Losing Sleep Over Germany
Episode Notes
Transcript
Eliot and Eric welcome Constanze Stelzenmuller, the Director of the Center on the United States and Europe and the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Transatlantic Relations at the Brookings Institution. They discuss the current row over Germany providing Leopard Tanks to Ukraine, the political constraints on German Chancellor Olof Scholz, the role of Cold War ostpolitik on contemporary policy debates, the intellectual impact of Carl Schmitt and Victor Klemperer on elite German thinking, and the Hitler-Putin comparison. They end with a discussion on the late Judith Shklar as a political philosopher and teacher of political theory and her writings on power and cruelty.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at [email protected].
Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder (https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471)
“Scholz is a wartime chancellor, whether he likes it or not” by Constanze (https://www.ft.com/content/d2fdb3cc-de73-4ad5-85fa-b48a6408f669)
“A Wartime President” by Eliot (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704107104574571444249809148)
“Obama does not accept war for what it is” by Eliot (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eliot-cohen-obama-does-not-accept-war-for-what-it-is/2014/07/31/8f27346e-1830-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html)
The Treaty Offered by Russia in December 2021 (https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en)
Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer (https://www.amazon.com/Language-Third-Reich-Lingua-Imperii/dp/0826491308)
Spiegel Report on Bundeswehr (https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-bad-news-bundeswehr-an-examination-of-the-truly-dire-state-of-germany-s-military-a-df92eaaf-e3f9-464d-99a3-ef0c27dcc797)
Helmut Schmidt’s 2014 Interview with Bild (https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/helmut-schmidt/bild-interview-altkanzler-europa-ukraine-krise-36003626.bild.html)
“Liberalism and Fear” by Judith Shklar (https://philpapers.org/archive/SHKTLO.pdf)
Ordinary Vices by Judith Shklar (https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Vices-Belknap-Judith-Shklar/dp/0674641760)
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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by The Bulwark, and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Liptman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. A polar contributor, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. My co host, Elliot Cohen, is the Robert e Ozgood professor at Johns Hopkins.
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School of advanced international studies and the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliot. How are you?
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I’m doing just fine, actually. I wrote the blurb to my my Shakespeare book, so I’m actually feeling productive for a change.
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Oh, so you’re like secretary Pompeo, you’re blurbin your own book. Is that right?
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You can be very mean sometimes.
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Ouch.
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Why don’t I know you podcast you podcast with somebody for a while? Tempered begin to fray. This
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is I think familiarity breeds and contempt. Why don’t you introduce our
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our guests, very special guests for those? Happy to do so, Eric. It’s a real pleasure to have a a good friend of ours, Constancia, a self similar with us. Constancia is the director of the center on the United States and Europe, pretty timely title, I have to say, at the Brooklyn’s institution, She’s also the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern chair on Germany and Transatlantic relations Fritz Stern, of course, a extraordinary scholar. Of of Germany based here in the United States.
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She has a law degrees. She has a doc written law from the University of Bond. She attended the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard NEST degree from there. She’s done a whole bunch of things, including working as a journalist for many years serving as, I believe, a deputy editor of deep site.
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No. An editor.
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And
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then you determine rider, that’s very confusing. But
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Sorry about that. For foreign affairs and national security at the deep side, one of the great German newspapers. She has too many other affiliations to go through given the subjects that we have that we wanna talk about. I’ll just say that she is really one of the most interesting people I know, not just on Germany and not just on Europe, but on the on the EVERTEC question of transatlantic relations. So if I can, let me begin Constancia.
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It’d be it’s gonna be very hard to avoid the topic of the day where We’re taping this just as it still remains unclear what exactly Germany is going to do with all those leopard two tanks that everybody wants them to ship to Ukraine. But I’ll I wanna begin by sort of broadening it. I’ll indulge in a a gratuitous display very edition. And, quote, one of my favorite favorite lines from Henry China, the great German poet, Dengue, and Deutschland, and then after, Beneshul, Ben Schlaskercraft. I think about Germany in the middle of the night and I lose sleep, which I think is the position that a number of us here in the United States have taken.
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And I guess the question that the proposed use this, given that actually Germany has done, I think, several remarkable things, one of which is kind of publicly acknowledging that the very, very close approach to Russia did not work out. And I think we don’t always acknowledge just how big a change that is. Given the Germany has actually shipped a lot of stuff to Ukraine, including Luthal Aid, Still, there is something baffling about the way in which it’s happened. And in particular, this latest issue, which is the issue of world forbid, not just ship its own tanks to Ukraine, but allow other countries in Europe. And there are a lot of European countries that have German tanks, which are quite good.
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To shift from Ukraine. And I guess my my question for you just as way of getting a started is, you know, is this about chancellor Schultz? Is this about the SPD, his party, or is this in some larger measure about Germany? How do we understand this? And welcome.
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Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me on your podcast. It’s an honor to be the part in firm to YouTube. And I will happy to do my best to answer your questions. And of course, we all guessed what the topic of this was going to be. Let me start by saying what I think this is not about.
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I personally don’t really think that German history weighs as much in this particular debate as it might have five or ten years ago. Although, you know, for any educated German, the fact that this war is taking place in what Timothy Schneider referred to as the Blood Nance where both Hitler and the Soviet Union committed most of the bloodshed of World War two and the Holocaust. That weighs heavily on any any educated Germans’ mind. But I don’t think it is a determinative factor for Germany’s indecision or its ultimate decision. Nor do I think pache a lot of Twitter that this is about Germany wanting to make night nice with Russia.
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Germany wanting to preserve standing to do business with Russia again after the end of the war whenever that is.
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I
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also think for whatever it’s worth, the child’s despite a student growth use as a left wing radical in the expedite. And despite his career as a supporter of Géraldé when when he was chancellor, I think that that by the his party’s standards, Schultz has really moved to to the conservative wing of that party. And considers himself a committed transatlanticist. Right? So I think that just as a misunderstood discard some factors, but I I think is important to say.
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That said, all the factors that you’ve just named the German public opinion, the party, and the character of the man himself, all appear to play a role here. Let me perhaps start with German public opinion. And since you referenced my journalistic career, I went to Somalia with a German brigade in nineteen ninety three. That was the first time after sending a handful of medics to Cambodia in nineteen ninety two that the Germans actually sent a significant military deployment anywhere after the end of the cohort. So I have some form in following German debates on these things.
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And I think that I am seeing a genuine deep emotional empathy
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and
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and horror. In German public opinion at this Russian invasion. And it does help you that the Russians are accusing a president of Ukraine who is Jewish and who has Jewish cabinet members of being a Nazi. And using language in the way it speaks about Ukraine,
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in the way
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the
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Kremlin speaks about Ukraine, Russian media speak about Ukraine, and in the way that Putin himself speaks about Ukraine, that uses a kind of essential other ring that is very familiar again to any German who is educated in the language of the third Reich. Many of us in school had to read the lingua Tati in Aerie, the famous study of Nazi language by Victor Klempere, himself a Jewish German who survives the persecution of a third reich and wrote a memorable set of diaries that’s somewhat recently been been translated into English. As for public opinion on the tanks themselves, a recent opinion poll showed a plurality forty six percent of Germans’ foreign tank deliveries and thirty three percent sorry, forty three percent. So forty six versus forty three against. That’s just a split public opinion.
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And I
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do understand politicians who worry about that. Now the obvious return to that is you know, that is where leadership comes in. Right? Okay. That’s so much for public opinion.
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On the party itself, again, I think I’m seeing a split. I think it’s really notable that the language about Ukraine, the outrage, the willingness to stand up against Russia, I think varies along a generational scale. The older the parliamentarian, the older the party member, the more likely they are to adhere somewhat unsinkingly to Aegon Barr’s sort of preheps of Osmotec, which is really a balancing of the western and the east. The younger they are in my personal experience, the more willing they’re they’re they are to ditch that. Interestingly enough, This is the day, two day, on which the Social Democratic Party has published new guidance on on its foreign policy.
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And where it explicitly says we made mistakes in our Russia policy. We need to revise our relationship with Russia. And for the for now, we have to define security in Europe against Russia not with it. That’s a really significant departure.
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That
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said, there is a glorious tradition in the sort of the party of the parliamentary group shooting down its own transliers. Right? Schroeder did that sorry. That was done to Schroeder because of his labor market liberalization policies, and it was done to Helbin Schmidt. Because of his support for the US media branch missile decisions, the famous Pershing twos.
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So
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that leaves us with fruit or the man sorry. Schulz the man himself. And I’m sorry. This is me just miss speaking. He is, I think, in no way, comparable.
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To try to it was genuinely corrupt. And I think shorts is absolutely not that. I suspect this is a character issue and this is where I’m least happy to speculate if only because I’ve only met him once. I’ve sat on a panel with him once. He is a man who keeps his own counsel.
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A taciturn politician who deeply dislikes being pushed into a corner, but who I think in this situation has genuinely boxed himself into a corner. And I will end on on this point, and and I will promise to give shorter answers in the future, but you did ask a very wide range of questions. The transfer you speaker today said that the transfer you had not decided had not decided to say no, it had just not decided yet. And the spiegel article that quotes that says it expects decision by the end of week. Now, that is a a German to that, let’s say, your word in God’s ear, but I am willing to bet that we are going to let other countries send their tanks and that we will also end up sending some of our own.
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It’s notable though that that the just maybe one last point. The polls are just now saying, that they will now ask Germany officially for permission to send. Sure. Yeah. I I guess if I could ask just one quick follow-up then — Absolutely.
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— to
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hand it hand it over to to Eric. How self aware are germane leads about and specifically the SPD leads? To to the damage it does, because it seems to me, I mean, we were talking a little bit about this before. You know, Germany eventually does do the right thing. But it almost doesn’t in such a way that guarantees that it doesn’t get any credit for doing the right thing because it looks like it’s been you know, dragged or compelled or coerced.
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And I can understand all the dynamics you’re describing, but it I guess, I suppose my question is, do you think it has done damage to Germany standing? And I tend to think it has. All those things that can be repaired over time. But do they feel that? Does it matter to them?
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How do we understand that? Again, I’m
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not privy to what people in the gensory are thinking right now. What I do know from personal experience is that they’re somewhat thin skinned with regard to criticism. A
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very concerned like that, you know.
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Absolutely not. And I was actually just going to go there if I may. I have to, you know, unconditionally agree with you that this has done damage to Germany’s standing and needlessly so because as you say Germany has actually ended up being a the third or fourth largest supplier of military heavy weapon systems to Ukraine and the huge quantities of ammunition And some of those weapon systems, as the Ukrainians, say themselves, have been very, very effective on the battlefield, especially the gay powered mobile air defenses, and the IST air defense system. And I can also, I think, assure you with some conviction that these these are not great days for German diplomats. Right?
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I don’t think anybody’s having fun here.
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But I
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will
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also say that perhaps one way to explain this to to American listeners. Is that in some ways, the Germans have become because of their economic power and their centrality to everything that happens in Europe. Something like the Americans in Europe, right, or the the functional equivalent of the Americans in Europe. We’re the eight hundred parrot pound gorilla. Right?
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Without whom nothing happens, and if it turns over in its sleep, that has consequences for smaller inhabitants.
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Of
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the of the jungle. But the eight hundred gapped gorilla’s empathy and awareness of its own surroundings is is occasionally somewhat reduced.
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Right?
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And of course, German political debates are parochial. I mean, if you look at the opening of of congress two weeks
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ago, You
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know, yes, that happens in other countries too. Right? Not everything that we do is is said or done. With in the consciousness that it is being watched worldwide. Should we be doing that?
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I I think so, but but, you know, domestic policies or politics are a constraining factor here. And the transfer is clearly acquisitively concerned about taking his party in the German public law. So
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Constanza, let me I know your loathe to speculate about chancellor Schultz, but allow me to pull on couple of threads here because you’ve written a terrific column in the financial times about the chancellor last week, about how he’s a wartime chancellor. Whether he wants to be or or not, which echoes I know things that Elliott wrote in the Obama years about president Obama vis a vis Afghanistan stand in in Iraq. And
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I I wanna
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pull on the string. You talked about his biography as a a radical leftist in the SPD in his youth. I, you know, I I have some sympathy for that position given my own misspent youth in in University on the left. But I’m wondering, I mean Tell
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us more. Well,
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Elliot knows the whole sorted story, but The question is really, you know, is there a biographical route here? Is this something that makes him uncomfortable because of his political past? Is it something that’s ideological? Because however much he, you know, has pronounced a turning point in German policy. He still is affected as you suggested by this sort of glorious tradition of a host ofpolitik that dominated the party since the mid sixties.
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And just one final point for you. You know, you pointed to the fact that German public opinions deeply divided as the poll numbers that you cited
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show. But
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I know you’ve also made the point in other context that it’s for national leadership to shape public opinion when it’s divided like this. And this seems to be something that the chancellor’s really loathe to do. And what, you know, is that because of the political situation that you talked about, the fear that he will be appended by his own or defenestrated by his own party? Or is it in the, you know, rooted back in the ideology or biography? I’m just fascinated by, you know, by the personal question here.
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I know you don’t wanna go there, but I think it’d be useful to hear from you on it. Well, thank you
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very much for the free plug on my phone. Very kind of you. You know, the phenomenon of the move from left to right is not that uncommon in the in German politics. And in the Social Democratic Party. Famously, Oshkoshka Fisher, the first Korean foreign minister, had been a thrower of plasterstones pavement stone, sorry, in his in his youth in the in the nineteen sixties.
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And then, you know, became a fairly respected and I think neo con friendly foreign minister back in the day of the congress workforce. Right? And
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I think we
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should give Schultz credit for what I believe to be a genuine political maturation. I don’t hear him paying even lip service to us, politics, right, or or to making nice with Russia for that matter. I think it’s possible that in the first weeks of the war, he and his advisers might have thought, there would be a return to some sort of a status quo. Right? And that Ukraine needed to be persuaded in one way or another to come to the bargaining
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table. I think
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in the intervening eleven months of this war,
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it
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has become obvious everybody, including the Chancellor and the Chancellor and his advisers, that the Russians are
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not
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amenable to this. For one, all of us will have read those draft treaties that they sent to the White House and two Brussels. In fact, before the beginning of the war, on seventeen December of twenty one, where they not where where it was made very clear that this was not just about pulling Ukraine back into the right for what wanted the better comparison. But also about turning back the clock of democratic transformation in Eastern Europe about the military neutralization of Western Europe. And about getting the Americans out of Europe.
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Those those identical treaty dress are really worth rereading.
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That and
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the intervening language that I’ve already cited that is reminiscent of nothing so much as of Cauchmidt, the crown jurist of the Nazis. Who is responsible for the category of the relative and the absolute enemy. The absolute enemy being categorized by its nature. And which is therefore impossible to negotiate with. Again, to any educated German, it’s very hard to imagine.
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How you would negotiate with that mindset. It is intimately familiar to us. So I’m tempted to think that this is about something else. It is about a I think about Charles’ perceptions or acute consciousness of the very narrow margins in which he has to operate. Recall that when he won the elections, in September twenty twenty one.
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A,
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he was an plausible candidate and his his party was an plausible candidate
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to win.
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Because it’d been hit had been in the pole doldrums for the better part of a deck a decade. And because it had it was seen by most Germans as having been worn a worn out in three of Angela Merkel’s coalitions, right, of
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her four
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coalitions. And when you did win. It was at least as much because of the character failings and the exquisitely awful communication of his conservative challenger I’m in luscious as on his own merits. Although they did, I think, have a very shrewd campaign. So it was the failings of his opponent and also, I think, a a mood for change in the era.
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And a willingness on the part of German voters should let the greens and the liberals into power. So and he got into power with one percentage point advantage over the conservatives. And with the first three way coalition in in Germany with the Greens and the Liberals who both of them got very good results. So not only did he squeak in by air his breath, he also has strong and confident coalition partners to contend with, both of whom, on the issue of leaning into the support of Ukraine, have a much more decisive and much more resolute take than he does. Right?
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And at the same time, he has to deal with a party that is still going through a generational attitude or shift with a German poll a a population that still has not fully digested. Every the consequences of this of this war for the security of the continent. And that I suspect is what makes him so so compact and so hesitant. So
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consensus, I wonder if I could broaden the discussion. Needless to say, I think whatever We talk about Germany, the shadow of the past appears. And and I guess the part of what I find puzzling is is this, that, you know, if Germany produced in the not so distant past, actually some quite remarkable European statesman. You mentioned one of them Helmut Schmitt. I think he definitely qualifies as a European statesman, not just as a German statesman.
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But I also mentioned something like Manfred Werner, who was not only a great secretary of defense, but a great secretary general of of NATO. Germany at at one point had actually a very, very powerful military. I mean, I remember visiting the Bundeswehr in the eighties. And the consensus in the American military was that they were as good as we were in in some ways better, certainly through the nineteen seventies they were. But there was It was a very competent, well equipped modern
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military.
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And and yet, you know, when we come to the present. I just don’t get the sense of Germany being able to exercise the leadership you would expect. And and I I don’t find the world war two, you
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know, kind
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of legacy of all that explanation entirely commencing. I’m sure that there’s some element of that. And and it doesn’t explain things like the deterioration of it doesn’t explain things like the deterioration I’m gonna say, there’s I’m sure you’ve seen it there’s a really devastating piece of Derspiegel about the Bundosphere — Mhmm. — recently, which is just in dreadful
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shape. So
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I I I suppose my question is,
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you know,
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I understanding that every country is, you know, their domestic politics are inward looking.
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But do
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you think Germany will be able to recover to to assert some kind of leadership role? Hopefully, in the course of this crisis, but at least for the future. I mean, is this going to be a watershed moment in that way? Or are we going to be dealing with the Germany that we’ve got now, which you know, will eventually does the right thing, but seemingly reluctantly and not in a way that’s bringing other countries along with it in some sort of common direction? Great
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question. Again, complicated. So how much met was my publisher when I was at deep side. So I sat with him in an editorial conference at least once a week, and I occasionally would have to do battle with him. It was a test of metal and of courage for any of us to have to go to his office when edits.
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On a piece of his. And I had some very memorable encounters with him. And honestly, I had a I have fond memories of him, but I will also say that he was a man of his time and generation. And that I think non German audiences are somewhat less aware of this, but but Schmid in his very last years. Gave some quite problematic interviews about the the nation holder of lack thereof of Ukraine and another aspect.
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Right? He was also an utterly real politician. And those were in fact the fiercest battles that I personally had with him. Go into details, but I don’t think we have the time for this. On month that Vona, I will just say, yes, he has the reputation of having been a great German defense minister.
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But I would, in fairness, say, that it was one thing to be a German defense minister in a time of limited sovereignty. With hundreds of thousands of allied troops, French, German, and English stationed on West German soil, and of course, hundreds of thousands of Soviets stationed on East German soil. And of course, the the the situation of the Bundeswehr was entirely different. The bonus fare had one task during the cold war, which is to defend the intra German border of one thousand seven hundred kilometers against a Soviet Union onslaught for what was presumed to be a maximum of three weeks, after which nuclear war would be would ensil and both countries would be a pile of ashes more or less. Right?
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That was the assessment. So Germany’s armed forces were armor and and an infantry heavy. And were deployed in such a way as to make full use of the German out of German hospitals and German gas stations. In other words, the opposite of the kind of expeditionary warfare that we were asked to do or learn how to do after nine eleven. It’s also important to say that the German armed forces were an afterthought of German the Germanese constitution.
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When the when we gave ourselves a basic law in nineteen forty nine, we were not supposed to have armed forces. It
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didn’t
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exist. We were asked to stand them up by NATO and as an entry price for joining NATO in nineteen fifty five. And we had to stand up twelve divisions. That’s half a million men of no women at the time. Within short notice, and the generation of my my dad who was grafted as a as a sixteen year old were rioting in the streets, not my dad personally, but but many of them.
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There were there were violent demonstrations across Germany at at even reintroducing armed forces in in our own country. That’s how profound the disgust and the and the trauma were of that generation. And and again, this is something I I described in my in my last f t column. I don’t want to quote myself here. But but the trajectory that the German armed forces had to undertake after nineteen after nineteen eighty nine embarrassing conscription because it wasn’t viable for a small professionalized expeditionary force.
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Sending troops to Somalia and to the Balkans and then to Afghanistan in fairly significant quantities. That was a larger stretch for us to move from where we had been during the cold war to that. And
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In the course
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of that time, pretty much all of Germany’s parties, including the conservatives and the social democrats, I think kept a marked distance to the Merkel was famously dismissive of
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military
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policy. Paid very little attention to it, was happy to see ministers hoist themselves by their own batards of various natures. Remember Culture de Zguttenberg? Or demissiere or the left underline. A lot of them how and and then, of course, finally, underground camp camp campground.
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A lot of them stumbled over what was essentially an impossible job. Right? And of course, the expert community to which I suppose I sit to some degree belong. We’re saying for, you know, all this time, we’re under regrets this time. We need to we we need to do this differently.
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If
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you talk to the
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German expert community, there are abundant ideas out there of how to change that. But the final reason why this is also difficult is, of course, that the and let me just perhaps step back and say, you asked are we capable of actually fulfilling this transformation? And I’ve been I’ve joked in a speech I gave in Harvard in November that the titan vendor is something you could call shooting a sun when it both is and is not. Right? So in terms of energy decoupling, we have managed to decouple from Russian fossil fuel imports with record speed, helped, of course, by the fact that the Russians turned off the gas station themselves.
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And sent prizes skyrocketing. But still, we did that. It is much more difficult to do in defense. Why? Because the entire constitutional arrangement.
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The way that that German defense policy is made, the way that the armed forces are constituted. Was designed after nineteen fifty five when we or we introduced them in a way to essentially resist any kind of disruptive change. Right? And can I just say one hundred percent success? Yeah.
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That is, in other words, you really have to change fiddle with the architecture of the system here. And a lot of defense ministers have sort of failed at that. We have what the current the new defense minister is twentieth, and we’re on our ninth of transfer. That tells you everything you need to know.
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You’ve mentioned
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a number of things that intrigue me, and I wanna get your reaction to it. You’ve talked about Timothy Snyder’s book, Bloodlands, and about the history of destruction reeked by both Germany and Stalin on this particular piece of territory, which includes Belarus, by the way, it’s not just not just
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Ukraine. And
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you’ve talked about Victor Klemper’s studies of the nazi use of language and the really troubling ways in which a lot of the Russian state propaganda has, you know, eerie echoes of precisely that language use. You’ve talked about Karl Schmitt. I think it was Leo Strauss in nineteen fifty three or so who talked about the Redukio ad Hitlerism. And so we’re all very cherry of ever making, you know, the comparison to Hitler. And, of course, the, you know, if you even breathe that about Putin people will say, well, he hasn’t killed twenty million people.
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So how can he be how can he be Hitler? But I’ve more and more and some other colleagues I’ve talked to see this as well and and seeing putin in a a light that puts him very much in the sort of company of Hitler in the late nineteen thirties, challenging the security order in Europe contemptuous of his
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adversaries.
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I mean, what was it that Hitler said after meeting with Chamberlain and Munich, I’ve seen my I’ve seen my enemies their worms. I mean, you you get a very similar sense. From Putin of his assessment of his his adversaries. The eliminationist rhetoric that you mentioned on Russian television is genocidal rhetoric. About Ukrainians and how they ought to be treated.
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And, of course, the way the war has been fought,
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which has
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been, you know, an ongoing series of war crimes since the very beginning of the war in Butcha in the first, you know, weeks of the war. And it’s continued, you know, up until the present
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day. So at
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at what point do you think it is fair to actually make the comparison and say, well, yes, you know, he hasn’t killed twenty million people yet. But if we allow this to go on, there’s no telling where it will end. Is is that a fair or unfair assessment? What’s your take on it?
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Well,
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of course, I agree with you
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on the
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problematic comparison. And I could remind you and our listeners that there was a huge fight in in Germany, the so called historic Çöpler. The historians debate about the comparability of the third right in the harder cost with the with the depredations of the Soviet Union. I think one has to be careful about that. But I have been thinking about the related question of the enemy.
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Both in the context of that speech I gave at Harvard Memorial speech for Peter Goldman in November and that is also something that I’m thinking about in the context of a book I’m supposed to write. And I and I do think that that Putin is
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ironically, if
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you will, pushing us into reconsidering a category in international affairs that we thought we had basically driven a stake through after nineteen forty five. Fumigade — Yeah. — exercised. And that’s the category of the enemy. And as I was referring earlier, the absolute enemy in the Argentinian
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terms. And
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I think that
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if we listen to
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the language of Putin of the Kremlin on a Russian state funded media, we have to conclude that that is how Putin sees not just Ukraine, but the west and the Democratic west. And this has nothing to do with NATO and CIRCULMENT, of course, this is about liberal modernity. Right? It is about whether Ukraine is Slavic country with that is half Catholic, half orthodox, can choose that path and what kind of challenged cultural and political that is to put in power.
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But it is couched in terms
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which I think a desperate leader who has very who has no soft power and dwindling hard power assets
-
feels he
-
needs in order to assure himself of the consent of his people.
-
But is is in the issue more than just Russia? I mean, it’s more than just Putin, excuse me, but to some extent a broader
-
Russian problem
-
Oh, sure. I’m not saying I’m
-
not trying to make distinction Elliott. Between Putin and his people. That to me is a somewhat academic debate in the same way. And again, as a German, you know, if there’s anything that I can give you chapter and verse about. Yeah.
-
It’s about those gradations. Yeah. At this point, I think we have to conclude that there is significant popular consent and certainly elite consent. And that that implicates in the responsibility and the guilt that many people beyond Putin.
-
You know,
-
I think I think that’s for me one of the most troubling things about all this. You know, I think you can see it simply in the the scale
-
of the
-
atrocities that have been committed, which are being committed, many of them not on orders, but just you know, that’s what people are doing. And it’s it’s very troubling. I’d like to go back if I could a little bit to the question of where Germany goes. And again, although if we had more time, I might try to argue with you a bit about the past, but let’s set that aside. And I get my question is, you know, for Germany to lead going forward, understanding all the constraints because of German politics and all that.
-
Is there enough
-
of a sense of urgency in the German system to do things like, you know, reform the judiciary such a way so that it it can be one of yours leading militaries and to sort of take initiative in terms of shaping the European security environment because at least the way it looks to me at the moment, if you were to ask me, where where is the center of kind of policy energy with regard to national security? I would say it’s in places like Warsaw, Tallinn, maybe Helsinki, London, Okay. Washington, D. C. It always was.
-
But I wouldn’t say Berlin. And I don’t think I could say Paris either. And I wonder, is that a passing phenomenon? And eventually, you know, Germany will kind of set forward in some more substantial way? Or is this a development that will be with us for some time?
-
So
-
a couple of things here. And I’m still I confess I’m still thinking about some parts of Eric’s question, but but that may be for another time. But oh, yes. I wanted to throw a nitrile quote at you. This is about the the category of the of the enemy.
-
Right? That that was that was my earlier point is that we need to expand the way we think about the paradigm of international relations where we have moved from international cooperation to strategic competition, which for the Germans, for whom this was the be all in end all, of what happened in nineteen eighty nine and nineteen was particularly difficult. We have to expand that that that paradigm by the category of the enemy. Right? Or if countries who think of us as the enemy, and for reasons that are not negotiable.
-
In realist terms. Right? And that that I think is, again, to Germans that particularly use disturbing thought. And that I understand psychologically is very hard to wrap one’s mind about. I
-
think
-
perhaps the reason why I find it a little easier, is is that I come from a very specific generation, which is that I’m the daughter of Germans, one of whom was old enough be drafted late in the war and one of whom was bombed out of Berlin as a child. And so the
-
And I’ve,
-
you know, I’ve I’ve been on a fair number of German military deployments myself and I’ve written about traumatized
-
soldiers. The
-
passing on of trauma — Yeah. — both among the victims and the perpetrators is a, you know, is a thing. And I
-
and I
-
think that that also is operates in subterranean ways that are difficult to grasp. Yeah. That is not to excuse policy inaction or policy mistakes. But I think it is a phenomenon that one has to deal with and perhaps to speak to. When trying to persuade as a German political leader, two different generations of Germans.
-
Anyway, that that’s by the by. To your question of can Germany change and will it change? And has the center of political gravity moved to the east?
-
I have
-
heard that latter point, it’s, you know, it is obviously a more so talking point for all the obvious reasons. And I have to say, I’m I’m not entirely persuaded by it. Because while the
-
I
-
think the Baltic states and the
-
and
-
antipols
-
have I think been both factually and morally right in their early warnings. About the malignancy of Russian intent. And I think that’s
-
acknowledged by
-
many in in Berlin and in Paris. At this point. I would
-
also have
-
to see them wanting unable to lead Europe.
-
And that’s, I don’t
-
think I’m seeing it. And for reasons, I think, which would be perhaps not right to go into here and into tell. You know, the polls have a national election this year, and it’s not entirely clear that the peace government will win it because its population is so
-
split. And
-
so I think,
-
to some degree,
-
Germany, in particular, because of it, geolocation and its economic power is fated to play a leadership role. And
-
I think that in
-
German dis debates and in German politics this ability and and comes in waves, frankly. You remember the the Munich consensus in twenty fourteen. Right, at the Munich Security Conference when you had a president, a a defense minister, and a foreign minister saying, we have to play a much greater role in Europe and put much more of our own weight behind European foreign and security policy. That was on January thirty first. And then the Russians annexed Crimea legally in February.
-
And and I
-
think that
-
and things developed otherwise. Ironic to look back at that. I will say though that the Germans when they want to and can need and need to can move incredibly fast apparently. If you look at the energy decoupling. And
-
if if
-
there is one sort of ray of light that I can find in this tanked a buckle. It is
-
that I think
-
it has not become apparent to all of us. The last German citizen that our armed forces are in bad shape, that we need to do something about that. For our allies sick, for Ukraine’s sake, and for our own sake. And
-
so I
-
think the the new defense minister has a a huge job on his end, but I’m actually he’s only been he’s only been in this role since Thursday, but on the home, my impression has actually been relatively good. I think that he might stand a chance of doing this, and and the the the rampstein debacle has, I think, given him an opening to do that.
-
I hope
-
you’re right because, you know, I think if that were to happen, set aside German leadership in Europe. But if Germany simply was able to try to, you know, to deliver on Schultz’s promises about the Bundosphere about not just about the gross level of defense spending, but about modernization in a whole variety of ways and in a serious way. I have to think the impact on the Russians would be pretty
-
profound. And if, you
-
know, part of if we begin to think about some sort of end game, part of it will be, I think, what the Russians really are convinced that they are gonna lose this thing one way or the other. And I I do believe
-
that one part of
-
that would be seeing a Germany that really is not going to go back to its previous set of relationships, but beyond that is actually
-
you know, really
-
reestablishing itself as a major national
-
security
-
power in Europe. Yeah.
-
Well, we
-
would have a lot by at this point to overcome in terms of distrust and recommendations. But I hope that too I can tell you that from my own knowledge of internal German debates, both at the elite levels and in the expert community, there is a very strong desire
-
to do
-
that, and a really strong sense of generational responsibility. I can certainly say that for myself. I’ve I’ve
-
you know,
-
my parents are no longer alive.
-
But
-
I think, you know, their generation would immediately understand that in some ways, you know, our history has come full circle. And that this is the time to get it
-
right. I’m sorry to indulge in
-
this pathos, but I do feel very strongly about this, and I know other people who do as well. On the
-
question of whether the current German defense minister is off to a good start, of course, the bar was set very low by his predecessors. So I knew you were gonna say that. Perfect.
-
But, yes. No. She was she was terrible. And he he gives us the impression of being decisive, communicative, open, and and, you know, willing to to overcome hurdles. None none of
-
those things
-
were ever said of her.
-
Yeah. I I do
-
wanna explore though with you a little bit the the seeming incongruity of the apparent German government insistence that before it can resolve this question of the leopards, whether it
-
allows third parties
-
to transfer them, the polls, the Fins, others, or whether it
-
does itself, which
-
is a a more vexed question, I think, because of the state of disrepair, how long it would take to get them repaired. But the insistence that unless the US was willing to provide M1 Abrams tanks. Yeah. There would be no leopards for Ukraine. And we can put aside the whole question of the military utility and the various pros and cons of one platform or the other.
-
But what strikes me about this is it it seems to be very much at variance with the trend towards European strategic autonomy discussion about a European pillar of defense, you know, because it’s recurring to the, you know, to the United States as the ultimate guarantor of European security. And I wonder if you could help us disentangle all this, you know, why why
-
was this, you
-
know, evoked as well, first, evoked as the, you know, as the reason for caution on the part of the German government and then withdrawn, you know, but we didn’t really do it only to have the Americans tell everybody that, well, yes, they really did. So what what’s going on here?
-
Well, I I think it’s certainly true that the past eleven months have shown that Franco German dreams of European sovereignty don’t have a strong grounding in reality, at least not where military force is concerned. I will say, if I may, that the Biden administration’s bet on Europe was one that counted not so much on our military support. Although that has ended up mattering, but on our
-
economic support.
-
And that in a strategy that in as much as it engaged directly with or rather against Russia, countered on economic power. We were not just a sort of boutique add on for American Power, but in fact co equals because of
-
our enormous
-
economic weight and our regulatory space. And that in that sense, the administration understood quote, my my former colleague and predecessor as director Tom Wright, who’s now in the administration, that was using measures short of war to counter Russian Russian and to support Ukraine, that that Europe’s economic power gave
-
it crucial leverage.
-
Not just nice to have boutique leverage. Right? So there is, I think, an element there where one of the lessons of strategic competition is also that we are independent with each other. Yeah. That the American superpower is independent with Europe in ways.
-
That that, you know, also didn’t figure largely in America’s narrative of itself. Right? And I think that is something to be considered for in the future of the alliance. And in the way we think about it, not least in the way that we try to map out how we would handle a conflict with
-
China. So, concerns,
-
I was wondering, we’ve been talking a lot about the SPD, of course, the SPD is associated with us, politics going back to days of the Billy Brand. Of course, one of the interesting phenomena is the green party being quite ferocious in ways that are welcome to an American’s ears. And a little bit surprising, I suppose. We hear less from the Christian Democrats, and I I assume that their kind of harder line than the SPD, but that may only be a matter of degree. So I was wondering if you could just flesh out for us the rest of the German political spectrum because the SPD will be around forever and it’ll be particularly interesting, I think, to see where the greens end up going, if particularly if they continue to be popular.
-
Sure. Well,
-
let me
-
do the executive summary for the nervous here because this could be sort of quite a long explanation, and I don’t want to inflict that on either you or your listeners. But very simply, I think the first thing to look at is the opposition leader, which is Merkel’s conservative party. Right? Which I think it has to be said, is not a strong player in this debate. Some of its parliamentarians, especially those who have military experience, are, but the leadership, I would say, isn’t.
-
So that’s one point
-
to consider.
-
The green ministers, foreign minister, Elena barebook, and economics minister, Robert Habeck, and I think by general consensus – considered to be the strongest and most capable and most successful men of directors in this cabinet and have consistently pushed outwards and leaning into the support of Ukraine. And I think it’s greatly to the credit of Habib and his team. That they have orchestrated the decoupling from Russian fossil fuel imports in this way without either the German consumer or German industry having a heart
-
attack. I mean, we did alienate
-
our neighbors a little bit with some of our subsidies etcetera, etcetera, industry package and so on, but that’s by the
-
by. And
-
I personally appreciate the way that Analina Behrberg has stood up to that old shark mister Leverov and other sort of interlocutives in of that kind of of her trips to Kiev and so on. I think
-
the criticism
-
of her tenure, to be fair, is that while she was she’s overseen the writing of a very forceful forceful China strategy. She has otherwise been rather less successful at shaping. Politics. She has articulated well and much better than the chancellor. But her shaping power is still, I think, an open question, unlike that of Havic.
-
So if you asked me which was which one was the likely candidate for a a green chancellor, it’s probably Hamburg and not Hamburg. As for the liberals, again, there’s they I think they they whipsawed too much. For them to be a producer of a serious chancellor candidate. And they are like the social democrats and the greens and there’s traffic like coalition, of course, have had to make really significant concessions to their coalition partners. And and that in in in in in the case of the Liberals is is permitting, you know, what seems like unlimited government debt, which is, you know, a secret cow for the business friendly legal party.
-
Are the hard right
-
and the hard left important? The
-
left,
-
I think, is is a spent force. Culturally, politically, on the federal level and on the local level. The hard right is slightly more complicated despite the fact that I was horrified in twenty seventeen when they not just made it into the bundestag for the first time at twelve point six percent But because of the fragmentation and Marcos grandco became the leader of the opposition. They too, at the federal level, are a discredited and spent force. I’m gonna say that’s radar.
-
However,
-
as
-
a party. They are still powerful at the local and regional level. And we’re lucky that we haven’t had state elections in Eastern German states. In the past year or so and won’t have one until the year after this one. And they have also, I think, put a great deal of energy into trying to unite, bring together, or mobilize conspiracy theorists like the crowd income.
-
To tunnel into the uniformed services and the intelligence services. And we saw that in the coup attempt a couple weeks ago. That was never going to overthrow the German system. And their leadership figures were laughable. But the fact that they had such support in the Armed Forces, and in other uniformed services.
-
Ought to disturb us and is a sign not just of their malignant intent. But also of the negligence of German political elites who were in supervisory positions, and that is where we need to clean up. So,
-
Constance, I want to
-
this is
-
occasionally my want to ask a question that’s a little bit out of left field. You, you know, you’ve had a really very interesting transatlantic career in Germany, but also in the United States. One part of that was a lot of time spent at my alma mater Harvard. And you were quite close to someone who was oh, I was quite close to one of my teachers. Judith Schlar, a very well known political philosopher.
-
I was wondering if you could just reminisce a bit about her. I think you know, the two of you, I as I’ve gotten to know, you have some things in common. And so just let her rip, but tell us about you to scar. Well, let me start with
-
something personal, if I may. I’ve told
-
you about
-
my parents who are sort of war, adolescent, and some children. My dad
-
became
-
a diplomat. And the in the years that I spent in Germany, which weren’t many, Obviously, there were Jewish communities, but they were tiny, and they they weren’t visible. Their synagogues were heavily guarded. There was one in born where I was
-
born. But
-
there was no sign of Jewish life that you would encounter as a child. And when we moved to Washington in nineteen seventy, I was old child, I remember my mother saying to us, we will meet Jewish people here. And if they don’t want to shake your hand, they have a right nod to. And I have never
-
forgotten that. And
-
I think my mother meant that, you know, as a sort of trying to help us navigate what could be tense conversations for German children. But it it really shook me. And when my Germans had been very had been very upfront, about the Holocaust, about World War two. They had left left nothing to to doubt about. And it was only as an adult that I understood that other parents hadn’t been quite as frank or as forthcoming.
-
But so when I came to Harvard after having gone to law school in in Germany, we’re still in the 1980s. You know, Jewish,
-
there there must have been Jewish
-
fellow
-
students, but they wouldn’t wear a kipa. I only saw that after I came back in nineteen ninety. You
-
know, it was
-
not navigating an environment with Jewish fellow students and and Jewish teachers and Jewish teachers whom I knew to be refugees from the Holocaust. You know, to me was a was a really sort of serious concern. How to behave appropriately and how to deal with possibly rejection. Right? Of which there were
-
instances. Although
-
I will say that the actual refugees were usually the kindest. But it was so
-
I took
-
Judith Gaurav’s class in political American political thought because I was planning to write a German’s doctorate about direct democracy in America. For my law faculty in Germany. And because I was interested in democratic movements in in Germany and roundtables and so on, this was in the late eighties and you know, there was a wind blowing that suggested from Germany and elsewhere in Poland that this might become an issue. And that maybe popular movements weren’t all that bad. And so I went to her really with my heart and my mouth, as we say in Germany.
-
An astronaut, I’d pass her class, whether she would do reading in a search with me.
-
And
-
and I explained to her and I said, you know, I will give you a reading list and I will and and then they’ll write an essay, but I promise to leave you alone. But it would be a great honor if if you would let me do that. And she looked at me and then said, I don’t think that’s going to work. And I thought, okay. I’ve I’ve made a mistake.
-
And then said, I think this will only work for you if I reserve for you an hour every every week in my office and wine library the way I do in the other Cambridge. And you come to me and then we discuss your your your paper. And and I was founder struck by this. This is not the kind of thing that German professors did. And I said, in that case, let’s do it the way you do it in the other Cambridge.
-
I will come to you with a paper each week. And I I have to say, you know, I I think I was at twenty four gloriously and ill informed, not just about my subject, but also about her. But but those sessions with her in her office and wine and library were not just one of the great honors of my life, but also one of the great learning experiences of my life. One of the
-
the few really
-
true mentors I have had and I it is the reason why I hold her in such regard. But of course, as as always, case, you learn about people as you become an adult, you learn more and more, and I met people who were friends of course, such as Guido Goldman. And I read her her writings, and I was especially, I think, struck and and marked for the rest of my life by her essay about the liberalism of fear. Which was something that she had raised in her classes but not fully written down or at least I hadn’t read it yet. And that was the thought that democracy representative democracy in particular doesn’t just serve some great ideals.
-
It it exists to prevent
-
fundamental
-
qualities. And
-
I
-
remember sitting
-
in her class when she said that and thinking, I understand exactly what you were talking about. I understand that to the depths of with every fiber of my being, but I am not sure what my American classmates do. First, that both
-
fascinating and also deeply moving. I’ll remember two things that she said, you know, she wrote the spoke of the seven deadly sins. And I remember her insisting cruelty is the worst. And I think it helps account also for her friendship with Isaiah Berlin. Had a very similar And who was also
-
from Regan? Yep. They
-
had very
-
and they had very similar outlooks outlooks of the world. The other thing is I remember saying to a group of scrantes, students. Said, you know, you become a political scientist for one of two reasons. You’re either fascinated by power or you’re afraid of
-
it. She
-
said, most of you were in the first category. I’m in the second one. I was quite a remarkable teacher. Yes. You
-
know, and that, you know, when I was asked to take on the security policy topic at my own newspeaker design, and I inherited it first from Teozama who’d been the editor, and then from Christoph Bertram who you may have encountered. And I was the first woman to ever do that. And I was frankly terrified of the responsibility. I also thought, okay, rather me than somebody who thinks that power is awesome. Right?
-
I am terrified of all of this. And I had and I have been to many places that were terrifying, including Kigali, in July of nineteen ninety four, the Balkans and Afghanistan. And I have many personal reasons to
-
to think
-
of Judith Carr and to say yes, cruelty is the worst. Well,
-
I think that’s an appropriate note on which to end this episode of Shield of the Republic. I’m very grateful, and as I know Elliott is to our guest Constantos Stelzenbiller who is the director of the center on the US and Europe at the Brookeings Institute and also the Fritz Stern chair on Germany in transit Atlantic relations consent to thank you for a kind of fascinating two or three zone of certainly Germany and its current travails and its impact on transatlantic relations, but much much more than that. So I’m very, really grateful to you for that.
-
Take your consensus. It’s been
-
a pleasure and a normal.
