"Chancellor Merkel's Germany: Coping with Domestic and International Challenges – U.S. Election Fall-Out, Brexit, and Russian Assertiveness" - a San Francisco Warburg Chapter Discussion and Reception with Prof. Hannes Adomeit

Adomeit
 
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“Chancellor Merkel's Germany: Coping with Domestic and International Challenges – U.S. Election Fall-Out, Brexit and Russian Assertiveness ”

Professor Hannes Adomeit was most recently a Bosch Public Policy Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, writing a paper on German-Russian relations under Merkel and Putin. Until 2014, he was Professor for Russian and European Studies at the Warsaw campus of the College of Europe. Prior to that, he was a Research Associate and head of the research section on Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. His academic degrees include, in Germany, an M.A. in Political Science from the Freie Universität in Berlin and, in the United States, an M.A. degree in International Relations, a Certificate in Russian Studies, and a Ph.D. with distinction, all from Columbia University in New York City. In the past, he also held teaching and/or research positions at institutions in se­veral countries, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Royal Military College of Canada, and the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California. From 1989 to 1997, he was Professor of International Politics and Director of the Program on Russia and East-Central Europe at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplo­macy in Boston as well as a Fellow at the Harvard Russian Research Center. He has written many arti­cles in academic journals and books, including Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev: An Analysis Based on New Archival Evidence, Memoirs, and Interviews. He was was born in 1942 in Memel, East Prussia, now Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Abstract: German foreign policy is faced with multiple challenges. Domestically, these include the refugee crisis and asylum seekers; nationalist, populist, anti-foreigner, and anti-establishment currents and organizations; terrorist attacks; and “right” (AfD) and “left” (Die Linke) challenges to centrist policies but also internal coalition-government squabbles. Internationally, too, the German government is faced with multiple challenges and threats. These concern Russia’s military modernization efforts, its annexation of Crimea and its military interventions in eastern Ukraine as well as in Syria – developments that have undercut Germany’s comforting notions about the obsolescence of “hard” (military) power and the importance of “soft” (civilian) power. Germany’s liberal and internationalist foreign-policy approach is perceived to have come under threat also by the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. This event has widely been interpreted in Germany as part of a dangerous Zeitenwende, where nationalism, anti-liberal, and authoritarian tendencies; “Great Power” rhetoric and policies; geopolitical revisionism and irredentism; and trade protectionism threaten to produce new conflicts. In Europe, such tendencies, in various combinations, are underlined by the UK’s Brexit, Poland’s PiS, Hungary’s Orban and Jobbik, France’s LePen, Austria’s Hofer and the FPÖ, and the Netherlands’ Wilders. Outside but adjacent to Europe, they have arisen under Erdogan, his de facto abandonment of the EU option and turn to cooperation with Russia and Iran. The lecture will examine the nature of these interrelated challenges and how Germany hopes to tackle them.