are simply being redefined whenever necessary: starting from the "harmless" operations in the early 1990s and leading to the little-noted "Tirana operation" and the combat operation in the Kosovo war without a UN Security Council resolution, which could hardly be covered by the traditional definition of defense - defense being the only permitted form of war. This means that the question of war and peace is not defined by clear Constitutional requirements, but by a concept of the needs of government, which works with categories of "state of emergency". The out-of-area ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court on the need for a parliamentary decision for Bundeswehr operations has only apparently brought clarity on this matter: in fact, the Court itself called for more differentiated rules. A revision of the Constitution has become all the more urgent, since the next "precedent" has been created by the obligations under the NATO Treaty following the terrorist attacks in the U.S. This is threatening not only to cause another ad-hoc shift in the limitations of out-of-area operations, but to totally remove the distinction between external and internal security which derives from the distinction between war and peace. After all, there are good reasons why, in the German legal system, the police and the justice system have so far been responsible for the fight against terrorism on the basis of criminal law - and not the military on the basis of the rules and customs of war.

Alfred Pfaller / Lother Witte

Towards a a Global Strategy on Pensions

The highly developed industrial countries will age dramatically in the coming decades. Countries like Japan, Italy and Germany will be particularly hard-hit. The proportion of over-60s there will rise from around 20 % at present to over 40 % in 2050. Also, the number of inhabitants will - even if the current rates of immigration continue - drop substantially in absolute terms. Under such circumstances, the pay-as-you-go social security system cannot be maintained in its present form. Either the contributions to pension insurance will have to nearly double, or the standard pension will have to fall to around 30 % of wage income, or the average (!) retirement age will have to be increased to over 70. Each one of these drastic steps can only be alleviated by accepting a little more of the other "cruelties". Nor can a capital-based pension system alleviate the problem: it just packages it differently. In theory, higher birth rates and a higher influx of immigrants could point to a way out. But the dimensions required for this in the longer term are so great that they have to be regarded as unfeasible. However, it is possible to "internationalize" the inter-generation contract, implicit in any pension system, not only by importing foreign producers (and tax-payers) into the country, but also by importing more foreign products. In that case, the domestic producers are not the only ones having to pay for the consumption of the growing host of pensioners and therefore having to reduce their own consumption. The net imports ensure that more is available for the overall consumption of the aged society than that society itself produces. To this end, the pension funds would have to start by investing more abroad and acquiring foreign assets. This creates an entitlement to the foreign national product which can subsequently be utilized when one's own society becomes ever older. The problem with the strategy is that almost all the "economically relevant" countries are facing the same problem. The only possible partners in this "global inter-generation contract" are the still-young societies of southern and western Asia, Africa and parts of Latin America. However, in order for their "demographic potential" to be built into a global pension solution, these countries will need a lasting process of rapid economic growth, a process which would have to be set in motion now. The West would have to adopt as a political priority of the highest order to do all it could to create the most favorable conditions for "Southern" growth. Merely offering more financial aid would not suffice. The most important thing would be global economic policies which favor Third World development. Political forces in the Third World which promote development would have to be supported, the all-too often dominating rent-seekers be put under pressure. It may be necessary to use political intervention to force the market to create new patterns of regional growth.