Tag Archive for: Germany

Europe steps up, with Constanze Stelzenmüller

Constanze Stelzenmüller, expert on German, European, and trans-Atlantic foreign and security policy and strategy at the Brookings Institution, gives Stop the World her short take on the remarkable sense of urgency that Europe is displaying in building its own security capabilities: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Her longer answer is a superb dissection of the radical reorientation coming out of the Trump administration—what she calls a “Yalta 2.0”; the likelihood that much of the world might have other ideas, leading a frustration of Trump’s instincts; Europe’s shortening patience for the skulduggery of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán; its need to keep the US engaged in Europe’s security; and ultimately the proper sense that Europe has accepted the need to step up to defend Ukraine and itself over the longer term.

Her conclusion: “I think we might all have to sort of buckle our seat belts.”

Tag Archive for: Germany

Independence under Merz is entirely possible

Could 23 February 2025 become known as Europe’s Independence Day? It might as well be if the winner of Germany’s election, Friedrich Merz, has his way.

It was striking that Merz, the quintessential German Atlanticist and fiscal hawk who many considered hopelessly stuck in the 1980s, should celebrate his victory by knocking away one of the fundamental pillars of German conservative politics since Konrad Adenauer, the country’s first postwar chancellor. ‘My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA’, he said in his first post-election interview.

Some other leaders are still trying to have their cake and eat it: talking about defending Europe while working with the United States. Not Merz, who has launched what amounts to a full-frontal attack on Germany’s closest ally, even going so far as to accuse the US of election interference, on par with Russia.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, US-Europe relations have been mired in a fundamental paradox. On one hand, Europeans are trying to demonstrate to Trump that they are willing to do more in exchange for US security guarantees. On the other hand, the US whose protection they seek is trying to force a NATO ally to give up its own territory and pressing Ukraine to consent to its own economic rape and plunder. Demanding that a desperate, war-ravaged country sign over half of its revenues from critical minerals and rare-earth metals in perpetuity is a shakedown that would make even a mob boss blush.

Perhaps this is why Merz has gone where angels fear to tread, insisting that Europe will need to find a way to move from total dependence on the US to some sort of independence.

At my think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, we have launched a European Security Initiative to explore what this might look like. Before Trump’s election victory, we talked about how we can defend Europe with less America. But Europeans are increasingly wondering how to defend themselves from America.

Merz seems to be clear-eyed about the fact that becoming the leader Europe needs doesn’t just mean recasting Germany’s relationships with France and Poland, but also working out a completely different relationship with Britain. Once British Prime Minister Keir Starmer returns from what will surely be an intensely frustrating first trip to Washington, he might see things this way as well.

But, to have any chance of success, Merz will also have to overcome the self-harm of German economic ultra-orthodoxy. Scrapping the constitutional debt brake, introduced by his predecessor and party colleague, Angela Merkel, is necessary not just to enable Europe to rearm but also to finance urgently needed investment in infrastructure, renewables and digitalisation.

Merz has been adamant that mainstream parties in Europe need to rethink their approach to immigration. But he has been much less clear about how to do that in a way that reflects Europe’s demographic challenges. Ultimately, what is needed is a set of policies that re-establishes control over borders and population flows, limits the negative impact of those flows on the most vulnerable members of society and simultaneously considers the workforce necessary for economic growth, innovation and public services.

Looking at green policy and the environment, the question for Germany and Europe will be how to avoid a zero-sum trade-off between reducing emissions and reducing prices. The only answer is to create an environmental policy which is also an industrial policy.

But how? A fundamental question behind all these issues, from immigration and the green transition to trade and defence, is how to make interdependence less risky. How do you give people who have been left behind the sense that the government will keep them safe in a dangerous world, without walling ourselves off?

The independence Merz is promising will force Europe to rethink many of its relationships, including with China, Israel, India and, of course, the US. And we will need a political class that is able to see things clearly and make radical changes. Merz will not be alone in leading Germany to a new consensus. He will almost certainly need to lead a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), which may actually help him to bring his party to a different place—especially on the debt brake. Germany’s coalitions have often been a source of government weakness, but in this case a grand coalition of the main centre-right and centre-left parties could be a source of strength.

Merz is an unlikely candidate for this shift. His main critique of Merkel when they were both vying for the Christian Democratic Union’s leadership was that she had strayed dangerously far from the party’s orthodoxy. But just as it took an SPD chancellor, the outgoing Olaf Scholz, to start increasing defence investment and cut the country’s ties with Russia, Merz, the uber-Atlanticist and fiscal conservative, might be the only German politician who can credibly bury the debt brake and pave the way for a truly independent Europe.

Has Angela Merkel no shame?

When Angela Merkel left the German chancellorship in December 2021, after 16 years in power, she had a credible claim to being one of the greatest politicians of the 21st century (so far). Now, after three years of deafening silence, and with her legacy in shambles, she is promoting her forthcoming political memoir. Her silence was more persuasive.

She gave her first interview to the German weekly Der Spiegel, defending major policies that helped to shape Germany and Europe as we know them today. Among these were her appeasement of Russia, which adhered to the Cold War principle of ‘change through trade’ (Wandel durch Handel); her welcoming of more than one million refugees (mostly from Syria and the Middle East) in 2015; and the phaseout of Germany’s nuclear power plants.

A fourth issue concerns not a policy but the lack of one. Owing to Merkel’s failure to do anything noticeable to adapt the German economy to this century’s technological challenges, the country remains under-digitalised, with embarrassingly poor internet access, an absurdly overgrown bureaucracy, governing institutions that still use fax machines and once-dominant companies that can no longer compete with their American and Asian counterparts. German highways and bridges are crumbling, trains regularly run late and major infrastructure projects (like Berlin’s rail station and airport) take two or three times longer than they would in Poland or even Romania.

Where once Germans heaped scorn on Poles for supposedly being foolish and incompetent, now the tables have turned. Visit Germany nowadays and you may find that you cannot even pay for breakfast with your credit card. You will have to run to an ATM, but you may find that it is broken or does not accept Visa or Mastercard (as is the case two-thirds of the time). And don’t even think about connecting to wi-fi. You will find better access (and a more dynamic information-technology sector) in Belarus—a Russian vassal state.

Moreover, Merkel did nothing during her 16 years in power to prod the industries that Germany prides itself on—chemicals, pharmaceuticals, internal-combustion vehicles—to adapt to the 21st century, and now it shows. The German army, meanwhile, is regularly an object of ridicule in the European press.

If Germans prefer to use fax machines and avoid the internet, that is their business. Unfortunately, though, their government’s decisions affect all of Europe. Merkel’s moral argument for providing aid and shelter to refugees in 2015 is uncontroversial. But surely she should have known that immigration on such a massive scale would produce a populist backlash, not only in Germany but throughout Europe. Merkel made a show of standing up for liberal democratic values, but her policy yielded an assault on them. The result was weaker liberal democracy and less immigration.

Similarly, by stubbornly insisting on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipeline projects, Merkel and other German leaders empowered a dangerous dictator who had revisionist designs on eastern Europe. And by blocking NATO from offering a ‘membership action plan’ to Ukraine and Georgia at the 2008 Bucharest summit, Germany effectively invited Russia to invade. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of Russia’s foreign policy knew that the Kremlin would exploit the resulting uncertainty.

In her Spiegel interview, Merkel blames others for this litany of failures. She says she was not the only one against a NATO accession process for Ukraine and Georgia; but is that supposed to excuse her? Europeans took their cues from Germany in those days, and Merkel’s voice mattered more than others—as she well knows.

Similarly, Merkel is still repeating the canard that Nord Stream was a purely economic project, even though it obviously was not. In defending appeasement of Russia, she argues that Poland and Ukraine did not mind having gas transit through their territories as long as they profited from it. But the controversy around Nord Stream was that by circumventing Poland and Ukraine, it diminished whatever influence they had vis-a-vis Moscow. Merkel decided that cheaper gas was more important than Polish or Ukrainian security. In the end, her approach brought an energy crisis and was one of the causes of a new land war on the European continent. The result was no cheap energy and no security.

Merkel’s decision, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, to phase out Germany’s nuclear power plants also empowered Russia by making the German economy even more dependent on Russian hydrocarbons. Again, such choices could still be defensible if we lived in blissful ignorance of Vladimir Putin’s true character. But after 2008, and especially after 2014, there was no longer any question about who he was and what he intended to do.

Merkel herself was repeatedly warned. As early as 2006, Radek Sikorski, then Poland’s defence minister, was comparing the Nord Stream project to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the secret 1939 agreement between Hitler and Stalin not to attack each other). Five years later, he was still beating the same drum, warning that Poland and Europe had more to fear from German passivity than from German power.

Merkel ignored these arguments. During her long tenure, Germany tried to trade Eastern European security for cheap energy, abandoned an existing renewable-energy source, and gave nativist populists a potent campaign issue. She made Europe less safe from threats both foreign and domestic. Today, with Germany mired in a leadership crisis and buffeted by new global headwinds, Merkel continues to tell herself that she did everything right.

Why the EU’s new migration pact matters

Amid escalating geopolitical tensions, and with European Parliament elections looming, the narrow passage last month of the European Union’s Migrant and Asylum Pact has attracted relatively little attention. To be sure, the agreement is more remarkable for the mere fact of its enactment than its provisions. Nonetheless, it marks the culmination of a decade-long effort to reform the EU’s Dublin System for governing migration-related matters.

The need for change was undoubtedly urgent. In the last year alone, some 380,000 people crossed the EU’s borders without authorisation, the most since 2016, and a record 1.14 million sought asylum. The major arrival countries, such as Greece, Italy, and Spain, have long advocated for a fairer distribution of asylum-seekers across the EU. But consensus on the topic has been elusive, owing to divergent interests and priorities among EU member states.

That has not changed. The Migrant and Asylum Pact rests on a delicate trade-off: frontline states agreed to establish detention centres to process asylum-seekers’ claims and repatriate individuals deemed ineligible, and their EU counterparts would either accept a share of the rest or participate in cost-sharing initiatives. For many of Europe’s political leaders, however, this is not good enough.

In fact, the pact barely passed. While it won the support of the three principal parliamentary factions—the centre-right European People’s Party, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, and the liberal Renew Europe—a significant number of MEPs abstained, effectively expressing their dissent.

The effort to push through the Migrant and Asylum Pact highlighted the complex political dynamics shaping the EU’s approach to migration. Both Italy’s Socialists and their ideological foils from the Five Star Movement voted against parts of the bill, motivated largely by their interest in opposing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a key proponent of the deal. Similar dynamics played out in France.

The process also exposed new political divisions. Representatives of Germany’s Greens, for example, broke ranks with their counterparts at home to vote against the package.

The pact still faces opposition from both ends of the political spectrum. Far-right parties say it is insufficient to deter migrants, whereas left-leaning groups and NGOs worry that it does too little to protect migrants’ rights and ensure adequate living conditions. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced that Poland will not accept the relocation mechanism, while Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, has declared that he will not implement the new rules at all.

Even so, the Migrant and Asylum Pact may hold positive lessons about EU politics and the union’s future. Most notably, the effort to pass it demonstrated the impact that leaders like Meloni can have when they bring to bear their coalition-building capabilities.

Contrary to her combative campaigning style, Meloni has adopted a pragmatic and constructive approach to European leadership, particularly when it comes to migration. For example, she was a principal architect of the memorandum of understanding that the European Commission and Tunisia signed in July. Though the MoU has been the target of much-deserved criticism—it is no blueprint for engagement with third countries—it established Meloni as a major voice in Europe’s migration debate.

Meloni has also been a driving force behind other bilateral deals, such as a recent aid deal with Egypt aimed at curbing irregular migration to the EU. In marshalling support for the Migrant and Asylum Pact, Meloni collaborated with the European Commission and carried out more than 20 high-profile missions in the Mediterranean over an eight-month period.

Ultimately, the Migrant and Asylum Pact hints at an emerging approach to EU-level policymaking: imperfect consensus. Although no one is entirely satisfied, the EU does not remain deadlocked. Some progress, however limited, is preferable to inaction. In this sense, the fate of the migration agreement will serve as a kind of barometer for the next European Parliament’s mandate.

When it comes to migration policy, the EU is at a crossroads. It has largely abandoned the ‘Wir schaffen das’ (‘We’ll manage this’) spirit embodied by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015, when she decided to allow over a million asylum-seekers to enter Germany. The idea of forcing asylum-seekers to settle outside the EU’s borders is gaining traction, as reflected in the EPP manifesto for the June elections.

Despite the broad appeal of limiting migration, however, the EU also needs migrants to fill crucial low-skill jobs, such as in construction, for which there is an acute shortage of workers. Finding consensus on the right balance between these two imperatives would be difficult in the best of times; at a moment of deep polarisation, it is practically impossible.

But the EU must find a way forward. To that end, the next European Parliament, which is certain to feature more fragmentation, must embrace the Meloni model of creative coalition-building, underpinned by pragmatism and a commitment to shared values.

Germany’s weakness is bad for Europe

Once the sick man of Europe, Germany seems to be under the weather once again. That might be putting it mildly: much as it did in the late 1990s, Germany is staring down the barrel of stagflation—high inflation and unemployment combined with stagnant demand and low growth. A lack of effective political leadership further darkens the outlook for Germany—and for the European Union that depends on it.  

France might be the EU’s second-largest economy, a nuclear power and the only member state with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, but Germany is its economic powerhouse, having benefited for years from cheap Russian gas, high Chinese demand for cars and capital goods, and a low defense bill, courtesy of the United States (via NATO). Moreover, it has stood the tallest in European institutions. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so influential over the direction of EU policy that she was nicknamed the ’queen of Europe’.  

But Merkel never relished the spotlight and often was reluctant to lead. Her successor, Olaf Scholz, is even more reticent, making public statements only when necessary and avoiding decisive action, especially where it might be controversial. The newly coined term ‘Scholzing’—which has been making the rounds on social media—describes ‘communicating good intentions, only to use/find/invent any reason imaginable to delay these and/or prevent them from happening’.  

No one is more affected by Scholzing than Ukraine, which has repeatedly found itself waiting out Scholz’s reluctance to deliver German weapons systems, such as Leopard 2 tanks, to support its fight against Russia. Today, Ukraine needs Germany to send Taurus long-range cruise missiles, as no other country has the capacity to provide a substantive quantity of comparable weapons in the short term. But Scholz has so far resisted pressure to do so.  

Scholz’s top priority seems to be to avoid an escalation of the conflict—especially a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia. In his view, sending the missiles increases that risk, because it would require him also to send German soldiers to help operate them. A leaked recording of a call involving four high-ranking German air force officers discussing possible Taurus deployment scenarios reiterated this assessment, though experts have refuted the claim that only German personnel on the ground can operate the missiles responsibly.  

In refusing to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine, Scholz is clashing with members of his own coalition government. Last month, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a leading voice in the Free Democratic Party, decided to break ranks and vote in favor of sending the missiles to Ukraine.  

The fragility of Germany’s three-party government has undermined Scholz’s ability to make deals with his counterparts in other EU countries. ‘The German coalition moves slower than the debates within the EU,’ lament Brussels insiders.  

Beyond being fragile, Scholz’s coalition is deeply unpopular. In a December poll, just 17 percent of respondents expressed satisfaction with it. Scholz himself has the lowest approval rating of any German chancellor since at least 1997 (when the poll was created).  

Far from spurring Scholz to relent on the Taurus missiles, his weak political position might encourage him to dig in his heels. Dubbed the ‘peace chancellor’, Scholz has cultivated a pacifist image that resonates with voters. In one recent survey, 61 percent of Germans expressed support for his refusal to provide the missiles to Ukraine. 

With European Parliament elections in June and state elections coming later this year—including in Germany’s east, where opposition to any confrontation with Russia tends to be strong—Scholz cannot risk appearing bellicose. As German voters embrace the far right—the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) appears poised to become the second-largest German party in the European Parliament—the stakes are particularly high.  

The AfD’s rise reflects growing popular frustration, not least with the economy. It was during last year’s budget crisis that the AfD’s popularity reached an all-time high of 23 percent. And, by some metrics, Germany has experienced more strikes this year than it has in a quarter-century.  

People have good reason to be frustrated. In 2023, Germany’s economy contracted by 0.3 percent—the worst performance of any major economy—and posted the highest inflation levels of the last 50 years. Its industrial production declined by 1.5 percent, factory orders fell by 5.9 percent, exports shrank by 1.4 percent, and imports by nearly 10 percent. Last November, unemployment reached its highest level since May 2021 (5.9 percent).  

A quick rebound appears unlikely. On the contrary, the rapid aging of Germany’s population is aggravating an already-severe labor shortage, which could reach 7 million workers by 2035, and leading German economic institutes recently cut their joint growth forecasts for 2024 from 1.3 percent to just 0.1 percent. Last year’s Constitutional Court ruling that the government’s reallocation of unused pandemic-era debt to a new climate fund was unconstitutional did little to strengthen confidence in Scholz and his colleagues.  

Economic conditions in Germany resemble those in the 1990s, when reunification brought soaring unemployment, declining industrial output and sluggish GDP growth. Back then, decisive action by determined leaders, bolstered by true belief in the European project, pulled Germany out of its slump. By contrast, while Scholz understands the challenges he faces—including declining exports to China and the possible loss of the US security guarantee—he has yet to chart a clear path forward.  

This is bad news for the EU and its member states. A weakened, rudderless Germany is in no one’s interest. 

Why is Germany’s far right surging?

Over the past two years, Germany’s largest far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has managed to consolidate the numerous splinter groups that comprise the country’s long-unsettled nationalist fringe. Defying its reputation for infighting and frequent leadership turnovers, the AfD has come to be dominated by a single figure, Björn Höcke. While Germany’s political mainstream still treats the party as a pariah, the AfD is seeking to present itself as a united force ready to take on government responsibilities.

Höcke, who heads the AfD’s branch in Germany’s eastern state of Thuringia, rose to prominence as the spiritus rector of the party’s most extremist faction, known as der Flügel (the wing). That radical nationalist grouping—whose neo-Nazi rhetoric attracted the close scrutiny of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s federal intelligence agency—was dissolved in 2020, and Höcke has become the de facto leader of an even more radical AfD.

How far to the right the AfD has shifted became evident during its recent party congress, held in the east German city of Magdeburg. Beyond addressing familiar themes, such as immigration control, Höcke offered new clues about the AfD’s agenda regarding the European Union, declaring, ‘This EU must die, so that the real Europe can live.’

The statement was reminiscent of Nazi slogans of the 1930s, which similarly advocated the destruction of an old system to enable the rise of a new, better one. And other AfD figures seem to be on board with it. The party’s lead candidate for next year’s European Parliament election, Maximilian Krah, said in a recent interview that the EU in its current form ‘is not viable’ and predicted that a ‘combination of disruption and reform’ would bring about its demise.

The party knows how effective a rightward shift can be for attracting popular support. For most of its existence, the AfD drew 9–14% of the electorate’s support in national polls. But its support briefly surged to nearly 20% around the time of the 2015 migrant crisis, when the party—founded two years earlier as an anti-euro party—played up its hardline anti-immigration stance.

The increase didn’t last, and the AfD was back to about 10% support within a year. But the Ukraine war—which disrupted not only Germans’ sense of security, but also their energy supply—seems to have given the AfD another boost. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, the party was polling just 11% support. By late May of this year, however, that share had grown to 18%, and by August it reached 21%, making the AfD Germany’s second-largest party, after the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The question now is whether the AfD can retain its new supporters this time. So far, the party has been following the same playbook as before, capitalising on widespread alienation from other parties and focusing on its opponents’ weaknesses rather than its own strengths. It is showing a new sense of unity by closing ranks behind Höcke.

That is an effective strategy, because both of the AfD’s main opponents—the current coalition government and the CDU—have plenty of weaknesses. Start with the so-called traffic-light coalition (Ampelkoalition), comprising the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats, with the SPD’s Olaf Scholz as chancellor.

Operating under the banner of ‘daring more progress’, the government has launched numerous reform initiatives since taking power in December 2021. But it has also been constantly in crisis mode, owing to the pandemic and the Ukraine war. And in confronting these challenges, Scholz’s administration has displayed a lack of professionalism rarely seen at the federal level in Germany.

For example, badly crafted reforms to modernise the energy sector left state governments, local authorities, businesses and voters confused about who is responsible for what, when and at what cost. After months of squabbling, the policy was put on hold until the autumn.

Efforts in other areas—such as national security, health care and infrastructure—have been similarly long on ambition and short on progress. And infighting has become the norm. Between the government’s ineptitude and broader popular anxiety about energy supplies, the economy and national security, the AfD has had plenty of political fodder.

Meanwhile, Friedrich Merz, the CDU chair and chancellor-in-waiting, has failed to position his party as a viable alternative to the SPD-led government. The CDU has also proved unable to win back the voters it lost to the AfD over its stance on immigration and issues such as gender identity and sexual orientation. As a result, popular support for the CDU has remained steady, at 28–30%, for more than a year.

For his part, Merz has made contradictory statements about the CDU’s relationship with the AfD, including whether local-level cooperation with elected AfD officials should be allowed. This has weakened his standing in the party, and challengers are already emerging.

The AfD, for its part, is still the party for those who are unhappy with the status quo and distrust mainstream politics, the party that opposes and criticises, but stands for little. But the failures of both the government and the opposition have emboldened its leaders, who are becoming hungrier for power as their popular support grows.

While the political cordon sanitaire that isolates the AfD still holds, one cannot ignore the possibility that the party could become not only a coalition partner, but even a coalition leader. That could well happen in the next two years in several eastern German states, where the AfD has long garnered well over 20% of the vote. In any case, unless Germany’s political mainstream gets its act together, it will be only a matter of time before the AfD—much like far-right parties in France, Italy and Sweden—is accepted as a legitimate party to hold government power.

Germany’s national security strategy misses the mark

After a significant delay, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week unveiled the country’s first national security strategy. The long-anticipated plan, introduced nearly a year and a half after Scholz stood before the Bundestag and proclaimed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had triggered an ‘epochal change’ (Zeitenwende), is intended to help Germany navigate a changed and uncertain geopolitical landscape. But while the 74-page document—jointly released by the foreign affairs, defence, finance and interior ministries, as well as the chancellery—clearly lays out the geopolitical and economic challenges facing the country, the strategy, in its current form, is too vague to be an effective guide.

Although Germany has so far managed without a national security strategy, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine—together with the country’s dangerous dependence on Russian natural gas—drove home the need for comprehensive thinking. For decades, Germany relied on the United States and NATO for protection, a seemingly never-ending peace dividend that enabled the country to champion military restraint while maintaining the illusion that the world was more peaceful and secure than it was.

That illusion was shattered after Russia attacked Ukraine, and China, eager to exploit any perceived Western vulnerability, adopted a more assertive foreign policy. But although the new strategy acknowledges Russia as Germany’s primary security threat, its description of China—‘partner, competitor and systemic rival’—is a contradictory mash-up, and Taiwan is never mentioned. Instead, the document emphasises Germany’s close partnership with the US, unwavering commitment to NATO, and membership in a strengthened European Union as the institutional pillars of the nation’s defence against both actual and potential enemies.

While a significant portion of the strategy is dedicated to stating the obvious, three of its key features are worth highlighting. On a positive note, it adopts a holistic approach to national security that goes beyond military preparedness and deterrence. Under the slogan ‘robust, resilient, sustainable’, the document outlines the three guiding principles of Germany’s integrated security strategy. ‘Robust’ means being prepared to protect against attacks, including cyberattacks and hybrid warfare, and meeting Germany’s commitments to NATO. ‘Resilient’ signifies the country’s commitment to upholding a liberal, rules-based domestic and international order through a values-based, interest-led foreign policy. And ‘sustainable’ represents the need to ensure that Germany has the natural, economic and social resources it needs to prosper.

Given that the current level of Germany’s defence and security spending is insufficient, such an integrated strategy would ultimately require further investments. By enhancing its military capabilities and accelerating the energy transition, Germany could fend off potential attacks, defend the international liberal order, protect human rights and promote a sustainable way of life. It’s difficult to imagine anyone opposing these goals.

But this vision also raises several questions. Crucially, what institutional mechanisms, rules, regulations and budgetary resources are needed to implement this integrated security strategy? Would embracing such far-reaching changes not require a nationwide mobilisation effort? Would that not significantly increase the role and power of the state?

The document’s first weakness is its failure to address these questions. When it comes to national security policy, a strategy’s purpose is to establish long-term objectives and provide a roadmap of short- and medium-term tactics to achieve them. But while Germany’s national security strategy is long on vision and outlines some strategic goals, it comes up short on tactics and concrete steps.

The document doesn’t propose any allocation of funding for its proposals, nor does it explain which agencies or bodies will be responsible for coordinating and overseeing implementation. Moreover, it disregards the potential value of a national security council and assumes that the existing inter-ministerial mechanisms will suffice. But will they?

Unfortunately, the strategy doesn’t reckon with the fact that it was the lack of coordination among key ministries and a weak central command that gave rise to Germany’s deficient foreign and defence policies in the first place.

The document’s reliance on vague language is another major weakness, because it creates ambiguity where precise statements are necessary. For example, while the strategy reiterates Germany’s commitment to NATO’s 2%-of-GDP minimum for military spending, it now qualifies that commitment as ‘an average over a multi-year period’.

Behind these equivocal formulations lies the looming threat of the debt brake, a constitutional mechanism empowering the finance minister to restrict public spending in order to prevent structural budget deficits. In other words, the effective implementation of Germany’s first national security strategy is contingent on the finance minister’s willingness to provide the funds needed to achieve it.

In sum, while Germany’s national security strategy advances some thought-provoking ideas, its realisation is jeopardised by a lack of actionable policy proposals and uncertainty surrounding institutional mechanisms and financial resources. Without precisely defined goals and detailed, step-by-step plans to achieve them, the strategy will most likely remain on the shelf—a well-written account of what could have been.

Foreign collaboration continues in China’s drive for technology self-reliance

For decades, China’s government has been tapping into foreign inputs and knowledge to close gaps in its national innovation system. As the political project of breaking China’s foreign technology dependencies becomes more important for Beijing, so too does the need for policymakers in Europe and elsewhere to understand and assess these connections.

For China’s ambition of industrial self-sufficiency in chip production, photoresists are a major headache. These light-sensitive materials are essential for the global semiconductor industry. In lithography—the process by which information contained in a design is encoded into patterns of a wafer—circuit features form after wafers are coated in photoresists. A handful of Japanese companies control 90% of the global market for these materials, making Chinese companies highly reliant on imports.

As John Lee and Jan-Peter Kleinhans write, photoresist development is prioritised in Chinese central and local governments’ industrial policy plans. National funding for research and development has helped some companies make some inroads at the lower ends of the value chain. But getting closer to the cutting edge within the next five to 10 years is an unlikely prospect.

In December, Shanghai Sinyang Semiconductor Materials signed a memorandum of understanding with Heraeus Group, a German company that makes ultra-pure specialty chemicals required for photoresist production. Heraeus will provide material and technical support to the Chinese partner’s development of photoresists. Beyond photoresists, Heraeus’s Shanghai innovation centre aims to ‘introduce world-leading technologies to lay a solid foundation for local production’ of third-generation semiconductors.

This is just one example of how partnering with a foreign company can provide the Chinese industry with helpful products and know-how as it marches towards indigenisation in strategic sectors earmarked by government policy.

Like other domestic players, Shanghai Sinyang is striving to ‘break the foreign monopoly of integrated-circuit high-end photoresists’, a Chinese securities media outlet reported. In the first quarter of 2021, the publicly listed company invested 14.56% of its revenue in R&D. Its self-developed KrF (248-nanometre) thick-film photoresist has already won its first order, and the company expects to commercialise the ArF photoresist needed to produce smaller chips in 2023.

In another case, German manufacturing and technology giant Siemens has been training China United Heavy-Duty Gas Turbine Company (UGTC) to develop and produce heavy-duty gas turbines. A subsidiary of the state-owned State Power Investment Corporation, UGTC can tap into Siemens’ technical experience in design, engineering and testing ‘in support of China’s goal to independently develop and build an own heavy-duty gas turbine’, according to the first MoU signed in 2018. The State Power Investment Corporation is the implementing unit of a dedicated national science and technology funding megaproject.

Because they are extremely hard to make, heavy-duty gas turbines are among China’s 35 strategic import dependencies described in a series of articles published by a newspaper run by the Ministry of Science and Technology, translated and analysed by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology. These ‘chokepoints’ are a major preoccupation for a Chinese leadership increasingly worried about export restrictions from the US and its allies.

The two cases have important differences—supplying inputs upstream is distinct from training a company to reproduce a technology, and power generation doesn’t have quite the same national-security implications as chip fabrication.

However, both illustrate the complex interplay between foreign inputs and R&D collaboration and their role in building up indigenous capabilities. The process is nudged along by government industrial policy in China’s larger technology innovation strategy. This is especially true in strategic sectors in which ‘key and core technologies are controlled by others’, as Chinese President Xi Jinping often laments. Each of these ingredients is critical in achieving the political goal of technology self-reliance.

For foreign companies across many industries, China is a key market. In Siemens’ case, China is a market of last resort as gas turbines are being replaced by renewable power generation. Market access is one reason European companies have been deepening their ties with China’s innovation system, disproving simplistic narratives about ‘decoupling’ between China and the West. Another reason is the attractiveness of the country’s local innovation hubs, especially in emerging technology fields like artificial intelligence.

Despite the clear advantages for China’s research partners, whether multinationals or research institutions, it is particularly in emerging technology areas that the costs and benefits of supporting China’s state-led tech indigenisation efforts are becoming both more difficult and more urgent to assess.

Among the results showcased at the 2019 Sino-German Technology and Innovation Cooperation Conference was a joint research endeavour in AI and brain science, led by the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin and Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU). Researchers made a technological achievement in the application of brain–computer interfaces to drone swarming and flight control.

NPU, one of the ‘Seven Sons of National Defense’, is subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and engages in classified military research. The US Industry and Security Bureau has been mulling export controls on brain–computer interface technology. However, Chinese AI–brain research is already progressing rapidly, also thanks to long-term government planning and investment.

It’s impossible to know the full extent to which the partnership with Professor Klaus Obermayer of TU Berlin, launched in 2002, might have contributed to the People’s Liberation Army’s advances in military applications of AI–brain technologies. The accomplishments NPU lists are certainly remarkable:

… signed eight international cooperation agreements; jointly established the Shaanxi Provincial International Joint Research Center for Brain–Computer Integration and Its Unmanned System Applications and the Sino-German Joint Laboratory of Neuroinformatics of Northwestern Polytechnical University; completed more than 20 scientific research projects; and undertook postgraduate teaching tasks and joint training; … published more than 60 papers, was granted or filed over 20 Chinese patents, won 16 awards, and trained more than 200 graduate students.

Although the Shaanxi provincial government’s website says that research conducted in the two joint facilities mentioned above is aimed at applications like healthcare and disaster relief, it bears remembering that NPU supplies drones to the Chinese military and hosts a dedicated defence lab.

I’m not suggesting that European stakeholders should halt their research and innovation cooperation with Chinese partners across the board. In an era of globalised value chains, policymakers should be extremely selective when considering restrictions on cross-border technology flows: overly broad controls can damage innovation, scientific progress and Europe’s industrial competitiveness. That China is catching up in soon-to-be legacy technologies like gas turbines is hardly a threat to European economic interests. Besides, foreign inputs are only one ingredient of China’s indigenous innovation strategy: domestic entrepreneurship and industrial policy matter greatly.

However, the role of foreign R&D collaboration in supporting China’s self-reliance drive warrants much closer scrutiny in countries like Germany whose long-term competitiveness could be at stake. That’s not to mention national security, which partnerships like that between TU Berlin and NWPU clearly endanger.

Germany’s green pacifism goes to war

Germany is emerging from dreamland, and the Green Party, a most unlikely avatar of realism, is leading the way. Forty years ago, the Greens arose out of nowhere with a hard-core ideology: no American nuclear weapons, no nuclear energy, no use of force. Call it ‘ecopacifism’ or ‘peace über alles’.

Back in the 1980s, they mobilised millions against the deployment of medium-range missiles by the United States and blocked civilian nuclear sites. But where you stand depends on where you sit. Today, the Greens are a pillar of Germany’s three-party coalition government. Their co-leaders, Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, are, respectively, foreign minister and economics minister.

Like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, the Greens once believed in many impossible things before breakfast. So did most Germans. The country would get plentiful cheap gas from Russia, safely switch off its last three nuclear power plants by the end of 2022, and replace oil and coal with sun and wind.

Germany could also let its army rot, shrinking it from 500,000 to 180,000. The former Reich would act as a ‘power of peace’, beholden to its culture of (military) self-denial. Trade and investment would tame Russia and other aggressors. Made in Germany would prevail.

Then Russian President Vladimir Putin pounced, inflicting unimaginable cruelty on Ukraine. The traditional ruling parties—the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats—were caught flat-footed. Send tanks and long-range artillery? We must not rile the bear who was then good for 55% of German gas consumption—the highest share in the European Union. Rescind the Energiewende, the green-energy transition imposed by Germany’s four-term chancellor, Angela Merkel? No way.

But the Green leadership has undergone a mind-boggling reversal, segueing from pacifism to bellicosity, from anti-Americanism to anti-Putinism, with dizzying speed. Habeck set the new tone: ‘Ideology should not stand in the way of extending the life of nuclear power plants.’ After visiting the killing fields in Ukraine, Baerbock spoke for all: ‘We could be these victims.’

As early as 2015, Baerbock had warned that Putin could wield gas as a weapon. ‘We have woken up in a different world’, she said in the wake of the invasion. ‘We can’t duck, we have to assume responsibility.’

Returning from the horrors of the battlefield, a young Green Bundestag deputy, Robin Wagener, advocated delivering modern heavy weapons, plus air defences, armoured vehicles and intelligence technology. Even an old-timer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, 77, has made peace with war: ‘I am pained by the reality, not by having to face it.’ Greens like him have faced it, which makes them ‘at this point the most rational party in Germany’.

How to crack the riddle of a party that has long clung to ecopacifism as a secular religion? Why would Baerbock accuse Putin of ‘having broken all agreements Europe has crafted to assure the peace’? Why would the Greens, who have worshipped so long at the altar of pacifism, turn against Russia?

One reason is what Germans call ‘the normativity of the facts’. Or, as John Maynard Keynes may have put it, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind.’

The facts are dire. Putin is trying to restore the old Soviet empire, threatening Europe’s unprecedented 77 years of peace. After Ukraine, will Moldova and the Baltics be next? Having been routinely victimised by Russia throughout history, Poles have every right to fear Putin’s armies on their eastern border, which bodes ill for Poland’s western neighbour, Germany. So, strategic logic demands rearmament and deterrence, plus, finally, heavy weapons to Ukraine.

But, despite realpolitik, the old guard on the left still cleaves to the hoary verities of German Ostpolitik. Cooperate, don’t confront. Peace beats power. Let’s give Putin an off-ramp, let him keep his winnings so that he won’t lose face and escalate. Weapons for Ukraine will only prolong the slaughter, as if Ukraine were bombing Russian civilians, schools and hospitals. In stark contrast, Baerbock proclaims: ‘If you don’t feel angst [about this war of aggression], you are either dishonest or obtuse.’

A second explanation is generational. Today’s Green leaders came of age in a world where their now grizzled or departed forebears used to hold both political and cultural power. Having inherited a country tainted by the greatest crimes against humanity, this post-war cohort was desperate to restore moral worth to the Fatherland.

That meant a 180-degree turn away from Der Führer. Peace, not panzers; community, not conquest; goodness, not greed. Germany presented itself as a moral superpower, which had a practical payoff. When badgered by the US to contribute troops to various military theatres, German leaders would invoke their country’s unspeakable past: Not us! At best, they would dispatch symbolic contingents while the US and the United Kingdom shouldered the heaviest load.

The new generation of Greens and their youngish voters do not labour under the moral burden of their elders. They need not shelter behind the past and preach the moral superiority of pacifism to prove Germany’s redemption. By the time they came of age, the country had long since regained moral worth. A solid liberal democracy, safely embedded in NATO and the EU, Germany no longer needed to sustain its posture as a reformed outlaw.

Putin helped, of course. Anton Hofreiter, a former chairman of the Greens, fumed that Putin is fighting ‘an imperial, colonial war of aggression’. Hofreiter is 52. A generation ago, the Greens and the left in general would have cowered behind the crimes of Nazism. Today, only the far right and left stick up for Putin. Together, they score 17% in the latest poll; the Greens command a solid 22%.

Chalk it up not just to Putin’s imperialism. The new Greens need not preach the convenient moralism of the past; they are the beneficiaries of a redemption earned by two preceding generations. As this cohort consolidates power, the country as a whole may be coming of age. Today, some 70% of Germans even want to keep the nuclear power plants running.

The moral bankruptcy of German pacifism

After a prolonged lead-up, Germany finally delivered on its decision to send heavy weaponry to Ukraine. But the Gepard (Cheetah) anti-aircraft tanks that Germany is offering are antiques that lack ammunition. The manufacturer has only 23,000 rounds available. The German defence ministry has since announced that it will look for spare ammunition in places like Jordan, Brazil and Qatar. While Russia lays waste to its neighbour—murdering, torturing and raping its civilians—Germany remains mired in an inept muddle.

Both countries have rich militaristic traditions, ruling as totalitarian empires in the 20th century. Their paths diverged after the defeat of Hitler but continued to move symmetrically. In particular, while Germany renounced imperialism, the belief in a Sonderweg (‘special mission’) in history has retained its hold.

This belief, born of imperial Germany’s position between autocratic Russia and the liberal-democratic West, has given rise to all kinds of dangerous and irresponsible foreign-policy positions, from the 19th-century Drang nach Osten (‘drive to the East’) and vision of Mitteleuropa (German leadership of Central Europe) to Hitler’s search for Lebensraum (‘living space’) and West German chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (rapprochement with East Germany and the Soviet Union). Interestingly, Ukraine was often at the heart of these strategies.

In this context, to describe postwar Germany as ‘pacifist‘ is to choose the most charitable term. Others would attribute Germany’s foreign-policy stance not so much to a renunciation of militarism as to greed, opportunism and cynicism on the part of its business leaders and politicians. After all, among the strongest supporters of sending heavy armaments to Ukraine are the supposedly pacifist Greens.

Why can’t Germany treat Ukraine the same way other Western European countries do? The refusal to send weapons to conflict zones equates the aggressor with the victim. For several weeks, German policymakers, refusing to acknowledge this, blocked other NATO members from sending arms to Ukraine.

Why have the Ukrainians received more weapons from Estonia (totalling $341 million) than from Germany (totalling $184 million), a country with an economy more than 100 times larger? Even in terms of financial and humanitarian aid, Germany’s support has been an embarrassment. What ever happened to ‘never again’?

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s statements and decisions since the start of Russia’s war have been nothing short of bizarre. Consider the following compendium from Thomas C. Theiner, a Kyiv-based film executive and former Italian army officer who has been documenting Scholz’s statements.

In late February, Scholz asked for a list of available weapons from the German defence industry, but cut all of the key weapons that Ukraine requested before sending it to the Ukrainian ambassador. When the media got hold of the original list, Scholz claimed that the deleted weapons would take longer to deliver.

The defence industry denied this claim, but Scholz then found a new excuse: The Ukrainian armed forces could not be trained to use the weapons in the time available. But German defence experts denied this, too, pointing out that the Ukrainians could easily master the weapons in 2–3 weeks, just as they have done with Australian, Canadian, American and French weapons.

Scholz then dug himself a deeper hole by claiming that NATO needed to approve the transfer of weapons. When NATO officials and Germany’s own generals denied this, Scholz tried to argue that no other NATO or EU member state was supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine. Hearing this, officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Romania and the Netherlands all presented lists of the heavy weapons they are supplying to Ukraine.

As Theiner reports, Scholz then announced an additional €2 billion ($3 billion) worth of military equipment for Ukraine, but German parliamentarians soon learned that the government was really allocating only €1 billion, and that this would not be available for 2–3 months. After the US, France, Poland, Romania, Japan, the UK and Italy confronted Scholz, he pivoted again and declared that Ukraine could receive the €1 billion immediately and order whatever it wanted from a list of available weaponry. But Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin then revealed that Scholz had removed all the items Ukraine actually wanted from the list. Scholz then warned that countries supplying armoured vehicles to Ukraine would be opening themselves up to a Russian nuclear strike. The process of evasion continues.

Neither Scholz nor even his domestic critics seem to realise what impact his waffling is having on countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, not to mention Ukraine. We in Central and Eastern Europe have been reminded that we live between two states that both want to follow their own unique paths. This is not to suggest that Germany today is anything like Russia, or that Scholz is like Vladimir Putin. Rather, the problem is that Germany’s pacifism is encouraging militarism. By refusing to stand up to the aggressor, Germany has exhibited an astonishing degree of moral desensitisation.

As such, Germany is heading for another grave historical humiliation for which it will spend years—if not decades—apologising and correcting itself. But no one will believe that it is truly sorry, especially not in Eastern Europe, which is Germany’s biggest economic partner. The central principle of Polish foreign policy is the so-called Giedroyc doctrine: Poland will not be independent without an independent Ukraine. This principle was formulated when postwar Poland shed its own imperial illusions and accepted its eastern borders without Vilnius and Lviv.

Unless Germany starts to act like its allies, a huge political breach in Europe is inevitable. Ukrainians will lose all trust in Germany, and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe will have learned always to be suspicious of German motives, no matter who is in charge.

Germany’s feckless response to war in Ukraine shows it needs a national security council

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the newly reunited Germany became a champion and leading exponent of the emerging liberal international order. Germany saw itself, and presented itself to the world, as an economically open democracy with a welcoming culture and a commitment to human rights. While its economic might put it near the top of many international rankings of soft power, decades of underinvestment in the Bundeswehr meant that it punched far below its weight militarily.

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine, Germany’s foreign policy rested on an ever-deeper European Union, fully integrated transatlantic relations, a belief in Wandel durch Handel (change through trade), international dialogue, and military restraint. But while this approach generally worked well, the military component had become an irritant to allies long before the current war. US presidents since George W. Bush have complained about Germany’s low defence spending, and the US and other EU member states have regarded Germany’s approach as a combination of fence-sitting and free-riding.

On top of this, Germany during this period was turning itself into one of Russia’s and China’s biggest trading partners. As it did business with autocrats around the world, it paid little mind to its growing energy dependency on Russia. From Helmut Kohl in the 1990s to Olaf Scholz today, German leaders have consistently believed that commerce and dialogue will ultimately bring countries closer together, alleviating the need for hard power.

This naive illusion has now been shattered by one of the greatest failures of German diplomacy since World War II. Years of German-Russian joint ventures and deepening commercial, cultural and academic relations did nothing to discourage Putin from starting a new war in Europe.

Within days of the Russian invasion, Scholz proclaimed a dramatic policy reorientation. If implemented, it would usher in an epochal shift, making Germany one of the world’s top military spenders and arms exporters. Germany’s economic interests would become much more closely tied to security concerns and its approach to foreign policy would become more assertive. Europe’s largest economy would also become its largest military power.

But the credibility of Germany’s declared reorientation will depend on whether it has a guiding narrative or strategy, and on who formulates it. Germany’s leadership will need to enlist the support of a generally pacifist electorate, which is by no means assured, given that Scholz announced the paradigm shift without first consulting the Bundestag or the broader public.

Nagging questions thus loom large. What will Germany’s new security strategy look like and what will it cost? Beyond economic costs, such as higher energy prices and more public debt, are social and environmental implications. Will Germans accept reinstatement of conscription or policies making it more difficult to meet decarbonisation targets?

The absence of formal debate on these questions has created a political vacuum and a paralysing sense of helplessness. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky explained in his 17 March address to the Bundestag:

‘When we asked for preventive sanctions, we turned to Europe, we turned to many states, we turned to you. Sanctions designed to make the aggressor feel you are a force. And we saw a delay. We felt resistance. We understand that you want to continue the ‘economy, economy, economy.’’

Zelensky accused Germany of building a new wall of disingenuous opportunism to benefit itself at the expense of countries like his: ‘Currently, the trade relations between you and the state which again brought brutal war to Europe are the barbed wire atop the wall…that divides Europe.’

But even after Zelensky’s address—one of the most critical and outspoken speeches ever given by a foreign leader to the Bundestag—there was almost no debate in Germany. The Bundestag merely returned to its regular agenda as if nothing had happened.

This fecklessness must stop, and one way to ensure that it does is to establish a German national security council. Long proposed but never realised, an NSC could advance a coherent defence, security and foreign-policy strategy. Located close to the chancellery, it would act as a central policy coordinator, helping to overcome the fragmentation that often characterises federal ministries’ responses to crises. This problem was on full display with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. But if that failure wasn’t big enough to generate the political will for an NSC, Putin’s war should have provided more than enough impetus.

But the NSC should be more than a coordinating agency, because its task would be decidedly political. It would have to spearhead and manage a debate Germany has long avoided, and its recommendations would have to win broad public support. Given these demands, it should include not only politicians and security experts but also representatives of the business community, civil society and perhaps even NATO and the EU.

Germany’s future foreign policy must correct for its past failures, particularly its blindness to a world of powerful autocracies. The old model of a benevolent economic and cultural power has proven to be at odds with reality. The new narrative must preserve Germany’s European and transatlantic commitments and avoid dependencies on critical supply chains. Germany needs to be able to fend off hostile external influences, whether Russian cyberattacks or Chinese-financed infrastructure investments. Above all, it must align its economic and security policy with the EU’s common defence strategy.