Frank-Walter Steinmeier :
Over the past two decades, Germany’s global role has undergone a remarkable transformation. Following its peaceful reunification in 1990, Germany was on track to become an economic giant that had little in the way of foreign policy. Today, however, the country is a major European power that attracts praise and criticism in equal measure. This holds true both for Germany’s response to the recent surge of refugees-it welcomed more than one million people last year-and for its handling of the euro crisis.
As Germany’s power has grown, so, too, has the need for the country to explain its foreign policy more clearly. Germany’s recent history is the key to understanding how it sees its place in the world. Since 1998, I have served my country as a member of four cabinets and as the leader of the parliamentary opposition. Over that time, Germany did not seek its new role on the international stage. Rather, it emerged as a central player by remaining stable as the world around it changed. As the United States reeled from the effects of the Iraq war and the EU struggled through a series of crises, Germany held its ground. It fought its way back from economic difficulty, and it is now taking on the responsibilities befitting the biggest economy in Europe. Germany is also contributing diplomatically to the peaceful resolution of multiple conflicts around the globe: most obviously with Iran and in Ukraine, but also in Colombia, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, and the Balkans. Such actions are forcing Germany to reinterpret the principles that have guided its foreign policy for over half a century. But Germany is a reflective power: even as it adapts, a belief in the importance of restraint, deliberation, and peaceful negotiation will continue to guide its interactions with the rest of the world.
Today both the United States and Europe are struggling to provide global leadership. The 2003 invasion of Iraq damaged the United States’ standing in the world. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, sectarian violence ripped Iraq apart, and U.S. power in the region began to weaken. Not only did the George W. Bush administration fail to reorder the region through force, but the political, economic, and soft-power costs of this adventure undermined the United States’ overall position. The illusion of a unipolar world faded.
When U.S. President Barack Obama assumed office in 2009, he began to rethink the United States’ commitment to the Middle East and to global engagements more broadly. His critics say that the president has created power vacuums that other actors, including Iran and Russia, are only too willing to fill. His supporters, of which I am one, counter that Obama is wisely responding to a changing world order and the changing nature of U.S. power. He is adapting the means and goals of U.S. foreign policy to the nation’s capabilities and the new challenges it faces.
Meanwhile, the EU has run into struggles of its own. In 2004, the union accepted ten new member states, finally welcoming the former communist countries of eastern Europe. But even as the EU expanded, it lost momentum in its efforts to deepen the foundations of its political union. That same year, the union presented its members with an ambitious draft constitution, created by a team led by former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. But when voters in France and the Netherlands, two of the EU’s founding nations, rejected the document, the ensuing crisis emboldened those Europeans who questioned the need for an “ever-closer union.” This group has grown steadily stronger in the years since, while the integrationists have retreated.
Now, the international order that the United States and Europe helped create and sustain after World War II-an order that generated freedom, peace, and prosperity in much of the world-is under pressure. The increasing fragility of various states-and, in some cases, their complete collapse-has destabilized entire regions, especially Africa and the Middle East, sparked violent conflicts, and provoked ever-greater waves of mass migration. At the same time, state and nonstate actors are increasingly defying the multilateral rules-based system that has preserved peace and stability for so long. The rise of China and India has created new centers of power that are changing the shape of international relations. Russia’s annexation of Crimea has produced a serious rift with Europe and the United States. The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia increasingly dominates the Middle East, as the state order in the region erodes and the Islamic State, or ISIS, attempts to obliterate borders entirely. Against this backdrop, Germany has remained remarkably stable. This is no small achievement, considering the country’s position in 2003, when the troubles of the United States and the EU were just beginning. At the time, many called Germany “the sick man of Europe”: unemployment had peaked at above 12 percent, the economy had stagnated, social systems were overburdened, and Germany’s opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq had tested the nation’s resolve and provoked outrage in Washington. In March of that year, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder delivered a speech in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, titled “Courage for Peace and Courage for Change,” in which he called for major economic reforms. Although his fellow Social Democrats had had the courage to reject the Iraq war, they had little appetite for change. Schröder’s reforms to the labor market and the social security system passed the Bundestag, but at a high political price for Schröder himself: he lost early elections in 2005.
But those reforms laid the foundation for Germany’s return to economic strength, a strength that has lasted to the present day. And Germany’s reaction to the 2008 financial crisis only bolstered its economic position. German businesses focused on their advantages in manufacturing and were quick to exploit the huge opportunities in emerging markets, especially China. German workers wisely supported the model of export-led growth.
But Germans should not exaggerate their country’s progress. Germany has not become an economic superpower, and its share of world exports was lower in 2014 than in 2004-and lower than at the time of German reunification. Germany has merely held its ground better than most of its peers in the face of rising competition.
Germany’s relative economic power is an unambiguous strength. But some critics see the country’s military restraint as a weakness. During Schröder’s chancellorship, Germany fought in two wars (in Kosovo and Afghanistan) and adamantly opposed the unleashing of a third (in Iraq). The military engagements in Kosovo and Afghanistan marked a historic step for a nation that had previously sought to ban the word “war” from its vocabulary entirely. Yet Germany stepped up because it took its responsibility for the stability of Europe and its alliance with the United States seriously. Then as now, German officials shared a deep conviction that the country’s security was inextricably linked to that of the United States. Nevertheless, most of them opposed the invasion of Iraq, because they saw it as a war of choice that had dubious legitimacy and the clear potential to spark further conflict. In Germany, this opposition is still widely considered a major achievement-even by the few who supported U.S. policy at the time.
Germany has merely held its ground better than most of its peers in the face of rising competition.
In the years since, Germany’s leaders have carefully deliberated whether to get involved in subsequent conflicts, subjecting these decisions to a level of scrutiny that has often exasperated the country’s allies. In the summer of 2006, for example, I helped broker a cease-fire in Lebanon to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah. I believed Germany had to support this agreement with military force if necessary, even though I knew that our past as perpetrators of the Holocaust made the deployment of German soldiers on Israel’s borders a particularly delicate matter. Before embracing the military option, I invited my three immediate predecessors as foreign minister to Berlin for advice. Together they brought 31 years of experience in office to the table. Germany’s history weighed most heavily on the eldest among us, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, a World War II veteran, who argued against the proposal. My younger two predecessors agreed with me, however, and to this day, German warships patrol the Mediterranean coast to control arms shipments to Lebanon as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon-an arrangement accepted and supported by Israel.
Germany’s path to greater military assertiveness has not been linear, and it never will be. Germans do not believe that talking at roundtables solves every problem, but neither do they think that shooting does. The mixed track record of foreign military interventions over the past 20 years is only one reason for caution. Above all, Germans share a deeply held, historically rooted conviction that their country should use its political energy and resources to strengthen the rule of law in international affairs. (To be continued)
