From Here On, We Must Go It Alone

It is not possible to separate the crisis experienced by the Jews from that experienced by Europe—and the latter has just taken a decisive turn. In this text, delivered on November 19 in Munich, Jürgen Habermas makes an unequivocal observation: the America that embodied a certain idea of the West no longer exists. What is happening there—the purge of the executive branch, the neutralization of the law, the silence of a civil society that reserves its indignation for other causes—is a regime change legitimized by the ballot box. For Europe, caught in an alliance that has lost its normative coherence, it is time to take stock, however bitter it may be, without losing hope.

 

 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered, among other things, a belated awareness among European populations of a profoundly altered global situation. This change, however, had been brewing for some time with the decline of the United States, the superpower of the twentieth century. An early warning signal was the frenetic shift in mood within American civil society after September 11, 2001. This swing in the mentality of a frightened population was further inflamed by the rhetoric of the Bush administration and its ruthlessly militant Vice President.

Everyone seemed to feel the dangers of international terrorism up close. In the course of the propaganda campaign for the war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq—a war that violated international law—this shift in mentality became radicalized and entrenched.^[1] From an institutional standpoint, it was primarily the party system that was affected by this transformation. Already during the 1990s, under Newt Gingrich’s leadership, not only had the practice of the Republican Party changed fundamentally, but so had the social composition of its base. The tendencies toward a deeper and, as it now seems, barely reversible transformation of the political system as a whole only fully took hold, however, after President Obama disappointed the hopes for a thoroughly reformed U.S. foreign policy.

China seeks a Sinocentric world order

In the meantime, the weakening of the former superpower’s international standing has become unmistakable. This was signaled once again at the APEC summit in South Korea at the end of October: the unsettled alliance partners of the United States are now also seeking agreements with other neighbors who are either more neutral or more dependent on China. And after the early departure of the American president—who is more interested in quick deals than in the far-sighted stability of U.S. influence—China’s President Xi reportedly set the tone with his pitch for a multicultural world society under Chinese leadership.

Ever since the People’s Republic was admitted to the World Trade Organization, shrewd governments had pursued the goal of making their country a leading economic power. But it was only with Xi Jinping’s assumption of office in 2012 that the declared aim—advanced with a certain “defensive aggressiveness”—became to replace the liberal world trade regime with a Sinocentric world-political order.^[2] With the Belt and Road Initiative, China had long been pursuing broader strategic and security-policy objectives. The greatest beneficiaries were Russia, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But China is now also likely the largest creditor for developing and emerging countries.^[3] The international shift in power is generally evident in the fact that, from a geopolitical perspective, the decisive conflicts will henceforth be concentrated in Southeast Asia.

It will be interesting to observe how Trump’s seizure of power will affect Taiwan’s domestic politics. But apart from this flashpoint, the confrontation here is not merely between China and its regional allies on one side, and the United States and the westward-leaning states of the region—above all Japan, South Korea, and Australia—on the other. In close proximity, India too is now pursuing its own aspirations to global power. The shift in geopolitical power relations is moreover reflected not only in the Pacific region but also in the rise of middle powers such as Brazil, South Africa, or Saudi Arabia, which are confidently striving for greater independence.

In the United States, the democratically legitimized dismantling of the world’s oldest democracy is underway

In the meantime, many such aspiring states are seeking admission to the loose, now expanded association of BRICS nations. The end of Western hegemony is also signaled by the profound geo-economic changes to the liberal world economic order that was created by the United States after the end of World War II.^[4] Not that this rules-based world trade order—now also strained by Trump himself—could simply be liquidated, as we can see today in the interesting dispute over the supply of rare earths. But hardly anything could better illustrate the security-policy restrictions on world trade that have now become commonplace than the recent decision by the government of Germany, the world’s leading exporter, to prop up the internationally no longer competitive German steel industry with state funds.

Although these shifts in geopolitical power relations had been emerging for some time, and although Trump’s re-election could by no means be ruled out when the Ukraine war began, Western governments failed to grasp after Russia’s invasion that this conflict—once its outbreak had not been prevented—absolutely had to be concluded within Joe Biden’s term of office^[5]. In the meantime, with Trump’s second term, what had long been announced in the Heritage Foundation’s programmatic document has come to pass: the now barely reversible dismantling of the oldest liberal-democratic regime, following a pattern we in Europe had already witnessed in Hungary and other states.

These authoritarian regimes of a new kind evidently cannot be attributed to the particular circumstances of a botched transition from post-Soviet forms of rule. They are rather the precursors of the democratically legitimized dismantling of the oldest democracy on earth and of the rapid construction and expansion of a technocratically administered libertarian-capitalist form of rule.

The pusillanimity of a largely unresisting civil society

What we are witnessing in the United States is the same transition from one “system” to another—not even particularly creeping, but rather inconspicuous given a more or less paralyzed opposition: the last or second-to-last democratic election was the long-announced starting signal for a swift, arbitrary-autocratic expansion of an executive power that has been simultaneously trimmed and purged.

Trump is abusing this power without regard for the objections of a legal system that is running into a void, gradually hollowed out from the top down.

The President has first seized legislative powers from Parliament through his rigorous tariff policy and is attempting to incrementally restrict the independence of the press and the university system. He has then intimidated the opposition through the unsolicited deployment of the National Guard in major cities such as Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago. Their mere presence signals the government’s willingness to deploy the army—already made compliant in its higher ranks—against its own citizens if necessary.^[6] While within the framework of the EU, the party system and democratic elections remain protected even in authoritarian states like Hungary (or formerly in Poland), their fate in the United States remains for now undetermined.

Real resistance, if any, exists only cost-free and against Israel

Following the Democrats’ recent scattered electoral successes, Trump is focused on marginalizing and discrediting the political opposition through denunciatory means. In foreign policy, he pays no heed to international law either, as his arbitrary military actions against smugglers off the coast of Venezuela demonstrate. The most astonishing and as yet unexplained phenomenon of this creeping but deliberately pursued seizure of power is the pusillanimity of a largely unresisting civil society—to say nothing of the willingness to conform shown by the students and professors who had just pushed their cost-free resistance against the supposed colonial power Israel to the extreme on their campuses.

Not that I would presume we would behave any differently. To this day, I see no convincing signs of a reversal of the path taken toward a politically authoritarian, technocratically administered, yet economically libertarian social system. For Trump’s potential successors hold an even more tightly closed “worldview” than the pathologically narcissistic president, oriented toward short-term personal “wins” and acknowledgements, who would rather be a tycoon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate than a politician with vision.

For the considerations thus far, I can claim no expertise beyond that of a newspaper reader. They interest me primarily with regard to the question of what the geopolitical shift in weight and the long-brewing political division of the West mean for Europe in the current situation.^[7] In what follows, I proceed from the assumption that, with isolated exceptions, the governments of the EU and its member states still firmly intend to uphold the normative foundations and corresponding established practices of their constitutions. From this follows the political goal of strengthening their weight sufficiently that the EU can assert itself in world politics and global society as an autonomous player—independent of the United States and independent of system-compromising deals with the U.S. or other authoritarian states.

With regard to the continuation of the Ukraine war, “we”—if I may henceforth speak from this European perspective—remain dependent on U.S. support, if only because we lack the technologies required for necessary aerial reconnaissance. Without U.S. support, the Ukrainian front could not be held. But this United States, which no longer normatively upholds its role declared under Biden as a legitimate supporter of Ukraine under international law and at best supplies weapons that Europe (de facto Germany) pays for, has become an unpredictable partner for its allies.

For this reason alone, there is also an interest on our side in the rapid ceasefire sought by the Ukrainian leadership. This has an awkward consequence for Europe that has not been addressed to this day. The EU cannot politically distance itself from the passive NATO member United States, which has, so to speak, stepped back into the ranks, even though this means that “the West” still acts in concert but no longer speaks with one normative voice. The Ukraine war forces the EU to maintain its alliance with the United States within a NATO that, due to the regime change underway in its most important and hitherto leading member, can no longer credibly invoke human rights to justify its military support for Ukraine.

Anyone who heard Trump’s recent speech before the UN General Assembly must admit that the rhetoric of international legal justification for taking Ukraine’s side—invoked by what was then still a united West from the first day of the conflict—has been devalued. The only group not affected by this embarrassment is the one that extends beyond the EU but has joined together independently of the United States, under the leadership of France and Great Britain, to support Ukraine: originally a group of 30 states. It is therefore of an—I hope unintentional—irony that this very group of states has thoughtlessly adopted the name “Coalition of the Willing”: the same name under which George W. Bush, with the help of the British Prime Minister but against the resistance of France and Germany, had once assembled a coalition to support his invasion of Iraq in violation of international law.

Angela Merkel coldly ignored France. How hypocritical all words were and remain

After this sketch of the altered situation of the divided West, I come to my actual question: How realistic is it to pursue a further political unification of the EU with the aim of being recognized within world society not merely as one of the most economically significant trading partners, but as a distinct political subject capable of self-assertion and action?

Although the newer member states in the eastern part of the EU are the loudest in calling for rearmament, they are the least willing to limit their respective national sovereign powers for the sake of such a unified strengthening. In view of this consequence, the initiative would have to come from the western core countries of the Union—although Meloni’s national government would also be a non-starter in this regard—and today, given France’s current weakness, primarily from Germany. The construction of a common European defense, now being undertaken, could provide the impetus for this.

The Bundestag has meanwhile approved the funds for a substantial expansion and buildup of the Bundeswehr, though I shall not concern myself here with the questionable justification citing the supposedly acute danger of a Russian attack on NATO. However, the federal government is pursuing the construction of “the strongest army in Europe” under the premises of existing treaties—that is, ultimately within the framework of its national sovereign authority. In doing so, the federal government is continuing the hypocritical European policy practiced under Chancellor Merkel: rhetorically always pro-European, she had over the past decades rejected various French initiatives for closer economic integration, most recently the urgent initiative of the freshly elected French President Macron.

But Eurobonds are also anathema for Chancellor Merz—in this respect entirely the son of Schäuble. There is no serious indication that the federal government is taking earnest steps to bring about a European Union capable of acting on the world-political stage.

Certainly, in an era of daily growing right-wing populism in all our countries, such a long-overdue step toward further EU integration—and thus toward its global capacity for action—would find even less spontaneous support than before. In most Western EU member states as well, the domestic forces favoring a decentering or reversal of the EU, or at least a weakening of Brussels’s competencies, are stronger than ever. For this reason, I consider it likely that Europe will be less capable than ever of decoupling from the erstwhile leading power, the United States. Whether it can maintain its normative, still democratic and liberal self-understanding in this slipstream will then be the central challenge.

At the end of a politically rather favored life, the nevertheless imploring conclusion does not come easily to me: The further political integration of at least the core of the European Union has never been as vital to our survival as it is today. And never so improbable.

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Jürgen Habermas

Translation: Julia Christ

This text is a slightly revised manuscript prepared by Jürgen Habermas for the Süddeutsche Zeitung of the lecture the philosopher delivered on November 19 at a colloquium on the crisis of Western democracies at the Siemens Foundation in Munich.