Qu vadis Germany?

In our time, which is characterized by hectic thinking and doing, there are only rarely moments that call for a pause – and allow us to look at the present through the wide-angle lens of our own experiences and adventures. Round birthdays can be such an occasion to look beyond the private sphere to look at the big picture, to name deficits and to describe perspectives. This Wednesday I will be 50 years old. The second half has kicked off. So how is the game? How can, should and will things continue – socially, politically and economically? To put it another way: Quo vadis, Germany?
The search for answers is currently all the more difficult as the pandemic has been infecting every long-term discourse like mildew for about two years. It has often been written – also at this point – that the corona catastrophe has revealed deficits and defects that were previously only virulent, as if under a magnifying glass. The complaints about a lack of digitization, the threat to world trade from fragile supply chains and insufficient focus of resources in the education sector are of course justified. They do not need to be repeated here.
More important is the equally necessary and painful admission: Behind all this is a development that has been apparent for two decades. Germany and Europe are blindly losing touch with global trends in many important fields – partly out of laziness, but also partly because of the failure of the elite. Three examples.
When three corporations from France, Germany and Spain merged to form the EADS group almost 22 years ago, the main reason behind the step was the realization that only a joint European aerospace industry would have a chance in a global market that had previously been dominated by US corporations was dominated. The calculation worked, today Airbus is one of the three major industry players worldwide.

Nothing remains of the technological lead

And where would the German and European aviation industry be today if the merger had not taken place? They probably wouldn’t exist anymore. The know-how would have swept across the Atlantic in a gigantic brain drain. When it comes to aircraft construction, Europe is exactly where other sectors are headed: on the sidelines. The best example of this is the area of ​​digital infrastructure.

At my age, some still remember the once trendy mobile phones from Nokia or Siemens or the development of the first mobile phone networks in the 1990s. Almost nothing remains of this technological lead. Missed the connection, know-how lost. Without support from Asia, the nationwide establishment of the urgently needed 5G network is an illusion. You don’t have to be a prophet to say: The next step in digital development will also take place without our intervention.

Arguably even more fatal is another trend that has been highlighted in the pandemic: a societal fragmentation and division that is making it increasingly difficult to find consensus on important issues. Last but not least, the power of social media enables smaller and smaller groups to define their individual interests as decisive – often without any regard for reason and logic.

The poison of the cleft fungus has entered the discourse

If, for example, debates about politically correct language cover up any objective discussion of the legitimate claims of minorities, this is an unmistakable symptom of misguided development. When courts seriously have to deal with the question of whether unvaccinated AfD members of the Bundestag have the right to sit next to vaccinated parliamentarians in the plenary hall of the German Bundestag, this proves how deeply the poison of the fungus has already penetrated the political discourse.

And if no carol singers went from house to house in a Bavarian village this year because anti-vaccination leaflets warned that the “C+M+B” on the door lintel was a secret marking to identify the unvaccinated, then that’s more than a local posse . It’s a general alarm signal. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared the question of social cohesion to be a central challenge and thus – implicitly – expressed the concern that a largely fragmented society could lose its resistance to authoritarian or esoteric infections.

In order to counteract this, there is an urgent need for a grand narrative in which a large majority of people in our country can identify – just like in the years of reconstruction or, albeit briefly, in the turning years of 1989/90. Part of this narrative, which brings me to the third point, is the definition of the role that Germany can and wants to play in Europe and beyond.

A strategic concept towards China is missing

The lack of a coherent and consistent strategic position vis-à-vis China and, currently particularly sensitive, Russia can only be camouflaged as long as the German economy can balance the balance with that potency that traditional foreign policy has increasingly lost in recent years. However, this is met with increasing resistance. If, for example, China not only catches up with the German manufacturers in the development and production of electromobility, but also overtakes them, that weakens our position, as does the increasingly emotional discussion about the human rights situation in the Middle Kingdom.
Here and there we have to be honest: Beyond all diplomatic rhetoric, what is the German point of view? And how can this point of view be further developed into a coherent overall concept together with the partners in Europe and the USA? So far, the German attitude has mainly been limited to reactive behavior – with the result that there are hardly any creative impulses. Germany can certainly play a constructive role here, as the signing of the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015, in which German foreign policy played a key role, showed.

To those who find this – incomplete – analysis too pessimistic, I say: only a clear diagnosis enables successful therapy. In the three subject areas it is late, but not too late. If it is possible to develop coherent concepts for the challenges that are based on a broad social consensus as well as on the political and economic will to act, there is cause for optimism. However, this requires an open and honest analysis. To put it in the words of the writer Ingeborg Bachmann: “The truth is reasonable for people.”
Who, if not the new three-colored traffic light government, would have the power to expect people to tell painful truths? I hope that the decision-makers in politics and business will have the courage to do this in the years to come.

The author: Harald Christ is Federal Treasurer of the FDP.

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