10. What is needed now is the art of statesmanship, not the art of war - in the Iran conflict, in the Iraq conflict and in the Palestine conflict.

The almost childish refusal of the former American president to talk directly to politicians he did not like such as Arafat, Assad, Saddam or Ahmadinejad, along with the decision - taken after consultations with God - to develop strategies to bomb them out of office, were two of the most absurd and wrong-headed decisions of our time.

"A statesman who seeks to promote peace must talk to the statesman in the opposing camp" (Helmut Schmidt, former German chancellor). It was only possible to resolve the East-West conflict of the post-war years because Ronald Reagan never felt squeamish about meeting with the rulers of what he termed the "evil empire."

It is simply not true that ,for example, in the Iran conflict there is, apart from the strategy of imposing ever tougher sanctions, only the "catastrophic alternative" of an "Iranian bomb or bombing Iran" (Nicolas Sarkozy). The real alternative to the ostracism and demonization of a great nation such as Iran is its reintegration into the community of nations - with all the same rights and the same obligations as any other member.

The main reason Iran is a problem for the West is that by marginalizing it and severing ties - in order to punish it for deposing the pro-Western Shah and his regime - the West has forfeited any influence it might have had on political decision-making processes within Iran. This development is not irreversible. There is a wise saying: "If you cannot beat your enemy, embrace him."

The majority of Iranians are pro-Western. They are waiting for the West and they pin their hopes on the West. But they do not pin their hopes on the West's bombs, which would yet again primarily kill the innocent, or on an invasion by Western soldiers, but on an "invasion" of Western businesspeople and tourists.

Even Shirin Ebadi, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, argues passionately against any such military action by the U.S., because it would "thwart virtually all the efforts that Iranians have undertaken to promote democracy in recent years."

The complex problems facing the Mideast can only be solved by political means. The best way to tackle them would be with a long-term conference for the whole region modeled on the CSCE. Besides the UN Security Council, all the major players in the region should be represented - including Syria and Iran, Israel and the democratically elected representatives of Palestine, and the leadership of the legitimate Iraqi resistance.

A solution to the Iraq conflict will only be found if the United States negotiates - as it did in the Vietnam War - with the leaders of the resistance, though of course not with Al-Qaeda. The leaders of the patriotic and moderate Islamist resistance are almost all prepared to take part in such talks.

Just as in the East-West conflict of the 1970s and 1980s, comprehensively tough but fair negotiations now present a real alternative to irresponsible wars and equally irresponsible passivity. All parties would benefit from such an approach, as has proven to be the case with the CSCE process. After one and a half decades of difficult negotiations it brought freedom, human rights, democracy and increasing prosperity to Eastern Europe. The CSCE process brought Europe as a whole stability, freedom and disarmament. "Mortal enemies became friends - without a single shot being fired" (former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher).

That should be the goal of a "Mideast CSCE". Perhaps one day a common economic area, or even more, will emerge in the region. Who would have thought 60 years ago that there could ever be a united Europe? Politics requires vision, and that holds true for the Mideast as well.

In view of the massive military superiority of the United States, how one can compare such a policy of negotiations to the scary “policy of appeasement” before the Second World War remains a secret of the neocons. It would not be “appeasement” if the current U.S. leadership stopped inventing more and more horror stories about Muslim countries, or if it stopped bombing a path to the natural resources of the world - if it stopped destroying the great values for which so many people once loved America and would love to love America again.

Which Muslim country could hope to attack either the West or Israel with even a remote prospect of success, given the overwhelming nuclear and also conventional second-strike capability of the United States and of Israel?

Even if Iran had nuclear weapons - and that would certainly not be a desirable state of affairs - the basics of nuclear strategy would still apply: Whoever shoots first, dies second. Whoever attacks the United States or Israel with a nuclear bomb, might as well blow himself up straightaway.

In terms of numbers, the United States has the nuclear weaponry to kill 20 billion people. That means it could burn to a cinder all 70 million Iranians three hundred times over. Iran knows that - even its loud president knows that. His defense budget is just one hundredth of that of the United States.

Unlike the major Western powers, Iran has not attacked any other country during the past 150 years, though it has been attacked several times - also with the help of the West. There are still 400,000 Iranians who were severely wounded or injured in the war with Iraq, among them 50,000 victims of chemical weapons. We are partly responsible for their suffering.

The Iran problem can be solved. The U.S. leadership must at long last change its ways and sit down at the negotiating table with the Iranian leadership - for top-level bilateral talks, or talks within the framework of a Mideast CSCE. It must offer Iran substantive security guarantees - as it did in the case of North Korea and ultimately Libya as well - in exchange for substantial concessions on its nuclear program and a verifiable commitment not to meddle in any way in the internal affairs of Iraq.

It is not just Iran's purported nuclear designs but also the very real nuclear weapons of today's nuclear powers that should be relegated to the junkyard of history. All nuclear weapons, including those of the United States, are - as the political hawk Ronald Reagan stated way back in 1986 - "totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization."

In 2007 even Henry Kissinger voiced support for such a "bold vision of a nuclear-free world." The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty calls in unequivocal terms for complete nuclear disarmament. The current nuclear powers are therefore all in permanent breach of the treaty.

“Appeasement” does not represent the greatest danger of our time; it is the patriotic Western armchair strategists who cling obstinately to their narrow-minded view of the world and to their furtive racism, and who are letting the world slide into the same kind of foolhardy cycle of violence and counter-violence that led to the First World War.

Statesmanship instead of warfare; vigilant, patient and tenacious negotiations - that is the appropriate strategy towards the Muslim world, as it was in the East-West conflict. In a just world order, terrorism will find no sustenance and will fail to thrive.

In a nutshell, we must demonstrate both severity and justice - severity toward terrorism, and justice toward the Muslim world.

The objective must be a world order that all states can accept as just; a world in which there is no longer discrimination against Muslims in the West and against Jews and Christians in the Muslim world; a world which disarms the West's weapons of mass destruction and its lie machines; a world in which the U.S. is again admired as a symbol of peace and freedom, rather than of war and repression. A world in which everyone sees the log in his own eye and not only the speck in the eye of his neighbor.

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