© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

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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© REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

After more than a year of discussing and promoting it with foreign counterparts and his own ambassadors, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas “launched” the Alliance for Multilateralism with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian and others on the sidelines of the 2019 United Nations General Assembly in New York.

But the fledgling formation already faces one of its first tests this month. One of its core members, Canada, is holding elections—and depending on the outcome, the new government could find it hard to fully commit to the Alliance for Multilateralism. Even if Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government supports the alliance, wins re-election on October 21, his global influence will likely be reduced. Multiple scandals have tarnished both his domestic brand and global celebrity.

Meanwhile his main opponent, the Conservative’s leader Andrew Scheer, comes from a party with a history of skepticism toward the UN and EU—the very institutions that the Alliance for Multilateralism’s French and German leaders view as integral to their own foreign policy interests.

France and Germany have never explicitly confirmed that the alliance is a direct response to the nationalism that culminated in the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU or Donald Trump’s election as US President, but its intent is implicit. This has prompted partners with historically close ties to the United States, such as Australia, to wonder where Trump’s America fits into the alliance’s goals and initiatives. Although Canada and the US boast one of the closest bilateral trade relationships in the world, the Trudeau government has not hesitated to support the alliance as one of its core members.

In fact, during Trudeau’s premiership, the world’s tenth largest economy has generally gone the opposite way of its increasingly isolationist Anglo-Saxon partners. Trudeau’s Liberal Party has emphasized completing the CETA free trade agreement with the EU, increased the country’s intake of refugees from Syria, and pledged a major climate package ahead of signing the Paris Agreement. Whether it’s talk of a liberal alliance with Emmanuel Macron, a joint appearance at Montreal Pride with Ireland’s Leo Varadkar, or an unexpected friendship with Germany’s Christian Democrat Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trudeau has been a close partner to many European leaders. They, in turn, have been keen to pose with Canada’s young prime minister in hopes of benefiting from Trudeau’s global star power.

Trudeau’s Sinking Popularity

However, even if Trudeau wins re-election, that star has arguably burned out, making his celebrity less useful to the alliance than it might have been previously. So far this year, he has admitted to wearing blackface makeup on multiple occasions. Parliament’s ethics commissioner rebuked him for improperly pressuring Canada’s attorney general to drop a criminal investigation into a company based in the electorally important province of Quebec. Recent polls have Trudeau’s Liberals and the Conservatives neck-and-neck in the popular vote, yet Canada’s majoritarian electoral system is likely to give the Liberals an edge in parliamentary seats. That said, electoral scenarios in which the Liberals either lose their parliamentary majority or lose power altogether are entirely possible.

Echoing many of their European counterparts, the Trudeau Liberals are of an instinctively multilateral foreign policy culture, though they are still prepared to deploy military assets. For example, Liberal then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien committed Canada to NATO’s Kosovo and Afghanistan campaigns, even as it opposed the 2003 War in Iraq.

Should Trudeau lose his majority, he may end up having to cooperate with the more force-wary New Democratic Party (NDP). Historically, the NDP withdrew support for NATO’s Kosovo campaign and was, in 2007, the first party to call for Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan. Like Germany, Canada spends around 1.2 to 1.3 percent of GDP on defense (i.e. far less than the agreed NATO aim of 2 percent), and the NDP will be particularly reluctant to support the already hesitant Liberals on any further increases or troop commitments.

So if Trudeau returns to the G7 table, he is likely to do so with less political capital. He may also have difficulties getting smaller parties to support some of his foreign policy initiatives. Yet Canada would likely remain at the core of the Alliance of Multilateralism.

Multilateral Skeptic

Should Scheer become Canada’s next prime minister, he might well pivot away from Macron and Merkel toward Trump and Britain’s Boris Johnson. Skeptical of the EU, Scheer once claimed he was pro-Brexit “before it was cool,” penning an op-ed to urge a Leave vote. The Conservative policy platform pledges to follow Trump’s lead and move the Canadian Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Sending a similar signal, Scheer used his first major foreign policy speech to lambast Trudeau’s Liberals for repealing Canadian sanctions against Iran—which were part of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran which was deemed a success by everyone but the Trump administration.

While Canada’s European partners—including Germany—have spent the last three years standing by the deal, Scheer pointed to Trudeau’s Iran policy as evidence that Canada is drifting away from its closest ally—the US. Scheer has also pledged to pull Canada out of the UN’s global pact on migration at the same time as fellow conservative Angela Merkel continues to argue forcefully in favor of it. On climate, Scheer and his fellow Conservatives originally voted against ratifying the Paris Agreement before later pledging to reaffirm support for the treaty’s targets.

Scheer’s foreign policy arguments reflect a tradition among Canadian Conservatives of prioritizing the Canada-US relationship and being skeptical toward the UN in general. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper advocated for Canada to join the US in Iraq when he was opposition leader and deliberately skipped the opening of the UN General Assembly more than once as Prime Minister, despite being in New York at the same time.

Both Trudeau and Scheer intend to continue campaigning for a Canadian non-permanent Security Council seat in 2021—Canada will have to beat out either Norway or Ireland to get one. As Germany and France decide which two countries to support, they will be asking questions about what sort of partnership to expect from a Conservative Canadian government. Would it remain committed to the Alliance of Multilateralism as a core member? Would it back other priorities in the areas of trade, climate, or security? Canada may be not as geopolitically influential as its larger Anglo-Saxon partners, but with Trump and Johnson already sitting at the G7 table, the answer is more important than one might think.

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© REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Acting in concert with others where this helps the achievement of our national interests—and, indeed, to head off threats to this achievement—is a key weapon available to Australia. It magnifies the international weight Australia can bring to bear; and the rules-based multilateral system helps build the stability and prosperity Australia needs, in a global environment characterized by perpetual uncertainty.

And these are deeply uncertain times. The tectonic plates on which the post-World War II order was built, modified slightly after the end of the Cold War, are definitely in motion. The order which served us so well for nearly 75 years is under significant challenge from all directions. This is most notably because of: doubts about the US security guarantees that have underpinned global security; the US questioning of the institutions and rules created since 1945 and its unilateralist approach to pursuing its interests; managing the rise of China; disarray in Europe, including uncertainty about Brexit and the future shape of the EU; and a range of other major problems, for example, populism/nationalism, mass people movements, chaos in the Middle East and North Africa, Russian games, and so on.

Little wonder that, at the 2017 Munich Security Conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, admittedly partly for self-interested Russian reasons, foreshadowed a new, “post-West” world order!

“Acting With Others”

Against this background, the 2017 Australian White Paper—the most recent and comprehensive definition of Australia’s national interests, the values that underpin those interests, and the approaches that it will take in pursuing those interests—correctly notes that Australia has benefited greatly from the system of global (and, for that matter, regional and bilateral) institutions and rules set in place in the period since the end of World War II.

It clearly states that “Australia’s interests are strongly served by acting with others to support a rules-based international order,” that “Australia will encourage and tangibly support the leadership of the United States to this end,” that “we will work with new and emerging powers to increase their stake in the international system,” and that “we will support… well-designed proposals for new forms of global cooperation and reform of multilateral institutions.”

So, even though the Australian government has yet to comment publicly on the German/French proposal for an “Alliance for Multilateralism,” in broad terms it seems to be very compatible with the approach taken in the Foreign Policy White Paper. No doubt Australia will be represented when the “Alliance” is formally launched—“at Ministerial level”, according to French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian—in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September this year. And Australian officials have also attended preliminary meetings in New York since German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’ speech putting forward the proposal in July 2018 in Tokyo.

How? Why?

But there are some cautionary things that need to be said about the proposal.

The first and most obvious is that it is still very short on detail. Maas told his Tokyo audience that he envisaged it consisting of an “alliance of countries” that: defend and develop existing rules further; show solidarity when international law is broken or ignored; fill vacuums created by the withdrawal of others from the world stage; are strongly supportive of efforts to combat climate change; and which take common political and financial responsibility in international organizations.

That’s all very well and these are fine ideals, but how is it supposed to work? At their meeting in April, Maas and Le Drian mentioned several issues (disarmament, global imbalances, new technologies, human rights, the environment) that could be pursued by such an alliance, but how is that to happen?

Second, what is its fundamental purpose? Some of the objectives in Maas’ Tokyo speech sound suspiciously as though the alliance is essentially anti-US (“fill vacuums created by the withdrawal of others from the world stage…”, for example). And, when asked by the media in New York if the United States would be invited to join the alliance, Maas said he had yet to discuss this with the United States but “wouldn’t slam the door in anyone’s face”—the alliance was about strengthening multilateralism against attempts to hollow it out and “each must decide which side his country is on.”

Committed to the US Alliance

The implication is obvious. If so, why? The US remains a massively important player internationally, including as the EU’s largest trading partner. Marginalizing it and its concerns would be a fruitless exercise. And trying to use the alliance to take forward global issues of the order outlined by the two ministers in April over US objections and despite US caution also seems like a recipe for failure.

Is the aim to encourage the US to re-engage multilaterally? That also seems a dead end for now, given the attitude of the current administration, at least while it still perceives great weaknesses in parts of the multilateral institutions, especially as tools to pursue US interests successfully. As it stands, the alliance proposal is unlikely to persuade America that multilateralism is a better way to achieve the outcomes it wants than the use of bilateral muscle. Just reinforcing the commitment of Western partners outside the US to a multilateral system that the current US administration sees as deeply flawed won’t cut much ice.

And here is a possible difference of opinion between Australia and the alliance proposal’s authors. Although published in 2017, before Australia and others saw the full nature of the Trump administration’s “America first” approach, the Australian Foreign Policy White Paper notes that “Australia will encourage and tangibly support the leadership of the United States” to support the rules-based international order. Australia sees multilateral cooperation as an important tool to pursue its national interests but clearly recognizes the central position of the United States in addressing so many issues of great importance to us. And Australia’s close alliance with the US remains a fundamentally important plank of its security.

An Imperfect System

Third, we shouldn’t pretend that the system of rules and institutions we now have is perfect as it stands. Let’s be honest: it needs modernization and reform, not least to meet the challenges thrown up by current and emerging global problems. We shouldn’t just dismiss US concerns, some of which we definitely share, about how some of the multilateral institutions operate.

And might not President Trump be right when he complains that the United States’ Western partners have become complacent (or worse, lazy) and aren’t carrying as much of the international burden of ensuring global security and prosperity as they should, instead “freeloading” (as the president claims) off the United States? NATO and the (non-)achievement of its 2 percent of GDP defense expenditure target could be an example of this.
Fourth, although potentially valuable in strengthening and reforming the multilateral system, especially in the face of a resurgence of unilateralism, the Alliance for Multilateralism won’t go to the heart of current problems in the West, which aren’t all about multilateralism. There needs to be a much more robust defense of the values we share and our democracies, for example. And most Western countries are facing major realignments in their established political order.

Do Your Homework First

We also need more certainty about institutions that have been hugely important pillars of global security and stability. Sorting out the significant problems facing one of those pillars—the European Union—and achieving agreement among its members on the shape of the new, post-Brexit EU would make a significant contribution to this. All of this will require leadership and energy of the sort that seems, at least seen from this side of the world, somewhat lacking at present.

And, finally, like-minded countries from across the globe which share interests and values, such as Australia and Germany, need to strengthen their bilateral cooperation. A good start was made to this end through the work of the Australia-Germany Advisory Group a few years ago. That needs to be revived. The Group’s report also contains recommendations for joint action—such as in development projects in Indonesia—that would also contribute to the goal of strengthening global cooperation.

In short, the Alliance for Multilateralism proposal is likely to receive a positive response in Australia. But, in taking it forward, there are still some big issues that need to be considered carefully.

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© REUTERS/Annegret Hilse

British Prime Minister Theresa May, fresh from surviving a no-confidence vote called by disgruntled members of her Tory party, left for Brussels on Thursday morning to seek assurances that the UK will not be trapped in the “backstop” her government agreed to in November.

But she’s not likely to come back to Westminster with much in hand. EU leaders such as Council President Donald Tusk made clear earlier this week that, while the EU could offer Britain some (legally non-binding) assurances that the backstop is not the desired long-term outcome, there is no room whatsoever for renegotiating the agreed legal text.

The EU’s biggest member-state is now hammering that point home.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he was relieved to see Theresa May survive the no-confidence vote within her party. But he sees no room for reopening negotiations on the already agreed divorce deal, in particular on the Irish backstop.

Those sentiments were backed by the chairman of the foreign policy committee in the Bundestag, Norbert Röttgen of the CDU, who said that EU negotiators had already worked for months on the current deal and that “all possibilities have been exhausted. There’s nothing left.” And a few hours later, the German Bundestag passed a motion asserting that the Brexit divorce deal could not be revisited.

(Merkel herself already told her CDU colleagues on Tuesday that she opposes renegotiations.)

The central sticking point for Theresa May and her government is the backstop, a safety-net provision meant to prevent the return of a hard border in Ireland: if no UK-EU trade deal has been agreed by the end of the transition period in December 2020, the backstop will keep Northern Ireland in parts of the single market and the whole of the UK in the EU customs union. This is anathema to both unionists in Northern Ireland, who don’t want the region to be treated differently from the rest of the UK, and euroskeptic MPs, who fear the backstop will leave Britain indefinitely subject to EU rules and unable to sign new trade deals.

Neither side can dissolve the backstop unilaterally, but only the EU would be comfortable letting trade talks drag on while the UK remained indefinitely bound by rules in which it had no say. So May is looking for a legally binding commitment from the EU that the backstop is temporary. And she is particularly keen to do so because the DUP, Northern Ireland’s unionist party, is propping up her shaky government and has threatened to pull out of the coalition if its concerns are not addressed.

As May seems incapable of getting her deal through the British parliament, there seems to be a growing consensus in Berlin that only two viable options remain: a no-deal, hard Brexit, which all sides are keen to avoid, or a second referendum.

And Norbert Röttgen has voiced his support for the latter, saying in a post on his Facebook page:

“The no-confidence vote didn’t change anything much. There is still no majority in parliament for the Brexit deal. Therefore, the only logical way out of the chaos that I can see is a second referendum on the future of Great Britain.”

The EU will continue to discuss Brexit at a summit in Brussels. But the ball is in Britain’s court.

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© REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

US President Donald Trump has dedicated himself not to maintaining and nurturing the liberal international order on which Germany’s current peace and prosperity are founded, but rather to destroying this order. Consequently, Germany now needs something that was previously unnecessary: an America strategy.

Here Germany faces a strategic dilemma: the country cannot live with the giant would-be destroyer of the international order along with all of his anti-German impulses. But at the same time Germany cannot survive without America—above all not without the American security guarantee. Any German citizen furtively hoping for this president to fail would fear a great American failure on the world stage just as much. This is the challenge facing Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. His new America strategy does more to illustrate this dilemma than to resolve it.

Three Goals of the Maas Policy

Maas wants three things: first, to work with the United States where possible and necessary, especially in security policy; second, to fill gaps left by America’s withdrawal from the international order, in particular by building an “alliance of multilateralists;” and third, to “form a counterweight” where America “crosses red lines.” Maas is effectively trying to pull off a gravity-defying feat: Germany is supposed to be a “counterweight” to its own security guarantor and most important partner outside of Europe. The German foreign minister wants to build this counterweight together with European partners that are more likely to want to be a counter-counter weight the further east they are located. Maas calls this construction a “balanced partnership.” He’ll certainly need good balance for this high-wire act.

Moreover, Maas’s strategy is based on the widespread, but questionable assumption that Donald Trump’s foreign policy will outlive his presidency and form a blueprint for future US foreign policy. Trump, so the theory goes, gives voice to long-ignored preferences of American voters and is merely continuing the process of withdrawal from the world (and especially from Europe) that Barack Obama initiated. According to this argument, Trump is not the cause of the change but a symptom of it. Thus, nobody can foresee if and when the nationalistically tinged self-isolation of the United States will end.

The Linear Theorists

At first glance this point of view has something to it: after all, Donald Trump is not the first one to realize that America is overextended. The turn-away from internationalism began before the Trump era, as did criticism of free trade or allegedly free-riding NATO allies. People across the wide American heartland have long wanted an explanation for why America must continue to give Europe a security guarantee 70 years after the end of World War II.

This line of argument has many supporters, including inside the United States. It allows those who support Trump to argue that the president is not in fact a revolutionary, but within (or at least near) the mainstream. In Europe, above all in Germany, the so-called “Post-Atlanticists” are devoted to the assumption that from now on, Trumpian nationalism will be an eternal feature of US policy. These are self-declared Atlanticists who feel abandoned by the United States. They are also linearists who believe that the US has permanently said goodbye to Europe, the defense of the NATO alliance, and the defense of democratic norms.

In December 2017, then-foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel joined the ranks of the linear theorists when he described the “uncomfortable world” of the future in a speech. “The US withdrawal cannot be traced back to the policy of an individual president. It will also not fundamentally change after the next election.” His successor Heiko Maas sees things similarly. His “America strategy” is informed by the assumption that the changes in US foreign policy “began well before Trump’s election—and will outlast his presidency well into the future.”

The continuity argument is based on apparent similarities of phenomena and relies on the maxim that what looks the same must be the same. The linear theorists concentrate on the point of departure, namely the American overstretch that, they argue, Trump and Obama both recognized. But they largely refuse to acknowledge the elements of discontinuity and even rupture. They ignore something essential: the strategic goal of American action. Here, there are dramatic differences between the two presidents. The goal of Trump’s foreign policy is the destruction of the liberal order to bring about a world of great power competition with zones of influence. The goal of Obama’s policy was virtually the opposite: the preservation of the liberal international order while reducing American input. Obama saw allies as power amplifiers; Trump sees them as encumbrances, as a drain on resources.

The linear theorists overlook or ignore this fundamental shift in American foreign policy. Especially for NATO allies, though, it is decisive.

Vulnerable Europeans

Any head of government who deals personally with Donald Trump intuitively notices that something significant has changed when relating to a US president. European leaders  see themselves as equal partners, and that is why they are so stung by Trump’s accusations, belittlement, and insults. At the June 2018 NATO summit, the European heads of governments responded by behaving like hostages suffering from Stockholm syndrome. They were relieved that Trump did not take more swipes at Europe, and even expressed understanding for his abuse. Almost submissively, a few of them credited Trump’s arm-twisting for making increases in defense budgets happen. They seem to have forgotten that their own defense budgets were already rising before Trump took office, since the Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine had changed Europe’s strategic situation.

Trump’s foreign policy simply doesn’t distinguish between friends and enemies—or rather, as political scientist Ivan Krastev aptly put it, between “fans and enemies.” If you’re not an enemy you’re a vassal, a lackey, part of a fan club. Sycophant is the role that a head of government of a client state is supposed to play. In Trump’s view, such a weakling should be educated and disciplined, not heeded.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump has no reservations about exploiting differences in power, even among traditional allies. He wants vertical integration based on power hierarchies, not horizontal integration between nation-states with equal rights. He seeks not allies but followers. Institutions and their rules seem to handcuff him. Only the other great powers are equals in his world, and with them he seeks bilateral deals (Russia) or conflict (China). This is not, as is often suggested, isolationism. It’s closer to imperialism. It represents, as Robert Kagan writes, the transformation of a benevolent hegemon into a “rogue great power” bound by few values beyond the drive for national power and grandness.

Any leader who believes that imperial posturing will be America’s default behavior in the future, is bound to draw conclusions. In his home country, such a leader will want to initiate a debate about national self-respect, about sovereignty, about acceptable and unacceptable American behavior, about red lines, about setting boundaries to a US president and thus about a more nuanced and eventually a more circumspect and distant relationship with the United States.

A Concept with Consequences

Therefore, the assumption that American foreign policy will continue in a straight line from today is not just fodder for foreign policy pundits. This idea could—should it carry the day—bring with it significant strategic consequences. These consequences could in turn have their own dangerous consequences, and it might be all based on induction from a faulty premise.

It is not too early to point out that the theory of continuity is dubious, and not only because it ignores the fundamental break between Obama’s and Trump’s foreign policy. It also disregards how new, how unique, how radical and how outside of the political mainstream Trump’s definition of American interests is. The continuity theory mistakes extremism for the mainstream of American policy. It underestimates how far Trump’s policies go beyond many voters’ real criticism of America’s overstretch. And it falsely assumes that in the long term, Trumpism is the only possible response to voter preferences. It ignores the polycentric structure of American foreign policy in supposing that Trump and his controversial policies will prevail. And finally, it disregards the power of the opposing forces that Trump’s extremism is either giving birth to or visibly strengthening.

America’s foreign policy simply cannot be understood as the extrapolation of the present straight into the future. Trump doesn’t have enough support at home for his imperial efforts and stands well outside many of America’s most important intellectual traditions. Rather, the theory of continuity is the expression of a new fatalism about America.

On the contrary, the future of American foreign policy has never been more uncertain. No one can predict exactly what will happen when America comes out of its Trump misadventure. But one thing is already foreseeable: if what analysts from Niccolo Macchiavelli to Henry Kissinger have written over the centuries continues to be relevant, Trump’s successor will, first of all, have to deal with the failures of this president’s foreign policy, perhaps even its utter failure.

Trump’s Cardinal Mistakes

President Trump is committing at least four cardinal mistakes. First, he misunderstands the intentions of both his opponents as well as his allies and partners; apparently he is not even interested. Not surprisingly, he reaches dubious conclusions. Second, he overestimates America’s ability to bend others to its will. Third, he underestimates the ability of opponents, allies, and partners to ignore, divert, water down or withstand American pressure or bond together to oppose it. And fourth, he undervalues the importance of alliances of equal states in order to help achieve one’s own objectives. As Harvard Professor Stephen Walt writes, “bullies don’t win at diplomacy.”

These mistakes inevitably tempt Donald Trump into an ineffective use of American power. And they will lead the President into foreign policy failures, perhaps even catastrophes, into trade wars, as we’ve already seen, and perhaps hot wars. It is unclear when and how the consequences of his miscalculations will become visible and the failure obvious. Nor is it clear how long domestic policy successes (impressive economic growth, for example) can mask foreign policy failures. With a superpower, the unmasking process can take a long time.

If Trump’s policy does culminate in disappointment, America’s foreign policy will be marked not by straight lines and continuity—as the post-Atlanticists assume—but rather by shocks and disruptions. The next president, whichever party he or she is from, will want to do things differently, will want to correct and repair. And they will justify the course correction by setting themselves apart from the unilateral and imperial affectations of their predecessor. They might even denounce Trump as sui generis, and his policies as an aberration.

German policy should prepare for such a moment. Instead of glorifying fatalism and bemoaning the end of Atlanticism or even multilateralism, policymakers should assume that Trump is not the end of (American) history. This means pursuing a policy that keep its distance from the incumbent in the White House, but at the same time builds bridges to the future. For this, though, one must first avoid burning the very bridges that might be needed later.

Robust Activism

Since Heiko Maas sees Trump not as an extremist but as a symptom of a tectonic shift, he doesn’t want to waste time. He wants to push back against Trump rather than elude him. He wants to forge a new path into the future, not maneuver and bide his time. He wants Germany to withstand Trump, not avoid him. He does not want to delay, distract, deflect, obfuscate, ignore or appease Trump. He does not seem to seek tactical compromises in hopes of subsequent corrections.

Any student of post war Germany’s foreign policy traditions will be surprised at such activism. Whenever the national interest is at stake, Germany has so far shown a great deal of strategic patience. German foreign policy usually elects continuity, even when important partners find themselves in phases of indeterminant internal turmoil. It put up with Silvio Berlusconi for eleven years without “balancing” Germany’s relationship with Italy. During France’s period of stagnation under President Francois Hollande, Germany chose “shutting up” to be its new policy and did not question the Franco-German partnership even as it produced nothing of relevance for five years. At the moment Germany is putting its Poland policy on ice for what looks like eight years, without questioning the long-term partnership. Anyone declaring after 18 months of the Trump administration that Germany is now a “counterweight” to its most important post-war partner should expect questions about the wisdom of this policy.

That said, Heiko Maas has plenty of reasons to rethink Germany’s policy towards the United States. Donald Trump’s imperial radicalism demands it. The president’s behavior has essentially turned the idea of joint initiatives on core questions of international relations into an exercise in wishful thinking. And Trump’s hostility to institutions and aversion to rules-based international relations is forcing Germany to finally do what’s long been necessary: take on more responsibility for the liberal international order that has bestowed upon Germany an extraordinary phase of peace and prosperity.

Produce More West

It is simply no longer enough to belong to the political West. Germany must produce more “West.” Maas’s idea of an “alliance of multilateralists” is helpful in this regard, provided he can fill it with substance. And the idea of investing more in Germany’s own foreign policy instruments and in Europe’s ability to act independently is gaining traction in Germany. One day Trump may deserve a thank you note for giving the Germans as well as all Europeans cause to finally create their own hard power instruments. Yet as long as one has not acquired such instruments, there is little use in talking about them. All that such loose talk produces is counterpressure. The irony is that even becoming more autonomous actually requires American support.

Heiko Maas deserves some credit: in the face of Trump’s attacks on the international order, he has at least offered a response that seeks to differentiate between areas of cooperation and disagreement. Going forward, he will need to nuance his strategy and rule out a misperception: that working without America will mean working against America. It is simply not in Germany’s national security interest to be seen as positioning itself against America. It would a blatant and obvious overreach and would turn Germany into a fringe player on the European stage. Rather, Germany should ensure that all hard power instruments it invests in, be they military or economic, can pass a dual-use test: they must make Germany a better Atlantic ally and at the same time make Europe more capable of independent action.

As uncertain as the future of America’s foreign policy may be, and as adaptable as Germany’s answer to it must be, one thing is clear: there will be no status quo ante, no return to the “good old days” of American parenting in Europe. There are three reasons for that: first, it won’t be possible to return to a pre-Trumpian state of affairs post Trump. The work of the great wrecking ball from Washington cannot be undone. Second, the special role that America plays for Europe has been rooted in a Eurocentric world that no longer exists. And third, that role is rooted in an American hegemony that also no longer exists.

The End of Deep Engagement

Such changes will certainly undercut the rationale for what Tom Wright of the Brookings Institution calls “deep engagement” in Europe. “Deep engagement” is America’s intense involvement in European affairs, its effort to help Europe help itself, both with its internal and foreign-policy challenges.

After World War II the American economy accounted for about half of world economic output. At the end of the Cold War it made up a quarter; and today, according to American political scientist Graham Allison’s calculations, it accounts for only a seventh. In any country, such a major shift on economic might must lead to a fundamental rethinking of strategy. This, by the way, is the rational reason for American voters’ skepticism of interventionism and assumed free riding of allies. And these sentiments may very well outlast Trump and his foreign-policy mistakes.

But the fact that a well-founded critique of American overstretch is likely to be long-lasting does not mean that radical nationalism and bullying of allies is the natural response. On the contrary: it is precisely the realization of America’s relative decline that will create a new appreciation of the fact that America will eventually need more allies and reliable international rules, i.e. multilateralism. This insight might be the basis of America’s future relationship with Europe. It is possible, perhaps even likely that after Trump, the United States will become more like-minded —though no longer Europe’s almighty protector and the grand arbiter of intra-European conflicts. For Europeans it might be an utterly confusing reality to face a United States that is close, but no longer deeply engaged rather than the other way around.

The United States, on the other hand, will face a double challenge: to respond to the collapse of the post-war consensus on America’s expansive role as protector of the Western-led world order while subsequently dealing with the failure of Trump’s nationalistic response to the collapse. A new equilibrium will be sought, one that takes into account the limits of the country’s power and the limits set by its population to engage globally. It must reconcile the fact that the world’s policeman is tired of going on patrol with the necessity of working with others in the name of America’s own national interest. Nobody can know today how successful the search for a new formula of American foreign policy, a new happy medium, will be.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Over the past two decades or so, German foreign policy has been driven into two directions: some leading actors were looking West toward America, while others were rather looking East, toward Russia.

The red-green government of 1998 to 2005 provides a good example. In his second term, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democrats (SPD) concentrated on his relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an attempt to counterbalance George W. Bush’s America, together with French President Jacques Chirac.

But while Schröder was exploiting his rejection of the Iraq war for electoral gains, his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer of the Greens, who was equally opposed to the Iraq war, continued to articulate fundamentally positive views of America (in a reversal of the anti-American views he had propagated as a left-wing protest leader in his youth).

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took over from Schröder, is clearly a „Westerner.“ Having grown up in East Germany under Soviet domination, Merkel sees the US-led West as a political and cultural counter-model to what she experienced in her early years.

Her foreign ministers, however, have tended to focus rather on Russia. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Schröder’s former chief of staff, in his two terms (2005 to 2009 and 2013 to 2017) first tried to bring Russia closer to the West under the catchword “modernization partnership” and then, even as major tensions erupted over Ukraine, tirelessly kept arguing for cooperation and coordination with Moscow.

Guido Westerwelle, foreign minister from 2009 to 2013, was equally soft on Moscow, calling for “more respect.” Sigmar Gabriel, who succeeded Steinmeier in 2017, was an outspoken skeptic of the Russia sanctions over Ukraine and a driving force behind the project of a second gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, Nord Stream 2.

Schröder, Steinmeier, and Gabriel all belong to the SPD, which considers Ostpolitik as established by Willy Brandt in the 1970s its foreign policy trademark. Indeed, Ostpolitik still plays an important role in the Germany public discourse, especially in SPD circles. But while Ostpolitik during the Cold War was aimed at bringing political change in the east, and was oriented toward Central Europe no less than toward Russia, today the term has often become a shorthand for good relations with the Kremlin.

Maas’ Surprising Change

Against this backdrop, current foreign minister Heiko Maas—also a Social Democrat—has performed a surprising change of course. Maas himself is, broadly speaking, a “Westerner” like Merkel. He has a strong commitment to liberal, western values and puts special emphasis on international rules and institutions. His „West,“ however, seems sometimes to be more defined by France than by America (Maas comes from the Saar, a region neighboring France).

Shortly after becoming foreign minister in March this year, Maas made it clear that he wouldn’t follow in the footsteps of Steinmeier and Gabriel with regard to Russia. He refused to use the established rhetoric about the need “to build bridges” with Moscow and to “keep channels open,” which was so often paired with criticism of the West’s supposed “saber-rattling” vis-à-vis Russia.

Instead, Maas has set a new tone, noting that “if Russia defines itself more and more in distinction, even in antagonism to the West,” then this changes “the reality of our foreign policy.”

And more recently, Maas has started talking about the need for a “new Ostpolitik,” one that is more focused on Central Europe.

A key point of his new approach is that EU member states must better coordinate their policies toward Moscow: “We need an understanding between all EU members about the foundations of joint action” toward Russia, Maas said. A new Ostpolitik “must take into account the needs of all Europeans—those of the Baltic states and Poland as well as those of the western [European] countries.“

In order to achieve this unity, Germany should act as a bridge-builder, counterbalancing the recent drift between the EU’s East and West triggered by the refugee crisis. Rather than simply criticizing Eastern neighbors for their attitudes, “[Germans] must learn to see Europe more through the eyes of other Europeans,” Maas said. “We Germans in particular should stop taking the moral high ground on migration, especially vis-à-vis our partners from Central and Eastern Europe. Mutual finger wagging and moral arrogance will only deepen divisions.”

A first concrete step in that direction was Maas’ participation in the third summit of the Three Seas Initiative in Bucharest in September 2018, where he also made clear that Germany would like to join this group. The initiative, launched by Poland and Croatia, aims at improving regional cooperation on infrastructure and energy from the Baltic to the Mediterranean via the Black Sea.

In a speech in Bucharest in August, Maas laid out the strategic context of his vision. First, there is the goal, central for Maas, of “a sovereign and strong Europe” at a time when the Franco-German motor is no more “able to drive Europe forward alone.“

Second, there’s the challenge from China. “Europe must also guard itself against divisions from outside. China has clear ambitions with respect to power politics, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe”, Maas said. Therefore, “we need a common European policy in our dealings with China. Only then will China perceive us as a partner on an equal footing.”

Third, there is pressure from Russia. “The same goes for Russia. As Europeans, we must defend the principles of the European peace and security order.” Only “a culture of common, coordinated action in our approach to our eastern neighborhood” can produce good relations with Russia.

A New Sound

This is a new sound coming out of Berlin. Maas is putting to rest a Russia policy that has failed to achieve the desired results. Instead of becoming more liberal, democratic, and peaceful, Russia has turned more autocratic and aggressive toward its neighbors and the West.

At the same time, Maas is signaling that Germany understands the strategic importance of Central and Eastern Europe at a time of renewed great power-competition. This a region where Germany must be deeply engaged on its own, not just through the EU mechanism.

The biggest challenge for Maas will be to turn his ideas and initiatives into political reality. The foreign minister will need substantial support from the chancellery in order to convince Central European partners that the German push is genuine, especially because German credibility has been massively undermined by Berlin’s continued support for the Nord Stream 2 project.

And Germany must find a middle way, balancing a value-based approach toward Hungary and Poland (with regard to their attitudes to liberal democracy) and the need to keep Europe together in a competitive, multipolar geopolitical environment.

Working with Germany’s eastern neighbors on infrastructure and energy through the Three Seas initiative, as Maas has proposed, looks like a good first step.

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© dpa / Gregor Fischer

In our attention-deficit era, when a Trump tweet can collapse a G7 meeting, is there any place for—or interest in—stirring speeches on the future of Europe?

That was the challenge Heiko Maas, Germany’s foreign minister, set himself on Wednesday in Berlin: To present arguments, ideas, and proposals to ensure that European integration won’t head down the same defunct route as the old industrial hall in which he spoke. He didn’t beat around the bush, turning his first sentence into a question: How can Europe assert itself in a world increasingly radicalized by nationalism, populism, and chauvinism?

Some 5,000 words later, his answer had become clear: By activating a passive European patriotism slumbering in the continent’s silent majority. Squeezed between Donald Trump’s America-first politics, Russian attacks on international law, and Chinese expansion, he warned, seven decades of certainty in Europe have come to an end.

“The world order we knew, which we got used to, and in which we sometimes made ourselves a little too comfortable—that no longer exists,” he said. “Under President Trump the Atlantic has grown wider and Trump’s isolationist politics have left behind a massive vacuum.”

Maas also suggested unfurling the Europe flag “as a banner for the free world, just as the stars and stripes once was.” There is no shortage of analysis of the continent’s problems, he conceded—digitalization, climate change, migration, and the social cost of globalization—but what Europe needs is solutions. The Social Democrat (SPD) minister’s answer to America first: Europe united. Echoing iconic SPD leader Willy Brandt, Maas urged his audience—in Berlin and beyond—to show more courage for Europe.

“Courage to present our own ideas for Europe that don’t exhaust themselves in purely technocratic concerns or empty slogans,” he said, adding: “Courage to also throw over board our own orthodoxies if it serves the greater good, because only then will we remain able to act.”

As a native of Germany’s southwestern Saarland region—near France and Luxembourg—Europe’s rising nationalism “hurt his soul.” But visits to the sprawling soldiers’ graveyards of Verdun—while still a powerful antidote to nationalist intolerance—were no longer enough to stave it off.

Reforming Europe was in Germany’s interest most of all, he said, and work should start in Germany’s own backyard. He urged his country to realize that “the line between fidelity to principles and stubbornness is sometimes a thin one, particularly here in Germany.” Those are welcome words to those who feared Berlin’s currency orthodoxy came close to ensuring that the euro rulebook would survive the recent crisis, and not the currency.

“We must also learn to see Europe more through the eyes of other Europeans in order to understand the European idea,” he said. “Know-it-all finger-pointing on the part of Berlin certainly achieves less than intelligent policies geared towards balancing of interests.”

Stronger Together

In 20 years, when Europe is forecast to comprise just five per cent of world population—and even big member-states less than one per cent—he said it was worthwhile to recall the words of ex-Belgian prime minister Paul Henri Spaak: “There are only two kinds of states in Europe: small states, and small states that have not yet realized they are small.”

Working together means moving ahead, not standing still in Europe, and Maas backed French president Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more flexible union with a pragmatic avant-garde, willing to move ahead on projects without excluding anyone who wanted to join later.

“Surrendering sovereignty to the EU enables us to win back the political influence we have long since lost as nations,” he said. “Nationalism does not in fact mean ‘taking back control,’ as the Brexiteers claimed, but, in reality, ‘giving up control’.”

Pooling greater sovereignty was crucial in today’s three burning priorities, he said: economic and financial policy, migration policy, and foreign policy. On the first, he took on Germany’s toxic EU debate that sees the cost of everything in Europe and not the value. He broke down the benefit of Germany’s single market membership—as calculated by the Bertelsmann Foundation—to some 450 euros of annual income gain per person.

“Thrift is a virtue, but avarice threatens what we want to preserve and enhance—namely the unity and strength of Europe,” he said. “Each and every cent invested here is money well spent because we will all stand to benefit in the end.”

The foreign minister welcomed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first answer to Macron’s reform proposals but called for more—and backed a weekend call by finance minister Olaf Scholz to finally get to work on the long-discussed financial transaction tax.

There was no point expecting national concepts to solve social disparity or youth unemployment that have laid waste to whole swatches of Europe, the minister suggested. Instead he called for European solutions: a European minimum wage or a European reinsurance system for national unemployment insurance schemes.

He suggested Europe pool its venture capital to face down the growing Chinese innovation challenge or Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence push. On the second major challenge, migration, he warned German politicians to get off the moral high ground and warned that “finger wagging and moral arrogance” words towards central and eastern European partners
would only increase divisions.

Finally on foreign policy, he urged Europe to adjust to new transatlantic realities by concentrating on areas where both sides’ “values and interests are balanced” and forming an “assertive European counterweight when the US crosses a red line.” Given growing world crises from Syria to Ukraine and the Middle East, he urged greater readiness to draft and implement a common foreign policy. He suggested the European Council define areas where co-operation can be decided, by majority vote if necessary.

As a show of goodwill, Maas promised that when Germany takes its seat next year as a rotating UN Security Council member, “we also want to speak on behalf of all EU member states.”

He backed calls for greater military spending as well, “not at President Trump’s behest” but because a readiness to act militarily is an essential component of a European foreign policy geared to peace and security. Only by uniting Europeans, he said, can there be any hope for his #europeunited campaign.

“Europe is about more than harmony and friendship between nations,” he said. “It is also about politics, which means debating opinions democratically and across borders.”

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REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

Heiko Maas, Germany’s new foreign minister, grew up in the Saarland, a coal-and-steel region in the very west of West Germany. This small state is steeped in Franco-German history: Maas’ own home town of Saarlouis was built as a fortress by Louis XIV; during Hitler’s rule the name was changed to Saarlautern to make it sound more German. After 1945, the French turned Saarland into their protectorate, until a bitterly-contested referendum in 1955 returned it to Germany.

“My grandmother lived in the same house, in the same street, in the same city for 80 years—but because of the political back and forth, she had five different passports in her life,” Maas wrote in an opinion piece for the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT last year. “But she lived long enough to see that the question of Germany or France has now lost its significance for us Saarlanders, because Europe became the answer to it.”

Maas, 51 and a Social Democrat since 1989, is a newcomer to foreign policy—in other words, an unknown quantity on the international stage. Yet his background as a Saarlander is certain to influence the choices he will make. He is clearly pro-European and in favor of renewing the Franco-German alliance, just as he is clearly not naïve about the challenges it faces.

A lawyer by training, Maas is controlled, reflective, and polite, with a mocking sense of humor. In Berlin, he is admired as a natty dresser, wearing closely cut suits and ties in sober colors. As a former triathlete, he knows how to pace himself. “The goal,” he once said, “comes only after the third discipline.”

“He’ll Be Excellent”

Maas sets a striking contrast to Sigmar Gabriel, his brilliant but impulsive predecessor. It is all the more remarkable that Gabriel—who is bitter about having to leave the foreign ministry—immediately endorsed Maas. “He will be excellent,” he said.

Of course, it was also Gabriel who brought Maas to Berlin in the first place. Back in 2013, when Gabriel was SPD leader, he nominated the Saarlander for the justice ministry. Until then, Maas had essentially spent his life in Saarland. He served as minister in several state governments, but could never win the top post, though he ran three times for the state premiership. Maas’ reputation was on the wane, and his appointment to the ministry in Berlin came as a surprise.

Yet in contrast to most of his colleagues from the German provinces, Maas quickly caught onto the way politics works in Berlin. One of his closest advisers had been working for the SPD group in the Bundestag before and already knew everybody. Maas has also played social media skillfully and actively (perhaps too much so, some of his detractors say), and managed to build a good working relationship with Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere—no small thing given the fierce hostility that is traditional between justice and home affairs.

As justice minister, Maas was immensely productive, with a keen sense of issues that play well in his party and the wider public. His ministry presented new laws on issues ranging from rehabilitating people convicted under outdated laws banning homosexuality to a quota for women in supervisory boards, from protecting small-time investors to stricter anti-doping laws. Not everything turned out perfectly: A new law restricting rent increases turned out to be ineffective, and Maas also drew a lot of fire for his law against hate speech on the internet.

Scourge of the Far Right

A frequent talks show panelist, Maas speaks out on every occasion against xenophobic and anti-Islam movements, like Pegida in Dresden or indeed the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In return, he has received massive amounts of hate mail. After finding a nine-millimeter bullet in the letterbox of his private apartment, Maas was put under additional police protection. If anything, though, that made him more determined to confront the far-right.

Nor has Maas pulled his punches on international issues. “Nobody fosters anti-Americanism as much as the American president,“ Maas said in August 2017. Donald Trump was acting in a catastrophic fashion such as Maas could never have imagined with any previous US president. In his opinion piece for DIE ZEIT, Maas called for a harder line against Turkey and Russia as well. “It is precisely because there are aggressive and authoritarian powers at the gate of Europe that the continent needs to show unified strength,” he wrote.

Presumably, Maas’ tone will become a bit more diplomatic when he is sworn in as foreign minister, but he will likely not soften much on substance. Particularly on Russia, he might be tougher than his two predecessors— Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Gabriel—who are both close to former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a personal friend and ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Of course, much of Germany’s foreign policy is set by the chancellery, and Angela Merkel is unlikely to give this newcomer much leeway in her fourth term in office. Yet it is also clear that Germany alone will have less and less pull in the world, be it in relation with the US, China, or Russia, or in stabilizing Africa and the European neighborhood. With his Saarland background, Maas brings a much-needed Franco-German and pro-European instinct to the table.

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