The War in Ukraine and Germany's Reluctant Response

It is now safe to say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t gone according to plan. Vladimir Putin and most analysts anticipated the swift downfall of the Ukrainian army and a tepid response by the United States and its European allies. On both counts events have unfolded differently: first, the bravery of President Volodymir Zelensky and his compatriots, combined with the invaders’ ineptitude, have given Putin a bleeding nose as his army is forced into ever more modest objectives; second, the shock and awe of the West’s financial sanctions and its willingness to arm the defenders have sent Russia reeling. 

At the same time, it is too early to speculate about how the war might end and its aftermath once the dust settles. Yet a new world is definitely emerging, one where many old assumptions no longer hold. To most nations and their leaders this will ring true, though to few more than to Germany and its newish government. Located in the heart of Europe, and with a historical responsibility toward peace, the continent’s economic hegemon was, prior to this war, the swing vote when it came to Russian revisionism. Owing to a combination of historical debts, commercial interests and the legacy of Ostpolitik, Germany sought to engage with Russia to the point of giving it a voice in Europe’s economic and security architectures, sometimes to the detriment of countries like Poland and the Baltics, much warier of Russian power and its imperial designs. 

But now, after a Zeitenwende speech delivered by Chancellor Olaf Scholz to the Bundestag on February 27th, Germany has pledged to dramatically steer its course. Not only did he announce a €100 billion fund to modernize the country’s inadequate armed forces, but also declared its intention to wean itself off Russian energy. Pacifist Germany, then, is belatedly realizing that soft power and economic heft are not enough to defend the multilateral rules-based order that has seen it thrive as a wealthy democracy. No, this loss of innocence unveils the uncomfortable fact that conventional might and military power matter just as much to the defense of liberal values; speak softly and carry a big stick. 

In the postwar period, and especially once it embedded itself inside the European Union, the temptation for Germany was to become a giant Switzerland—bound by neutrality and a repudiation of militarism, a commercial powerhouse without a strategic footprint to match. Its position as an export juggernaut led it to coin the shibboleth Wandel durch Handel, the naive notion that, by economically yoking itself to Russia and China, it would gradually conduct the two in a more democratic direction. When, in fact, a version of the opposite is what took place: to protect its access to China’s lucrative market, Chancellor Angela Merkel had to downplay and overlook severe human rights violations in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and elsewhere; by gorging on Russian hydrocarbons, Germany became ever more reticent to condemn Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the intimidation of its Eastern European neighbors. 

And while the current government appears to have awakened to the precarity of Germany’s position, the truth is that it will take sustained effort to make up for lost time. For example, it is only now, after Russia’s adventurism has imperiled European security, that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has begun the task of formulating her country’s first comprehensive national security strategy. This evinces the profundity of the challenge: Germany needs, in a short period of time, not only to better equip its armed forces but to scrap the outdated paradigms of its strategic outlook. 

The war in Ukraine dramatically exposes Germany’s obsolete self-image and its place in the world. Europe’s most powerful country can no longer be a bystander that happily outsources the continent’s security to the United States. Even within the NATO umbrella, Germans must carry their own weight if the alliance is to have a long-term future. Germany, and with it much of Europe, is rushing to catch up to events. 

But this is not the first time that Germany is caught thinking about itself one way while a changing world imposes new demands. In the last decade, immigration has forced Germans to come to terms with the changing social and cultural makeup of their country. In the second half of the twentieth century and in the face of a booming, labor-thirsty economy, Germans began hosting moderate numbers of Gastarbeiter. The term, whose literal translation is “guest worker”, implied that these new arrivals would eventually return to their home countries. Mostly hailing from Southern Europe and Turkey, they ended up settling in Germany, attracting more numbers even as native Germans were reluctant to admit that their country had become a destination for economic immigrants. 

Fast forward to 2015 and the Syrian Civil War, when an unprecedented influx of refugees was met by Angela Merkel’s courageous opening of its borders to more than a million people fleeing the Middle Eastern country.  Politically troublesome at the time, the decision put a capstone on the slow process of Germany coming around to seeing itself as an Einwanderungsland, a destination for immigrants. This transformation is still very much ongoing, but Germans have finally taken the decisive step of admitting that the foreigners flocking to their country won’t be going anywhere after a decade or two of work. 

A more daunting challenge will present itself before long when Germany is forced to disabuse itself of the notion that its advanced manufacturing assures it a spot as one of the most technologically advanced nations. Squeezed between Silicon Valley’s techno-libertarian ethos and the state-directed resurgence of China as a technological power, Germany’s Mittelstand (its small and medium companies that are world champions in niche markets) appear quaint in comparison. Thanks to years of austerity and a backward attitude toward digitalization, German industry today lacks the edge to compete with the companies that are busy devising what the future will look like. Tesla’s recent opening of a massive car plant in Brandenburg exemplifies how German dominance in cars, one of its most distinctive industries, can no longer be taken for granted. 

For the time being, Germany retains a significant advantage in a range of high-precision industries. The success of BioNTech, the company behind the first mRNA Covid-19 vaccine also evinces the strength of German technology. But these achievements will have to be leveraged and repeated many more times if Europe’s economic powerhouse hopes to remain relevant in the long run. Once more, Germans should abandon the idea that their technological primacy is a given. 

A shock similar to the war in Ukraine has already taken place in immigration, and Germany will likely face a similar reckoning in its economic and technological position. Once the war broke, Germany’s initial reaction—to rearm itself and supply weapons to Ukraine—was the right one, albeit belatedly. Yet a couple of months in, the familiar dithering seems to be taking hold again. Chancellor Scholz is reluctant to provide heavier arms to the Ukrainians and won’t even consider an embargo on Russian gas, a measure that would all but cripple Russia in a matter of weeks. How Germany acquits itself during this war will determine its reaction to future challenges.