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.

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© China Daily via REUTERS

The coronavirus has caused a global health crisis that risks fueling a pandemic of authoritarianism, nationalism, economic autarky, and malign foreign influence of the kind that the United States and its European allies constructed alliances and institutions to guard against after 1945. This is a time for democracies across the Atlantic to help and support each other, but also to rally around protecting the free and open international order from authoritarian assault.

By virtue of their open societies, Western nations are more vulnerable to this pandemic; their governments are more limited in their ability to control citizens’ behavior than the dictatorships in China and Russia, which are not subject to the same legal constraints. At the same time, both the Chinese Communist Party and the Kremlin view the crisis now mostly playing out in the West as a strategic opportunity to extend their influence at the democracies’ expense. Meanwhile, strongmen are using the cover of the crisis to consolidate power in ways that threaten the democratic integrity of the European Union.

Four Threats to Democratic Systems

Both the US and Europe will emerge from the fog of the immediate crisis and face a new world order profoundly reshaped by COVID-19. Western democracies will grapple with a new balance between the state and the economy, new powers in the hands of governments to surveil their populations in order to manage public health, new pressures on established political parties from nationalists and autarkists on the left and the right, intensified migration pressures from nations in the Middle East and Africa unable to handle the epidemic, new forms of malign foreign influence associated with leveraged Chinese and Russian forms of health assistance, and revolutionary demands from citizens for health and welfare safety nets following the extraordinary insecurities produced the pandemic.

In this new world order, questions of democracy and governance will be more, rather than less, relevant as governmental and societal responses to the crisis expose fissures and vulnerabilities within democracies. Throughout Europe, we already see these cleavages being exploited by China and Russia. At the same time, competing narratives of unity in the face of the crisis—ranging from those who advocate a more robust response capacity at the EU level to those who emphasize national unity, sometimes with a decidedly anti-EU cast—will shape transatlantic politics for years to come. So, too, will the consequences of emergency measures and societal controls and various forms of state-driven surveillance and enforcement introduced in response to the pandemic.

Those who believe in the ultimate strength of democratic forms of government to deliver best for the people that they serve—in particular Europeans and Americans—must begin now to prepare and act to win the battle for the post-crisis narrative. Even in the midst of the crisis, at least four potential post-COVID-19 threats to the democratic systems that the US and Europe have worked so hard to build since the end of World War II are becoming evident. It is incumbent on those who believe that a strong transatlantic response to these challenges is necessary in the wake of the crisis to begin to plan now for how we will address them, together.

Freedom Takes a Back Seat

In the short term, of course, the virus is putting enormous strain on freedom of movement as most European nations have effectively closed their borders, thereby reversing one of the founding tenets of European integration: the free movement of people. At the same time, some leaders are using the opportunity presented by the pandemic to centralize control and weaken institutions that countervail executive power. In Hungary, parliament has passed State of Danger legislation allowing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to rule by emergency decree. In both Serbia and Turkey, the governments have used the crisis to crack down even harder on the press and the capability of the opposition to function.

In the short term, democratic political and civil society leaders need to step in wherever necessary to stem moves to sidestep democratic processes, as illiberal politicians try to take advantage of the crisis to move their own political agenda forward. More broadly, in the aftermath of the crisis, democratic political leaders will need to address questions regarding how well democracies responded.

It is thus critically important that Europeans and Americans prepare for this eventuality by marshalling the resources to strengthen democratic institutions. European nation-states and the EU itself have an extensive infrastructure of such organizations at their disposal. So, too, does the US. Working together, we can effectively demonstrate what will be the real lesson of this crisis: that citizen-centered government that both communicates with and responds to the needs of the people it serves is best positioned to act effectively to meet the challenge—including supporting health and economic recovery over the long term. With a united response, we can help to build and rebuild trust between government and citizens, assist political leaders to respond in crisis situations, and amplify local, citizen-led responses.

The Temptation of Autarky

As the state takes more control over the economy in various countries in the transatlantic community, we must plan for calls for “industrial self-sufficiency” to grow louder in mainstream politics.

Few countries will want their pharmaceutical and broader medical supply chains dependent on China or other foreign countries. The question is whether this will simply be a readjustment to globalization, or whether there will be politically viable calls for each country to have its own production capacity for major products, in which case we risk reverting to a 1930s-like wave of introversion within European nations and in the US. Here, too, we risk losing a major accomplishment of the post-World War II era in Europe: the free movement of goods and services.

In fact, it is the private medical sector in the US and Europe that is most likely to come up with a vaccine for coronavirus. It is private markets on both sides of the Atlantic, not lumbering government bureaucracies, that will devise innovative health solutions to serve citizens who may expect too much from overextended governments. No amount of government spending will be capable of restoring nations to economic health should their large and small enterprises fail to lead their economies out of recession by re-hiring workers and restoring production and services. Furthermore, no nation will innovate its way out of this crisis on its own; institutionalized and multilateral forms of collaboration will be central to devising solutions to the pandemic’s fallout across so many national boundaries. Pulling up economic and political drawbridges would also only cede strategic space to Chinese and Russian efforts to build out new spheres of influence, including in eastern and southeastern Europe.

An Intergenerational Struggle?

It is now well-established that COVID-19 affects people very differently according to their age: while the elderly are especially vulnerable to succumbing not only to the virus but also to existing underlying conditions, younger people seem to have a much higher survival rate. This is a spectacular intergenerational change of fortunes in places like the south of Europe, where millennials and generation Z are the ones who have been the most socially and economically vulnerable recently—particularly in places like Italy or Spain. Now, it is the older members of society that are existentially vulnerable—and it is their turn to feel threatened by younger citizens’ visible unwillingness to change their lifestyles. This could have lasting consequences on intergenerational relations in the future and could lead to political tensions.

Additionally, data from studies we conducted in Europe indicate that the younger generations—even in advanced democracies—are much less prone to believe that democracy is the best possible form of government. Historical amnesia may be partly to blame—they don’t remember the police states that terrorized citizens behind the Iron Curtain, or the fight against fascism that occupied what Americans call the Greatest Generation. It is clear that we need a forward-looking transatlantic response to the concerns of younger generations that will have been shaped by the pressures of both the 2008 financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. This is a wholly different frame of reference than that of those who fought the Cold War and saw 1989 as a crowning achievement, and it will require both different forms of communication and engagement to ensure their commitment to the democratic process.

Propaganda Targets

As if the acute domestic pressures on democratic systems were not enough of a challenge, in the post-COVID-19 era, the transatlantic community will also have to contend with aggressive attempts by malign authoritarian powers to turn the crisis to their advantage.

In this regard, Europe’s southern peninsulas are the most economically vulnerable on the continent, and they are also the ones that are so far hardest hit by the virus. High levels of social contact in public spaces have contributed to the rapid spread of the virus in places like Italy and Spain, and since the confinement began, many citizens have expressed the opinion that they were left to fend for themselves by their purported friends and allies in the EU and the US—even though Western assistance to allied nations has in fact been higher (and of higher quality) than far-better-publicized Chinese and Russian forms of sometimes questionable medical support.

Chinese and Russian propagandists have picked up on this trend and launched operations to bolster their image at the expense of European governments. Chinese Communist Party propaganda is aggressively attempting to confuse people about the origins of the virus (contending that the US or even Italy were the source of the contagion), and is attempting to curry favor by sending masks and medical equipment to Italy, Serbia, and other places. Local politicians in these countries have praised the Chinese Communist Party for its generosity, and in Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic said it most plainly on Serbian television: “European solidarity doesn’t exist—that was a fairy tale on paper,” contending that the Chinese “are the only ones who can save us.” Russia, for its part, has dispatched military medics and equipment to Italy and Greece to deal with the crisis—all while ignoring cases at home. The subtext of these efforts is that “we are all in this together,” so there’s no value any longer in continuing the EU’s sanctions on the Kremlin for its aggression in Ukraine.

In the propaganda narratives from Beijing and Moscow, there is also an obvious glorification of their respective regimes at the expense of democracies. In China, the focus is on the heroics of President Xi Jinping and the CCP, which they claim are doing what is needed to stop the spread of the virus, unlike ineffectual democracies—even though it was China’s authoritarian suppression of medical and media reporting on the virus at its inception, including the punishment of local officials who sought to sound the alarm, that helped turn COVID-19 into a global pandemic. Meanwhile, the Kremlin initially behaved as if COVID-19 had not reached the country at all and even sent scarce medical equipment abroad as part of its propaganda push. Indeed, the Kremlin seems to have devoted more resources to information warfare against the West than to protecting Russian citizens who will inevitably suffer from the pandemic.

It now seems that the tide of the narrative here may beginning to turn, as more and more stories of inter-European and US assistance efforts come to light. Similarly, it is increasingly clear that “assistance” from the CCP comes at a high price, as Chinese diplomats leverage assistance for political and economic concessions. Nonetheless, Chinese and Russian sharp-power influence in Europe was a significant and growing issue before the COVID-19 crisis broke, and there is every reason to assume it will continue afterward.

The Path Ahead

Europeans and Americans should understand clearly that both Beijing and Moscow define a strategic interest in weakening the cohesion of the Atlantic alliance in order to enhance Chinese and Russian influence in Europe at American expense. The Kremlin also defines an interest in weakening European unity, including by supporting political extremists, in various European countries in order to build out a Russian sphere of influence in the east at Brussels’ expense. Meanwhile, the Atlantic allies’ uneven and belated responses to the pandemic risk discrediting democratic systems in the eyes of fearful publics.

To meet these challenges, the transatlantic democracies must position themselves to shape the post-pandemic order. First, they must ensure that temporary measures limiting basic freedoms put in place to limit the spread of the virus remain just that: temporary. Emergency powers exercised by governments to beat back the pandemic by surveilling and controlling their citizens cannot become the norm. When the crisis is over, we are convinced that democracy will once again have proven itself vis-à-vis its authoritarian detractors to be the most effective—and certainly the most transparent and accountable—form of government in meeting the needs of the people. We must remain vigilant to push back against backsliding that undermines this basic truth: that sovereignty rests with the people and not a permanent class of political elites unwilling to yield power.

Second, democratic governments must resist the temptation to disengage their economies from one another, pursuing the fantasy that each one of them can build (or rebuild) an infrastructure making it fully self-sufficient. Economic globalization has helped produce a broadly middle-class world for the first time in human history. While countries will be more prudential about supply-chain security in the post-pandemic international economy, rebuilding prosperity will be impossible without an open international trade and investment regime. Europe and the US could even consider an economic version of NATO to protect intellectual property, consolidate free-world supply chains and innovation networks, and encourage a qualitatively superior form of market access than that accorded to imperialistic authoritarian powers outside the West.

Third, political parties, government leaders, and civil-society organizations must redouble their efforts to ensure engagement across generations in the political process to help minimize tensions between them driven by the different experiences they have suffered in the various crises that have buffeted the transatlantic space since 2008. The challenge for political parties will be giving young people a greater voice in politics so they do not become alienated and radicalized by disruptive economic conditions.

Fourth, democracies in Europe and America must further develop their capacities to push back against the malign forms of foreign authoritarian influence that risk undermining democratic institutions—and democratic unity among allies—in the West. This includes protecting their citizens from Russian and Chinese misinformation as well as piercing the information bubble that denies Russian and Chinese citizens objective news reporting and leads them to believe their governments’ self-serving and deeply anti-Western propaganda.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in her first national address on the pandemic, noted that the COVID-19 crisis presents the greatest challenge Germany has faced since the end of World War II. With old and new democracies working together, Europe and the United States overcame that challenge and built the most prosperous and free community of nations in the history of humanity.

Even as former enemies were able to put their immediate pasts behind them to rebuild Europe, today’s transatlantic democracies must do the same. Crises have a way of focusing the mind on what matters most. And what will matter most after the COVID-19 health crisis has passed is protecting the political liberties and democratic institutions that enable free nations to work together to serve their citizens, uphold their common security, and rebuild their prosperity.

Just as coronavirus presents a mortal threat to public health, so the aggressive authoritarianism of revanchist great powers presents a mortal threat to American and European leadership in the world. Building political resiliency to protect and sustain democracy through the pandemic will be as important as developing the medical antibodies against COVID-19 and restoring public health—and public trust in government—across the West and the world.

The post Protecting Democracy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; foreign affiliate sales: estimates for 2018; total trade: data for goods and services 2018

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 is currently wreaking havoc on the world economy. Disrupted supply chains are forcing companies to throttle back production. As China was the epicenter of the crisis, headlines thus far have focused on how German and European companies have had to adjust because they are so reliant on deliveries or component production in China.

These stories seem to have reinforced a fairly widespread—yet false—view that China has become Europe’s top commercial partner. Spending time in Germany this year I have been struck by repeated assertions by German government representatives that this is so. Those making such statements usually point to sizable bilateral trade in goods.

There is no doubt that commercial ties with China have become more significant for Germany and Europe. But that does not mean that China is the country most important to the health of the German or European economies.

Reducing complex commercial ties to one metric—trade in goods—ignores the commercial importance of investment links, services, digital connections, innovation ties, and foreign sources of “on-shored” jobs for the European economies. On each of these other metrics, the ties that bind Germany and Europe to the United States are much thicker and far deeper than those with China.

These additional arteries are literally the lifeblood of the transatlantic economy. If COVID-19 chills these connections, the ripple effects on the German and European economies are likely to be far worse than what we have seen thus far from China. On the other hand, if the United States and its European partners are able to avoid additional commercial tensions and actually sustain their deep commercial bonds during this crisis, the overall impact of a COVID-19-induced recession is likely to be much lower.

Half Right, All Wrong

US exports of goods to the EU totaled $337 billion in 2019, up 6 percent from 2018 and more than three times larger than US goods exports to China ($107 billion in 2019). US imports of goods from the EU were even larger, $515 billion in 2019. 2019 figures for trade with China are not yet available, but in 2018 the EU exported €351.2 billion in goods to the US and €210 billion to China. The EU imported €213.4 billion in goods from the US and €395 billion from China. That means that total EU-China trade in goods of €605 billion was roughly €40 billion more than EU-US trade in goods.

Keying in on this single metric, on March 6 Germany’s statistics office, the Statistisches Bundesamt, issued a bald statement that “China was Germany’s largest trading partner in 2019 for the fourth year running.” I have heard many government and industry representatives parrot the same line. Strangely, the professional number-counters only count trade in goods. They omit trade in services—the fastest growing segment of the global economy. In short, Germany’s official statisticians get it only half right, and therefore all wrong. Apparently, one of the best kept secrets in Berlin is how German and European firms actually operate.

The Trade Flows You Can’t See

In 2017, the last year of available data, the EU exported €236 billion in services to the US and €42.6 billion to China. It imported €223 billion from the US and imported €30.2 billion from China. So, in sum, EU services trade with the US was €469 billion compared with only €72.8 billion with China.

Here’s the reality: the US and Europe are the largest services economies in the world. They are each other’s largest services market, and dense transatlantic services linkages mean that the transatlantic services economy is the geo-economic base for the global competitiveness of US and European services companies. Europe accounted for 38 percent of total US services exports and for 42 percent of total US services imports in 2018.

In short, if you put trade in goods and services together, then it is clear that the largest trading partner for Germany and the EU overall is actually the United States. And it has been thus for decades.

And this is just the beginning of the story. Most German and European companies actually prefer to deliver services via their investment ties rather than through exports. Allianz of America provides insurance, DHL Holdings offers courier services, and SAP Americas delivers software services across the United States. Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW all supplement their US-based manufacturing operations with a range of customer services. In 2018, sales of services by European companies based in the US amounted to $585 billion, more than double European services exports to the US in the same year. Similarly, sales of services by US companies based in Europe of $882 billion were 2.5 times larger than US services exports to Europe. And all of this dwarf the sales that American and European companies are able to make in China, due in part to the many restrictions the Chinese impose on Western companies.

Why Export When You Can Invest?

These numbers highlight an additional reality: trade itself is a misleading benchmark of international commerce. The real backbone of Germany’s international economic standing is investment, not trade. And here again, America is the preferred destination. The US accounted for 62 percent of Europe’s non-European assets around the world in 2018. The total European stock in the US of $3.0 trillion was four times the level of comparable investment from Asia. Germany’s total FDI stock in the US totaled $324 billion in 2018, and German investment flows to the US grew 54 percent in the first three quarters of 2019. China plays a marginal role in comparison.

Europe’s role vis-à-vis the United States is very similar. Europe accounted for about 60 percent ($18 trillion) of total US global assets in 2018. This is more than four times the amount of comparable US investment in the entire Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, Europe’s share of total US FDI is going up, not down—57.5 percent over the past decade. And when US FDI flows to Caribbean offshore financial centers are subtracted from the total, Europe’s share climbs even higher, to almost two-thirds of US direct investment flows.

An inordinate fixation on trade ignores the reality that most German and European companies prefer to deliver goods and services by investing in other countries in order to be close to their customers, rather than sending items across the ocean. Sales by European companies based in the US in 2018, for instance, were more than triple European exports to the United States. Sales by US companies based in Europe, in turn, were roughly one quarter larger than the comparable US sales throughout the entire Asian region. Ford, GE, Amazon, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Caterpillar, Goodyear, Honeywell—American companies have a long-established presence in Germany and other European countries, and their sales reflect that. Sales by US companies in Germany alone were over two-thirds larger than combined US sales in Africa and the Middle East.

So, despite the headlines about US-European trade wars, American and European companies also earn their money on each side of the Atlantic, not in China. In 2019, US affiliate income in Europe rose to a record $295 billion and European affiliate income earned in the United States in 2019 was also at a record $140 billion. Over half of the income US companies earn abroad comes from Europe. That is roughly three times more than what US companies earn in all of Asia.

At Home, Abroad

All of these facts run counter to the fashionable narrative that US and European companies prefer China or other low-cost nations to developed markets. The reality is different, for several reasons.

First, investing in Europe or the United States is relatively easy, while investing in China remains difficult because of onerous restrictions on foreign ownership and forced technology transfer rules. Second, growth prospects in China have slowed not only because of the coronavirus but because Beijing has shifted toward more consumption- and service-led growth and away from export- and investment-driven growth. Third, in addition to being two huge markets, the US and Europe are wealthy, which is correlated with highly skilled labor, rising per capita incomes, innovation, and world class R&D infrastructure, among other things. Together the US and Europe account for half of global consumption, and gaining access to wealthy consumers is among the primary reasons why US and European firms invest in each other’s markets.

Deep and thickening transatlantic investment ties contrast starkly with FDI coming to each continent from China. For some years Chinese FDI in both the US and Europe soared from a relatively low base. However, Chinese investment is now plummeting on both continents due to bilateral commercial tensions and tighter US and European scrutiny of such investments. Chinese investment flows to the US declined to approximately $4.5 billion last year, and Chinese FDI in Europe fell by 40 percent to $13.4 billion. Looking at the paucity of deals in the pipeline even before the coronavirus crisis struck in such dramatic fashion, it appears 2020 will be a year of weak Chinese investment in both North America and Europe.

Finally, the transatlantic economy is also the fulcrum of global digital connectivity. North America and Europe generate approximately 75 percent of digital content for internet users worldwide. Transatlantic flows of data continue to be the fastest and largest in the world, accounting for over one-half of Europe’s data flows and about half of US flows. 55 percent more data flows via transatlantic cables than over transpacific routes. In 2018 US exports of digitally-enabled services to Europe were double US digitally-enabled services exports to the entire Asia-Pacific region. Similarly, EU exports of digitally-enabled services to the United States alone were greater than EU exports of such services to all of Asia and Oceania.

Misleading Focus

An inordinate focus on trade in goods is deeply misleading. The health of the German economy and Europe’s international competitiveness is not just dependent on this one particular segment of commerce, but on the many other ways Germany and its European partners are bound to others around the world. A fuller understanding of these forces makes it clear that, despite much talk of de-globalization and de-coupling and siren calls of “America First” or “Europe First,” the United States and Europe remain deeply intertwined and embedded in each other’s markets, and that their respective links with each other—not China—remain the driver of the global economy. To argue otherwise is to miss the forest for the trees.

COVID-19’s hit to European-Chinese commercial connections was simply the first phase of this cascading crisis. A shutdown of transatlantic commercial ties, which are much deeper and wider, would be far more devastating. Now is not the time to exacerbate transatlantic commercial tensions. On the contrary. Ensuring that transatlantic flows of goods, services, and investment are sustained is one of the most important things that can be done right now to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic.

N.B. This article is based on the author’s and Joseph P. Quinlan’s publication The Transatlantic Economy 2020, which will be released on March 26, 2020.

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© REUTERS/Andreas Gebert

A small biotech company in the German city of Tübingen is one of about 20 companies, institutes, and universities worldwide working on developing a vaccine against COVID-19, the new coronavirus that is causing a worldwide shutdown.

With a staff of 450, CureVac AG is pushing ahead with an innovative, RNA-based method that, if proven successful in the clinical trials planned for this summer, would make it possible to vaccinate hundreds of millions of people within just a few weeks.

Yet on March 15, the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that US President Donald Trump was trying to buy up the company or hire away its scientists so that the United States—and only the United States—would benefit from the vaccine.

From a journalist’s point of view, it’s a good story. For the German government, however, the story is even better: at a time of terrible worries and fears, the CureVac drama provides a perfect narrative of hope, of good against evil, and of solidarity against selfishness. It’s crisis communication at its finest.

Being such a good story doesn’t make it untrue, either, despite energetic denials by Richard Grenell, Trump’s ambassador to Berlin. The German government confirmed the report; CureVac itself issued a half-hearted statement which only denied that an offer for the company as a whole had been made. No mention was made of trying to lure away the scientists working there.

Add to that a curious coincidence: CureVac had come to Trumps’s attention at a White House meeting on March 2, where a number of biotech CEOs outlined their efforts against the coronavirus. One of them was Daniel Menichella, the German company’s CEO, a Harvard-educated American business manager.

Just days later, Menichella was replaced unexpectedly. The shareholders brought back his predecessor Ingmar Hoerr, a co-founder of CureVac. Hoerr is not in good health, so his deputy Franz-Werner Haas will be running the company day-to-day for the time being.

Trump’s attempt to poach the vaccine research outraged German politicians of all parties. The Federal Ministry for Education and Research pointed to the substantial financial support that CureVac had been receiving for its research. The European Commission chipped in with offers of additional credits of up to €80 million.

“Germany is Not for Sale”

Economic Minister Peter Altmaier even raised the idea that Germany could block a foreign takeover because German security interests were at stake. Except that this time, it would be to protect a German company not from China, but from the United States. “Germany is not for sale,” Altmaier added somewhat unnecessarily. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the federal government had gotten involved at a very early stage. The issue had been “solved,” she said.

At a time when all the news seems dark—from the number of infections to the economic fall-out of the crisis—the CureVac story hits a number of spots.

It caters to rising anti-American feelings fueled by anger over President Trump’s policies and attitude and especially over his decision to abruptly close US borders to Europeans without consulting with allied European governments. It also deflects criticism away from Germany’s public authorities, which have not always been up to scratch over fighting the pandemic, either.

The story contains an element of “David against Goliath”—after all, it’s about a small German company facing down demands from the giant United States. In parallel (and perhaps in contradiction, but who wants to squabble?), it’s a battle between billionaires.

CureVac’s main shareholder is Dietmar Hopp, founder of the German software giant SAP and certainly a much richer man than Trump. Hopp immediately promised to keep the company and its jobs in Germany and to make any vaccine available to people all over world. Incidentally, the second-largest investor is the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation—and Gates will certainly not accept that any vaccine be limited to the US public.

Yet the most potent ingredients in this remarkable story are pride and hope: the pride about having a German company on the cutting edge of the world’s most important research; and the hope that a vaccine available to everybody in the foreseeable future. While it is clear that the process is still likely to take several more months, CureVac and its commitment to Germany and the world still bring a silver lining to the Corona story.

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© REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs

Frustrated by three years of US President Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency, many European leaders have openly wished for a Democrat to defeat him in this November’s general election. Their opinions of Senator Bernie Sanders, though, might be different. Sanders, who emerged as the main rival to Democratic front-runner Joe Biden after this week’s Super Tuesday results, seems unsettling to many EU foreign policy-makers. One senior diplomat told the Washington Post that Europeans are “all praying for Biden.” Others remarked that they would see a Sanders victory as further evidence of an isolationist turn in the United States. The Economist went so far as to describe a potential Trump-Sanders match-up as “appalling choice with no good outcome.”

Such fears are misguided, however.  Although Sanders may not speak the language of the Cold War American foreign policy consensus, he does not represent as stark of a break with it as his critics fear (and many of his supporters hope for). In many areas—such as climate policy and reducing tensions with China—the Vermont Senator may actually hew closer to European views than Biden does. The “old continent” has little reason to fear, and should even hope for, a Sanders victory.

The US commitment to NATO

One of the main anxieties that European leaders express about a Sanders presidency is his commitment to mutual defense. They often focus on his past opposition to NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe, which he argued would provoke Russian aggression. They allege that this is proof of ‘isolationism’ and an anti-Western outlook. Leftists like Sanders, however, were hardly alone in this opinion. George Kennan, an arch-realist and the architect of America’s Cold War containment policy, felt the same way. In 1990, he argued that NATO expansion would prove to be a “fateful error” which would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion” and could prompt a resurgence of East-West animosities. This not a niche viewpoint; a group of dozens of senior American diplomats shared this view at the time.

Although he opposed the expansion initially, Sanders has not expressed any desire to renege on the US’ existing commitments. In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, he said he would be willing to use military force to defend American allies and that he “believes in NATO.” Furthermore, even if Sanders wished to limit the US commitment to NATO, he would almost certainly be constrained by Congress, which is strongly supportive of NATO.

In one sense, European NATO members might even find a Sanders presidency a relief. California Congressman Ro Khanna, who often speaks for Sanders on foreign policy, has said that as president, “Sanders is not going to push countries to be increasing their defense spending.” It is unlikely that Joe Biden would exercise similar restraint.

International engagement

Sanders’ long-standing opposition to free trade agreements (FTAs) is also held up as an area of concern for European policymakers. While he is skeptical of the relative lack of labor and environmental standards in current FTAs, Sanders hardly has an autarkic vision for the United States. His policy platform states that “trade is a good thing, but it has to be fair.” He emphasizes stronger protections for workers, the environment, and human rights—all issues the European Commission prizes in negotiations. Far from signaling an end to transatlantic trade, a Sanders-appointed US Trade Representative would likely share more views with his or her EU counterpart than a Biden-appointed USTR would.

Sanders approach to the US’ geopolitical rivals sets him apart from more mainstream Democrats in a way that is uniquely beneficial to Europe. As the EU works to find middle ground between the US and its ‘great power’ rivals, Russia and China, a less confrontational US president may be exactly what it needs. Whereas the Trump Administration insists that the EU reduce ties with China, a future President Sanders is more likely to defuse tensions with America’s rival superpower. This could spare Europeans the painful decision between their security guarantor and one of their largest trading partners. Significantly, Sanders has also been one of the Democratic candidates who said he would re-join the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with no preconditions. This would reduce transatlantic tensions and lessen the chance of conflict with Iran, both of which would be a relief to Europe.

A Rejuvenated Multilateralism

Far from being an “isolationist”, Sanders would seek increased engagement on many issues that are of substantial importance to Europeans. He has the most ambitious climate plan of any candidate, which would allow for critical US-EU cooperation to combat carbon emissions. He also supports strengthening international institutions, which is also a key tenet of European foreign policy.

Where Sanders would continue a rupture with the pre-Trump business as usual—such as limiting the US’ military footprint and curtailing support for FTAs—Europe must realize that the status quo ante was unstable and unlikely to persist. With crumbling infrastructure and declining life expectancy, it is improbable that the US can maintain a global military footprint in its current form for much longer. Because Washington views China as its chief rival, it will likely shift the US’ finite resources away from Europe toward East Asia, regardless of who occupies the White House. Similarly, a country that has experienced hundreds of thousands of lost jobs from free trade agreements should not be expected to support unfettered global markets indefinitely.

Should Europeans still harbor any doubts about whether Sanders may be disinclined to use American resources to solve global problems, they can take solace in the Senator’s own words. When asked to name the best foreign policy decisions that the US has ever made, he listed the United States’ post-WW II Marshall Plan aid to Western Europe and the establishment of the United Nations. As two of the most significant internationalist and pro-European actions the US has ever taken, leaders across the Atlantic can rest assured that a President Sanders would serve their interests well.

The post Op-Ed: Don’t Fear a President Sanders, Europe! appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© United States Library of Congress via REUTERS

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the transatlantic relationship has been severely shaken. Diplomatic and security structures that dated back to 1945 have looked to be suddenly in danger of collapsing.

On climate change and Iran policy, the United States and Europe have parted ways: US actions have undermined European strategy in these areas. On trade, there is the potential for a real collision given President Trump’s rhetoric, but the key change since 2016 has been atmospheric. The tone has altered and with it, the expectations for the future. The United States has proven not so much an intransigent partner as an unreliable ally, leaving Europe with the difficult job of navigating its way to military autonomy on a timeline that leaves it dependent on the United States (whoever its president is) for decades to come.

The greatest analytical challenge of the Trump era is to break free from the day-to-day turbulence and to identify the underlying patterns. Yesterday’s crisis fades into today’s and tomorrow’s, many of them meaningless. Politics is subordinated to the theatrical imperatives of a theatrical man. Placing the Trump White House to the side of the larger narrative, there are three historical patterns that have defined the deterioration in transatlantic relations since the end of the Cold War. Because they pre-date the Trump presidency, they will outlive the Trump presidency.

No Need for Pessimism

The first is an uncertain commitment to Europe, and a lack of clarity on Europe’s place vis-à-vis the economic and strategic interests of the United States. The second is the extreme partisanship of American politics, to which relations with Europe can easily fall victim. The third is the transformation of the cultural foundation for the transatlantic relationship. Taken together, these three patterns may amount to an American abandonment of the West in a second Trump term or with a Democratic successor to Trump. This scenario is hardly implausible. It haunts much of the contemporary policy writing and thinking on the transatlantic relationship.

Yet Europeans interested in preserving the transatlantic relationship need not be fatalistic or even pessimistic. Historical patterns can be converted into lessons, and lessons into policies, helping to establish conditions for the survival of the transatlantic West.

To forestall a crack-up of the West, and regardless of who is elected in November 2020, “Atlanticist” European policymakers should pursue three lines of effort toward the United States. They should emphasize the many interests shared by the United States and Europe, since these are no longer self-evident in the United States. They should build relationships with Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, so as not to be too closely aligned with the fortunes of the Democratic Party, and they should invest in a cultural diplomacy that evokes the open-ended future rather than the Cold War past.

The Cold War Alliance

World War II and the early Cold War brought the United States to Europe, making the case for the United States as a European power. An intertwined set of interests set the US strategy. Hitler demonstrated the damage that could be done when a single power, hostile to the United States, gained control of continental Europe’s economic assets. A remilitarized Nazi Germany rapidly seized territory between 1939 and 1941, making it a nightmare for the United States to defeat. The US was forced to partner with an unsavory ally like the Soviet Union and, even then, the push into Europe’s South, through Italy, and into Europe’s West, through Normandy, was immensely costly. The fear that what had been required after Pearl Harbor would be required again, were the Soviet Union to advance into Western Europe, spooked American policy makers, from Harry Truman to Dwight Eisenhower. The United States stayed in Europe after 1945 in order to deter the Soviet Union from dominating the territory that for several centuries had been the center of global military and economic power. The urgency of such interests for Washington resulted in the Marshall Plan and in the NATO alliance, both initiatives that demanded sacrifice from the United States.

The economic situation highlighted another kind of American interest in postwar Western Europe. Europe was an excellent market for American goods—from Coca Cola to Hollywood films. Prior to the outbreak of war in 1939, Europe and the United States had a symbiotic relationship in economics and finance, a measure of which was a long-standing willingness of Europeans to invest in the American economy. In 1945, much of Europe lay in ruins, but that turned into an economic opportunity. A reconstituted Western European economy represented an array of interconnected advantages for the United States. It minimized the chances for another world war. It kept the Soviet Union at bay, and it contributed to a virtuous cycle of economic growth in Europe and the United States.

A Londoner and a Berliner

Awareness of these interests helped to solidify bi-partisan support for a “pro-European” American foreign policy in Washington. The Democrat Woodrow Wilson had pioneered this foreign policy in theory after World War I. He had failed, however, to convince the Republican Party to come along. It was a lesson Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could not forget. Nor could Roosevelt’s Wilsonian Vice President, Harry Truman. World War II was so grave and so enormous an operation that it could never have been handled by the Democratic Party alone. Truman devoted substantial political resources to getting Republicans on Capitol Hill behind the Marshall Plan.

Meanwhile, Dwight Eisenhower, NATO’s first commander, was so distressed by the prospect of an isolationist Republican Party that he decided to run for president in 1952. When he was elected, Eisenhower did not break from the foreign policies of Democratic administrations that had been in power since 1932. Although he changed emphasis here and there with US Cold War strategy—on covert action and on using nuclear weapons—this was a question of fine tuning the strategy, not reversing it. Eisenhower, who had declared himself a “Londoner” in a 1945 speech in the United Kingdom, put the American commitment to a transatlantic West at the center of his foreign policy. When John F. Kennedy much more famously declared himself a “Berliner” in the summer of 1963 he was speaking and acting in an established political tradition.

While interests directed American strategy toward Europe, bi-partisanship strengthened a Europe-oriented American foreign policy. Culture was part of the mix as well. The political elite that created American foreign policy in the 1940s and 1950s was the product of an extremely europhile and eurocentric higher education. Students were educated to believe in the goodness of the West and in the notion that the United States was an integral part of the West. This education furnished figures like Acheson and Dulles with a vocabulary for justifying American “leadership” of the West, which, if it meant anything tangible at all, meant the security commitment to Western Europe. When he was assassinated in 1963, President John F. Kennedy earned the high praise of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which stated in its obituary that studying at Harvard had made him into “a European.”

Who Is Illegitimate?

In each of these domains—perceived interests, bi-partisanship, culture—the end of the Cold War was the beginning of a new era. Centers of economic power diversified in the 1990s, the heyday of globalization. It was no longer possible to claim with such strategic certainty that the economy of Western Europe was the key to global power. By the 1990s, there were at least a dozen economic keys to global power, which was hardly contained in individual nation states but in the form of multi-national companies that made a mockery of national borders. This put Europe into a new kind of foreign-policy equation for the United States, one that was less geographically concentrated than in the past.

Meanwhile, by the 1990s and beyond, Europe had succeeded beyond the most elaborate fantasy of American policymakers in the 1940s. It was no hotbed of great-power militarism but, in the form of the European Union, it was expanding peaceful structures that were quite welcoming to American companies and that, as in the past, were conducive to European investment in the United States: richer Europe, richer United States. Indeed, by the outset of the 21st century Europe was so rich that the American military commitment to Europe was strategically sensible but nevertheless something of an anachronism, a legacy of the past that was a less and less rational construct—if not for Europeans, then in the eyes of the American taxpayer.

Internally, American politics would never recover from the Vietnam War, which saw the United States split into at least two competing parts. However, discontent did not boil over in the 1970s and 1980s, and for all the high drama of the Watergate scandal and its aftermath, there was considerable foreign-policy continuity during the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But the seething discontent did not recede either. Without the Soviet enemy there to superimpose some order on domestic American politics, warring factions started to collide in the 1990s.

The impeachment of Bill Clinton suggested that for Clinton’s Republican opponents, he was in some way an illegitimate president. After an initial burst of patriotism immediately after 9/11, George W. Bush emerged as an illegitimate president in the estimation of his political opponents. Republicans mounted ferocious attacks on Barack Obama. The first phase of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was to argue that Obama was not a citizen of the United States. In office, the clearest indication of what President Trump will do is whether or not he can reverse something that President Obama had done. If Trump can be the anti-Obama, he will be—especially where foreign policy is concerned. The Democratic candidates for president are currently positioning themselves as the anti-Trump on foreign policy, and so it goes.

Trump and the Cultural Wars

American culture of the past few decades has little in common with the culture of the 1940s and 1950s. Conservatives have moved away from Eisenhower’s pro-Europe posture, many of them embracing an ethnonationalist sensibility that is one part anti-EU and another part anti-immigrant, anti-internationalist. This coincides with similar movements among European populists, hearkening the death of the transatlantic West or the birth of an entirely new West, as espoused by the likes of Steve Bannon. Meanwhile, in the 1960s, multiple political movements affirmed a fact of American life that had been obvious but had not always been accepted: that as much as the United States had a European patrimony, an inheritance of religion and political philosophy and art from Europe, the European strain was only one of several in American history. The European strain also coincided with the ideology of whiteness in American life, a legitimizing tool for governing elites over the generations.

Over time, American universities became vehicles of social change as they shifted away from espousing “Western civilization” and adopted curricula that tended to associate Europe with empire and with whiteness. Europe is no longer the cornerstone of American higher education, and the rise of the West that McNeill wrote about has yielded to Provincialization Europe, in the title of an important recent book on global history. These changes have been contested at every point, leading to the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, which mirror the erosion of bi-partisanship in American politics. (And no president has ever so visibly enjoyed the culture wars, and profited from them politically, as President Trump.) Still, the basic transition that began in the 1960s has been unstoppable. American multiculturalism is here to stay, but Europe does not fit comfortably into the American scene, as it once did, which is a problem for the transatlantic relationship.

Trump has proven a salient truth about the transatlantic West. It must not be taken for granted. It is not a self-perpetuating mechanism, an engine put together in 1945 that will keep on running indefinitely. A United States unsure of the interests that bind it to Europe, mired in partisan division, and moving culturally away from Europe could well abandon the West in coming years. Trump’s talent as a politician, often buried behind his personal bluster and behind the incoherence of his administration’s foreign policy, is his knowledge of his electorate. It did not care when he proclaimed NATO obsolete. It was not horrified by Trump’s disdain for Chancellor Merkel. It agrees with the president that Europe needs to be forced into spending more on defense, while being coerced into trade deals the president says are more favorable to the American economy. It finds persuasive Trump’s contention that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are members of a selfish global elite, that their belief in the “liberal international order” was a smokescreen for an assault on American nationhood, and that the foreign-policy tradition of democracy promotion, going back to Woodrow Wilson, is either irrelevant or it is nonsense. Much as Trump has struggled to change the course of American foreign policy, failing more often than succeeding at the task, he has tapped into feelings and grievances that he did not have to fabricate on the campaign trail in 2016. He activated divisions and disagreements that will endure and that will certainly imperil the future of the transatlantic relationship.

Seek Out US Conservatives

To address this problem, Europe can remind the United States of the interests held in common and that are prone to deepen over time. The crucial point here is not so much economic, though the regulation of a productive commercial and financial relationship between Europe and the United States is a shared interest. The basic strategic imperative concerns Russia and China. Both of these powers are benefitting from a divide-and-conquer approach. They can accomplish much more bilaterally than they can if they have to deal with a united transatlantic front.

Conversely, on trade, on the stability of Europe’s borders and on international order generally the United States and Europe can more than double their influence by working together. Whatever the short-term imperatives are for competition, for rivalry, and for the narcissism of small differences, Europe and the United States must recognize that they live in a world that is far more eager to transform the West than to be transformed by the West. The days of hubris, when the United States thought it could democratize the Middle East and Europe thought it could Europeanize Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus, are over. Internal reform and the prudent maintenance of the transatlantic relationship are big enough challenges. They also reflect hard-edged and long-term interests in both Europe and the United States.

Tactically, Europe should try to reach out to as many American conservatives as possible. Trump has cast the EU as a “liberal” entity. He has been able to do so in part because many European nations and the EU find it easier to work with Democrats. Leading Democrats tend to rhapsodize about the EU. Democrats have positions on gun control, abortion, climate change and international order that tend to accord more closely with majority opinion on these matters in Europe. But if Democrats come to own the transatlantic relationship, it could prove fatal to the relationship.

Europe as such is not unpopular among American conservatives. To the contrary, but the case for the transatlantic relationship has to be made to them. European heads of state and European diplomats should seek out conservative audiences to find points of transatlantic cooperation that appear bi-partisan to those Americans who are not Democrats.  The approach could be called “Operation Eisenhower” in memory of the Republican President who played such a prominent role in the Allied victory, who was a stalwart defender (and employee) of NATO and who saw no alternative to a robust transatlantic relationship. This is not a technique of managing relations with the Trump administration. It is an investment in the future.

Make Use of Cultural Diplomacy

Finally, Europe should make the United States an object of its cultural diplomacy, not as an ornament but as an aspect of its overall foreign policy. This might seem beside the point among allies, but it is essential at the present moment. Accentuating the historical ties between Europe and the United States is insufficient. A creative European cultural diplomacy would take into account the complicated multiculturalism of the United States, encouraging tolerance and openness not as the genetic possession of anyone but as a legacy of the transatlantic relationship at its best. It would also seek to persuade—as all cultural diplomacy does. Assuming that the hard US interests in the transatlantic relationship have been clearly articulated, Europe’s cultural diplomacy could be aimed at persuading Americans that isolationism and unilateralism are wrong turns and that cooperation and multilateralism, refined into a foreign policy that reflects democratic deliberation and the rule of law, constitutes the best way forward. Cultural diplomacy could be deployed to remind Americans that when the West crashed in the 1930s it was not just Europeans who suffered. It was Americans who found themselves in uniform as well. Likewise, when the West was reconstituted after the war, when the Marshall Plan was conceptualized and the NATO treaties were signed, it was not just good news for (Western) Europeans. It eventually made the United States safer and more prosperous. These examples are not merely academic history. They frame the decisions that will be made on both sides of the Atlantic, in and after 2020, determining whether the bottom of the West falls out for good or whether a renewal is still possible.

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© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

We are conducting this interview on a sad day, January the 31^st. The United Kingdom is departing the European Union tonight. With the EU’s second largest economy gone, where does this leave the EU? The immediate reaction of the EU has been to circle the wagons and to maintain and re-emphasize unity—in the face of the first such event, the first time a country has left the EU, and obviously concerned about potentially hostile relations in a hostile world. So, in the first place the EU has strengthened its unity. The second point is, that Britain’s departure hasn’t made any of the obvious problems within the EU any easier, except that it’s removed one moderately problematic member—but until the Brexit vote happened, not an enormously problematic member, because in some of the most difficult issues the EU faced, Britain wasn’t involved: the eurocrisis, where the UK was neither helpful nor a hindrance. It’s obviously not really involved, or hasn’t been at least since the early 2000s, in relations between the old members and the new members of Central and Eastern Europe or in the relations with Russia. It doesn’t actually even have very much to do with relations with America. But that might change.

So, I don’t think Britain’s departure solves any problems for the EU. Third, there’s a diminution in the perceived international weight of the EU. Because of its history and location, Britain has exceptionally close—exceptional by the standards of other members—relationships with countries around the world. You know, people know Britain pretty well, in Asia, the Americas. There are other member countries with important relations like Spain with Latin America, but I think Britain was exceptional. So, people feel this is an EU they know less well. Germany is less well-known, for example. And they also feel that, I think, if Britain is leaving, something is wrong with the EU. There is a sort of weakening of credibility, which will have to be re-established, and the sense, well, maybe there will be more break-ups.

And finally, I think that Britain’s departure will probably mean a sort of change in the policy culture of the EU itself. I would expect it to become more southern—it must do so—less economically liberal, more continental. And I would expect therefore cumulatively over time the orientation of the EU and the policy choices of the EU will be somewhat different than they would have been if Britain had remained a member. Remember that the single market, as we know it, wouldn’t have happened. It would have been quite different, it’s quite a big deal. I expect the EU to be somewhat more inward-looking, somewhat more defensive, somewhat more regulation-minded.

The ambitions of the European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen, of course, go a completely different way. Absolutely. And we will have to see if she succeeds.

Von der Leyen promised a “geopolitical commission,” most likely using geo-economic tools. If you look into the EU’s toolbox, is there much to look at? I think the problem the EU has is that it has lost its big alliances, particularly with the United States. The EU is not and—whatever they pretend—will not in the near future be a security player of big weight. That would require a policy revolution, above all in Germany. And we’re not seeing much sign of that at the moment. So, it’s geo-economics. There are two big areas where in theory the EU could play big role. The first is trade. Globalization is a big interest of the EU. It is a very open economy. Actually, it is the most open of the large economies. If you regard the EU as a whole, it’s substantially more open than China or let alone the US. And the other one is climate.

The problem in both cases is that though the EU is big, it’s not big enough on its own to shift the world. And it’s not clear who its allies are going to be. The United States obviously has become highly unilateralist and protectionist. So, that makes a globalization program very difficult. Indeed, the effort is going to be devoted clearly just to managing the bilateral relations with the US. And vis-à-vis China, it is very difficult to know how to make progress with China. It’s a very complicated story. The EU has a lot of interests in common with the US, but the US is not coordinating with it or not very much. Creating a critical mass of willing countries that will make a really big difference to the progress on the trade front will not be impossible, but it will be very, very difficult.

And on climate it’s basically the same story. You’ve got the US out of the picture, which is a big loss, and again China is in a very different place in terms of its development, its ambitions. It may be possible to construct some sort of climate alliance with China, but it’s going to be a tremendously big problem. The EU is in a very different stage of development with very different priorities from China, which is still a very fast-growing, emerging economy. So I think in those big areas, the EU can do interesting things and important things. I don’t underestimate them, but shifting the global dial is going to be very, very difficult.

Do you think the rapid worsening of transatlantic relations can be reversed after President Donald Trump? It obviously will depend, first, on what happens in the presidential elections and the congressional elections later this year. Speaking now, it looks rather likely to me that Mr. Trump will be re-elected. But I think, there’s a second question, which is how much difference it would make if a Democrat won. It would depend rather on who the Democrat was, but I think, the general balance of opinion in the US has shifted in a more inward-looking direction, a more protectionist direction, a more anti-Chinese direction. I think a Democrat will be much friendlier to the Europeans; it would make it much easier to have good international relations, but I think, it will be very difficult to get a Democratic administration to focus on any huge, ambitious global endeavor. I mean, the world in which the Europeans and the Clinton administration completed the Uruguay Round for example, 26 years ago, seems unimaginably distant.

Donald Trump is on tape saying the EU was constructed to “screw up” the United States… And he’s not entirely wrong. This was very clearly not the German view in the 1950s and 1960s, but it was a French view. One of the raisons d’être of the EU and more recently the euro was to challenge American power. The French have a pretty consistent view going back to Charles de Gaulle. They got out of NATO; later they wanted to upgrade the euro as a rival currency. So, the Americans aren’t completely wrong. Nonetheless, the dominant view of the US until the end of the Cold War was that the Europeans were very important allies. There were on the forefront in the global war with Communism. And the stronger Europe was economically and politically, the better. They didn’t take the French threat too seriously for perfectly good reasons.

The end of the Cold War changed everything. The first period, the 1990s , were “the holiday from history.” Everything was fine, the world was perfect. Then you got into the post-9/11 period and you got into a really big split between America and Europe over the Iraq war, and it’s an important split. The Europeans were right, but that doesn’t make the Americans like them better, and there was a split within Europe, because the British went their own way, which was itself, I think, a revealing fact.

But at that point, Europe began to just look less important. It’s no longer the front, because there is no front there anymore. Russia has gone away, that’s what we felt, and we are now interested in the Middle East and the pivot to Asia, which came later. What’s Europe got to do with that? Nothing. It’s a nuisance in the Middle East and as far as Asia is concerned, it’s irrelevant. So, the Americans increasingly became a mixture of hostile and indifferent, more indifferent than hostile, but there was some real hostility.

Then in the post-financial crisis period, there’s been the long period of economic crisis in Europe, at least it was seen as a crisis. I talked to a lot of American policy makers: Was Europe a help? No, it was a nuisance. There was a tremendous worry that Europe would create the next stage of the financial crisis and then, finally, we get to the Trump era. Now, Putin is a bit more of a threat, but he’s not seen as a threat like the Soviet Union by most Americans. Trump likes him, whereas Europe is not seen as central to America’s concerns and is seen—on the right—as moralistic and unhelpful.

There are still some Americans in the center-left who admire Europe, admire Europe’s civic culture, they admire the social democratic systems and values. Probably, if you talked to Elizabeth Warren, she would say actually Europe is the way we should do things. I don’t underestimate that, but I think basically Europe simply doesn’t play the same role in America’s interests. And then you get this very Trumpian, protectionist view: Europe is running a big trade surplus with us, so it’s hostile. Europe depends on our defense umbrella and it’s not paying enough for it, so we’re providing them with a valuable thing for free, so they’re freeloaders and then they moralize at us all the time and tell us how bad we are.

So I think for Trump, given his protectionist views on climate change, his very transactional view of international relations, Europe is really, really irritating. And then it’s stuffed full of liberal democracies and he doesn’t much like liberal democracies. So, for him to be lectured by the German chancellor about how to behave as a decent democrat is, I think, pretty well unbearable. And the fact that I agree with Angela Merkel doesn’t make it any better.

Is there any chance of the EU achieving the French aim of strategic autonomy? Well, it would be possible for Europe to achieve a fair degree of strategic autonomy. It is very big, 450 million people. It is still the second largest economy after the US, depending on how you measure it. It has clear economic weaknesses, it is slow-growing, very slow-growing, it is aging, it is not doing as well in the frontier technologies with America and China, but still it is a big power.

But the real question is whether it can develop a collective will and purpose to achieve that. Does it really want strategic autonomy? Does it want to exert power in the world with its economic wealth and weight? There two pretty big obstacles to doing this. One is Germany. What is it that Germany wants? My strong impression is that Germany remains emotionally very committed to not being a great power, which is the post-war situation. Second, Europe remains a mosaic of very different countries and cultures with very different attitudes. Can you create a genuine, coherent whole out of it? Otherwise, if you cannot do it, you need much more political integration. Much more!

So, I do not think it is likely to be. The French ambition, which is basically the French idea, when they say, “Europe must have strategic autonomy,” they mean, “You must do exactly what France wants and put everything behind France.” Well, that is not how it is going to work. I have to say, in these matters France is actually closer to Britain than it is to Germany and Germany is a very different, for very obvious reasons.

Would a US-China confrontation reverse the trend of deteriorating transatlantic relations? This is a really important question. Trump is very peculiar in that he is so unilateralist and so indifferent to a lot of alliances. Another president may also be concerned with balancing China while having very substantial interests and views in common with Europe. I have talked to German businesses in China: they have very similar concerns to those of the Americans.

So in economics it is perfectly possible to imagine an alliance of Europe and America, and Japan as well, confronting China. But of course in a geopolitical and geostrategic confrontation with China, Europe is not going to be relevant. It does not have relevant forces outside economics, to bring to bear in this. Europe is no longer a strategic front, which is a very good thing. Who wants to be the strategic front? It was not much fun when the Soviet army were here [in Berlin].

By the way, there is another possibility, which is relevant to this: Europe has the potential to extend its economic influence by forging very close relationships with what used to be the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and is now minus America. At some point I think the US will go back in. So, an alliance of liberal-market democracies on the economic side is conceivable and China could break that. That could yet be an important strategic opportunity.

So, if the Americans are moderately intelligent, you could imagine a world, five to ten years from now, in which you have China and probably Russia on the one side and a Western-led alliance of liberal democracies on the other. And Europe would be an important part of that. That would involve a pretty big shift in American thinking at the moment, but I could imagine that happening.

The interview was conducted by Henning Hoff. Assistance: John-William Boer and David Schmitt. Martin Wolf was speaking at the “After Populism” conference organized by the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

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© REUTERS/Adriano Machado

Senator, how did American foreign politics change under President Donald Trump? One very significant change is this administration’s attitude toward China. There has been a generation-long, bipartisan tradition among American presidents of being tough on China while running for office, but not following through once elected. The president campaigned on China’s abuses with respect to trade and other issues, and he is governing accordingly. What might not be apparent to Europeans is just how much popular support this tough approach to China commands in America. When we aren’t in moments of crisis or fighting wars, foreign policy doesn’t generally dominate the American political discussion. But China is an exception. In my home state of Arkansas, people see the harmful effects that unfair Chinese competition has had on their neighbors and communities, and like all Americans they have a sense of justice and fair play that is offended by the abuses in Hong Kong, or in Xinjiang where the Chinese Communist Party has built concentration camps. So that genie is out of the bottle. It won’t be put back anytime soon, even if there’s a US-China trade deal.

There is an impression that the United States under Donald Trump is taking a step back from world politics while placing a stronger focus on domestic affairs. What is your view? I don’t accept this premise—and remember, Barack Obama campaigned and tried to govern on the notion that it was time to engage in nation building at home. His attempt to pull back from the world, and his largely rhetorical “pivot to Asia,” which wasn’t sufficiently backed up by military assets, contributed to the chaos beginning in 2014 and 2015, whether it was ISIS and the refugee crisis, China bullying its neighbors in the South and East China Seas, or Russia invading Crimea. America remains committed to NATO and committed to its allies in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. The threats to NATO are China and Russia, as well as other NATO members that don’t take China and Russia seriously as adversaries.

What do you think of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s suggestion of creating a safe zone in Syria? I’d welcome increased German involvement in northeast Syria. It is imperative that we coordinate to stamp out the last remnants of ISIS. As part of this process, we must ensure that ISIS detainees are returned home and detained. Additionally, we should cooperate to halt further Iranian expansion in the region and protect the Kurds from being overrun, even if they don’t receive an autonomous zone in northeast Syria.

The global order is changing. Right now, there are two main beneficiaries: China on the one hand, Russia on the other. Does the US accept this development and if not, how does it counteract it? Russia and especially China are very serious threats to countries like the United States and Germany. Analysts typically speak of Russia as an economically challenged and, literally, demographically dying nation, and China as the real threat for our future. There’s something to be said for that, but what we should keep in mind is that Xi Jinping and his cronies act as much out of desperation as does Russia’s leadership. As Xenophon taught ages ago, tyrants everywhere and always rest uneasily. Government without the consent of the people is an inherently fragile situation.
One thing we must keep in mind is that dictators like Putin and Xi want to split apart allies like the United States and Germany. The greatest threat to NATO today is the failure or refusal of some members to take seriously the malign intentions of these two men and their policies. Take Huawei, which some NATO members like Germany may allow in their 5G infrastructure, despite its track record of espionage for China. Or take Nord Stream 2, which is, frankly, an appalling and shameful project. While Germany touts the pipeline’s commercial benefits, Putin will use it as a strategic tool to split Eastern Europe from Central and Western Europe. It would effectively double the amount of natural gas Russia could export to Europe along a route that bypasses the alliance’s eastern frontier. This would enhance Russia’s ability to blackmail countries like Poland and the Baltic states by threatening their energy supplies, while deepening NATO members’ reliance on Russia to heat their homes and power their economies. Russia’s use of oil and gas exports to pressure Ukraine is a preview of how it could use Nord Stream 2 against NATO. And remember that when Putin invaded Crimea, he threatened to cut off European countries that assisted Ukraine. If NATO members increase their reliance on Russian gas, it will give the Kremlin more opportunities for blackmail and more leverage over the alliance.

Are you satisfied with the contribution of Germany and the European Union to the international security architecture? What do you expect the Europeans and especially Germany to do in terms of security and foreign policy? I appreciate Germany’s recommitment last month to increasing its defense budget to levels agreed upon by NATO leaders. Given the common threats we face, it’s urgent that all NATO members meet their defense spending commitments. NATO may struggle to remain a credible military force if all but seven NATO members refuse to spend sufficiently on their militaries. Additionally, I support European initiatives to streamline the defense acquisition process for our European allies. However, as these initiatives develop, it’s critical that they be designed in a manner that doesn’t duplicate NATO functions or impact NATO interoperability.

Germany has not ruled out incorporating Huawei in its 5G mobile networks. Would Huawei’s participation limit the intelligence sharing between Germany and the US? I’m deeply concerned about the German government’s proposal to include Huawei in the country’s 5G infrastructure. Huawei is an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist Party. China’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region—Australia, Japan, and New Zealand—have already banned Huawei from their 5G networks. The United States has gone further by placing the company on our trading blacklist. Some NATO allies have also acted to counter the Huawei threat, including Poland and Estonia.
Huawei technology may be favored by the German business community because it is relatively inexpensive, but at what cost? Huawei networks present a risk to German security that can’t be mitigated. It could enable the CCP to spy on the German government and invade the privacy of German citizens. I’d urge the German government to look at more secure 5G providers such as European firms Nokia and Ericsson.
The adoption of Huawei technology by some allies could split NATO into Huawei and non-Huawei blocs, harming our ability to cooperate and thus helping our adversaries. Unfortunately, the presence of Huawei in allied nations’ networks will force the US government to review our intelligence-sharing procedures.

President Trump stated that the EU and Germany are among America’s “foes.” Do you agree with that, also considering the recent 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall? The United States, Germany, and the EU are never going to agree about everything, including trade, which is the context of the remarks you’re referring to. We’ll have disputes. Our relations will be better under some leaders than others. But important anniversaries like the fall of the Berlin Wall, and threats like China and Russia, remind us that we’re united by common interests much stronger than any supposed divisions.

Could it be already too late for the US to effectively limit China’s expansion in the world? The Chinese Communist Party poses a threat not just to the United States, but to the entire free world. China is run by a totalitarian regime that doesn’t tolerate dissent, at home or abroad. It’s easy to dismiss the Communist Party’s concentration camps in Xinjiang as a “far-off” problem. But the CCP’s malign activities are already at our doorsteps. Beijing is already using predatory economic tactics and censorship to steal from our companies and stifle our citizens’ ability to speak out against it.
Americans and Germans know the evils of totalitarianism, so we must mount a firm, unified response to these threats from Beijing. The US and Germany have many allies and friends, so I’m confident in our ability to confront this challenge.

How would you evaluate the current relationship between the United States and Russia? As I’ve long said about Vladimir Putin: once KGB, always KGB. I expect that the United States and Russia will remain adversaries as long as he remains in power. It would be good if we had a better bilateral relationship, but that may not occur anytime soon—particularly given Russia’s continued aggression against the NATO alliance, as well as its meddling in Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

Do you fear any reoccurring Russian interference in the 2020 US presidential elections, and how do you plan on confronting the issue? I don’t fear anything to do with Vladimir Putin or his efforts to keep Russia relevant. His actions deserve a firm response, not fear. I sit on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Russia’s malign activities on this front are something we track closely, and for which the United States is well prepared. But it’s also important to remember that Russian interference was not a decisive factor in recent US elections. The American people decide their own future, and we’ll do everything in our power to ensure that remains true.

Former national security adviser of president Trump, H.R. McMaster, and economic advisor Gary Cohn stated in a 2017 op-ed that nations should prioritize their own interests over global alliances. Does this statement still resonate with you today? Alliances must be dedicated to some purpose—they are instruments to strategic ends, and so they are critical elements in any nation’s pursuit of its own interests. I look at the world today and I have no doubt about the purposes to which NATO, for example, remains dedicated.

In your view, what are the most important topics for the Munich Security Conference 2020 and what do you expect from it in order to be a successful conference? The most important topics for the 2020 Munich Security Conference are the nefarious intentions of our adversaries, Russia and China. Russia continues to bully, intimidate, and occupy its neighbors. Meanwhile, China seeks to build an international system antithetical to constitutional government, the rule of law, and market-based economics. Despite these threats, some allies continue to strike dangerous deals with China and Russia that risk betraying their safety and the safety of their allies. Conference attendees should discuss how we can prevent our transatlantic alliance from being infiltrated and divided by these hostile powers. How we respond to the threats posed by Nord Stream 2 and Huawei will be critical.

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The German question seems to be back yet again. With speculation about the end of the Atlantic alliance and the liberal international order, there are renewed fears of German dominance at the heart of Europe.

German power now takes a different form than in the past. While before 1945, the German question was geopolitical, the current German question is geo-economic, as I outlined in my book The Paradox of German Power. But things have changed since it was published in 2015—in particular with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. In a recent thought-provoking essay in Foreign Affairs, Robert Kagan suggests that we should now be less certain that Germany will remain “benign” in geopolitical terms. In other words, for Kagan, the old German question is back.

However, this underestimates the deep cultural change in Germany since World War II. It’s hard to imagine any circumstances that would lead to the country reverting to an old-fashioned kind of German nationalism and militarism. The commitment of ordinary Germans to the idea of peace is simply too strong. For better or worse, this is the lesson that Germans have drawn from their experience in the 20th century.

Moreover, focusing on a remilitarization of Germany actually obscures a more likely—and interesting—possibility. If the United States were to actually withdraw its security guarantee to Europe, or if the liberal international order were to completely collapse, Germany might defy the expectations of realist international relations theorists and simply choose to be insecure rather than abandon its identity as a Friedensmacht, or “force for peace.” In other words, even in this worst-case scenario, Germany might in effect do nothing rather than either develop its own military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, or exchange dependence on the US for its security for a new dependence on France.

How Germany Harms the EU

Meanwhile, those, particularly Americans, who warn about the danger of the return of the old German question underestimate how problematic today’s Germany already is in the European context. Germany’s semi-hegemonic position within Europe is one of the main reasons why the EU has struggled to solve the series of crises that began with the euro crisis in 2010. On the one hand, Germany lacks the resources to solve problems in the way a hegemon would. On the other, it is powerful enough that it no longer feels the need to make concessions to other EU member states, and in particular to France. As a result, the EU has become dysfunctional.

It’s important not to idealize post-war Germany as acting selflessly. German politicians certainly look out for German interests in Europe. In fact, since the beginning of the euro crisis, much of the debate about Germany’s role in Europe has centered on exactly this question of the relationship between Germany’s national interest and the wider European interest. From economic policy and the management of the single currency itself to the refugee crisis and the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Germany has again and again been accused of putting its own national interest ahead of the interests of Europe as a whole.

Nor has Germany exactly rejected nationalism altogether. Although—or perhaps because—Germans rejected militarism, they found new sources of national pride. In particular, a kind of economic nationalism developed in Germany and increasingly focused on Germany’s success as an exporter—what I have called “export nationalism.” During the Obama administration—long before Trump “targeted” Germany, as Kagan puts it, for its huge, persistent current account surplus—the US treasury had already put Germany on a currency-manipulation monitoring list.

Restoring the Franco-German Balance

Today, the dire state of trans-Atlantic relations and the threat of the withdrawal of the US security guarantee have raised concerns about how Germany might respond. Historically, American power has pacified Europe—that is, it “muted old conflicts in Europe and created the conditions for cooperation,” as Josef Joffe wrote in 1984. There are therefore good reasons to worry that a withdrawal of the security guarantee could lead to European disintegration and even the reactivation of security dilemmas. Yet a US withdrawal could also help to resolve the German question in its current, geoeconomic form—without necessarily re-opening the classical, geopolitical German question.

This is because Germany’s semi-hegemonic position in Europe is dependent on the configuration of the US-led liberal international order, and the particular form it took in Europe, that allowed Germany to “free ride.” In particular, the US security guarantee meant that Germany didn’t need France’s military capabilities and therefore had little incentive to make concessions to France on other issues like the euro. Whatever Trump’s intentions, his threat to withdraw the US security guarantee has given France greater leverage over Germany and thus gone some way to restoring what Harvard’s Stanley Hoffman called “the balance of imbalances” between the two countries. If the United States were actually to withdraw its security guarantee, it would further restore this balance and could mean the end of German semi-hegemony.

Power Politics Persists

In particular, increased German dependence on France for security might—and I emphasize might—force Germany to make concessions to France on other issues like economic policy and the euro, which would be good not just for France, but for Europe as a whole. In this way the removal of the US security guarantee could potentially enable Europe to finally deal with the crisis that began in 2010. The crucial question, however, is whether even this dramatic scenario would be enough to force Germany to rethink its approach to economic policy and the euro. It’s also perfectly possible that Germans would still not feel sufficiently threatened to make concessions to France on these issues as a quid pro quo for a more explicit or extensive French commitment to German or European security.

There is a tendency at the moment to view the world in extraordinarily binary terms. But the situation in Europe today is much more complex. While commentators like Kagan worry that a collapse of the current order would lead to a return of power politics within Europe, in reality power politics never really went away, even if it was no longer pursued using military tools. Within the peaceful, institutionalized context of the EU, member states continued to pursue their own national interests. In short, Europe may not have been quite the Kantian paradise that Kagan famously suggested it was in Of Paradise and Power.

Similarly, since the beginning of the euro crisis, it has become apparent that the Atlantic alliance and European integration did not resolve the German question quite as conclusively as was once thought. Given the ongoing reality of power politics within the EU, the unequal distribution of power among member states continued to matter, though that power was largely economic rather than military. After reunification and enlargement increased German power within Europe, a familiar dynamic emerged—though it only really became apparent after the beginning of the euro crisis. In other words, in resolving one version of the German question, the EU and the United States may have simply created another.

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© REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

There must be times when Angela Merkel closes her eyes and wishes that Donald Trump would simply go away. In her brief daydream, she would be dealing with a very different politician in the White House: a rational and enlightened person, amenable to debate and argument, and open to a wider view of the world and its history.

But every single time the German chancellor opens her eyes, Trump is still there, busily upending traditional US policy and trying to forge a world according to his own views and interests. All too often, this entails conflict with Germany: over trade, over Iran, over gas from Russia, and—most persistently—over military spending.

A long succession of US presidents has believed that Germany is spending too little on its military (a position somewhat validated by the Bundeswehr’s huge problems with outdated and frequently malfunctioning equipment). But none of them have ratcheted up the pressure like Donald Trump, who seizes every occasion to scold Germany for free-riding.

Where Trump goes, his handpicked diplomats pave the way. In early July, two months before Trump is scheduled to visit Europe twice (both without a stop in Germany, and there’s supposed to be a lesson there), his ambassadors to Poland and Germany raised the issue again. In Warsaw, Georgette Mosbacher tweeted: “Poland meets its 2 percent of GDP obligation toward NATO. Germany does not. We would welcome American troops in Germany to come to Poland.”

Richard Grenell, Trump’s appointee to Berlin and one of the most heartily disliked diplomats ever, happily retweeted Mosbacher’s statement and followed it up with a statement of his own. “It is offensive to assume that the US taxpayers will continue to pay for more than 50,000 Americans in Germany, but the Germans get to spend their surplus on domestic programs,” he said in an interview.

Currently, Washington has 35,000 soldiers stationed in Germany, supported by 17,000 American and 12,000 German civilians—far fewer than during the Cold War, but still the second-largest force outside the United States.

Raising the Pressure

Grenell’s comment allows for several interpretations, all of which aim at raising the pressure on Berlin: the US could bring home some or all of its forces; it could station them in Poland; or it could make Germany pay a much higher contribution in order to keep them.

All three scenarios have been talked about before. In June 2018, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was looking at options for bringing back troops from Germany or relocating some of them to Eastern Europe. Warsaw, both because its government is ideologically close to Trump and because it would like US troops on its soil as an insurance against Russian aggression, offered to contribute $2 billion toward the costs of setting up permanent bases.

In March of this year, Bloomberg reported that the administration was drawing up demands for Germany, Japan, and South Korea to pay much more toward the upkeep of US troops. The plan was to make those countries pay the entire cost plus an additional 50 percent for the privilege of hosting them, Bloomberg said, citing anonymous sources in the administration.

According to this report, Trump has been championing the idea for months. In talks with South Korea over the status of the 28,000 troops stationed there, he overruled his negotiators with a note to National Security Adviser John Bolton saying, “We want cost plus 50.” In the end, the American delegation accepted a much lower increase to the South Korean contribution, but the new agreement was concluded for only a year, which means that further talks must be held before the end of 2019.

Bad News for Germany

“Cost plus 50,” if confirmed, is particularly bad news for Germany. According to a study by Rick Berger, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Germany could be asked to pay 10 times more than today—$10 billion instead of $1 billion per year—if the US decides to include all its costs, even the troops’ salaries.

To irk Germany further, Washington apparently is pondering two rates, with a rebate given to countries that are ideologically aligned with the Trump administration. Germany would certainly not qualify, given the many policy disagreements and the personal dislike between Trump and Merkel.

Most recently, Merkel’s government rebuffed a request from Washington to join a US-led military operation to secure shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Germany fears being drawn into war against Iran by a US administration that unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement and is ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran.

Costly for All

In his remarks about the troops, Grenell did not refer to the differences over Iran, but they certainly contributed to the Trump administration’s profound exasperation with Berlin. But is it really imaginable that the US would withdraw its armed forces from Germany?

Such a step would be harmful to Germany, and not just because the US bases are an important economic factor. Europe is not ready to defend itself—talks about a European army aren’t getting anywhere in a hurry—and US troops in Germany provide a tangible guarantee of American assistance in case of need.

At the same time, pulling out of Germany would be extremely costly for the US, both financially and in terms of power projection. Most of the troops aren’t in Germany to defend Germany anyway, but because it is an established hub for operations further afield.

Ramstein Air Base is vital for US air operations throughout the Middle East, Stuttgart hosts the US Africa Command, and the Landstuhl Regional Medical is the largest overseas military hospital in the world, providing emergency care to US soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots. Even with huge investment, Poland could not build up such an infrastructure anytime soon.

Officials in the State Department and the Pentagon are deeply worried about any schemes to withdraw the troops or make Germany pay much more for them—which, given the strong current of anti-Americanism in Germany, would be politically impossible.

Keeping Promises

Yet if there is one thing that the world has learnt about Donald Trump, it is that he is good at keeping his promises—whatever the cost. And Trump has been arguing for a very long time that America’s allies should either pay for the troops or see them brought home.

“The Japanese have their great scientists making cars and VCRs, and we have our great scientists making missiles so we can defend Japan,” he said in an interview with Playboy in 1990. “Why aren’t we being reimbursed for our costs?”

Closing her eyes may give Merkel a temporary reprieve from the headache that is promising to happen. But if Trump gets reelected to a second term next year, this one is guaranteed to come back.

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