ÜBer Alles After All: Europe’s German Future
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Last week Germany reclaimed its status as the leading power in Europe. In the two years since it became apparent that Greece was, essentially, bankrupt, there have been dozens of emergency meetings of the countries that use the common European currency, the euro. Most of the euro-using states believe that Germany—with a booming industrial economy, vast trade surpluses, a reputation for fiscal probity, and a history that makes it reluctant to reject the counsel of France—ought to cover the bill. Germany has long argued that Greece must become competitive again by selling off state assets and cutting government handouts. More recently, Germany has added another demand—that EU authorities be empowered to discipline Greece and other delinquent countries. At the Brussels summit on January 30, the Germans won.
Germany is fortunate to have, in the moment of its triumph, a chancellor who does not scare people. Angela Merkel is an East German intellectual, a physical chemist, the childless daughter of a clergyman. She mumbles. Her taste in clothing runs to pantsuits. She isn’t brawny and forceful like her Christian Democrat mentor Helmut Kohl, who presided over the reunification of Germany at the end of the Cold War. She isn’t eloquent and haughty, or tempestuous and randy, like her Social Democratic predecessors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder, respectively. “This lack of a presidential demeanor is a big advantage,” says longtime Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, whom Merkel replaced as party leader. Germany’s economy naturally provides it with a leadership role, but its history means that that role is something Germany cannot be seen to claim. “Neither personally nor politically does she come off as wanting to blow her own horn, along the lines of ‘I am the leader of Europe.’ ”
By “Europe” Stoiber means the 27 countries that make up the European Union. The EU was launched in the wake of the Second World War as a way to organize Europe through economics, not war. This is a polite way of saying it was meant to keep Germany from dominating Europe with its army. A decade ago, the EU acquired a common money, the euro, which replaced the franc, the lira, the peseta, and the super-strong deutsche mark. The new monetary regime was meant to keep Germany from dominating the continent with its currency.
But the euro has backfired. In 1990 British trade secretary Nicholas Ridley was forced to resign for calling the EU “a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.” Ridley was quite wrong about Germany’s intentions, but he was right about the result. Joining Germany in a currency union meant playing by its rules. In fact, so big and rich is Germany—particularly now that reunification has brought its population to 80 million—that joining it in anything means playing by its rules. This is not Germany’s fault. It is the classic “German problem” that has confronted Europe for the whole modern era. It was camouflaged for six decades only by Germany’s reluctance to express any wishes whatsoever.