Updates

Back to News

On the Current State of Transatlantic Relations, by Theo Sommer

On January 12th, 2016 Theo Sommer, Editor-at-Large for DIE ZEIT, spoke to American Friends of Bucerius and American Council on Germany program alumni. Below is a transcript of his speech as originally written. All opinions expressed belong to the author, and do not reflect the values or opinions of the Bucerius family of institutions.

Forty-five years ago, in the summer of 1967, I flew down to Texas to interview President Johnson on his ranch near Houston. He was worried about the cohesion of the Western alliance – about the French withdrawing from NATO’s military organization; about the Germans balking at paying more for the American troops stationed in the Federal Republic; and about rising opposition in Europe to America’s Vietnam War. Johnson pulled no punches. He felt ham-strung by the Europeans. “The king of Denmark expects me to ask for his permission when I want to go to the outhouse”, he grumbled. Actually, he used a somewhat earthier expression than “outhouse”. Then he recounted the anecdote of the young Texan fellow who was seeking a job as a railroad switchman.

The fellow was hauled before an examination board. The chairman told him: „Imagine, young man: you are working on this single-track railroad. You look to the right and see an express train approaching at 100 miles per hour. You look to the left and you see another express train approaching at the same speed. What would you do?“ The young man scratched his head. Then he replied: „I would run and fetch my brother!“ – Now it was the chairman’s turn to scratch his head. „Why would you run and fetch your brother?“ – „Well, Sir, he ain’t never seen a train wreck…“

Johnson’s implication was obvious: He feared that Europe and America were on a collision course. For all we know, they may have been; but the collision never occurred. The alliance rode out that storm as it has weathered many others since.

While the Cold War lasted, self-preservation provided an overriding rationale for accommodating differences, settling conflicts or, if necessary, sweeping disputes under the rug. “Camp discipline” was the order of the day. The transatlantic allies could differ over details, but they would agree about the main questions of international politics.

And differ they did. We had many workaday squabbles: over tariffs on chickens and oilseed and soybeans; over German pipelines for Russia; over the dollar exchange rate and economic policy. European-American relations were never trouble-free. Yet during the Cold War, self-preservation provided an overriding rationale for accommodating differences settling conflicts or, if necessary, sweeping disputes under the rug.

This has changed. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, camp discipline broke down. During the past quarter century have been numerous clashes of interest: over genetically-modified food and chlorine chickens; over George W. Bush’ ill-conceived Iraq War; and over the CIA tapping Chancellor Merkel’s cellphone. In the absence of any threat to the West comparable to the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union, alienation set in between the Atlantic allies.

Today they disagree on momentous strategic issues such as dealing with the Ukraine crisis, sanctions and coping with the Greek debt crisis, to name only a few. The much-touted common democratic values do no longer guarantee agreement on major issues of global and regional politics.

In an earlier era, Lord Palmerston said that nations have no permanent friends, they have only permanent interests. Nowadays, it seems to be the other way round: they have permanent friends and allies, but ever shifting interests. Which, of course, makes friendships and alliance much more awkward and strenuous affairs.

Washington’s unipolar moment is over. In most world regions, the US may still be the “keystone in the arch”, but its capacity to single-handedly shape and reshape the international system is gone for good. It will remain preeminent, but will no longer be predominant. Its military power doesn’t automatically buy influence and more. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, waterboarding and extraordinary renditions undermined the standing and the influence of the U.S. in the world. It lost the moral high ground it once occupied. An economic and financial crisis triggered in the United States engulfed the whole world twice within the first decade of the 21^st century. The American model of unfettered capitalism – castigated by the former Fed boss Alan Greenspan as based on “infectious greed” and “irrational exuberance” – lost both its luster and its power of attraction. Its political system, too, polarized and paralyzed to the point of disfunctionality, no longer enjoys or merits universal admiration. Throwing up a weirdo like Donald Trump as the leading Republican candidate for the presidency makes pro-Americans all over the world both snort and despair.

While the United States is no longer at the apex of its history, the European Union has not yet reached its zenith. I used to think that it might take another generation or two to reach it. But given the present predicament of the European Union, for the first time in half a century I cannot exclude that it will collapse and break apart. The current refugee crisis has revealed fundamental differences between member states about the nature, the purpose and the destination of the EU. As a “culture of the smallest common denominator” (Guttenberg) it has no future.

The EU is without doubt an economic giant; its GNP is larger than that of the United States (BIP EU: 17.2 Mio USD, USA: 16.7, double the size of China’s (8.9), eight times that of Brazil (2.19) and ten times that of India (1.75) . But the giant is presently shaken by an economic crisis as well as by doubts about its finalité. Should it remain just a free trade zone according to the British prescription, or should it evolve into an ever-closer union of its peoples? A Grexit is still possible, and a Brexit keeps looming on this year’s horizon. Eastern European governments love the handouts from the Brussels coffers but evince little European spirit. In Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, the burgeoning right wing keeps badgering Europe; while in the south of the continent populist parties are upsetting their austerity apple-cart. And there are patent differences between the 28 EU members’ geopolitical aspirations and capabilities.

Europe has gone through many crises, and I used to point out that without fail it has come out stronger from each of them. There was an important kernel of truth to the old joke that the process of building Europe must be compared to the love-life of the elephant: Everything goes on at a very high level; a lot of dust is raised; and you have to wait years for results.

That may still be true. This time, however, the outcome could be quite novel: not an ever larger, ever tighter union, but a much looser consociation, with an outer ring of peripheral states participating á la carte, at their own pace and financially banking less on Brussels, and a smaller, much tighter core sharing the euro and marching in step toward the old goal of an ever closer union – less than a federation but more than just a confederation.

The problem is that currently all the big powers are in a state of transition. This goes for the United States and for the EU, for Russia and for China, for Saudi Arabia and for Iran, for India and Brazil and South Africa. Since both Europe and the United States are in a very fluid state politically, at the moment, it is very hard to prognosticate which way their relationship is going to develop.

I am an old transatlanticist. If I have also frequently criticized U.S. policies, I have done so not as an anti-American but as a disappointed friend of America. It hurt me to see America becoming untrue to it self. Yet I am firmly convinced that we must not let our transatlantic partnership erode and silently fade away. The reasons are obvious.

We face a host of problems that neither Europe nor the United States can hope to master alone. The immediate challenges of our time require partnership as a response: combatting terrorism; stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons; building peace in the Middle East; providing energy security; fighting climate change; solving the never-ending trade disputes in a non-antagonistic way.

We have more in common with each other than with any other power. If America and Europe are to thrive in this new era, they should beware of letting their partnership languish.Also for a very simple demographic reason: By the year 2050, they will each count a population of 500 million – between them, one billion people facing eight billion in the rest of the world. One billion people in the West, eight billion in the rest – that prospect should make us think. We should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by their differences. Rather we should try to overcome the altercations of recent years and make the best of our commonalities by striking a transatlantic deal that would give fresh punch and purpose to an association that has, all in all, served us well for more than seventy years.

We should all remember Winston Churchill’s dictum: “The only thing worse than having allies is not having allies.”

Germany, too, is a country in transition, if not in crisis. During her ten years in office, Chancellor Angela Merkel has social-democratized her party. She has given up many traditional CDU/CSU positions, abruptly decreeing the exit from nuclear power, abolishing conscription and accepting a minimum wage. In her foreign policy, she downplayed Germany’s engrained “culture of restraint”, committing the country to the assumption of enhanced international responsibility. The culture of restraint was not to become a culture of standing aloof; indifference was an option neither from a security perspective nor from a humanitarian perspective; while military force was the last resort, on occasion sending in the troops might be necessary – that was the message trumpeted at the Munich Security Conferences in 2013 and 2014.

Until very recently, the Chancellor could be sure of the support of both her party and two-thirds of the electorate. But the refugee crisis, which swept 1.1 million asylum seekers into Germany in 2015, is in the process of changing that. Initially, most everybody except a few tens of thousands of xenophobic hardliners applauded and even admired her welcome to the downtrodden fugitives from war, persecution and destitution. They were prepared to believe her assurance “Wir schaffen das” – we can do. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers fleshed out Merkel’s welcome by 7/24 support, feeding, clothing, advising and escorting the newcomers through the bureaucracy.

By now, these volunteers are at the end of their tether. The state authorities are clearly unable to live up to the “we can do” promise. And none of Merkel’s elements of a solution have so far materialized. There is no agreed scheme for the fair EU-wide distribution of refugees; the deal with Turkey – visas and 3 billion euros for closing the Turkish border – is as far from implementation as the setting up of “hot spots” in Greece and Italy to register the refugee inflow and the build-up of Frontex into a credible force to control the EU’s Mediterranean shores; and tackling the roots of the problems by reestablishing peace and stability in the Middle East is but a pious pipe-dream. In reality, since the outer borders of the EU can’t be controlled, more and more countries build steel fences or impose borders controls inside the Schengen area.

There will be five state elections in the Federal Republic this year. If the refugees keep coming in the same numbers as last year, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AFD) is expected to garner at least 10 percent. Merkel’s stance is already vehemently contested within her own party. Unless the influx can be significantly reduced, in my estimate the Chancellor will be forced to change tack or else be forced out of office.

Looking at the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be, looking at the global flashpoints and at the societal, as well as political, upheavals everywhere, I can’t help feeling that this is not the time for a new effort at international architectonics. Any new deal – within the West, between the West and Russia, and between the beneficiaries of the 1945 world order and the emerging or re-emerging powers – will have to bide its time. I am afraid that things must get much worse before global leaders confront the host of challenges to global peace and prosperity.

For the time being the best we can do is probably avoiding bluster and blame, learning to live with our differences while simultaneously building on our common interests. Recently I heard a top German diplomat describe this as a “compartmentalized cooperation” – a method he recommends both for the relationship between friends and for the relationship with rivals or adversaries such as Russia or China. You disagree where your interests diverge, but you join hands wherever you have shared interests.

It does not sound like a great idea. But in the current VUCA world – a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world –, I guess avoiding disasters must be accorded priority over building castles in the air.