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World in Danger. Wolfgang Ischinger
Читать онлайн.Название World in Danger
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isbn 9780815738442
Автор произведения Wolfgang Ischinger
Жанр Прочая образовательная литература
Издательство Ingram
That is a quick overview of the general geopolitical situation in the summer of 2018. So there are plenty of reasons for concern. Our country will be facing a whole slew of new foreign policy tasks. The question is whether and how Germany wants to grapple with them—and whether it can.
THE CHALLENGE FOR GERMANY
How should Western foreign policy orient its compass, particularly to deal with the plethora of current violent conflicts in the world? At the moment the West’s compass is spinning: Is the lesson to be drawn from Afghanistan and Iraq that we would be better off refraining completely from lengthy, laborious stabilization missions because they are generally fruitless? Did the international involvement there perhaps blaze important trails for development? Can the West stake any claim to moral leadership at all after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? If so, what should this leadership look like? Is the conclusion from the bloody, bumpy transition processes since the Arab Spring that we would be better off not undermining dictatorships? Or do we admit that the chaos in the Middle East today is in part also a result of Western realpolitik, which cemented apparent stability in the short term by supporting autocratic rulers?
There are so many important questions we need to debate if we are to understand that we are not facing a cartoonish black-or-white decision between two archetypes: the fanatic democrat who would rather overthrow every dictatorship or the political realist who has no problem with the suppression of others’ freedom as long as it keeps things calm in Western eyes.
No, foreign policy decisions are not carried out at these opposite poles; they take place in a spectrum of shades of gray.
The debate about such decisions in Germany, however, is often emotionally charged, as if there were only black and white. Some voices ask whether Germany, with its usual policy of staying on the sidelines, belongs to the West at all. Intellectuals are particularly bothered by Germany’s behavior in the UN Security Council in 2011, when Germany, a nonpermanent member, abstained from voting on the no-fly zone over Libya. Others, such as Bernd Ulrich in the weekly Die Zeit in 2014, emphasize the burdens that have to be shouldered due to the Western policy of intervention: “In the last fifteen years it was stunning to see how Western heads of state bent, and sometimes broke, international law; what justifications they offered for the war and what alliances they switched how often. This mortgage must finally be expressed and accepted; the West will recover its capacity for action only by acknowledging this debt, not by refusing to mention it.”
The best thing about the West is that it allows this dispute about the right foreign policy, as well as critical self-reflection. The kind of confrontation raging here would not be possible in newspapers in Russia or China. But the fact that we can conduct this discussion so openly—in contrast to many other countries—brings with it an enormous responsibility to draw clear conclusions from the debate. After all, what the West itself defines as its values and ambitions remains of paramount importance for people in many parts of the world.
Both within the Federal Republic and without, there is considerable skepticism about whether Germany can currently measure up to this responsibility. For example, the Washington Post on April 27, 2018, called Germany’s hesitation to accept international military obligations one of the greatest strains on Europe. “German passivity is deeply engrained,” it explains. “Berlin’s political class lacks strategic thinking, hates risk … and hides behind its ignominious past to justify pacifism when it comes to hard questions about defense and security issues.”
This cautious German policy, as Michael Thumann commented in Die Zeit on March 9, 2018, simply does not do justice to the modern challenges and power politics upheavals of the twenty-first century: “In March 2014 Angela Merkel said that Vladimir Putin was living on a different planet. A distant star where might is right, where one conquers territory and no international law applies. Four years later, however, much has changed. Today it looks as if Putin fits in perfectly with this new, hard, real world. And as if Merkel is living on another planet.”
In May 2018, Christoph von Marschall expressed a similarly harsh criticism in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel:
Wherever one looks, the surroundings are becoming more dangerous: wars in the Middle East, migration pressure and the threat of terrorism from Africa, an aggressive Russia. Relying on the U.S., the chancellor says, is no longer possible to the same extent. Europe must do more. [But] what is its contribution? … The political class and the majority of the media are content with the excuse that Germany’s history makes it a special case. More than seventy years after the war, the Allies are no longer willing to make an exception. Germany’s EU partners, especially France, are pushing for a common European defense.
Has Germany earned this harsh criticism? What is clear is that things are getting unpleasant. And Germany—and its partners in the EU—clearly need a wake-up call. But what role and what responsibility can and must Germany shoulder, along with its European partners? What does it actually mean to take on “more responsibility?” Is that meant politically, militarily, or perhaps “only” morally? To answer these questions, we have to widen our scope. Above all, we must explain in detail why good foreign policy and diplomacy are so very hard in the twenty-first century. There is no getting around discussing the fundamental issues of war, peace, and international law, without which it is not possible to understand the complex and dangerous global situation in which Germany and Europe are acting. It further requires an in-depth look at two states that have always been of tremendous importance to the security of Germany and Europe—namely, the United States and Russia. As I finalize this text, at the end of 2019, the debate in Berlin about whether and how to take on “international responsibility” is in full swing again. In my view, this is an important and urgent debate. All of this will be discussed in the following chapters. Let us start with the question of how diplomacy, the most important instrument of German foreign policy, really works.
TWO
THE ART OF DIPLOMACY
PROTOCOL: THE OFTEN-UNDERAPPRECIATED DETAILS OF DIPLOMACY
In summer 2017, Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, traveled to Germany for an official visit. Over three days they traveled to Berlin, Hamburg, and Heidelberg. The British royals impress with the glamor and glory they emanate. But although most of the reporting on their visit was found in the tabloids, and focused primarily on clothing and hairstyle, handshakes and jewelry, in truth their visit was nothing less than foreign policy.
Accordingly, the British ambassador to Germany announced that the visit would “reflect the entire spectrum of the good relations between Great Britain and Germany and strengthen the connection between the young generation of our two countries.”
The young heir to the throne and his wife are considered the miracle weapon of the now 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, and the purpose of their visit was to create “a good climate”—through state receptions, official visits, dinner speeches, handshakes, and even more handshakes. While the success of British foreign policy is hamstrung by the wake of the country’s withdrawal from the EU, the royal family remains the emotional icebreaker for London’s interests.
The Germans may not want a monarchy, but their adoration for the royals knows no bounds. The British queen enjoys much greater admiration than the German head of state, no matter whether he’s called Gauck or Steinmeier. Federal presidents tend to be more respected than admired. The difference can certainly be credited in part to the queen’s personality, but it is due primarily to tradition and protocol. Every royal appearance, every movement, every sentence is deliberated carefully and analyzed for its implications. After all, representing the state is a high art! And Great Britain is certainly the world champion of this art form. The Queen’s receptions in the garden, the state dinners in Windsor Castle—this is not Hollywood, it is all real, as is the natural self-confidence with which this wealth of tradition and power is demonstrated. Nearly everyone who has experienced this presence is impressed.