Brain dead, part I
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U.S. Secretary of State and Christian fundamentalist Mike Pompeo’s utterly ridiculous convoy snakes its way through Bavaria in this photo published in the F.A.Z. To you and me it looks like a lot of vehicles, but it’s actually the precise number Jesus wanted America’s top diplomat to travel with.
The best of times, and the worst of times
There was a strange duality to the most important diplomatic events in Europe yesterday. On the one hand, there was the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, telling The Economist that the NATO alliance was “brain dead” and that he didn’t even know whether the promise of collective security at the heart of the alliance was still valid.
On the other hand, there was the American secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in the old headquarters of what the Saxons call the “peaceful revolution,” the Church of St. Nicholas in Leipzig, honoring with his German counterpart, Heiko Maas, the legacy of 1989. During Pompeo’s visit, Maas was serving up generous helpings of nostalgic trans-Atlanticists’ favorite comfort food, that hearty if somewhat greasy dish called German gratitude.
“Without America’s leadership, there would have been no reunification,” said Maas, according to the report on page 2 of today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “We are obligated to you in great thankfulness.” And: the American alliance is “the basis we stand on today.”
So the French view of NATO is that America is duplicitous, and it’s time to bring all the family members together and decide whether we should just pull the plug on the whole thing; but the German view is that freedom itself is inconceivable without the American alliance.
Is there anything newsworthy here? Macron is not the first French president to blast NATO, nor is diplomatic schmaltz anything new in the German-American relationship. The French have always been dreaming of independence. The Germans have always had a way of laying it on pretty thick in public, and then simply getting back down to business once they have got their visitor, smug after all the obsequiousness, comfortably seated in his westwardbound jet. And who, after looking at their enormous trade surplus, could begrudge the Germans this? To judge from my perch in renovated Leipzig, someone around here is doing something right.
War, what is it good for?
Back at the beginning, I used the word “duality.” But that was a mistake. There was actually a “tri-ality” going on yesterday, if that’s a word, or even a “quadruple reality.” It gets very confusing.
The third element was the fact that while Pompeo was driving around Germany with 7,900 automobiles, impeachment proceedings were going on back at the ranch. The former national security advisor, John Bolton, said he was going to tell Congress that untoward things had happened. The administration Pompeo represents, which is currently running the country Maas describes artfully as the basis of everything, is in what looks to me like pretty hot water. Impeachment is a big deal. European media are routinely downplaying it, with one-sentence dismissals about Republican control of the Senate. That might be a mistake.
To me, impeachment lent a surreal air to Pompeo’s visit. Anybody watching this has got to wonder what Maas and the rest of Germany’s top diplomats might really be thinking about “American leadership.” What they’re thinking might not be all that different from what Macron is saying.
The fourth element was a speech given by the German defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is also the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Kramp-Karrenbauer, known as AKK, has a problem, which is that she is not very popular in the CDU and faces a highly-motivated group around the investment banker Friedrich Merz looking to prevent her from becoming the CDU’s next chancellor candidate.
At last year’s CDU convention in Hamburg, AKK narrowly defeated Merz for the position of party chair. But getting AKK over the goal line took everything the Merkel machine had. One year on, and that machine ain’t what it used to be. Merkel is in full lame-duck mode, and AKK’s performance on the big stage in Berlin has left a lot of the audience feeling unconvinced. At this year’s convention, to be held later this month in Leipzig, the Merz forces will be out for revenge. The conservative wing of the party is already in an uproar over voters lost to the far-right AfD. As the leader of a right-wing CDU faction has told me, “Merz is the great hope.” The hope being that a Merzian rightward turn will de-fang the AfD.
It became clear to AKK, once she had reviewed the situation very carefully, that she must “do something.” The something was to get herself installed this summer as defense minister (despite never having held a federal political office before) and then embark on a series of initiatives. These have included free train tickets for soldiers in uniform, the proposal for sending German troops to set up a security zone in the Turkey-invaded part of Syria, and a promise to nearly double the German military budget.
Well, OK. That last one is basically just the fulfillment of the NATO pledge to spend 2% of GDP on the military. But yesterday — the same day Macron’s interview came out — AKK gave a major speech detailing what all that money will be used for.
In part II of this post, I will talk about AKK’s military (militaristic?) plans and how they mesh with Macron’s NATO temper tantrum. Sorry — I meant to say vision! Of course, his vision is probably to have a convoy as big as Pompeo’s, but we can get into that next time.
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