Global Prospects: A German View

by Amir Taheri, GATESTONE  •  December 18, 2022

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. (Photo by Omer Messinger/Getty Images)

• What [German Chancellor Olaf Scholz] fails or decides not to mention is the need to acknowledge the return of the nation-state as the key force capable of correcting those mistakes.
• Because a certain gang of Germans gave nationalism a bad name in the last century, one must not forget that in a world of diversity, the nation-state is the most workable model of socio-political and economic organization.
• A world of nation-states does not mean “each one for himself”, all the time, pursuing narrow and selfish “national interests”. Groupings of nation-states such as NATO or the European Union would be based on the common interests of all member nations with their right of opt-out or veto on certain issues preserved….
• However, the real force that pushes inflation upwards may be the decision by “liberal democratic capitalist” governments to print money as if there were no tomorrow.
• More good news is that the chancellor distances himself, ever so gingerly, from the federalist project of some of the founders of the European Union in its earlier version as the Common Market.
• Reminding Europeans that there is no peace without security and no security without a measure of self-sufficiency in strategic domains is a timely contribution to the current debate about the future of democracy in an increasingly complex world.

Is the world order heading for a tectonic shift? And, if yes, what will that shift be like?

These are the questions that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz posed in an article in the American magazine Foreign Affairs, published almost immediately after his lightning visit to China. The word that Scholz uses to describe the shift is “Zeitenwende” or “game-changer”, but the tone of the article is more in tune with Euro-pessimism of the kind expressed by French President Emmanuel Macron, reflecting the current Zeitgeist or “spirit of the time” in Western democracies.

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