Taking to the pages of Foreign Affairs to explain Germany’s “new 
global role”, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier came up with a rather puzzling – yet sadly evocative – adjective to describe his thinking.

© Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has invented a new term to describe his country’s “new global role”: Germany, Steinmeier writes in the July-August issue of Foreign Affairs, is “a reflective power.” The word “reflective” is so important to him that he repeats it no less than three times in the course of the article.

One wonders what goes on in the head of a leading politician who either honestly believes or thinks he can make people believe that the distinctive trait of his country’s policies is that the Germans “reflect” before they act. Whereas the Americans, Brits, and French presumably act upon impulse? Don’t use their heads? Shoot first and ask questions afterwards? This at least is what Steinmeier implies when he writes, “Germans do not believe that talking at roundtables solves every problem, but neither do they think that shooting does.” Unlike whom?

The idea that Germans are “reflective” rather than active is not exactly new. It was a common trope with German writers of the 19th century. In a famous phrase, Friedrich Hölderlin said that his countrymen were “tatenarm und gedankenvoll” – lacking in deeds but full of thoughts. And Heinrich Heine, speaking of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and his notorious incapacity for action, wrote, “We know this Hamlet as we know our own face that we see so often in the mirror.” Echoing this thought, the revolutionary Ferdinand Freiligrath exclaimed in 1844, “Germany is Hamlet!”

These writers were decrying Germany’s missing democratic fervor. All over Europe, revolutionaries toppled thrones and united their countries in the name of freedom. In Germany, a reactionary made his king emperor of a Germany united by war. The German Social Democrats applauded. They had lost their appetite for democracy after Bismarck had promised them social security. To this day, what drives Germany’s allies to despair is not the fact that Germany thinks before it acts (always a good idea, as Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler found out too late), but that it always seems to develop the thinking habit when action is necessary in the interest of freedom.

Recently Steinmeier criticized NATO maneuvers designed to reassure its Eastern members of the alliance’s readiness in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine and provocations in the Baltic, in European airspace, and on the borders of the Baltic states. “Saber-rattling and war cries”, said Germany’s foreign minister, were not helpful in the circumstances. Had the Social Democrat Steinmeier “reflected” just a minute longer, he might have realized that open discord within the alliance was the worst possible message to send to Russia. But on reflection: maybe he wanted to send the message to Vladimir Putin that freedom and democracy were – now as in the 19th century – not a priority for Germans of his ilk.

The worrying thing about Hamlet, you see, isn’t that he thinks too much, but that at the end of the play the man who has returned from the German University of Wittenberg gets tired of thinking, goes berserk, and kills everybody, including himself, thus opening the door to a foreign invader. Sound familiar?

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – July/August 2016 issue.

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(c) REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

While the Bundestag is wrestling with the implications of the most recent spy scandal, the ex-Communist Left Party (Die Linke) has access to the secrets of Germany’s three intelligence agencies: the domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), whose spying on Germans until recently focused also on Left Party parliamentarians; the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD); and the foreign intelligence agency (BND).

Now the Left Party’s André Hahn, chair of the PCC, has been indirectly accused of leaking secret documents to the media. In return, he has hinted that the documents were leaked directly by the agencies themselves and that his oversight committee had not even seen them. Welcome to a country where questions of national security are routinely used as ammunition in political squabbles. Welcome to a political class that still cannot understand why American and British intelligence services might deem it necessary to spy on them now and again, if only to find out who is telling what to whom.

The most disturbing aspect is: the Germans consider NSA spying or the cooperation between it and the BND scandalous, but not the fact that confidential information has been leaked. Nor did anyone cry foul when Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, in fact, used leaked intelligence material to lay a trap for Chancellor Angela Merkel: It appears that back in 2006, America’s National Security Agency (NSA) asked the BND to check out two European companies, EADS (now Airbus) and its subsidiary Eurocopter. Nobody knows what the NSA was looking for – possibly attempts to subvert the sanctions against Iran. But Gabriel – who is also economics minister – lost no time in describing this as “industrial espionage.” He went on to say that Merkel had “assured” him twice that these were the only two “German” companies (they are, in fact, multinational) that had been spied on by the BND.

This seems unlikely. German companies have a sorry record of dealings with unsavory regimes, from the Mullahs’ Tehran to Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad to Putin’s Moscow. If any more companies turn up (and, given the porous nature of the spy agencies, that could happen at any time), Merkel will stand accused of lying.

It was, of course, no accident that Gabriel, a member of the SPD, chose to unleash his revelations a week before elections in Bremen, where his party stood to lose votes to Merkel’s CDU. But German media patted Gabriel on the back for his indiscretion, because he had found a chink in the iron chancellor’s armor. Nobody questioned his use of the term “industrial espionage” or the wisdom of using secret intelligence material to score points.

Admittedly, Merkel was asking for it. When in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s revelations it became clear that the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were spying on German politicians – even tapping Merkel’s cell phone – the chancellor publicly declared that “friends don’t spy on friends.” This was a stupid thing to say, as she must have known better. Shortly afterwards it turned out that the BND had tapped US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s cell phone – but only “inadvertently,” according to the official explanation. Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, Merkel convened a meeting of Germany’s European partners to agree on a “No-Spy Treaty,” under which EU members – “friends” – would not spy on one another. This PR exercise – shortly before the last general election, incidentally – was a dig at the British, who of course were not going to sign any such agreement. All the while, however, the BND was spying on hundreds, possibly thousands of European Union institutions and officials at the behest of their friends at the NSA.

A No-Spy Treaty is an inherently absurd proposition, as is the idea of “friendship” between nations. A husband might swear never to read his wife’s diary, but when jealousy strikes, his wife had better be sure her diary is well hidden. In the harsh world of international relations, you want to be sure that what your “friends” are telling you to your face is what they are saying behind closed doors. Trust, but verify.

Merkel could have said just that. She did not. She could have pointed out that the cooperation between the BND and the NSA is a valued part of our “friendship” with the US. She did not. She could have stated that it is illegal for the BND to spy on German citizens at home, and that there is no evidence that the BND did that – and, in fact, there is a lot of evidence that the BND routinely refused such requests by the NSA. She did not. She could have explained that it is not illegal to spy on European institutions and businesses and why such espionage might be necessary. She did not. Instead, she tried to ride the tiger of German anger at the Americans and the “scandal” of cooperation with them; now, though the tiger will not eat her, it just might bite her. Serves her right.

In discussions with American and British visitors, Germans like to point to the Nazi or Stasi past to explain their sensitivity when it comes to data collection. Nonsense. Every German regularly surrenders more information to the tax authorities and state Registration Office than a British or American person would deem acceptable. The Verfassungsschutz is the only spy agency in a Western democracy dedicated not only to tracking down real and present dangers to the state, but also to documenting “dangerous thoughts,” including those of Parliamentarians.

The problem with Germany is that part of its political class is politically immature. There is no discussion of concepts such as the national interest; the idea that there is not only a duty to control the security agencies but also to protect them is alien to most people. This is, potentially, much more dangerous than the possibility that the BND might have overstepped its remit now and then.

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