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Much of this pro­gram focus­es on the Amer­i­can con­flict with Ger­many over suc­ces­sion to become head of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund.

Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly opposed the nom­i­na­tion of Caio Koch-Weser, the U.S. acqui­esced to the wish­es of the Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EU by accept­ing Horst Kohler as the IMF chief. The pro­gram under­scores the fact that the IMF dis­pute is symp­to­matic of the grow­ing dis­cord between the two coun­tries. Clin­ton agreed to sup­port Kohler in order to avoid fur­ther con­flict with the Ger­mans, some­thing many feel can­not be avoid­ed. After high­light­ing the fact that Ger­many uti­lized eco­nom­ic dom­i­nance of Europe to bring oth­er EU mem­bers in line over Kohler’s can­di­da­cy, the broad­cast sets forth details of Kohler’s polit­i­cal his­to­ry.

Kohler arranged a deal to sub­si­dize the with­draw­al of Sovi­et troops from the for­mer East Ger­many, there­by imple­ment­ing the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many. In this capac­i­ty, he must have worked close­ly with Gun­ther Strass­meier, Hel­mut Kohl’s for­mer chief-of-staff and the archi­tect of Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion. (Strass­meier’s son Andreas appears to have been the mas­ter­mind of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing.) Kohler also over­saw eco­nom­ic reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many, includ­ing the eco­nom­ic can­ni­bal­iza­tion of its indus­try.

The reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many has result­ed in record unem­ploy­ment and con­se­quent social unrest. In turn, this unrest has gen­er­at­ed polit­i­cal grav­i­ta­tion toward Nazism. The pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR #200 con­cern­ing the his­to­ry of the Kohler fam­i­ly. Natives of what is now Poland, the Kohlers fled with the retreat­ing Third Reich armies dur­ing World War II. They lived for a time in the for­mer East Ger­many and fled to the West when it became evi­dent that polit­i­cal reuni­fi­ca­tion of the two Ger­manys was not immi­nent.

The dis­cus­sion turns to increas­ing eco­nom­ic con­flict between the U.S. and the EU, as well as Pen­ta­gon reluc­tance to agree to the merg­er of Amer­i­can and Euro­pean defense indus­tries. Reit­er­at­ing a point Mr. Emory has made in the past, the broad­cast under­scores the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the ESDI (the EU mil­i­tary union) may result in the weak­en­ing of NATO and lim­it­ed mil­i­tary con­flict between the U.S. and the EU at some point in the next cen­tu­ry.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a look at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agen­cy’s fail­ure to keep up with tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions field. State-of-the-art dur­ing the Cold War, the NSA’s abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor and inter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions has been erod­ed with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of fiber optics and oth­er new tech­nolo­gies.

The broad­cast dis­cuss­es the fact that the NSA’s com­put­ers crashed in Jan­u­ary of 2000, appar­ent­ly because of a tech­no­log­i­cal “glitch,” and reviews of the Ger­man and EU attacks on the NSA and the sub­se­quent attacks on the NSA in the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can media. The German/EU assault on the NSA and its Men­with Hill lis­ten­ing sta­tion con­sti­tute a par­a­digm shift in inter­na­tion­al pow­er pol­i­tics, punc­tu­at­ing the end of the Cold War and the ini­ti­a­tion of a Ger­man Amer­i­can strug­gle for polit­i­cal dom­i­nance. (Record­ed on 3/26/2000.)