A sense of unease is spreading through Germany’s political establishment. For a long time, it was suppressed. In a world full of external dangers, who wants to look at internal reasons for one’s own helplessness?
But it would be wrong not to examine the causes of this irritation because if we don’t, it won’t be possible to get an overall view of the crisis. This isn’t about problems in individual areas. German foreign policy has reached a kind of point zero. Fundamental ideas and principles are being called into question. This can be seen most drastically in the relationship with Russia, which within a few years has gone from being a partner in Ostpolitik (the policy of rapprochement with Russia and Eastern Europe) to an enemy that routinely threatens to destroy German cities with nuclear weapons.
But Germany’s policy toward Russia is only the most striking case. There is almost no foreign policy area in which the guiding principles—and therefore also Germany’s self-image—are not being challenged today. On the day of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, February 24, 2022, the head of the German army, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, wrote in a widely-read post on social media that the Bundeswehr was “more or less empty-handed.” The same could be said about German foreign policy.
At its core, the uncertainty stems from the fact that a positive German self-image, which had been formed over decades during the post-war period, is being subjected to an almost endless series of reality shocks. Germany appeared to be “surrounded by friends,” as Helmut Kohl put it—at peace with itself and its neighbors.
All the foreign policy foundations of the post-war period appeared to have been triumphantly confirmed: being anchored in the West, Ostpolitik, European integration, commitment to Israel (and a Palestinian state), multilateralism, disarmament and, last but not least, highly profitable free trade for Germany as an export nation in a globalized world with increasingly open borders for goods and information.
From Avant-gardist to Lobbyist
The global spirit carried the Federal Republic forward. Germany, it seemed, was the avant-garde—and the natural beneficiary—of a globalized, post-national constellation in which old geopolitical conflicts were overcome by rules and institutions. Nationalism, imperialism, and the mindset of spheres of influence were in retreat.
How times have changed: The idea that we are still living in a “post-war era” is overshadowed by the premonition that it could also be a pre-war era.
Ostpolitik was shot to pieces by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his neo-imperial war of destruction against Ukraine. Middle East policy, with its hope for a two-state solution, is being crushed between Hamas, Iran, and Israel’s far right. In the Far East, German foreign policy is peering anxiously at China’s aggressive positioning toward Taiwan and its neighbors in the South China Sea.
Even more worryingly, Germany’s most important trading partner is helping Russia to destroy Ukraine and with it the European peace order. This was officially stated in the communiqué of this year’s NATO summit in Washington: China was a “decisive enabler” of war in Europe, it said.
The German government is reluctant to draw consequences from this. It clings to the wishful thinking that China could be a fair mediator in peace negotiations. After all, Beijing has already curbed Putin’s nuclear rhetoric, it argues.
On his trips to Beijing, Chancellor Olaf Scholz continues to act as a lobbyist for major German companies that are increasingly expanding their business there, such as BASF with a €10 billion investment in southern China. Berlin’s mercantilist policy toward the country runs counter to its professed China strategy of de-risking. In this respect, a clash with the next US administration—regardless of its political persuasion—is foreseeable because both the Democrats and Republicans favor switching toward a containment policy on China.
The transatlantic alliance is facing a reset, not just in the event of a feared second Trump presidency. Whoever wins, Joe Biden will have been the last US president to define Europe's security as a core American interest.
A New Iron Curtain
Within Europe, meanwhile, an increasingly fragile middle ground is locked in a struggle for supremacy with nationalists and right-wing extremists. The old “core Europe” centered around the two key nations of France and Germany is unable to find a common voice.
Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, is turning Hungary into a docking station for anti-liberals and autocrats around the world. Should Donald Trump return to the White House, the Hungarian prime minister will present himself as a kind of ambassador and interpreter of global illiberalism.
A new Iron Curtain is descending in the East. When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said five years ago that the European Union must become a “geopolitical” power, the bloc had not imagined that the new reality would be so harsh: securing external borders (with fences and pushbacks), financing weapons purchases for Ukraine from the European Peace Facility, becoming resilient against hybrid and conventional attacks.
The character of the European Union is changing from an open project based on common markets, rules, and shared sovereignty to a defensive player among other competing major powers.
Within Europe, the strategic weight is shifting from the major founding countries France and Germany to Central and Eastern Europe and to the North, where the conflict with Russia is being waged. The most dynamic foreign policy voices in Europe today are Radek Sikorski (Poland), Gabrielius Landsbergis (Lithuania), Kaja Kallas (Estonia), and Alexander Stubb (Finland).
The war in Ukraine shows daily just how naïve the debate about European “strategic autonomy” was: Without NATO, the EU would currently be defenseless; it would therefore be wise to make the alliance more European rather than dreaming of European sovereignty.
A key country in this new Europe will be Poland, which has been returning to the ranks of liberal democracies under Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition. Poland gives cause for hope that the triumph of authoritarian nationalism, which is continuing in many places, is not irreversible.
Germany now has the chance to detoxify its relationship with its eastern neighbor—which in economic terms is already as important as France. On defense, Poland is leading the way in Europe. A comprehensive offer of cooperation could be made, especially in defense matters—tanks and submarines could be provided instead of the Second World War reparations Poland has been calling for.
A historic reversal of the balance of influence and power is emerging in Germany's neighborhood, a north-eastward shift in the strategic center of gravity in Europe. The European order attacked by Russia must therefore be jointly stabilized by Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw—with Poland as the decisive frontline state in the new Cold War.
Ukraine: From the Gray Zone into the EU
The Ukraine question is part of this larger context. The EU, led by Germany, has rightly committed itself to integrating the country into the EU. This has serious strategic consequences: Ending the conflict is not just about Ukraine, but about the future border between the EU and Russia, the most important part of the new Iron Curtain.
In Germany’s interest, this border must be as far to the east as possible, ideally where it was established between Ukraine and Russia in 1991. If this cannot be achieved militarily for the time being, it is in Germany's interest to focus on stabilizing as much of sovereign Ukraine as possible.
The failure of German (and European) policy in recent years has shown that stabilizing Ukraine within a geopolitical gray area does not work. The de facto recognition of a Russian sphere of influence has been German policy ever since the No to Ukraine’s NATO membership in 2008—through the Minsk Agreements of 2014/15 and up to the Russian attack in February 2022.
If Ukraine is now to be integrated out of the gray zone and into the Western communities of the EU and NATO, the complete and immediate territorial integrity of Ukraine is less decisive than the quality of the security guarantees. Germans know this from the history of their division, in which NATO membership preceded reunification by 35 years.
Olaf Scholz’ correct maxim that there must be “no dictated peace” in Ukraine could soon be put to the test if a future US administration adopts the concept of “freezing” the conflict. In the event of a Trump/Vance administration, this could happen very soon. Germany would then have to insist on deterrence and containment of Russia in its own interests—in other words, on tough security guarantees that would be almost indistinguishable from NATO membership.
Here lies the core of Germany’s foreign policy unease. The hope has been dashed that German reunification would mark a turning point toward a post-national world of networking and openness, democracy and prosperity. On the contrary: nationalism is back; major powers are securing zones of influence; a tendency toward disentanglement, isolation, and fragmentation has taken the place of globalization. We are no avant-garde of world history, we are not “the good guys,” and we’re no longer even the “German model” within Europe. In our policy toward the East, the Middle East, and the Far East, we are operating with concepts that no longer work.
Learned Helplessness in Berlin
Germany's two most important partnerships are in crisis. In Europe, Paris and Berlin are blocking each other: In both capitals, lame-duck governments are at the helm and beset by internal disagreements that are sapping their political energy, just when the war in Ukraine has once again drastically increased the security policy dependence on the United States.
The German security dilemma is homemade. Psychologists have a term for it: learned helplessness. Transatlantic-minded presidents were interpreted in Berlin as an invitation to save on defense, because safety was guaranteed. Donald Trump was seen as a defense policy freak who could be fobbed off with moderate increases in defense spending—without ever seriously aiming for NATO’s 2 percent target.
After Joe Biden took office, the ratio of German defense spending to GDP fell again—from 1.37 percent in 2020 to 1.32 percent in 2021. It took Putin’s attack on Ukraine to put an end to Germany's provocative foot-dragging. But just as Germany has reached the target, NATO has redefined it as the new minimum.
Regardless of who gets into the White House: Defense spending will have to increase to an extent that will require new thinking in budgetary and financial policy. The situation demands a rethink by all of Germany’s main political parties.
Scholz’ center-left Social Democrats (SPD) have witnessed the collapse of their Ostpolitik. The maxim is now: Warsaw and Kyiv first, then Moscow. The Greens have switched to a policy of maximum arms supplies and, in the shape of Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck, secured fossil fuel supplies from the autocrats in Qatar. The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the opposition conservative Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) now face the task of abandoning their own self-delusion: A balanced budget policy is not compatible with Germany’s security interests.
Germany will not be able to counter Putin’s war economy with its debt brake, the constitutionally enshrined restriction limiting the government to new debt of no more than 0.35 percent of GDP per year. At the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of the year, JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate, gleefully rammed home the point. If Putin's war is really an existential threat, why do we have to force you to spend 2 percent on defense? If the future of democracy and the European peace order are at stake in Ukraine, why are you acting so half-heartedly?
Paradoxically, the Greens co-leader Ricarda Lang explained to the conservative US senator why it was in America’s interest to keep NATO strong in Europe and why Putin had to be contained in order to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping. Vance sarcastically countered that Europe must prepare for a “world of scarcity” in which the US had other foreign policy priorities, away from the Euro-Atlantic area, with China as the focus, still alongside Israel.
German Middle East Policy in Upheaval
Germany too stands firmly on the side of Israel after the Hamas massacre in October 2023. However, Germany’s Middle East policy is now in a state of flux, even if it continues to cling to two familiar terms: “two-state solution” and “reason of state.” Angela Merkel’s canonical formula from 2008 is omnipresent today. Yet it is increasingly uncertain what actually follows from this commitment.
The term, coined in 2005 by the Social Democrat Rudolf Dressler (then ambassador to Israel), was intended to defend Israel against a new German anti-Semitism spreading at the time. Germany’s commitment to the Jewish state’s security, as Chancellor Merkel understood it, was unconditional (“non-negotiable”). The German policy on Israel moved into a pre-political realm of the unquestionable, beyond the usual interest-orientated considerations.
Now, however, it is more questionable than ever what strengthening Israel's security actually means. The “two-state solution” favored by Germany has already been thwarted by the Israeli right for years through forced settlement activity tolerated by the vast majority, repression in the Palestinian territories, and the restructuring of the Israeli constitutional state.
Initially, Berlin rightly supported the actions of the Israeli army, the IDF, in Gaza as an act of self-defense. Even when the bombardment of Gaza had already claimed thousands of lives and caused enormous suffering among Palestinian civilians, there was no clear criticism. In March 2024, the German air force (together with Jordanians and Americans) supplied Gaza with aid parcels from the air because Israel’s blockade was threatening to cause famine. Five people were killed by the parcels (it is unclear who dropped them)—a blatant symbol of a failed Western Middle East policy.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has made many trips to the region and called for humanitarian relief. However, she doesn’t publicly address the political core of the conflict—that Israel is destroying its future as a democratic Jewish state by undermining the two-state solution.
The concept of the reason of state was intended to strengthen German-Israeli relations, but it has rendered Germany politically incapable of dealing with an Israeli government that, in Germany’s view, is undermining its own security—not only by devastating Gaza, but also by tolerating right-wing extremist settler violence in the West Bank.
Shift in Iran Policy
It’s not only Berlin’s policy toward Israel, but also its Iran policy that needs to be realigned because, firstly, Iran has been taking advantage of Palestinian suffering. Secondly, and more importantly, Iran is part of an axis of autocracies that operates far beyond the Middle East. Tehran supports Russia's attack on Ukraine. China, in turn, supports Iran economically through oil imports and diplomatically by including it in the BRICS group of states.
The Iranian regime has radicalized itself both internally and externally and is driven by the “axis of resistance” against the Western-dominated world order. The historical constellation that made the JCPOA nuclear agreement possible—at that time with Russian-Chinese sponsorship—is a thing of the past.
The draft for a new Iran policy outlined in July 2024 by the parliamentary groups of Germany’s opposition Christian Democrats defines the Iranian regime as a “comprehensive adversary” against which “we must change our basic political reflex ... accordingly.” This amounts to both a policy of containment with even more sanctions and terror listings for parts of the regime as well as support for an Israeli-Arab axis against Iran.
However, the change in policy toward Iran will come to nothing if the extreme right-wing ethno-nationalists in Israel aren’t curbed as well. This is because the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians gives Iran an opportunity to position itself, via its proxy militias, as the protector of the forgotten. Moreover, without a prospect of hope for the Palestinians, the Arab states won’t join forces with Israel against Iran. Germany’s conservatives are glossing over this inconvenient truth: The containment of the regime in Tehran cannot succeed without progress for the Palestinians.
It is striking that today, as in the first Cold War, the focus is once again on suppressed concepts such as deterrence, containment, and defense. Germany’s self-assertion in a fragile West that is under attack from within and without requires a new level of courage and determination in foreign policy. It all depends on Germany. And we should not forget that this country, despite all the unease, is worth defending.
Jörg Lau is international affairs correspondent for Germany’s weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT.
