More Powerful Germany Searches for a Role Model

Behind all the headlines and anguish about the gulf crisis and political strife in the Soviet Union, the “German question” continues to cast a long shadow over Europe. Will a more powerful Germany, emboldened by reunification, eventually revive its expansionary past and begin to threaten political--let alone military--stability in Europe?

To echo the Fats Waller line, “one never knows, do one?” But one can draw some reassurance from a stunning poll recently released by a leading German newspaper, the Suddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. A vast majority of Germans, it would appear, prefer political tranquility, international neutrality and modesty of ambition.

In the poll, titled “Germany 2000--the Nation We Would Like,” a large representative sample of Germans--including residents of the former German Democratic Republic in the East--were asked to choose which country and government they would prefer to emulate in their post-reunification world. The results were unequivocal.

Among those polled, 40% preferred to emulate the model of Switzerland. Another 29% stated a preference for Sweden. The United States, with all its international power and consumerist appeal, lagged far behind. And there was little discernible difference between residents of the Western and Eastern regions of the country.

Assuming that the poll sample was indeed representative, this means that more than two-thirds of the German adult population would prefer to follow the path of those two countries in Europe that, for all their affluence and economic success, have most consistently minded their own business in international affairs. Far from suggesting a desire to expand territorial dominion, the Swiss and Swedish models provide the full and perfect embodiment of countries that jealously guard their political neutrality and seek to avoid international entanglement.

I find these results remarkable. But are they credible?

They are at least consistent with recent German behavior in the international arena. Despite its growing economic power, Germany has evinced little or no interest in deploying that power for political or diplomatic advantage. In responding to the Suddeutsche Zeitung reports, the influential French newspaper Le Monde commented recently: “These numbers merely confirm a perceptible tendency over recent years in the Federal Republic.” Instructed by lessons from the past . . . the Germans manifest a stunning reticence in international affairs. . . . In major questions of international politics the leaders in Bonn want to avoid being directly involved.”

But will this behavior continue into the future? There are several reasons for trusting that it will.

Perhaps the most important reason, of course, is that the Germans are likely to continue enjoying a comfortable prosperity and rapid economic growth without resorting to heavy-handed efforts to throw around their weight politically or militarily. Their relative economic power, based on rapid productivity growth and commercial cunning, is likely to continue to grow. The accelerating trend toward a united Europe will provide open and ample markets for the steady expansion of German exports. If the Germans, like the Swiss, enjoy their current relative prosperity, there seem to be few threats on the horizon to their continued future enjoyment.

Moreover, it becomes increasingly clear that the Germans will have their hands full developing and integrating Eastern Germany into their republic. Recent estimates suggest that the regions of the former German Democratic Republic will require capital investments of at least $100 billion during the next decade to bring its industry, as well as its social and physical infrastructure, up to West German levels.

Facing those political and capital requirements, the country as a whole will have little time or money left for international adventures. As the Le Monde commentary continues, “the modernization and development of the former East Germany appears to (the Germans) to be a more important responsibility than international involvement.”

But what about the early 21st Century, after much of this development and modernization has taken place? Should we not then fear an even more powerful and internally integrated Germany?

One never knows, to repeat the opening refrain, but there are substantial grounds for believing that an even more powerful Germany of the future will continue to eschew expansionary international politics.

I continue to be impressed with the apparently ineluctable push toward European unification. And it seems clear, looking far down the road, that continuing success toward European economic unification will create the possibility of a kind of ballast in Europe, a countervailing pressure against German domination. In creating an ever-more-powerful set of political and bureaucratic institutions, the European Community is acquiring leverage over the economic policies of its members, including Germany, which no single country, such as France, could possibly achieve on its own.

Given the enormous benefits that Germany derives from the Common Market and will potentially enjoy with an increasingly integrated European economic union, it will be extremely reluctant in the future to jeopardize those opportunities by swimming against broader European currents.

In this regard, ironically, German reunification appears to have propelled rather than impeded European unification.

On one side, other countries in Western Europe seem to have calculated that their best chance at protecting against Germany’s immense economic power is to submerge that potent economy as quickly and as fully as possible in a unified and constraining European union.

On the other side, I get the impression that Germany is equally eager for continued movement toward closer European integration. One reason, if readers will tolerate some casual psychological speculation, may stem from many Germans’ anxiety about the ghosts of the country’s own totalitarian past. One way for Germans to protect themselves against the possibility of a resurgent chauvinism and expansionism, indeed, would be to immerse the country in an increasingly united Europe before those “national” tendencies--if they are indeed as characteristic and ineluctable as many fear--have a chance to rear their ugly heads.

With all this said, then, the Germans’ preference for the Swiss and Swedish models may indeed prove both credible and enduring. If so, then the major continuing battle within Germany--rather than involving a debate about international political involvement and potential domination--will revolve around the choice between the Swiss and Swedish examples.

For the time being, the 40% to 29% advantage currently indicated for bourgeois liberalism corresponds quite neatly to the recent advances that Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats have achieved on the coattails of excitement about reunification.

Even though I would prefer the Swedish over the Swiss model, I’ll take self-contained bourgeois liberalism over the Fascist quest for Lebensraum any day.