© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

The thirty wonderful years—les trente glorieuses—was the name the French demographer Jean Fourastié gave to the years of economic boom France enjoyed between 1945 and 1975. The term could have been applied to West Germany during that time as well. But the description is far more applicable to the first three decades of the Berlin Republic. Between 1989 and 2019, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the two Germanies that had been nervously eyeing each other across the Cold War front lines became one flourishing European hegemon. Those historically unique gains in prosperity, power, and prestige are the real German post-war miracle.

But there are now plenty of signs that this miracle is coming to an end—perhaps even with a cyclical downturn of the global economy ahead—and that the Germans are entirely unprepared for it. What has happened? What does it mean for Germany? And what must be done?

Strained and At Risk

Europe—the continent that over the last 70 years has stood like no other for overcoming war and violence with the help of law and diplomacy—finds itself in 2019 a staging ground once more for the competition of the great powers. And this at a moment when the region is doing worse than it has in a long time. The crises of the last decade—from the global financial crisis (2008/09), which quickly became a eurozone crisis, to the Ukraine crisis (2014) to the refugee crisis (2015) and the Brexit referendum (2016)—have weakened and divided Europe. For the first time in post-war history, the fight over the future of the European project is not just about the “when” and “how” of deepening or expanding the European Union, but rather—at least for a few member states—about whether the clock of European integration ought not to be turned back altogether.

There are also alarming signs of paralysis and strain emerging within our seemingly sophisticated European nation-states. It is plausible to read Brexit as a failure of devolution in Britain; the rise of the gilets jaunes is rooted in part in the vast distance between France’s civil society and an overbearing executive branch driven by a technocratic elite; many Germans’ anger is sparked by an enormous backlog in infrastructure investment. Yet nothing bears more potential for conflict in Europe today than questions of identity. Who may call him- or herself a citizen—and who may not? Here the legacy of colonialism, the follow-on consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, and the unresolved issues of migration and the refugee crisis make for a toxic combination, worsened by fears of a new economic downturn.

All this is fertile soil for extremist populists who claim the exclusive right to represent the “silent majority” or “the people.” They say they want to take on both elites and outsiders, but their real enemies are the liberal values, secular modernity and representative democracy they revile as the “system.” They snare anxious voters with promises of “taking back control” and freedom of action (the key word here is “sovereignty”) by radically reducing complexity (“close the borders,” “Merkel must go”). They systematically attack institutions (courts, parliaments) and intermediary organizations (parties, the media) as well as the norms and taboos of our constitutional order, mobilizing the street just as aggressively and deftly as they do social media.

At the same time, populists are looking for a way to capture Europe’s institutions—with the goal of undermining them. They have had the greatest success in Budapest and Warsaw, where illiberal authoritarians are in power and working to cement their dominance through constitutional change. (In Poland at least, a strong civil society is making every effort to defend itself.) And as if that were not enough, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini have created a so-called “movement” of right-wing European parties, with which they want to storm the European Parliament at the elections in May in order to hollow out the EU from the inside.

A Hostile Environment

Europe’s neighborhood has also become more unstable. In Turkey, a NATO member, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is ruling with an ever harder hand. In eastern Ukraine, Russia is waging a war that has so far claimed more than 13,000 victims. In Syria, the dictator Bashar al-Assad is successfully fighting his own population, with Russian help. And in Moscow and Beijing, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have consolidated their power. All across the world, authoritarians are questioning the leadership of the West and the rules of the international order.

Nevertheless, Europe cannot simply turn itself into a fortress and seal itself off from the world. That would be tantamount to suicide, as its prosperity and security are existentially dependent on the deep integration of European states with each other and with the global economy. Yet Russia and China have become adept at instrumentalizing the old and new elements of globalization—from physical infrastructure and trading hubs to cyberspace, mobile networks, and social media—against Europe, including through strategic asset investments and buyouts.

Moscow’s attempts to interfere have an especially destructive effect on the influence of the US in Europe and on the transformative effect of the EU beyond its borders. Beijing’s perspective is somewhat different: European coherence, at least in terms of a functioning trade and infrastructure area, is key to its long-term plans for worldwide economic expansion. But both have become active, even aggressive players in Europe. And both know very well how to crack European unity whenever it helps them achieve their goals.

The “America First” Dilemma

But Europe’s greatest dilemma in this new era is “America First:” Europe’s protector, and for many decades its closest friend and partner, has mutated under President Donald Trump into a “rogue superpower” (in Robert Kagan’s words), a power that is “active, powerful, and entirely out for itself.” The 2017 US National Security Strategy announced the end of the “global community” and coldly replaced it with the paradigm of great power competition. The trade war with the EU has been deferred, not cancelled; and the sanctions guillotine is still hanging in the air.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s very first Europe speech in December 2018 in Brussels finally made it clear (if confirmation was needed) that it is not just the president who sees the EU as an enemy. Pompeo asked if the EU was still serving the interests of its citizens, adding that international institutions that no longer serve their purpose should “be reformed or eliminated.” What’s more, this US administration has a noticeable weakness for Europe’s autocrats. Trump and his comrades-in-arms call that healthy national pride. But it’s more accurate to call it ethno-chauvinism.

Washington is entirely justified in asking its allies to take more responsibility for Europe’s security. It’s just that the US government’s foreign and security policy has now become a risk factor for our fragile continent even when it’s not specifically directed at Europe. The volatility and incoherence of Trump’s Middle East, Russia, and Asia policies, the threats to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan, the withdrawal from the Iran deal and the INF treaty, the hostility to multilateral institutions—all of this destabilizes Europe.

Admittedly, this administration has also demonstratively strengthened the eastern flank of NATO. Diplomats report that there is a still a lot of trust and cooperation at the working level. But how much is that really worth when Trump simultaneously courts Vladimir Putin and rarely misses an opportunity to question the principle of collective defensive enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty? In the meantime many high-ranking officials who value allies—including then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe A. Wess Mitchell—have left the government. And given the government’s fixation on China, its perceived main adversary and nemesis, some in Washington are anxiously asking if Trump might not be capable of conceding to the Kremlin, as the price for its allegiance, a sphere of influence in Europe.

There are no signs that Europe has found a common answer to this new situation. London, Paris, and Berlin have, in a rare act of harmony, come together to throw their weight against the termination of the Iran deal, but without success. Berlin has managed to hold together the consensus about Russia sanctions, with some difficulty—but what is needed is a real European effort to push back against China and Russia’s energetic attempts to undermine and divide the continent. In the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia, Europe is at best present in homeopathic doses.

Baffled and Bereft

The geostrategic shift from multilateral cooperation to great power competition affects Germany like no other country in Europe. After 1949, the Bonn Republic had attempted to answer the “German question” once and for all: through voluntary self-containment in multilateral frameworks (notably the United Nations, the EU, and NATO), as well as by anchoring itself to the West. Two factors made this possible: West Germany’s willingness to atone and America’s decision to take Europe under its nuclear umbrella and thereby guarantee its security. That, in turn, allowed Germany to concentrate on its economic transformation and the simultaneous development of a generous welfare state. In brief, Germany owes not only its security to the US, but also its social peace.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the course of EU and NATO expansion, a completely new trading sphere opened up for Germany in Eastern Europe. The new mobility of people, goods, and data created a deep interdependence of the German economy with its neighbors. In terms of its security, Germany found itself, for the first time in its recent history, “encircled by friends” (in the words of the former Defense Minister Volker Rühe). Yet this comfortable security buffer was created by exporting its geopolitical risks to the European periphery.

It is no surprise that in the fateful year of 1989, the thesis of the end of history won more acclaim in Germany than anywhere else. Germans celebrated the idea that the West had achieved victory through the worldwide convergence of systems toward democratic transformation and an increasingly rules-based international order. We were, after all, the champions of atonement. So we enjoyed the peace dividend to the fullest.

A Glum Perplexity

All this has turned the Berlin Republic into a de-facto “shaping power” over the past thirty years. In other words, within the fragile European ecosystem, Germany is what Americans call “an 800-pound gorilla”—the animal that makes the trees tremble just by rolling over in its sleep. From the point of view of most of its neighbors, Germans are, well, the Americans of Europe—urgently needed, but also feared for their inconsiderateness, including the inability to recognize the need to be considerate.

And it’s not clear that we are even aware just how much we have benefited from the US and Europe, or that we would be willing to acknowledge that fact and draw appropriate conclusions. We sing the praises of normative universalism but are absolutely ready to swerve away from our convictions in pursuit of our national interest. We see ourselves as the engine of European integration, but when it comes down to it, German governments regularly hit the brakes. And we persistently refuse to acknowledge that German decisions—in the controversy over the gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, in the eurozone or refugee crises—have consequences (and costs) well beyond our borders.

In 2014, in the aftermath of the financial crisis and under the impression of Russian aggression in Ukraine, there was an attempt to engage more with the world and make German foreign and security policy “faster, more decisive, and more substantial,” as then-president Joachim Gauck promised. Five years later, this energetic optimism seems to have given way to glum perplexity. The problem is that for the West’s challengers—the enemies of a rules-based world order and the European project, those who scorn representative democracy and open society—Germany is the main foe, precisely because it is the fulcrum and linchpin of European stability. Unfortunately, the US president seems to share this antipathy.

What Needs to Be Done

Germany’s options in this significantly darker strategic environment are limited. A retreat behind walls is unrealistic for a country that borders two seas and nine countries. The temptations of the “Greater Switzerland” model—a Berlin Republic which does business with all sides from an equidistant middle location and fastidiously avoids spoiling its relationship with any greater power—are on display daily in German debates over sanctions, gas pipelines, and mobile networks. But that, too, would be a dead end for Germany. Its fate is existentially bound up with Europe’s; to support and protect it is in Germany’s own best interest.

This means, first, that Germany needs to get its own house in order. For—and this is the lesson of the populist wave—without an effective and legitimate domestic order, there is no effective and legitimate foreign and security policy.

Second, Germany’s power requires us to take on greater responsibility for Europe. Our neighbors’ criticism (and yes, that of the US) of our budget surpluses, our defense spending, and our energy policy may be motivated by self-interest; but that makes it no less justified. In all three (and other) cases there are pragmatic compromise solutions. Our government could reduce its budget surpluses by spending more on infrastructure; it could spend its defense euros more effectively with greater European cooperation in armaments production; and it could address many of its neighbors’ deep concerns about Nord Stream 2 by fully applying EU competition law to the project and finally modernizing Ukrainian transit pipelines. To keep acting as if there are no alternatives will only further isolate us.

Third, a policy of diplomatic dialogue is greatly enhanced by the ability to enforce one’s interests if necessary. That includes the ability to apply military force. Even Germany’s closest friends think its hard-power prudery is sanctimonious. But deterrence is so much more than a credible threat of force. It also, crucially, means never taking issues off the table preemptively, neither sanctions, nor the expansion of the EU or of NATO. It requires the ability to ward off Russian and Chinese interference and defend liberal democracies against their enemies.

Fourth, how to deal with America? Germany’s policy vis-à-vis the United States will have to be schizophrenic for the foreseeable future. It will have to be based on two contradictory insights: that Trumpism goes beyond Trump; and that America is, as the midterm elections showed, more than Trump. So Europe and Germany must become stronger and more independent; but European “strategic autonomy” from the US is an illusion. Europe continues to need America by its side, not least when it comes to responding to the Chinese challenge. But the US needs Europe, too. If the EU wants to be taken seriously by America, it has to put up resistance where necessary—and cooperate where possible. Perhaps Europe can learn from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi here?

The fact that Berlin became a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council on January 1, 2019, will put its foreign and security policy in the spotlight. A “new Ostpolitik” that takes into account Eastern European sensibilities is all to the good—but what if it is counteracted by our energy policy? How much is Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s “alliance of multilateralists” worth if we don’t stand by Canada and protest the hostage-taking of its citizens in China, or if we ignore the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi? In the end, legitimacy—that is, the willingness to stand up for one’s values and convictions—is the most precious power resource a democracy has.

NB. A longer version of this article is available on the Brookings website.

The post The Unready Hegemon appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

There’s been a lively debate in Germany recently on the future of the transatlantic relationship. Is the postwar alliance destined for the dustbin of history?
SERGEY LAGODINSKY: I really don’t think it’s possible to replace the transatlantic relationship, its vision and values. And another point that is important to me: you cannot have it all! If Europe does not have a special, close, westward-looking relationship with the United States, then the continent will be drawn toward the East. We Europeans are not strong enough to develop and sustain our own sense of mission. Rather, we will come under pressure from the East.
One thing is new, though, and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel touched on this recently: For the first time since World War II, we need a foreign policy strategy for the US. The question is, what kind of strategy?

Gabriel also spoke of a vacuum that exists as a consequence of US President Donald Trump’s policies. What if the other player in this relationship no longer shares the same values and goals in foreign and security policy?
LAGODINSKY: You have to keep trying, you have to be inventive, and you have to be interesting to the other party. And the other party is not just President Trump. There are a variety of other players in the US we can work with – on climate change, on refugee policies, and so on. This is something we are doing at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The underlying idea is that, yes, we have to have a strategy vis-à-vis the present US government, but also one that addresses US society in its complexity and in its diversity, including on the level of the federal states. We should not write the US off as a country just because Donald Trump is making calls we cannot identify with.

Constanze, you are currently visiting from Washington. How does the debate look from your perspective?
CONSTANZE STELZENMÜLLER: Managing the fact that now, there are two completely different conversations going on in Washington and in the rest of the country is incredibly challenging for us Europeans. But Sergey is right to say that we Europeans should do better at reaching out to those Americans—in Washington and elsewhere—who continue to believe their country should engage with the world.
We do also need to see that the hardliners in the current US administration believe that globalization and alliances are bad for America. They want America to make its international relationships transactional and based much more on interests than on shared values. This thinking is by no means limited to the president. It exists not just in Washington but in other parts of the US too—and in some quarters in Europe as well, of course.
For those of us who want to defend the model of a non-transactional alliance, of a relationship that is based on an embrace of globalization and a liberal international order, we have to realize that this dark view is more widespread than we like to believe. So we also have to find ways of countering this dark narrative. There are two ways of doing this: by taking on a greater share of the burden ourselves; and by striving to correct the disadvantages globalization has brought to some groups in our societies.

How does this argument look from a Central and Eastern European perspective? When we are talking about the forces on the rise in the US―is that something that we also see in Eastern Europe?
MILAN NIč: Superficially, yes―there’s a less critical view of the Trump administration. But you have to realize that Central and Eastern Europe is no monolith; it doesn’t have a unified view. So there are the Polish and Hungarian governments voicing general agreement with Trump’s approach, and then you have critical voices – from within Poland and Hungary and elsewhere, like Slovakia where we see a more balanced view.
Overall, people do distinguish between Donald Trump on the one hand and the rest of the administration and Congress on the other. Arguments you hear often include: the US presence at NATO’s eastern flank is as strong as ever; the US effort to counter-balance the Russian threat is not lessening; there’s no decrease in the support for Ukraine, although that might be coming. You may call it delusion or denial, but the fact is that there’s a more optimistic view in parts of Central and Eastern Europe regarding the Trump administration. Some State Department appointments have certainly contributed to this – Kurt Volker, who is a very active Special US Representative for Ukraine, and Wess Mitchell, the new Assistant Secretary for Europe. Both are considered “friends of Central Europe,” and not so critical, if you will, toward the current governments in Poland and Hungary.
STELZENMÜLLER: Does it help the Poles or Polish society if the US government refuses to criticize the fact that the PiS government is rewriting the Polish constitution to undermine political pluralism and the independence of parliament and the judiciary?
NIč: It doesn’t help them, but the fact that the US keeps quiet helps the PiS government. It was no coincidence that Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the PiS leader, decided to proceed with the controversial judiciary reform a few days after Trump’s Warsaw speech last July.
At the same time, people in the Polish government were very nervous before Trump’s speech. They realized that they didn’t have any control over its messages, and they worried that Poland could be used as a platform to divide Europeans. They didn’t want that and still don’t. Unlike in Hungary, Poles are predominantly focused on the Russian threat, and they are concerned that if we are divided as Europeans, and Poland splits from Germany and France, it’s not good for Poland.
Hungary is different. Budapest has a different strategy of working at the margins of the EU and NATO and has its own independent relations with Russia and China. That said, there is still some criticism coming from some quarters of the US administration, especially the State Department, concerning illiberal tendencies in Hungary and Poland.
STELZENMÜLLER: That’s true. The State Department rebuked the Orbán government for the anti-Semitic campaign against George Soros and his organization, as well as for the crackdown on NGOs.
NIč: I think Orbán was caught by surprise, he expected a much smoother ride with the Trump administration. That hasn’t been the case so far. None of these illiberal leaders from Central Europe has been welcomed to the White House yet. In contrast, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis met Trump in the Rose Garden.
STELZENMÜLLER: Yes—but let’s get back to Trump’s Warsaw speech for a moment. He stopped just short of comparing the EU to the Soviet Union. He suggested that the West was under threat—not the West of open, liberal, representative, democratic society, but a Christian West of hyper-conservative values. There was a lot of dog whistling in that speech, and not just against the EU, but also against Germany. Trump repeated similar criticism of Europe very recently, in a speech in Pensacola, Florida.
NIč: Nevertheless, for many Europeans, the calculation runs like this: There is Vladimir Putin, and in the short term he is our biggest threat. Thus we need to keep the Americans engaged in NATO and slow down their disengagement for as long as we can. If Trump tells Europe, “Buy more arms and comply with the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense,” Central and Eastern Europeans are more understanding. But some of them are like many Germans who know that they will not get there that fast.
Poland is among the few NATO members that spend more than 2 percent, but Trump’s transactional approach has not really paid off for them lately. Warsaw wanted to purchase Patriot missiles, but now it seems that the sale will not go through. When Trump was in Warsaw, he promised the US would deliver more liquified natural gas to Poland – but again, there are no contracts yet. In other words, the Trump world view isn’t always based on realities.
LAGODINSKY: The question is: by focusing so much on the US president, don’t we invite our publics to start believing that the US is fundamentally different from us, that the election of Donald Trump heralds an irreversible change?
STELZENMÜLLER: I’m not saying that. But there are other people who are using this turbulent and confusing phase to claim that America is abandoning Europe, and that Atlanticism is over. Including in this country.
LAGODINSKY: That’s why when other German Atlanticists and I published the Transatlantic Manifesto back in October 2017, we stressed that Trump is not necessarily representative of the US at large. We called him a president sui generis.
STELZENMÜLLER: I think all three of us are in agreement that America has not changed fundamentally, and that we Europeans still have allies in America, including in Washington. Take the mayors or governors who want to stay in the Paris climate agreement. But there is another school of thinking that genuinely wants to disengage. And I’m saying that we need to work harder to convince that part of America that this is a really bad idea—bad for us and bad for them.

What will remain after Trump, though? The US engagement in the world has changed dramatically since Obama. Do you really think that the US will come back and play its former role again?
LAGODINSKY: No, history doesn’t repeat itself. But there is a good chance that after Trump the US will again be a more active, more internationalist, although maybe not more interventionist. We should not rule it out.

… and as focused on Europe?
LAGODINSKY: I think that despite the demographic change within the US and a changing global landscape, US elites still are interested in Europe, and they are frustrated about Europeans turning away. Obama called for the pivot to Asia, but was still interested in Europe. I have a feeling that in a sense the hasty turn-away from the US by many Germans is not caused by their emancipatory self-understanding, but by their betrayed wish to be loved and taken care of by America. This longing for fatherly love turns into complete rejection of “post-Atlanticist” as soon as reality falls short of their expectations. We need to grow up.

But Europe has lost its “father,” right?
LAGODINSKY: We’ll see – but even if that’s correct, we are still part of the same family. We should not start getting rid of our Western roots and our orientation toward the US just because we aren’t getting the attention we think we deserve. We should not underestimate the risk that our non-Western roots will lead to authoritarianism and populism.

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Anyone who was around for the Cold War and not high knows that it wasn’t that much fun. So why are films and television indulging a sudden nostalgia for the era?

© picture alliance/AP Images

Christ, I miss the Cold War”: This memorable exclamation from M in the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale” seems to have infected the brains of scriptwriters from Los Angeles to Berlin like a virus, with lasting and consequential reverberations. Perhaps not least because Judi Dench’s M, even in a power suit and pearls, managed to exude infinitely more erotic energy with one contemptuous snort than Daniel Craig’s 007 in tiny swimming trunks.

In any case, there has recently been a notable increase in films and television series about the era between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall: from “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (2011) to “The Americans” and (just last year) “Bridge of Spies,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” and finally “Deutschland 83,” a US production filmed entirely in German. Not to mention the extraordinary German series “Weissensee” (three seasons between 2010 and 2015). Coincidence? There is of course only one correct answer to this question: I think not! …

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – May/June 2016 issue.

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Illustration: Dominik Herrmann

Allies, take note: with German leadership you get, and we do apologize for this, the deutsche Sprache – not to mention German thinking, which tends to be, well, complicated, and rarely straightforward enough to conduct proper methodical exegesis – and so you may yet, notwithstanding our very sincere efforts to explain ourselves fully and wherever possible with extensive footnotes and useful diagrams, be sorry you asked. “Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man,” wrote the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, adding by way of elucidation: das Nichts nichtet. We must admit in all sincerity that this, like many of our deepest ideas, sounds more confusing and less helpful in English: “the nothing nothings.”

Many may associate this concept of leading from the center with the characteristic quiet of Chancellor Angela Merkel – and the <> shape she makes with her hands, fingertips joined together in a rhomboid in front of her navel (or solar plexus chakra, seat of self-confidence and -control), when listening impassively to her Social Democrat coalition partner Sigmar Gabriel; or US President Barack Obama; or EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker; or Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, all of whom keep on talking (and talking …) despite the fact that she has already decided what they are going to do.

But while the defense minister’s ambitions are thought to be – like her self-confidence – essentially limitless, she is undoubtedly aware that her position in the German cabinet is not known as the government’s ejector seat for nothing: since 1949, there have been eight chancellors and 16 defense ministers. She has enough self-control, at least for now, not to be seen as wishing to lead from the center of the cabinet table, since one of the most important lessons from the history of the Merkel era is that such leadership invariably leads to departing the cabinet table entirely. And to be a good German is to learn from history and not be seen as trying too hard, which is uncool.

Meanwhile, Berliners who generally would rather be dead than be thought to be trying too hard at anything – among them tens of thousands of Israelis who have taken up residence in the German capital because they are bored by history (and Israeli chocolate pudding is so much cheaper in Berlin than at home) – may have assumed that Führung aus der Mitte would mean uniforms and armored personnel carriers among the laptop-and-latte crowd in the cafes on Torstrasse, thereby definitely and possibly terminally reducing the coolness of Berlin-Mitte. They, too, need not worry.

No, what Ursula von der Leyen was trying to explain – in, it must be said, teutonically convoluted fashion – was what Germany does not want, namely a) to lead from the front (or, as she called it, “Prussian style”), or b) “dominance over our neighbors” (been there, done that, didn’t work out so well). Führung, she remarked at a recent conference in Brussels, still sounds terrible in German. “Really?” said the moderator. “I have a Führerschein (driver’s license) in my pocket.”

Nor, presumably, does von der Leyen want Germany to “lead from behind,” like Obama in Libya, meaning sitting back, letting allies screw things up, finding yourself forced to deliver weapons anyway, and ending up bombing much of the Middle East on a daily basis.

A quick and highly unscientific Google search reveals that in the business world, “leading from the center” is a recommended technique for middle managers seeking to run their departments efficiently and with a minimum of anomie, subversion, or actual insurrection (think “The Office”). While this fits neatly with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s self-description as Europe’s “Chief Facilitating Officer,” it is perhaps not a felicitous concept when applied to sovereign countries.

To be fair, the concept behind “leading from the center” is as well-meaning as it is appropriate: the idea is that Germany should assume responsibilities commensurate with its power, but that it is also dependent on and vulnerable to its neighbors and partners. Therefore, it must work together with them, offering its own resources to bolster the capacities of others. So far, so gut, as we say.

And high time, too. Germans refused for nearly a quarter-century to accept that the enlargement of the EU and NATO had allowed their country to export its border security problems outward to the periphery of Europe. It took Russia’s armed support of the “separatists” in eastern Ukraine to make them understand why the Balts are afraid. Now Merkel is holding together a European coalition against Putin, but allies still complain that they are not in the room (much less consulted) when Berlin (sporting a French fig leaf) cuts deals like the much-criticized Minsk II agreement with Moscow.

“You’ve come a long way, baby!” – a legendary 1970s advertising slogan – certainly applies to Germany in this case. But it still has quite a way to go. And maybe it needs some better copywriters.

Read more articles from the April 2015 issue FOR FREE in the Berlin Policy Journal App.

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