23.07.2021 – 15:16
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s farewell visit to the White House this month offers an ideal opportunity to reflect on the state of US-German relations.
But it is not a sentimental opportunity. The long and complicated history of bilateral relations may be ready to enter a new phase.
From the aftermath of World War II to the reunification of Germany in 1990, the United States oversaw the country’s reconstruction and economic revival.
This era can be summarized under the title “Guardian and Ward”, which was much more coincidental than the previous chapter, “Hostility and War”.
In that chapter, Germany’s relentless pursuit of world power in two wild world wars eventually ended in its complete and utter defeat.
The Allied victory in World War II left Germany divided into four occupation zones. Large parts of its eastern territory were lost, resulting in 12 million refugees and deportees. And, everywhere, it was the moral abyss of the monstrous legacy of the Nazis.
Since post-war reconstruction relied on U.S. defense and assistance, it occurred exclusively in Western Europe, and thus only in West Germany.
Joseph Stalin saw the Soviet Union as the starting point of the Greater Russia socialist’s US-led capitalist West.
From the late 1940s onwards, this ideological and geostrategic stance supported the Cold War, which took place mainly in Germany, and especially in Berlin, the focal point of the new division of the great power.
Germany’s twice possible bid for European hegemony and global domination gave the country a close alliance between the US and the Federal Republic of Germany.
Some political distrust on the part of the US continued, but the German “transatlantics” refused to see it.
From their perspective, the alliance (which included a military component with the creation of NATO) had replaced all previous antipathy, and that was it.
They were wrong. During the Cold War, the US pursued a multifaceted strategy, hindering the Soviet Union and retaining control of Germany, in recognition of its vital position in the heart of Europe.
The transatlantic relationship has never been as simple as its champions wanted it to be, and it still is not today.
In normative terms, the Federal Republic successfully integrated into the West more or less immediately, under its first post-war chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. But in terms of crude interests and political economy, significant changes remained.
For example, since the mid-1950s, the transatlantic perspective has competed with a more specific European perspective.
And with German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) in the 1970s – which coincided with the US-Soviet-born whitewash – the ward’s various advocates and interests became even more apparent.
However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States was the only transatlantic power that released immediate and wholehearted support for German reunification. For Germany’s European neighbors, its possible return as a geopolitical force restored the old fear of the “German cause.”
When Germany became a fully sovereign state through reunification, the old defense-neighborhood relationship necessarily changed. And yet, Germany has not shaken the post-war mentality. Consider other European powers of similar size.
The United Kingdom and France are nuclear powers with permanent seats on the UN Security Council, where they do not hesitate to claim a global leadership role.
By contrast, Germany – the world’s fourth largest national economy – makes no such claims.
Germany will therefore remain dependent on the US security guarantee for a long time. Not only is it haunted by its own history; also has to manage extremely complex security conditions.
At the heart of Europe, Germany must account for the interests of the smaller countries of Central and Eastern Europe – both inside and outside the European Union – while also joining an increasingly expansionist, nuclear-armed Russia.
And it must do it all at a time when its economic foundations are being broken.
Moreover, Germany must account for the strategic interests of its defender, even though they are not always in line with its own.
The US is engaged in an escalating confrontation with China, the new global power of the 21st century; but China is one of Germany’s most important trading partners.
Even more important is the EU, whose future Germany plays a key role in shaping.
German diplomacy is an extremely complicated undertaking, to say the least.
After the presidency of Donald Trump, who did more serious damage to US-German relations than anything else since World War II, the question for President Joe Biden is whether the US can regain the trust of its allies.
For Germans, this question will weaken all other considerations in the coming years. The protective-ward relationship is no longer functional; but neither can Germany establish a fully independent role for itself within a European framework.
To make matters worse, changes in interests – starting with China and Russia – will lead to more controversy and friction between the US and Germany.
The next stage of the bilateral relationship, one hopes, will be determined by the high art of compromise.
Joschka Fischer, Germany’s foreign minister and deputy chancellor from 1998 to 2005, was a leader of the German Green Party for almost 20 years.
Translated and adapted by Project Syndicate / konica.al