JB: You have spent quite a lot of time in Germany from what I hear and are fluent in the German language. Tell me a bit more about your personal German history.

Parag Khanna: I lived in Germany off and on over the last 20 years actually. I have kind of a love affair with Germany.
The first time I was there, it was right after the wall came down and my father who had been in Germany in the 1960’s as a student from India also had this passionate love for Germany. He brought me and my brother and mom on a vacation and said, ‘you guys have got to see this’. He remembers crossing from West to East Berlin multiple times during his time in Germany. That trip was really my first geopolitical awakening – being at the Berlin wall. I came back a few years later as an exchange student in high school and was in Flensburg at the gymnasium there. I also spent a year at the Free University of Berlin from 1997-98 as a student for one year during my undergraduate studies. When I lived in Switzerland working for the World Economic Forum I also spent a lot of time in Germany. I have always come back on State Department trips or with the American Academy in Berlin or for a variety of things – I am a big fan. It’s like a second home for me.

JB: Your academic interest is evident but I am guessing your love of Germany runs deeper than that. What are your cultural interests in the country?

Parag Khanna: One of the most useful aspects for me of knowing German is in philosophy because I studied philosophy in college and I came in already knowing German from my high school experience and that really was a very rewarding thing. Basically the two languages that you really need to consider yourself even remotely qualified to touch philosophy are Greek and or German. The general public obviously doesn’t think that much about what qualifies you to become a philosopher but when you study philosophy you gain an amazing appreciation for just how important Germany has been in that. And of course literature. I have read a lot of 19th century German literature and 18th century, in college. And for me, culture is the history and as a political scientist, I find it hard to distinguish my thoughts about Germany’s culture or its social values. I find them linked to its political evolution which to me means modern history and the cold war and being a divided country – these things fascinate me. For all the amazing museums and cultural artifacts that Germany has, especially Check Point Charlie – that’s my favorite museum in the country because it is living history and it says so much about the individual level and what Germans endured during that time. The story is just so fascinating.