Merz needs to save Germany and EU unity against Russian neo-czarist drives. Trump captured the European defense intention but now should mute the loud rhetoric and hard-right support, which is backfiring.
It may be a blow for US President Donald Trump, but even more so for Russian President Vladimir Putin. While there is no clear horizon for a peace deal with Russia on Ukraine, and no sharp strategy on China, prospective German Chancellor Friederich Merz pledged ‘independence’ from the USA in the wake of his victory in the elections on February 23.
Apparently, US billionaire cum Trump advisor Elon Musk didn’t make a difference with his support for the hard-right AfD. Possibly the contrary, since the rightists slightly underperformed compared to opinion polls taken before the ballots.
The challenges for Merz are enormous. He needs to rally Europe around his new vibrant ‘independent’ drive from America, more supportive of Ukraine and more assertive with Russia. He needs to rope in the UK, where Premier Keir Starmer may feel like him but remains out of the EU, and stave off possible resistance from some EU countries with pro-Putin sympathies like Hungary, Slovakia, and possibly even Austria. Internal politics still tear France apart. Italy is showing structural and cultural limitations. Poland is the most aligned with Merz and could help bolster a new EU consensus.
Merz’s plan for ‘independence’ and rethinking NATO, which has been the keystone of Western security for eight decades, should prompt some soul searching in Washington. The USA might ill afford to press on talking to Russia without full EU support. Subtle diplomacy should perhaps step in to avoid derailing ties, which might mean that bombastic statements from the administration should be muted.
Merz’s position vis-Ã -vis the US or Russia backs the AfD into a corner. The new nationalist party will have to choose between backing the government in Berlin or the foreign billionaire. If they choose the foreigner, it might not sit well with their patriotic voters.
China’s Europe
Chinese radicals, closely following the vote, may rejoice at the new transatlantic fissure; indeed, this is an opening for Beijing. However, China might want to consider other elements below a superficial chuckle. The root of the transatlantic problem is Russia: Merz wants a stricter policy with Putin, and Beijing is Putin’s staunchest supporter. In fact, China’s support for Russia was the main element driving Berlin and Beijing apart in the past three years. Would Beijing drop Russia to improve ties with Germany and the EU? The answer is tricky and full of hidden traps. Thus, Beijing should be cautious about this.
Moreover, politics could be embedded in the geography of Germany. The map of the vote shows that Germany remains divided precisely along the Cold War borders, with Berlin as the exception in the East. According to the vote results, there are two Germanys, one for AfD and the other against it, with well-defined geographical spaces: one in the East and the other in the West. The fissure may build up on other forces, tearing present European geography apart and creating new entities.
In a nutshell, late 19th-century Europe was built against the Holy Roman Empire (for a millennium the hub of the continental order) by constructing two ‘nation-states’ that never existed before, Germany (as de facto an extension of Prussia) and Italy (as de facto an extension of Piedmont). Both carved out and eventually ended both Habsburgs’ secular rule and the Pontiff State. It also ended the other empires dominating Europe and the Mediterranean, czarist Russia, and Ottoman Turkey. “Europe” as a political entity was first envisioned by America after the end of WWII (1945) and then expanded after the Cold War (1989), always as an anti-Russian barrier.
The resurgence of Putin’s neo-Czarist ambitions has reverberated in the past decade. President Recep Erdogan recently claimed the Ottoman legacy in Turkey. The vociferous anti-EU Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has gained traction in Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Vienna, Milan, Venice, and Trieste. It’s almost as if the old Austro-Hungarian dominion is retaking shape. It would be the end of the EU but also of Italy and possibly Germany, reverting to what the poll’s results show.
Two Germanys
The two Germanys seem to be at loggerheads, as if the Cold War had never ended. West Germany didn’t prevail over East Germany, nor did East Germany over the West. The map shows two sensibilities, two time zones, and two visions of the future. Children of different parents, one born from a democratic American tradition in the West, the other in the East begotten by a long seamless time under a dictatorship, black or red, and a love affair with the Soviet Union.
Rivers of ink were spilled for decades over their separation, almost like Siamese brothers cut off by the cold sword of the Iron Curtain. Both Germanys romanticized the fall of the Berlin Wall, thinking the two long-separated siblings would now live in peace. Both forgot that children are made by their foster parents, perhaps much more than by their DNA, and they had had very different foster parents for five decades.
These differences were like an avalanche in Germany in the past few years, triggered by an economic crisis. The West had long been used to immigrants. First came the fellow German refugees expelled from the East, then came people from Italy or Turkey to fuel the industrial miracle, and lastly came those from Africa or the Middle East. They were all inconvenient in their ways, yet West Germans had grown used to living with them and Germanizing them.
East Germany didn’t know any of this. Foreigners and outsiders were spies and enemies according to Nazi or communist propaganda. The seeds of this thinking may have grown and taken deep roots in the bones of some people of the East.
When new waves of immigrants came to Germany with bigger problems than the previous waves, the two Germanys apparently took those foreigners very differently. They were a new, possibly more significant nuisance in the West, yet something they could deal with. According to past unspoken sensitivities, it was a foreign invasion in the East.
It would be just too easy for people in the East to revert to the good old times when no foreigners, no immigrants, and no enemies were admitted within the borders.
Merz now has to draw a line against these forces tearing Europe and European countries apart with Russia’s open or hidden support. Germany’s old ties with Turkey could help rebalance disruptive Euro-Mediterranean drives.
With his push for increased defense spending, the US president may have gotten what he wanted, but perhaps it went too far. Germany wants its defense because it doesn’t feel fully backed by America. Trump may want to consider what kind of Europe he wants: a 19th-century continent dominated by revamped empires or a different EU?
For China, the transatlantic fissure can be a tempting opportunity, and it may want to step in. But it’s also a delicate and sensitive Euro-Mediterranean fissure, and, unlike with Ukraine, China may not want to blunder it.
Finis
