In 2010, Germany was criticized for its “uncooperative” attitude in the economic and financial crisis, in 2011 for abstaining from the Security Council on the intervention in Libya, and in 2013 when the chancellor refused to approve a possible American intervention in Syria, Germany eventually overhauled its foreign policy. In 2014, the “Munich Consensus” announced the willingness to take on more responsibilities on the international stage. In February 2015, the Defense Minister confirmed at the Munich Security Conference that Germany is ready to assume a “Leadership from the Center” role, and the Foreign Minister Steinmeier, the same month in Washington, described Germany as a “Chief Facilitating Officer”: the main intermediary in Europe.
The “Munich Consensus” is a facade: the Bundeswehr has been underfunded since reunification and two-thirds of Germans oppose German involvement in foreign operations. But Berlin persists. In 2019, Germany took command of NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. Germany has over 1,000 German soldiers in Mali engaged in MINUSMA and EUTM operations, as well as in resolving the Libyan crisis with two conferences held in Berlin in 2020 and 2021. Against Trumpism, the federal government launched the Multilateralism Alliance with France in April 2019, an informal network of around twenty countries from all five continents, and in May 2021 published a White Paper dedicated to multilateralism in the 21st century.
Thirty years after reunification, Germany is still searching for a strategy, and its contradictions are reflected in its relationships with each power in the American-Sino-Russian triangle dominating international relations in the 21st century.
German-Russian relations: a reflection of German contradictions
With Russia, Germany seems to play its role perfectly as a politically engaged actor, multilateralist, and embracing its status as a “Chief Facilitating Officer”. At the same time, the failure of Berlin’s Russian policy and the issues raised by Nord Stream 2 highlight the limits of its approach. Faced with the Kremlin, both Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder, and Angela Merkel have relied on the strategies of Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik.
PLAN – German-Russian relations: a reflection of German contradictions – China: partner, competitor, adversary? – Repairing the transatlantic link after Trump: mission impossible?
Hans Stark is a professor of contemporary German civilization at Sorbonne University and an advisor for Franco-German relations at Ifri.
