War and Peace . . . and a Changing Europe

>> Bill Whalen: It’s March 12, 2025 and welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. I'm Bill Whalen. I'm the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism here at the Hoover Institution.

 

I'll be the moderator in today's show. I'm not the only fellow, by the way, who is in the podcasting trade. If you don't believe me, you should go to our website, which is hoover.org, actually go to hoover.org forward/podcast. There you'll find podcasts and commentary. We also put out every month what we call a pod blast, which comes to your inbox and it gives you the best of the Hoover Institution.

 

And hopefully, this podcast makes the cut because I'm gonna have a good talk today. I want to focus today on Europe, two things in particular. First were a peace negotiation stand regarding Russia, Ukraine, and a war that's soon to complete its 38th month, which makes it about one year shy now of World War I.

 

Second, I want to talk about the changing face of European political leadership, specifically what to make of Germany's recent election. Helping me to unpack all of this is Russell Berman. Russell is a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and the Walter A Haas professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.

 

He's also the co-chair of Hoover's Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World. At Stanford, he's a member of both the Department of German Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature. He specializes in politics and culture in Europe as well as the Middle East. Russell, thanks for coming on the podcast.

 

>> Russell Berman: Happy to be here, Bill. Thanks for having me.

>> Bill Whalen: So we were complaining before I went on the air about the weather today. We're both doing this on the Stanford University campus, and we're in the midst of what they call here an atmospheric river, which is climate talk for a lot of rain.

 

It's raining in about three different directions. It is windy, it's gusting. And Russell, the one thing about the Stanford campus, it stands out when it rains like this. It's a flat campus, there's water everywhere.

>> Russell Berman: I'm glad I'm one floor up.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so how does your life get complicated when it rains like this?

 

I live just off campus. I like to walk back and forth to work or take a bicycle that's obviously out, but how does the rain affect you?

>> Russell Berman: It affects me the same way I walk a lot, both here and in San Francisco, where I live. And the a heavy rainy day confronts me with the moral quandary as to whether I should man up and go out there with an umbrella or whether I should just stay at home and stay warm and dry.

 

>> Bill Whalen: But we shouldn't complain too much because California needs the rain. Those who are familiar with how California works know the ecosystem as such. The rain comes in, it turns into snow up in the mountains and the snow melts off in the summertime, which gives us water. So yay, rain even as inconvenient today.

 

So Russell, let's talk about first of all Ukraine and Russia. What's going on there? The news this week out of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday was that Ukraine has agreed to a 30 day ceasefire. The ball is now in Moscow's court. It's up to Russia to decide if it wants to go along with this.

 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio interviewed leaving Saudi Arabia. He said both sides are going to have to give up land, be part of the deal. Still to be decided if indeed we're gonna have peace negotiations, Russell, contentious matters like POW swaps and the very contentious matter of Ukrainian children were abducted and taken to Russia and being returned to their homeland.

 

So this much I think we'd agree, Russell, we all want peace. Even the Russians, I assume, want peace in this regard. It's hard to find numbers on this. The numbers dance all over the place. But I've seen figures of the Russians have lost something on the order of 800,000 troops in this war now, which is double the number of service American service members who lost their lives in World War II.

 

And consider that was a longer war and two theaters. So the Russians are simply getting slaughtered here. I could not really find reliable numbers on how many Ukrainian casualties they are, but let's just call it a catastrophe, Russell, in this regard, not just the number of people dead or injured, the destruction to the country.

 

You're talking about a nation that very much like A World War I country is losing, seeing a generation of men to combat. So who knows how that country comes out of it. Let's begin with this, Russell. I was thinking about history coming in today and I specifically thought About Munich in 1938, September 30, 1938, particular, the Munich Agreement is signed.

 

The Czechs are forced to give up the Sudetenland. In return, Western Europe rejoices because they think they have now avoided an all out war with Germany. And guess what, 11 months later, Germany is getting ready to pour into Poland. So let's say, Russell, that there is a peace agreement that includes Russia getting a portion of eastern Ukraine that it currently occupies, and let's assume that it's some sort of armistice like Korea, where the fighting stops.

 

What assurances are going to be baked into this, Russell, that Putin is not going to go back and fight again?

>> Russell Berman: There are absolutely no assurances that Putin won't go back and fight again. This issue emerges in the pending negotiations. With regard to the question of guarantees, let us say that there's a ceasefire along the current front lines.

 

When that ceasefire is over, or if an agreement is reached, when that agreement is in place, he may decide, just take another big chunk out of Ukraine and keep on moving along the way. Putin and the Russians have said that their position is that they want all of Ukraine.

 

I spoke with a Russian ambassador a couple of years ago who said, I proposed, well, I proposed in a kind of conciliatory move. Could we think of an Austrian solution that is like Austria after the Second World War, was occupied, like Germany until 1955, but then there was an agreement on neutrality.

 

Would the Russians accept a neutral Ukraine and everybody pulls out? Absolutely not, ambassador replied. We want to get all of Ukraine. We want to put Zelensky on trial. There's an argument that says they want to have the Black Sea coast, period. There's no guarantee. I'm not sure, though, that the Munich analogy is absolutely compelling.

 

It is the pessimistic version, obviously. On the other hand, we should look at the reality of what has transpired. There is no doubt that Ukraine has a moral, a normative, as we say, deontological claim on retrieving territorial integrity, including Crimea.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Russell Berman: And full sovereignty. And full sovereignty would include the right to enter into treaties such as to apply for NATO membership.

 

There's no doubt in my mind that Ukraine has a moral claim on that. It also has troops occupying a lot of its territory. And although since the Russian invasion of 2022, the second invasion cuz the first invasion was the Invasion of Crimea.

>> Bill Whalen: 2014, right?

>> Russell Berman: Ever since 2022, there's been initially reluctantly, but then robustly cheerleading from European capitalists and from Washington.

 

But the Europeans and the Americans under the Biden administration, while they have, yes, given lots of funds and arms, never gave Zelensky enough to win the war. There was never an agenda to win the war. There was never a plan to bring the war to a conclusion. I think this was not intentional.

 

A conspiracy theorist might disagree. I think this is a matter of incompetence and anxiety about fighting to win. So now what, almost three years later, with so many dead. President Trump arrives and says, let's bring this catastrophe to an end. Bring it to an end, presumably by some kind of compromise.

 

This is not good. There has never been a will in Washington or in Europe to fight to a Russian defeat. One could say a Russian defeat would be great for American interests, but that is not what has transpired. So we have to look this grim reality in the face.

 

And say, like it or not, there will be some compromise. It's not up to me to negotiate away Ukrainian positions. And I have consistently written that the Ukrainians have a right to it all. But let's face it, they, they've put up a great fight, they've fought valiantly, they've inspired people around the world.

 

They've put the Europeans to shame. We know that the European populations, at least in, in, in old Europe aren't willing to fight for their countries, but the Ukrainians are good for them. But a lot of killing has taken place. Now when the, how should I put it, altercation took place in the Oval Office between President Zelensky and President Trump and Vice President Vance, this not only rattled U.S. Ukraine relations, this rattled U.S, European relations.

 

And the Europeans, always inclined to think the worst of North America, decided that this was the indication that the US Was giving up on its alliances, on NATO and on the security umbrella that the United States has provided to Europe for so many years with so little participation by the Europeans in their own self defense.

 

It seemed as if, or the Europeans read this as this proves Russiagate. This proves that Putin and Trump are together. Now suddenly this wonderful news from Saudi Arabia, that whole situation seems to have flipped. Zelensky, who in the Oval Office probably would have been, would have done better to keep his mouth shut at a certain point, has indicated some kind of regret for what happened.

 

They're apparently signing a mineral deal, and deals is what the world is about moving forward now. And as Secretary Rubio put it, it is now in Russia's court. Will Russia say let's have a ceasefire and try to move it on. So far there's no indication. And all of a sudden Zelensky looks like the compliant partner here willing to work with the White House and Putin is hidden away.

 

>> Bill Whalen: We'll see what happens. Let's look at another court, Russell, which is the court of the United States and our friends in Western Europe. We're going to move many steps ahead here and it would be peace process to the point where let's say Russia agrees and Ukraine agrees.

 

And so we have a situation where Ukraine is still a sovereign country, but Russia has been placated by getting a piece of Ukrainian land. And in between the two is going to be a dmz, Russell, and sitting in that DMZ is going to be a lot of peacekeepers.

 

So which nation is gonna step forward and put in peacekeepers, nations, plural I should say, because I don't know? Throw out a number, 10, 20, 30,000 people are gonna have to sit in that DMZ.

>> Russell Berman: DMZ is exactly the right word, you're proposing a model that is something like what we have in the Korean Peninsula.

 

President Trump's made it clear that those troops on the ground won't be American troops. In the wake of the Oval Office theater, the Europeans finally seem to get the message that they should do something for their own self defense. They finally began to realize that what the Ukrainians have been doing all along actually is not only fighting for Ukrainian sovereignty, they've been fighting for the security and freedom of Europe.

 

The Europeans have, yes, paid for this, but there's been no contemplation of putting European troops there to fight, or, I mean, perish the thought. Imagine the Europeans having decided to open up a second front. If Russia is going for Kyiv, the Europeans should go for Kaliningrad. This could have been on the table as a way to pressure Moscow to act with restraint.

 

This is my take on the world, both with regard to the European theater and with regard to East Asia. We're just waiting for our adversary to go on the offensive and they imagine that all we'll do is play defense. They should have to calculate in, well, what kind of offense are they going to face as well.

 

The price is too low for Putin. So the Europeans are now beginning to think about, could they put troops in, I don't know. Germans, French, Poles, who knows? I think an interesting solution would be if we're Turks. Turkey is a NATO partner, Turkey has the second largest, or maybe now third-largest military in NATO.

 

And Erdogan, for all of his faults, bless his soul, he has been consistent on saying that Ukraine should regain full territorial sovereignty, including for Crimea, where President Erdogan of Turkey has a particular affection for the Crimean Tartars, so there are lots of local stories here as well. Turkey is the key actor in maritime law in the Black Sea, going back to the Montreux Convention of 1930, whatever.

 

And Ukraine is the other side of the Black Sea, or will it be Ukraine? Maybe it'll be Russia. Turkey and Russia have a long, troubled history together. There's no plan at this point as to who those peacekeepers will be. Putin has expressed his opposition to NATO troops. He also expresses opposition to troops from NATO member states, even if they're not under a NATO command.

 

So it could maybe someone else, but maybe Putin doesn't get his way.

>> Bill Whalen: Right. So the Korean model is A good one in this regard, Russell, that war has been stopped, halted, and armistice reached, what, 72 years ago, I believe, 1953. So there hasn't been another war since then.

 

So you can say good model. But here's where I think the model doesn't work out. I'm not privy to the mindset of Pyongyang, but what I'm led to believe is this, that they would not start a war for the simple reason that they understand if they did so, they would be obliterated very quickly by a superior military force from the United States.

 

So why sweep into South Korea? You might destroy a great part of Seoul, but in the end, you will be wiped off the planet. But the problem with this analogy, Russell, as you now put this in the context of Ukraine and Russia, would Vladimir Putin be of the mindset that if he were to start a war again, he'd be wiped off the planet?

 

In other words, it seems to me that if you're going to have this armistice and tell Putin no more, he has to think that it's not worth my while to begin the war again. So the question would be, what threat or threats, plural, would you put in front of him to show him that it's not worth his while to try to gobble up all of Ukraine?

 

>> Russell Berman: It's very difficult to imagine what the menu of threats would be. The difference between North Korea and Russia to nuclear powers is the order of magnitude. North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has some nuclear arms. Russia has a whole lot. And that's the reason why we have to take Russia seriously.

 

It's not its economy. It's not its ideological appeal, it's the nuclear arms that it has, which include some arms that were stationed in Ukraine but were sent back to. Sent back. Sent over to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the behest of the international agreement, the so called Budapest Accord in which the United States and I believe the United Kingdom committed themselves to Ukrainian territorial integrity.

 

So that's what guarantees on paper are worth. I don't know what kind of threat they'd have to be. Maybe massive sanctions, but the Europeans have a hard time enforcing those sanctions, I don't know. I frankly don't know.

>> Bill Whalen: What if you brought Ukraine into NATO and said, Mr. Putin, we're serious about Article 5 and if you attack again, it's game on with all of NATO, not just Ukraine.

 

But now this begs the question, do the NATO countries want to go there?

>> Russell Berman: I don't think NATO countries want to go. The NATO countries for a while were making the argument that they did not want to admit a country that is currently at war because that would trigger their own immediate participation in war.

 

Unless NATO and the United States were prepared to go to war. This is, this is a non starter. Unless there's a devastating military defeat of Russia, it's not unimaginable. I'm not advocating this, it's not unimaginable. That rather than contemplating European peacekeeping troops along the DMZ in, in Ukraine, that the Europeans man up, get the weapons, get the troops and go on a counteroffensive and you know, really defeat Russia.

 

But I don't think the Europeans have that in them.

>> Bill Whalen: What are your thoughts, Russell, on NATO's future? The organization turns 76 on April 4th. Do you think NATO, is NATO gonna change in the next few years? Is the United States going to stay in NATO?

>> Russell Berman: It's a question that's been posed very dramatically again since the Oval Office event with, with Zelensky, which the Europeans read as a.

 

Well, that and Vice President Vance's speech in Munich read them both as indications of US Hesitation about its commitment to European European security. I think that both NATO and the EU for that matter, face significant internal pressures because of centripetal forces of different nations having different interests. I'm not sure if NATO would collapse, but we could see European security architectures developing outside of NATO alongside NATO and gradually European defense resources flowing more toward the organizations of their own, to use Macron's term, Strategic Autonomy, rather than to NATO.

 

I could imagine a, a networked security structure that would include at least Poland and the Baltics. And the Nordic states, which would cover the key vulnerabilities on NATO's Eastern Front, but also more importantly, the Arctic, which is likely to become a theater of competition in the future, which is why the Greenland discussion is, in fact, really important.

 

>> Bill Whalen: You recently penned a column for the website 1945. For our listeners who are not familiar with that, that's the numbers 1 and 9, 19, but then alphabetically 45, 1945.com. The headline of that was what will Happen if America Stops Supporting Ukraine. And what caught my attention, Russell, was this passage deep in the article where he wrote, and I quote, if Europe is rebuffed by Washington, it has other options.

 

It might choose to deepen its trade dependence on China.

>> Russell Berman: I think we're at a moment where the great powers, and I guess I'll include Europe in that as an economic great power, are exploring flexibility of their global relations. Heretofore, we've had a transatlantic architecture that has served us well, and I hope it could remain strong.

 

But it has been severely tested in this past couple of weeks. At the meantime, Russia and China have moved close together. They're not always on the same page. I think Russia smarts at being the junior partner to Beijing, but that's the way it is with population and technology.

 

At the same time, Washington is seeing China as the really important threat to, to U.S. economy and U.S. security. 2017, National Security Strategy shifted the United States away from counterterrorism to great power competition. But the only and with great power, that means China and Russia maybe as subsidiary, North Korea and Iran, but China is the real issue.

 

A big difference between the United States and our friends in Europe is that our friends in Europe don't have a Pacific coast. I'm leaving aside a few, a few French islands in the South Pacific, but that's not going to be what world history depends on. We have to, the United States, for security reasons and for economic reasons, should worry about China.

 

If, if China takes Taiwan in 2027, as some predict, US credibility in the island chain that includes Japan and, and the Philippines will, will plummet. The United States will no longer appear to be a guarantor of security in the region. And the U.S Sphere of influence in the Pacific will be pushed back to drumroll Pearl harbor, that's where we are.

 

And the western Pacific will become a Chinese lake. That's why we worry about China. And that's why, listen, in the Trump administration right now, there are those who say yes, great power competition. There are others who say, it's only about China, therefore, we can't do Ukraine in the Middle East.

 

And then there are those who are just, you know, how should I put it, consistent isolationists and say, you know, at best we do the Western Hemisphere or we do the Western Hemisphere north of the Rio Grande. That's the debate. And I think that's those several different but contiguous positions explains sometimes the inconsistencies that appear from the outside in terms of current foreign policy.

 

But I have to say that between when I wrote that 1945 piece and the news from Saudi Arabia, it looks like the Trump negotiating agenda has in fact pulled off a coup here in flipping the script on Zelensky and Russia.

>> Bill Whalen: It is hard at the age of Trump 2.0 to do these sorts of columns, Russell, because things happen very fast.

 

I do a show for Hoover called Goodfellows, we record it, comes out about two or days later after the show. Something has completely changed from what we talked about two days before. So unless you are doing this day in and day out, it's a struggle. But let's turn our attention to Germany, Russell, and the the results of the February 23rd national election.

 

Interesting election in this regard. The turnout, turnout was monstrous. I think about 82 and a half percent, largest turnout since the 1980s. It's a nation, about 60 million voters, I believe. They had nine televised debates, compare that to the US Election where there were two debates and all just, just not good.

 

Let's talk about the winner, the Chancellor in waiting, Friedrich MERTZ, who is Mr. Mertz Russell? And put him in the context of Europe. What does he stand for? And also tell us a little bit about what the CDU and the CSU are. So I'm gonna get the alphabet soup that is German politics.

 

>> Russell Berman: Yeah. Okay, so the CDU, CSU, this is the Christian Democratic Unions, Christian Social Union. This is the center right party, it's their Republican Party. You could say it's the, the. The CDU is the party in most of Germany. The CSU is its sister party in the southern state of Bavaria.

 

That is indicative of a, of a longer history of Bavarian relative autonomy. But it's in effect, one party, and Friedrich Merz is the head of this party. He is, one could say, the successor to Angela Merkel. Although they represent very different positions in terms of their politics within the center right, center right field, his party won the most votes.

 

Therefore, it is up to him to take the lead in coalition negotiations. Let's see. I guess they got around 28 or 29%, so by no way a majority. And they have to negotiate with some other party in order to form a governing coalition. This is the way German politics work.

 

You mentioned that they had what, seven or eight or nine debates? We only had two German politics. In the good old days of West Germany, there's a politics of two and a half parties. The center right, the center left, and a small liberal party that would switch back and forth.

 

Now we have, I guess, seven parties that are in play in any election. There's been a fragmentation of the party political landscape, as the Germans say. And this is causing difficulty, it's going to be harder and harder to form a stable coalition. You know, frankly, I think that we may end up seeing minority governments where the lead party forms ad hoc coalitions for different bills, but we're not quite there yet.

 

Mats is negotiating now with the Social Democrats, the center left party, together with which he could form a governing coalition. German Social Democrats are the oldest party, they go back into the 19th century.

>> Bill Whalen: Is that the SPD?

>> Russell Berman: The SPD, they go back to the 19th century.

 

Some of the listeners may remember Willy Brandt or Helmut Schmidt, legendary leaders of the SPD. They were plummeted, they were devastated. Their results were the worst ones since 1887,

>> Bill Whalen: 16.4%. But you know, who had a Good night, Russell. Alternative for Germany or AfD, which got about 20.8%, almost 21%, it's doubled its support over the years.

 

So what is going on there? As I understand it, this is a party that likes to call itself Libertarian Conservative, talks about remigration.

>> Russell Berman: AfD began as a classical liberal economic party. Skeptical of the European Union was very quickly taken over by anti-immigration nationalists. Immigration has emerged as a key question across Europe and of course we have the same topic here in the United States.

 

It's particularly acute though in Germany. The AFD, Alternative for Deutschland, the alternative for Germany. The name name comes from a linguistic tick of former Chancellor Angela Merkel who would often say there is no alternative in order to, to explain the necessity of people adopting her position. And they're saying yes, there are alternatives.

 

There is this alternative, they're a populist party, they impute to the mainstream parties a kind of uniparty homogeneity. They just prior to this election there was a three party coalition. The Social Democrats, the Greens, the Environmentalist Party and the Liberals. Their color coded red, green, yellow therefore is called the Traffic Light Coalition.

 

Mats and the CDU campaigned against them, campaigned against their inability to act on immigration or energy or recession, but so did the FDA. The AfD accused the three parties of the traffic light but also the CDU of just doing the same thing. And only the AfD would offer an alternative.

 

Now there's a range of positions the AfD, some are center very right, I should put it that way all the way over to some that are regarded as feeding in, in Nazi waters. I, I don't, I, I, I think it's wrong to call all of the AfD, all the 20% of German voters, Nazis.

 

This is just a misreading of German society and culture. But, and we're also living in an era all you know, in the United States as well in Europe as where there's an extraordinarily inflationary use of the epithet Nazi. Anybody I don't like is pretty much a Nazi. But the AfD is, is out of the European mainstream.

 

It is comparable to the far right party in France, the Le Pen Party, the Rassemble national, the brothers of Italy of Meloni. But both the brothers of Italy and the French rassemblement see the AFD as further to the right than they. And that gives you a sense of what the issue is because in the German discussion, given this perception of the AfD, there was the expectation that there would be a Brandmauer, a firewall and that no one would participate with the AfD and would not, certainly not form a coalition with the AfD.

 

And Matz has been very adamant that he would not form a coalition with the AFD. He's a Christian Democrat, he's a conservative. He's not a radical right winger, as which he sees the AfD.

>> Bill Whalen: Russell, if you look at the United States map after the Trump Harris election, we assign colors to tough states, red states, blue states.

 

Red states are conservative Republican, blue states are liberal Democrat. If you look at the map of the US Russell, it's streaks of blue on the two coasts and a lot of red in between. Now, that's misleading because while the red dominates the geography, it's not the population necessarily.

 

So the two kind of balance out. But the point is, when you look at the United States, you see blue on one side, blue on the other side and red in between. You look at a map of Germany right now. I saw this the other day. It's fascinating.

 

And that if you look at the map of Germany right now and assigned political identity in this election, the western half of Germany is CDU, CSU, and the eastern half is not, it's AFD. It looks almost like the Cold War is still going on with the Western Germany and East Germany.

 

Why, why does it split that way?

>> Russell Berman: Of course, that's a map of who won the, so you lose all the SPD votes or the green votes who are only clustered in a couple of metropolitan centers. That West Germany is all CDU is not surprising, this is a recognized conservative party.

 

In the maps, it's black. That's the clerical black because of the religious origin of the party. But in the former East Germany, it's all blue, which is the color that's been attributed to the AfD. Why. The AfD appeals to East German sentiment successfully in part because this is the population that came out of communism and they don't have the same sensibility about the importance of liberal democracy.

 

They have much less experience with immigration than Western Germany. An interesting problem has to do with work I did earlier on anti Americanism in Europe after 1989, after the fall of the Soviet bloc, collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Pretty much in all East European, Central European states, you saw a bonus, a pro American bonus.

 

People were pro America because America is who defeated the. The occupying power, Russia. The only place where that doesn't work is in East Germany. You don't get a more pro American stance there. And I think a lot about why this is. It could be because for that population, for that culture, the United States was the enemy basically in three wars.

 

First World War, Second World War, Cold War, for, for the Poles, for the Hungarians. You know, the United States was sort of on their side in, in some of this and representative force of liberation. There's also an economic divide between West Germany and the former East Germany. The East Germans are doing less well than the West Germans.

 

Why that is the case is a whole other podcast. But what we have seen is that the AfD does well in poorer electorates. The AfD, and not the SPD, is attracting the working class vote.

>> Bill Whalen: Wel, Mr. Metz has said that he would like to reach out to France and Britain to discuss the sharing of nuclear weapons.

 

He has clarified it, saying it would be. I think his word he chose was it would be a compliment to the US Nuclear shield. He has also said, in the aftermath of the unfortunate Zelensky Trump meeting in the Oval Office, he said that Europe needs to be independent.

 

That's a word he chose, independent in the United States. But he's also been described, Russell, as a transatlanticist at the same time. So can you kind of explain, well, at least the contradiction of independent versus transatlanticist, but also where you think he's going with the idea of sharing nuclear weapons?

 

>> Russell Berman: A lot of this phrasing is squishy, I'll put it that way. He has a history as a transatlanticist. The CDU is a transatlantic party. Transatlantic means that they look to the United States, the alliance with the United States, and they count on the United States to provide a security umbrella.

 

Fun fact, Ben Hooker, a member of the far right wing of the AfD, denounces the CDU as a vassal party, that is a vassals of the United States. So MATS can indeed claim to be paying the price for support for an alliance with The United States, on the other hand, for years, various European leaders have called for greater European capability in terms of providing security.

 

So it's not only been American presidents. President Obama called them, what, free riders. That's Obama, let alone what Trump has called them. And you know, the United States has limited budget resources. And why on earth should we be paying for European defense if they're not paying it for themselves?

 

Because they have a comparable and perhaps even larger economy than ours. So de Gaulle called for European independence. Chancellor Merkel, remember her? She was the leader of the free world. She said, we have to do more. We have responsibility to do more for ourselves. Chancellor Schultz, the outgoing Chancellor, talked about a a change of era, that Germany has to step up and do more for itself.

 

And so Matt is not out of line in claim. And of course, Macron and his calls for strategic autonomy. Matt isn't out of line, this is a consistent position. He can call for the Europeans to have greater capability of their own and nonetheless remain in the alliance. Now, the nuclear question is super interesting.

 

France and England are the two nuclear powers inside Europe. Russia is obviously a major nuclear power who could threaten Europe, just as the Europeans for years have fretted over the question of how valid is the nuclear weapons umbrella provided by the United States. Will the United States save Chicago in order to defend Munich?

 

The Germans can say, well, will the UK endanger London in order to save Frankfurt? So he'd be looking for some kind of European nuclear umbrella. I don't think he's calling for a German nuclear armament, although that is, there's no reason why that couldn't come up as well. Except for pretty terrible 20th century history.

 

This is the result of the European distress that the United States might be less reliable. That sense or less liability is in part, I think, a result of maybe loose rhetoric coming out of Washington. That's a subjective problem, that could be solved with a speech coach. But there's also an objective problem.

 

As I said before, Europe doesn't have a Pacific coast. Europe doesn't face China as a threat in the same way that the United States does. And if the United States has to be paying for defense against China, Europe should really face its own responsibilities in Europe, including in Ukraine.

 

That doesn't mean that the United States won't be there at all. But not making it to 2% is not enough.

>> Bill Whalen: Final question for you, Russell. When the European leaders get together, is there an alpha in the room in this regard? We have a new German chancellor. We have a relatively new British prime minister.

 

Macron's been around for a while. I'm not sure any of them have a dominant personality, the kind of personalities who wanna take over Rome. But is there a leader that you see among this group who could sort of stand among the others and shepherd them along?

>> Russell Berman: Well, Macron will want that role, but he's getting a little tired and his domestic political situation is not strong.

 

Starmer might play a role maybe in building a bridge between Europe and the United States, but he does not seem to me to be your term alpha in the room. Potentially the alpha in the room is Meloni from Italy, who also could build a bridge and who would open up the possibility of discussion among these right wing parties.

 

Although not the far right parties. Mertz is not yet Chancellor, this is not a done deal. Coming back to that fractured political landscape in, in Germany right now. We're going now into the weeds of German politics. But we had the election a couple of weeks ago. Now the new legislature, the new Bundestag, the new Congress doesn't convene until the end of the month.

 

In the meantime, we have the old Congress having legislative capacity. This is sort of a lame duck phase, if you will. This is important because in the incoming Congress and the incoming Bundestag, the AfD and the FAR left party, the left together have. A third of the seats and a third of the seats is enough to block certain actions, including the proposed constitutional amendment, which would allow Germany, along with other nations to spend much more on its military.

 

Mats and Scholz for that matter, have to be working together right now to get that constitutional change through before the new Bundestag convenes. Some might say that this is undemocratic because the current Bundestag, although formally legislatively empowered, has obviously lost its electoral base. And there may be cases brought to the Constitutional Court to prevent this from happening.

 

But the new Bundestag won't be the same as the old Bundestag because the new Bundestag, presumably with a cdu SPD that is center right, center left coalition, is going to face a collaboration of the far left and the far right that can not only block constitutional amendments, but can block all sorts of appointments and, and other other mischief.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Russell, did you see the movie look who's, look who's Back? I think it's 20. I think it came out in 2015.

>> Russell Berman: Is this the Hitler movie?

>> Bill Whalen: It's a dark comedy and the premise is that Adolf Hitler comes back to modern day Berlin and he's walking around modern day Berlin wearing Hitler's outfit and people think he's just a Hitler impersonator, but he starts talking and the joke of the film is actually he has a message that people listen to.

 

I mention this, Russell, because May is the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Is there an appetite in modern Germany for military rebuild?

>> Russell Berman: No, there's no appetite or there's little appetite for a military rebuild.

>> Bill Whalen: Is that because of the cost involved or does it bring back bad memories or combination thereof?

 

>> Russell Berman: I do think there's an awareness in Germany that they have to contribute more to their own security.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Russell Berman: Ideally with the United States holding their hand. I think Germany in general is Atlanticist, transatlanticist, and after years of being being hammered on by Obama and by Trump and by Ambassador Grinnell during the first Trump administration, that you've gotta do more.

 

And having seen what happened in the Oval Office, there's an appetite to build up. But I think you're asking me, is there an appetite to build up as an independent military power, an appetite for militarism? There's not an appetite. The United States, the Allies, including the Red army, hammered Germany so hard during the Second World that they've become a country inclined toward pacifism.

 

And that's better than militarism. But there's considerable trust in the Democratic character of Germany today. And there's considerable concern that Germany isn't pulling its weight in the collective defense architecture. There's a far right party there, the AfD, that is still considerably smaller than the far right party in, in.

 

In France. Marie Le Pen has a shot at becoming the next president in France. Alice Weidel doesn't have a shot at becoming the next chancellor in Germany.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, Russell, we'll leave it there. You have a student to meet with, I have raindrops to dodge, and so we have things to go on to.

 

But for someone who follows Europe, these are interesting times, aren't they?.

>> Russell Berman: Interesting times and sometimes we wish they were less interesting.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Russell, thanks again for coming on the podcast. I sure enjoyed it.

>> Russell Berman: My pleasure.

>> Bill Whalen: You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world.

 

If you've been enjoying this podcast, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our show. And if you wouldn't mind, spread the word. Tell your friends about us. Russell Berman is on X. He's not the Atlantic writer, by the way. How many times you get confused with the guy in the Atlantic, Russell?

 

It must drive you crazy.

>> Russell Berman: It doesn't drive me crazy and not that often.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, good news. Russell is on X, his X handle is @Russell Berman. That's R-U-S-S-E-L-L-B-E-R-M-A-N-S-F, @RussellBermanSF. The Hoover Institution is on X, we have X, Instagram and Facebook feeds. Our X handle is @HooverInst, that's spelled H-O-O-V-E-R-I-N-S-T.

 

And while you're there, you should sign up for the Hoover Daily Report, which keeps you updated on what Russell Berman and his Hoover colleagues are up to. And that is emailed to your inbox weekday afternoons. For the Hoover Institution, this is Bill Whalen. We'll be back soon with new conversations and matters of policy and politics.

 

We're going to be talking economic, economic, statecraft, and also what next for education in America. Till then, take care. Thanks for joining us today.

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