Twenty years have passed since the Berlin Wall fell and Angela Merkel – then a budding politician who grew up in communist East Germany – first saw the potential and promise of a free world.

Now the chancellor of Germany, Merkel says freedom can only flourish with international cooperation aimed at making the world safer, cleaner and more economically stable.

"Freedom and solidarity and partnership belong together," Merkel told a capacity crowd at Stanford's Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Thursday after being introduced by President Emeritus Gerhard Casper. "They must be indivisible for us to be able to master the challenges ahead."

But Merkel's speech – the only one she delivered during a four-day trip to the United States – showed that those alliances often come at a cost. Speaking hours after four German troops were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, Merkel expressed her condolences while calling the war a "mission that guarantees our freedom and security."

"It is a sad experience for us in Germany," she said. "It is an experience we share with you in the United States."

With polls showing the war becoming increasingly unpopular in Germany, Merkel said she accepts and respects "doubts" about whether the conflict is necessary or right. But her commitment to fighting the war is unwavering.

She told the audience at Dinkelspiel that the fallout of the international financial crisis "will be with us for a long time to come." But strengthening global trade agreements, steering away from protectionism and bolstering innovation will put financial markets back on the right course, she said.

European financial woes are a volatile topic in Germany right now. The country has offered to pitch in about $11 billion for a Greek economic rescue package, a move that has sparked criticism of Merkel's government.
The bailout poses a serious political risk, as Merkel’s political party faces regional elections in Germany's biggest state on May 9. The party of Christian Democrats must win in order to maintain its majority in the Bundesrat, parliament's upper house.

Merkel did not directly address the Greek economic situation during her speech, but she did stress the need for countries to work together and share responsibility for strengthening the world's financial future.
"We need a new global financial architecture," she said. "We need rules that prevent a whole community of nations from being damaged because individuals have made mistakes."

She said the players behind the world's largest markets have to take an interest in emerging economies and "sit down and reflect together with them" how to establish a strong and prosperous global economy.

A scientist by training, Merkel earned a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin. While she was a student, Stanford "was just a far, far-away scientific paradise unreachable from behind the Iron Curtain." And when the Berlin Wall came down, she found herself pulled to a life of politics.

But first, she and her husband celebrated their newfound freedom by doing what they had long dreamed of. They visited California. The chancellor reminisced about the trip as she concluded her speech at Dinkelspiel, standing in front of a backdrop displaying Stanford's German motto: Die Luft der Freiheit weht.

The wind of freedom blows.

Jonathan Rabinovitz contributed to this report.

Kentaro Toyama is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.  Until 2009, he was assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India, which he co-founded in 2005.

Kentaro identified a number of myths that surround the field of ICT4D and argued that these can confuse our thinking about the proper role for technology in addressing development problems.

Myth 1: Technology x will save the world: The history of writing on technology shows that each new advance tends to be greeted with unbridled enthusiasm about its potential impact. Where once people were convinced television could solve all social and political problems, today we are putting that burden onto mobile phones.

Myth 2: Poor people have no alternatives:  We can often assume that technology is the only way that poor people will be access certain goods. In reality, there are usually non-technological routes to information and services that are free and therefore preferable.

Myth 3: ‘Needs' are more pressing than desires: A high proportion of the income of the very poor goes on what Western observers might view as ‘luxury' items: (music, photos, festivals & weddings) rather than ‘basics' such as healthcare.

Myth 4: ‘Needs' translate into business models: Building a business model around the needs of poor communities is possible, but there are significant barriers. Poor populations are harder to reach, and they may not want to pay for the services you provide, even if their value seems obvious to you.

Myth 5: If you build it, they will come: Spending is not always rational. An eye hospital in India offers extremely high quality cataract operations for free and covers all related costs. 10% of those offered the service will still refuse to have the operation.

Myth 6: ICT undoes the problem of the rich getting richer: In contexts where literacy and social capital are unevenly distributed, technology tends to amplify inequalities rather than reduce them. An email account cannot make you more connected unless you have some existing social network to build on.

Myth 7: Hardware and software are one-time costs: Kentaro estimates that the average One Laptop per Child will in fact cost $250 per child per year to cover breakage, connectivity, power, maintenance and training.

Myth 8: Automated is always cheaper and better: Where labor is cheap and populations are illiterate, automated systems are not necessarily preferable. Greater accuracy may be another reason to favor voice and human mediated systems.

Myth 9: Information is the real bottle-neck:  Those in the ICT4D world are prone to overestimate the significance of information gaps. Even if you connect a farmer to an agricultural expert via a PC, there are a host of other barriers to be overcome before he can actually increase his yields, including: literacy, poor transport links, and a lack of volume buyers for seeds, pesticides etc.

Kentaro contends that when technology makes a difference in development, it is always as much to do with the input of committed and competent individuals and organizations. Despite this, the focus when reporting ICT4D projects quickly slips into extolling the virtues of the technology itself, not the human component. This says much about the seductive quality of technology. Myths about its potential persist because we have a strong desire to see the triumph of clever ideas and ingenuity, and to believe that one time catalytic investments can have such an impact. The reality is always more complex.

Hendrik Hertzberg writes that the end of the Cold War and the coming of global warming have brought about increased support for nuclear power, even among some environmentalists (The Talk of the Town, March 22nd). But many of us who work on nuclear-proliferation issues are dismayed by the growth of nuclear energy. Expanded nuclear power in industrial countries will inevitably mean expanded nuclear exports to less developed countries as manufacturers try to recoup their investments in a limited domestic market by selling abroad. It can be shown statistically that countries that receive nuclear assistance are more likely to build nuclear weapons, especially when they perceive threats to their security. India, Pakistan, and Israel started their nuclear programs with the importation of research reactors carrying peaceful-use requirements; with help from other countries, they were able to then realize their desire for weapons. Iran appears to be heading in the same direction. Given the documented interest in nuclear materials of terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, and given the questionable assumptions that nuclear-energy economics is fraught with, it makes little sense to push nuclear power at a time when protections against proliferation are still so problematic. Improved energy efficiency is a safer, greener, and cheaper alternative.

With an April 8 date set for the United States and Russia to sign a new nuclear arms reduction treaty, each country is preparing to cut their deployed weapons by about 30 percent. That caps each side at 1,550 nuclear warheads and bombs and 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers.

The pact, which needs approval by the U.S. Senate and Russian Duma, is the culmination of a year's worth of often tumultuous negotiations. It's also an important step in President Obama's push for a nuclear-free world, an idea that was given a roadmap during a 2006 conference at Stanford's Hoover Institution. The conference, which was convened by former Secretary of State George Shultz and Stanford physicist Sidney Drell, resulted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in January 2007 calling for a world without nuclear weapons.

The piece was written by Shultz, a professor emeritus at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and a distinguished Hoover fellow; William Perry, President Clinton's defense secretary and an emeritus senior fellow at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

President Obama mentioned the four men in a March 26 statement announcing the new treaty, noting their support for more assertive action in reducing nuclear weapons.

David Holloway, a professor of international history and faculty member at FSI's Center for International Security and Cooperation, participated in the Hoover conference and has analyzed the steps taken to shrink the world's nuclear stockpile.

Holloway, author of Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, spoke with the Stanford News Service about the latest pact between the United States and Russia, and what the prospects are for further reduction of nuclear weapons.

Put the treaty in context. How significant is it?

You could say it's a small step in an important process. In the 1980s, there were about 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Most were owned by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now there are about 22,000 nuclear weapons, 90 percent of them owned by the U.S. and Russia. A number of those weapons are slated for dismantling, but it takes time to do that. Meanwhile, the feeling is that it's better to regulate the US-Russian nuclear relationship by treaty, so that it does not develop in an unpredictable way or a way that causes instability in the relationship.

This treaty reduces only the number of deployed warheads and nuclear delivery systems. What will happen to those weapons?

Some missile sites will be closed down and the warheads will be put into storage. The treaty apparently won't commit either side to dismantling the warheads. It only moves them from deployment. But cutting the number of delivery systems is important because if you don't have the missiles or bombers to launch the warheads, then the warheads aren't much use.

Is there a system in place to keep each country in compliance with the treaty?

Each country has the capacity to monitor the other side's compliance with the treaty. There are satellites that can see what the other side is doing; there are arrangements for the electronic monitoring of test flights and so on; and there are exchanges of inspectors. The two countries have considerable experience of cooperation in this area.

The treaty does not restrict America's plans to build a missile defense shield in Europe. But explain the tensions between Russia and U.S. over that issue.

This was probably the most difficult part of the negotiations. The Russians were eager to get limits on American defenses against ballistic missiles, and the U.S. was very reluctant to include them in this treaty. The Russians are worried what the effect of defense systems would be on their ability to retaliate in the event of an American first strike - as improbable as that is.

Despite that tension, the Obama administration has said it wants to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations. Does this treaty help?

The treaty makes great sense in terms of that agenda. It's an affirmation of Russia's position as a nuclear superpower, and it gives the Russians some assurance that they will maintain the status of an American partner in this area.

What the United States wants is help on issues like Iran and Afghanistan: making sure we can get supplies across Russia to Afghanistan and persuading Russia to continue putting pressure on Iran to back away from making nuclear weapons.

The treaty will have to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. How do you expect that to play out?

The mood in Washington isn't very bipartisan at present, of course. And there are many people who think: why should we have an agreement with the Russians? We're stronger; they're weaker. We shouldn't limit our own flexibility by negotiating agreements. That was a strong view in the Bush administration - that arms control is a bad thing and it only limits our freedom of action. And the issue of missile defense systems will be a contentious issue. There are people who want to see absolutely no restrictions on our defenses against ballistic missiles, whereas that is one of the goals of Russian policy.

How does this treaty fit in with concerns that unstable countries and terrorist groups might get their hands on nuclear weapons?

The Russians aren't about to blow us up, and we're not about to blow them up. The real fear is that other people will get hold of nuclear weapons. In the Obama administration's view, this treaty is part of a single effort to create a tough nuclear regime where states that have nuclear weapons are taking steps toward getting rid of them. And at the same time, the mechanisms for preventing new states - and in particular terrorist groups - from getting hold of nuclear weapons or the materials to make them are being strengthened.

Under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which entered into force in 1970, states that have nuclear weapons are obliged to pursue nuclear disarmament, while the states without them have promised not to acquire them. So if you want to strengthen this nuclear regime and make it harder for other states and terrorist groups to get nuclear weapons, then those with the nuclear weapons need to be moving toward zero. That's a key element in the administration's policy. The judgment is that a discriminatory regime is not viable in the long run.

What's the likelihood that we'll get to world free of nuclear weapons?

The president laid that out as a goal, and he said it probably wouldn't happen in his lifetime. Nobody can say that we can get to zero in say 20 years, but we do know what the first steps should be on such a path, and this treaty is one of them.

Before the world could get to zero nuclear weapons, there would have to be certainty that nobody could break out and say, "I've got lots of nuclear weapons, so you better listen to me."

The goal of zero is a vision, but I think it's an essential one because it gives you a sense of the direction you should go in.

What are the next steps Russia and the U.S. will take to reduce their nuclear stockpiles?

It's not clear. There is no agreement to have a further round of talks, but I very much hope there is one. There could be further negotiations on the reduction of strategic forces, but it seems more likely that talks might focus on the possibilities of cooperation in ballistic missile defense and/or on tactical nuclear weapons - the shorter-range systems that are not covered by the new treaty.