BRET STEPHENS: FROM MUNICH TO MUNICH
http://www.wsj.com/articles/bret-stephens-from-munich-to-munich-1423528171
How Germany chooses to remember its past has always been crucial to Europe’s future.
The news from last weekend’s annual Security Conference is that Angela Merkel has flatly refused Kiev’s pleas to supply it with defensive arms in the face of Russia’s onslaught in eastern Ukraine. “I cannot envisage any situation in which an improved equipment of the Ukrainian army leads to a situation where President Putin is so impressed that he will lose militarily,” the German chancellor bluntly told an audience of high-level dignitaries.
To which one might reply that it’s a good thing Franklin Roosevelt took a different view of Britain’s military chances during the Lend-Lease debate of 1941. Or that Harry Truman didn’t give up on West Berlin during the Soviet blockade of 1948.
How Germany chooses to remember its past has always been crucial to Europe’s future. Modern Germany is the product of not one but two wars: World War II, in which defeat gave the Germans their democracy; and the Cold War, in which victory gave the Germans their unity. Yet Berlin’s foreign policy is now ruled by the cliché that force is neither the answer nor even part of the answer, whatever the question. This, from a country that is still defended by 50,000 American troops stationed in Germany at an annual cost of some $8 billion.
So it’s dismaying, to say the least, to watch Ms. Merkel demonstrate how little she understands of her own history. “Look, I grew up in [East Germany],” she said during a question-and-answer session after her speech. “As a 7-year-old child I saw the Wall being erected.” She went on to explain that it was reasonable for the West not to respond militarily to the building of the Berlin Wall, even as it consigned her and millions of Germans to another 28 years of tyranny. “And I don’t actually mind,” she added. “Things take long but I’m 100% convinced that our principles will in the end prevail.”
Ms. Merkel seems to think of herself as a latter-day John F. Kennedy, who said at the time that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” But Berlin in 1961 is the wrong analogy. The Soviet Union wasn’t trying to overturn the status quo when it built the Wall; it was trying to salvage it. Territory wasn’t seized. And the West did, in fact, deploy its tanks to Checkpoint Charlie to make sure the Soviets didn’t take another step.
The better analogy, unflattering as it is, is to Munich in 1938. Then, as now, an irredentist dictator sought to seize foreign territory using as his excuse his obligation to protect “persecuted” ethnic cousins and defy an unjust postwar settlement. Then, as now, conflict-averse democratic leaders tried to pay off the dictator in the coin of someone else’s territory. Then, as now, local paramilitaries sprang up to fight for the cause of their “liberation”: the Donbass People’s Militia is the Sudetendeutsche Legion of our day. Then, as now, an embattled democratic leader was told he could either swallow a diplomatic fait accompli or shove off.
And then, as now, those Western leaders didn’t much seem to mind making agreements with liars. Ms. Merkel arrived at the conference fresh from a parley with Vladimir Putin in Minsk, where four months ago Russia had signed a cease-fire agreement that it is now violating. At Munich, Russian officials did their best Gromyko impressions by denying that there were any Russian troops in Ukraine.
They lie not because they think they are being believed, but because they know they can get away with it. The West will usually prefer its illusions to its principles, at least until it has no other choice but to defend those principles.
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There were some bright spots at the Munich conference. Joe Biden delivered a powerful statement in support of Ukraine, probably the best speech of his long career, marred only by the fact that he does not speak for the president. John McCain dismissed Ms. Merkel’s position as “foolishness” and caused a firestorm of German indignation, one in which they ought to stew. The similarity of views is a reminder that a bipartisan consensus in foreign policy still exists, despite the aberration in the White House.
But it was Lindsey Graham who put in the most impressive performance of the conference. “Do you really believe any of this you have heard [from the Russians]?” the South Carolina Republican asked of Ms. Merkel from the conference stage. “Who are you trying to upset? Are you worried about upsetting people who just lie to your face and could give a damn about their neighbor and the rule of law? How about trying to help somebody that you actually do have something in common with?”
He continued:
“I don’t know how this ends if you give [the Ukrainians] a defensive capability. But I know this: I will feel better because when my nation was needed to stand up to the garbage and stand for freedom, I stood for freedom. They may die. They may lose. But all I can tell you is that if somebody doesn’t push back better, we’re all going to lose.”
Mr. Graham tells me that he is seriously considering a run for the presidency. Why not? The worst that could happen is to expose GOP primary voters to the views of a foreign-policy heavyweight in an era of encroaching global disorder.
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