Germany isn't going to rearm because of the European debt crisis.
I've heard many criticisms of President Obama's foreign policy but I think Victor Davis Hanson mines new ground by suggesting that the president is stoking a potential war on the European continent:
Historical pressures, well apart from Putinism in Russia, are coming to the fore on the continent â?? pressures that were long suppressed by the aberrations of World War II, the Cold War, the division of Germany, and the rise of the EU. The so-called â??German problemâ? â?? the tendency of Germany quite naturally at some point to translate its innate dynamic economic prowess into political, cultural, and above all military superiority â?? did not vanish simply because a postmodern EU announced that it had transcended human nature and its membership would no longer be susceptible to ancient Thucydidean nationalist passions like honor, fear, or self-interest.If you have doubts on that, just review current German and southern-European newspapers, where commentary sounds more likely to belong in 1938 than in 2012. The catastrophe of the EU has not been avoided by ad hoc bandaging â?? it is still on the near horizon. Now is the time to reassure Germany that a strong American-led NATO eliminates any need for German rearmament, and that historical oddities (why is France nuclear, while a far stronger Germany is not?) are not odd at all. In short, as the EU unravels, and anti-Germany hysteria waxes among its debtors, while ancient German resentments build, it would be insane to abdicate the postwar transatlantic leadership we have provided for nearly 70 years.
I admit I had to read this last graf three times to fully convince myself that Victor Davis Hanson was actually arguing that the upshot of the European debt crisis will be a return of a militarized "German problem." (There is, clearly, a financial "German problem" on the continent, depending on how you view the austerity debate.)
Look, economic dislocation is going to lead to radicalism in Europe. It is arguably already in evidence. German-mandated austerity is roiling the continent. But just to straighten it out: the most likely German reaction to having to use its money to bail out a broke European periphery will be to continue to insist on austerity or to eject Greece and other indebted nations from the Eurozone (or even to have a change of heart and embrace Keynesian pump-priming, although that's unlikely). Re-arming, acquiring nuclear weapons and soothing over "ancient resentments" via military force doesn't strike me as the most plausible German route at this point.
Update: Larison has more:
In case Hanson hadnâ??t noticed, using its military to project power is the last thing that modern German governments want to do. President Köhler was forced to resign in 2010 after he seemed to suggest that securing German economic interests might justify the use of force overseas. Germany was the most outspoken European opponent of military intervention in Libya. Following the Fukushima meltdown, Merkel reversed her position on nuclear power, which means that Germany is not not going to be interested in acquiring nuclear weapons. Its official position is more radically anti-nuclear than most other Western governments. The â??German problemâ? as Hanson describes it here is not a real problem for the foreseeable future.
