In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead urges Germany to become a great power again:
Thirty years after unification, history is knocking at Germany’s door. To answer the call, Germany will have to break some of its deepest taboos, and begin to think and act like a great power again.
Power politics has a bad reputation in Germany, and it is not hard to see why. Otto von Bismarck and his successors made Germany a great power, but the effort ended in the shipwreck of World War I. Adolf Hitler’s fever dreams of empire led to an even worse outcome. Divided and impoverished, Germany lost millions of citizens, saw centuries of cultural treasures annihilated by Allied bombs, and was saddled with a burden of shame and guilt that still haunts its conscience.
Postwar German leaders took another path, integrating themselves into the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which protected Western Europe from the Soviet Union, also reassured Europeans who feared another German bid for supremacy by creating large American bases in Germany. NATO made the European Union possible and still underwrites its security.
Throughout the Cold War, a strong West Germany worked with allies to strengthen both the trans-Atlantic relationship and its European partnerships. When the Cold War ended and Germany reunited, the rewards were enormous. Central and Eastern Europe wanted nothing more than to join NATO while integrating economically with Germany and the EU. A weak Russia looked hopefully to Germany for the investment that would launch its recovery and a growing China eagerly welcomed German companies and imported German capital goods. With the whole world apparently moving toward the Western values to which Bonn (and later Berlin) had passionately committed itself, Germany was richer, safer and better liked than ever before in its history.
Today’s world is very different. U.S.-German relations haven’t been this troubled since West Germany recovered sovereignty in 1955. A revanchist Russia probes for weakness across the EU. China seeks to challenge Germany’s place atop the value-added manufacturing chain. Bitter Italians and Spaniards blame Berlin for their countries’ difficulties and threaten to disrupt the EU if their considerable financial demands are not met. Countries like Poland and Hungary are flouting democratic norms that Germans believed were solidly implanted.
The last time Germany was a great power it laid waste to large swathes of Europe three times in 75 years. As its economic might has grown over the last half century, fueled especially by German reunification, it has used that might, the European Union, and the euro to expand its foreign markets under its mercantilist trade policy and impose harsh sanctions on its southern neighbors. Every ill that Dr. Mead catalogs and wants a great power Germany to remedy was fomented by Germany. And more: the Balkan wars were in part fomented by Germany. Europe’s present inability to defend itself is largely a product of Germany’s failure to fund its own military.
The risks presented by a great power Germany are too grave to ignore. Rather than encouraging Germany to reassume its great power status, I propose something radically different: divide Germany permanently into at least four separate countries and possibly as many as six. Let the Germans compete with each other. Those Germanies might be less willing to triangulate between the U. S. and Russia as the united Germany is presently doing. And they’d be less threats to their neighbors.
Maybe one Sunni, one Shia, and one apologist liberal.
The hottest news out of Germany and the EU is a mini nullification crisis. The ECJ and the German Supreme Court are fighting over who is the final authority to review the legality of ECB actions.
I am not in favor of partitioning Germany. I prefer the EU become a proper Federal Government; with independent spending and taxing powers. That would fix the excessive reliance the EU member countries have on Germany.