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Helmut Kohl once described Germany as “only surrounded by friends.” The re-unified country, had “found its international place,” the former chancellor reckoned, “without breaks (…) with the foreign policy tradition of the old Federal Republic.” That is very hard to argue today. Rather, Germany is seeking its place again. The international order is crisscrossed by fault lines, and the foreign policy tradition of the Federal Republic must prove itself in an environment full of old-new great power rivalries.

Ambivalence permeates almost all foreign policy relationships. US President Donald Trump, of course, comes to mind first. But he is only the most flagrant case. German diplomacy moves in a world full of two-faced frenemies, as a cursory glance at (some of) the most important opponents shows.

Janus-Heads Everywhere

China is Germany’s most important future market, but its technology-driven authoritarianism also poses the greatest threat to freedom worldwide. The United States is urging Germany to decouple itself from the People’s Republic: this is the background to the dispute over Huawei. “Decoupling” is out of the question for Germany because of the density of economic interdependence, but the protests in Hong Kong and the revelations about the Gulag system in Xinjiang make it seem advisable to reduce economic and political dependence on Beijing wherever possible—especially with such a crucial infrastructure as 5G.

India offers itself as an alternative, democratically governed growth market, but under Prime Minister Narendra Modi it is also drifting dangerously toward authoritarian nationalism, with repressive, Islamophobic domestic politics and an aggressive, revisionist foreign policy—as recently demonstrated by the brutal suppression of autonomy in Kashmir.

Thanks to its geopolitical gains in zones of disorder (Syria, Ukraine), Russia is back in the geopolitical game. German policy on Russia, however, flitters helplessly between pipeline construction and sanctions. Moscow will gain even more influence over Germany’s energy supply through the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, while Putin is arming his country more and more aggressively against Germany’s eastern neighbors and is quite openly positioning himself as a champion of an illiberal global movement. The new pipeline also weakens Ukraine’s negotiating position vis-à-vis Russia, which Germany is actually trying to strengthen with sanctions against Russia.

Turkey, Poland, the UK

Since the refugee deal, Turkey has been Europe’s de facto border guard, caring for millions of Syrian refugees and keeping them comfortably far away from the Europeans. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes, of course, that he can blackmail the EU with these refugees, whom he keeps threatening to “send”—just as he puts NATO under pressure with his overtures to Putin. His intervention in northern Syria, which violated international law, triggered a debate about Turkish NATO membership and has led to a far-reaching ban on arms exports to a country that is still a NATO ally.

Poland—twice as important for German foreign trade as Russia—has been courted by Berlin for years, and yet the PiS government regularly threatens to demand reparations for German crimes during World War II. Warsaw is pushing ahead with its efforts to dismantle the separation of powers and is subordinating Holocaust remembrance to an all-dominant national narrative of victimhood in a troubling way (which Germany criticizes only cautiously for fear of further fueling demands for reparations).

The United Kingdom is leaving the EU, reducing its geopolitical heft and indirectly exacerbating the problem of burden sharing within Europe because Britain has always made an above-average contribution to collective defense (spending constantly more than 2 percent of GDP for defense). If in the future more than 80 percent of NATO spending comes from non-EU countries, Germany in particular will be singled out for its shortcomings. Keeping the breakaway UK as a partner after Brexit will be one of the most difficult tasks in the coming years.

The Cost of Moral Clarity

The list could go on. As different as these cases are: politics in a world full of frenemies demands a high tolerance for ambiguity. It must do without grand gestures and pseudo-radical proposals that suggest “moral clarity” but often achieve the opposite of what is desired.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of them in the German debate, such as the idea that cutting Poland’s EU agricultural subsidies because of the PiS government’s controversial justice system reforms would somehow bring PiS back on the path to the rule of law. Similarly, pushing Turkey out of NATO (fortunately almost impossible according to the statutes) would be against the interests of Germany and the alliance. Erdogan would simply tie himself to Putin even more closely.

And capping defense spending on the grounds that more should not be given because “a racist sits in the White House” (SPD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich) would confirm Trump’s prejudice that the US is exploited by its unappreciative NATO partners, who despise their protector. Equally short-sighted are the widespread fantasies of punishing the renegade British―some Germans would love to see them feel the negative effects of their exit from the EU club.

Such proposals serve more to set moral boundaries than to achieve a strategic goal. As Jan Techau of the German Marshall Fund has argued, the overriding need for self-affirmation in the German foreign policy debate leads to a paralyzing uncertainty of action: “Moral insecurity leads to a compensatory, self-centered moralism, which in turn produces the feeling of moral superiority.” But this psychological need is not the only explanation for the German foreign policy paralysis.

Three Shocks

Three shock-like experiences have provoked confessions by leading German politicians that they want to assume “more responsibility:” the Ukraine crisis (2014), the double blow of the Brexit referendum and the Trump election (2016), and finally the alienation between Paris and Berlin (2019). The sacred vows that Germany would become more involved had barely been made before they were overtaken by the next crisis.

The first shock was seeing how Putin’s Russia has gone from being an unwilling partner to an open opponent and has forcibly redrawn borders within Europe. The US and the UK, the two founding nations of the Atlantic system, the two nations that first reeducated Germany as a model pupil of the liberal world order, are taking a nationalistic turn. They see the EU—the decisive medium for Germany’s political and economic resurgence—as “a foe” (Trump).

And now France, Germany’s most important remaining partner in Europe, is going its own way. French President Emmanuel Macron single-handedly blocked the accession process for the Western Balkans and launched a new Ostpolitik with Vladimir Putin, also without discussion. He also declared NATO to be “brain dead,” thus confronting Berlin with the impossible choice between an Atlantic alliance or European defense. An ancient dilemma from the 1950s has returned: Germany is supposed to decide between Washington and Paris.

Catch-22 of German Security Policy

This calls into question Germany’s preference for not taking sides but rather striving for European cohesion and the expansion of NATO at the same time. This has been a constant of German foreign policy since the failure of the European Defense Community in 1954 and Germany’s subsequent accession to NATO.

For a long time, it seemed not only that the two weren’t mutually exclusive, but that they were almost conditional on each other: NATO was the security policy framework that made European unification possible. Trump and Macron are now questioning this, and their attacks complement each other in this respect. Trump (like his predecessor Barack Obama) no longer accepts that the US should forever be Europe’s guarantor of security, while the Europeans (in his eyes) are fleecing the US economically and at the same time building new gas pipelines to Russia. Macron, on the other hand, has concluded from Trump’s unpredictability that it is an imperative of European sovereignty to build an alternative to NATO as soon as possible.

This results in a kind of catch-22 of German security policy: if Germany were to reach out to Macron over his project, Trump would have another reason to question the alliance. And the Eastern Europeans do not trust Germany and France to defend them against Russia. So they would try to bind themselves even more closely, bilaterally, to the US. In terms of defense policy, Europe would be divided into different zones of (in)security—the opposite of the desired European sovereignty.

The Fragile Munich Consensus

Although key German interests are at stake here, Berlin is purely reactive in this debate. While Trump, Macron, Putin, and Erdogan drive the action, the German government largely limits itself to reviewing the initiatives of others.

Why? It was only six years ago that the “Munich Consensus” was reached at the Security Conference in January 2014—when Germany’s federal president (Joachim Gauck), foreign minister (Frank-Walter Steinmeier) and defense minister (Ursula von der Leyen) made almost identical speeches that all saw Germany taking “greater responsibility” in the world. They encouraged the country to face these challenges self-confidently. Gauck conjured up a “good Germany,” an adult, widely respected country. It had something to give back to the world, he said; Germany had to change from a consumer of order to a producer of order.

Shortly after those Munich speeches, Putin began a hybrid attack on eastern Ukraine, occupying the Crimea with “Green Men” without badges. The Russian leader to whom only six years earlier Steinmeier had offered a “modernization partnership” was waging war to move borders in Europe.
The world of “new responsibility” was not supposed to be this rough. When Berlin foreign policy-makers are asked when the latest uncertainty about Germany’s role in the world began, they mention the Crimean invasion more often than any other event.

Wooing Berlin, Disrupting Europe

According to the Munich Consensus, Germans had to do more to maintain the existing order. But the notion that this world order could be questioned not only by its opponents, but from within—by its previous guarantor, the US—was beyond the power of foreign policy imagination at the time.
That’s why the Brexit decision and Trump’s choice were so shocking. Angela Merkel’s lapidary remark in a Trudering beer tent in May 2017 summed up the new situation in a nutshell: “The times when we could rely on others completely are to some extent over.” The situation didn’t seem hopeless at the time, however: a few weeks before Merkel’s campaign speech, Emmanuel Macron had defeated Marine Le Pen. That September, Macron gave his great Sorbonne speech, in which he set out the program for a sovereign “Europe that protects.” He had deliberately scheduled the speech with Germany in mind, right after the Bundestag elections.

After Chancellor Angela Merkel’s failure to build a coalition with the Liberals and the Greens, her third “grand coalition” with Germany’s Social Democrats started in March 2018 on the basis of a coalition agreement including a passionate chapter on Europe that called for a “breakthrough.” But little action followed these noble words. Macron did not receive a concrete response from Berlin to his numerous proposals. How could it have done so? The coalition was always divided on crucial issues such as European defense, migration, or the European budget and was therefore unable to speak or act.

The deafening German silence on Macron’s European sovereignty initiative leads directly into the recent crisis. After his enthusiastic proposals for reform were rebuffed, the French president switched over to disruption and questioned the EU accession process for Northern Macedonia and Albania, EU Russia policy, and finally NATO.

Now, he is getting his reaction: German politicians haven’t for many years talked about NATO as enthusiastically for many years as they did after that “brain death” remark. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer tried in several speeches to revive the Munich Consensus: Germany must do more for common defense, she said, not just as a partner but with its own initiatives, perhaps even northern Syria, Africa, or East Asia. After some hesitation, both the chancellor and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also made a passionate case for NATO as Germany’s only reliable life insurance. The 2-percent promise would certainly be fulfilled—around 2030.

Twilight Period

It would be very bold to make forecasts about this crucial year of 2020. But one thing can be said: domestic and foreign political instability are a dangerous combination.

A foreign diplomat who has been observing Germany for decades (and prefers to remain anonymous) explains the “paralyzing ambiguity” of German foreign policy as the effect of a “twilight period.” Germany is in a double transition: Angela Merkel apparently cannot and does not want to provide any more impulses. And while Germany is waiting for a change of power at home, foreign policy is also in transition, during which the American-centered order is crumbling without a new one being foreseeable yet. Germany is fleeing the double stress of domestic and foreign insecurity and in a way is playing dead.

The unspoken question is: what if Donald Trump wins a second term as President of the United States in November 2020? That is the question that hangs over all strategic considerations—not only in Germany. Uncertainty about the outcome of the impeachment process and the presidential election influences calculations in Beijing, Moscow, Paris, London, Brussels, and Berlin.

American elections are usually not decided by foreign policy. However, this election will undoubtedly be decisive for the foreign policy orientation of the US. It will determine whether the world has to prepare for another four years of disruption in the name of America First—an America that knows only opponents or vassals—or whether a (at least partial) return of the US cooperating with its allies again seems conceivable.

Expect More Shocks

And yet it would be wrong to fixate on this question. It is risky to bet on Trump’s exit. Not only because his re-election doesn’t seem unthinkable. Even without this president, there would be no return to a status quo ante.

NATO would breathe a sigh of relief if Trump lost, but the pressure for more burden sharing would remain, and the doubts about the commitment to collective defense would by no means disappear. They would perhaps even grow under an explicitly left-wing US president. A Democratic successor to Trump would perhaps choose less aggressive means against China. But the perception of Beijing as a systemic rival is a consensus position in America.

A more confrontational tone could even find its way into Russia’s policy if insights from the Mueller Report and the impeachment hearings become the basis of policy: a Democratic president would have a score to settle with the election manipulator Putin while the Republicans would boost their profiles by continuing to act as Russia apologists, in a blatant reversal of their previous role.

The questions that have thrust themselves on German foreign policy under Trump’s presidency would remain, even if he had to move out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. How can we succeed in building a European defense without further damaging NATO? Can Europe agree on a Russia policy with gestures of détente coming from Paris and new-old fears rising in Warsaw? How should Germany behave in the new Cold War between the US and China?

There is no end in sight to the turbulence, not for domestic or foreign policy. The three shocks of recent years will not be the last. One thing is clear: German (and European) foreign policy can no longer be geared to who sits in the White House. This is a helpful insight for which we should be grateful to Donald Trump.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Going by the number of available experts, the German government is receiving better advice on foreign policy than ever before. For years, the number of think-tanks in Berlin has been growing, as have their budgets and staff. Ten years ago, there were 175 think-tanks; last year, there were 225. These figures from the think-tank index created by the University of Pennsylvania document an increase of nearly 30 percent. That German foreign policy has gotten 30 percent more effective over the past decade, however, is not an assertion one is likely to hear.

The growth is plainly related to the increasing importance of Germany in Europe and the world. Anyone who wants to influence the direction of European foreign policy is now likely to open an office not only in Brussels, but also (perhaps even beforehand) in Berlin. A sort of mixed forest of expertise has grown up in Germany’s capital, with plants of various size and orientation—from large institutions close to the government that can provide advice on nearly every global political issue to party foundations with numerous offices abroad to small civil society initiatives that fight for a single issue or point of view.

On top of that, there’s what the wags call the country’s biggest think-tank: the German Foreign Office, with its thousands of world-wise officials.

The “Merkel Plan” Dare

But what makes for good foreign policy advice today? It’s not the size of the institution that counts. In 2015, one of the smallest and newest think-tanks in Berlin made an astonishing impact. A small team boasting a bombastic name—“European Stability Initiative”—showed Angela Merkel’s government the way out of the refugee crisis. Gerald Knaus and barely more than a dozen employees formulated the basic concept of the EU-Turkey agreement without being officially tasked. Then the group cheekily named its concept the “Merkel Plan.”

Knaus, a Balkans and Turkey expert, proceeded on the following premises: deaths in the Mediterranean had to stop; Turkey needed help with the flows of refugees; and Greece needed relief. The stability of south-eastern Europe is vital for Germany; Turkey may not be able to become an EU member state but needs to be kept close to Europe; Germany cannot take in every refugee; a “Hungarian solution” of building fences would drive Greece to collapse.

So Turkey had to receive financial incentives to prevent people smuggling and improve its refugee refugee camps. And Greece would, after a certain deadline, return new arrivals to Turkey. The incentive to board dangerous boats would disappear; the drowning would stop. Germany, Knaus believed, had to lead the way there, in part to avoid having euroskeptics like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán offer (illusory) solutions.

Why didn’t the proposal come from one of the established think-tanks? Knaus had dared to step beyond the well-trodden path: both German leadership and European unity were possible on this issue, and it was even possible to deal with ornery Turkey. Migration is not an act of nature that withstands political control.

Advising Without Knowing-It-All

In times of upheaval—to employ a true cliché—advice cannot come from a standpoint of omniscience, not in a tone of perspicacity. Those giving it have to acknowledge uncertainty about Germany’s role in the world. It is a question of expanding the realm of the possible and doable, of reassessing the basic assumptions of German foreign policy.

The first efforts are here. Some examples: a debate has broken out at the German Marshall Fund about how the transatlantic relationship can be saved in the Donald Trump era by Germany itself. As GMF Vice President Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff put it, “producing more West” rather than just waiting for the United States. At the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), under Russia expert Stefan Meister, a sober, realistic approach to Moscow has taken hold, one that has freed itself from the Ostpolitik paradigm and takes a clear-eyed view of Vladimir Putin’s tough anti-Western power politics. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) is carrying out a critical analysis of the Franco-German ambition to achieve “European sovereignty” and researching diplomacy in post-diplomatic times. The Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) is illustrating the dangers of German industry’s excessive dependence on the Chinese market instead of simply celebrating its opportunities for growth.

Nevertheless, such outside-the-box thinking is still far too infrequent. All too often, experts are satisfied with putting themselves forward as voices of moderate reason in their respective fields, which is reflected in their use of certain buzzwords. Middle East experts hold on to the “two-state solution” for Israel and Palestine, regardless of every new Jewish settlement; transatlanticists swear to the “community of values,” which the US president stomps on every day; undaunted France experts demand a restart of the “Franco-German motor,” which has long been broken; and it took years of destructive policies by Putin to drive phrases like “modernization partnership” out of at least some Russia experts’ vocabulary.

The Temptation of the Mainstream

Having a registry of foreign policy phrases might even be useful—for political advisors as well as newspaper columnists. Right at the top would be the “liberal international order” (LIO for short). These days, people pledge allegiance to it so often that one would think that a free, liberal world order for the good of all mankind had reigned for decades until Trump showed up out of the blue and kicked it to the curb. Again and again, like a mantra, we hear that we must defend this “rules-based order.” (Is there actually order without rules?) I must confess, I have joined this chorus myself.

And yet it is important to understand how this order was related to the Cold War and US hegemony; why it brought neither freedom nor rules to large parts of the world; why its rules were perceived in many places as an imposition; and that this order carried the seeds of its present decomposition long before its opponents ganged up on it. Only then should one ask the question of what the German government could contribute to saving it, and what part of the LIO promise seems, despite everything, worth saving.

Without critical examination of such axioms, political advice becomes the production of ideologies. Which, admittedly, when one looks at the historical context out of which the “strategic community” originated, is a constant danger.

In the mid-1950s and early 1960s the foundations were laid for what are still the most important think-tanks in Germany, the DGAP and the SWP. The inspiration came partly from London (Chatham House), but above all from Washington. Germany’s friends in the US had already complained in the early 1950s that they didn’t have German counterparts in the “pre-political” sphere. So Germany set about creating corresponding institutions.

Around Massachusetts Avenue in the US capital, there had arisen an expert network linking government, lobby groups, the academic elite, and—not to be forgotten—the intelligence services. This network justified, shaped and steered US foreign policy during the decades of its seemingly unlimited growth in importance. According to its own claims, the network was both an instrument of US hegemony as well as a means of correcting the latter’s worst mistakes.

The “Playbook” as a Problem

The foreign policy advisers were a characteristic of US hegemony after World War II from the start. Today, they continue to constitute a cross-party foreign policy elite with a strong sense of mission, who claim to write the “playbook” for the challenges facing the world’s leading power. Their institutes can make available a recruitment pool of highly-qualified experts after every change at the White House and the State Department.

Today’s German landscape still lags behind its American counterpart, not just in terms of numbers (the US has 1800 think-tanks), but also in terms of the lack of barriers between government, politics and advice. The division between expertise and the executive remains strong in Germany. To be sure, there are a few diplomats who have gone on further education and professional training missions—in a sense parked in the pre-political sphere. But rarely do think-tankers switch to the other side and temporarily become diplomats, as the head of SWP, Volker Perthes, has done with his Syria mission. The German political foundations are essentially permeable in one direction only: they serve as a spent fuel pond for deserving top talent on its way off the political stage.

Because changes of government in Germany do not lead to the replacement of thousands of top officials, one key function of US think-tanks—being a place for temporarily out-of-action top officials—is superfluous here. That alone creates, despite all the interconnections, a large distance between the experts and political power. This distance is often lamented. But in view of the massive advising failures of the American foreign policy establishment, one could also take that as a virtue. The US think-tank complex is—after the failed wars it helped pave the way for in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—in a deep crisis. It wasn’t Trump’s disparagement of the elites that first created this problem, as some interested parties would suggest.

Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama—not a person that one would suspect of anti-intellectualism—also rebelled against the expert consensus, the so-called “Washington playbook.” Obama’s decision to erase his own red line and not interfere in Syria, as he admitted to Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, was a break with the advisers who recommended an attack for reasons of “credibility.”

The Legitimacy Crisis of the Experts

The discreditation of the foreign policy establishment did not start with Trump, the populist. Obama was proud to have pulled away from the “experts complex,” too. The fact that two US presidents who couldn’t be more different have conducted themselves in the same manner in this respect suggests that the crisis of experts has structural causes.

To a lesser degree, the downfall of the foreign policy establishment in the US is also relevant for Germany. Not only does it demonstrate which mistakes one should avoid, it also has repercussions due to the international interconnection of experts. The experts’ legitimacy crisis is an international phenomenon.

The world of advisers is, like other institutions—parties, parliament, governments, trade unions, universities, foundations, the media—under unprecedented pressure to explain itself. The questions are justified: whose interests do the experts represent? From which perspective do they actually make their observations? How do they acquire their knowledge? How objective can they be?

The going conspiracy theories about the dark power of the adviser network are inadequate. Just think of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded by George Soros and the numerous organizations they support. For years, there has been a global hate campaign against them, with anti-Semitic elements. Left-wing critics now accuse the network of wanting to keep the world open for the capitalist market. Right-wingers see a global “shadow government” that has dedicated itself to the subversion of national sovereignty. The corrosion of traditional values, the promotion of illegal migration, the support of “color revolutions”—authoritarian regimes accuse OSF of all of this. The organization had to move its headquarters from Budapest to Berlin last year because Hungary was impeding its operations.

Other interested parties also cast doubt on foreign policy networks. I myself was denounced on Russian television as an American agent after writing several articles critical of Germany’s Russia policy. Proof of my guilt: in 2000 I was a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington. On his evening news show on Russia 1, the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, Dmitry Kiselyov, used this freely available information and the GMF logo to make me out to be a US-directed enemy of Russia.

Even discounting such smear campaigns, it is true that political advice today needs to do a better job of justifying and explaining itself. As the decisions made in Berlin become more important in Europe and the world, the pressure increases on those who make them to legitimize themselves.

German Belief System in Ruins

What’s more, Germany foreign policy no longer faces challenges only from its opponents, but also from its most important allies. Nothing has thrown this into sharper relief than the US government’s rejection of the most important achievement of German (and other countries’) diplomacy since reunification. The agreement over the Iranian nuclear program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was torpedoed last year by the same ally that helped negotiate it.

That is not merely a disagreement about substance or policy, as has often occurred between Berlin and Washington. The fight about the JCPOA is also about a basic premise of German foreign policy: that there can be diplomatic solutions for problems that cannot be solved at the national level (such as climate or trade questions); that one can achieve success with opponents and frenemies (Russia, China) for the benefit of non-participating third parties (Israel); that, in other words, win-win-win situations are possible.

The US government, under the banner of “America First,” is questioning this axiom of German diplomacy. And the end of the JCPOA is possibly only a harbinger of coming disruptions: in climate diplomacy and on free trade questions, serious fissures between the allies are already starting to appear. That is also true with regard to NATO, an even more existential question.

Decision-makers in Berlin are deeply shocked by all of this, and uncertainty about the consequences has also hit external advisers. That’s a good thing. But what should be done? Simply carrying on won’t work. What then? Break away from the powerful partner, strengthen one’s own capabilities? Even openly act against it? Try to bring it closer? Build an alliance against it? Develop workarounds with other allied powers that might compensate for the loss of the US (Alliance of Multilateralists)? Or do all of that at the same time?

Is the German government getting good advice on this existential strategic question? That’s a hard claim to make. The traditionally transatlantic-minded expert circle is Berlin is only slowly coming out of its shock-induced paralysis. After two years of constant attacks on NATO, free trade and every liberal principle, Trump is now being taken seriously as the result of structural change, and no longer trivialized as a “freak event” after which we can all return to the status quo.

As bitter as it is, it could actually be an opportunity that all three major schools of Germany foreign policy are staring at the rubble of their belief systems: the transatlanticists thanks to Trump, the Ostpolitikers thanks to Putin, and the European integrationists thanks to the European reality.

Passion and Inner Freedom

How to proceed? Two rather technical-bureaucratic proposals are making the rounds: Germany needs a national security council, and (or) it needs a council of foreign policy experts similar to the German Council of Economic Experts. Both might be helpful to some extent, in order to facilitate strategic communication between the government departments and between different levels of hierarchy. (However, in recent times the US example of a powerful NSC has not proved very encouraging.) In the future, Germany will have even more colorful, fragile coalition governments, which will divide up the ministries relevant to foreign policy. (And today, which ministries aren’t?) That makes reaching a consensus about “grand strategy” even more difficult. That doesn’t have to be a disadvantage in every respect, and could instead be chance for self-correction.

A pluralistic council of experts could bring strategic questions into the public consciousness, questions that cut across the borders of government departments: why climate change is a security challenge; how migration is related to our economic policy; that one has to understand digitalization as power politics, data as a resource, and social media as a weapon.

But new strategic structures alone will not answer the decisive questions. How does one avoid the self-reinforcement and path dependency that got the experts into this crisis? By suggesting the Turkey deal, an unknown mini think-tank with a small budget was able to change the policy course of the German government and help solve a European crisis. So it is possible, with passion and inner freedom.

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© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Preparations have been underway for some time – for years, talk of Germany recognizing its “new responsibility” has been making the rounds. Yet now that the moment has finally arrived for Germany to supplement this recognition with a coherent foreign policy, it is greeted with shock and confusion. No one had expected things to change like this – not this quickly and not this thoroughly.

More Responsibility than Power

After six months of “America First,” not even the most committed atlanticists can deny the crisis at the heart of the transatlantic relationship. But this crisis is only part of the seismic event shaking the entire international order, which has unsettled no country more than Germany, a country reliant on foreign trade, positioned in the very center of Europe, with a foreign policy traditionally focused on balance and moderation.

Indeed, Germany stands at the center of these upheavals. No other country is as reliant on Russia for its energy, on China for its trade, on the United States for its defense – and simultaneously made the ultimate guarantor of the future of the European Union.

The nonsensical wish that Angela Merkel take the reins as “leader of the free world” contains a grain of truth: More than any other international actor, Germany depends on the continued existence of the liberal international order. This touches on the heart of the new German question: Once Germany was described as too big for Europe and too small for the world; now, it is too big to flourish without a stable international order and too small to defend it alone. German foreign policy will have to operate with this tension for the foreseeable future. As the previous guarantor of the liberal order has begun to shirk its responsibilities, the question of Germany’s contribution has become suddenly, and dramatically, much more relevant.

Strategic Unity

As difficult as it is to turn away from the daily soap opera of the Trump administration, the steady trickle of tweets, leaks, and rumors leads to a critical error in foreign policy thinking. One could come to the mistaken belief that the transatlantic crisis began with Trump and will end with his departure from office – all that is necessary in the West then is to hold out. Besides, isn’t the president surrounded by some responsible “adults”? Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and National Security Adviser R. H. McMaster might at least prevent the worst.

Yet President Obama had already expressed discomfort with the US role as guarantor of the international order. One can see how his thinking changed over his two terms in office by looking at two of the more memorable phrases he used to describe American leadership: After the Arab Spring, he advocated “leading from behind”; later, after the failed intervention in Libya, this rather unambitious approach was even more watered down to the maxim “Don’t do stupid shit” – and a desperate wish not to follow the “Washington playbook” in Syria at any price.

Trump, on the other hand, sees no need for Obama’s reluctance. When Trump says “America First,” he means strength without responsibility, power without mission, bombing without regret. Two of the supposed adults recently described what this means in foreign policy terms, with a May 31 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by McMaster and economic adviser Gary Cohn contextualizing Trump’s first trip abroad in office.

This first presentation of the Trump Doctrine makes it clear that even the supposed moderates within his team support a radical break from 70 years of American post-war policy. McMaster and Cohn praised the “clarity” of the president, his recognition that the world is “not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage.” And “rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.” The text is a shocking document, especially for the German government. One day after this announcement of a “strategic shift,” the president took to the White House Rose Garden to announce that the US would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Transatlanticism for Adults

The US government’s willingness to constantly put the foundations and principles of German foreign policy into question is an enormous intellectual and strategic challenge. It means that in the future Germany will have to pursue European integration, transatlantic partnership, multilateralism, support for human rights and democratic norms, and ruled-based globalization – along with countless other issues – without the US if need be, and possibly even against the wishes of the American government.

Two points must be made here: First, this fundamental conflict should not be played down as though it were only the usual differences between two countries, as once arose between Willy Brandt and Richard Nixon, Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter, or Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush. This is something different – no previous crisis touched fundamental questions of the world order. After World War 2, the US managed to create an international system with institutions, rules, and values that allowed member nations the chance to resolve conflicts peacefully, profit from free trade, and address problems (including, once, the proliferation of atomic weapons and climate change), which by definition exceed the abilities of any one nation. This order is now in jeopardy.

The fundamental calculus of the Pax Americana was that it would not just be the many nations of the international community that would profit from an international order – the hegemon at its heart would also benefit. In contrast, “America First” sees the world as a zero-sum game. International relationships are purely transactional. No amount of lip service about commitment to NATO will erase the impression that the US president thinks of the most successful multilateral defensive alliance as nothing more than a protection racket.

The beneficiaries of the world order the US has supported until now will have to decide for themselves what its continuation is really worth. It could yet have a chance – but that brings us to point two. Anti-Trumpism – which is, to a certain extent, an extension of a reflexive German (and European) resistance to the US president – hinders the formation of any independent strategy. The SPD candidate for chancellor, Martin Schulz, provided an example of the negative results of this knee-jerk opposition in an interview with Der Spiegel in early June. Contrary to what Trump may think, he said, Germany owes neither NATO nor the US any money. Schulz went on to criticize the military-industrial logic of the NATO two percent spending goal and called on voters to pick him if they felt the same.

It is both correct and trite to say that Germany owes Trump nothing – but German contributions to NATO are in its own interest, as the alliance forms the backbone of the Western multilateral alliance. Obama himself correctly criticized the “free rider” mentality of Europeans when it comes to defense. Instead of tearing our hair out over Trump’s ambivalence on Article 5, we should begin to discuss what transatlanticism for adults might look like. Schulz’s anti-Trumpism, just like the impulse of many Europeans to simply wait for new American leadership, does nothing to move in that direction. What should be done instead? First, cooperate more than ever with those in the US who still defend Western values, who share our view on trade and climate policy (in Congress, in the states, in nongovernmental organizations) – even if that only serves to limit the damage Trump can cause.

The real challenge, however, is elsewhere. If Germany wants to give its understanding of mulitlateralism – and its embodiment in Article 5 – more credibility, it has to invest significantly more in collective defense. Instead of making the national election a referendum on a supposedly dangerous military-industrial policy, a new logic of German security should be explained to German voters: we must be willing to pay more for defense not because of Trump but in spite of him, not because he has demanded it but because we want to push back against his nonsensical policies. For that to succeed, it will be necessary to reform Europe’s insane acquisition system, with its 178 weapons systems (compared to 30 in the US) and 17 types of tanks (versus one in the US).

Three Rings of Uncertainty

German diplomats today have a tendency to refer to three “rings of uncertainty” that have plagued Germany for years.

The first “ring” concerns the EU itself: the fragility of the euro, attacks on the rule of law in Poland and Hungary, the flourishing of populism in the shadow of Germany’s economic and political strength, and mass immigration. Within the EU, Germany enjoys a great deal of influence, but with a significant risk of backlash when it exerts its power outright, especially when it has made significant decisions unilaterally like the Energiewende or its 2015 refugee policy shift.

The second “ring” is an arc stretching from Rabat to Donetsk, from Morocco (which is less stable than hoped) and Mali (stabilized for the time being by French soldiers) over Tunisia (relatively stable, but exporting jihadists) and Libya (as unstable as it looks) to Egypt (ultra-stable thanks to brutal repression, and thus highly fragile); and further over the Saudi anti-Iran coalition and its new enemy of choice, Qatar (thanks, President Trump!); over the demolition in Yemen, obliterated Syria, and untamed Iran; and finally over Turkey (a prisoner of its failed regional politics, and now hardly a real NATO partner), all the way to a divided Ukraine (where Russia’s aggression has likely frozen Western expansion policies). In this area, Germany has no direct influence anywhere, and can only contribute to multilateral solutions, as the Bundeswehr’s operations in Mali, the Minsk Agreements, the nuclear deal with Iran, and the EU refugee agreement with Turkey have shown.

The third ring, which is still hardly acknowledged, runs between the islands in the South China Sea (through which German goods are shipped, too) to North Korea, where the young leader is busy building rockets that threaten not only friendly democracies like South Korea and Japan but as of recently the US as well – and thus we are back to Article 5. Though Germany is hardly capable of contributing directly to any resolution of the conflict, it can help indirectly, for example by strengthening NATO and working with China and India to keep the Paris Agreement alive.

Three rings of instability, each with less room for German influence than the last. If one wanted to express the challenge facing German foreign policy in the summer of 2017 with a single word, it would be “stabilization.” That means a break with the current era, the era of post-Berlin Wall, EU expansion, NATO extension, color revolutions, green movement in Iran, and Arab revolts elsewhere. It may once have seemed like a movement toward open, liberal societies was inevitable – but that era is over, and with it the European policy of association and expansion, which reached its end in the division of Ukraine and the rejection of Turkey. The arc of history that had seemed to bent irrevocably toward freedom was nothing but a beautiful illusion.

Expanding Options

That is a setback, but also a chance – an opportunity to rethink circumstances. And Germany has new tools to bring to bear: Over the past few years, it has gained significant influence and expanded its palette of options commensurately, exercising its new capacities in the bailout programs for its struggling neighbors, in sanctions to limit Russian aggression, and in the once-taboo delivery of weapons to conflict areas (particularly the Kurds in Iraq).

Whatever one may think of each of these steps individually, together they represent a significant shift. In January 2014 then-President Joachim Gauck encouraged Germany to take on “more responsibility for the international order” at the Munich Security Conference. Horst Köhler, president from 2004-10, had explained nothing less in an interview he gave in May 2010, which led to his stepping down: “A country oriented toward international trade,” he said, “must sometimes be willing to secure its interests including free trade and regional stability with military means if necessary.” He had surely believed that German society, by and large, was ready to defend an order that is in its own vital interest. He was wrong back then:  He, who had done more than any previous German president to increase German engagement in Africa, was denounced as a warmonger. Shortly after that interview, he left office deeply embittered by the aggressive attacks against him.

How things have changed. Today it is commonly accepted that Germany must do more to preserve the international order from which it profits so much, and not only through “paying more and shooting more” (as Gauck put it). Thanks to Brexit and Trump, it has become painfully clear that today, as pathetic as it may be, a rapidly disintegrating West is dependent on Germany’s willingness to assert itself.

But that being said, a vague consensus is not a strategy. An incomplete list of Germany’s foreign policy priorities could begin with supporting France as an equal partner, managing Brexit without attempting to punish the United Kingdom, limiting the damage Trump can do to the West, decisively warding off Russian aggression, keeping Turkey aligned with Europe, and reducing the “pull factors” drawing people from Africa to Europe through a mix of development assistance, managed immigration, and effective border control.

German foreign policy will have to accomplish things that at first glance seem to be mutually exclusive. For example, Germany will have to be much more generous with money for (and in) Europe, while simultaneously combating the blurring of liberal norms in Eastern European member states. It will have to create more opportunities for Africans to come to Europe legally, while at the same time protecting the EU’s external borders better. It must take a clearer position against the authoritarian turn in Ankara, while pursuing an active Turkey policy (and one without illusions about Turkey’s joining the EU immediately after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan leaves office).

Germany will not be able to reach any of these goals alone, even if it is now Europe’s “indispensable nation.” German foreign policy has been presented with challenges it will have a difficult time meeting – striking a new balance between firmness and generosity.

The post More Stick, More Carrot appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

Some years ago, an Italian friend who lives in Munich laid out to me his theory on the success of the German economy. “The secret is your pessimism. Your products are so good because you are always ready for failure. Better carry out more tests! For us it’s the other way around – optimism and a good mood makes life in Italy more pleasant, but they’re not good qualities for engineers.”

I was reminded of this over the last few weeks. The mood in this country has darkened. The can-do attitude of the late summer has increasingly been replaced by an autumnal skepticism – can we really cope with the refugee crisis?

The sentimental courage of our Willkommenskultur is making way for an atmosphere of concern in which an old phenotype of German political discourse has re-appeared: the Bedenkenträger – the bearer of reservations. He poses questions such as: how many more are coming? Can we integrate them all into the labor market? Will we be able to organize enough winter accommodation for them?

The questions are justified. But the change in mood cannot be explained by logical reservations. The swing back is as extreme as was the summer’s positivity.

The scenes at Munich train station of Germans welcoming refugees as if applauding marathoners at the finish line, now seem oddly surreal. Talking to politicians in Berlin nowadays about these scenes, one senses irritation. Something about those days was odd, suspect, overblown, they say.

Were we in fact applauding ourselves rather than the refugees? And did these potential immigrants misunderstand us? Are they all on the way here now? Has our explicit openness turned into a curse? There he is again, the German Bedenkenträger.

The word is often laconically translated into “skeptic” in English. But that’s not quite right. Skepticism marks a rational distance from overly ambitious ideas. The skeptic pulls expectations and possibilities into a reasonable balance, to maintain the ability to act and prevent too much disappointment.

A Bedenkenträger is not interested in the ability to act. He issues constant warnings and reminders of danger. His mind creates rows of hurdles and he anticipates failure, in order to avoid having to do anything at all. He is not a singular phenomenon; thousands of Bedenkenträger can be heard not only in response to the refugee crisis, but also in German debates about TTIP, gene technology, and other new developments he finds risky – if not too risky.

The Bedenkenträger finds his thoughts burdensome, and because he wants people to see the efforts he makes, he is happy to carry them in public. He is uniquely proud of his fears. While the Bedenkenträger represents a very particular form of German conservatism, he is completely independent of political direction. He comes in all party colors.

There are many warnings and reminders in this autumn’s discussion of the refugee crisis. It begins with pragmatic concerns over whether enough beds, shipping containers, and clothing can be made available. But these concerns quickly turn to the fundamentals: If this crisis cannot be solved, the Bedenkenträger warns, then, no less, “politics has abdicated responsibility,” “Europe is approaching collapse,” or “the coalition is going to break apart.” Politicians from the ruling coalition even go so far (at least in private conversations) as to say that “democracy in Germany” is in danger.

The actual situation is not that apocalyptic. Certainly it is appropriate to take a more sober look than was the case in the summer. For we face huge challenges: Tens of thousands of additional teachers will be needed, hundreds of thousands of apartments, and training programs for the most varied of qualifications.

But the truth is that the Germany that is supposedly scared and fixated with following the rules, is currently showing a magnificent talent for improvization. A very un-German flexibility is enabling the country to stoically keep on through the biggest crisis it has faced since reunification – without having the perfect solution to all problems. After all: Germany’s mayors and local politicians, police officers, and civil servants  taking care of thousands of new arrivals every day have no time for the concerns of the Bedenkenträger.

The post Words Don’t Come Easy: “Bedenkenträger” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.