Politics & Power Quote by Joschka Fischer

The line reads like gratitude, but it’s also a strategic reminder about who underwrote modern Germany’s second chance. Fischer, speaking as a postwar German statesman with Green credentials and a reputation for moral argument, is doing two things at once: anchoring Germany’s legitimacy in an American-enabled rebirth, and quietly disciplining any flirtation with geopolitical equidistance.

The phrasing is carefully calibrated. “Most important ally” isn’t sentimental; it’s a hierarchy. In a Europe built on balancing acts, Fischer plants a flag: the transatlantic relationship sits above convenience, above day-to-day disputes. Then he frames U.S. involvement not as interference but as scaffolding: “unification” and “democratisation” are presented as fragile achievements that required external architecture after 1945. That matters because it shifts the story away from national self-mythology. Germany didn’t simply “learn lessons”; it was compelled, protected, and integrated.

The subtext is aimed at two audiences. Domestically, it’s a preemptive rebuttal to anti-American reflexes on the left and nationalist “normalization” on the right. If America made democratic Germany possible, then anti-American posturing risks sounding like ingratitude - or worse, historical amnesia. Internationally, it reassures Washington (and nervous neighbors) that Germany’s power remains morally tethered: sovereignty, yes, but inside the U.S.-led security order that made German reunification palatable in 1990.

“Almost impossible” is the rhetorical clincher. It’s not strictly provable, but it’s politically potent: a reminder that history’s happy outcomes were contingent, and can be undone if alliances are treated as optional.