GERMANY´S RECKONING / PROJECT SYNDICATE

Germany’s Reckoning

When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a fundamental reorientation of German policy in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there had been no public debate on the matter. But in the year since, German society has been grappling constructively with the questions that will define its future.

Helmut K. Anheier

BERLIN – Germany’s recent decision to furnish Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks may have taken longer than most of its allies wanted, but it nonetheless represents a major breakthrough. 

It is in keeping with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s proclamation of a dramatic policy reorientation – a Zeitenwende – made just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

If this reorientation is implemented in full, Germany will emerge as one of the world’s top military spenders and arms exporters. 

Its economic interests will be much more bound up with security concerns, and its approach to foreign affairs will grow more assertive. 

Germany will be not just Europe’s largest economy, but also its largest military power.

Yet German society remains basically pacifist and comfortable with its status as a peaceful democratic country in the middle of Europe. 

And the Zeitenwende announcement was not preceded by debate in the Bundestag (parliament) or among the public. 

Like the Russian invasion itself, Scholz’s pronouncement came as something of a shock. 

Suddenly, longstanding principles seemed to have been shattered, raising questions about the country’s traditional foreign-policy narrative and new prevailing realities.

But over the past year, Germans have been debating these issues. 

Media outlets have been examining what went wrong in Germany’s relations with Russia, and with its broader view of the world. 

Everyone is weighing the pros and cons of alternative responses to the changing geopolitical landscape. 

And the full implications of such changes are slowly dawning on German citizens.

German society is now grappling with a host of difficult questions. 

How did we get here? 

Can we become more assertive in foreign affairs while still upholding the values we hold dear? 

Will a Zeitenwende leave us more divided? 

And is the current generation of politicians up to the task, given the long shadow that Angela Merkel’s 16-year chancellorship still casts over the political class?

WHAT HAPPENED?

On the question of how we got here, Norbert Röttgen, a member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Union and the chair of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee from 2014 until 2021, recently published a “manifesto” listing what he sees as the failures that weakened NATO and strengthened Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hand. 

He assigns ample blame to Germany for allowing itself to become dangerously dependent on Russian energy and the Chinese export market.

Röttgen recites all the now-familiar reasons for Germany’s past wishful thinking, from the belief that trade with Russia would encourage peace to the influence that certain economic interests have wielded over the chancellery and the foreign office. 

So strong were these forces that Germany never bothered to come up with a plan B, let alone engage in deeper strategic thinking. 

In coming clean about the past and looking to the future, Röttgen has been refreshingly critical of his own party and even of himself. 

So, what must change?

Röttgen recognizes that a common European foreign and security policy is still a long way off. 

If the European Union is to overcome its paralysis in international affairs, he argues, member states should focus first on taking pragmatic steps, in close cooperation with EU institutions, toward more inter-governmental coordination on common strategic issues in critical fields such as climate change, technology, and, in particular, security.

Röttgen has also called for a new strategic Ostpolitik (“Eastern Policy”), whereby Germany and the EU would reach out to all countries in the region – including in the ex-Soviet space – to offer economic, infrastructural, and military assistance, or even security guarantees. 

He advocates “friend-shoring,” reinvigoration of the transatlantic partnership, greater burden-sharing within NATO, and a common Western strategy toward China. 

Finally, Röttgen stresses the need for new thinking about energy and energy security. 

Among other suggestions, he has proposed that Germany and its neighbors establish new special economic zones to facilitate the transition to a green economy.

IMPOTENT OMNIPOTENCE

But Susanne Schröter, a professor studying the “anthropology of colonial and postcolonial orders” at Goethe University, identifies even deeper systemic failures that may be jeopardizing the West’s future and emboldening autocrats like Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. 

A frequent critic of what she sees as Germany’s naive approach to political Islam and identity politics, she diagnoses a crude mixture of hubris and self-loathing in Germany and the broader West – problems that express themselves in an endless series of double standards and ambiguities regarding economic, environmental, and security policy.

The hubris that Schröter sees lies in the assumption that all other societies value individual freedom in the same way that Western countries do, and that all are equally attracted to democratic structures. 

The self-loathing represents the other side of the same coin. 

There is a growing strain of Western thought that blames the West for everything that is wrong with the world.

In her view, anti-Americanism, cancel culture, identity politics, intellectual narcissism, and a feigned tolerance of archaic Islamic practices (cultural relativism) are all expressions of the same underlying problem: the idea that the West is omnipotent in both good and evil. 

And as this narrative has taken hold in Western churches, the media, and civil society, it has also been readily taken up by the Global South.

Schröter’s arguments, outlined fully in her 2022 book Global Failure?, amount to a scathing critique of not only Western-led state building and democracy promotion, but also of development aid and humanitarian assistance. 

Yet as powerful – and controversial – as her diagnosis is, she offers little in the way of concrete policy suggestions.

Instead, she focuses more on various abstract changes that she would welcome. 

For example, she thinks Westerners should recognize that their values – especially their conception of freedom – did not simply take root on their own; they were secured only after centuries of struggle and political reform. 

Moreover, this struggle is still ongoing, now that cancel culture, identity politics, and other recent political trends have begun to challenge the foundational tenets of liberalism. 

This is not a fight that can be waged by others abroad. 

If the West wants its values to prevail, it must secure them at home first.

THE POLARIZATION MYTH

Schröter sees the United States and France as prime examples of dangerously divided societies, and she fears that Germany might be next. 

But Jürgen Kaube, a top editor at the influential daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and André Kieserling, a sociologist at Bielefeld University, provide an alternative narrative. 

In their view, German society is no more divided today than it was in the 1990s, just after reunification.

Their argument is straightforward. 

As modern societies undergo a continual process of social differentiation, tensions inevitably emerge, and it falls to politics to ensure that negotiable conflicts over interests do not become intractable struggles over fundamental values. 

In their book The Divided Society, Kaube and Kieserling contend that this kind of downward spiral has occurred in Northern Ireland and the US (to a lesser degree), but not in Germany.

The reason, they explain, is that Germany’s own religious, ideological, and ethnic tensions are not deep enough to be exploited by political entrepreneurs. 

Of course, right-wing politicians like Björn Höcke of Alternative for Germany (AfD) have sought to unite alienated voters (predominantly East Germans) in a single bloc. 

But AfD’s very limited successes hardly compare to the gains made by the far right in France, the US, and Italy.

Why, then, has there been so much hype about German divisions? 

Kaube and Kieserling see two major reasons. 

First, audience-seeking media outlets have become too eager to exploit commonplace social tensions as instances of identity politics run amok. 

And, second, the specter of a divided society gives politicians an excuse to avoid difficult decisions, for fear of dividing society even further.

THE GEN X FACTOR

In fact, some tensions are good for society, because they can provide the impetus for innovation and progress. 

But for that to happen, political leaders need to understand the nature of the problem and offer a clear and coherent vision for ameliorating it. 

In the face of climate change, energy insecurity, and other generational challenges, is the current crop of German politicians well suited for the moment?

As the Die Zeit journalist Anna Sauerbrey points out, the new German leadership – Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser – all belong to Generation X. 

By contrast, the leaders they have succeeded – including Merkel, Wolfgang Schäuble, and Horst Seehofer – were all representatives of the postwar generation that previously dominated German politics for decades.

In Change of Power, Sauerbrey shows that the Gen X leaders were basically untested domestically until 2020 (the COVID-19 pandemic) and internationally until February 2022. 

Theirs is a generation shaped not by any major drama or conflict, but rather by the peace, prosperity, and stability of the Merkel years. 

While they witnessed the shocks of Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Donald Trump’s presidency, and Brexit, they were mere bystanders through it all.

By the time they began to wield power and influence, the German political system had expanded into six parties, which multiplied the possibilities for coalition-building. 

And while the party system has not split apart (except at the extreme fringes, with AfD and the far-left Die Linke), it has become less rigid and less ideological. 

The new leadership fits that characterization: It is more pragmatic and less beholden to any party line.

But will the Gen X politicians succeed? 

For Sauerbrey, it is too early to answer that question affirmatively. 

“It’s about proving that the fragmented German democracy can handle a major transformation without breaking up,” she writes, “It’s about proving that you can rule with white sneakers.”

Debates about Germany’s Zeitenwende and what it portends for the country’s future will undoubtedly continue to gather steam, especially in the run-up to state (Länder) elections in 2023 and 2024, and then the next federal elections in 2025. 

German politicians, scholars, and journalists are giving us plenty to think about. 

There are strong arguments for why German foreign policy needs to undergo a major overhaul, and for why the broader West needs to get its own house in order. 

In doing so, it should remember that tensions are not the same thing as irreconcilable differences, and that a dose of pragmatic fresh thinking and new blood may be just what is needed.

Helmut K. Anheier, Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, is Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.