GERMANY STEPS UP FOREIGN POLICY

 

In October, Britain slunk ignominiously out of Afghanistan. The United States is also itching to get out. “The bottom line is, it’s time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in May 2014, sticking to his self-imposed withdrawal deadline of 2016.

But there is one country in no hurry to leave: Germany.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants America to extend the nato mission beyond 2016, German newsmagazine Spiegel reported on October 12, citing anonymous sources. Chancellor Merkel reportedly told a parliamentary committee that she doubted that local security forces will be competent by the time German soldiers are scheduled to leave.

Meanwhile, Germany is investigating the possibility of sending soldiers to Iraq. And the Green Party—one of the nation’s most pacifist political groups—has called for German boots on the ground in Syria as part of a United Nations mission.

America’s foreign policy is becoming increasingly disastrous. Meanwhile, Germany’s is becoming more assertive. As America retreats from the world, Germany is starting to fill the footprints it has left behind.

Policing the Middle East

Britain’s politicians may be trying to convince the public that Afghanistan is a job well done, but Germany’s are not. The best German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier could bring himself to say in an Oct. 12, 2014, newspaper column was that, compared to Iraq and Syria, “the results in Afghanistan are fairly respectable” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung).

But Steinmeier didn’t just denounce the mission with faint praise. He also implicitly campaigned to extend it. He warned against “hastily leaving the country, like the Americans did in Vietnam in 1975″—and have been prone to do ever since.

With Britain drawing its forces down, Germany could become the second-largest foreign force in Afghanistan. The German force has come a long way during 13 years of war there. Berlin began the mission as a finicky partner to the U.S., undertaking only certain missions and pointing to its pacifist constitution and reluctant public. Yet now Germany is America’s most dependable ally—the one least likely to cut and run. In fact, the Germans seem more dependable than the Americans themselves. It would not be inconceivable for Germany to stay put even after America adds Afghanistan to the list of countries it has messily left behind.

Meanwhile, Germany has sent a team to Irbil in Kurdistan to decide whether the Bundeswehr should deploy there to train the Kurds. Germany has already joined America, Britain, France and other Western nations in arming the Kurds, and has flown some Kurdish soldiers back to Germany for training. Berlin has deployed a handful of soldiers to Iraq to train the Kurds and is now considering a more substantial deployment. Steinmeier said he’d received “signals” from other European Union nations that they may be interested in joining such an effort.

Germany is also considering going beyond Kurdistan and training Sunni fighters in Iraq as well. On October 31, Chancellor Merkel said, “If we were asked, we would consider training Sunni soldiers, not just Kurds.” Merkel said the Sunnis had been “badly treated” by the previous Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, oppression that has given Islamic State terrorists a strong following among Sunnis.

Overall, Germany’s foreign policy seems to be quickly coming of age. For example, Germany wants to confront the Islamic State and bring order to the chaos in Iraq—but not in such a way that hands the whole region over to Iran. Therefore Merkel suggests that Germany work with Iran’s Sunni adversaries. America’s shortsighted thinking means it usually focuses only on the crisis at hand. Here Germany is thinking of the future.

Confronting the Islamic State has support from across Germany’s political spectrum. Even the Green Party, which can usually be counted on to oppose any use of the German Army, favors the mission, given the right conditions. “[The Islamic State] can only be beaten militarily,” Greens parliamentary leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt told the Süddeutsche Zeitung on October 13. Germany “must be prepared to deploy the Bundeswehr in an operation,” she said. She was clear that she wanted a United Nations mandate for a mission—but still, for the Green Party this marked a rare call to arms.
Steinmeier ruled out any German deployment to Syria. But boots on the ground is not the only option. The Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (swp) think tank, which advises the German parliament, has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone.

Wise Restraint

Of course, a mature foreign policy doesn’t mean sending in the army at every sign of trouble. When it comes to withholding its military, Germany has also proved wiser than Britain and America.

In 2011, Britain, France and America led a military intervention in Libya, enforcing a no-fly zone in the air and deploying special forces on the ground. Germany, by contrast, refused to get involved. In many circles within Germany’s current government, that was viewed as a mistake. Immediately after the attack, Germany’s nato allies labeled it as “an unreliable partner,” and America and France lost trust in Berlin.

Now, however, trust lost has been regained. Look at the disastrous results of the Libyan intervention. Muammar Qadhafi was a brutal dictator, but at least he opposed radical Islam. His fall turned all of North Africa into a new battleground in the war against terror. Terrorism surged in Algeria. The West had to step in to prevent Mali being completely overrun. Radical Islamists gained control of some of Qadhafi’s advanced weapons. And Libya is still suffering under civil war—a deadly no-man’s land and playground for terrorists.

The whole region would be far better off had the West followed Germany’s lead, not America’s.


Entire article:
https://www.thetrumpet.com/article/12251.2.170.0/united-states/stepping-into-americas-footprint