Letters to the Editor
246 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
could help resolve the German question
in its current form. Thanks to the U.S.
security guarantee, Germany had no
need for France’s military capabilities and
thus had little incentive to make conces-
sions to France on other issues, such as
the euro. Whatever Trump’s intentions,
his threat to withdraw the U.S. security
guarantee has given France greater
leverage over Germany and thus has gone
some way toward restoring the balance o
power in Europe. Making good on that
threat could mean the end o German
semi-hegemony.
Kagan worries that Europeans could
return “to the power politics that
dominated their continent for millen-
nia.” But power politics never really
went away in Europe; it was just no
longer pursued using military tools.
Within the peaceful, institutionalized
context o the ¤, member states
continued to advance their own national
interests. In short, Europe might not
have been such a Kantian paradise after
all. In resolving one version o the
German question, the United States
and the ¤ created another.
̈¬£ ¶£²£¬£
Senior Research Fellow, Europe
Programme, Chatham HouseFOR THE RECORD
“Democracy Demotion” (July/August
2019) misstated the title o a 2018 report
by a group o experts convened by the
Hoover Institution and the Asia Society.
The correct title is “China’s InÇuence
and American Interests.”∂reasons Europe has struggled to solve the
series o problems that began with the
euro crisis in 2010. On the one hand,
Germany lacks the resources to solve
problems in the way a hegemon would.
On the other, it is powerful enough that it
does not feel the need to make conces-
sions to other ¤ member states, and in
particular to France, as it used to. As a
result, the ¤ has become dysfunctional.
Moreover, postwar Germany has not
acted quite as selÇessly as Kagan
suggests. Although (or perhaps because)
Germans abandoned militarism, they
found new sources o national pride—in
particular, a kind o economic national-
ism based on the country’s success as an
exporter. German economic policy is
often described, with some justi¿cation,
as mercantilist, and even before U.S.
President Donald Trump singled out
Germany for its large current account
surplus, the U.S. Treasury had put
Germany on a list o countries it was
monitoring for currency manipulation.
Kagan is right to ask where “the dark
path that Europe and the transatlantic
relationship are currently on” might lead,
but that path might not be as straight as
he suggests. In particular, the conse-
quences o a withdrawal o the U.S.
security guarantee to Europe are far from
easy to predict. It is true that, historically,
that guarantee paci¿ed Europe, and so
there are good reasons to worry that
withdrawing it could lead to the disinte-
gration o the region and even the
reactivation o security dilemmas. But it
is also possible that such a withdrawal
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