Kategorie: Activities

  • Poland’s War Over Knives and Forks

    Poland’s War Over Knives and Forks

    In Poland’s presidential election last Sunday, the unprofessional national populist Karol Nawrocki won over the highly skilled former Member of the European Parliament and now Mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trzaskowski. This result had nothing to do with the qualification of the candidates, and everything with crude, ‚us vs. them‘ identity politics of the rural, socially conservative ‚real Poland‘ vs. the urban middle class open to Europe and the world. In a milder form, this antagonism exists in West European countries as well, but the vitriol of the Polish case is not only stunning but also rooted in a very specific political culture. In a 1999 op-ed for Krzysztof Bobinski’s biweekly ‚Unia & Polska‘, I described this ‚war over knives and forks‘ and predicted it will influence Poland’s EU accession and membership for some time to come. The title is derived from a sarcastic remark that Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski made to me at a Warsaw conference in the late 1990s. Sikorski (with whom I get along brilliantly today) at that time was a British-style Eurosceptic clearly feeling sidelined by the Warsaw establishment and therefore flirting with national populism. He accused me of overfocusing on ‚Unia Wolnosci‘ (the precursor of Donald Tusk’s Platforma Obywatelska‘) because ‘they are more comfortable partners for you, they know how to eat with forks and knives‘. That stuck with me, and a few weeks later I wrote the op-ed. I would call it prophetic, but judge for yourselves.

    Roland Freudenstein

    Director, Warsaw Office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation

    February 2, 1999

    The War Over Knives and Forks, or:

    the Conflict Poland Will Take into the EU

    As part of the larger debate on Poland and the EU, it has become quite fashionable to ask what will be Poland’s ultimate contribution to the integration process. Many answers are offered: Catholic values as well as a youthful spirit, a „special relationship“ with the United States next to a sense for hard work (as the bumper sticker says: „PL – we try harder“), a reinvigouration of the nation state as well as a particular love of freedom (as Bronislaw Geremek keeps pointing out). My feeling is that there will be a bit of all of these elements in Poland’s contribution. But there will be something else about which there has been very little debate:

    In my view, ranking high as an element of Poland’s contribution is a conflict. A conflict so divisive it will influence (and hamper) much of Poland’s behaviour before as well as after accession. I’m talking about the difference between those Poles who constantly have to prove they are not traitors of the Nation (with a capital N), and those who equally constantly have to prove they know what a knife and fork are. Between those who feel the need to demonstrate they still speak Polish, and those who always have to show they already speak a few words of English. Now don’t get me wrong: Almost all current member states of the EU have more or less of an internal split over European policy, even the Germans who for so long seemed to be the good boys in class. But these are arguments about two different ways of defining integration. In Poland’s case, we have to do with a conflict about two different ways of being Polish.

    What is the nature of that conflict? – First of all, it is very old. In fact, it came into being long before Poland regained independence in 1919, so except for extreme situations like WW II or martial law, it has been with this country for most of modernity, from the tiffs between urban intelligentsia and organized peasantry to the difference between Unia Wolnosci and most of the rest in Poland’s political spectrum today.

    Second, it is, of course, extemely important. It will ultimately shape Poland’s relationship with her partners within the EU. It is about the future of the nation state in a globalized world, about the true meaning of sovereignty and national identity, about what it means to be Polish at the beginning of the 21. century. But it is also about persons and personalities, parties and social milieus.

    Third, it is rather intense and waged with all available means. The conflict between Ryszard Czarnecki and Piotr Nowina-Konopka in June 1998 may serve as an example. The dailies „Zycie“ and „Gazeta Wyborcza“ are regularly used as weapons for one or the other side in the conflict.

    Fourth, it has some disastrous effects. Precisely in preparing Poland for EU accession, the friction created in the War Over Knives and Forks leads to much waste of energy, time and nerves. For instance, the eternal crisis surrounding the distribution of competences among Poland’s European institutions (UKIE et al.) can only be understood as part of this conflict: „Europe“ is much too important to be left to the domination of one of the sides in the conflict, so they fight. And will continue to do so for some time. The tinge of hysteria in some Polish demands for a target date for EU entry is another product of this conflict. West Europeans will have to take this into account when trying to understand Polish European policy. And Poles will have to do more to minimize the damaging side effects. To be sure, they have already come a long way. Membership itself, for instance, is not much of an issue anymore among relevant political parties, or within the clergy. But don’t deceive yourselves – as soon as we begin to talk about not just membership, but membership under such and such conditions, there will be a relapse into the old times.

    Fifth, the conflict’s final outcome is pretty clear – although it will last for a long time to come: The guys who already flock the salons of Brussels will somehow ultimately win – not by annihilating, but by slowly absorbing the other side. Or, if you prefer, the other side will simply improve their English. In any case, somewhere around 2050 nobody will talk about those 20. century antics. But before that, we can look forward to some interesting times.

  • Jürgen Habermas and the „Zeitenwende“

    Jürgen Habermas and the „Zeitenwende“

    Jürgen Habermas, like my mother, turns 96 this year. This is, in itself, a remarkable achievement, especially as both, in their own ways, have remained intellectually agile. Admittedly this is where the parallels end.

    The philosopher and political-social theorist Jürgen Habermas is an institution in Germany and beyond. His works spanning by now several decades have regularly impacted public discourse and political thinking.

    • Already in the early 60ies he outlined that democracy is not just about free and fair elections. Equally crucial for democracy, he outlined, is a vibrant public sphere, providing a space for critical debate and public opinion formation.
    • In the 80ies Habermas provoked one of the most important debates in postwar Germany, when he accused four historians of trying to “normalize” the German past and criticized any attempts to relativize the Holocaust.  Instead, he argued in favor of “constitutional patriotism” with Germans learning to take a critical stance vis-à-vis their history while embracing universal principles enshrined in a liberal democratic constitution.
    • His passion for European integration and a stronger Europe has become another leitmotiv in his thinking and writing. He supported the adoption of a European constitution (which failed) and regularly advocated for    more democratic participation and the active engagement of citizens in shaping Europe’s future.

    It is this enduring engagement for Europe which has now led him to publish a comprehensive essay “For Europe” in Süddeutsche Zeitung.

    Many aspects of his analysis and critique are to the point and heads-on, but he seems far from having internalised the “Zeitenwende” in his own framework.

    With Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the systemic change in the US that has set in motion, the “West under the leadership of the United States has disintegrated, even if, formally speaking, the fate of NATO remains an open question for the time being.”

    Against this background he is again advocating for a strong and united Europe: “From a European perspective, this epochal break has far-reaching consequences – both for the further course and possible end of the war in Ukraine, and for the need, willingness, and ability of the European Union to find a redemptive response to the new situation. Otherwise, Europe will also be drawn into the maelstrom of the declining superpower.”

    Astonishingly for someone with a lifelong pacifist posture, he justifies European rearmament: “The member states of the European Union must strengthen and pool their military forces, because otherwise they will no longer count politically in a geopolitically turbulent and disintegrating world. Only as a Union capable of independent political action can the European countries effectively bring their common global economic weight to bear in support of their normative convictions and interests.”

    And he criticizes, rightly, consecutive German governments since Angela Merkel for “ignorance and inactivity” in the realm of European integration, “and this in the face of the long-standing efforts of our neighbour France!”

    But when it comes to other aspects, Russia, Ukraine, and Europe’s way forward, his analysis seems biased or limited.

    Whereas Habermas outlines the authoritarian transformation of the US with some depth, Russia is largely defined as an “irrational imperial power long in decline.”  While Russia may be in decline from an economic and human resources perspective, its imperialism under Putin has, sadly, not been in decline, but rather on the rise. As such, there is no reference that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine since 2014, as earlier wars against Georgia, are an integral part of a coherent, and not an irrational, imperialistic ideology, combined with a strengthening of dictatorship internally.

    When it comes to Russia, he diagnoses a “climate of heated anti-Russian sentiment” which is “fuelling old prejudices” and refers to “a possible or talked-up current Russian threat to NATO countries” and “highly speculative assumptions about a current threat to the EU from Russia.” This is largely ignoring facts and reality.  Not any hot-headed individual has identified Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.”  This was agreed by all then 30 NATO Allies in adopting the still valid Strategic Concept 2022.  Since then, it has been reconfirmed and sharpened by Allies on many occasions.  And the threats of Russia’s shadow war against European countries are not “speculative” but very real. They range from interference in election processes, cyber-attacks, via sabotage against critical infrastructure, coercion in particular against Ukraine supporters, up to targeted murder.  The EU is pursuing the European Defence Readiness 2030 or the EU Preparedness Strategy not out of “speculative”, but in light of very tangible threats.

    This bias is compounded with other misjudgements.  He accuses the US government of having “made no attempt to initiate negotiations to avert the threatened Russian attack flanked by troop deployments” in 2022. In fact, negotiations with Russia continued also in NATO until last minute. The last meeting of the NATO-Russia Council with Russia represented by Deputy Defence Minister Fomin and Deputy Foreign Minister Grushko took place on 12 January 2022!   In that meeting, as in earlier ones, the Russian side had outlined their maximalist revisionist programme, including the assured neutrality of Ukraine, and the withdrawal of NATO troops from Allies that did not belong to the Alliance prior to 1997, i.e. the entirety of NATO’s eastern flank from the Baltic States, via Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary to Romania and Bulgaria. This would in essence have granted Russia a sphere of influence not only over Ukraine but also NATO.  At the time, then NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg noted that “NATO Allies are ready to meet again with Russia to discuss a number of topics in greater detail and to put concrete proposals on the table.” “There are opportunities for constructive engagement which should not be missed, in the interest of security in Europe,” he added.

    Habermas’ pro-Russia bias is combined with a latent anti-Ukraine bias. According to him, Europeans “completely surrendered the initiative to the Ukrainian government by pledging unconditional support for the Ukrainian war effort without any objective or orientation of their own.” In reality, support provided to Ukraine has in essence been too limited, too late, and subject to too many caveats – driven by a mixture of lack of leadership and courage, and narrow national interests.  This in essence, while it has enabled Ukraine to uphold the defence of the country, has not provided it with what is needed to win the fight on its own terms.

    Equally concerning is how Habermas constructs a presumed divergence of fundamental interests between Ukraine, NATO nations and the EU respectively:

    “For the immediate concern of this long-term rearmament program cannot be the fate of Ukraine, which is currently particularly risky and rightly worrisome; nor is it a possible or talked up current Russian threat to Nato countries. Rather, the overall goal of this rearmament is the existential self-assertion of a European Union that can no longer count on the protection of the United States in an increasingly unpredictable geopolitical situation.”

    With that Habermas seems to construe different European categories: There is Ukraine whose fate is “particularly risky and rightly worrisome,” but European rearmaments efforts should not be seen as considering Ukraine as an “immediate concern.”  Thereby, Habermas seems unwilling to understand that the defence of Ukraine cannot be separated from European values and interests; that these very values are defended by Ukraine on its soil and with its blood, against a ruthless aggressor.  As stated by all 32 Allies at NATO’s Washington Summit: “A strong, independent, and democratic Ukraine is vital for the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area.  Ukraine’s fight for its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders directly contributes to Euro-Atlantic security.” Sadly, Ukraine’s partners have only been providing half-hearted support in putting this vision into reality.

    And then there are in Habermas’ thinking NATO countries facing a “possible or talked up current Russian threat”, in distinction to the “existential self-assertation” of the European Union – as if most EU members would not also be in NATO.

    Altogether, Habermas’ framework seems unable to accommodate the seismic shifts that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and Donald Trump’s instigated dissolution of the “West” have triggered.  While the response undoubtedly needs to be European, his focus on the European Union is too narrow to meet current and future challenges.

    Habermas wants the creation of a “joint EU military deterrent force”: “Can the EU be perceived as an independent military power factor at the global level as long as each of its member states retains ultimate sovereignty over decisions regarding the structure and deployment of its armed forces? It will only gain geopolitical independence if it is able to act collectively, including in the use of military force.”

    Even if this EU reform were ever achieved, which is more than doubtful, it would not provide the deterrence, defence and security Europeans need now, and in the years ahead. As a case in point, the EU itself confirms in the new White Paper on European Defence Readiness 2030 that “Member States will always retain responsibility for their own troops, from doctrine to deployment, and for the definition needs of their armed forces”.  But providing collective defence and security does not necessarily require the creation of a supranational body a la Habermas. NATO has done this successfully over the past 76 years as an intergovernmental institution.  Should NATO fail to meet the challenges of its current Trump-induced existential crisis, there can be other formats to mobilize Europe’s ”existential self-assertation”. These can consist in establishing a coalition of the willing which could also involve EU outsiders UK, Norway, Canada, and in fact also Ukraine, or by forging a new European or Western Defence Alliance which could bring together the “rump NATO” and the EU’s portion of defence and security.  

    Effective deterrence and defence needs, beyond resources and formats, in particular the will and determination of people to defend their country, their values and their interests. For that the “military mentality” much demonized by Habermas is essential – to be in extremis willing to fight for our freedom and our democracies.

    Habermas’ adherence to his life-long pacifism and anti-militarism, as honourable as they have been over past decades, seem to have made him a prisoner of his own thought structure.   The “Zeitenwende” begins in people’s minds. Unfortunately, Habermas doesn’t really seem to have realised it yet.

  • John le Carré- a Very Personal Obituary

    Roland Freudenstein, December 2020

    “Ten minutes to midnight: a pious Friday in May and a fine river mist lying over the market square. Bonn was a Balkan city, stained and secret, drawn over with tramwire. Bonn was a dark house where someone had died, a house draped in Catholic black, guarded by policemen.” – These are not only the greatest opening lines of any novel I’ve read: The meter and alliterations make them sound more like a poem, an incantation, than ‘normal’ prose. They’re also, incidentally, the best poetic description I know of the “Small Town in Germany” I grew up in, and a hymn as well as a damning verdict on the Homburg hatted Federal Republic of my childhood whose non-capital it used to be, self-pitying at times and boastful at others, ridden by complexes and concealed resentment, never quite ready to go into open battle against the ghosts of its own, eerie, not-too-distant past.

    And so this book made me see what I took to be intimately familiar, even part of myself, with the eyes of a stranger – a literally eye-opening experience, and one of the best things literature can do for you. I can proudly claim to have read, and in most cases re-read, all le Carré novels up to the late 2000s. My all-time favourites, such as the aforementioned “A Small Town in Germany”, “Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy”, “The Honourable Schoolboy”, “Smiley’s People” (written between 1968 and 1982, his best period) I must have read five or more times each, which produces its own effect when different aspects come to light depending on the different phases of your own life you read them in. I remember being glued to “The Honourable Schoolboy” while riding through a snowy Northern GDR on an overnight train from Hamburg to West Berlin and on to Poland to link up with the anti-communist opposition there in March 1983, knowing I would soon trade in the fictional Cold War in Hong Kong for the real one in wintry Warsaw.

    So it’s no exaggeration to say that le Carré’s glamourously unglamorous spies, all the George Smileys, Peter Guillams, Connie Sachses, Jerry Westerbys and Alan Turners, became familiar characters in my universe, sometimes shape-shifting in my mind’s eye, depending on which movie or serial based on le Carré I had last seen. At times I also had my very own idea of what they must look like – Jerry Westerby of Hong Kong fame, to me, is still clearly David Bowie of around 1980, when he stopped using makeup. Whereas Smiley is, of course, Obi-Wan Kenobi, i.e. Alec Guinness, after the BBC mini-series “Smiley’s People”, forever clumsily cleaning his glasses with the fat end of his tie.

    As to le Carré’s politics, I admit my feelings have evolved over time, and not for the better. His Cold War maxim was rock solid and spot-on: that we’re fighting for a good end (against the likes of Karla, the Soviet spymaster), but that we always, always, always have to question our means, and that despite our best intentions, we sometimes screw up, morally as well as factually. On Germany, he got so many things right – in his first decades. On the Middle East, a bit less. He ends “The Little Drummer Girl” (1982) with Israel’s alleged choice to either become “a Jewish homeland, or an ugly little Sparta”: as if these things could be neatly separated, and as if some of the latter weren’t indispensable to remain the former – how quaint! How very European! And as for Russia and the Cold War, by 1988/89 (“The Russia House”), he lost me politically. Increasingly, for him, the capitalist West was no better than the communist East had been, the West allegedly humiliated Russia in the 1990s and le Carré’s universe of villains-in-chief became populated by morally and financially corrupt Western spies, arms traders, pharma bosses and Eton-bred criminals speaking Whitehall cockney. Add to this his visceral hatred of the US neo-cons of the George W. Bush era, compared to which Graham Greene’s “Quiet American” is an almost loving portrayal.

    Am I unfair in assuming his narrative powers waned over time? Maybe. By the time of “A Most Wanted Man” (2008), set in Hamburg and very much about the global war on terror, some novels rather had the authorly punch of a short story – not to mention, in this case, the limitless understanding for victimised Muslims and persistent demonisation of the evil Americans. (The 2014 movie version with a stellar performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman is better than the book). Equally by that time, the truly heroic Germans in his books had almost invariably become human rights lawyers politically somewhere between antifa and Greenpeace, whose idea of a drink at the Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg was flat water without lemon or ice, served at room temperature.

    For le Carré, throughout his oeuvre, spying was more than intelligence gathering – it was a condition humaine. In, time and again, betraying what we love, and those we love, and sometimes even for a good cause, we are all lifelong spies. There is also a degree of Englishness about le Carré’s topic: No wonder spies, and writing about them, thrive in a country that has self-control and hiding one’s real feelings so deeply woven into its cultural fabric. And no wonder that, for example, Sid Meier’s turn-based strategy computer game Civilization V gives you an extra spy if you play as Britain. But in my eyes, the even more remarkable fact about his writing is his incredible gift for rendering spoken language, with its jargons, sociolects, culture-driven thought patterns and even personal quirks shining through just a few sentences of direct speech. In one of his early masterpieces in this respect, “A Small Town in Germany”, in the tense ministerial briefings and awkward Godesberg diplomatic dinner parties, you can literally hear the German accents without the author having to change one letter in the spelling. Another such marvel is the vulgar nouveau-riche cynicism echoing in every sentence by Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw who makes a brief but memorable appearance at the end of “The Secret Pilgrim” (1990, actually a short story collection and one of le Carré’s hidden gems), only to become a major figure in “The Night Manager” (1993).

    His last two works deserve special mention: In “A Legacy of Spies” (2017), in which his disdain for Brexit and confessed Europeanness perk up at the very end, for the first time in an eternity our own spies aren’t always the villains, and their detractors in the shape of parliamentary committees or children of former MI 6 victims aren’t always saints. But whatever political sympathy I started feeling at the time, his last novel, “Agent Running in the Field” (2019), pretty much nixed it. Le Carré, the Snowdenversteher: A post-Brexit MI 6 leadership conspiring with the cousins across the Pond and the idiot in Number 10 to destroy the remaining EU and driving an idealistic young cypher specialist into Putin’s arms – not my idea of a spy novel at a time when so many real-world villains (i.e. Putin, Xi Jinping, Khamenei, Lukashenka, maybe Orbán…) and their cynical corruption of our open societies offer such rich material to write contemporary thrillers.

    But late politics aside, I can’t complain. It’s as simple as this: I wouldn’t be the same without John le Carré. His characters have been with me ever since I devoured “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” as a teenager. And when I think of him now, I picture him in his days as an MI 6 agent in Bonn in the early 1960s (and this you will not read in the many eulogies that are appearing today, but I know it for a fact), taking the morning ferry across the Rhine from his house in Königswinter, below Chamberlain’s Hill, to the office in Her Majesty’s battleship of an embassy, ever so coincidentally the same ferry that Konrad Adenauer used on most days from his Rhöndorf house, and ever so casually manoeuvering his bicycle close to the Chancellor’s black Mercedes in order to peer through the rear side window and see which newspaper articles the Old Man read with special interest, and marked with his pen. And have a few fun facts for his daily sitrep to the Circus.

    Thank you for the stories, David John Moore Cornwell/John Le Carré, and R.I.P.!

  • Book review – Piotr Siemion: Bella Ciao

    My summer reading in 2023.

    “They are seven, moving through mapless, measureless land. They are surrounded by a no man’s world, a bloodstained bedsheet of earth, a shroud at dawn. No kingdom of kindness, just the tired, trampled football field that our millennium has become.” (my translation of the opening lines, with apologies to the author)

    Piotr Siemion, lawyer, top manager and novelist with a rich personal experience in Western Europe and North America, has put 200 years of Polish sacrifice, guilt, domestic strife and strategic dilemma into a (logically dystopian) novel that neatly hovers between tragic past, alternate present and gloomy future. Europe (which is mentioned a lot by the protagonists) is in some kind of postwar situation but it’s never completely clear whether the fictional reality of the novel is closer to 1944, 1945, 1989 or 2022. There is even a reference to 1709 and a Swedish intervention (tough humanitarian this time). Refugees have left, people expelled elsewhere have arrived, and in between are Polish militias, leftovers of regular forces, Russian mercenaries and kids in the forest that survive through cannibalism.

    There is a bit more clarity as to the place: somewhere in Pomerania, in a town whose architecture speaks German and which has one German name (Lanzig) and about ten different Polish ones (from Leńsko via Łancko to Łańcyk). Two of the protagonists also have several names like the heroes of Polish uprisings from 1830 to 1944. All the collective traumas and vitriolic debates, the homicidal, fratricidal and suicidal proclivities of Poland in the course of history are negotiated in almost mathematical permutations in the dialogues, with a confident feeling for sociolects and languages. And ‘Bella Ciao’, the perky musical antidote to oppression and misery is rendered in Swedish as well as Kashub (google that!). The separation of the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’ (where the worst of ‘them’ can be your own compatriots), the desperate oscillation between revolt and submission, the ‘Should I stay or should I go’ of generations of Poles tempted to just get up and leave for safer, richer and greener shores – it’s all there. Some of the dialogues between the two different Polish forces in ‘Bella Ciao’ sound like a copy pasted debate between the current government and opposition after a few drinks.

    There is no shortage of cliffhanger scenes, and there is a surprise ending with a tiny ray of hope, as well as some nuanced characters without total villains or angels, but the strongest element of the novel is Piotr Siemion’s uncanny sense of continental vibes in the air. Slovenia’s heavy industrial band ‘Laibach’ may be politically difficult to bear and musically a bit tedious in recent decades, but in the early 1980s they managed to ‘predict’ the lethal identity politics at the root of the Balkan wars with an esthetic precision that no PoliSci pundit could muster at the time. Siemion wrote ‘Bella Ciao’ between 2015 and 2021 – so after Crimea and before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And by the time it was published, war crimes, torture and expulsions in Europe’s East had become the staple food of TV news and social media.

    So, my non-Polish friends, ‘Bella, Ciao’ is well worth waiting for the English translation – and Piotr Siemion, apologies for any misinterpretations and mistakes. But I had to write this review before gong back to work!

  • Book review – Sönke Neitzel: Deutsche Krieger

    Book review – Sönke Neitzel: Deutsche Krieger

    ‘German Warriors’: My primary summer reading in 2023. Mind blowing, I dare say. So Germany’s leading young military historian, Sönke Neitzel, asks what the Kaiser’s soldiers in 1914, the Wehrmacht ones in WW2, the Bundeswehr’s ‘virtual’ soldiers in the Cold War, and the post-unification first (few) real warriors since 1945 (Afghanistan) had in common. Not to forget a few other German armies in between, such as the 1920s Reichswehr and the East German NVA.

    His ambition is breathtaking in its temporal and intellectual scope. He looks at how political leadership, the standing of soldiers in society and politics, and force structure and inner resilience are intricately linked, in no less than 7 German militaries over 120 years. He zooms in and out, from broad sweeps of the geopolitical and ideological ‘big picture’ to day-by-day accounts of individual battles of WW2 or the Bundeswehr Afghanistan mission. Sometimes you feel like he read an entire book in order to put down a half sentence.

    His primary questions are: What was the common element (subsidiarity/Auftragstaktik, the preference of mobility over firepower, leading from the front, a higher emphasis on offence rather than defence etc.) and: how can German soldiers still be warriors while aiming to be the contrary of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, or even other past German forces, in every sense?

    It is this last question which makes Neitzel’s book so explosive: he is absolutely right (but very much opposed to the PC Berlin zeitgeist) that in order to maintain liberal democracy in the 21st century, neither the emphasis on deterrence of the Cold War Bundeswehr nor the ‘development assistant’ mode of post-2001 will suffice. Soldiers kill and die on the job, and therefore develop a very special tribal culture, which is what makes them unique among professionals. Whether that means that Bundeswehr garrisons should return to celebrating WW2 Fallschirmjäger strikes in Crete or panzer attacks in the East, is a different question. My answer is no; Neitzel is a bit less clear on that. But he is right in saying that Afghanistan, and the sacrifices made by German soldiers there, would offer some ground to create new tribal traditions.

    So for military geeks like me, this book is no less than a treasure trove, more captivating than a Netflix series and food for thought and debate for years to come. Thank you, Sönke Neitzel, for the best book I’ve read in a long time!

  • We Are All Gaullists Now. Are We?

    We Are All Gaullists Now. Are We?

    To the Grand Old Man of wartime and postwar France, Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s European allies would not have come as a surprise. Quite the contrary, he suspected the Americans all along of being perfectly capable of backstabbing their allies (in his view) like in the Suez Crisis of 1956. That is one of the reasons why he insisted on taking France out of NATO’s integrated military structure in 1966 and prioritised developing France’s independent nuclear deterrent.

    In the days of Trump and MAGA, he seems to be proven right, to the point of Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp claiming ‘We’re all Gaullists now’, or Germany’s likely future Chancellor Friedrich Merz demanding European ‘independence from the US’ in security, like an Atlanticist mugged by reality.

    No wonder that Charles de Gaulle is now back in the headlines across much of Europe, way beyond the hexagone of France itself. But before we unquestioningly jump on this bandwagon, let’s examine the entire de Gaulle, assess his present successor Emmanuel Macron and his record on European security, and spend a few thoughts on the future of our relationship with the US. And then chart a course that will hopefully be consensual among the majority of Europeans.

    De Gaulle’s mixed legacy

    While acknowledging the indispensable contribution of les Anglo-Saxons (meaning chiefly Britain and the US) to France’s freedom in the First as well as the Second World War, de Gaulle nevertheless harboured a deep, culture-based bias against them. Incidentally, that was why he went to considerable lengths to keep Britain out of the European Economic Community, the EU’s precursor, in the 1960s. Today, the UK is indispensable to any European security structure, for its size, as well as for its military, diplomatic and intelligence capabilities, especially its own nuclear deterrent. Nobody has brought post-Brexit Britain and the EU closer together than Donald Trump.

    De Gaulle was also very much opposed to all supranational aspects of European integration, advocating a ‘Europe of the fatherlands’ (very much Orbán-style in today’s terms) – and boycotting European ministerial meetings in his ‘empty chair’ policy of 1965 which threw the young community into an existential crisis. The EU wouldn’t be where it is if this purely intergovernmental approach had won the day. De Gaulle also helped to kill the European Defence Community which would have given European integration an early security component, in 1954.

    Finally, his 1959 dream of a ‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’ deliberately excluded North America (including Canada) from the continent while approving a strong bond with Russia (as he insisted on calling the USSR). That’s not even equidistance anymore; in today’s terms, this would be appeasement of Putin.

    Praise to Macron where praise is due

    To make things absolutely clear: Macron was right about Europe’s strategic autonomy as a goal. Probably, the concept would have had stronger appeal if he had named it ‘responsibility’. But this is water under the bridge. As much as the Central Europeans were historically right about Russia, he had the right instincts about the probability of the US decoupling from European security in a way Atlanticists (including myself) could not imagine.

    But Macron came late to the party of clearly and decisively opposing Russian aggression under Putin. Only in his Bratislava speech of 2023 did he fully embrace Central European views of Russia, having dangerously appeased Putin – alongside Germany under Schröder and Merkel – for much too long: for almost a decade after the initial aggression of 2014. This attitude went a long way to explain Central Europeans’ and, generally, Atlanticists’ distrust of French leadership on European security.

    Moreover, even after 2023, France has not in every sense followed up its words with concrete action. Today, France’s defence spending has just reached 2 % of GDP while already being in massive debt. And French military assistance to Ukraine, at 3,5 billion Euros, remains behind countries like Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark and above all, Germany with over 12 billion.

    Most importantly, France’s partners in Europe are still worried about the prospect of a Marine Le Pen victory (or some other nationalist’s) in the 2027 presidential election. Would other Europeans then be entitled, or actually forced, to seek strategic autonomy from France? – To say that such a victory is not going to happen, or not going to have any consequences for Europe’s common defence, would be to repeat the mistakes of those who ruled out Trump in 2015, or the disastrous effects of Trump 2.0 in 2024. This is another reason why France as the sole leader on Europe’s security is unlikely, and a backstop against one of the security drivers of future Europe turning nationalist, will have to be part of the formula.

    Is Trump history’s last word on America?

    The answer is, of course, no. First of all, whatever Trump and the Republican Party are claiming, November 6, 2024, was no landslide victory. Trump got less than 50 % of the valid votes (49,8 %), his advance on Kamala Harris was a mere 1,5 percentage points – and 48,3 % voted for her. With the US economy tanking, there are good reasons to assume that the midterm elections in November 2026 will see a Democratic majority in the House, ending unrestrained Republican government. There have been too many moments since the end of the Cold War when the current administration seemed to imply a total and lasting break with the past – for example, George W. Bush’s neocons 2000-2008, and right after that the ‘Obama coalition’ of youngsters, women and Black and Latino voters that were supposed to guarantee Democrat majorities forever. At some point, US electorates will realign again, maybe rather sooner than later.

    Whether Trump and MAGA manage to turn the US into an autocracy, is very questionable. Not just are checks and balances still alive and hard to abolish, but there are powerful federal states, media, civil society and above all, citizens who will at least have an important say in the future of the United States, no matter who is in the White House.

    Most of all, ‘America First’, bullying allies and pandering to autocrats is simply opposed to the founding narrative of the United States. The ‘city upon a hill’ as which America is designed, cannot easily and above all sustainably turned into a jingoistic bully. America the Beautiful is stronger than America the Horrible. Of course, Europe must now defend its freedom against MAGA and Musk, and it should never return to the dependency of recent decades. But it should always prepare for a change of tack in Washington and leave as much as possible of transatlantic ties in place, especially on the sub-national level.

    What we owe to ourselves and our children now:

    · It is high time to put to rest the acrimony of past debates about Russia as well as the US, and step by step work on Europe’s strategic autonomy in defence and security.

    · Obviously, we need to ramp up defence spending, arms production and assisting Ukraine: on this, ‘Gaullists’ and Atlanticists were already in agreement for some time. For sophisticated weapons systems, there should be a clear ‘Buy European’ preference.

    · This will in many cases have to happen in coalitions of the willing, because of Hungarian vetoes, and outside of EU structures in order to include countries like the UK. An EU Army is therefore hard to imagine, as well as an EU nuclear deterrence. Which is why Britain and France will be in the drivers’ seat of rearming Europe and securing a possible ceasefire in Ukraine for quite some time.

    · We need to preserve of NATO as much as possible for as long as possible, because Europe’s autonomy will take time to build; if necessary, we need to stick to ‘NATO Redux’ (with the US remaining de facto passive) but including the UK, Canada and Norway. Even a ‘Ramstein Redux’ Group makes sense, in order to continue security cooperation with Japan, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan etc.

    · Don’t fall for China: China under Xi Jinping has developed into a fundamentally hostile power that, though different from Russia under Putin, nevertheless defines our democracy as an existential threat. Some degree of economic decoupling from China, especially reducing dependency on its markets and lowering the risk of technological penetration, will be necessary – for our own sake, not to please Trump.

    · Global democracy support remains a worthwhile undertaking. Our growth in hard power should not come at the cost of soft power (which is not that expensive anyway). Part of the mantle of America’s past solidarity with democrats across the globe must now be picked up by Europe.

    In other words, we need to embrace strategic autonomy while seeing that it will only emerge step by step. We will need America’s support in a transactional manner where we can get it but should never rely on it for our freedom. It will be a long and arduous road, with lots of socioeconomic distribution battles. But we need to start walking on it now.