10 The EconomistApril 14th 2018
SPECIAL REPORT
GERMANY21the Russian border would have been unthinkable. The post-war
German constitution ruled out any combat deployments of the
armed forces, a prohibition that was lifted only in 1994. Between
the end of the second world war and 2002, when Germany
joined the war in Afghanistan, the number of Germans killed in
combat was precisely two. Mr Trump complains that Europe’s
largest economy still falls well short ofNATO’s target for defence
spending of 2% ofGDP. But as the Lithuania mission shows, the
country is now more engaged.
Across all aspects of Germany’s foreign policy, the country
is beginning to give up its cautious traditional doctrines, but
much more slowly than many of its allies would like. The coun-
try’s role in the world is inevitably coloured by recent history. At
NATO’s Lithuanian headquarters in Rukla, a former Soviet army
base, Thorsten Gensler is reflecting on his childhood. TheEFP
battlegroup’s commander grew up in Bavaria, just 4km from the
border with East Germany, which he recalls was patrolled by
American soldiers. Sometimes they would give out chocolates.
“But the threat was there, it was visible,” he says. “And then the
Wall fell, and with the expansion ofNATOwe are surrounded by
friends...Here in Lithuania I feel that Ger-
many is now giving back something of
what the alliance gave my country in the
cold war.” In the nearby mess tent—a little
corner of Germany, complete with sau-
sage stand and post office—postcards
bearing messages from home are pinned
on a board: “My papa, my soldier, my
hero”; “Greetings from theHeimat”.
Germany has stepped up its defence
effort in recent years. In 2014 Joachim
Gauck, then the country’s president, gave
a speech at the Munich Security Confer-
ence calling on his country to act “sooner,
more decisively and more substantially”
in the world. Since then Germany has ex-panded its role in Afghanistan, started
arming Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in
northern Iraq and increased its peace-
keeping role alongside France in Mali.
When MH17, a Dutch airliner, was shot
down by Russia-backed insurgents in Uk-
raine just months after Mr Gauck’s speech,
Mrs Merkel pushed her European partners
to impose sanctions against Moscow. In
Munich last May she said in a speech ap-
parently aimed at America that “the times
when we could rely entirely on others are
to some extent over.” Last July she hosted
the G20 group of world leaders in Ham-
burg at a summit where she sought to en-
courage multilateralism, free trade and en-
vironmental protection.
One reason why Germany needed
to think bigger was the refugee crisis. With
its geopolitical wings clipped after the sec-
ond world war, and without Britain’s or
France’s imperial legacy, the country long
did not engage much with the world be-
yond Europe and big partners like Ameri-
ca and China. The arrival of hundreds of
thousands of poor Arabs and Africans in
recent years has broadened its strategic
horizons. In April 2016 Mrs Merkel said
she had requested a world map coloured
in to show Europe’s true borders: Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, the Sa-
hara. Such thinking had just prompted a deal with the Turkish
president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, exchanging German money
and visas for Turkey’s help with reducing the numbers of refu-
gees entering Europe. Last year the German government pro-
posed a “Marshall Plan” for Africa (recalling America’smassive
investment in Europe after the second world war) to help fight
poverty in sub-Saharan countries like Nigeria. In August Ger-
many signed a deal to reduce migrant flows from Egypt, based on
the Turkish model.
The one exception to Germany’s hands-off foreign policy
has been its stance on the European economy. When the euro
was created, the Germans insisted that it be modelled on the
mighty Deutschmark and refused to entertain a “transfer union”
channelling resources from Europe’s austere north to its alleged-
ly spendthrift south. Germany’s politicians and central bankers
stoutly defended the value of their country’s money, putting
pressure on weaker economies such as France and Italy. Domi-
nique Moïsi, a French writer, urged Germans to “let the sound of
Beethoven prevail over the sound of Wagner”.
However, the election as France’s
president of the reform-minded and Ger-
manophile Emmanuel Macron has
created an opportunity for closer integra-
tion of the euro zone, which Germany has
long resisted. Mrs Merkel has hinted that
she may be willing to shift position, tell-
ing Mr Macron on his first visit to Berlin
last May that “a little magic dwells in each
beginning.” Her new government is open
to the idea of a future euro-zone budget
and proposes to turn the European Stabil-
ity Mechanism, currently a fail-safe de-
vice, into a “European Monetary Fund”:
music to Mr Macron’s ears.
But even though Germany is pre-GERMAN TELEVISION USED to be domin-
ated by sentimental romantic dramas and
worthy but dry documentaries. But a
succession of innovative new series is now
taking the culture world by storm. In 2015
the first episode of “Deutschland 83”, a spy
thriller set in former East Germany, was the
most watched subtitled programme ever to
air on British television; a sequel,
“Deutschland 86”, will hit screens later this
year. Now reviewers are raving about
“Babylon Berlin”, a Weimar-era crime
drama that has been described as
“ ‘Cabaret’ on cocaine”.
Deep-pocketed American studios are
working with German writers and actors to
make television aimed at global markets.
“Babylon Berlin”, the costliest non-Eng-
lish-language series ever made, was half-
funded by Sky, a European media group,and distributed by Netflix, an American
entertainment company, which in Decem-
ber produced its own first German-language
series—“Dark”, a science-fiction thriller.
Amazon, an online giant, did the same last
year with the Berlin-based “You Are Want-
ed”, a series about the aftermath of a
cyber-crime attack.
“When our series was popular in the
US and the UK, Germans were surprised but I
wasn’t,” recalls Anna Winger, one of the
makers of “Deutschland 83”. Comfortable in
its skin and blessed with a cool, creative
capital city, Germany is now seen as sexy. In
2017 it overtook the United States to be-
come the world’s most respected country,
according to an annual survey of 50 nations
by GfK, a market-research firm. Its long-
undigested past is at last considered suit-
able material for television programmes.Squarely in the frame
A string of successful television exports project soft powerExpensive friends?