As if Germany hadn’t been humiliated enough by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the investigations and media reports that try to point the finger everywhere except the obvious culprit, Berlin just rolled the red carpet for the chief suspect.
US President Joe Biden received Germany’s highest Order of Merit on Friday.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and others lavished praise on the “big guy” and thanked him for strengthening the transatlantic alliance.
US President Joe Biden has been awarded Germany’s highest honor, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit at a ceremony in Berlin, on his farewell trip to Europe. pic.twitter.com/pNZOyos0e7
— DW Politics (@dw_politics) October 18, 2024
It was all quite surreal, capped by a Biden press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in which through he uttered the following:
“…I don’t see how we maintain stability in Europe and around the world without a tight, German-U.S relationship…”
To which one might ask, “maintain what stability?” All they had to do was step aside for a reminder.
Protesters in Berlin are telling Joe Biden to “go to hell” during his political visit to Germany. While Biden called Germany the “closest and most important” ally of the US, the streets are echoing with a different message. pic.twitter.com/qy6TLsmdwm
— Gaza Under Attack_🇵🇸 (@Palestine001_) October 19, 2024
Beyond setting the world on fire, the tight German-US relationship is also proving disastrous for Germany. It’s the same old news. The country’s war policy continues to result in a severe energy crisis and a trade war which is decimating German industry.
The economy continues to shrink. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck announced earlier this month that it is now expected to contract by 0.2 percent this year, revising a more optimistic spring outlook of 0.3 percent growth.
The government pats itself on the back for “stabilizing” energy prices, but that’s at a level much higher than pre-2022 and one that is uncompetitive with countries like the US and China. It is now considering even more state aid for manufacturers in an effort to keep them from leaving the country or at least investing more in their factories abroad than in their domestic bases in Germany.
Due to Germany’s debt brake, that means money must be taken from elsewhere, which means social spending cuts.
The government is increasingly selling off state assets, such as Schenker, the profitable logistics subsidiary of national railway operator Deutsche Bahn, which was sold to its Danish rival DSV for $15.3 billion (New York City-based hedge fund Third Point run by billionaire Daniel Loeb just took a major stake in DSV).
There’s also an enormous housing crisis in the country with no improvement in sight.
The biggest problem for Germany is that turning over its foreign policy to US interests runs counter to the economic interests of the majority of Germans — although it should be noted that the wealthiest Germans are making off quite well from all the chaos. On Russia, China, energy, and wars on the EU periphery that create millions of refugees in the EU, Germany as a whole, however, is on the losing end.
“In the middle of the crisis, Germany and Europe are squeezed between China and the United States, and must learn to assert themselves,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck recently told reporters in Berlin.
No doubt. How and when is Germany going to start doing so?
Transatlantic Relationship Rethink?
When a report from The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) titled “Europe and the End of Pax Americana” showed up in my inbox, I thought for a second that maybe the German establishment was beginning to turn the corner.
I was sorely disappointed.
SWP is one of, if not the foremost think tanks in Germany, and it advises the Bundestag and the federal government on foreign and security policy issues so it’s worth paying attention to, although it usually produces quite bland, toned down versions of reports from the imperial capital in DC.
In this particular paper the premise is that Germany must prepare for the outcome of the upcoming US election, and it starts off well enough:
The idea that US power underpins international security remains deeply anchored in today’s US political elite. Ultimately, this idea also lies at the heart of US-led alliances, including NATO. But the three pillars of Pax Americana – US military strength, the country’s economic openness and the liberal-democratic foundations of American foreign policy – have, in fact, been crumbling for some time.
The report has the usual rules-based international order talking points like China, Russia, and Iran being threats to US bases surrounding them and that these countries refused liberal-democratic values despite all the free trade gifts given to them, but the takeaway seems sound: there are increasing limits to US military power, and the US is turning to America-first geoeconomic thinking with more sanctions and export controls (the US becoming increasingly abusive with its “allies” goes unmentioned).
What the author seems to be driving at is that Germany must begin to think more of itself as the US does the same. Sounds sensical, right?
It’s all downhill from there. Here are the solutions the report comes up with:
The minimum requirement would be to build those specific capabilities for which Europeans have been particularly dependent on the US and which Washington would most likely need in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a crisis involving China. They include reconnaissance, strategic airlift, air defence systems, combat aircraft, amphibious naval capabilities, and long-range and cruise missiles.
But what is important here is not just armaments but also genuine political issues. For example, how might European NATO partners react if, under a Trump II administration, the US were to participate much less in consensual decision-making in the NATO Council or even try to play NATO allies off against one another? What would European allies do if America finally gave up its “liberal” understanding of leadership within the Alliance and behaved like a “normal” great power?
Europe must therefore unite on defense to take on Russia. Why?
Russian policy under Putin’s leadership is driven, above all, by the desire to destroy the European peace order based on the liberal-democratic values enshrined in the 1990 Charter of Paris. Moscow sees the emergence or consolidation of liberal democratic societies in Russia’s neighbourhood as a threat.
What is being proposed here is the same as all the think tanks, Scholz’s Zeitenwende, and in the speeches by Foreign Minister Annelena Baerbock that Germany will lead the fight in Europe for the “rules-based order” while the US focuses on China. The paper continues:
Ultimately, the decline of Pax Americana also raises the question of what role liberal-democratic values could and should play in foreign policy. German and European advocates of a values-based foreign policy could lose an important backer – namely, America – in the coming years. As far as the European security order is concerned, the situation is quite clear: the conflict with Russia is only superficially about territorial claims and military power relations; its real cause lies in irreconcilable values about Europe’s internal and external order. From the perspective of the EU and the European NATO states, Europe’s security is therefore inextricably linked to the defence of liberal-democratic values.
Standing up for values outside Europe should therefore focus on those norms, institutions and rules that directly affect the peaceful coexistence of states: international and maritime law, multilateralism and, consequently, the often-cited “rules-based order” at the regional and global level. These principles are also supported out of self-interest by authoritarian states that are not major powers and therefore are confronted by more powerful neighbours. However, none of this changes the sobering fact that without the United States, it would be much more difficult to protect the remnants of the rules-based world order.
And thus the report concludes by doubling down on the failed strategy of a liberal-democratic “rules-based order” also known as American hegemony.
In a paper intended to be about the rethinking of Germany’s relationship with the US, we get regurgitated talking points from the likes of the Atlantic Council that amounts to a continuation of German vassalage to Washington.
It brought to mind an Aurelian comment on a past post:
…After WW2, Germany was understandably a little unpopular with its immediate neighbours. The Adenauer generation recognised that the only way back to international respectability was through membership of multilateral institutions and through, effectively, giving much of its sovereignty away to others, such that it was not seen as a threat. Germany was therefore a member of the European Coal and Steel Community from 1951, and of the EEC from the start in 1958. German remilitarisation, grudgingly accepted by other European states, actually turned out to be a better solution than the original idea of a Western Treaty Organisation as a permanent military alliance against Germany. All German troops were put under NATO control, and the Bundeswehr was not allowed to have its own operational HQ, and so could not conduct national missions. This, together with the subordinate relationship to France under the 1962 Elysée Treaty, was a kind of voluntary masochism, which helped to deflect very real fears of German revanchism. (Those fears, incidentally, are a large part of the explanation of why European states were keen to continue with NATO after the end of the Cold War). This subservience produced several generations of German diplomats and military officers (and I met many of them) whose greatest concern was to be seen as “good Europeans” and “good members of NATO.” Whilst they didn’t agree with the US on everything, a German government which followed the US lead could never be criticised.
It’s changed a lot since then, of course, with the change in the balance of the Franco-German relationship and the complete transformation of the European security scene. It’s been observed especially that, on the rebound after decades of good behaviour, the Germans don’t have the diplomatic reflexes they really need, and risk getting themselves into an incredible mess. The existential problem of what Germany even is, never solved in its history, means that for many in positions of authority, the best and easiest solution is to follow the US, because that worked well in the past.
It’s not working anymore.
As evidenced by the SWP report, German elites are in a mess they don’t know how (or don’t want) to get out of and react by digging deeper. As Alex Merouris and Alex Christoforou pointed out yesterday on The Duran, Germany is now trying to shift all the blame for the country’s dire economic situation squarely on Russia.
The leader of the main opposition and the odds-on-favorite to be the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz is backing the idea of launching German Taurus missiles into Russia from Ukraine.
And Berlin is among the most enthusiastic backers of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and wider war in the Middle East. To say nothing of the moral bankruptcy or violations of international law, such a policy is bad for Germany in Europe. More conflict on the EU periphery is already adding to the European energy crisis and has the potential to do much worse. It will also mean millions of refugees heading for Europe, which will add to woes of underfunded and overstrained social services no matter how many deals are worked out with Turkey, Albania and others to host refugees in prisons.
Here is Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, granddaughter of the Nazi Waldemar Baerbock and promoter of what she calls a “feminist” foreign policy, making the case that Israel has the right to kill women and children:
German Foreign Minister Baerbock defends Israel’s killings of Palestinian civilians. “Civilian places” lose “their protected status” because “terrorists abuse that”, she claims. This is of course nonsense under international law. The International Criminal Court accuses Israel of… pic.twitter.com/Qr8GdVo0bH
— Tarek Baé (@Tarek_Bae) October 14, 2024
Her championing of genocide brings to mind the warnings Diana Johnstone who was press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996 and saw firsthand the transformation of the German Greens from a group opposed to the Cold War to the warmongering crazies it is today. In an interview with Black Agenda Report back before the German election she had this to say about Baerbock:
Frankly, I hope they don’t (win) because they are the most dangerous when it comes to foreign relations. This woman—Annalena Baerbock—she has no real political past. She’s 40 years old, and she hasn’t even been in the party very long. She has very little experience, but she’s well trained in American and NATO foreign policy. And she has been rapidly shoved to the top of the party, becoming a candidate for Chancellor simply on the basis of that. So in fact, people who are really on the left in Germany consider her and the German Green Party extremely dangerous. They’re most likely to stumble us into a major war between world powers.
Sadly, the Greens fit right in with the belligerence of the other major parties and collective wisdom of German elites. It’s a truly remarkable turn over the past few decades. Germany was one of the US “allies” that said no to Iraq and watched Washington bungle that job, as well as Afghanistan and its regime change efforts in Syria and now, before the US is even finished retreating from Ukraine, Germany is following Washington into another more horrible disaster in the Middle East.
Will the Alternatives Be Blocked?
Two insurgent parties, which both argue for rapprochement with Russia and more sovereignty for Germany in general made major gains in recent state elections, but they’ve struggled to turn that into real power thus far — and they’re likely to face similar roadblocks in the Bundestag following next year’s elections despite polls showing them in strong positions.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party on the right (think ethno-nationalist, climate change denial, EU and NATO skepticism, trickle down economics, and some Nazi admirers thrown in for good measure), remains isolated behind a “firewall” intended to keep the party out of government. The AfD has been able to capitalize on widespread disenchantment with record levels of immigration that comes at the same time as a shrinking economy, declining living standards, an energy and housing crisis, and social spending cuts. Other parties like the front-running Christian Democratic Union are increasingly shifting towards AfD positions except of course for the NATO and EU skepticism and Russia detente.
After years of warnings that the AfD is a threat to democracy — a threat the state responded to by placing the party under surveillance — other parties are now resorting to more desperate measures to protect democracy. Due to the firewall against the AfD, those parties are being forced to form coalitions with the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), an essentially one-woman populist party formed nine months ago with an anti-war, working class platform.
BSW, however, is insisting that any coalition partner must take a clear position against the deployment of US medium-range missiles in Germany. There are no takers yet. At least in the case of Saxony, that could mean new elections if no coalition is formed by February.
In the state of Thuringia the AfD won the September 1 election with 32.8 percent of the vote. Here’s what happened next according to a September 27 report from European Conservative:
The party does not have a majority to form a government, and will remain in opposition due to the cordon sanitaire imposed by the other parties. However, it does have the right to nominate a candidate for the position of speaker, which it attempted on Thursday, the first session of parliament following the elections.
However, its decision to put forward Wiebke Muhsal for speaker of the chamber was dismissed by the other parties—the centre-right CDU, the left-wing nationalist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, the hard-left Die Linke, and the Social Democrats—saying she has little chance of commanding a majority. But the AfD refused to consider changes to the rules that would allow other parties to put forward competing candidates, and adjourned the meeting.
The CDU then turned to Thuringia’s constitutional court, which ruled against the AfD, paving the way for the CDU candidate to become the parliament’s speaker. The CDU is negotiating with the BSW and Scholz’s centrist pro-war Social Democratic Party (SPD) in an effort to build a coalition.
Despite the media, spooks, and all levers of government being used against the AfD and to a lesser extent BSW, they continue to make headway. In the case of BSW, they are currently being boosted due to the fact they’re the only major party that is opposed to the state’s support of genocide:
BSW of Wagenknecht is the only relevant party in Germany that speaks out against Germany’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
I am not surprised that BSW is polling increasingly well among German Muslims who don’t want their vote to contribute to the extermination of Palestinians. https://t.co/xCg6PJ6mAI
— Nassreddin 🍉 نصر الدين (@Nassreddin2002) October 10, 2024
As the BSW finds more support from voters, the government might be looking to crack down on the party in response. Foreign Minister Baerbock recently claimed in an interview that the successes of the BSW were “the product of Russian propaganda.” Baerbock, as foreign minister, is supposed to remain neutral on matters of domestic politics, but has not faced any discipline.
Her statements come at the same time that German spooks — both abroad and domestic services — are claiming they need more money and more power in order to tackle threats from Moscow.
And so it goes.
Both Biden and Steinmeier, in an effort to make the death and destruction their governments have unleashed sound noble, quoted from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney in their Berlin remarks — Biden from “The Cure at Troy” and Steinheimer from “Republic of Conscience.”
Perhaps a more fitting piece for the regimes in Berlin and Washington to reflect on would be “Oysters”:
Our shells clacked on the plates.
My tongue was a filling estuary,
My palate hung with starlight:
As I tasted the salty Pleiades
Orion dipped his foot into the water.Alive and violated,
They lay on their bed of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.We had driven to that coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool of thatch and crockery.Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilegeAnd was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
