By Jay Nordlinger
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Note: In the
December 31 issue, National Review published a piece by Jay Nordlinger called
“Calls to Arms: The pregnant question of Germany, Japan, and their militaries.”
This week, in a two-part series, Mr. Nordlinger expands that piece. Today’s
installment is on Germany.
Germany and Japan have not been known for military forays
since 1945. Much of the world has liked it that way. So have many Germans and
Japanese. But a new era is upon us. Germany and Japan are venturing out. They
are rethinking their military postures. After 70 years, this was perhaps
inevitable. In any case, it is so.
The Germans are sending a battalion to the Baltic states
— specifically, to Lithuania. Japan is sending troops to South Sudan under new,
indeed historic, rules of engagement: They may use force, not only to defend
themselves but to defend others. More broadly, Germany and Japan are responding
to new threats.
They are also responding to a new America, which is ready
to abandon or lighten the burdens it has long carried.
Not everyone was happy about the reunification of
Germany, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prominent among the unhappy was
Margaret Thatcher — who said, with alarm, “We beat the Germans twice, and now
they’re back.” Her fellow Briton, General Ismay, had made a famous remark. He
was the first-secretary general of NATO. And he described the alliance’s
purpose as “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
Eventually, many people decided that Germany had been
down long enough. Radek Sikorski made a famous statement of his own, when he
was foreign minister of Poland. The year was 2011 and he was speaking in
Berlin: “I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say
so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German
inactivity. You have become Europe’s indispensable nation.”
Madeleine Albright, remember, had made a famous statement
when she was the American secretary of state: “We are the indispensable
nation.”
When he became president, Barack Obama made clear his
distaste for “free-riders,” as he calls them: nations that ride freely on the
back of the United States, without paying for their own defense. And his
defense secretary, Robert Gates, issued a clear warning. This too was in 2011,
the year of Sikorski’s remark: “The blunt reality is that there will be
dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body
politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations
that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the
necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”
Of late, Germany has not been exactly a wallflower on the
international scene. They are part of the Afghan coalition, of course: That war
is a NATO operation, among other things. The United States invoked Article 5
(which says that an attack on one is an attack on all). Germany was not part of
the Iraq coalition, though they trained Iraqis in countries outside Iraq
(including in Germany itself).
The Germans have been in Africa — in Mali, for example,
and they are planning to build an outpost in Niger. This is all with an eye to
counterterrorism. And they have been arming and training Kurds in the fight
against ISIS.
But it is Russia that has really concentrated the German
mind. In 2014, Vladimir Putin’s state annexed the Crimea, and made war in the
Donbass region of Ukraine. This was alarming in Berlin and throughout NATO, and
it was particularly alarming in the Baltic states, the eastern flank of NATO.
The alliance decided to send fresh battalions to those states: Britons to
Estonia, Canadians to Latvia, and Germans to Lithuania.
The Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaite, made an
exuberant statement. “I think we are at a historic turning-point,” she said.
“First, a lot of time has passed, and a breakthrough is occurring in the German
mindset: Time for self-doubt, fear, reluctance to take responsibility, and
dread of what Putin might think is over.”
In Germany, support for a mission to Lithuania was not
universal, of course. The Left, in particular, objected — and there is a
political party called, straightforwardly, “The Left,” Die Linke. It has 64 members of parliament (out of 630). One of
them is Sahra Wagenknecht.
She said, “Chancellor Angela Merkel is committing an
irresponsible provocation when, 75 years after the attack on the Soviet Union,
she is sending the Bundeswehr to the Russian border.” (The Bundeswehr, or
“Federal Defense,” is the German military.) “The federal government is playing
with fire if they blindly support NATO’s aggressive game.”
The German air force — the Luftwaffe — is in Estonia at
this moment. They are part of the NATO mission called “Baltic Air Policing.”
Night and day, NATO pilots escort buzzing, taunting, aggressive Russian planes
from Baltic airspace. Rival pilots get very close to each other.
In November, the Washington
Post reported an interesting tidbit: A Russian pilot gave a German pilot
the finger. Observed a German commander, “Maybe he watched too much Top Gun.” (This is a reference, as you
know, to the hit movie of 1986.)
Germany is embarked on a tremendous military expansion:
billions more euros, thousands more soldiers. Giving a speech in October,
Chancellor Merkel explained, “In the 21st century, we won’t be getting as much
help as we got in the 20th.” She went on to say, “We have to spend more for our
external security. The conflicts of this world are currently on Europe’s
doorstep, massively so.”
In saying this, she was surely thinking of Middle Eastern
and African migration, as well as Russia.
Constanze Stelzenmüller is an expert on Germany and
Europe at the Brookings Institution. And she notes a dog not barking: a lack of
protest within Germany over the government’s new direction. (There is a lack of
protest in Europe at large, too.) Yes, there is some dissatisfaction, as from
the Left party. But generally there is agreement or acceptance. This is in
amazing contrast, Stelzenmüller says, with the huge protests that took place
over the installation of U.S. missiles in the early 1980s. At the time, she was
in Bonn, the West German capital, studying law. She could barely get to class
for the crowds.
Visiting Lithuania in September, the German defense
minister, Ursula von der Leyen, made a declaration: “It is time to move forward
to a European defense union.” She said that such a union would complement and
strengthen NATO. Plus, it’s “what the Americans expect us to do.”
A few months earlier, President Grybauskaite had made a telling
statement: “With Britain withdrawing from the European Union, but remaining a
NATO member, responsibility for stability in Europe will increasingly fall on
the shoulders of Germany — not only for economic stability, but also for
security.”
Germany is indispensable, said Grybauskaite, because of
“the strategic tendency of the United States to turn more and more security
responsibility over to Europeans.”
It is perhaps not well enough understood around the world
— very much including the United States — how fundamental the idea of Europe is
in Germany. “The Russians are meddling with the European project,” says
Stelzenmüller, “which is the foundation of German prosperity, stability, and
peace. It is the be-all, end-all of German power.”
I think of Willy Brandt, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in
1971. He was the West German chancellor, and he won the prize for his
rapprochement with countries to his east. Here is a passage from his Nobel
lecture, given in Oslo:
I say here what I say in Germany: A
good German cannot be a nationalist. A good German knows that he cannot refuse
a European calling. Through Europe, Germany returns to itself and to the
constructive forces of its history. Our Europe, born of the experience of
suffering and failure, is the imperative mission of reason.
Constanze Stelzenmüller says, “There is a general sense
that there’s a tsunami heading Europe’s way.” This question of military power —
of doing the necessary, militarily — “is about values, interests, and the
integrity of Europe. And it’s about Germany and our future, damn it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment