An Interview with Helmut Schmidt

"Wars may become possible for the single reason of competition for oil"

"Germany is one of the medium powers of the world. It is a non-nuclear power. It is in a lower class than the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United King dom and others. "

Always sensitive to historic European misgivings about the Germans, Helmut Schmidt is careful to play down Bonn's emerging political strength. But last week, as he ranged across a series of other global and strategic questions in an exclusive interview with TIME Bonn Bureau Chief William Mader, the Chancellor himself sound ed every bit like a great-power leader. Excerpts:

Q. What should the consuming nations be doing about the energy crisis?

A. No. 1, we have to educate our societies and induce our economies to conserve energy to a much greater degree than we so far have been able to bring about. One of the most important instruments in so doing is to let people feel the fast-rising real costs of energy. Second, to a growing degree we have to replace oil by other primary resources of energy, especially coal and nu clear energy. Foreseeably, we will within the next one or two decades get into a worldwide debate about the irrevocable consequences of burning hydrocarbons -- whether oil or coal or lignite or wood or natural gas -- because the carbon dioxide fallout, as science more or less equivocally tells us, results in a heating up of the globe as a whole. This leads to the third point, namely the necessity to put up rather large sums of money in order to develop scientifically, and from the engineering side, sources of energy like nuclear, geothermal, solar energy, all of which enable us to avoid the CO2 consequences.

And this leads me to a fourth point: I have the feeling that we have not seen the ultimate maturity of nuclear energy as yet. I think the fast-breeder question, linked as it is with the question of reprocessing,* should not be decided right now. We need some more years to decide that one. In the meantime, we have to keep that option open. Of course, this entails two other questions in the energy-political field that deserve closest attention:

1) international precautions or safeguards against proliferation of weapons-grade material, and 2) processing security, whether it is reactors, reprocessing, fast-breeders or the stowaway business for the remnants.

I would like to make three footnotes. No. 1, as regards processing security, I have asked for an international evaluation of the Harrisburg incident, in order to bring about greater safety in all our countries. Second, I will stick to the nonproliferation treaty Article Four, [which states that] every country in the world has the undisputed right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. And third, I will point to the great danger that if nuclear energy is not developed fast enough, wars may become possible for the single reason of competition for oil and natural gas. And I think that the scarcity of oil and the rising prices for crude, which are a menace to the functioning of our economies, can lead to wars. This problem has to be understood as a grave one for the last two decades of this century.

Q. Do you believe that force, if necessary, should be used to secure oil supplies for the West?

A. I hate that I have to be quite frank in answering this one. I have deplored these utterances.

Q. What is your response to reports that West Germany is drifting away from the Atlantic Alliance?

A. That notion is being nurtured by people who for domestic reasons either fight my government in Bonn or fight the Carter Administration in Washington. It has been invented as an instrument in order to criticize the actual policies of the Carter Administration or the Social Democratic-Free Democratic coalition in Bonn. The malevolent intention of such rumors is obvious. It is also obvious that the raison d'etre of the Federal Republic would be lost if and when my country lost its strong [sense of belonging] within not only the Atlantic Alliance but also within the European Community.

One will, at the same time, have to bear in mind the geostrategic situation of my country, being nearest to the territories in which you have big Soviet armies in Europe. One will also have to bear in mind the facts that Germany is divided and that West Berlin is in a particularly sensitive situation. Therefore, for ten years it has been the policy and strategy of my country to use our strong foundations within the Western community as a basis from which to try--and so far not unsatisfactorily--to ease the situation for the people living in a divided nation, to ease the situation especially toward the Eastern neighbors of Germany. In other words, not to let the East-West relaxation of tensions or detente circumvent the Central European situation.

Q. What is your assessment of Soviet military strength?

A. I have been in politics for more than a quarter of a century. Within that quarter of a century I have repeatedly heard voices that talked, sometimes in an even alarmed way, about the oncoming military superiority of the East. It never has materialized. I remember very clearly Jack Kennedy's talk, before he became President, about the so-called missile gap. I recall the race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the fields of rocketry and satellites. In the end--and this is the experience of a quarter of a century--the West has always been strong enough to make it understood that we would defend ourselves very effectively. Therefore I don't have any inferiority complexes right now about Eastern military power.

Q. How would you evaluate West Germany's political strength internationally in relation to its military and economic strength?

A. The economic strength of our country is sometimes grossly overestimated. The German economy is strong in itself, it is solid. On the other hand, it is only one-fifth or one-quarter of the volume of the American economy. The strength of the deutsche mark is envied sometimes, sometimes applauded and hailed, but one must not delude oneself. It does not mean that the Germans can buy the whole world. The Americans could buy, more or less, the whole world.

One can understand this very clearly if one looks to the Swiss franc. The Swiss franc is even a stronger currency than the deutsche mark, and the Swiss economy is even stronger than the German economy, but nobody would ever believe that for this reason Switzerland is a world power. Swiss defense is first-rate, but nobody would ever believe that for this reason Switzerland is a world power. To sum it all up: Germany is not a world power; it does not wish to become a world power.

But I will not deny that taking all into account, Germany politically is much stronger today than it was ten years ago, 20 years ago. There is no doubt about it. Fifteen years ago, a prominent West German politician used to quip that Germany economically was a giant but politically was a dwarf. I don't think that this holds true any longer. But I am rather cautious that nobody in Bonn overplay Germany's hand. There still is the unique vulnerability of this divided nation. There still is the sensitivity of all our neighbors in Europe, who well remember what was done to them in the German name under Hitler.

Q. What are the greatest problems facing the world economy?

A. There are three. The first is the general notion in most countries, including the Communist countries, the developing and industrial countries alike, to consume more than we produce and to fill in the gap by printing money. [That leads to] inflationary monetary policies as well as inflationary fiscal policies.

The second factor rather suddenly broke upon all of us: namely, the oil price explosion and the insight that energy would become rather scarce much more quickly than anybody had foreseen. It misled a number of governments to seek refuge--because they had to pay high energy prices--in printing even more money and creating even more inflation. This led to an upheaval in the fabric of the world economic system. I would prefer not to call it a system any longer. It is more a constellation than a system. At least it is a very unsystematic system.

Third, a number of developing countries today produce their own steel and their own ships, not to mention their own textiles. This has led to the necessity for a rather wide-ranging restructuring of industrial capacities and professional capabilities in the developed world. This process is not going fast enough.

Q. How important is SALT II to East-West detente?

A. Let me ask the question: How would the world change if SALT II failed or were not ratified on the American side? I have no doubt that the world would lapse back not only into a full-scale arms race between the East and West but also into another cold war.

Q. How would you assess U.S.-German relations, and your own relationship with President Carter?

A. Our personal relations are good. We have been able to exchange our views without any mental or tactical reservations, which in itself is a great asset and leads to close cooperation. There have been federal Chancellors in Bonn and American Presidents who have not been on such good terms in their times. But personal relations are only one aspect between our two countries. Relations between the two administrations, in the German view, are characterized by three significant experiences. No. 1, we have, to a very great degree, adopted American ideas about the structure of a federal democracy, American ideas of human rights. Second, we have experienced an astonishing degree of American solidarity vis-a-vis a former enemy over whom you won a terrible war. There is a great underlying appreciation in Germany for this lesson in solidarity. Third, the Germans are convinced that their outward security has been maintained by the U.S. more than by anybody else. I think the American nation does feel that the Germans have proved to be as industrious as the Americans themselves, and that they follow similar economic and international philosophies. My feeling is that the American nation, in a rather nondramatic way, has come to accept the Germans and the Federal Republic of Germany as an almost natural ally.

Q. Is there a trend toward political conservatism in the Western world?

A. I definitely do not sense such a trend. If such a trend existed, Jimmy Carter would not have been elected President, for instance. What I do sense is the fact that some Western industrial democracies are to some degree restless nowadays, which is only natural given the fact that almost all of them are under deep impact of the world economic crisis. It is only natural that the electorate in the first place holds its own government to be responsible for economic evils. Where you have conservative governments, this can lead to change toward a more liberal or progressive administration instead. Where you have liberal or social-democratic governments, it can lead to a more conservative government. It can also, as we have seen rather recently in Austria, lead to a result where the people think that their government has done well in a set of economic dangers, and I guess the same is going to happen in Germany next autumn.

*The problem involves both cost and nuclear proliferation. Plants for fuel reprocessing are large and expensive. Fast-breeders in the reprocessing plants pro duce plutonium that can be used in building weapons.

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