01 March 2017

Germany’s Geography

states do not have friends,
only intererests

Abstract

Germany’s history is a child of Germany’s geography. The truth of this heredity, blurred by the Cold War, is emerging with ever greater clarity. But the natural indolence of the Cold War vintage hampers defining and planning the nation’s purpose and strategy anew. The handling of vital affairs often looks unsure and fortuitous. Only honest and steadfast national self-interest, firmly rooted in the West, worlds away from hypocracy or arrogance and married to the awareness of the necessity of nations being in dialogue, will deliver the goods – steady security and stable affluence within a confident neighbourhood of nations.

Geohistory

Geography haunts Germany. Were it but possible for Germany to steer clear of the continental land-mass and place itself in, say, some placid mid-Atlantic havens west of Ireland, it were foolish not to try. But that is by all accounts not to be.

Short of that, the German nations-State’s “grand strategy” cannot but be a perrennial effort to overcome this “great flaw”. Canada is supposed to have, as the wry saying goes: ‘too much geography and too little history’. For Germany geography is history, is destiny. No other major nation excepting perhaps Russia sits so utterly in the midst of everybody else. And nearly every attempt to alter the nation’s boundaries has ended in failure - and in cataclysm.

Obviously, the thing is not to reverse the “great flaw” but to arrest it. Chancellor Bismarck, who built and shaped the German nation-state, was a master at living up to his country’s geography. With surefooted ease he negotiated the precarious trapeze between the then European great powers – Russia, France, England, Prussia and Austria. And he succeeded.

But the spectre sneaked in this very success. First, the ingenuity of Bismarck in sustaining a balance of power lulled lesser mortals into believing this balancing was permanently and comfortably attainable. Second, this elusive stability in external affairs coupled with rapid industrial growth and rising societal cohesion in Germany at the turn into the twentieth century encouraged a fatal overestimation of German power. Emerging German strength ws now predominant in Europe – but only if pitted against the rest one at a time, not all at once. In retrospect, this silly oversight would be banal – but for the sombre consequences.

The Adenauer Revolution

Chancellor Adenauer changed all that. As the first chancellor of the Federal Republic surveyed the carnage he saw a nation lying in unfathomable ruins. Worse, the shock of moral defeat weighed down upon the nation debilitating its every effort to begin anew. So confronted, Adenauer opted for a threefold course of action:

  1. to start with, keep the lid tight on the Pandora’s box Auschwitz; at the least, do not encourage its opening right away.
  2. let the physical task of rebuilding the country be the logic of the infant Federal Republic’s very existence.
  3. correct the ‘flaw’ in Germany’s geography.

And success in this third task is Adenauer’s lasting legacy to German history. Today, after the passage of two generations, it is of petty consequence to delve into the question as to whether this was Adenauer’s carefully thought out strategy or whether he rather stumbled upon the solution. The truth of the matter is that he achieved these:

  1. he gave up Bismarckian balancing – Germany was hardly in a position to balance anyway
  2. he smoothed his people’s reconciliation to the surrender of vast territories east of the river Oder to Poland and to the Soviet Union
  3. he ignored Stalin’s alleged proposal of barter – unity against neutrality
  4. he brought Germany West.

Thus West-integration, not mere West-orientation, will surely stand out in history as Chancellor Adenauer’s greatest achievement. And the surest mark of greatness in the solution he supplied lies in its elegant simplicity, a simplicity born of wisdom. Today, Germany’s being in the West, no more an unsure colossus glancing at Central Europe, is normal and banal to the extent of being trivial to most of its affluent youth. So complete indeed has been the Adenauer Revolution.

Having said that, one may legitimately point out the three factors which made Adenauer’s task bearable:

  1. a truncated country: more than emotional or intellectual, the journey West was a physical reality. Eastern and Central Germany were carved out and now provided outer ramparts to the Soviet Empire. The one great symbol of the Reich, Berlin, was gone. Millions of refugees travelled west carrying despair and destitution.
  2. the USA, the great anchor: the obvious rescue for this lurching ship lay in the United States. Not in the general vagueness of some mythical West but, solely and specifically in the United States. None else would then have had either the desire or the muscle to prop Germany up socially, economically, politically and, above all, morally.
  3. the focus of the novel US strategy: after the Second War the United States did not go home – as after the first. The urge for splendid and distant isolation gave way to containment which, at the start of the Cold War meant: X protects Y from Z by means of P for the sake of Q

X = United States
Y = Federal Republic (and West Europe)
Z = Soviet Empire (and not necessarily Bolshevism)
P = nuclear strategy (extended deterrence)
Q = to stall and roll back Soviet expansion

And given that West-integration was not contingent choice but necessity, three consequences stand out:

  1. Freedom over reunification: particularly Germany’s NATO- membership seemed then to many to perpetuate the country’s division – what with a German Democratic Republic in the Warsaw Pact.
  2. Abdication of foreign policy: in her first decades the Federal Republic largely ignored one half of every state’s supreme calling – to seek to obtain and sustain for its citizens freedom from poverty in prosperity and from alien bondage in security. This latter goal demands power, diplomacy, strategy – in short, an existential awareness of external affairs. Under the US umbrella Germany could afford the luxury of being lukewarm on matters beyond her borders. To some extent, this dearth prevails.
  3. Restrained sovereignty: restricted sovereignty for forty years has left its mark on both citizens and government. One example: as late as 1990, Hans Modrow, the then Prime Minister of the dying GDR, upon being put the standard question as to what his half of Germany would bring to impending unity, stumbled and fumbled, desperately looking for an adequate answer, till he finally came up with, “our slogan: ‘we are the people’. One wished he had more history. With a slightly better grasp of things he could instead have said: ‘prospects of unbridled sovereignty for united Germany’.

Mr. Modrow was not quite an exception. A sizeable section of post-1990 Germany’s citizens obviously does not realize to this day that the nation’s sovereignty – and hence responsibility in the world – has increased; others, who possibly do, seem to find the new state of affairs embarrassing or deplorable. The very concept ‘nation state’ is currently one of Germany’s leading taboos. Many would rather drown it in a new-found sea of euphoria – in a United States of Europe.

With the end of the Cold War, a substantial bit of Germany’s well-structured world suddenly evaporated. Containment, nurtured to tackle Soviet explosion into Europe, was caught on the wrong foot at what came instead – a quick and, no less amazing, non-cataclysmic implosion in the Soviet Empire. Like the fabled prince who kisses the beautiful princess back to life and dies thereupon, containment’s very success was designed to seal its fate. Already it looks distant and gone for good, leaving behind a forlorn orphan, NATO, to fend for itself. But to what purpose?

A Converse Lippmann Gap

Quoting Walter Lippmann on American foreign policy, Samuel Huntington once coined the term ’Lippmann Gap’ for naming any serious imbalance between a nation’s powers and its commitments. This imbalance occurs when a nation’s ends overtake its means. And unlike the decline in relative power, Huntington reassured us, the imbalance in policy can be corrected.

Although the gap can be either way, depending on whether means or ends are in short supply, Huntington obviously prefers to use the term for the means-gap since it is usually the more interesting of the too, being both more common and more destabilizing. Saddam Hussein’s Irak for instance exemplified a blatant Lippmann-Gap because his country’s strength fell way short of his aspirations, apparently at least to usurp Kuwait – if not to become the prime mover in the Arab world. And the answer to a Lippmann-Gap can only be: stretch your means or curb your ends.

Viewed thus, post-Cold War Germany is suffering from a Converse Lippmann-Gap. Unification has of course advanced severe demands upon the nation’s economy. The homogeneity of German society has shown strange fissures at the seams. Nevertheless, Germany’s means are significant and, wisely used, sufficiently elastic to absorb the current massive stretch. It is rather on the ends-side that the nation is showing the gap: Germany seems to have suddenly run out of purpose. Worse, many Germans are quite oblivious of this deficit. They would rather prefer to nestle in snug certitudes long lost.

Post-war German foreign policy – notwithstanding Ostpolitik, UN membership etc. – has been a pale affair. Policy implies choice. And choice requires possibilities. For Germany there has never been an alternative to the primacy of stable security nor any other way but to seek this security in the United States and this stability in the credible(?) threat of mutual extermination. The swift farewell to the Soviet Union has now also bade farewell to set habits. After a long pause, Germany must now seek to handle her affairs the way she considers best. It is like the instructor having, after an arduous trial, handed over the driving licence and got off; novice or not, it is now up to the driver to deftly manoeuvre his vehicle without endangering health or property. Mikhail Gorbachev, unwittingly perhaps, was a roaring success at making Germany the master of her own affairs again.

And therefore what for instance former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher so often said – namely, that the essentials of German foreign policy are set and thus in no need of rethinking – is gravely faulted. Why? Because at least two factors, so far largely ignored under the pleasant shelter of the Cold War, have resurfaced with vigour and are set to determine Germany’s tryst with the external world: the question of the nation-state and the question of geography. And for both it is imperative to think afresh, to challenge stereotypes and to construct an indigenous methodology for the conduct of policy. Let us throw a glance at each.

The Nation State

As for the nation-state, it is indeed no small irony that Germany, the belated nation, is today the most vociferous enthusiast for some European supranation. In fact the United States of Europe is a convenient alibi for a non-existant definition of Germany’s national interests after the revolutionary changes of the year 1989.

The only sensible way, it is often claimed, to prevent any repetitions of the German nation’s recent unspeakable crimes is to take leave of the nation altogether. This attractive solution, namely of cleansing dirty linen by either getting rid of the linen or by calling it by another name, invites comments:

First, admittedly, nations as nations have seldom been great harbingers of peace. Nor, though, have they ever had any monopoly on genocide or barbarism. How many dogmas, one wonders, how many religions would, by the same token, have to self-deface? It is quite questionable whether wars of religion have counted fewer deaths than war amongst nations, or, say, Stalin’s horrors, perpetuated not the least in the name of transcending the nation-state, fewer sorrows.

Second, the success of the nation-state in its rather brief career are significant too: the flowering of modern science, emergence of democracies, universal education, prosperity for the ordinary citizen.

Third, the tendency, for better or for worse, and both in and out of Europe today is towards the nation-state’s consolidation or formation, not its abolition. On the contrary. With the farewell to the Cold War, fake supranational constructions from the Baltic to the Black Sea have vanished. Even non-socialist, affluent Europe has seen stateless minority ‘nations’ restive: Scots in Britain, Catalonians and Basques in Spain, German-speaking Tyrolleans in Italy. Beyond the façade of nonchalant nationhood, even Switzerland has had animosity between her speakers of French and German. And the speakers of Dutch and French in Belgium have often tossed at one another more than mere verbal crudities.

Fourth, history supplies ample evidence that the viability of a certain United States of X is ultimately settled in no small measure by language. Linguistic homogeneity tends to guarantee a country robust health, heterogeneity tends to endanger it. Witness in turn, for instance, the USA and the Soviet Union. (Are there though signs of this homogeneity in the USA cracking? If so, it may soon demand greater attention than sundry other tales of decline and deliverance).

Finally, if bellicosity indeed runs so deep in Germans as to call for supranational shackles, if only mortal distrust binds Europeans, then surely some day the bonds will slip off leaving as sole consolation the next grand European carnage being called a civil war of sorts.

Geography

It is admittedly absurd to make the point but the truth is: since 1990, Germany is voluntarily in the West. Any other state of affairs will of course beat both probability and prudence. Yet it is more than a mere tribute to Adenauer to insist that Germany has chosen to continue where she should be. Choice implies volition. Policy implies freedom to choose. And choice is a novel element in the biography of the Federal Republic.

And it is indication of this novel element that for instance some voices have started worrying, others hoping, that the West’s ‘grip’ on Germany may slip. Others may consider the question academic, for Germany it is incendiary. Why?

Indeed, Germany is today ‘free’ to choose between the West and, say, some ‘United Europe’ as a geographically more ‘natural’ locus of orientation. This is true, and there’s the rub, quite aside from the wisdom of yet another venture at ‘neutrality’.

Moreover, this shows too the dilemma that has entered Germany’s affairs on the heels of choice, the novelty. Since post-war Germany hardly had any choice, sticking now to old positions like, say, NATO encourages the mistaken conclusion that Germany continues to have none. Only time will remove Germany’s lack of familiarity with choice and only time can convince the world of Germany’s steadfastness and clarity of vision - presuming they are there. A common argument which advocates that Germany turn her face elsewhere comes from what might be called the ‘decontainment school’ and essentially rides the crescendo of the United States’ alleged ‘decline’ as well as, more universally, capitalism’s alleged grim future, worlds away from ethics and compassion.

Even states on occasion handle solely according to the dictates of ethics. But diffuse moralism is wrong counsel in the affairs of states. This, quite apart from the fact that Europeans, like people everywhere else, strive for prosperity and democracy precisely in that order, that the probability of Russia and a few others retreading the path of some totalitarianism is not negligible and that neither Germany nor any other European power can maintain, much less enforce, peace and stability in the neighbourhood - witness Yugoslavia, Ukraine and some others – and ought therefore to shun dreams of the kind.

Rather, there are now at least four new ‘threats’, as yet veiled, which are poised to demand every fabric of Germany’s resilience; continuing firmly in the West, assuming it is still there, is necessary but insufficient to countenance these. Geography again. They are:

  1. Political: the possible birth of weakly authoritarian states in the East and the South where very often economies are still bereft of substance, where stability is unsure, where purpose is uncertain. A weird coalition of anti-West crusaders, of disgruntled military officers and of a subterranean Neo-Bolshevism in economy and society may in the short run throttle nascent democracies.
  2. Social: the lifting of the iron curtain, added to perilously permeable state borders in and around Germany has, given the affluence differential between Germany and most others, set an exodus rolling. This has fanned animosity towards aliens in some quarters.
  3. Military-Diplomatic: since so many countries are in a flux, it is futile to seek durable security arrangements of lasting significance with most.
  4. Economic: it is for instance a fair bet that Russia will ultimately tap her enormous riches and arrive at prosperity - unless it politically disintegrates. But the journey will be arduous. And the amount of initial investments necessary will be horrendous. Large conferences on peace, democracy and well-being produce little else but humbug. Besides, when it comes to future markets, not Germany but Korea, and of course now China, are more likely to reap some day a rich Siberian harvest bartering technology for, say, natural gas.

What is to be done?

Which set of beacon lights is likely to provide an optimal strategy for Germany to manage her fundamental interests - military and economic - in the next decades?

Security: in the field of pure security Germany has at least three mutually accommodative avenues open – preservingNATO, constructing a West-European defence and putting up some form of Collective Security for Europe.

The term ‘Collective Security’, to start with, is ambiguous and allows of at least three interpretations:

Beyond such ambiguities, Collective Security has severe conceptual difficulties. Still, the point here being not so much to compare strategies as to point at possibilities, it should be legitimate to construct, say, the following hierarchy of priorities for Germany

NATO > WEU > Franco-German Corps > CSCE

On the face of it, any state invited to share in this spectrum is fortunate – especially since the elements offered are not mutually exclusive. The West European Union, for all you are worth, is NATO’s supposed European pillar; some certain Franco-German Corps may some day become the heart of the WEU; everyone worth his name is a member of CSCE.

But there is a snag in the matter. The snag involves the viability of the several proposals. CSCE is still very much a feast without a host - quite aside from the wise adage ’everybody’s business is nobody’s business’. WEU with its common defence policy is claimed to be a necessity. But is it also achievable – be it in the next years or at all? A mere Franco-German Corps establishes little – yet. Because prudence warrants caution – that Germany better not, yet, take leave of the fundamental assumption that, for France, her supreme concern is in many ways rather ‘seen in Germany’ than ‘shared with’. And that this assumption is likely to remain significant in the next future. And that its validity may very well grow if security is made to include, as some would have it, ‘geoeconomics’ too.

What is then to be done? How is Germany to achieve and retain stable security in future?

The right approach seems to lie in the apparent banality of the dictum: ‘hope and try for the best, prepare for the worst, rule out nothing prematurely and thwart euphoria’. At any rate, the following - or a similar - list of possibilities ought certainly to be considered:

  1. continue to work for a strong NATO, trimming it of archaic and obsolete doctrines, giving it more tensile strength; put greater emphasis on mobility, out of area operations, humanitarian support and conflict prevention. But all the while do seriously weigh the possibility of NATO’s withering away.
  2. Simultaneously work at strengthening WEU, particularly the cooperation with France. Again, it would be rash here not to take into account the chances of the entire project falling flat.
  3. try to establish some common security connections with the former soviet satellites – avoiding in the process inadvertently causing Russia to worry.
  4. seriously reflect upon the chances of 1), 2) and 3) all ending in failure. In that event, in the aftermath of a receding NATO, attempt to establish an ‘Atlantic Bilateralism’ with the USA -– perhaps in some ways reminiscent of the Anglo-US Special Relationship.
  5. Bear in mind that the chances of 4) failing may be even greater than the chances of the other three. And in this worst of all cases, Germany may even have to reconsider her current axioms of deterrence, both conventional and nuclear.

To repeat, the unkindest cut of all this is that Germany must force herself to consider the eventuality of NATO’s, in its present form and function, turning defunct – soon. It is very difficult for successful alliances to survive success. Worse, in NATO’s case, chances are significant that the United States will leave, if she does, because her Lippmann Gap at the turn now into the next century is obvious. And because, contrary claims notwithstanding, her Pacific engagement is poised to increase, her Atlantic fervour destined to shrink.

Prosperity

If on account of some significant improbabilities the preceding section on Security should suggest an academic exercise, pursuing the question of preserving Germany’s position on the international scale of affluence is definitely not. Germany is a medium-sized, fairly heavily populated, resource-poor country. Its society is well-knit and has so far been culturally homogeneous; affluence is to a large extent uniformly distributed, though of course regional as well as income discrepancies exist.

That post-war Germany attained swift and genuine prosperity in spite of great devastations is due to at least four factors:

  1. Germans’ diligence, discipline and organizational talents
  2. continued excellence in the training and performance of skilled workers
  3. farsighted US policy - no reparations, Marshall Plan, liberal import policies etc.
  4. a large brain drain to the USA notwithstanding, success at maintaining a steady supply of engineers and scientists eminently capable of mastering the then forefront technologies - chemicals, machine tools, automobiles.

As a result the passage to affluence for all Germans was smooth and quick. And this affluence is robust. So much so, that the economy has, everything said and done, managed to cushion the severe initial impact of unification – the economy of the former GDR having been perfectly brittle and bottomless. The shock however, though absorbable, has been great.

Not content with such tumults, Germany’s economy is now confronted with a challenge from quite different quarters. There is today ample reason to believe that economic (and therefore, also political?) pre-eminence, and hence an affluence differential, is shifting fast from energy-optimizing manufacture to knowledge-maximizing manufacture like in ceramics, high-speed computers, communication technologies and genetics. Areas where Germany’s economy, having nearly missed out on the race, has just joined in but is still trailing. Worse, current non-forefront sectors of production where Germany has so far led, are increasingly in danger of being captured by once-threshold, now thriving industrial economies. No one in Europe’s automobile industry for instance may feign surprise if Asian competitors happen to make deep inroads in the market for middle-class cars soon. Worst, German society is only gradually waking up to the nature and immensity of this garbed threat. This can some day turn out to be a fatal defect in the world’s leading trader.

If the German economy is to prevail and retain its present international position, at least three things must be done:

  1. the key to both survival and supremacy in the age of knowledge-maximizing manufacture lies in education. Universities, research laboratories, banks, large industrial corporations and the administration must work here in unison
  2. Germany must bring its weight to bear upon the moulding of the European Market (assuming it is still mouldable) in a fashion that stresses not just the oneness and Europeanness of the market but also its freeness (from the prevailing shackles of a defunct bureaucracy) and openness.
  3. Germany must be bold and iconoclast enough to continue ignoring the double-dogma that has dominated economic life for far too long, the double-dogma namely, that the state can run the economy best and the market thus is superfluous - or vice versa. Instead the state’s motto must be: as much over the market as possible, as little through the state as necessary. Specifically for the German state it must also mean trimming debts, supporting forefront technologies and curtailing societal ‘free lunches’.

Germany’s Purpose

Dedicating oneself to the dual task of preserving affluence and assuring security is nothing specifically and exclusively German. These are defining criteria for the notion “sovereign state”. Differences may of course exist in the nature of strategies that states select toward achieving these goals. But the broad pattern is universal.

What is new about Germany is that she is, since unification, a newcomer to the club of major sovereign nation states and that her geography has bounced back to life and must be considered a matter of supreme relevance. And this does not contradict legitimate reminders that have come from various quarters that, notwithstanding Bismarck’s words (“geography is the sole constant in the affairs of nations”), Germany for the first time in her history is surrounded not by enemies but by friends and partners. Precisely. Enemies alternate between ruinous wars and nervous peace. But friends may, and do, heartily quarrel. Neighbours are of no consequence only to those who have none.

Therefore all major principle of dealing with the external world, principles nurtured in the cosy comfort of the Cold War, should be rethought. Rethinking is not obliged to mean discarding. But it does mean putting even the firmest of axioms to question and it does mean readiness, if need be, to redefine goals and to reset priorities.

How to bridge this Converse Lippmann Gap? For the next years nearly everything will be open to uncertainties – NATO, European unity, democratization around the Mediterranean, encountering the threat from Islamism, the fate of nuclear arsenals in the hands of inscrutable entities and many more. But two landmarks will neither sway in unsure winds nor mislead. These are: enlightened Nationalism and the West. Germany should be wise to stick to both.

Enlightened nationalism ought to attempt several things simultaneously. For instance:

And finally to the West that post-1990s Germany is being so warmly recommended in the present essay to continue to be firmly in. Where does it lie?

Germany, in her incapacity to handle her geography, brought ever so often boundless tragedy upon herself and her neighbours. Then, in 1945, the high offices of destiny finally carried her west. Now, seventy years hence, at a moment when the great antagonist Soviet Union has long faded, the Federal Republic is a normal, secure western state. Without this unexciting but vital correction it would have been impossible for her in 1990 to physically swing east and become one again. Her infrastructure, economy, political affairs, culture and society are thoroughly amalgamated with the rest of the western world. Today, any significant discussion of Germany’s being in the West may - and must - therefore take leave of bare physical geography and turn to another, more abstract, aspect.

The West is ultimately an idea whose compass includes more than Europe or America. The idea has evolved through millennia while the primary seat of power and prosperity in the world has gradually shifted from Mesopotamia to Egypt to the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. As to whether some day it will move to the Pacific is speculation. But it very well may.

Two features mark out this currently dominant Atlantic Culture – inductive reasoning and constructive scepticism. Of the two, inductive reasoning, which dwells at the heart of modern science, is the Atlantic’s mediterranean inheritance. The other, scepticism, is an attitude toward problem-solving that, though by no means exclusively, is in its daily practice quite typically Anglo-Saxon. It is scepticism that makes dogma give way to common sense, orthodoxy to inquiry, radicalism to a trial and error approach. It is the spirit that dares to call the continental intellect’s favourite dichotomy, rationalism vs. empiricism, bogus. It reminds its Cartesians that ‘pure reason’ bereft of objective experience is a phantom; and it reminds its positivists that the world of the concrete divorced from the world of the concept is a myth. A free, peacful and prosperous Germany has need of both.