In times gone by Germany as a whole, and most German businessmen I have met, liked to come across as the grown-ups of Europe. Oh, their worldly wisdom! How I remember the condescending post-Brexit lectures on the imminent departure of the whole of the City of London for Frankfurt … [1]
Well, it didn’t seem to get them very far when the custard hit the fan. Their two aces – being deeply in bed with Russia, and exporting like crazy to China, didn’t turn out quite the bankers they had assumed when Putin played his own hand: cue breast-beating and hand-wringing. So what happened next in Germany? Well, lots of things but I’ll highlight a few:
- A typically dynamic German practical response: massive shift towards LNG to replace NS1 / NS2 gas – long before ‘someone’ exercised the Semtex option
- Hugely accelerated efforts on a large-scale shift to hydrogen fuel as the supposed saviour of German manufacturing (no tangible results yet, though)
- Meaningful slump in said manufacturing sector (whether this is permanent ‘demand destruction’ is yet to be established) with baleful economic repercussions
- Promises (as yet unfulfilled) of much more defence spending and a full-scale reorientation of policy
- Lame & abject ‘followerism’ as regards military aid for Ukraine: truly, pathetically demeaning
And now, the ‘intercepted military telephone discussion’ of a couple of weeks back. WTF? Afterwards, Scholz had the gall to suggest that everyone still has complete trust in Germany as a secure & reliable military ally. Errr, no. Hasn’t been any for years before this incident; even less (if that’s possible) now. They don’t get a look-in on anything of importance.
In short, from having a plausible case for being the grown-ups of Europe, Germany now looks like the over-sized, know-nothing teenager sulking in its bedroom and defying calls to come down for the family outing. What and how long it takes for Germans to throw off this current malaise is not something I have a detailed view on, except that nobody should ever underestimate their ultimate capacity for hard work and self-sacrifice, whether in a good cause or a bad one. Doesn’t look as though it will be in time to be of much assistance to Ukraine, though. I suppose keeping out of the way isn’t nothing, in the circumstances. It may be the best that can be hoped for.
While we all wait to learn the outcome of this surely-temporary impasse, there’s a question lingering in my mind: did Mutti realise what she was doing all those years of ‘drawing Russia into the fold’, and how misconceived it was? Obviously, the German polity embraced her always-implausible policy wholesale: as Nietzsche said, ” ‘Credo quia absurdus est‘: that is what the German spirit wants” [2].
Merkel mostly keeps her peace on the matter, and we can see why; but early on, there were some hints at remorse (- unlike the shameless Schröder, only too happy to draw his enormous Russian stipend: historical, ocean-going, world-scale treachery). She, remember, was a prize-winning Russian student: fluent in the language, in communism – and surely also in the Russian mentality? I don’t have a tenth of her first-hand experience of Russia; and for a westerner the ‘Mysterious Russian Soul’ takes a bit of adjusting to. But I still reckon to have more insight than she seems to have deployed. When you’ve been systematically exposed to all things Russian (including the bully Putin personally – the man who maliciously enjoyed literally setting the dogs on her) as long as she has, it’s pretty weird to misread them quite as badly as she did. I don’t consider her guilty of Schröder-sin, so I can only assume her neuro-wiring is extremely well geared for language-learning but not for reading human beings. It happens out there on the autism spectrum.
This post hasn’t been much centred on Ukraine (for which apologies). It was the Russian invasion that triggered Germany’s present regression, of course – but we must surely assess there was a major fault-line in the coherence and wisdom of German geo-economic policy and overall statescraft that would have become manifest eventually, one way or another. What are the likely consequences – e.g. for the EU? For NATO? The West vis-à-vis China? Etc etc. Very much open to any insights and perspectives on this massive and rather important topic – lots of you [2] know Germany well.
ND
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[1] Frankfurt?! Have you ever been there? Would your wife be willing to live there? Would anyone ever visit you there?
[2] OK, this quote is a bit out of context but Nietzsche very much saw the Germans as being suckers for falling in behind a Grand Idea, whether or not having serious merit. He blamed Bismarck for using his undoubted statesmanship and populism to build up “a monstrosity of imperial power”; and I don’t think he’d have liked what Merkel did either.
[3] Am greatly missing whatever would have been Mark Wadsworth’s opinions on this: he thought widely & laterally, and was an excellent German speaker.
Source:
http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2024/03/aspects-of-russias-war-on-ukraine-3.html
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