Fifty-five years ago, Karl Kaiser published his seminal essay “Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Politics” in a special issue of the German journal Politische Vierteljahresschrift.1 In it, he analyzed the significance of transnational relations and increasing interdependence for international order and democracy. Shortly afterward, Kaiser’s groundbreaking conceptual treatise also appeared in the leading US journal International Organization.2
For Kaiser, who had just been appointed to his first German professorship in Saarbrücken, this transatlantic dual publication was a matter of course. After studying widely in Europe from 1954 to 1963 (in Cologne, Grenoble, and Oxford) and completing his doctorate, he worked as a researcher at Harvard University from 1963 to 1968. Karl Kaiser could have simply pursued a transatlantic academic career based on his research in transnational politics. But he did not content himself with such a narrow focus.
Kaiser’s career is one of multiperspectivity – of a resolute “both.” As much as he emphasized the importance of transnational interdependence, he never lost sight of the fact that “international politics with its traditional interstate struggle continues.”3 His seminal essay makes it clear that he was very capable of making important contributions to theoretical debates in international relations; however, purely academic work was not enough for him. His passion for practice was too great, as evidenced by his teaching. In a 2019 interview, he recalled some of the exam questions he set: “You are the security advisor to the American president. The following situation has arisen. Please provide a brief analysis and a recommendation with three options.”4
Kaiser did not shy away from a wide range of advisory roles for leading politicians, including Fritz Erler, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Gerhard Schröder. “I always enjoyed it because I just like to work on whatever problem was at hand,” he said.5 He is a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and once even sought nomination for a seat in the Bundestag. At the same time, Kaiser steadfastly maintained the principle of non-partisanship in DGAP’s work and was respected as an expert across party lines. He fearlessly threw himself into political discussions to steer them in the right direction, whether in the arms race debate of the early 1980s or the disputes over the doubts sown by Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) about the finality of the Oder-Neisse line in 1989.
Kaiser understood that people and relationships are the most important assets. He invested a lot of time in his own networks on both sides of the Atlantic and the Iron Curtain – open to dialogue but never currying favor with communist rulers. He mentored generations of young professionals with a transatlantic background, such as those in the McCloy Scholarship Program. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Kaiser invested in relationships with Russia and its think tank representatives, for example, with Sergei Karaganov, with whom he published a paper in 1997 titled “Toward a New Democratic Commonwealth” that outlined an association of democratic states that included Russia.6
By February 2022 at the latest, Kaiser was among those facing the ruins of many of these investments with Russia. In 2014, after the invasion of Crimea, he had characterized Putin’s rule as an “authoritarian regime run by old KGB and Soviet elites supported by the oligarchs.”7 But like many others, Kaiser did not expect Putin to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “[The West] has assumed a rationality that is obviously lacking,” he said on February 24, 2022.8 In this case, “the West” encompassed a large part of Germany’s foreign policy elite, myself included. In the interview, Kaiser spoke of a Zeitenwende, a term that was – following the speech by the German chancellor a few days later – to become the watchword of a foreign and security policy U‑turn in Germany. Meanwhile, his “Democratic Commonwealth” co-author Karaganov advocated nuclear strikes on Western Europe because of its support for Ukraine.9
This failure teaches us an important lesson: projecting our own ideas of rationality onto the autocratic leaders of great powers can lead to fatal errors in judgment. We should not repeat the mistake that many made with Putin when it comes to China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping. We cannot assume that Xi will not risk war simply because war is not profitable and because there are mutual dependencies. War can only be avoided if Xi wakes up every morning for the next ten years and says: “I would love to cement my place in the history books by annexing Taiwan. But today is not the day, it’s just too risky militarily and economically.” To ensure this, the West must bring far more to the table in terms of deterrence than it did in the case of Ukraine. Then, as in the Cold War, it can provide a functioning deterrent and offer dialogue and disarmament from a position of strength.
Learning from Karl Kaiser
Today, we can learn from the multiperspectivity that Karl Kaiser applied in his work. His combination of interdependent transnational relations with an understanding of power politics is more relevant than ever. In 2000, working for DGAP in my first German think tank job, I organized a study group on globalization and the world economy. Kaiser, who was my boss, was very interested in my work on the fashionable topic of “global governance,” which tied in with his early research on transnational relations. Yet in meetings, he still talked a lot about great power politics, warheads, and deterrence. Given my institutionalist optimism of the late 1990s, this seemed anachronistic. As it has become clear: it was, in fact, my one-sided focus on “governance” that had fallen out of step with the times. By the same token, today it is not sufficient to simply garnish one’s work liberally with the adjectives “geopolitical” and “geoeconomic” to signal that one is up to date.
In view of the parallel nature of conflicts between great powers, deep transnational interdependencies, and existential global challenges such as the climate and biodiversity crises, Kaiser’s multiperspectivity is more imperative than ever. This also means that international institutions and multilateral cooperation are not knickknacks that can simply be done away with when the new self-appointed grand strategists ponder geopolitics and geoeconomics.
However, multiperspectivity must also be brought up to date. To successfully pursue German foreign policy, it is no longer enough to be a “transatlanticist.” We urgently have to understand the very diverse perspectives of the non-Western world – not least with regard to the consequences of colonialism, historical experiences, and the respective regional strategic constellations. This need for learning becomes clear if we look at the moral outrage on the part of many transatlanticists in 2022 who then failed to understand the different strategic considerations of countries such as India, Brazil, and South Africa regarding Russia’s war of aggression. The German strategic community in particular must invest much more in understanding the non-Western world – and at the same time prepare for a post-American Europe, which will largely have to provide for its own fundamental security. Donald Trump’s second term in office marks the brutal end of classic transatlanticism. In 2019, Kaiser warned that we “need to restructure European-American relationships with much greater weight and ownership” on the European side.10 Unfortunately, Germany and Europe have not used the gift of the Biden years to move powerfully in this direction, making themselves all the more vulnerable in the age of Trump, Putin, and Xi. The pressure to act is all the greater today.
Kaiser’s successors in German foreign policy would do well to follow the example he set in the Bonn and Berlin Republics: to engage in debates even when things get uncomfortable. After all, uncomfortable is the new normal in the world of shitty choices in which Germany finds itself after the happy dreams of the 1990s failed to come true. Leading German foreign policy experts have followed his lead very successfully over the past years, for example, with regard to Russia and Ukraine – often showing great courage and commitment at significant personal cost. But leading German think tankers have, by and large, failed miserably on Germany’s Israel policy in the age of Netanyahu. In times of increasing centrifugal forces affecting democracy at home, German foreign policy analysts must also pay much more attention to the domestic (not least fiscal) conditions for foreign policy leadership. Five years after German President Joachim Gauck’s “more responsibility” speech at the 2014 Munich Security Conference,11 Karl Kaiser summed up the situation poignantly: “In reality, no major change has occurred either in the political class or in action or in public opinion.”12 It is up to Kaiser’s successors in Germany to help ensure that the assessment of “five years of Zeitenwende” in 2027 is not similarly disastrous.
[1] “Transnationale Politik. Zu einer Theorie der multinationalen Politik” [Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Politics], Ernst-Otto Czempiel (Pub.), Die anachronistische Souveränität, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Vol. 1/1969, Wiesbaden 1969, pp. 80 – 109.
[2] Karl Kaiser, “Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Politics,” International Organization Volume 25, Issue 4, fall 1971, pp. 790 – 817: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818300017732 (last accessed on November 15, 2024).
[3] Ibid., p. 816.
[4] Karl Kaiser, “Die Wahrheit gibt es für den US-Präsidenten nicht mehr” [For the US President, Truth No Longer Exists], Deutschlandfunk Interview, June 27, 2019: https://www.deutschlandfunk. de/transatlantiker-karl-kaiser-die-wahrheit-gibt-es-fuer-den-100.html (last accessed on November 15, 2024).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Graham Allison, Karl Kaiser, Sergei Karaganow, “Toward a New Democratic Commonwealth,” Trilateral Strategy Group of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, 1997.
[7] Karl Kaiser, “Kennedy School Prof. Reflects on Ukraine Crisis,” The Brandeis Hoot, October 31, 2014: https://brandeishoot.com/2014/10/31/dr-karl-kaiser-of-kennedy-school-speaks-on-the-ukraine-crisis/ (last accessed on November 15, 2024).
[8] Karl Kaiser, “Putins Angriff auf die Ukraine: Eine neue Spielart des Kalten Kriegs” [Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: A New Kind of Cold War], Deutschlandfunk Interview, February 24, 2022: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/interview-zum-krieg-in-der-ukraine-mit-prof-karl-kaiser-harvard-university-dlf-dbf99c09-100.html (last accessed on November 15, 2024).
[9] Sergei A. Karaganov, “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” Russia in Global Affairs, June 13, 2023: https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a‑difficult-but-necessary-decision (last accessed on November 15, 2024).
[10] Karl Kaiser, “Die Wahrheit gibt es für den US-Präsidenten nicht mehr” (see note 4).
[11] Joachim Gauck, “Speech to open 50th Munich Security Conference,” January 31, 20214: https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/JoachimGauck/Reden/2014/140131-Munich-Security-Conference.html (last accessed November 15, 2024).
[12] Karl Kaiser, “Die Wahrheit gibt es für den US-Präsidenten nicht mehr” (see note 4).
This piece originally appeared in the collection Ways Into the Future: Perspectives for Foreign Policy, a commemorative volume published in honor of Karl Kaiser by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
A German version is available.
