© REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

Seven years ago DIE ZEIT foreign editor Jörg Lau provocatively wrote of the “German love of dictators,” pointing to Germany’s uncritical embrace of autocracies, kleptocracies, and theocracies in the name of smoothly doing business, be it China, Russia, or Iran. Lau criticized the German tendency to value “stability” above all else and to characterize the alternative to dictators like Vladimir Putin always as “chaos, separatism, nationalism or even Communism.” Attempts at criticizing regimes like Putin’s was regularly denounced as “hyper-moralism”—and who are the Germans to play the school master of the world given their history?

Strikingly, this approach remains dominant in the case of Germany’s relationship with China, too. Peter Altmaier, the Economy Minister and close confident of Chancellor Angela Merkel, gave an interview on July 15 to Politico Europe defending Berlin’s refusal to take a hard line over China’s repression of Hong Kong. Altmaier argued that those advocating a more strident approach were ignoring the economic consequences of confronting Beijing. He sounded like many of his Social Democratic (SPD) predecessors, making the case for Wandel durch Handel (“change through trade”), stating, “I have always been convinced that change can be achieved through trade.” He argued that this strategy had worked with the former Soviet Union and remained the core of the German approach to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Dangerous Misconception

This answer and approach are mistaken and are quite dangerous in the longer term. The phrase of Wandel durch Handel came out of the earlier formulation of Egon Bahr of Wandel durch Annährung, or “change through rapprochement.”  This was the original concept behind the shift in the West German strategy toward the Soviet Union in the early 1970s under Chancellor Willy Brandt from one of a policy of strength to one of dialogue.

Many Germans, especially Social Democrats, believe to this day that this was the primary factor behind the peaceful reunification of Germany in 1990. It’s true that West Germany’s acceptance of the postwar territorial order and the renunciation of claims for the lost lands in the east were crucial to Mikhail Gorbachev’s acceptance that Germany was no longer a threat to the Soviet Union. Without the support of the United States, however, both with its extended deterrent and diplomacy, German unification would not have happened the way it did.

This way of thinking also downplayed the major political and ideological differences between the West and Communist East to the point that Chancellor Helmut Schmidt agreed with the East German Communist leader, Erich Honecker, that martial law was necessary in Poland in 1981. Stability trumped ideological differences, democracy, and human rights. This was a form of realism to be sure and another example of the German love of stability.

The Primacy of Economics

The reasons behind Germany’s passivity lie in the nature of the its geo-economic approach to foreign policy, which is grounded in its political economy. Germany is the most export driven economy in the world, with close to half of its GDP deriving from exports. It also has the globe’s largest per capita current accounts surplus, is heavily dependent on industry and on the import of energy and other raw materials to fuel its industrial core. The business of Germany is business and despite the importance of Moralpolitik and the need to atone for the crimes of the Third Reich, economics is seen as the foundation of both German democracy and Berlin’s international role.

This approach was adapted to Putin’s Russia from 2008 under the “partnership for modernization” of then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during the first Merkel Grand Coalition government. This concept argued that change would come through economic interdependence, or Verflechtung. The growing authoritarianism of the Putin regime and the Russian invasion of Ukraine shook, but did not break this illusion. To this day, however, German investment and trade with Russia has done practically nothing to open up the political and judicial system of Russia or to reduce its rampant corruption. Based on data compiled by Transparency International, Russia ranks 137 out of 198 countries in terms of corruption and its score of 28 out of a possible 100 has not changed since 2012. There is little evidence of much Wandel here.

Tough on Trump, Soft on Xi

China is a much more different and more important matter, given its much greater economic weight. Both China and Russia have violated international agreements with impunity, Russia in Ukraine and China in its agreement with the United Kingdom on the “one country, two systems” concept for the status of Hong Kong. Like many other Western corporations, German companies like Volkswagen, Siemens, and BASF are manufacturing in Xinjiang province where Uyghurs and other Muslims are being held in interment and labor camps.

Chancellor Merkel has been silent and Altmaier argues that it might be “too risky to pursue a confrontational course” against China. Yet, there is more risk in dealing with a country which openly violates its international agreements and lies without any attempt at pretending they are doing so. Accommodation conveys weakness and invites further pressure and blackmail, undermining the economic and political objectives of the strategy.

While German leaders have been rightly critical of US President Donald Trump’s disregard for democracy and human rights, they have their own version of value free transactional policies with regard to China, Russia, Hungary, and other illiberal regimes. Merkel’s and Altmaier’s Christian Democrats (CDU) continue to welcome Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz into the European People’s Party caucus in the European Parliament; and the government has no qualms about German car makers continuing to invest in Hungarian plants.

Thus, Berlin is not likely to use its EU presidency in the second half of 2020 to stand up to Orbán and to the consolidation of illiberalism in Poland. The current discussions in the EU about a COVID-19 fiscal stimulus package raised the issue of tying economic support to the rule of law, specifically in regard to Hungary, but this was kept out of the European Council’s final agreement.

Time to Change the Tune

With Germany presently at the EU’s helm, this would be the time to show that the EU stands for more than just economic power. Non-governmental organizations like Transparency International and German foundations have promoted a more values-based approach including support for democratic reforms, but so far Merkel’s government has fallen far short of expectations that Germany can be a leader for liberal values.

This is the more troubling since Germany’s geo-economic position is under threat from both China and Russia. The issue of intellectual property rights, equal and reciprocal access to the Chinese market, and the role of Chinese investment and takeovers of German companies in key sectors is central to Germany’s continued economic power and independence. This was pointed out last year in a major study by the German Confederation of Industry, the BDI. Russian investments, like Nord Stream 2, pose the prospect of Wandel in Germany rather than in Russia with the export of corruption and political influence buying in Germany itself, not to mention the continued waging of hybrid war by Putin in Germany.

As Lau pointed out in his 2013 article, demand for German products, investment, and expertise will survive a more balanced and critical approach. The Chinese will continue to demand German automobiles and German technology even if the chancellor meets with the Dalai Lama or is critical of the suppression of democratic rights in Hong Kong. Putin will continue to pump gas and provide oil to the German market.

Germans need to learn the lessons of their neighbors. The UK spoke of a new “golden decade” of relations with China under David Cameron, but now Boris Johnson’s government has reversed course banning Huawei from the UK 5G network and sharply criticizing China’s violation of the agreement on Hong Kong. The French government under Emmanuel Macron has also taken a tougher line on Beijing (see also “Pariscope: Macron’s Entente Cordiales Against China”).

Germany is in a far stronger position than the UK to exercise its economic power to speak for its values. Along with Paris, Berlin is key to the development of a strong EU position on China, Russia, and on authoritarians in Europe. As Andreas Fulda recently argued in a commentary for the British think tank RUSI, “Europe can no longer afford Germany’s unprincipled and failed China policy of change through trade… While trade clearly matters, European values need to be defended too.”

NB. Noah Ramsey contributed research to this article.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the trends and dynamics underlying recent geopolitical shifts, a new poll conducted by Koerber Stiftung for a special edition of The Berlin Pulse has found. In fact, from a German point of view, the coronavirus crisis has deepened major cracks in each of the three pillars that have underpinned Berlin’s foreign policy almost since World War II: European integration, the transatlantic alliance, and the export-driven economic model.

Each pillar depends on a rules-based order that is increasingly under threat. Recognizing this, Germany has gone to great lengths to promote a renewed commitment to international cooperation: from new initiatives in the UN Security Council, where the country took up its seat as a non-permanent member in January 2019, to the launch of the Alliance for Multilateralism, Berlin has placed multilateralism front and center of its agenda.

But how are these challenges, and the purported solutions, viewed by the German public, particularly in the context of the pandemic?

First off, Germans continue to feel rather comfortable in a deeply interconnected world. A majority of them believe that globalization has benefited their country (59 percent) and them personally (52 percent, compared to 47 and 49 percent, respectively, in the United States, as data gathered by the Pew Research Center shows). In a similar vein, Germans remain staunch supporters of international cooperation: 89 percent favor cooperating with other countries to solve global challenges (there’s been a slight decrease from 96 percent in 2019). When it comes to international challenges, clearly Germans do not like to go it alone.

However, there are limits to the support for global interconnectedness: a strong majority of 85 percent would like to see the production of essential goods and critical infrastructure like 5G technology returned to German soil, even at the risk of higher costs.

So how do these preferences relate to their views on European integration, the transatlantic partnership, and relations with China?

Conflicted on Brussels, Disillusioned with Washington

On Europe, Germans appear rather conflicted: A plurality of 38 percent say that their view of the EU has deteriorated amid the COVID-19 crisis, compared to 33 percent whose view has improved. While nearly three quarters agree that, given its status as a relatively wealthy country, Germany should contribute more than other countries toward solving global problems, it is not clear how this would pan out in Europe: a majority of 59 percent comes down against so-called “coronabonds”, among the most controversial topics over recent weeks.

Support for European integration becomes less ambiguous where tangible benefits are at stake: for instance, an emphatic majority of 85 percent favors a return to the Schengen Agreement, with no border checks among participating states, once the virus is defeated.

German attitudes toward the transatlantic relationship have taken a significant dive. While skepticism predates the pandemic, the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has clearly accelerated a feeling of estrangement on the German side: 73 percent of Germans say that their opinion of the United States has deteriorated—more than double the number of respondents who feel the same way toward China. And despite the close security cooperation between Washington and Berlin, merely 10 percent of Germans consider the US their closest partner in foreign policy, compared to 19 percent in September 2019.

US out, China in?

The trend of transatlantic estrangement is further underlined by the fact that the number of Germans who prioritize close relations with Washington over close relations with Beijing has decreased significantly, from 50 percent in September 2019 to the current number of 37 percent, almost equal to the number of those who see it the other way around (36 percent).

So out with the US, in with China? Not quite: Yes, the fact that the public is leaning toward a position of equidistance between Washington and Beijing should worry policy-makers. However, this is not to say that Germans are uncritical toward the People’s Republic. Over 70 percent believe that the Chinese government could have mitigated the pandemic by being more transparent in its handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Neither do Chinese propaganda efforts appear to resonate with many Germans. In contrast to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who in March declared that, given a lack of European solidarity, he was putting all his trust in Beijing, 87 percent of Germans believe that the EU is contributing more to the fight against the pandemic than China.

Negative Effects

So, what does all of this mean for the future of German foreign policy? The benefits of EU membership remain popular. However, the results suggest that the pandemic’s net effect on the EU’s image among Germans is negative. Looking west, the Atlantic seems wider than ever. Data from previous surveys suggest that German perceptions of the US closely correlate with their perceptions of the incumbent president and may thus change again. However, the growing gap between public opinion and official German foreign policy provides openings some parties are willing to try and exploit. Some in Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partner, recently advocated the removal of US nuclear weapons stored on German soil in the context of the NATO’s nuclear sharing scheme—a policy that is essential to Germany’s role within the alliance. This may just be a taster of similar debates coming up.

And China? A number of German policymakers have repeatedly warned that, wherever democratic states retreat from the international stage, authoritarian states will be quick to fill the gaps. In terms of public opinion, China appears to be on the cusp of filling the vacuum resulting from the waning of US popularity. As experts and politicians alike predict that Germany eventually will be forced to pick a side, Beijing’s growing popularity will undoubtedly complicate such a decision.

As the coronavirus pandemic underlines the urgent need for international cooperation, multilateralism appears to be faltering in both spirit and practice. Germans for one remain staunch optimists about the future of international collaboration, however, with 42 percent believing that the pandemic will lead to an increase in international cooperation. They may be in for a rude awakening.

The post Keeping an Equidistance appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Yves Herman

When you go to Berlin and discuss foreign policy, Angela Merkel’s critics and admirers agree on one thing: the chancellor pursues a typically German foreign policy—pragmatic and without any grand design in mind.

Berlin has no geopolitical culture, the argument goes. The sober “country of engineers” generally distrusts grand strategizing. German politicos like to cite the sociologist Max Weber (“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards”) or former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (“If you have visions, you should see a doctor.”)

Finally, according to this mainstream view, Germany still feels deeply uncomfortable with power politics. Berlin—very much unlike Paris—always prefers reserve to dominance, and cooperation to conflict.

Twisted Selfie

But in politics, as on Instagram, selfies are always lopsided. First, the narrative of Germany’s post-World War II aversion to thinking big and acting bigger isn’t borne out by history.

The key chancellors of post-1945 Germany—Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl—were all visionaries. They pursued a foreign policy driven by a desire to escape their country’s history and geography. The lesson from the past? If Germany with all its power, its dynamism, and its Mittellage—its central position in the heart of Europe bordering nine nations—behaves like a “normal” country, trouble looms.

Solving the so-called “German question” meant two things for German leaders. First, Bonn should withdraw from the “seesaw politics” that saw Germany pivoting between east and west. Instead, Bonn had to be clearly anchored in the West. And second, Germany should equate national with European interest. Indeed, it should be more pro-European than others. When devising national policy, it should always take into account the consequences for its neighbors.

In practice, Adenauer’s policy of West-integration rested on three pillars: reconciliation with France, European integration, and the transatlantic defense alliance NATO. In close cooperation with Washington, Brandt pursued his Ostpolitik—the double-pronged approach of firmness towards the Soviet Union coupled with a willingness for dialogue. And with reunification spurring fears of renewed German hegemony, Kohl turbo-boosted EU integration through the introduction of the euro.

These were no sober pragmatists! To quote Egon Bahr, the former state secretary to Brandt and mastermind behind Ostpolitik, they were like architects “capable of seeing something that does not yet exist,” but should. And they leveraged all their authority and pathos in order to push through their strategic visions against often heavy domestic opposition.

Mittellage 2.0

This collective memory of Germany’s foreign policy tradition is fading. And maybe that’s no coincidence at a time when Berlin is drifting away from Adenauer’s politics of West-orientation. In an world increasingly orientated to the East, the chancellor’s unconditional support of Germany’s export-industry has been shifting the country into a new geostrategic position: a global Mitellage.

Early on the chancellor realized that China was not only a rising power, but a savior for Germany’s economy. Throughout her 15-year reign, Merkel has invested much in the Beijing relationship and has visited the country every year. It has paid off. China will in a few years be more important economically for the world’s “export champion” than the United States.

In the growing trade and tech war, the Trump administration is pressing Berlin to side with Washington. But Merkel thinks in terms of issues, not geopolitical blocs and therefore is standing by her China strategy. Her economy minister, Peter Altmaier, even argues that companies from authoritarian China are as trustworthy as those from the democratic United States. Merkel feels no need to rein him in.

Instead, the chancellor is taking on her own CDU lawmakers who are threatening a rebellion over Huawei’s role in Germany’s 5G network; it’s likely the last major struggle of her political career.

Life Insurance

And what about Europe’s place in Merkel’s thinking? The chancellor never misses a chance to underline the fact that the EU has brought peace and prosperity to Germany.

Merkel sees the EU as the key instrument to ensuring stability and a multilateral rules-based order on the continent. When revanchist Russia invaded Ukraine, Merkel took the lead and forged the European response. Contrary to Paris, she resists the easy temptation to reset relations with Moscow and champions EU enlargement in the Balkans.

Economically, the EU is Germany’s “life insurance,” as Merkel put it in a recent interview with the Financial Times. The single market and the euro protect Germany’s export industry. Merkel also wants to strengthen the EU, for example by setting global regulatory standards. And she wants to collaborate on industrial policy so that Europe is not left behind in the race for tomorrow’s technology.

Finally, Merkel knows that every insurance comes with a premium. In terms of money, she is willing to increase Germany’s contribution to the EU budget after the UK exit. And in terms of politics, she has tried to accommodate Macron’s zest for action. In 2018 in the so-called “Meseberg Declaration,” Berlin and Paris outlined a European roadmap with some substantial elements.

A “Normal” Country

But contrary to her predecessors, advancing European integration is not an end in itself for Merkel. The country is reunified. The “German question,” many in Berlin believe, is solved. The EU doesn’t need any deepening just for the sake of constraining German hegemony. And contrary to Adenauer or Kohl, Merkel never felt the need to put her career on the line to advance Europe at home.

Like any other “normal” EU member state, Germany is instead free to pursue its national interest within the EU today.  And as nothing in Europe can be done against Berlin’s will, Merkel has the luxury of being able to hesitate, endure conflict, and play power politics at times.

Think of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia to Germany—the chancellor has no problem ignoring the security concerns of her eastern EU and NATO partners. In the euro crisis, Berlin largely got its way and deflected all criticism. And when deciding on exiting nuclear energy or the 2015 refugee crisis, Merkel did not coordinate her position with Paris. Such unilateralism on issues of European importance would have been unthinkable in the Bonner Republic.

Portfolio Manager

Under Merkel, Adenauer’s policy of West-orientation, the cornerstone of German post-war foreign policy, has been fading. Merkel operates like a portfolio manager, masterfully diversifying risks. If you don’t have a clear winning trade, keep all options open. This is causing Berlin to increasingly drift into a position of equidistance between China and the US.

Of course, this is not all Merkel’s doing. Today, Germany’s export economy has outgrown the West. And the global political framework is evolving. Populists are breaking apart the consensus on policies from trade to human rights that used to define the Western camp. The world is not the same as in Adenauer’s times.

But on Europe, nothing has really changed since Adenauer. Germany is still not a “normal country”—it still lies at the heart of the continent and is today more than at any time since 1945 Europe’s most powerful state. And as with General Motors, what is good for Germany is not necessarily good for the EU.

All Change?

The three top candidates for the CDU leadership disagree on many things including China. But they all reminisce about the days when CDU chancellors saw it as their job to convince Germans of the need for “more Europe.” Announcing his candidature, Friedrich Merz said “The CDU has to once again become the leading Europe-party in the Federal Republic.” Armin Laschet argued at the Munich Security Conference “in the time of Kohl, the major EU initiatives all came from Germany … you have to summon that courage today.” Norbert Röttgen even penned an answer to Macron’s vision of a “sovereign Europe.”

History had taught Germany’s post-war chancellors that looking beyond the issues of the day and its short-term interests is the only realistic way to overcome the “German question” and the country’s Mittellage. With Merkel on her way out, this line of thinking may be about to see a revival. But before that happens, Germans should update their selfie.

The post Merkel in the Middle appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS

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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Let’s start with a thought experiment: Imagine you work for a German company, university or government agency, and you’re flying to the United States for a business trip. There you meet American colleagues, and after the official work is done you go out to eat together. You’re talking about your families and recent holidays, and eventually the conversation lands on current politics: on Donald Trump’s latest Twitter thunderstorm and the support he gets from Fox News. On the situation at the Mexican border, where human rights activists are arguing with the authorities about a humane way of dealing with migrants. On the deep division between the political camps and the outlook for the coming elections. Can you imagine such a conversation with American colleagues? Probably.

And now imagine the same situation in China. You are on a business trip in Beijing or Shanghai. You meet Chinese colleagues, and after the official conversations you go to dinner. You chat about this and that and eventually, of course, also about current politics: about Xi Jinping, around whom the state broadcaster CCTV is building up a Mao-like cult of personality and whose words of wisdom are the subject of a mandatory learning app. About the internment of Uighurs in the western province of Xinjiang, which human rights activists condemn. About the protests in Hong Kong and the question of who might become China’s next head of state. Can you imagine having such a conversation with to your Chinese colleagues? Probably not. And that’s a problem.

The Things You Can’t Talk About

It is harder to speak frankly about China than about any other major topic of our time. The People’s Republic and the United States are the two formative global powers of our time. We have important relationships with both of them; neither one is easy these days. But our discussions with and about China differ from those with and about the US in a fundamental way: with Americans, we can talk about anything; with Chinese, we can’t talk so readily about a lot of things. Even when we are among ourselves, we often act differently—because Beijing could be listening. And when you can’t speak openly about something, it’s hard to reach a consensus and settle on a functional strategy.

When German top politicians go to China, commentators always ask whether they use “the right tone.” What do they say in public? What about behind locked doors? And what, in the best case, not at all? There’s no other big country that attracts the same amount of attention from commentators when it comes to this issue—not even Donald Trump’s America. There, too, diplomats do their best to skillfully handle the unpredictable president. But otherwise one can have open and “grown-up” conversations with American counterparts.

There are more than 70 bilateral dialogues between Germany and China. Among the most important are the encounters between German top managers and the Chinese leadership in the framework of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s state visits. While complaints about the conditions on the Chinese market often dominate during the run-up to the talks, in the actual conversations with the Chinese side the Germans mostly praise the good cooperation.

The fact that the managers prefer to leave the unpleasant messages to the chancellor is a something Merkel has repeatedly complained about to the business representatives.

For years, surveys conducted by German and European chambers of commerce in China have shown that foreign companies there suffer from increasingly difficult market conditions, for example due to worsening legal standards or the systemic discrimination against foreign companies. However, what is clearly apparent in surveys and is also a permanent topic in confidential discussions is not illustrated by specific examples in the press. No company wants to talk publicly about problems in China. And Chinese diplomats like to use this circumstance to refute criticism: If there really were grievances in China, why can’t this be substantiated with concrete cases? After all, one can supposedly talk about anything!

Fear of the Party State

But you cannot—at least not without consequences. Sure, there are open discussions with Chinese people. But when they occur, they are the exception rather than the rule, and proof of a particularly trusting relationship. The more the Communist Party extends its control over public discourses—in the media, in classrooms, on the Internet—the greater the worry that one might say something wrong.

Why is it so difficult for us to maintain an open dialogue with China when we can do so with the United States or other major partners? The reason is not cultural differences, which people often cite in the China case. The real reason is much more profane: We are afraid. We fear that criticism of China will have a negative effect on us: on business, on political access, on the next visa application. It’s not so much a fear of individuals, of individual business partners or interlocutors, but a fear of an increasingly autocratic political system, whose power is not restricted by laws and which employs a huge apparatus to prosecute attacks on the authority of the party.

Many incidents in recent years show that this concern is not unfounded. When a Dalai Lama quote appeared in a Daimler Instagram channel in 2018, there was immediately a wave of indignation in China. The calls for a boycott only stopped when the car manufacturer formally apologized. The Marriott hotel chain had similar problems because it had Taiwan on its list of independent countries in its booking system.

After Chinese democracy pioneer Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, Norway was inflicted with a Chinese political and economic boycott for years—despite the fact that the Nobel Prize Committee is not under the control of the Norwegian government (let alone the Norwegian salmon exporters who were excluded from the Chinese market).

Combining Political and Economic Pressure

Canada currently sees itself under similar pressure: After the Canadian police arrested Meng Wanzhou, CFO and daughter of the founder of Huawei, on the basis of an international arrest warrant, several Canadian citizens were arrested in China, including China expert and former diplomat Michael Kovrig.

This way of combining political and economic pressure has a real effect. The message is: If you are critical of China, you have to expect consequences. These often turn out to be far less dramatic than the headline-grabbing cases: permits are delayed, visas are not issued, or warnings are dropped in conversations. That’s enough to turn heads in the West. If you want smooth business or cooperation, you’d better be a little overcautious.

Often the result is heated arguments about what to say and what not to say. For example, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) published a paper in January in which it took the rather moderate position that China was not only a partner for Germany but also a “systemic competitor.” It received much praise for this unusual openness, but it also faced accusations of negligence: in China, something like this could lead to unpleasant demands and diplomatic disgruntlement that could have been avoided. This temptation to self-censor becomes fully visible when in press interviews, personalities like former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder or Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess painstakingly avoid taking a position on the detentions in Xinjiang and even claim to not know anything about them.

Distorted Discussions

From a business perspective, it’s quite understandable and, in a certain way, reasonable not to take a political position on China. Whoever is responsible for a company and its employees is therefore also responsible for ensuring that business runs smoothly. Moralizing appeals are of little use here. But on a broad scale this leads to distorted discussions, because the Communist Party has a say in what we talk about when we talk about China—not only in China, but also here in Germany and Europe.

However, with the Chinese leadership being increasingly open in its commitment to the course of authoritarian state capitalism, we have to recognize the fact that when we talk about China’s economy, we must also talk about politics. For a long time, we believed we could avoid this fact. There was hope that the economic opening would eventually be followed by a political one, and that many of our concerns would thus be resolved. This position has always been controversial, but there have always been indications that this is ultimately also the position of the Chinese leadership.

The fact that Xi Jinping began his term in office with a major reform agenda raised hopes for a new wave of liberalization. But six years later, it’s hard to avoid the reality that Chinese politics has developed differently—toward more state, more control, and more nationalism, in politics as well as in the economy.

The Limits of Misunderstandings

What can be done to hold on to China as a partner and take it seriously as a competitor? Beijing would like things to continue as before. And to interpret the West’s critical perceptions as misunderstandings. After all, China’s government insists that it is committed to the rule of law,  transparency, open markets and a multilateral world order.

There is no doubt that we would prefer nothing more than for some of our criticisms to turn out to indeed be misunderstandings. For that, the impetus, however, would need to come from Beijing. The annual position paper of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, for example, sets out what steps the Chinese government could take to convince European companies and politicians that the world’s second largest economy is still on course towards open markets and a level playing field. At the end of September, the chamber published a list of more than 800 problems that concern European companies in China. The greatest wish is “competition neutrality”, i.e. equal treatment for all companies, regardless of their ownership structure.

Five Recommendations

In Beijing, Germans and Europeans can only wish. However, at home, we have a real capacity to act. So, what can we do?

First, we must openly name and admit the dilemma we are in. That may sound obvious, but it’s not. Politicians and entrepreneurs prefer to project security rather than uncertainty or fear. Academics and think tankers prefer to talk about their knowledge rather than about gaps in that knowledge or mistakes.

It’s easy to accuse others of self-censorship, but harder to admit it ourselves. Tactically weighing up what can and cannot be said in and about China is the core of our dilemma. We have to be clear about this: The things we do not talk about in China—such as the political system, the arbitrary use of the legal system or human rights—are sensitive because they are important, not the other way round. If they had no relevance, they would not be taboo.

Second, we need more media organizations, academics, think tanks and associations that are able and willing to do research without regard to political constraints and also to name critical issues. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression and research are among the central values that distinguish our political system from the Chinese one. What comes out of this is not always pleasant, undisputed or correct. That’s the nature of such things. However, a general bashing of “the China reporting in the German media” undermines the quality of our discussions, as does the sweeping labelling of positions as pro-Chinese and anti-Chinese.

Third, Germany and Europe need strategies for a world order in which our relationship with China will be difficult for the foreseeable future. As long as Beijing’s authoritarian and nationalistic course continues, we cannot avoid seeing China in many areas as a “systemic competitor” or even rival, and drawing the necessary conclusions from this.

This in no way means that the People’s Republic is our opponent or enemy. It is not! This does, however, provide the context in which we define and prioritize our own work at home. Central to this is the strengthening of Europe as an economic area and global player. That is easier said than done, but that urgency has finally been recognized in Brussels.

Criticism Is Possible

This is exactly what the incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is talking about when she says she wants to lead a “geopolitical” commission. She is inheriting a number of initiatives and discussions that can be developed in the coming years: The EU’s Connectivity Strategy, first presented in 2018, aims to put cooperation with emerging economies on a new platform and provide a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Initiatives to promote education, research and future technologies should strengthen Europe’s competitiveness. The free trade agreement with Japan shows that Europe is in a position to forge new alliances. All these are all hard nuts to crack—but they are the right ones.

Fourth, we should talk as openly as possible with Chinese interlocutors about the dilemmas in which we find ourselves. They should be made aware how unsettled we are by China’s current course and how hard we struggle to respond properly. That applies to dealing with the government as well as with individuals. For the West’s critical attitude towards China, many Chinese only have the explanation that Beijing’s party propaganda gives them: that the West wants to prevent China’s rise. If we want them to understand our view of things, we need to explain it better.

Beijing Listens

China’s government is also reliant—as strange as this may sound—on comprehension aids. Experience in recent years has shown that Beijing can listen attentively. At the recent Belt and Road summit, Xi Jinping systematically worked through the criticisms that have been levelled at the giant project for years, such as the massive indebtedness of the partner countries or a lack of consideration for sustainability. The party no longer publicly mentions its “Made in China 2025” industrial policy, at least not by name.

Whether the new rhetoric will be followed by action is still open, but the message has at least been received. Critical strategy papers from Europe, such as the Federation of German Industry’s China paper or the EU Commission’s 10-point plan, were received in China not with joy, but with respect, and did not lead to the tit-for-tat response feared by some.

Fifth, we need a positive agenda for constructive cooperation with China. Despite the current difficulties and concerns, China is an important partner for Germany – and should remain so. A decoupling strategy such as that of the US under Donald Trump is not a realistic, let alone desirable, option for Germany and Europe.

Global political tasks such as combating climate change and its consequences, implementing the UN’s sustainability goals or securing peace only have a chance of success if the largest, richest and most powerful countries work together.

Economically, Germany and China—and by extension, Europe and China—have benefited enormously from each other in recent decades. They can continue to do so. To create open and fair market conditions for this is possible and is in both sides’ interest; a realization that is political mainstream at least when it comes to words and that can be followed by action again once the wave of economic nationalist solo attempts subsides. Germany and China are also more socially networked than ever before.

The much-described era of a “low trust world” does not need to become a self-fulfilling prophecy if cooperation continues: with new openness on both sides. Europeans and the Chinese will continue to be successful together where this succeeds. And nothing creates more trust and understanding than mutual success.

The post Silence is Silver appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

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In his speech to the UN General Assembly at the end of September, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas promised more “sustainability” in foreign policy. Crisis prevention would play an essential role in this, he said. On the same day, the German government presented three new policies on crucial areas of preventive action: security sector reform (SSR), rule of law support, and transitional justice. They represent a welcome step forward but need to be developed further to be effective.

Since 2014, the German government has significantly increased its involvement in fragile states. The German Foreign Office’s project funds for crisis prevention, stabilization, and peace-building alone have quadrupled since then—to €396 million in the current budget. These funds are in addition to Germany’s development aid, the majority of which is spent in fragile states as well. Iraq, Mali, Afghanistan, and Niger are some of the countries where the Auswaertiges Amt uses the stabilization funds to support humanitarian mine clearing, police training, or peace mediation.

Three Sectors Shaping Transition Processes

Security sector reform, transitional justice, and rule of law shape social transformation processes in fragile states. What sounds quite technical actually has real-life consequences for millions of people in countries undergoing transition periods after war and authoritarian rule. Germany’s new strategies recognize the most important challenges related to these concepts.

For authoritarian leaders, the police, armed forces, and government-aligned militia are key instruments to secure their rule. Retraining forces, demobilizing militias, and reducing the military’s control of the economy are crucial for conflict transformation. International support for security sector reform needs to be finely calibrated. There may be considerable resistance to giving up power and access to resources. Moreover, training and equipping government forces may deepen distrust among parts of the population that see them as representatives of a deeply discriminatory state.

After war and tyranny, smoldering grievances can trigger new conflicts if left unaddressed. Truth commissions, special tribunals or compensation mechanisms can make an important contribution to reconciliation and help prevent renewed violence. There has been considerable international experience since the Nuremberg trials in the 1940s and the truth commissions in South Africa and South America in the 1990s. One of these lessons is that there is never a straightforward path toward transitional justice, and that the expectations for truth, justice, reparations, and healing may differ widely between national and international actors, as well as among different victim groups.

In countries marked by repression, violence, and weak state capacity, the justice system is often deeply dysfunctional. In Sri Lanka, a relatively wealthy and capable state, it still takes 10 years for a serious criminal offence to reach an indictment at the High Court, and an additional seven years for the appeals process. Moreover, powerful politicians or business people have substantial resources to delay or evade judicial proceedings altogether. Authoritarian regimes stuff courts with biased judges or adopt discriminatory laws. Reforming the justice system is thus not just a technical task but touches on politically sensitive areas as well. Lastly, informal, traditional and religious mechanisms may offer complimentary sources of justice, but international actors like the German government are right to insist on their alignment with the protection of fundamental rights, including those concerning minorities and women.

Focus, Details, and Embassies

There is strong conceptual thinking in the document that are going to underpin the German government’s work on prevention and stabilization. At the same time, Berlin needs to develop them further to ensure they are not just policies, but strategies worthy of that name. Three areas stand out.

First, focus. The three strategies differ widely in their discussion of the value-added that Germany can provide. The transitional justice strategy shows the greatest coherence. It identifies four priorities and allocates individual measures to them. The German government wants to embed transitional justice in a “prevention agenda” of political reforms, empower victim groups, promote gender equality and make use of Germany’s specific experience in dealing with its Nazi and communist past.

In the area of promoting the rule of law, the strategy mentions that the focus should be on binding administrations to the rule of law. However, this is not further explained or used as an ordering principle. The SSR strategy even manages to not set any priorities. This is surprising in so far as Germany’s system of parliamentary control of the armed forces and the leadership concept in the Bundeswehr (“Innere Führung”) could provide valuable lessons for its SSR support.

Second, details. Monitoring and evaluation are important, and they are mentioned in all three strategies. On SSR, the government commits itself to conflict-sensitivity, the “do no harm” principle and “more exchange” between the ministries. Except for such generic commitments, it remains unclear, however, to what extent the government will vet individual participants in SSR programs and trace their deployment after their training. On rule of law, the strategy mentions the rule of law dialogues with China and Vietnam as examples of long-term engagement. Here it is important to reflect more on the ambition of such dialogues: While individual legislative proposals may be defused, the overall one-party-system remains in place. On transitional justice, it is baffling that the strategy doesn’t mention the on-going practice of German law enforcement to pursue mass atrocity crimes under the principle of universality, for example in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Third, embassies. All three strategies emphasize the importance of political dialogue accompanying programmatic efforts. Significant portions of this political dialogue will fall on German embassies in fragile countries, which are frequently ill-equipped for the growing demands placed on them. With often less than a handful of staff, German diplomats not only need to provide country analyses, but also spot opportunities for programmatic efforts, monitoring their progress and ensuring continued political buy-in with national stakeholders. In addition, the more projects there are in fragile countries, the more likely are visits by German policymakers, which absorb significant bureaucratic resources. Embassies will also need to replicate the growing cooperation between government ministries and non-governmental organizations in Germany at an operational level in their respective country. Only if embassies have enough qualified staff can they adequately fulfill these tasks, and remind their counterparts of their political commitments, if necessary.

Overall, the strategies are a demonstration of Germany’s growing investment in prevention and stabilization. They are testament to a new way of doing business marked by growing transparency, agility, and cooperation with outside experts. This is not enough though. Credibility and larger issues matter, too. Global trade, economic, climate and arms export policies can be structural drivers of conflict. A sustainable foreign policy worthy of the name needs not only verifiable strategies, but also a holistic approach.

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“Multilateralism is under fire precisely when we need it most”, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated when accepting the Charlemagne Prize in May. Indeed, in recent years we have seen a revival of great power politics and unilateral action, while support for international institutions has weakened.

The good news: some middle powers have joined forces to reinvigorate collective action and the multilateral order, with Germany and France at the forefront. At the opening of the 74^th United Nations General Assembly, on Thursday a number of countries will officially launch what has been in the air for a while: an Alliance for Multilateralism, bringing together states that share an interest in not only upholding but further developing the current multilateral order.

The launch is timely, coming in the midst of populist and nationalist resurgences. In order for the alliance to succeed, its members will have to consider three key issues: the group’s normative underpinnings, its agenda, and the geopolitical implications.

Germany and Its Partners

The idea of founding a “multilateral club” of like-minded states is more than a year old: German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas first it during his visit to Tokyo in July 2018. He proposed an “alliance of multilateralists” to defend and develop international rules and to fill the vacuum that had emerged following the withdrawal of “others”—read: Donald Trump’s United States—from the world stage.

Canada was presented as another member of the alliance’s core group during the German ambassadors’ conference in August 2018. Finally, France joined as the fourth core group member: in a joint op-ed, Maas and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian emphasized that an Alliance for Multilateralism was “more necessary than ever” to stabilize the rules-based international order.

Since then, Germany and France have held consultations with various countries, most extensively during the handover of the presidency of the UN Security Council in April 2019. The countries they approached included Argentina, Australia, Chile, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

While Canada and Japan have officially expressed their support for the initiative, others have been more wary. The more hesitant camp comprises states with traditionally very close ties with the United States, toward which the alliance’s proponents have remained rather ambiguous. Minister Maas has repeatedly emphasized that the grouping is not directed against anyone. Yet his assertion that he “wouldn’t slam the door in anyone’s face” if there was an interest in joining was probably not received as a friendly invitation by his colleagues in Washington.

Ambiguity and Lack of Substance

Terminology does not help Maas’ case: at the very core, the term “alliance” invokes associations of the transatlantic alliance or the Allied Powers of World War II. What these alliances had in common at their inception is that they were clearly directed against someone. While the German foreign minister was eager to emphasize the inclusive character of the grouping, he could not forestall doubts on the other side of the Atlantic and among some traditional US allies (see for instance David Ritchie, Alliance for Multilateralism: An Australian View, from the BPJ’s July/August 2019 issue).

Alliances are also usually defined by a settled membership, unlike the idea of flexible geometry that has now been attached to the Alliance for Multilateralism. Rather than consisting of a defined number of members, this alliance, its creators hope, will gather combinations of countries under its umbrella to take the lead on specific international challenges.

In addition, the term “multilateralism” might not have been the best choice for the minister’s signature project. A recent survey has shown that most citizens in Germany have never heard of the concept or are unaware of its meaning. The numbers in other countries are likely similar. This is not a trivial flaw in a time where populists often set the agenda. But among policy-makers, too, interpretations of multilateralism vary. Chinese political leaders, for example, have acted as defenders of the multilateral system even though they do not attach the same meaning to it as many Western powers, who implicitly regard multilateralism as synonymous with (or at least largely congruent with) the rules-based and liberal international order.

Terminology aside, there is yet another, more substantial weakness of the Alliance for Multilateralism, namely its hazy agenda. As multilateralism is, first and foremost, a tool of international politics, the policy issues one seeks to address in a multilateral manner need to be defined. Diplomats have linked the alliance to climate change, trade, international humanitarian law, and migration, among other things. But the topics have varied since the idea was first presented. A clear-cut agenda is not in sight, and the form and substance of the alliance are still to be defined.

Three Suggestions

How to make the alliance a success, i.e. to help it become a tool for reviving collective action in international politics? Here are three suggestions:

Communicate your normative baseline clearly: The first task will be to come up with an “Alliance for Multilateralism in a nutshell”, outlining the core features and objectives of the club. An important component of this would be to work out the normative underpinnings that the Alliance adheres to. Clearly, multilateral cooperation and the liberal international order are not the same thing. However, they must be seen as two sides of the same coin: multilateralism is codified in the United Nations, and the latter’s charter was largely built on liberal-democratic ideals. This also underpins the idea of an Alliance for Multilateralism as pursued by Germany, France, and other partners. These countries would do well to be explicit about their view of the international order and the rules and principles they attach to it. After all, doing so would enable other potential partners to decide whether they want to be part of the club. Nobody likes to buy a pig in a poke.

Be bold when setting the agenda. The issues that have been floated so far—climate action, international humanitarian law, migration, trade—are all crucially important. At the same time, various regimes are already in place for regulating and addressing them (e.g. the Paris Agreement, the Geneva Conventions, the Migration Compact, the World Trade Organization). Living up to the ambitions of these frameworks and institutions—and where needed, reinvigorating them—should be a priority of the alliance. It will be even more important, however, to address the “jungle”, i.e. the areas of international collaboration that are not currently regulated by international organizations or regimes. Cyber security and the digitalization of weapons systems are preeminent areas in this respect; biotechnology and geoengineering would be others. In driving forward global governance where it is needed most, the alliance should not shy back from picking these issues as its core projects.

Take geopolitics seriously and involve the US: With all the emphasis on “soft” matters, one must not forget that the multilateral order of the past decades was built on the convergence of great power politics, especially in the 1945 postwar period and the 1990s. The order flourished when the interests of great powers aligned. In times when this is no longer a given, reviving the international order requires the alliance to also address underlying geopolitical rivalries. To do so, the members could come up with joint policy proposals on the world’s geopolitical focal points, such as Syria or Yemen. The role of Australia and Luxembourg in negotiating humanitarian access to Syria in 2013 has proven that coalitions of small(er) states can make a difference when great powers are caught in a political standoff.

Engaging in geopolitical thinking implies that the alliance will have to come clean regarding its relationship with Washington. Despite all the current transatlantic (and trans-Pacific) quarrels, the United States is certainly the great power that shares most of the norms and values that the prospective members of the alliance adhere to. They should therefore actively search for common ground. A starting point could be to take the American criticism of the current multilateral system and its institutions seriously, and to come up with proposals for how to ramp up its effectiveness.

Multilateralism has to regain the strategic initiative. In order to win the race against nationalist and populist tendencies, the rules-based international order has to produce innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. The Alliance for Multilateralism has the potential to give fresh impetus to this undertaking. But it will need to be clearer, bolder, and not shy away from power politics.

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The German government has just decided not to back a US-led mission to protect the shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. It will now find it harder to work for its interests in the region.

To be sure, de-escalating the conflict between the United States and Iran is the key to lowering risks in the Gulf. But it would help to have an international mission in place that could keep Iran from meddling with the shipping in the Gulf, reliably monitor the movements in the Gulf, offer dispute settlement, and work toward regional stability.

Yet Germany, which is critical of the Trump administration’s strategy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, has opted to withhold support from a Washington-led naval mission in Persian Gulf. Although this dissatisfaction with the US Iran strategy is widely shared in Europe, refusing to participate will weaken Germany’s position vis-à-vis Tehran and Washington, thus playing into the hands of both. Therefore, it is now crucial for Europe to engage in a way that is complementary and not in competition with the US-led effort.

Competing Plans among Allies

A fifth of all oil shipments worldwide—an average of 14 tankers per day—run through the Strait of Hormuz. The escalation of the US-Iran conflict has put free passage through the Strait in jeopardy. Shipping companies run the risk that Iran or Iranian-backed groups will attack or seize their vessels, as happened twice in July. Germany has an interest in upholding free passage through the Strait of Hormuz for reasons of global economic stability and of regional order, including the protection of Israel.

There have been intense debates about the character of a potential maritime mission in the Strait, with questions about its optimal size or duration. European navies have experience with anti-piracy missions, but this time the mission would have to deter attacks from a state actor equipped not only with speedboats but also helicopters, drones, and air defense. To what extent should the mission rely on coercion and deterrence? Participants would also have to credibly threaten retaliation against targets in Iran. What legal basis would the mission have?

By the end of July, two competing initiatives were on the table. The US government circulated a proposal, first in NATO, for participating nations to provide joint surveillance and protect ships running under their own flag. The Americans did not get more than lukewarm support for the initiative. Their allies in Europe and Asia feared being dragged into escalation, in line with Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

After the seizure of a British tanker by Iranian forces on July 20, the outgoing British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt proposed a European naval mission, detached from America’s disruptive strategy, with the objective of lowering tensions. There was some support in France and Germany for such a format, but the change of the British government changed the tone as well. The new foreign minister, Dominic Raab, made clear that the mission should not take place without US support. On July 31, US and UK representatives met at a Gulf Maritime Security Conference in Bahrain to sound out the options.

Three Dilemmas for Berlin

It was then that Germany announced that it would not to take part in a US-led mission. The US had made its request for support public, and the German reflexes were not surprising. “Out of the question,” said Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesperson of the Social Democrats in the Bundestag—the frail SPD, junior partner in Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, does not want to alienate its peace-oriented electoral base.

But this question is not dividing the government. While Merkel’s CDU/CSU had promised to look into the US request, it was never inclined to follow America’s lead into escalation either. The German position remains to opt for strategies of diplomacy and de-escalation, albeit without specifying how that should work and without testing the theory that an international presence on the Gulf might help make these viable. Germany is not alone; other Europeans, notably the French, hold this view as well. But the seemingly reasonable “no” creates unintended consequences that Germany should avoid.

That is dilemma number one: The Europeans cannot cooperate with their strongest ally in a crisis situation that is very relevant for Europe. They do not trust the US government to not escalate tensions—and not utilize the international support for the mission in order to coerce Iran militarily. Europe and the US have been at odds over the right Iran strategy ever since the Americans withdrew from the nuclear agreement in May 2018 and heightened economic pressure against Iran. This division will be present for quite a while, and it will get even deeper now that most Europeans are staying out of the naval mission.

Dilemma number two is that the transatlantic struggle makes Iran happy. It is hard to judge whether Tehran is applying these needling tactics to raise attention, to get compensation for the tougher sanctions, or to deter the US from further escalating the conflict. The attacks could be an indication of a helpless government under pressure, with an economy in free fall. In any case, it will serve the Iranians if the rift between the transatlantic rift becomes deeper. The US president has forgotten this, but it was Western unity that brought Iran to the negotiation table.

What’s more, Germany’s “no” does not punish the US, rather the opposite, which forms dilemma number three. The Trump administration believes it has time on its side to force Iran to the negotiation table, without being drawn into a war. If tensions increase, the US can act without the Europeans.

In fact, Trump wins whether the Europeans participate or not. If international support comes together, it adds legitimacy and lowers the financial burden. If not, America can still protect her own ships. Yes, many will complain about the erosion of American benevolent hegemony, but helping others for free is not part of Trump’s electoral appeal. If Europe abstains from the mission, it will be easier for Trump to snub allies who fail to stand up for their own interests and pressure them to increase defense spending in accordance with their obligations in NATO. Germany will now find it harder to work around the Trump administration when negotiating with Washington about burden-sharing.

Few Good Outcomes for Germany

At the moment, the possible outcomes of the Gulf crisis do not look desirable for Germany. If the US patrols alone or with the British, this might induce Iran to test the mission’s vigilance. Provocations and misunderstandings could lead to military exchanges—with German ships unprotected. In assessing what has happened in crisis situations, Germany would have to rely on the reporting of others. And uncontrolled escalation and use of force would affect German interests, but there would be few ways it could involve itself in conflict management.

Even if the mission and the sanctions successfully force Iran to the negotiation table, Germany and the EU might no longer be the players they were when the nuclear agreement was crafted back in 2015. It will look bad that Germany opted out and let others do the job.

Instead of giving a flat “no,” Germany should lead the debate about how the Europeans could stage their own mission with a friendlier face and more elements than patrolling. Admittedly, such duplication might require a lot of energy for coordination and add the burden of sorting out who does what and when. Running two separate missions would also deprive European navies of the support they could receive when cooperating with the Americans, such as in reconnaissance or re-fueling. Nevertheless, a European mission to secure the Persian Gulf could bring in elements that are complementary to the US-UK mission. Germany should work in this direction.

Monitoring will be key, to make sure that Iranian activities against German ships cannot go undetected. Germany, France, the UK, and Belgium could bring the question of an international monitoring mission to the UN Security Council. Even without producing a UN mandate for a EU mission, such a debate might pave the way for a wider internationalization of crisis management.

Moreover, Berlin could turn to the EU to set up a framework in which the regional partners and Iran as well as the UK and the US would be tied in. Consultation among the littoral states of the Persian Gulf already exists, but a new format could accompany the growing international presence there. Its objective should be to design confidence-building measures, such as consultation and clearing mechanisms, and produce schedules for on-site visits or overflights. This would make a mission conducive to the goal of de-escalation. The EU has hosted negotiations about the nuclear agreement, so it is a natural player here. If the UK and the EU can be tied into that mission package, it will also show how close London and the continent still are.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

When NATO celebrated its 70^th anniversary in early April, feelings in Germany were mixed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government dutifully praised NATO’s achievements but could not hide its embarrassment when US President Donald Trump once again criticized Germany for failing to keep its promises on military spending.

Yet Merkel’s government is doing exactly what most Germans want. A clear majority says that NATO is important to secure peace and useful to Germany, according to a recent infratest dimap poll. Yet the same poll also shows a majority opposed to increasing military spending to the two percent of GDP to which all NATO members committed, Germany included.

Have-your-cake-and-eat-it is not an unusual attitude anywhere. But what is striking is the extent to which Germany indulges in it. After more than 70 years of peace and a decade of economic growth, this whole nation has wrapped itself deeply into the comfort zone. Germans do not want to know about threats or conflicts that might necessitate any kind of action. Close your eyes, and those conflicts might go away.

Renouncing Strategic Thinking

By blinding itself to the risks and threats around it, Germany has also renounced strategic thinking: about its role today and in the future; about defining who its friends and enemies are, and anything in-between; and about resolving conflicts between its economic interests and its political and moral code.

There are three areas where this refusal to think strategically is particularly noticeable: first, in the relations with the United States and Russia; second, concerning military matters; and third, in Germany’s failure to lead Europe. In all three areas, there is a pronounced lack of leadership from the chancellor and the political elites. The effect is a slow erosion of the political loyalties and convictions that hold the country together.

Take the dramatic rise of anti-Americanism, fueled not only by US President Donald Trump’s dreadful politics but also by Merkel’s refusal to define Germany’s core interests in a continuing relationship with Washington. In February, a ZDF Politbarometer poll that showed that 86 percent of Germans do not believe that under Trump’s leadership, the United States is a reliable partner for Europe’s security.

In fact, Germans are far more worried about Trump (82 percent) than about Vladimir Putin (56 percent)—despite the Russian president’s aggression against Ukraine and his continuing efforts to undermine democracy and social cohesion in the West. Merkel, in the meantime, continues to support the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, but the chancellor makes little effort to explain her reasons for doing so. Nor does she encourage a debate on the future relations between Russia and Europe.

Don’t Mention the Bundeswehr

Germany’s highly ambiguous relationship with its military follows a similar pattern. Merkel never talks about the Bundeswehr or NATO, if she can avoid it—it’s a topic she personally doesn’t much care for and which won’t win her any votes. If the German armed forces today are underfunded and ill-equipped, it’s largely due to her governments’ profound lack of interest.

Lack of commitment also means that Germany’s elites have failed to build any kind of popular consensus around the Bundeswehr: why it exists, what it should do, and how much that should be worth to the taxpayer. As a result, a sizeable part of the population considers the use of hard power illegitimate on principle.

A fine example of that kind of thinking was recently set by the Social Democratic Party, Merkel’s junior partner in government. At an SPD congress in Berlin, the local party delegates decided that the Bundeswehr should be banned from visiting schools in order to inform students about its mission. If implemented, this would be a break with a long-standing tradition throughout Germany.

“Military organizations will be prohibited from advertising at Berlin schools for serving and working in the military domain,” the Berlin SPD declared. The proponents’ main argument was that school children were at an age where “they are vulnerable to military propaganda and the minimization of the real dangers of a military mission.”

A side effect of this anti-military current is the strong public opposition against arms exports. While from a moral point of view, this is certainly a viable choice, it carries a price: without exports, the German or European arms industry cannot produce weapons systems in sufficient numbers to make them affordable for the Bundeswehr.

This also causes huge strain in Franco-German relations. France, which has far fewer qualms about exporting arms, sees the future of European defense in danger if it becomes impossible to develop and build major weapons systems with Germany.

Silent on the Big Picture

Defense is only one area in which France’s President Emmanuel Macron is gnashing his teeth at Berlin’s lack of strategy and consistency. It has been 18 months since Macron gave his Sorbonne speech, an impassioned appeal to build a much more integrated and powerful European Union. But while Merkel and her ministers have been keen to push forward with bilateral and EU agreements for specific policies, they have remained silent on the big picture: what is Germany’s vision for Europe? What are the institutions and policies that will allow the EU to regain popular support and defend Europe’s position in the world?

It is impossible to define the future of Europe without a clear definition of Germany’s own interests vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Or without defining the means to pursue those interests. Yet this isn’t happening, and as a result, Germany has turned into a black hole at the center of Europe: the biggest and most powerful country, indispensable to the EU’s survival and success—but too deeply ensconced in its comfort zone to face up to its responsibilities.

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© Fabrice Coffrini/Pool via REUTERS

Traditionally, German foreign policy has been viewed and shaped through two prisms, that of the European Union and that of the transatlantic relationship. The country’s involvement in the EU and NATO, and its close cooperation and coordination with Washington have presented a normative frame of reference and practical operational framework for (West) German foreign policy ever since the 1950s. But now the cracks are starting to show.

For Germany, this means not to turn away from one organization or the other–on the contrary. In terms of economic, political, security and defense policy, Germany depends heavily on both and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. This is all the more true as global institutions see their foundations shaken, paradoxically, by pressures from the United States. It will therefore be in Germany’s interest to make its relations with its European partners, and any resultant relations with the US, as targeted and resilient as possible.

A Question of Global Governance

In today’s rapidly changing world order, Germany’s European agenda has become more multi-faceted than in previous decades. While initially, it was about deepening and expanding the EU, now crisis management has increasingly been pushed to the fore.

To this day, Germany’s EU policy is an expression and consequence of the fact that Germany and Europe require a reliable international regulatory framework in order to secure peace, stability, and prosperity. However, at a time of rapid international change and growing strategic competition between great powers, this policy is becoming part of a more comprehensive form of global governance. As international institutions and laws are being called into question, notably by the US, this has become a pressing task for a middle-sized power with powerful international ties–a task that cannot be achieved alone. If Germany wants to help shape the discourse on an international level, it can only do this effectively–if at all–with the help of its European partners and through the EU.

At this point, three priorities emerge for Germany’s European policy. First, the community’s inner workings must be improved and its future as a cohesive whole secured, rendering it stronger in the global race between economic regions, political systems, and from a security and defense perspective. Second, it must fend off external influences and attempted divisions, thereby improving conditions for joint action on foreign policy. Third, it must safeguard the influence of the EU and its member states in the further development of international laws and organization.

Improving Resilience

Today, European politics is no longer a matter of the voluntary realization of a grand integration project, the “ever closer union” that was envisaged by the Treaty of Rome of 1957. The pressing task at hand is to adapt and integrate existing achievements–such as the eurozone, the single market, and passport-free travel within the Schengen area–to make them sustainable. This must be addressed despite the political climate which has seen polarization increase significantly both within and between member states, in part due to the rise of right-wing populist parties.

For a decade, Germany’s European policy has focused on the North-South divide. The financial and economic crises, which rippled out of the US and toward Europe in 2007-08, and the subsequent economic, banking, and national debt crises deepened economic rifts, making political differences in the eurozone all the more stark. Those showed in disputes over appropriate political responses, open criticism of Germany’s approach, and harsh polemic in the Greek and German media. The antagonism between donor and debtor nations which has pervaded the eurozone since 2010 is undoubtedly no longer a simple matter of north and south. It has long borne traces of an East-South divide: as previous and potential recipients of support and in light of their lower income per capita, some central and eastern European and Baltic members of the eurozone view national developments, such as those in Italy and Greece, with suspicion and consider them deeply irresponsible.

A new debate has arisen over legitimacy. On the one side, governments and societies criticize “the politics of austerity” and European controls over national political decisions on domestic and economic matters as too extensive; on the other, there are those who consider non-compliance with common rules and agreements in the eurozone to be illegitimate and divisive.

Uphold the Rule of Law

If we are to attain better socioeconomic cohesion and acceptance of the common European economic system, the balance between legal compliance and political action, between solidarity and personal responsibility, must be rejigged. This would entail a review of the basic regulations of the single market and the eurozone as well as improvements to the cross-border functioning of the capital, goods, services, and labor markets. These are the tools required to provide a stabilizing effect if neither monetary policy nor market mechanisms are able to guarantee the adjustments required in the event of asymmetrical shocks.

Germany and France are expected to continue working on developing instruments for macroeconomic stabilization. Another important step is to agree on a financial transaction tax, which would provide the EU with tax-based budgetary resources, as well as measures to combat tax dumping through harmonization of corporate taxes. Additional important steps for supporting growth and convergence include greater support from structural reforms, European research and innovation initiatives to support the digital revolution, and work on the European capital markets union, aiming to improve financing options in the EU.

In recent years, increasing reference has been made to an–at times discernibly–growing rift between the East and West within the EU. The discourse on Europe in some central and eastern European nations is particularly vehement in its prioritizing of questions of identity and sovereignty. Criticism of the EU is often combined with a radical rejection of migrants of a Muslim background. The Hungarian and Polish governments push explicitly illiberal democratic models and must be held accountable for violations against the principles of the rule of law and democracy.

Beyond the East-West Divide

The dichotomy between models of liberal Western democracy and society and openness toward more integration on one side and models of illiberal democracies and societies as well as isolationist politics and criticism of the EU on the other can no longer be reduced to a fault line between East and West. It has long been the case that parties in almost all EU member states have formed and succeeded in speaking for those who feel they have lost out to globalization, see no benefits to stronger cooperation in Europe, and push for a return to the nation state. As uncomfortable as it may be, these forces must be integrated into the discussion regarding the future of Europe, and they must be challenged to formulate their own ideas in a concrete way.

Euroskeptic, often populist parties and movements receive external support, be it from Russia or the US, for instance from the former head of the Breitbart News website Stephen Bannon, with a view to weakening Europe from within: with targeted propaganda, the dissemination of fake news, and support from the extreme right and left. They reject greater European cooperation, pushing instead for an identity-based nationalism. It is crucial to the EU’s future to be able to fend off the external influences which seek to divide it, undermine its ability to act, and weaken democracies and democratic powers.

For decades–and to its own advantage–the US has supported the integration of Europe and worked toward a close transatlantic relationship. The current US president has called the transatlantic alliance into question, triggering incentives for cooperation and integration within the EU, such as in matters of defense. Washington continues to send political signals which could, or may even be intended to, undermine European unity.

Germany now has the task of tackling interference from Washington and strengthening the EU, as Washington’s negotiating partner, in those areas where Brussels has a claim to representation, such as in trade policy. When it comes to defense, it is not a matter of strengthening cooperation between Europeans “against Washington,” as is often surmised. It’s a case of strengthening Europe’s capabilities within the context of NATO and, in doing so, increasing its contribution to the alliance.

Strategic Dilemma

In the case of China, defending against interference and reducing dependence while maintaining close relations is a real balancing act. Following strategic investments, among other moves, China has developed considerable influence within the EU and must be viewed as a potential threat. Defense strategies such as screening investments or utilizing political criteria for procurement are not enough–particularly as measures developed to ban Chinese investments in strategic industries are limited in their effectiveness if Chinese businesses are operating through European companies.

China’s perceived strength is also an expression of Europe’s weaknesses. Germany and the EU’s innovative powers are waning, and they are investing too little. This trend shows the EU’s strategic dilemma particularly when dealing with the crises in the eurozone. China made strategic investments in Portugal and Greece. During the crisis, the governments of these countries understandably allowed Chinese money into the country. Considering Germany’s own economic development, this is a rational short-term strategy, as long as Germany and the EU underinvest structurally.

However, the medium-term impact on the EU and the member states is only gradually becoming clear. When it comes to the EU or the UN, governments of countries in receipt of considerable investment from China consistently “toe the line” dictated by Beijing. Indeed, in 2017 Greece blocked a joint EU declaration on China before the UN Human Rights Council, and Hungary refused to sign an EU statement on the arrests of lawyers in China. Similarly, Greece and the Czech Republic advocated watering down EU regulations on controls on Chinese investments.

A Creator of Order

The European economic debate’s narrow focus on consolidation instead of investment has other, occasionally dramatic effects within the context of global power shifts, strategic competition, and rapidly advancing technological developments. Europe is at risk of falling behind the US and China in the race for artificial intelligent and biotechnology. The most successful online portals have long since ceased to be European ones. Significant sectors of the automobile industry are feeling the pressure; Germany has lost industries such as consumer electronics, telecommunications, computing and solar energy. A boost in European potential for growth and innovation and therefore the preservation of Europe’s economic powerbase is required to strengthen cohesion within the EU and make it possible for it to take on a formative role. This applies especially to new sectors such as artificial intelligence, cyber security, and other fields with basic regulatory requirements.

In light of its economic model, its traditions, and the orientation of its values as concern foreign policy and its understanding of itself from a security perspective, Germany has indicated that international laws and institutions will remain essentially functional. New regulatory frameworks will be established in order to, for example, keep up with the pace of technological developments. Another sensible aim of German’s European policy is therefore to strengthen Europe’s international role, enabling the EU to have an impact on shifts in the world order.

Germany’s Role at the United Nations

Germany has committed to using its temporary seat on the UN Security Council to represent European interests. Symbolically, it is sharing its presidency with France for the first time. Its top priority is to take an active role in the vital discussions surrounding UN reform–especially with the US, which may withdraw from more UN organizations, or reduce funding for them.

Germany’s strategy as regards its seat on the UN Security Council is to be viewed within the context of further efforts to give the EU a more powerful voice on the global stage. The German government supports majority decisions in EU foreign policy in order to make the likelihood of a decision being reached more probable. However, a unanimous decision must first be made regarding the change in this voting model. Due to the external influences mentioned above, it is also highly unlikely that the EU will actually take this step; at best, it will first identify individual fields in which a majority decision can be reached.

Finally, Germany should assume the role of an engine in the further development of civil crisis management, in European collaborations on defense within the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), and in smaller formats. As cooperative efforts on defense intensify, one must also anticipate criticisms that Europe is working “against the US,” if, for example, it promotes its own industrial defense projects. This insinuation must immediately be countered with the fact that the initiatives are taking place within the NATO framework.

Hanging in the Balance

Germany also has an important role to play in intra-European discourse, as some central and eastern European states in particular view themselves as considerably dependent on the US. Together with France and other EU partners, Germany needs to engage in deeper strategic talks to develop a common understanding of the changing challenges, its own and more common goals, and the instruments required to achieve them. With this in mind, European partners require more than to simply establish the necessary forums and processes between themselves. A crucial factor will be whether a genuine interest exists on both the German and the other side to enter this highly political discussion in an honest and committed way, in order to make Europe more capable of acting strategically.

Germany’s European policy must get to grips with a paradox: in light of international challenges, European cooperation has never seemed so important, while the centrifugal forces at work within the EU have never been so great, strengthened as they are by strategically exercised external influences. Together with France, Germany must work on solutions to enable the EU to deal with the challenges–both internal and external–which can no longer be denied.

Over the past couple of years, both countries have demonstrated to differing degrees that they recognize the signs of the times. If they run on sight, and if red lines are considered more important than developing strategic courses for action–be they in matters of the eurozone, defense or enlargement policy–then the shifting internal and external environment will continue to shrink the scope of European policy. Part of the discussion must focus on how Europe can secure and build on its remaining strengths and which options for power it can develop in order to avoid becoming a plaything–or worse, one plaything among many–in a world of strategic competition and zero-sum game thinking. To guarantee its resilience and power to act in international affairs, Germany and its EU partners must invest much more in the internal cohesiveness of the EU.

Just over two years ago, Germany’s mantra for its European policy was that the EU would make it through the age of Brexit with its 27 states intact. London’s attempts to conduct talks with a view to reaching an agreement on the side, in the interests of German industry based in the United Kingdom, fell flat in Berlin. The aim was to make any attempt to copy the UK seem unappealing and to ensure that its threats to leave did not change the fundamental principles of the EU.

Greater Flexibility

From the German perspective, it still makes sense to define the reference group for discussions surrounding the future of the EU as participants in the single market. It also remains the correct approach to hold fast to two principles: first of all, the freedoms of the single market and the European legal system, including the Copenhagen criteria on democracy and the rule of law, are and remain the basic principles of the EU. Second of all, the EU institutions must be protected and strengthened in their contractual duties, especially following this year’s European elections.

Nevertheless, there are grounds for greater flexibility in European cooperation. Europe is ultimately only a persuasive power by virtue of its success. If the system remains in a self-blockade, it will be necessary to work together to solve the problems in smaller groups of countries. In doing so, the edges of the community become blurred: as the EU struggles to differentiate itself internally, opportunities arise to cooperate more closely with neighbors, with the UK as a former EU state and with candidate countries. Brexit will contribute considerably toward making the future conversation on some topics, such as security and defense policy, more a matter of the creative role of Europe rather than that of the EU.

To preserve the internal cohesion of the EU, or at least that of the eurozone, Germany must show a greater willingness to compromise on economic organization and finally agree to the creation of stabilizing instruments and a greater sharing of risks in return for mechanisms which exert effective pressure on national politics. This will come at an acceptable price, considering the enormous benefits Germany derives from the existence of the euro, its functionality, and the single market. Together with France, Germany must also press ahead with discussions on the EU’s competitive position. The ban on the merger between Siemens and Alstom rail operations has made it clear that this must include not just a strategic research and innovation policy but also a discussion about an industrial and competition policy which looks to the future.

The Age of Minilateral Relations

Diplomatic efforts must be reinforced when it comes to seeking compromises and building a sustainable consensus. A new age of bilateral and minilateral relations began just a few years ago, when there was talk of reducing or even withdrawing German embassies from EU partner nations because involvement in EU structures and voting mechanisms had become so close. This sought to prevent future mishaps like the failed attempt to impose a migrant quota system, to understand developments in member states and the scope of their governments, and to campaign better for the EU’s own position and identify common preferences. For some of Germany’s important partner states, such as Poland and France as much as the United Kingdom, intensive bilateral relations must be maintained very consciously in order to (re-)establish mutual trust and identify common strategic goals. That France must be listed here shortly after the signing of the Aachen Treaty is evidence of the extent to which even these formerly close partners have become estranged.

The first indications of a rethink of European policy are evident in Berlin. Previous approaches, such as the “Likeminded Initiative” or #EuropeUnited will not be enough. Plausible political proposals and pioneering efforts are still needed in light of the comprehensive challenges at hand. This may be due to the chaotic situation in the EU or a recognition of the fact that our national interest may be deeply at risk if we do not come to our senses and lead the way with a crucial willingness to lead, take action, and engage in dialogue. If it turns out to be “too little, too late,” it is Germany and Europe who will pay the price.

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