meGa! Will Trump Make Germany Great Again?
Trump’s threat to abandon NATO and Europe are of grave concern to the world’s democracies. But it is his lust for empire building that should really rattle Germany – and Europe – into action. Will it?
Trump loves real estate. That is how he and his family have made a fortune. To him, success is visible in towers, golf courses, hotels, and people paying rent to use the stuff.
As president, Trump has at his disposal the means to really make a name for himself in real estate. He can now do so at no cost to himself, which he really likes a lot. The mechanics of empire building have always involved grand gestures at the expense of other people. He can leverage the military, political, and economic might of the United States to indulge his land grabbing fantasies – and get away with it. He has let us know that threats to add Panama, perhaps Canada, and most prominently Greenland to the United States should be taken seriously. Making America Great Again, as it turns out, is not just a useful election metaphor but part of a political thrust that he wants us to take literally, greatness as in square miles added.
Never mind the sovereignty of other nations.
Trump’s disdain for internationalism stems from the inherent constraints that multilateral agreements impose on treaty partners. Thus, weakening NATO or withdrawing from the alliance altogether would free him up to pursue unilateral goals without other countries objecting on the grounds of treaty violations or, at the very least, of breaching the spirit of such agreements. As if to give us a prime taste of things to come, on his first day in office, Trump revoked the Paris Environmental Agreement and announced he would withdraw from the World Health Organization, in both cases underscoring his willingness to upset the international order with the intention of freeing up U.S. means to pursue parochial policies that may not align with the interests of other countries.
Trump assumes that he – and by extension, the United States of America – can afford to alienate allies and risk confrontation with unfriendly nations. But he may not have considered the long-term consequences. More likely, however, he does not care about the fallout down the line. Other countries are in turn well advised to examine the ramifications of Trump’s rapid fire executive orders. Friends and foes will likely conclude that the United States is no longer a reliable treaty partner (was it ever?) and therefore naturally seek to bolster their own capabilities, strengthen existing alliances without the U.S., enter new treaties, or choose a combination of those options.
Trump has spoken and Berlin is all ears. Suddenly, the German sleepyhead capital city is abuzz with a foreboding mix of angst and exuberance. Trump’s designs on Greenland are the reason Olaf Scholz, probably the most awkward chancellor post-war Germany has seen, has belatedly declared that international borders are inviolable. The way he delivered this breath-taking insight you could have thought he was discussing yesterday’s weather forecast. Don’t we wish the Germans and the rest of the international community hadn’t been asleep at the wheel when Russia made its imperial designs perfectly clear by violating Ukraine’s borders in 2014, annexing Crimea outright and sending little green men in tanks into Donbass? Sure, that happened on Angela Merkel’s watch, and for too long too many people were willing to overlook her political DNA that included too many Russian drushba (friendship) chromosomes. As for Obama, who was well liked in Europe because he left it alone, the U.S. president at the time was more interested in Afghanistan. Bad idea! (The Swiss to all flatlanders: Do not fight battles in mountains; they are always uphill!)
But now, Trump wants to violate the borders of a German neighbor, Denmark, and the Germans seem to agree that this moving of fence posts has gone far enough. (Remember, this Substack is all about the Many Awesome Fence Posts in our mental and physical landscapes, past and present.) Sure, some Germans seem to think it is o.k. for Putin to rape Ukrainian women and torture their sons. But American imperialism is always bad. That is what 17 million East Germans were taught in school, jawohl, by their Russian occupiers, and many have since internalized this double standard to automated perfection. However, Trump’s dream of grabbing Danish territory is sending shock waves through the German discourse on empire building. Friends of America find it difficult to defend such outlandish rhetoric and friends of Russia are waking up to the fact that imperialism is imperialism is imperialism.
What the Germans will make of it depends on many factors. German pundits have come to the fore to appeal to Germany’s responsibilities allegedly stemming from its political and economic position of strength. Note that its relative military capabilities are not worth mentioning. But 80 million Germans carry some weight in Europe and its economy is the continent’s largest and number three in the world. Yet, there is the embarrassing realization that today’s Germany cannot act unilaterally in any meaningful way, least of all in defense.
No doubt, the onus is on Germany to coalesce European assets into something coherent and meaningful. But is Germany up to the task? It is a question worth pondering and answers will come with many potential hiccups. It does not help, for starters, that many in Germany’s capital envy Italy’s Giorgia Meloni for her good ties to Donald Trump. Worse, the reaction to that obvious fact cannot be how Olaf Scholz could possibly win the beauty contest among European leaders when it comes to currying favor with the new old man in the White House. The better strategy would be to make common cause with Europe’s darling du jour and send her to Washington on a mission to impress Trump. But that is not going to happen.
It seems that Berlin has not understood the practical implications of Europe’s predicament of being caught between a rock and a hard place, between the ambitions of imperial Russia and the recent antics of imperial America. To state the obvious, infighting will not help and, lest we forget, Europe’s self-doubt and discord are openly sponsored by Russia through various channels, most effectively through thousands of social media outlets. Germany’s lack of unity has aided foreign interests in the past and why should it not work this time? Germans show considerable difficulty in clearing the fog of war. As the country prepares for snap parliamentary elections on February 23, little effort is made to unite the German public behind an effective response to empire building in the 21st century which feels a lot like the imperialism of the late 19th century when Germany also clamored for a “place in the sun” – and got it.
Germany’s own experience in land grabbing may hold the key to dealing with the new challenges facing Europe. Germany was the first major country in Europe to abandon formal empire building. It did not change course voluntarily and did so only after two world wars. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 forced the Reich to give up its colonial holdings after World War One and rewarded the winners with the spoils by handing over German colonies to Britain and France. That in turn fueled much resentment in Germany. The Germans thought of themselves as the better landlords, and in many respects, this was probably true. More than one hundred years later, there are still visible elements of German colonialism in Tanzania where I had an opportunity to visit some of the poorest areas far away from the tourist paths. There, doctors, teachers, and clergy spoke with high regard of the improvements the Germans had brought to their country, including an end to slavery, the preservation of their local language, improvements in agriculture, minimal education as well as basic medical care.[i] In fact, the Swahili word for school is schule, an everyday reminder of Germany’s legacy in East Africa.
However, Germans were not through with empire building. After all, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Portuguese held on to their colonies after 1918. Soon, the clamor for more Lebensraum (territory to expand into) became a rallying cry of the Germans longing to regain the status of a respectable empire. Germany had maintained colonial armies called protection forces or Schutztruppen, a moniker that would soon take on ominous meaning. Thousands of them returned home from Africa after 1918. They brought with them not only a name, but also an ingrained attitude of racial superiority as well as the habit of using unprovoked violence with impunity. Their surplus colonial khaki uniforms would soon become omnipresent in Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and hundreds of smaller towns where the growing Nazi movement held its rallies demanding the reintegration of Alsace-Lorraine, the annexation of Austria, the occupation of Czechoslovakia, and the conquest of lands further east.
We know what happened next. In 1945, Germany’s renewed imperial ambitions lay in ruins. But other European powers held on to their colonies for years, even decades, and too often they gave them up only after more bloodshed.
Ironically, western Germany underwent a transformation away from imperialism towards a prosperous democratic country with the help of foreign powers that were in no hurry to give up their overseas claims. In eastern Germany, the Russians made sure the Germans would never again be able to dream of empire building while brutally consolidating their own imperial gains. Russian tanks repeatedly crushed uprisings in Eastern Europe, including in Germany (1954), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968).
Many Germans are ashamed of their history. Seen through the lens of imperialism, they should not be. After 1945, Germans on both sides of the wall dividing their country were on the right side of history. As two of the four victorious powers of the Secon World War, the United States and Russia, have resumed their empire building, Germany is handed a unique opportunity to stand out in the middle of it all as the leading country without an imperial past after 1945. This should give it immense moral and political weight.
It appears the Germans are largely unaware of their updated place in the sun, metaphorically speaking. Their new vantage point in a world seemingly full of autocrats, plutocrats, kleptocrats, technocrats, oligarchs, and monarchs, could be one of virtuous republicanism. Their democracy may show signs of discursive weakness and institutional deficiencies (I have a few tips on how to remedy that), but largely its post-war democratic history is exemplary regarding its commitment to the pillars of self-rule and freedom.
Germany could be a bulwark against imperialism.
Germany could not only strongly repudiate its own aggressive past but it should also firmly reject Russian and American empire building. Of course, many German politicians have professed as much and the Scholz government has sent military aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression. But it will require much more, intellectually, politically, and physically.
The perception from the outside looking in is that Germany is half-hearted about its new role in central Europe. The German leadership appears at a loss of words and lacks imagination as well as historical awareness. It has failed to communicate through the fog of war its own normative stance in unmistakable terms. It has let itself be thrown off track by fringe parties on Putin’s payroll that effectively undermine Berlin’s power of judgement.
Chancellor Scholz and many in his government have not put the foot down and reminded the voting public that the so-called Alternative for Germany, AfD, and the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance, known as BSW, are both ugly reminders of Germany’s imperial past. Weidel’s AfD is far too apologetic about Germany’s pre-1945 empire building and Wagenknecht in turn has shown a disturbing level of accommodation for Russia’s current bout of imperialism. Moscow has openly expressed admiration for both women.
Unfortunately, the German sirens of imperialism resonate with a portion of the voting public for several reasons.
First, my impression is that too many Germans still see nothing wrong with a little empire building on the side. Supporting Russia’s forceful expansion would seem to offer a way of putting one’s own past in a more apologetic light. It is a psychological cop-out with no political exit. Empire building at the expense of other people was wrong then and it is wrong now. But Weidel and Wagenknecht are all about the past. They have no constructive vision of the future for Germany. Weidel’s narrative celebrates the old dream of Lebensraum in thinly veiled terms when Germany was great in territorial terms. Wagenknecht’s defense of the wall dividing Germany until 1989 is but one troubling reminder of her penchant for autocratic rule and her near unequivocal support of all things Russian, including Moscow’s imperial machinations.
Second, both AfD and BSW advocate a preemptive peace in Ukraine that accommodates Russian interests while ignoring the security concerns of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic countries. Perhaps most telling of Sahra Wagenknecht’s and Alice Weidel’s imperial thinking is their discursive condescension. Both assume as a matter of course that Germany has a right to dictate the terms of war and peace to other nations. This should be alarming as it circuitously seeks to vindicate Germany’s darkest hours when it struck a deal with Stalin to divide up Poland once again in 1939. Wagenknecht and Weidel speak to a public nostalgic of even earlier times when imperial Russia, Austria, and Prussia ruled Eastern Europe with an iron fist off and on until 1918.
Third, the countries of Eastern Europe do not exist in AfD and BSW ideology. Rhetorically, Wagenknecht and Weidel have already wiped them from the map. They fully buy into Kremlin propaganda calling for a Russian sphere of influence unhampered by international law. More disturbingly, they offer no clues as to where the Russian empire should end.
Fourth, some voters see in Wagenknecht and Weidel two skilled public speakers who cut through the often-confusing din of public discourse. That should be alarming, given Germany’s experience with skilled orators, but for many it is not. The fact that Wagenknecht has built a political movement around her persona is troubling by itself. Have those Germans not learned yet that pinning their hope on a lone charismatic figurehead will bring suffering and destruction? Have they still not understood that idolatry has no place in republican democracy?
If Germany should step up to assume leadership in a world of renascent empires, the country will have to change in important and lasting ways.
First, Germany must realize that its role in Europe and the world is not solely based on its demographic advantage, geographic location, and economic weight. Rather, the country has emerged from Europe’s troubled history in a unique leadership position because it has experienced imperialism both as an aggressor and as a victim. My wife, who was born and raised not far from Putin’s office when he was there to keep the Germans in their place, recounts with horror the years of oppression and dictatorship. Nobody in their right mind wants to go back to that. It should be equally obvious that nobody wants to go back to empire building, either.
Second, the Germans must construct their story as a positive one. After the war, the Germans repudiated imperialism before the Dutch, the Belgians, the British, the French, and the Portuguese did. It had been pounded into them that the violation of boundaries will end in disaster.[ii] It is a hard lesson learned worth remembering and promoting. Germans can do so from a position of moral redress not afforded to other countries.
Third, Germany must strengthen its commitment to freedom and democracy. That seems easier said than done. Germans did not earn freedom and democracy and their own. They were handed to them. Among many others, 400,000 Americans gave their lives between the beaches of Normandy and the Elbe River to lay the foundation for a democratic and prosperous new Germany. Often, Germans show an awkward difficulty in acknowledging the fact they may enjoy their freedom without having fought for it – indeed, despite having opposed it. A bit of gratitude now and then would go a long way to feeling better about themselves. Gratitude is an indispensable precondition for a strong democracy, not just in Germany.
Fourth, Germans must develop a new, healthy patriotism based on gratitude and humility. Even a sound moral position, such as the active opposition to empire building, must never cause for condescension. It is disheartening how Germans do not know how to celebrate their country. It is time to take away the flag from the right-wing nuts in the country. It does not belong to those who would just as soon sell out Germany to the Russians. There is nothing more cynical in recent German history than the putrid hypocrisy of AfD and BSW. Claiming to be for Germany while showing nothing but disdain for democracy and freedom is not patriotism, it is treason.
Fifth, Germans must restore the power of judgement. In our age of digital mayhem, it has become ever more important to be able to distinguish the salient from rubbish. Not all facts, if they are then shown to be that, are equal. Demagogues love to use facts to obscure, in addition to often generous use of outright lies. Propagandists overwhelm audiences with information avalanches to suggest competence and credibility. Their goal is to make listeners and readers believe that they have covered the whole truth, exhaustively, and nobody else could possibly add anything else to their narrative. The power of judgment questions not facts necessarily but their relevance to truth. The power of judgement draws attention to the role that facts may be used to distract and obscure. Naturally, the power of judgement exposes and rejects lies.
Sixth, Germans must reform their public discourse, which is related to the power of judgement, the new patriotism, as well as the country’s commitment to freedom and democracy. None of those gains will come about automatically. They are nurtured in the family, schools, countless associations, the workplace, and in the halls of parliament. Listening to German politicians berate each other in the Bundestag is a sad experience and non-German speakers can be glad they are spared the abomination. Germans must learn to rediscover friendliness, courtesy, and sincere respect.
Seventh, Germany must push for a reform of the European Union based on the unequivocal repudiation of imperialism and the bolstering of democracy. Germany will succeed in that formidable task only if it welcomes the smaller countries in the EU to help articulate a new vision for the continent not based on the tyranny of the majority, but on the respectful political inclusion of all member states. Simultaneously, Germany and the European Union will have to become nimbler. Bureaucracies stifle innovation, efficiency, and democratic culture.
It is too early to tell whether the United States will descend into an era of authoritarianism. But Trump should have prodded the Germans to rethink greatness not in terms of territory added, but in standing firm in the defense of freedom and self-rule.
meGa!
[i] The East African slave trade through Zanzibar continued partially until the early 1960’s.
[ii] The wrinkle in this story is the fact that GDR’s army, the NVA, was a willing co-aggressor in putting down the Prague Spring Uprising in 1968. It did so, of course, in unison with the Warsaw Pact under Moscow leadership.