Gerhard Schröder, on the other hand, was a lame duck all summer. After calling for snap elections in May, virtually every pundit in the country assumed the chancellor was rapidly heading for early retirement. Summer surveys had his SPD below 30 percent until early September, and he seemed to be desperately flailing about for an issue that might animate Germany’s electorate. But then Schröder’s numbers started improving and he went on the offensive. His result on Sunday, while still one of the worst in the history of his party, represents the SPD’s high-water mark of support since its 38.5 percent result in 2002. Since that election, the party has had great trouble reaching the 30 percent mark in popularity polls.

So naturally, both politicians are claiming the chancellery.

Merkel on Sunday evening went before the television cameras — trying her best to look the victor but not quite pulling it off — and crowed that Schröder’s governing coalition with the Green Party had been voted out of office. “We can be proud to say that we are the strongest political power in this country,” she continued as her supporters cheered her on. Clearly she was ready to be crowned chancellor.

At virtually the same time, however, Schröder was offering victory salutes. “I feel validated,” he shouted to cheering supporters, and then promised that the next four years in Germany would see a stable government under his leadership. In the subsequent television discussion attended by the leaders of all the major parties, Schröder could hardly contain himself, verbally strutting about like a peacock with Angela Merkel all the while glumly — and for the most part silently — looking on.

All of which means that Germany, on the Monday after the election, has two chancellors, no coalition government and little in the way of a plan how to resolve the situation. It was an election without a victor.

Even worse, it isn’t clear that the upcoming coalition negotiations will result in a government able to govern. Schröder, after all, is no longer the reform chancellor. After years of trying to push through needed cuts to Germany’s bloated social welfare system, he suddenly jettisoned his tough-love talk during the final campaign push and hammered on his opponent Merkel for being cold-hearted and even tried to portray her as a money-hungry neoliberal. In other words, if Schröder does manage to come out on top and remain chancellor, he will be a chancellor without a plan. He has no platform and has chucked his reform program aside for political expediency.

Merkel, on the other hand, ran a campaign of frankness. Months before the election, she told voters that, were they to elect her, she would raise the sales tax by two percentage points. Her party also promised job-market reforms that would make it easier for employers to cut costs by laying off employees and said she would keep Germany on the reform path. Mostly, however, Merkel’s campaign slogan seemed to be “Germany is in a crisis, so vote for us.” The voters responded by being simply unable to put the X in the CDU box on Sunday. They chickened out in part because the Union painted too dark a picture.

“Maybe we concentrated too much on describing the reality and too little on explaining how we wanted to make it better,” said Jörg Schönbohm, a CDU leader in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, on Sunday night.

Indeed. At the end of the day, more Germans voted for parties to the left of the political center (a total of 51.1 percent among the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party) than for those to the right (45 percent for Merkel’s Union and the neo-liberal FDP). Hardly a mandate for Merkel’s campaign platform.

Ironically, however, it will be exactly these two parties — Schröder’s platformless SPD and Merkel’s shunned Union — that will likely be forming the country’s next government. Now, Germany is faced with a coalition of the losers.

Of course, there are other options. Merkel could team up with the FDP and the Greens. Schröder could do the same. But that could prove incredibly difficult. Guido Westerwelle, head of the FDP, has for months said that he would not form a coalition that included the environmentally friendly Green Party. On Sunday night — even after his party polled a respectable 9.8 percent of the vote — Westerwelle once again said that, since a governing coalition with Merkel’s Union wouldn’t be possible, his party would head for the opposition. On Monday, he seems to be singing a slightly different tune and has said he would consider working with the Greens in a coalition with Merkel’s Union if the Greens “re-invent themselves” — likely a reference to the party getting rid of Joschka Fischer. Westerwelle, though, faces a credibility gap if he pursues such a coalition.

So what will the near future bring for Germany? During the summer, many had been referring to the elections as being a key moment in the country’s destiny. Now, it seems the country will be led by the weakest government in its postwar history. Further reform to Germany’s ailing economy, further plans to reduce its hefty unemployment problems, sleek budgets to combat rising national debt all seem unlikely. Instead, gridlock may well be the name of the game. In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal opined that “the ‘sick man of Europe’ is likely to remain bedridden for a while longer.”

Germany’s parliament has to meet by Oct. 18 to elect a chancellor. Between now and then, it’s a safe bet that the country’s political leadership will be leading talks the likes of which Germany has never before seen. Two political heavyweights who have lost their heft will be circling each other for the privilege of becoming the head of an unwieldy coalition. And Merkel, meanwhile, will have to be constantly looking over her shoulder for attacks from within her own party.

Berlin political stock has rarely had less value.

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Many in Germany see the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, as a mass slaughter of innocent human beings devoid of any strategic goals. Much of this, of course, stems from Germany’s own World War II history of genocide.

For me it’s a historical question. The atomic bomb was not more destructive than the mass forces the Allies were flying in Germany and Japan. If there was a moral issue involved, it was surely the decisions the Allied forces made in 1943 to begin the strategic bombing of cities — in particular, the decision to firebomb Japanese cities. So it’s a complicated question given the amount of civilians killed in these earlier attacks.

Was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime?

Curtis LeMay, who was the general in charge of the bombing campaign in Japan, said that if we’d lost the war we certainly would have been brought before an international tribunal. In that sense, he was admitting it was a war crime. Of course one is revolted by the idea of killing civilians. We killed almost 2 million Japanese civilians with bombing campaigns.

Why was the A-bomb dropped at all? What were the strategic goals the U.S. was attempting to achieve?

By the time the atomic bomb was dropped, we had destroyed virtually every Japanese city with a population of over 50,000. The logic went something like this: “If bombing a factory with workers inside it wasn’t a war crime, then why would it be a war crime to bomb the area around the factories where the workers live?” After that the bombing campaign was essentially to force the Japanese to surrender so that a land invasion would not be necessary and thus limit the loss of life. The atomic bombs were really just an extension of that. And in the end, it did shorten the war.

Was there a racist element to the decision to drop the A-bomb on Japan or would it have also been used in Germany had it been developed earlier?

The war in the Pacific was indeed an intensely racist war — on both sides of the lines. General Leslie Groves, who was in charge of the Manhattan Project which developed the bomb, was quoted after the war as saying that he had discussed the bomb with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943 and that there was no question that Roosevelt would have been prepared to use it on Germany. On the other hand, they knew that the bomb would not be ready before mid- to late 1945 and most felt that the war in Europe would likely be over by then.

What about the scientists who worked on the bomb during the Manhattan Project? Were they horrified at what they had done when they were confronted by the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

No, they weren’t, because they were working on the project in the middle of a war that cost 55 million human lives. From their point of view, this was going to be the weapon that was to end World War II — and it’s fair to argue that it did. And there was also a feeling that it might be a weapon that would end all wars. You can definitely argue that it ended world-scale war. If you look at the number of man-made deaths in the 20th century, you will see that around 1917 it was around 6 million per year and then in the 1930s it was around 4 million per year. During World War II, it spiked up to the horrendous figure of some 15 million per year. But then, immediately after World War II, it dropped off dramatically to around 1 million per year and stayed at that low level for the rest of the 20th century. What caused that dramatic change? I think pretty clearly the introduction of nuclear weapons.

After Roosevelt’s death, Harry Truman became president. He was ultimately responsible for making the decision to use the bomb in 1945. Did he give enough thought to using the weapon?

No. He had a sense that it was a cataclysmic weapon because he writes about it in biblical terms in some of his private journals. But Truman was a self-educated man and had some fairly original ideas about how the universe worked. I don’t think he spent much time thinking about the use of the weapon. After all, they were already in production and it was clear that Roosevelt had already endorsed and authorized them.

So if Roosevelt thought it was OK, then it was OK for him too?

Truman has won a rather rosy image over the years. But I think he was a great deal more like George W. Bush than he was like Franklin Roosevelt. He was an intellectually insecure man and he covered up that insecurity with a great deal of bluster and an almost obsessive attitude that “the buck stops here.” That was the attitude he used when approaching the atomic bomb. But he also had a visceral and existential response to the mass killings when he got the news of what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After that, he was unwilling under any circumstances to use nuclear weapons.

So by virtue of the destruction nuclear weapons wrought in Japan, using such weapons has become impossible?

There were definitely some long-term results from the use of the A-bombs in Japan. One president after another and one leader of the Soviet Union after another looked at the destructive force of these weapons and made a private decision that there is no context in which they could ever be used. We came very close a number of times during the Cold War, of course. But sense prevailed.

Was physicist Niels Bohr right in arguing that the only way to control nuclear weapons is to make the technology open to everybody?

Bohr’s idea was that if nations forwent developing a nuclear arsenal, then they would receive assistance in developing civilian nuclear technology — an idea that is more or less in place today. But Bohr was really trying to make clear to the political leaders of the time that there was no way these weapons could be used once more than one nation had access to them. That’s how it turned out. But Bohr also thought that once nations realized this salient fact, they would forgo the arms race.

It doesn’t seem like too many people were listening to him.

These weapons still have lots of prestige as a symbol of national power. This attitude follows very directly from the continuing insistence on the part of the United States to this day that other nations shouldn’t have nuclear weapons but we should because it’s important to our national security. If we can make that claim, then so can any other nation or any other entity. And they have. A country like North Korea knows — especially after the invasion of Iraq — that being part of the “Axis of Evil” is a dangerous place to be. Because we insist on our primary right to be a nuclear power, they have no other option but to do the same.

Is disarmament a realistic goal? Can we turn back the clock?

It is possible to imagine a world without nuclear weapons, but the know-how would still be around and deterrence would still work. You only have to imagine it as extending the amount of time it takes to deliver a weapon to its target. Today it takes 15 to 30 minutes to deliver a nuclear weapon, which is hardly enough time for any kind of rational consideration. If you took the warhead off all the missiles and kept them in a separate place — which is how Pakistan maintains the security of its weapons — then it would take perhaps an hour or two hours. If you actually dismantle these weapons and put the parts in separate places, it would take three days. The countries like Germany that have the technology to go nuclear but have refrained from doing so have a delivery time of about a year. In such a world, if one country decides to start building a weapon, other countries might follow suit. At worst, that would bring us right back to where we are today.

How great is the danger that a nuclear weapon will be used again?

Everybody I talk to in the nuclear community is pretty comfortable that nation-states are not going to use nuclear weapons — even states like North Korea are clearly more concerned with the prestige factor than about actually using it. But everyone I talk to is greatly concerned about the very real possibility of a terrorist nuclear attack. Terrorist groups — al-Qaida is one example — would see a great amount of prestige if they were able to build and detonate a nuclear weapon in New York City or in Iraq’s U.S.-controlled Green Zone. In fact, everyone I take seriously in this field believes the possibility is 100 percent. The fact is, if you can get a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, it’s very easy to make a nuclear weapon that would explode with about the same yield as the Hiroshima bomb. These weapons are so small and so portable and so vastly destructive for their weight and size that there is no effective defense against them except abolition.

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People in Pakistan were very apprehensive after the bombing, but the connection with Pakistan did not come as a surprise. It was clear there was a great danger that the Pakistani community in London would carry out such an attack. It is well known that the Muslim community there is very radical — at least some of them. People also knew many of them had connections in Pakistan.

There have been a number of arrests in Pakistan in recent days. Were the roots of the London attacks in Britain, or were they in Pakistan?

The roots of the attack were in England. There has been an enormous radicalization of British Muslims in the last few years and especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. There are radical preachers; there are radical mosques. There are lots of schools there that have been teaching students the Koran on Friday afternoons and at the same time radicalizing them. There is no dearth of ideological training in England.

So how great a role does Pakistan play in international terrorism?

Pakistan remains the global center for terrorism and for the remnants of al-Qaida, which is still very strong here. The fact is, after Sept. 11, despite the many crackdowns made by the military regime of Gen. Musharraf, we haven’t effectively shut down the Pakistani militant groups. The reason for that is that these groups are very closely tied into the military’s foreign policy, especially with respect to Kashmir and Afghanistan. The militant groups here have not been crushed, and if the madrassas they control — they all control a certain number of such religious schools — are not shut down, we’re not going to see an end to militancy here.

So in other words, despite Musharraf’s claims to be combating terrorism — claims that he repeated in his speech to Pakistan on Thursday evening — he is not doing enough. Is that what you are saying?

When crackdowns do occur, they aren’t effective. Three hundred, or even 2,000, people are picked up; they’re held for 90 days, and then they are freed as soon as the attention and pressure from the West has stopped. There has never been an organized campaign to combat it. It has never taken place.

In his speech, Musharraf spoke quite a bit about the July 7 bombings in London. What was the main message he was trying to communicate to his nation?

His main message was a very positive one. He said we must combat extremism and launch a jihad against radicalism. He asked that people mobilize and not vote for extremists and so on. But there has been no shortage of such speeches. The main question is whether they will be followed by any meaningful action.

Musharraf also emphasized that the London bombers were born and raised in England, as though he were trying to take the blame off of Pakistan. Do you think that’s what he was trying to say?

The message was that you don’t need to come to Pakistan to become a fanatic. You can become a fanatic in Yorkshire, in Leeds or anywhere in England because there’s enough extremism there too. That’s what he was alluding to.

You mentioned before that there is a lot of work to do in Pakistan when it comes to cracking down on extremism. But what can the West do to keep up pressure on the country and on Musharraf to energetically combat fanaticism and terrorism?

The biggest mistake the West has made with Pakistan since 9/11 has been the pursuit of private diplomacy. It hasn’t been made public. The West should spell out exactly what is expected of Pakistan and the regime. U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, they keep praising Pakistan and saying it is doing a great job hunting down al-Qaida and the Taliban, but behind the scenes they are whistling a completely different tune. The West needs to have one policy, which should be in the public domain. Then the Pakistani public would insist that Musharraf fulfill these demands.

But Musharraf is already under great pressure as he tries to walk the fine line between being allied with the West in the war on terror and at the same time having powerful factions in his society that are radicalized and extreme.

But that has been the argument for the last four years. The fact is, Musharraf is still here; he is still very much in power and absolutely nothing has been done about extremism. It is clear that Musharraf has a very political agenda. He wants to be reelected in 2007 and he wants to remain in office until 2012. And for that, he needs votes. At the same time, though, he has been trying to be a good partner with the West. But his political agenda takes precedence over any commitments to combating extremism and terrorism. An army general cannot have a political agenda while he is trying to crack down on terror.

One of the reasons the West is not putting too much pressure on Musharraf is that it is afraid of what would happen if he were no longer there. He has been targeted by assassination attempts twice in his own country. What would happen if his government were toppled or if he were killed?

I have no doubt that the army would take over again. People are afraid because the country has nuclear weapons and they think the country would fall apart. I don’t believe any of that would happen. There would be continuity.

Since the July 7 bombings, there has been lots of focus on the madrassas as breeding grounds for terrorism and radicalism. What role do these religious schools play in Pakistan?

The London bombers came to Pakistan, but I don’t think they came to attend a madrassa. I think they came here to make contacts with militant groups and possibly to get training. The majority of madrassas in Pakistan — I would say around 80 percent — play a traditional role. That means they teach the Koran and then produce mullahs or religious leaders — just like religious schools in any religion. But in Pakistan, a number of madrassas have been taken over by militant groups, and it has become a sort of badge of honor for the extremists. These madrassas have become recruiting platforms for these extremist groups. But it is difficult to close them down because they are run by the militant groups Musharraf needs for other aspects of his foreign policy.

It is suspected that Osama bin Laden is on the run or hiding somewhere in Pakistan. What role does he currently play in international terrorism?

He is on the run. His main priority at the moment is to stay alive. At the most, he may be able to provide some strategic directives through his support group. But he’s not in a position to run day-to-day operations.

Some say that he is in Pakistan and that the Pakistani secret services know where he is and could catch him, but they are not willing to.

He is certainly in Pakistan because Pakistan has traditionally had the best infrastructure for al-Qaida. I don’t think the Pakistani military knows where he is, but they aren’t looking very hard, either, because they fear the military support they get from the United States would disappear as soon as bin Laden is caught.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was recently in Washington, and Bush promised closer cooperation with India — even support for India’s civil nuclear program. What does that mean for Pakistan?

The biggest fear of the Pakistani military is the new American relationship with India. The fact that the Americans are even willing to work with India’s nuclear program now — something they would never do with Pakistan — makes the military very nervous. They want to keep the Americans on-board, but the Pakistanis know that the long-term interests of the United States lie with India. The goal of the Pakistani military is to keep the Americans on its side for as long as possible.

Where do you see Pakistan in 10 years?

The country has a lot of potential and there is a democratic force here. But the main powers in the country at the moment are without a doubt the military and the fundamentalists.

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