“Gulliver Unleashed”

Cover story: The USA is the undisputed number one in the world, in military, economic and cultural terms. But the superpower is beginning to suffer from the disease of all empires in history: overestimating itself and overstretching itself. Does the Iraq War mark the beginning of the end? Under George W. Bush, the national budget deficit has reached record levels, predicted to amount to the inconceivable figure of 1.8 trillion dollars over the next 10 years – and yet the president continues to expand America’s imperial ambitions.

On Friday, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder presented his new plans for dealing with economic stagnation. Will everything remain the way it is?

“America’s Power Will Be Broken”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd about the effects of the Iraq War, the decline of the USA as sole superpower and the emancipation of Europe:

“It isn’t an act of heroism if a country with 280 million inhabitants and a full military arsenal attacks a country of 20 million that is totally drained, has hardly any armed forces capable of fighting any more, and half of whose population consists of children and adolescents. … Bush is afraid of ridicule if he draws back. … If you consider that the old contrast between East and West has been overcome, it seems perfectly natural and normal that France, Germany and Russia, which form a compact geographical bloc on the borders of the Middle East, should join together to curb the hegemonic USA in this region. … I think the US administration has a distorted relationship to democracy. … Bush and his team are dangerous because they are resisting reality. They sense, they see the signs of decline, but they don’t want to admit to it. Paradoxically, this drives them to pursue policies which will destroy America’s supremacy. Iraq will be the first great stage in this process.”

“Every Hour Pays Off”

SPIEGEL interview with Iraqi information minister As Sahhaf about Baghdad’s last-minute hopes:

“Bush is being driven by economic interests into attacking the oil superpower Iraq. But even if the worst comes to the worst, the calculations of the US president won’t work out. … Do you seriously think Syria or Saudi Arabia, Libya or even Egypt would accept being enslaved by an unpredictable superpower? The peoples of the Middle East and the entire world will do everything possible to prevent the international community from being remodelled into a world of states dictated to and controlled by America.”

“Missiles from the Kiosk”

Weapons dealers: The “Axis of Evil” has now reached Steinfurt, a small town with 30,000 inhabitants halfway between Münster and the moors along the border between Germany and the Netherlands. An electrician and a kiosk owner are believed to have tried to have at least three parts for missiles built here on behalf of the Iraqi military. Perhaps they were even intended for the missiles that the Iraqis have been forced to destroy for some weeks now on the orders of the United Nations. For all its drollness, the case is already considered extremely delicate – because quite obviously the Iraqi leadership was still trying to complete its arms programme long after the United Nations inspectors were in control in the country.

“Turkish Jackals”

Northern Iraq: The Kurds in Northern Iraq are longing for the Americans and British to go to war against Saddam Hussein. All of them have made promises to the Kurds: the English, the Turks, the Iraqis. But in the game of the big powers, they have all disappointed and passed over the Kurds again and again. The American plans for a new order in Iraq now proclaim an end to the oppression of the 3 million Kurds, who have officially long renounced the eternal dream of an independent Kurdish state. But since the Turkish foreign minister Yakis speculated publicly about the Turkish right to the oil deposits in the Iraqi towns of Mossul and Kirkuk, the Kurds are once again afraid of foreign rule. People here don’t believe that a peaceful alliance between Americans and Turks will bring freedom to the Kurds.

“Time Bomb in Delaware”

Car industry: Two worlds collided last week in a small US district courtroom. The ultrarich investor Kirk Kerkorian wants to sue the international DaimlerChrysler group. The case revolves around thousands of documents, but most of all eight billion dollars. The starting point for the billion-dollar quarrel is the statement by Jürgen Schrempp, that the fusion of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler in 1998 was a “merger of equals”. Kerkorian, who held almost 14 percent of Chrysler’s shares at the time, claims that this was a malicious deception. In fact, he says, Schrempp had secret plans outlining how the Germans would seize power at Chrysler. Unlike with a merger, Daimler-Benz would have had to pay a higher price for Chrysler in the case of a take-over, according to Kerkorian, and he himself should accordingly have received a larger block of shares in the new DaimlerChrysler AG. Now he wants compensation for this.

“They Don’t Give Away Anything for Free”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with bank adviser Thomas Fischer about the characteristic features of the successful product Formula 1, the car manufacturers’ threat of organising their own rival event, and his attempt to rescue the money of the banks involved:

“The reason Formula 1 was able to function so well was that Ecclestone understood better than anyone else how it might develop. And he recognised that it was a questions of rights: broadcasting rights, venue rights, the right to use certain courses and so on. This means that Formula 1 as a business is based on very complex contracts. … If we want to preserve Formula 1 and develop it further, we have to extend these contracts. … In the end, everyone will realise that the best solution for the future is to continue developing what has already proven its worth, while in the process getting rid of those things that have become the most troublesome.”

Miami Vice/Don Johnson

When film star Don Johnson tried to enter Germany from Switzerland last November, he had documents in his pocket which are better not carried around with one. Especially not if one is only on an excursion to nearby Stuttgart to take a look at a luxury Maybach car manufactured by DaimlerChrysler. Searching his black limousine, investigators found several bank receipts, and on totting up the figures came to a grand total of eight billion dollars. Since then, Johnson has been facing the question what exactly his connection is with these bank statements.

“Trapdoors into Horror”

SPIEGEL interview with writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger about the beauty and violence of nature, the spirit of the times and his latest volume of poems:

“I don’t like being told by discourses like this what poets ought to or are allowed to do, or what they shouldn’t do. … The world is bigger than what’s printed on the cover pages of the newspapers. One should take the liberty to see things from a less limited perspective. … I am particularly concerned with the treacherous, contradictory aspect of our experiences. However, nature does allow you to see human violence in relative terms – clouds will survive mankind by millions of years. That isn’t necessarily comforting.”

“Democracy Kills Diplomacy”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, European visionary of the Green party, and Robert Kagan, mentor of US foreign policy, about war and peace, and about why Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus.

Cohn-Bendit: “Europe happens to be a sort of collective. It has a concept of solidarity and at the same time it shies away from taking on responsibility. America, on the other hand, has a neo-liberal view of the world. America only does what it wants. It is a very moral and generous country, but it is also egotistical and brutal. It says: We are strong and can and must reorganise the world on our own.” Kagan: “The Europeans live under the illusion that you can pursue international policies without military force and without power. But even in Kosovo they needed the USA and its know-how to stop the genocide. … America exercises power in a Hobbesian world, in which everyone is fighting everyone else and in which you cannot rely on international regulations and international law.”

“Designer Food for Everyone”

Genetic engineering: Europe is under mounting pressure to open its markets to genetically manipulated crops. The barriers will probably fall this year, after which consumers will scarcely be able to buy any food that is free of GM ingredients. The weight of the facts is crushing. Last year, genetically manipulated plants for the global market were grown on almost 60 million hectares of land world-wide. Today, 35 times as many transgenic plants thrive as did in 1996. Already in 2002, more than 90 transgenic crops were licensed world-wide. Biotechnology enthusiasts don’t perceive any risks. A study recently published in the journal “Nature Biotechnology” comes to the conclusion that “we can find no scientific arguments suggesting that transgenic plants are essentially different from those that are bred by natural means.” Dietary experts are also sounding the all-clear. It is “unlikely” that genetically manipulated foods, which are already on the market for example in the USA, “pose a problem for human health”. The Americans know that the European Commission has long come over to their side. The instruments are already on the table in the form of the new regulations on labelling and tracking GM foods. Now it remains for the European Parliament to agree to these.