Arnon Grunberg

Policies

Guarantor

On the end of old world order - Matthias Gebauer, Christiane Hoffmann, René Pfister and Gerald Traufetter in Der Spiegel:

'The quarrel between Trump's man in Germany and the most important organization in the trans-Atlantic relationship may seem like a bizarre facet of political life in Berlin, but it is also symptomatic of a German-American relationship that has reached a new low-point in recent months. "There is a crisis in the U.S. German relationship of a type that I would never have expected to occur in our time," says Nicholas Burns, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO ambassador and current foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Germany has become the antithesis to Trump's America -- that much is clear from Grenell's tweets. The conflict centers on concrete interests and political issues, but of course also on the personal chemistry between Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In no other area are the stances of Berlin and Washington as far apart as they are on the issue of Iran. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the German government has explicitly based a decision not to take part in a military deployment on the fact that the deployment is being led by the U.S.

Germany could face new punitive tariffs in November as part of the trade conflict, and Grenell has even indirectly threatened to pull its troops out of the country in the dispute with Berlin about increasing its military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in line with the target for NATO members.'

(...)

'In Berlin, many are still holding out hope that the good old days of trans-Atlantic cooperation can resume once the Trump era has passed. But that could prove illusory. "The U.S. won't remain the way it is under Trump, but it will also never be the same as it was before him again," says Gabriel.

The fact is that the Democrats agree with many of the points where Trump is critical, and Washington would remain an uncomfortable partner even if a Democrat is elected into the White House next year. Trump, in all his brutal openness, has made it clear that the U.S. is no longer willing to pay for Europe. The Democrats are also raising the question of military spending. And even Biden adviser Burns thinks the Germans should have taken part in the military action in the Strait of Hormuz.

A Convenient Excuse for Germany

Indeed, Trump has become a convenient excuse for the Germans. Whatever he says is rejected almost reflexively. This is true for both the military mission in the Strait of Hormuz and NATO's 2-percent target. The Germans need to finally get over the idea that they can remain a kind of giant Switzerland in the middle of Europe forever, says Peter Rough from the conservative Hudson Institute think tank.

Robert Kagan, a former adviser to two Republican presidential candidates who now works at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, generated considerable buzz with an essay he published in May in Foreign Affairs magazine. In it, he wrote that the German question, which led to two world wars and millions of deaths, could return. America's role in Europe has historically been a guarantor against Germany's hegemonic tendencies, Kagan argued.

America, according to Kagan, made a stable Europe possible after 1945 by providing economic and military security, promoting democracy and suppressing nationalist tendencies. "Trump is actually fanning the flames of nationalism ... again and again by supporting basically nationalist parties in Europe," Kagan told DER SPIEGEL. "He's clearly destroying the global free trade regime by pursuing protectionist American policies which are directly harming Germany, which depends on a free trade regime to be economically successful."

So, what can be done? "I wish I had an answer to that," Kagan says, noting that Europe's success following World War II has been closely linked to support from the U.S. "I don't know how Europe can do it in the absence of the United States' role."'

Read the article here.

I'm not sure if the "German question" will return soon, but that the totalitarian question with support of POTUS is knocking on the door may be clear for some time now.

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