Germany’s Libya Abstention and the World: What Now?

         Germany’s March 17^th decision to abstain from the United Nations vote for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya has unleashed a firestorm of international criticism – as well as open skepticism on the country’s current and future fitness for leadership on the world stage. The tumultuous last few weeks have observers voicing three primary concerns on whether Germany should (or even could) assume the world leadership position it claims to want: 1) a paradox, both in policy and in image, 2) battered confidence on the part of its foreign partners, and 3) an uncertain future in global leadership.

         Germany’s actions are paradoxical at national, European and international levels. The country long followed draconian foreign-affairs strictures such as “never alone” and “never again Auschwitz,” which guided the country since it emerged, shuddering and ashamed, from its losing role in World War II. After abstention, these tenets seem, at least in the immediate, to have largely been cast aside – with no alternatives proposed to replace them. Equally problematic are the polling results of German opinion on Libya: Reuters reported in April that a whopping 71 percent of Germans support international intervention in the country. According to a contributor at the online Atlantic Community, 65 percent of Germans – essentially, many of the same voters – would disapprove of German participation therein. The country shows a sort of diplomatic allergy to the often ugly business of conflict prevention. Berlin still insists it wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but after its ill-considered abstention, its Western UN allies will surely be loath to grant such a diplomatic trump card to a partner increasingly seen as unreliable.

         The battered confidence in Germany’s recent diplomacy is perhaps best reflected by the United States and France. (...)

Germany Slammed by French Left, Domestic Press on Libya Vote

The French left has damning words for German foreign policy. The country, which recently decided to abstain from armed intervention in Libya in a March 17 UN Security Council vote, has since faced withering rebukes from the international community. 

Jean Quatremer, a star writer of the left-leaning newspaper La Libération, takes a decidedly EU-focused approach to his criticism, dismayed that "the [European] Union must, therefore, stay confined to what's humanitarian..." He echoed the words of new foreign minister Alain Juppé, who on Wednesday lamented, "must we resign ourselves to the EU remaining a humanitarian NGO?" He also quoted ex-foreign affairs minister Hubert Védrine, who lamented while in office that the EU must not grow into a kind of "giant Switzerland." When the Libé's top name aligns with the center-right French government's official voice on foreign affairs, Germany faces a uniformly hostile neighbor, which will also rally outside opinion into France's camp and against Germany's.

Der Spiegel, Germany's best-known English-language newspaper, has little better to say about the response to Libya by Angela Merkel and the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle. In an article written collectively by Spiegel staff, the newspaper presents a symbolically potent show of solidarity against their government's latest foreign affairs calls.

"The general sense of consternation," they emphatically write, "raises the question of whether this government is simply out of its depth when it comes to foreign policy." They signal that Germany missed a great opportunity to forge a "yes, but" alternative. The team quotes a German diplomat's accusation that his government is guilty of "historical cynicism," and they surmise that "Merkel's administration now welcomes any bad news from Libya that suggests its partners were wrong to intervene." 

And as if Merkel thought it would alleviate anything, Germany unveiled a conciliatory gesture to send more surveillance planes to NATO operations in Afghanistan as a way to free up allied materiel and military hardware for the Libyan campaign.

Federal Disunity: Civil-War-era US and the Eurozone

Global Policy, a fairly new world affairs journal, has some interesting things to say on the current eurozone troubles. Its quality of links is slightly derivative, with liberal borrowing from the Economist and even Wikipedia. But it's still a worthy read, if for nothing else that its unorthodox comparison of leadership styles of US President James Buchanan (predecessor to Abraham Lincoln) and Angela Merkel.

"... If Buchanan is remembered as one of the worst American presidents of all time, his successor Abraham Lincoln is remembered as perhaps its greatest. Although lacking in executive experience his underlying principle was unwavering: preserve the union at all costs. To this goal he was willing to subsume all other concerns, including his moral repugnance of slavery. To its end he was willing to commit to and sustain a bloody civil war and rebuff suggestions of compromise. Everything else was negotiable, but union was not. The result was a nation ripped apart by an enormously destructive and prolonged civil war, but also one reborn on a stronger footing. The slavery and secession issues that had, since America’s founding, threatened to rip the nation apart were (at an enormous cost) settled once and for all.

"It is from this parable-like take on the American Civil War era that perhaps lessons can be drawn for Europe’s undisputed present-day leader, Angela Merkel. The seriousness of the conundrum she faces is immense. Preservation of the European project requires a willingness to risk political martyrdom on her own part. The case for Germany continuing as the backstop of the Eurozone grows more unpopular domestically every day. Meanwhile the irresolute action and half-measures that characterised earlier attempts to save the single currency have merely postponed the day of reckoning. They have also, at almost every turn, increased the cost and the stakes of the next move. The case of the Greek Bailout is perhaps the most blatant example. Yet time and again her approach has seemed reductionist and pedantic. Bowing to national pressures she has proven more adept at tinkering with the terms of bailouts and turning the screws on profligate states, than on securing a long-term fix for the single currency. The result has been a continuing narrative of core vs. periphery and an ominous slide towards a series of defaults, which even the German coffers will not be able to rebuff."

See the piece in full here. 

Merkel's Gains in Brussels

Here's a cogent wrap-up, from The Economist's "Charlemagne's Notebook" blog, of the EU economic governance summit that ended late last week in Brussels. Among the demands presented, German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued for -- and won qualified concessions -- for a reopening of certain economic contours held in the landmark 2009 Treaty of Lisbon.

Merkel emerged as the clear winner -- and, it seems, one of the most effective national leaders in the Union.  This is certainly true when compared with Herman Van Rompuy, whom the article insinuates as a kind of EU pipsqueak, out of his depth in the EU's play-for-keeps attitude among the Continent's heavies such as Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron. The blogpost's takeaway is as follows:

 “I AM on the whole quite satisfied with the decision.” With these modest words, Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, rounded off a remarkable victory at the end of a bruising European summit that concluded today.

Less than a fortnight ago, members of the European Union were universally opposed to Germany’s demand to reopen the EU’s treaties to strengthen the means of maintaining fiscal discipline among members of the euro zone. But within days of winning over Nicolas Sarkozy to her cause at the Deauville summit on October 18th, she got everyone to sign up to the idea of a “limited treaty change”. By the slow-moving standards of the EU, this happened in an eye-blink. It is a testament to the authority of Mrs Merkel, as well as the power of Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe.

“Everybody was very sensitive to Mrs Merkel’s persuasive arguments,” is how one national diplomat put it. “Bullying,” said another. Whether by persuasion or compulsion, Mrs Merkel secured her main objective: agreement to amend the EU treaty to allow the creation of a “permanent crisis mechanism” to resolve the debt of countries that may be hit by a Greek-style crisis in future.

This means creating a bail-out fund similar to the €750 billion IMF-backed temporary financing facility that was created in May, imposing tough conditions on any country that taps it in future and making bondholders take some of the pain of saving insolvent countries. “The burden must never again be borne simply and only by the taxpayer,” she declared." (...)

This may turn out to be a baby step toward tighter EU integration, at a time when member states can hardly maneuver otherwise -- and would hardly choose to do so in sunnier times. Once the tight belt of the recession loosens, we'll see which European country strains for more room to breathe.