Europe’s Sovereignty in Times of Disruption
“Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose” (Janis Joplin in Me and Bobby McGee)
Dear Tanit Koch,
Dear Mr. Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner, Thomas Lange, Tom Buhrow, Michael Hüther, State Secretary Mark Speich,
Thank you for the invitation.
The Value of Freedom
The title of the event makes it clear that freedom does not come for free. It raises the question of values and the worth of the transatlantic relationship.
Values like freedom, human dignity, and democracy exist independently of material worth.
We cannot buy them. But they can cost something.
We like to talk about “German-American friendship.” It indeed exists. Our society has a different but predominantly friendly image of American society. The United States still leads the list of the most popular countries for student exchanges.
But when friendship becomes political, things get difficult. My generation was defamed as “anti-American” because of its protest against the Vietnam War—by a father’s generation that had shortly before fought against the U.S. with weapons in hand and, unlike us, did not know English.
Who stood more for the values of the West? Lieutenant William Calley, convicted for the massacre of 500 people in My Lai? Or Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the secret background of this illegal war waged by the U.S.?
Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer were also accused of “anti-Americanism” when they prevented Germany from participating in the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Who were the better transatlanticists in Germany? Those who wanted to go to war with George W. Bush? Or those who, like Barack Obama, rejected that war as a destabilization of the Middle East?
You see, the friendship bracelets are fragile. They don’t last long.
We could refer to Bismarck. According to him, states do not have friends; they have interests.
Precisely because we do not live in a “community of fate,” it is time to reassess the value of transatlantic relations.
Donald Trump’s second election is a turning point in the history of American democracy.
It is not merely a change of government. A system change is looming.
In times of disruption, we need a redefinition of the relationship between the U.S. and Europe.
The End of Democratic Capitalism?
Trump’s victory was decisive. He has not only regained all the swing states from Joe Biden. There is no long-term structural majority for the Democrats.
Both parties shared this idea. The Democrats believed they just had to wait for immigration and urbanization. The Republicans thought they could organize majorities against the popular vote only with the help of the electoral college system and gerrymandering.
But Trump won over the majority of voters. He narrowed the gap in Democratic strongholds. He turned the once Grand Old Party into a MAGA movement loyal to him.
Trump formed a new coalition of voters—especially male voters.
It includes not only right-wing, Bible-believing rural residents and wealthy suburbanites. It also appealed to Black men as well as many Latinos.
They were united by their contempt for those beneath them. The discourse of hate against those below them was an expression of the defense of their own status privileges.
These privileges were under pressure—due to inflation, which made energy and food more expensive following the Ukraine war, and due to the successful fight against inflation. Higher interest rates dashed the dream of homeownership for many.
Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid” is not merely a statistical statement. Statistically, Biden pursued a successful economic policy, with falling inflation, high growth rates, and high employment. But the success of the Inflation Reduction Act did not translate into the everyday experience of the masses.
The Democrats’ warnings about Trump’s racism led 96% of Black women to vote for Kamala Harris. However, warnings about a new fascism did not convince a majority.
Instead, Elon Musk bought votes and turned his platform X into a misinformation machine spreading hate and lies.
The fact that the warning of a new fascism didn’t stick doesn’t mean it isn’t fascism.
Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Secretary of State, wrote in her book “Fascism: A Warning”: “What makes a movement fascist is not the ideology, but the willingness to do whatever is necessary—including the use of violence and the disregard for the rights of others—to assert itself and gain obedience.”
Madeleine Albright wrote this in 2018. It reads like a prediction of Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ attempt to violently overturn Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 6, 2021.
For those who still find Trump’s fascism lacking movement, take a look at his rally in Madison Square Garden. At the end of the event, an ambassador from a major nation turned to another and said, “That’s Sportpalast.” He deliberately used the German word.
Regardless of whether one adopts that view, a new system is trying to establish itself here. It’s about a system change. There is another parallel that leads Democrats in the U.S. today to speak of a new 1932.
Like the fascists in Germany, Trump triumphed with the support and opportunism of Big Money.
For opportunism, look at Jeff Bezos. He prohibited the Washington Post editorial board from issuing its traditional election endorsement. He explicitly wants conditions like those before the Post’s revelations about Richard Nixon’s criminal Watergate actions.
This system change, this disruption, is not merely an internal matter of the United States.
This system change will have massive consequences for Europe.
A look at Trump’s direct supporters shows this. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have invested millions in Trump’s campaign—and have become billions richer. They decisively influenced the choice of JD Vance as vice president. Above all, they have clear political visions.
Peter Thiel has long ceased to believe that “freedom and democracy … are compatible.” Therefore, democracy must be sacrificed. The freedom of Musk and Thiel is not a right for everyone. This libertarian freedom is exclusive. It is about their freedom to do whatever they want—unimpeded by law, regulation, or majorities.
Musk and Thiel are not only against separation of powers and the rule of law—they hate the market economy and competition. Their goal—as they themselves write—is monopolies along with monopoly profits.
For Musk, “reducing bureaucracy” is just another word for being able to eliminate competitors and ignore inconvenient environmental and consumer standards as a government representative.
A new system conflict is looming.
For decades, democratic capitalism—the combination of democracy and a market economy—has established itself as a global societal model, in Europe, parts of Asia, all of Latin America, and southern Africa.
Democratic capitalism has long been challenged by an authoritarian state capitalism of Chinese origin, which created prosperity for many without democracy—and thus developed an attractiveness in the Global South.
Germany and Europe have expressed this towards China in the formula: China is a “partner, competitor, and systemic rival.”
The libertarian model contrasts democratic capitalism and state-commanded capitalism with a private monopoly capitalism. In this system, monopolists use the state to enforce their immediate interests.
These interests do not stop at national borders. The libertarian idea is not a protectionist one. Anyone who wants to go to Mars, like Musk, also wants global monopolies.
Hence the attempted extortion of Brazil’s Supreme Court. Hence JD Vance’s threats to withdraw NATO protection from Europe if the European Union regulates Musk’s platform X.
If Trump, Thiel, and Musk prevail in the U.S., Europe faces a new challenge. The U.S. will no longer just be a partner and sometimes rough competitor.
The U.S. will become a partner, competitor, and systemic rival in a new way.
This will have an impact on European security and prosperity.
Out of NATO?
Our first concern, of course, is Ukraine. If Trump and Vance carry out their announcements, they will scale back support for Ukraine. They want to force Zelensky into an agreement with Putin, giving up territories.
Europeans can hardly prevent Ukraine’s coercion.
Germany is the second largest supplier of weapons after the U.S. It supplies more to Ukraine than the rest of the European Union plus the United Kingdom. But the Europeans cannot financially or technically compensate for the absence of the U.S.
If there is a deal at the expense of Ukraine, Europe’s security interests are directly affected. A merely frozen conflict that Putin can reignite at any time is a permanent threat to our security.
Effective security guarantees are needed against this.
Effective security guarantees for Ukraine against attacks by Russia are in Europe’s immediate interest. These guarantees could consist of NATO membership for the rest of Ukraine, as Henry Kissinger called for shortly before his death. Or they would have to be equivalent to such a guarantee.
Europeans must face the uncomfortable question of whether they are willing and able to give these guarantees. It will be us Europeans who have to guarantee them. Trump will not do it.
“We can no longer rely on the U.S. as a power of order.” (Angela Merkel, July 20, 2018)
Merkel’s correct realization was followed by nothing in Germany under the grand coalition. Only with the Zeitenwende (turning point) proclaimed by Olaf Scholz did Germany begin to tackle this task with the special fund of 100 billion euros.
That will not be enough. And certainly not in times of systemic change under Trump.
We do not even have to assume that Trump will leave NATO as he did the Paris Climate Agreement. He would indeed have the majority to overturn the law passed during his first term by Nancy Pelosi and John McCain. But the U.S. is not in NATO out of friendship but out of self-interest.
NATO is part of the U.S.’s geopolitical strength.
From Trump’s perspective, NATO is a good tool to blackmail individual European states and split the European Union. He would prefer not to give that up.
If Europe does not want to be blackmailed and divided, it must invest more in its own security. It is not just a question of money. It is also a question of where this money is spent.
According to Wolfgang Ischinger, today 80% of European defense spending ends up as arms orders in the U.S.
Annalena Baerbock was right to demand that the answer to America First must be “Europe United.” In security policy, this means we must not only standardize.
We need to build a European defense industry. We need a European fighter jet, a European drone industry, and a missile defense shield in Europe that is not dependent on U.S. technology.
It is more expensive than going shopping in the U.S., as we did with the special fund.
For more European sovereignty, 2% of GDP for defense is not enough. It will probably be more like 3 to 4%.
And it is not just a question of money. Europe United will only exist if the Franco-German relationship, damaged under Scholz and Macron, is repaired.
Helmut Kohl had forged a strategic alliance with the socialist Mitterrand. Between the real tough guys Jaques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, not even an empty glass fit. And Angela Merkel, the Protestant from the Uckermark, even got along with a criminal parvenu named Sarkozy. But between Scholz and Macron, radio silence reigns. The Franco-German engine doesn’t even stutter anymore. In China policy, Germany is outvoted by a majority with France.
It’s not just about Germany and France. It’s also about Poland. If Europe does not want to be divided into the old and new Europe, a strategic alliance with Poland is needed. After all, we have Donald Tusk as a contact person again. But Scholz tends to push him away when he excludes Poland from consultations on Ukraine.
But we must at least become capable of action in Europe again.
This costs money—and the same applies to the second field of contention between the U.S. and Europe after the system change under Trump—geo-economics.
The End of Globalization?
Trump’s election is a global setback for climate protection. Even if Trump cannot completely reverse the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest climate protection program in U.S. history—the U.S. will fail as a global actor in climate protection. Trump is about saving fossil capitalism. “Drill, baby, drill.” The appointment of climate denier and fracking entrepreneur Chris Wright as energy secretary underscores this.
In the future, China, with its billions of investments in renewables, will be a better partner in climate protection than the U.S.—and remains an uncomfortable competitor.
But even before Trump, China and the U.S. fundamentally changed the conditions of globalization. Globalization today is no longer a race for the lowest possible social and environmental standards.
After COVID-19 and with the war in Ukraine, globalization became a competition in industrial policy for supremacy in strategic industries.
This competition is fought with norms, tariffs, and subsidies. This affects Germany in a fundamental crisis.
Germany’s business model is broken.
Producing steel and cars with cheap Russian gas and exporting them around the world no longer works. The climate crisis and Putin force a shift away from fossil imports. And Donald Trump is making exports even more expensive: “I love tariffs.”
Trump had already imposed tariffs during his first term, most of which Biden did not lift. Now, 20% more tariffs are to be imposed on goods from “Little China” (Trump about Europe). This particularly affects Germany.
But even though it particularly affects Germany, the response to this challenge must be a European one. German special paths, a policy of appeasement, will only encourage Trump to continue to blackmail.
Those who want to avoid tariffs must threaten Trump with serious consequences. Otherwise, he won’t negotiate.
Countermeasures go beyond tariffs on whiskey and Harleys. If there is no climate protection in the U.S., then the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism applies. Platforms like X and Amazon must, of course, submit to European laws in Europe.
Above all, however,
Germany and Europe must reposition themselves in globalization.
They must define what their strategic industries are. Which value chains they want to have on the continent. How they protect their strategic industries.
In other words, we must learn from China and the U.S. And we must open up new markets for ourselves beyond China and the U.S.
With recipes from the 1990s, this will not work. More likely with Mario Draghi’s proposals.
Europe is a single market with 440 million consumers representing about 17% of the world’s social product. But Europe has a huge investment gap. Draghi identifies a gap of private and public investment of 800 billion euros. That’s 4.5% of economic output.
If we want to preserve our freedom and prosperity, we must close this gap.
By improving the framework conditions for private investments here—and through public investments in maintaining and expanding infrastructure.
Investing in Freedom
We can put it another way: Values must be worth something to us.
We must invest in our freedom.
Here I have two bad messages to conclude.
The first for CDU/CSU and FDP: None of this can be done together with tax cuts. And financing it through cuts in pensions and citizens’ benefits will not work either.
The second for SPD, Greens, and Left: This cannot be done on credit. A reform of the debt brake will only help in the short term.
Permanent tasks like defense and infrastructure must be permanently financed by revenue.
Some point to Willy Brandt. He spent 4% on defense alongside his policy of detente. That’s true.
The whole truth, however, is:
Back then, the top income tax rate was 53%, wealth tax was still collected, and the burden equalization levy was still in effect. In other words:
With Christian Lindner’s tax rates, Willy Brandt’s defense spending cannot be financed.
Our response to Trump’s system change must be:
Freedom costs. It should be worth it to us.
Because, to return to Janis Joplin, we have a lot to lose in times of disruption.
Thank you.