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Why Merkel can’t stop apologizing – POLITICO - R1 NEWS

Why Merkel can’t stop apologizing – POLITICO

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BERLIN — Under Angela Merkel, Germany has faced the raw reality of its past like never before, winning admiration and praise for what has come to be known as Erinnerungskultur, or the “culture of remembrance.”  

But as Merkel’s era draws to a close (she will visit the White House one last time as chancellor on Thursday), it’s clear that Germany’s no-holds-barred reckoning has had another profound, if unexpected, consequence: a near-crippling loss of purpose and direction in its dealings with the rest of the world.

Instead of emboldening Germans to act with fortitude in foreign affairs and live up to their unofficial national creed — “never again!” — Erinnerungskultur has hobbled them, creating an escape hatch from any potential conflict, the proverbial easy way out.  

As anyone who has spent time with Germans can attest, they are not a folk that’s ever been shy about expressing opinions; convincing them to show the courage of their stated convictions is an altogether different matter, however. 

Name a sticky international issue and you can rest assured Germany will be comfortably straddling the fence. Ukraine, Russia, China, Iran — the mere mention of any of them will make a German leader shrug her shoulders and wince with indecision.  

Never mind that Germany, with its outsized dependence on exports and foreign sources of energy, relies on secure trade routes and a stable global environment more than most. Keeping the world from cracking is a job for others. 

To the casual observer, it must seem that the Germans are everywhere on the diplomatic stage, voicing concern about one global hotspot or support for a democratic movement in another. But even as German leaders never miss an opportunity to proclaim the importance of a global “rules-based order,” as soon as it’s truly threatened, you’ll either find them hiding deep in the skirts of their allies, hands frozen in a Merkelian rhombus, or on the sidelines, offering punditry about the mistakes everyone else is making. 

When cornered about the moral ambiguity that has come to define contemporary German foreign policy, Merkel and her cohorts flood the zone with gauzy rhetoric, speaking of the primacy of “keeping open the lines of communication” when dealing with difficult “partners,” while invoking the solemn lessons Germany has drawn from its own history.  

The frequency with which such diplomatic shibboleths have passed Merkel’s lips over the years despite the repeated failure of her calls for “dialogue” illustrates the cul-de-sac into which she has steered Germany’s foreign policy.

That isn’t to say that Erinnerungskultur itself is a sham (the earnestness with which German leaders seek forgiveness would indicate otherwise), but rather that the country has drawn the wrong lessons from it.

Even if German elites are true believers in the cause of Erinnerungskultur, there’s growing evidence that the population at large is less so. Growing right-wing radicalization in the ranks of the German police and military is just one indication that many Germans have switched off. 

Russian lessons 

The stranglehold Erinnerungskultur has taken over German foreign policy has been on full display in recent weeks and months as the country both debated how to respond to Vladimir Putin’s recent aggressions and commemorated the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa,” the eastern offensive that led to more than 20 million Soviet deaths by 1945. 

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the war “abandoned every human dimension. But it was people who conceived of it and carried it out. They were Germans.” Merkel, in a special video message, spoke of the profound shame Germany still felt for the invasion, adding that Germans “bowed with humility” to the remaining survivors, evoking Willy Brandt’s historic “Warsaw Genuflection.” 

Even as she spoke those words, Merkel’s aides were working behind the scenes with the French to revive the European Union’s regular summits with Putin, suspended since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in the spring of 2014. Merkel, who pushed back against sanctioning Russia over Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine until the downing of flight MH17 in July of that year, sensed an opening for rapprochement with Putin after his Geneva summit with Biden. 

Though other EU countries, led by Poland and the Baltics, nixed Merkel’s plan, the episode illustrated Russia’s continued hold over Germany. 

Merkel’s critics ascribe a degree of Russophilia to her because she came of age under communism and speaks fluent Russian. But a closer look suggests Merkel’s instincts toward Russia are more the rule than the exception in Germany. 

In February, Steinmeier triggered a diplomatic incident with Ukraine by arguing that Germany should take into account the legacy of the war when deciding whether to complete the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia.

“We shouldn’t lose sight of the big picture,” he said. 

One needn’t look further than Merkel’s predecessor as chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, a personal friend of Putin’s and proud apologist for his regime, for even more ardent Russophilia. (Unlike Merkel, Schröder didn’t grow up in former East Germany, but he has his own Soviet connection: a father who fought the Red Army in World War II and was killed on the eastern front.) 

More telling is what happens if someone dares to challenge Berlin’s Russia orthodoxy. 

A few weeks before the “Barbarossa” commemorations, Robert Habeck, co-leader of the Greens party, created a furor by suggesting that Germany send arms to Ukraine to help the country defend itself against Russian aggression — a step Merkel has resisted for years. 

He was castigated by friend and foe alike. Merkel’s spokesman said the government would stick to its “responsible policies regarding arms exports” (read: no arms for Ukraine), while a leader of the far-left Die Linke party claimed Habeck represented a “real danger for the security of Germany and Europe.”  

Süddeutsche Zeitung, the daily bulletin of Germany’s cosmopolitan elite, accused Habeck of ignoring “the long shadow” of World War II.

“Is it really a good idea for the leader of the Greens to propose sending arms to Ukraine,” the paper asked in a lead editorial. “One can and should denounce Putin’s violent policies there, but one shouldn’t forget that more than a few Ukrainians, many of whom had been mistreated by Stalin, served as the extended arm of the German invaders, while many others were victims of the Nazis.” 

In other words, Germany shouldn’t help sovereign, democratic Ukraine defend itself against autocratic, expansionist Russia today because of the role inhabitants of the country played under the Nazis, as both perpetrator and victim.  

Cowed by history 

Such episodes suggest that Germany hasn’t so much learned from its history, as become cowed by it.  

There’s little reason to think Germany will be cured of that paralysis once Merkel leaves. Armin Laschet, the governing Christian Democrats’ leader and candidate to replace Merkel as chancellor, is running on a platform that might best be described as “more of the same.” 

“Foreign policy consists of finding common ground with countries whose views are the polar opposite of our own and changing them,” Laschet said in a debate last month. 

A bold new way forward it was not. 

Sure, to keep the alliances it depends on for its security intact, Berlin will agree to a sanction here, an export ban there, or even, to quote Laschet, “to call a spade a spade.” If pushed, Germany might even send troops to support international operations in hotspots like Mali. 

But, rest assured, any action that Germany takes in one direction will be neutered by a step in the other.  

Even as Berlin supports sanctions against Russia over Ukraine, it has fought tooth and nail to keep Nord Stream 2 on track — with success. At the same time as Germany gives refuge to those persecuted by Putin’s brutal regime and nurses its victims back to health, Merkel pushes to revive European summits with him, ignoring concerns that doing so would only bolster his international standing. 

Germany’s stance on Russia is by no means the only example of its both-sides-of-the-fence strategy. 

A similar dynamic is at play in Berlin’s approach to China: Decry Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong and Uyghurs, speak of the “universality of human rights,” while also pursuing a lucrative investment agreement between China and the EU. Here, the justification is usually the battle against climate change; i.e., the only way to win lasting Chinese support for international climate accords is to keep it in the tent. 

In the Middle East, Germany has made protecting Israel a pillar of its raison d’état, yet it has also been a driving force pushing for a nuclear deal with Tehran, despite vociferous Israeli objections that such an agreement would pose a fundamental threat to the Jewish state’s survival.  

These seeming contradictions are not accidental, but rather the inevitable result of the organizing (if unspoken) principle that underpins German foreign policy: exports über alles.  

Even if one takes Erinnerungskultur at face value, it’s striking how quickly Germany looks the other way when it suits its economic interests, whether in China, Russia or Iran. If you confront a German official with these double standards in private, prepare to be subjected to an angry litany of denial and whataboutism.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of exports to Germany’s political calculus. Exports account for nearly half of German GDP (in the U.S., the export share is less than 12 percent). Without exports, German prosperity evaporates, and the EU’s with it. 

It’s natural, then, that Erinnerungskultur has become a diplomatic ripcord that gets tugged whenever the outside world nudges Berlin to do something that could harm its industrial core. It allows Berlin to claim the high ground, to believe it is drawing on the lessons of its own history, when in reality, it’s just copping out. 

Truth be told, many Germans have become wary of the rest of the world. Germany needs to sell the cars and machinery that power its economy abroad, but most of all it just wants to be left alone, like a big Switzerland. So long as it has the U.S. to provide for its security, Germany will face little pressure to change course. 

Allied support 

Germany’s allies, including the U.S., have been largely complicit in letting Berlin get away with it. 

It’s almost as if Erinnerungskultur (with a little help from Hollywood over the years) has helped convince the rest of the world that Germany is the sovereign equivalent of a comic villain struggling to suppress a primal urge to destroy civilization as we know it. (British historian Tom Holland has gone a step further, suggesting that for modern audiences, Hitler serves as an ersatz devil and Auschwitz as the new hell.)   

The subtext: For all the progress Germany has made with Erinnerungskultur, its base instincts are not so much cured as in remission. ACHTUNG! 

It’s surprising how well the technique has worked. 

Standing next to Merkel during a visit to Berlin last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “no better friend” than Germany. The same Germany that has failed for years to live up to its NATO commitments, that has frustrated American efforts to build a coalition against China, and that ignores Washington’s objections to its dealings with Russia? No better friend? Really? 

In the rarefied circles of elite academia and culture (not to mention international journalism), the missionary zeal with which Germans “confront” their history inspires awe and admiration.  

The late Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy once declared Germany the “world champion of Vergangenheitsbewältigung.” (The term literally means “overcoming history.” Once popular, it has recently been supplanted by Erinnerungskultur and other, more neutral terms after critics argued that Germany could never “overcome” its history.)  

Historian Timothy Garton Ash, winner of the coveted Charlemagne Prize, has credited Germany with establishing the gold standard for how countries deal with their past. British journalist John Kampfner published a best-selling book this year called “Why the Germans Do it Better,” a 320-page love letter to today’s land east of the Rhine. 

But like any cliché, the notion that Germany has cracked the code for how to wrestle with historic demons is as much myth as reality. 

Domestic detachment 

The perpetual incantations of shame delivered by German leaders have become so routine in recent years that they have all but lost their potency with German listeners. In private, many Germans express exasperation with Erinnerungskultur. More than half believe that it’s time for the country to draw a line under the Nazi period, according to a poll published last year by Die Zeit weekly. More than a quarter of respondents professed strong support for doing so.  

That may help explain why citizens of the country that vowed to “never forget” shrug their shoulders at the rise in anti-Semitic violence across Germany, which has reached the highest level seen in decades, according to official statistics.  

Steinmeier, the German president, has expressed deep regret for the violence. 

“We are not going to put up with hate towards Jews,” a shaken Steinmeier said in May.

Sadly, they do.  

When a mob marched on a synagogue in the western German city of Gelsenkirchen in May, shouting anti-Semitic slogans, including scheiß Jude (“shitty Jew”), the police showed up — and watched

The ranks of Germany’s army special forces have become so rotten with Nazi sympathizers that one of their four companies had to be disbanded completely last year. The same fate befell a police commando unit in Frankfurt last month. Authorities are also investigating recent allegations of extremism in the police force that protects the German parliament.

And yet, the Erinnerungskultur parade marches on unabated.  

A couple of weeks back, Merkel went big in her remarks at the opening of a documentation center focused on researching the millions of Germans expelled from their territories in Eastern Europe after World War II.

Her mission was delicate. Germans were the bad guys in the war, so portraying them as victims is fraught. For years, that uncomfortable reality frustrated repeated efforts to get the documentation center off the ground. 

But with a big daub of Erinnerungskultur, Merkel made it happen.  

“Without the terror Germany visited on Europe during the Nazi period, without civilizational rupture of the Shoa caused by Germany during National Socialism and without the Second World War unleashed by Germany, it would have never come to this,” Merkel said, referring to the plight of the German expellees.  

The center, overlooking the grounds of a train station where 55,000 Berlin Jews were sent to the death camps, opened without any furor.   

Mission accomplished. 

Reparation demands 

Erinnerungskultur has provided Germany with what long seemed out of reach: deference and respect.  

The depth of that deference is best understood by examining the reaction to demands that Germany’s victims — be it the Greeks, the Poles or Africa’s Herero people — make every now and then for reparations for the atrocities Germans committed against them.  

After the war, for example, Germany paid what might charitably be called a pittance to some of its victims. But when the likes of Poland or Greece raise the issue today, the international community responds with near embarrassment. “Hasn’t Germany atoned enough?” they seem to be saying. 

Is repeatedly saying “sorry” really the same thing as atonement, though? And if Germany is really as racked with guilt as Merkel and Steinmeier claim, why won’t it pay more to its victims?

While no country has ever gone as far as Germany in owning up to its deeds, why is it so reluctant to match the rhetoric with cash? Money might not undo what happened, but neither can expressions of regret, however heartfelt.  

Just over 100 years ago, the German empire committed what is now recognized by historians as the first genocide of the 20th century in its colony in southwestern Africa, present-day Namibia. Germany’s goal was to eradicate the local Herero and Nama tribes, herdsmen who had become a nuisance to German colonists. The effort ultimately failed, but not before the Germans slaughtered nearly 100,000 people. 

After years of negotiation, Germany offered in May to pay €1.1 billion to fund various projects for the Herero and Nama in Namibia over the next 30 years. Germany’s annual economic output is about €3.5 trillion. The math speaks for itself.

Steinmeier is set to visit Windhoek as soon as Namibia formally accepts the agreement, which some of the Herero have rejected as not enough. He is expected to deliver a speech to the Namibian parliament, the high point of which will be a formal apology for the genocide.   

An agreement would mark another great leap for Erinnerungskultur and bolster Steinmeier’s bid for another term as president. He has already turned the role of Germany’s apologizer-in-chief into something of a rhetorical art form. 

If it weren’t for the pandemic, Steinmeier might well have been to Windhoek and back by now. 

Last month, Zedekia Ngavirue, a Herero elder who led the negotiations with the Germans, died of COVID-19, one of many prominent victims as the pandemic takes hold of the country, which has almost no vaccines

The crisis would seem to present the perfect opportunity for Germany to show true compassion for its one-time colony. After all, Germany has no shortage of vaccines these days. 

So far, Germany has sent just one plane, not with vaccines, but with medical supplies and equipment. Though no doubt welcome, the aid is ultimately what Berlin offered in reparations — no more than a gesture.

Germany, in the words of one commentator, has effectively “cut and run,” leaving Namibia to fend for itself against the coronavirus. 

Does such behavior mean Erinnerungskultur has become more about cleansing the country’s collective conscience than repentance? 

Only the Germans know for sure, but the gulf between the rhetoric of the country’s leaders and its feckless foreign policy presents a reality, if not an answer. 

The German verb for apologize — sich entschuldigen — is reflexive, its literal meaning, “to remove one’s debt.”   

Germans don’t need others to absolve them, they do it themselves.  

It’s a fitting construct for a country whose vaunted “culture of remembrance” looks more and more like self-delusion. 

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