Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German Bundestag, Germany’s principal legislative chamber, discussed Germany’s role in the world as a nation both rooted in diplomacy and committed to ending terrorism during a lecture in Gaston Hall Tuesday.

Thierse focused on the many domestic challenges Germany has been facing since the fall of the Berlin Wall 15 years ago.

“Of all the democratic nations in Europe, the Germans have traveled a particularly long way westward,” Thierse said. “Today we are happy to have arrived.”

East Germany was a major topic of domestic concern for the president. He described the decisions of the German Democratic Republic as “calamitous economic policy.”

“It is not surprising that 15 years on, we are still grappling with the fallout from the almost total collapse of the East German economy,” he said.

Thierse said that reform is still in the making despite East Germany’s ongoing economic problems, which include an unemployment rate of nearly 20 percent – double the rate of West Germany. Citing the major East German growth centers of computer technology, shipyards, the chemical industry and the car and food industries, Thierse said, “The current federal government has understood that it must support these centers if growth in East Germany is to have a future.”

On the international front, Thierse discussed Germany’s military changes since the Balkan conflict. Germany currently has the second-greatest number of troops, after the United States, deployed on peacekeeping missions around the world.

“Germany in the reunified Europe is encircled by friends and hence no longer needs a national defense force in the traditional sense,” he said. “We now have international responsibilities, and we have had to adjust to this fact politically and militarily.” Regarding the German-American rift over the war in Iraq, Thierse emphasized the need for unity and multilateralism.

“The controversy is history now and the fact that I am the first President of the German Parliament to be invited on an official visit by his American colleague in 30 years is evidence that our bilateral relationship is well and truly back on track,” Thierse said.

Still, he questioned the war’s results.

“What purpose do these thousands of deaths serve?” he asked. “My heart goes out to the parents, siblings and partners of the young Americans who have lost their lives there or who are still in great danger.”

Citing the United Nations’ agenda for the 21st century, which includes fighting hunger, disease and suffering, safeguarding peace and conserving the world’s resources, Thierse stressed the need for industrialized nations to focus on these global issues as a means of disrupting the conditions that give rise to terrorism.

“Our reason and our instincts told us that the terror was directed against all who espouse freedom, democracy and human rights and wish to live their lives on the basis of these values,” he said. “If we do not face up to this task in our fight against terror, we may prevail over individual terrorists, but we will never prevail over terrorism itself.”

Nationally, Germany is in need of many social and economic reforms, Thierse said.

“The worldwide collapse of the much hyped New Economy put an end to what proved to be exaggerated expectations of growth in the ’90s and rendered redundant the German recipe for success, which involved using year-to-year increases in economic growth to solve problems in the welfare system,” he said.

Healthcare is also suffering, and demographic changes threaten to make pensions and the health system unaffordable, he said.

“The German system offers a high standard of medical care, there are no waiting lists, and patients are completely free to choose their doctor,” Thierse said. “But the contributions constitute a second tax on earnings.”

Thierse explained that healthcare is becoming increasingly expensive and there are limits on how far contributions from the earnings tax can be increased.

Germany has made recent reforms in response to economic difficulties, including a 15 billion euro tax cut this year, he explained, and major German corporations are increasing their expected profit forecasts for the current year.

“Next year I am sure that we will have considerably fewer unemployed. In the past Germany needed growth of at least 2 percent to generate new jobs,” he said. “Experts forecast that the reforms will bring the employment threshold down to 1.5 percent and that will generate sufficient growth to exceed this margin.”