January 31, 2024 - 1:15pm
Is Germany entering Weimar conditions and becoming increasingly ungovernable? At first glance, an observer might come to such a conclusion. During the interwar period, there were more than 40 different parties represented at some point in the Reichstag; now, contemporary Germany is seeing a similar rise in party registrations. While almost all of them have a populist bent, the cohort boasts representation from both the Left and the Right and even a party that attempts to appeal especially to Germans with a Muslim-migrant background.
On the Right it is the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Hans-Georg Maaßen, who is making waves. Maaßen, a longtime member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), lost his job in 2018 after he appeared to downplay Right-wing violence in the eastern city of Chemnitz. Once isolated within the CDU, he announced alongside the so-called WerteUnion (Values Union) that he would found a new, conservative-liberal party to compete in German elections.
The WerteUnion was originally a splinter group within the CDU that opposed the Leftward shift under Chancellor Merkel, but has since become a political movement in its own right. One of its main features is to not only be a potential alternative to the AfD (itself a self-styled alternative to the established parties), but also a willingness to cooperate with them, thereby ignoring the CDU-decreed “firewall” vis-à-vis the AfD.
But it is not only the conservative party that is splintering. Die Linke (The Left) last year lost its most prominent member, Sahra Wagenknecht, to a new party — named after her — which is hoping to capitalise on the Left-wing firebrand’s popularity. Wagenknecht is appealing to East Germans especially, for she combines nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic and the welfare state with calls for a more restrictive migration policy and an end to arms deliveries for Ukraine.
In fact, if one listens to her speeches it is tricky to find significant differences with the AfD. Both Wagenknecht and Maaßen want to appear as softer versions of the Alternative for Germany but fish in the same voter pool — one that is growing due to widespread dissatisfaction with the current traffic-light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and the Liberal Party. Germany does not have any federal elections – with the exception of votes to the EU Parliament in the summer – but the two new parties do have a realistic chance of gaining seats in three state elections this autumn.
What’s more, another unlikely actor has entered the fray: a new party called Alliance for Diversity and Renewal was founded a few days ago in the hope of gaining votes in the upcoming EU elections. The party, run by individuals with close ties to supporters of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and various Islamist movements, is appealing to the 3.2 million Germans with a Turkish background. It has not yet been included in any polls, but there is a possibility that the next EU parliament will have members who openly sympathise with Islamist ideology, while officially representing Germany in Brussels.
None of these parties, it has to be said, are openly agitating against the democratic system in Germany, so the comparison with the Weimar Republic has to be taken with a grain of salt. Back then, communists and national socialists were running on platforms calling for the end of democracy, something that (thankfully) is absent from the current debate.
Nonetheless, German democracy is not a bouquet of flowers with everything nicely arranged, but instead a workshop where there is hammering, welding, and yelling. And from time to time, someone has to pick up the broom and clean it all out. Germans seem to be desperate to find that someone, as this flurry of new parties demonstrates.
Ralph Schoellhammer is assistant professor of International Relations at Webster University, Vienna.
Raphfel
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Subscribe“other NATO operations around the globe”?
NATO was formed as a defensive alliance for Western Europe against the USSR. That was it’s sole purpose. It should never be involved in “operations around the globe”. That it has been is entirely wrong and a result of its actual purpose vanishing with the end of the Cold War when its bureaucracy sought a different reason to survive.
Europe will never be capable of its own defence until it grows some b*lls.
….and realises who its enemy is (Spoiler Alert: Russia).
‘Swedish Defence University?’ Now there’s the perfect definition of oxymoron. Mind you, Sweden did very well out of its close economic ties with Germany during WW2 so it does have form for looking after itself.
Hasn’t been doing too well looking after itself against crime just recently. Probably that’s where effort should be expended, not on a dying NATO.
What I find amazing is that they’re unironically calling themselves “the coalition of the willing”, either thinking most people are too stupid to remember what a disaster the last “coalition of the willing” led to, or being too stupid themselves to think of something original (and not associated with a fairly recent western foreign policy debacle).
Article 5 bears reading carefully. While NATO Secretaries-General like to trumpet the phrase “an attack on one is an attack on all”, they are much more reluctant to spell out the consequence: According to Article 5, each NATO member then autonomously decides the scope of its reaction. It may well deem a démarche (with exceptionally strong wording) to be appropriate.
Yes, Europe needs a new architecture for its defence – even if the label is “NATO”, it will have to be something completely re-thought from first principles. And the key principle will have to be defence, something current NATO has sloughed off.
The US’ current role in NATO is so crucial that there is no NATO without the US, which of course was always deliberate. The US brings not only the nuclear shield, but also intelligence, the command-and-control structures, and probably most importantly the undisputed leadership that precludes squabbles among the Europeans. Without the US, who will take that leadership role? France? Germany? The UK? A council? Even just asking the question shouts out the problem.
First and foremost, the defence architecture must not be linked to the EU, for the sake of everyone.
“According to the Financial Times, Europe’s biggest military powers and the Nordic states are discussing a plan to “replace the US in Nato”, with a view to guaranteeing the continent’s security”
….but they can’t even secure their borders.
Personally I’m finding it quite tedious having military defence and border control/immigration conflated all the time. The two things are not at all related.
Really? The inability to control borders most certainly calls into question the competence of those who are now proposing to involve their countries in expanding their militaries and getting involved in a “peacekeeper” role in Ukraine.
Peacekeeping can quickly become “hot” and I for one have no faith in any of the leaders to handle the situation.
You could say their inability to run the economy calls into question their competence, or the rise in shoplifting, or how well they can cook.
Migration is too high. This does not say anything about replacing the US in NATO.
The keyword is “border”. They are proposing to police someone else’s but cannot do so for ours.
Replacing the US in NATO, as the OP was talking about, involves buying weapons, boosting the size of the military etc.
Reducing immigration requires processes to prevent/deport illegal migrants, enacting policies to reduce legal migration etc
They are not the same, and people putting them together are just parroting something they’ve heard elsewhere.
What’s the point of national defence if your borders are open?
There will soon be no nation to defend.
Not “can’t”
Won’t.
After reading this article, I’m at a loss what the author is proposing. What is a more native NATO? How would this be practically implemented? It all seems so abstract when the real world is anything but abstract and needs to be dealt with in a concrete way.
One thinks of Turkey, not mentioned here.
I’m still unclear, as an American, as to what NATO is supposed to do any more? Russia is not the Soviet Union in scale or capability. Europe has 3 times larger economy and population than Russia. The EU together spends as much or more on defence than Russia with capacity to spend more on defence. France and the UK have nukes so what is NATO’s purpose at this stage?
The Russians are still “the Enemy”. That isn’t going to change any time soon.
A millennium of violent European history prior to Pax Americana casts a long shadow of doubt on the success of a NATO sans the U.S. All of the many divisive elements–economic, cultural, and political–that continue to plague Europe will soon escalate to more profound significance absent the heavy hand of American hegemony.
Consider the historic European experience of conflict deriving from simply the division of Christianity into Catholic and Protestant and then add to that the two additional modern polarities of Secularism and Islam. The adversarial nature of the current milieu will lose its latency when all the separate European nations and factions within them are left to their own devices.
Pure fantasy. There are only three countries in the world that can actually affect change. They are the U.S. China, and to a lesser extent Russia. Germany, up to 2010, could make that list but they are a broken country. France has always wanted to have that capability but has never had the capacity. England is also out for the same reason.
The EU is nothing but a bureaucrat’s wet dream. It has no purpose except to further their careers. They are amoral, occasionally immoral, and wouldn’t risk a broken fingernail to actually do the right thing. There will be a lot of eloquent soliloquies but no real action. As always. But they will still be building their careers and wealth.
Europe has no guts. It won’t do a damn thing for the Ukrainians.
If that it true, then it will need to accept continual Russian invasions of its borders.
Only complete utter morons argue that Russia is a threat to Western Europe. Not only are they morons but they have the moral compass of a rabid sewer rat.
“The only way, arguably, to keep the Americans in Europe”
Why would we want this?
Watching NATO die is not, I suppose, a very edifying business but what we are currently witnessing (I’ve seen it described as a “coalition of the killing”) is rather pathetic.
The Cold War is over. It’s become obvious that Russia (or China) has no wish or capability of invading the West. The West should turn its efforts to friendly trade with the East, and minimize effort wasted on weapons.
Ukraine is “the West”. Russia has invaded it.
Russia IS a threat to all members. The sooner they all realise it, the better.
What is happening is the return to the default condition of Europe in which nations decide what is best for them. The EU like the earlier UN and League of Nation talking shops is doomed to splinter apart. People reject supranational organizations in principle on the reasonable grounds they are unnatural. Tribalism is deep in our DNA.