Pakistan’s Konrad Adenauer

Henry Kissinger’s latest Book, Leadership — Six Studies in World Strategy, is a work that can easily be described as an academic and diplomatic power house from which many pertinent lessons can be drawn. It is based on Henry Kissinger’s in-depth diplomatic analysis and experience during his long diplomatic career with the selected leaders that he came across and learnt about.

Reading it I was particularly touched by the role that Konrad Adenauer’s (born 1876) political career played in guiding and rebuilding Germany after the fall of Hitler and Germany’s defeat and devastation during the World War II. Those were the desperate years in German history and currently ours are no less desperate. The five basic values that any state is expected to uphold are: security, freedom, order, justice and welfare.

Germany went to war and lost hold of all these values but we despite enjoying an environment of relative peace have not been able to support, sustain and promote these basic values either. Pakistan like Germany after the WWII is also in dire need of a visionary leadership to restore its dignity, legitimacy and crushed credibility. Like Germany we also hope to become a normal country and some leader has to step up and take responsibility of doing that.

“Either you can serve power or you can serve the truth” is a famous phrase that I often use taking my sociology classes in the universities — a strong idea and a belief but carrying it demands resilience, courage and confidence because carrying this belief means constantly exposing yourself to dangers and paying a cost. In 1933 Hitler’s Enabling Act in the German Parliament suspended the rule of law and independence of civilian institutions.

Through this act he created the enabling environment for his dictatorship to crush all liberties and freedom and impose war on its neighbours. In 1933 when Hitler became the chancellor, Konrad took three public demonstrations of opposition. In the Prussian Upper House, he voted against the enabling act, refused an invitation to welcome Hitler during Hitler’s election campaign at Cologne airport, the city of which he was the mayor and he ordered the removal of Nazi flags from bridges and all other public monuments. Inviting Hitler’s vengeance, he was eventually imprisoned.

Konrad’s stand against Hitler, his policies and the politics of status quo made him an obvious choice to lead Germany in the post war era. His 14 years rule (1949 -1963) is important because the world had turned its face away from Germany. Not once but twice within a gap of 20 years Germany had engaged the world in world wars and now in this difficult period of probation (50s and 60s decades) the onus to rebuild Germany’s image was on Konrad’s shoulders.

Konrad applied a strategy of humility composed of four basic elements: accepting consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe. In the years that followed Germany not only regained its lost position in Europe but also its prestige. Pakistan is also suffering and has lost its position and prestige. Our institutions are no more sovereign and freer and as a society our freedoms have been curbed. Our parliament passed no enabling act but has amended laws to remove checks on corruption. What we have today are non-serious parliamentarians and a dysfunctional parliament.

A vivid example of that is that the President of Pakistan’s speech to the joint session of the Parliament on Oct 6, 2022 was attended only by 14 lawmakers out of 442 of both the upper and lower houses. These parliamentarians have relegated NAB to the dustbin of history and no institutions or organisations in this country seem to be as independent and sovereign as they should be — Pakistan today is no more a democracy but a kleptocracy under an inefficient dictatorial, despotic and authoritative rule.

War destroyed Germany but peace during which war by all other means was imposed on us has equally destroyed us. Like Germany what this country needs is a transformational leader. Politics of all kind and rulers, both military and civil, have miserably failed and let this country down. When the entire world was climbing the bus of information age in the 90s our politics was changing governments — not one, not two, but three and that too in just one decade. We haven’t been able to recover from that lost opportunity. We also need something similar to Konrad’s strategy of humility.

Our politicians suffer from an inflated sense of self-importance. Humility begins when one starts having a narrow and modest view of his/her importance. All political forces have combined to defend the politics of status quo. Today there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that it is the politics of status quo that has brought us to the doorstep of an abyss which only opens into indignity and shame. All these civilian and military rulers have combined to drag us to the stage where we are on the threshold of defaulting and becoming a failed state. One man during all this political upheaval is promising to turn around the fate of this country. Even when he was forced to leave the government the state was gradually moving towards all the ideals that any state should look up to, even the economy was taking a turn towards good and was turning around. Like Germany we need a Konrad Adenauer who is not part of the status quo and who has stood up against those that have ruled this country for a very long time and has let it down.

The political interpretation of the information-age audience in Pakistan is that the parties that have their Headquarters in London and New York and which have successively ruled this country have failed. Their narrative has failed to bind and unify this information-age audience. Despite state sponsored propaganda against Imran Khan and all attempts to disqualify him from politics the one leader who fits in the boots of Konrad Adenauer is Imran Khan and he seems to be the only leader destined to lift up the spirits of the nation and lead it to regain its lost dignity and pride.