Loss of political compass drives German policy

BY NOW, everyone knows that Germany is calling the shots not just in the eurozone, but across all of Europe.

Inside Germany, there used be endless debates about German identity — what one historian called “the continual dispute about what being German might mean”. But, in foreign-policy terms, post-war West Germany — and, later, reunified Germany — was utterly predictable: Never against the West; always for more Europe. Now, the “Berlin Republic” is very secure about its identity — and seemingly at sea in its dealings with the world.

There are structural reasons for this change. Germany is too small to be a global player, but too big to be merely first among equals in Europe. While Germans generally see no legitimacy in a global role, even in alliance with the country’s old partners, Germany’s neighbours do not find a German-led Europe legitimate.

Contrary to the fears of many of these neighbours in 1990, the Berlin Republic is not more nationalistic than the old West Germany. True, the left-liberal pacifist milieu that in the old Federal Republic influenced published opinion with its political pieties disappeared during the 1990s; but today’s more “normal” Germany did not begin forgetting the Nazi past and reasserting itself as a great power.

If there is pride, it is pride in how the country has dealt with the legacies of Nazism and East German state socialism. Germans present themselves as champions at “coming to terms with the past”; and their capital’s architecture gives this ethos concrete expression.

Moral disputes over history are over, and even the Left Party is agreeing to an anti-totalitarian consensus, with consequences for policy and political self-perception. Nobody wants to repeal citizenship legislation that makes birthplace, not bloodlines, the basis of belonging, and everybody is proud that populism has never taken off.

Indeed, while received opinion has moved to the right on economics and foreign policy since 1990, the party spectrum has moved to the left. The Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party, and the left-libertarian Pirates potentially represent a structural majority for the left. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is in many ways a social democratic party.

Germany’s behaviour today is not driven by nationalism, but by the German elite’s loss of a political compass, as well as the Berlin Republic’s new circumstances. Berlin is not sleepy Bonn, and the world of the 24-news cycle is not the same as the clubby atmosphere of the old Federal Republic, where only the opinion of one or two newspapers mattered.

In Europe, Germany is the indispensable nation, yet it lacks not only a clear mandate to lead, but also a sense of what the EU should look like after the great projects of peace, the common market, and enlargement are completed.

Previously, the question of Europe’s final shape could be postponed or finessed. Now, Merkel has had the misfortune of inheriting an incoherent project — a situation demanding vision from a politician good at everything but articulating one. Thus, Germany’s political class has responded with short-term solutions: yes, more Europe, but no European state; yes, more money to pour down fiscal black holes, but no departure from the old Bundesbank orthodoxies.

Merkel’s style has exacerbated this: She prefers to lead from behind and seems incapable of the stateswoman-like speech that would bring acceptance for bolder measures. Others have filled this vacuum. Even the most banal statements of Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, pronouncing from retirement on the dangers of betraying their European dream, are adored as pearls of wisdom.

The president of Germany’s constitutional court openly speculates that, if more Europe is needed for technocratic reasons, it might be time for the people to vote on a new constitution. Intellectuals recommend that Europe’s periphery be disempowered for the sake of Franco-German leadership. Others wish that Germany could be like Switzerland and retreat from a world of moral challenges.

Unlike in the post-war decades, Germans no longer want to escape to “Europe” from their difficult fatherland. Today’s generations are far too comfortable with being German to see Europe as the answer to all of their problems.

Still, they probably would be willing to do more for Europe if someone explained why it fits their interests. Talk of a new, Europe-friendly constitution indicates that they might even be willing to give up what, along with the deutschemark, was the old Federal Republic’s most prized possession: the Basic Law, arguably the world’s most successful constitution during the last half-century. But Germans will not give it up for nothing.

Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton University. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.