“”I Have My Doubts about NATO’s Survival”, Der Spiegel
Joschka Fischer, a titan of Germany’s post-reunification foreign policy, says he finds Trump “deeply distasteful,” discusses the need for a European bomb and says he never trusted Putin.
Interview Conducted by Felix Bohr und Frederik Seeler
Berlin, 28.05.2026
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Fischer, if you were still Germany’s foreign minister, how would you be dealing with the current U.S. administration and President Donald Trump?
Fischer: I’m glad I don’t have to, because I find this person deeply unpleasant. The German government has not done a bad job with him so far, and neither has NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. They’re often criticized for approaching Trump on a broad trail of slime. But in this situation, they don’t have many other options. And (German Chancellor Friedrich) Merz has issued a clear refusal to participate in the Iran war – a wise decision.
DER SPIEGEL: Trump has obviously miscalculated with his war in Iran. How do you assess his actions?
Fischer: From my perspective, it was already a mistake in his first term to sweep the nuclear deal with Iran, negotiated by Barack Obama and the Europeans, off the table. With the current war, he has so far achieved nothing. The regime will most likely hold on to power, and the enriched uranium will remain under its control. The only regime change Trump has achieved in Iran: the mullahs have been replaced as the central power factor by the Revolutionary Guards. The regime has become even more radical.
DER SPIEGEL: Friedrich Merz currently seems to have little influence over Trump. Do you consider descriptions of him as a “foreign-policy chancellor” to be accurate?
Fischer: Every chancellor is a foreign-policy chancellor. I have never really been able to understand this distinction.
DER SPIEGEL: Does Germany need to involve itself even more strongly in global politics?
Fischer: Economically, Germany is a European middle power; in terms of power politics, it remains rather small. Now that the U.S. has fallen away as a protective power, Germany must first strengthen and improve its military position.
DER SPIEGEL: Could Germany’s Bundeswehr become part of a European army?About Joschka Fischer
Joschka Fischer, born in 1948, was a key figure in the rise and success of the Green Party from the 1980s onward. From 1998 to 2005, he served as vice chancellor and foreign minister in the SPD-Green coalition government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He shaped German foreign policy during the Kosovo War in 1999, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and in the debate over the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.
Fischer: That will be difficult to push through. We are under considerable time pressure. The simplest approach would be to assemble a coalition of those countries that feel threatened by Putin – which also means: making use of national strength. In Europe, Germany and France are vital in this regard. We simply cannot rely on the U.S. anymore in the future. I have my doubts about NATO’s survival.
DER SPIEGEL: You think the situation is so dire?
Fischer: At least as a trans-Atlantic alliance. I think it would be sensible for a European NATO to continue to exist.
DER SPIEGEL: In two years, the U.S. could have a new president who reverses Trump’s course.
Fischer: Who can guarantee that another Trump won’t come along four or eight years after that? The trust is gone, and it cannot be restored through a different election outcome, as much as I hope for one. The stability of the trans-Atlantic alliance rested on this trust.
DER SPIEGEL: Does Germany also need to consider establishing its own nuclear deterrent?
Fischer: If Trump withdraws the nuclear umbrella – and that possibility exists – this debate will be unavoidable. There would have to be an attempt to create a European alternative, together with France and Britain. Those would, of course, be extremely challenging changes.
A 108-kilometer-long demonstration between Stuttgart and Ulm against U.S. missiles in Germany in 1983. “Was I ever in the peace movement?” Foto: Roland Holschneider / dpa
DER SPIEGEL: Is Europe ready for Germany to become a military power again, to build the strongest conventional army on the continent, as Chancellor Merz is demanding?
Fischer: Only if the Berlin conducts foreign policy with historical sensitivity. Twice in the 20th century, Germany was thwarted in its bid for world power. We don’t seem to think about that as much anymore, but our neighbors have not forgotten this past, even if Chancellor Konrad Adenauer created a European postwar Germany through Western integration. That ultimately made unification possible and created a certain trust among former wartime adversaries.
DER SPIEGEL: What does that mean for today? What does that mean for a Germany in which the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is gaining strength?
Fischer: If we have our country’s best interests at heart, we will remain committed to the principle of never again going it alone as a nation. That is also the great danger that the rise of the AfD brings with it: that we suppress our own history and once again develop fantasies of becoming a great power. The AfD wants to return to a pre-Adenauer Germany, a nationalist Germany. Doing so, in my view, would be quite simply insane. Europe is the only option remaining to us.
“Our playgrounds were the remnants of bombed out buildings. Materiel left over from the war was also still lying around.”
DER SPIEGEL: You were once a militant opponent of the Bundeswehr, and you took part in demonstrations against rearmament and NATO. What was your path to the peace movement as a young man?
Fischer: My generation was raised by the surviving veterans of Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht. In primary school back then, it was customary for teachers to tell stories of their war experiences before report cards were handed out. Our playgrounds were the remnants of bombed out buildings. Materiel left over from the war was also still lying around – steel helmets, ammunition and so on.
DER SPIEGEL: That made you a pacifist?
Fischer: It was also, to some extent, a stance against the older generation. But I wonder these days: Was I ever in the peace movement? After all, I was no pacifist. I never rejected violence per se. But I was firmly convinced that, against the backdrop of German history, a lasting peace was needed.
DER SPIEGEL: After school, you didn’t go into the Bundeswehr but were declared unfit for service.
Fischer: I was severely nearsighted. If I hadn’t been weeded out, I certainly would have refused. But today, in retrospect, I have come to understand that my rejection of the military wasn’t completely thought through.
DER SPIEGEL: Today, would you urge your grandchildren to do military service?
Fischer: They haven’t even started school yet. But in principle, yes.
DER SPIEGEL: As foreign minister, you, as a member of the Green Party, presided over a turning point for the Bundeswehr in 1999. That year, German soldiers were sent into combat as part of a NATO mission for the first time – against the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević. Do you see parallels to today’s discussions about crisis readiness?
Fischer: I see a parallel to the realignment of the Bundeswehr and its possible areas of deployment. The question of whether German soldiers should participate in combat operations in the Balkans was an extremely difficult one for me back then, too. We were sending German soldiers into a region where Hitler’s henchmen had once wreaked havoc.
DER SPIEGEL: Skepticism was particularly great in your own party. At the special Green Party convention, you were struck in the ear by a bag full of paint and called a “warmonger.”
Fischer: In hindsight, I came to realize that the Greens conducted a debate at that convention in proxy for German society as a whole. The deployment was also discussed within other political parties and in the media, but it was a particularly fierce debate in our party.
DER SPIEGEL: You justified the Kosovo intervention by saying: “Never again Auschwitz,” essentially saying that it was necessary to prevent a genocide against the Albanian minority in what was then Serbia. The historian Heinrich August Winkler accused you of relativizing the crimes of the National Socialists through that comparison. Do you stand by your comments?
“The return of an extremely dangerous form of nationalism, determined to commit mass murder and mass terror.”
Fischer: Heinrich August Winkler is a very astute historian, but he is not a politician. I was unable to understand his criticism.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you think the accusation of genocide is often thrown about carelessly today?
Fischer: A short time before, in 1995, we had experienced the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. That was later recognized as genocide. If there is anything I can reproach myself for in the Kosovo case, it’s that it took me so long to recognize the true nature of this conflict. Namely, the return of an extremely dangerous form of nationalism, determined to commit mass murder and mass terror. If Milošević, the Serbian president, had pushed through his agenda, you could have forgotten about the future of the EU and its expansion to the Balkans.
DER SPIEGEL: Still, the Serbian plans for “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo that were circulating at the time later turned out to be unsubstantiated. Were you too hasty in entering the war?
Fischer: No. Bosnia, Sarajevo and Srebrenica were reality, and the expulsions and attacks we saw back then were real as well.
DER SPIEGEL: When it came to Russia, there was an extreme lack of foresight back then. Did you underestimate the danger emanating from Moscow?
Fischer: It was a completely different situation. The major factor in Russia was named Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who made German unification possible. After that, despite the Yugoslav wars, people believed that eternal peace had broken out. And that carried over to the early phase of Vladimir Putin’s time in office. In hindsight, an illusion.
DER SPIEGEL: Did you believe at the time that Putin was committed to peace?
Fischer: I never trusted him. As foreign minister, I was fully aware of the brutality with which the war in Chechnya was waged starting in 1999. And then came the radical words Putin used in reaction to the pro-European Orange Revolution in Ukraine. For me, there was always a sense of mistrust.
DER SPIEGEL: Why did the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, which you belonged to, nevertheless pursue a policy of rapprochement with Russia?
Fischer: At the time there was hope that balancing interests with Russia might succeed. But you should never put all your eggs in one basket, as happened in energy policy.
DER SPIEGEL: Did the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022 finally destroy the fundamentally pacifist attitude held by Germans?
Fischer: Pacifism as a basic idea is not finished. A world that is no longer violent, one where the law of the jungle no longer applies, is one I consider to be very much worth striving for. Unfortunately, however, we find ourselves in a moment of upheaval – a moment where the opposite is taking place. That is a fact we must face.
DER SPIEGEL: Today it is your party, the erstwhile peace-minded Greens, that is advocating particularly vociferously for military support for Ukraine. Is that partly your legacy?
Fischer: The Greens have always shown solidarity with democratic initiatives in former countries of the Soviet Union. We had early contacts with the human rights organization Memorial in Russia, for example. We were also among the first to support the Maidan demonstrations in Ukraine.
DER SPIEGEL: Do you believe that the Green Party’s realpolitik will last?
Fischer: I had expected the party to fall back into a more pacifist stance once the Greens were no longer part of the government in 2005. I was mistaken about that. I have no ambition, in my old age, to continue wielding influence over Green Party politics. But I’m pleased that my party today holds the position it does. I hope this realism remains.