George Friedman

by The Next Decade: Where We've Been --;Where We're Going

  Another problem facing the Germans is that once again, owing largely to the financial crisis and the U.S. war in Iraq, their relations with the United States have declined. Germany is an exporting country, and the United States is a major non-European customer. The Obama administration created a stimulus package to get the American economy out of recession, but the Germans took no such measures. Instead they relied on the American stimulus to generate demand for German products. This meant that the United States went into debt to jump-start its economy while (at least from the American point of view) the Germans got a free ride. The Germans also wanted the Americans to participate in the bailout of European countries through the IMF. But beyond these substantial economic disagreements between the two countries, there was a real geopolitical split. The Americans, as we’ve seen, have significant issues with the Russians, but Germans wanted nothing to do with U.S. efforts to contain them. Beyond their aversion to encouraging another Cold War, the Germans, as we’ve already seen, depend on Russia for a large part of their energy needs. In fact, they need Russian energy more than the Russians need German money.

  U.S. relations with both Russia and Germany will vary over the next ten years, but we can anticipate a fundamental shift. Whatever the atmospherics, Russia’s growing presence to the east of the European peninsula threatens American interests. Similarly, the more the United States sees its global interests dragging it into wars in places like Afghanistan, the more Germany is going to want to distance itself from its Cold War ally. The greater the U.S. level of concern about Russia, the greater the distance between the Germans and the United States. The sixty-five-year relationship that began at the end of World War II will not survive the decade ahead unchanged.

  Germany can afford to distance itself from America, in part because its traditional problem of being squeezed from both sides is gone and it has a close and friendly relationship with France. Germany no longer borders Russia but now has Poland as a buffer. Germany needs natural gas, which the Russians have in abundance, and the Russians need technology and expertise, both of which Germany has to spare.

  In addition, significant population decline will soon affect Germany’s industrial plant, as a labor shortage, combined with an aging population, creates a formula for economic disaster. Even with its own decline, Russia will still have a surplus of labor that Germany can utilize, both by importing Russian workers and by moving production to Russia. The only way to counteract population decline is by encouraging immigration, but immigration and national identity in Europe are at odds.

  If Germany doesn’t want to bring workers to its factories, it can move its factories to where the workers are. Russia is also undergoing a decline in population, but because it has such a weak economy focused on primary commodities, it still has a surplus workforce, meaning people who are unemployed or underemployed. If the Russians want to move beyond simply exporting energy and grain and develop a modern industrial economy, they need technology and capital, and the Germans have both of those. The Germans want workers to man their factories and natural resources to fuel their economy. German businesses of all sizes are already deeply involved in Russia, adding to the new reality of a Moscow-Berlin relationship that soon will be the pivot of Europe, more dynamic if not more significant than the other relationships each country has.

  With France at Germany’s back—tied there by economic interests—Russia will move closer to the European core, setting off a new dynamic in the EU. Tension between the core and the periphery is already rife. The core is Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, the advanced industrial heartland of Europe. The periphery is Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and eastern Europe. Still in the early stages of economic development, these smaller countries need looser monetary policies than their more advanced neighbors and will have wider economic swings, so they will be more vulnerable to instability.

  Meanwhile, France has hedged its bets, positioning itself as both a northern European power and a Mediterranean power, even to the point of considering the formation of a Mediterranean Union alongside the EU. In French thinking, this would include southern European countries, North African countries, Israel, and Turkey. This is an attractive idea in the abstract, but in reality the difference in developmental stages between Libya and Italy is so profound that it dwarfs the difference between Germany and Greece. Still, we can expect the French to dabble in the Mediterranean, trying to compensate for being Germany’s junior partner in the north.

  Germany is uncomfortable in the role that was pressed on it during the 2008–2010 crises. As the Germans reconsider their interest in the EU periphery, the peripheral countries raise questions about the economic benefit of integrating with the Germans. They resent losing control over vast areas of their economies, such as the banking sector, especially when they are expected to stand on their own if a crisis occurs. That those on the periphery are expected to sustain their economies with a monetary policy designed for the core adds to the pressure on both sides.

  The old periphery, from Greece to Ireland, is firmly focused on economics. The new periphery, the Intermarium—and Poland in particular—is deeply concerned about Russia. And as we have seen, Poland is especially uneasy over being a neutral buffer between Germany and Russia, a role that historically has never ended well for it.

  Also uncomfortable with this alignment is Britain. The UK could live with a Paris-Berlin axis as long as it was countered by the United States, with Britain as the balance point midway. But including Moscow puts too much weight on the European mainland, posing a challenge to British commercial and strategic interests.

  As the next decade unfolds, Germany will resume its place on the North European Plain, but allied this time with its historic enemies, France and Russia. Britain will move even closer to the United States. Countries on the old periphery will be left to sort their way through the complexities, but it will be the new periphery—eastern Europe—that will be the focus of activity. The European Union will continue to function, as will the euro, but it will be difficult for the EU to be the organizing principle of Europe when there are so many centrifugal forces.

  THE AMERICAN STRATEGY

  A fairly extraordinary policy lapse since the collapse of communism is that the United States has never developed a strategy toward Europe. This will soon change. During the 1990s, the United States simply assumed a commonality of interests with the Europeans, but that assumption was never tested during the benign conditions of that decade. The emergence of the EU was never seen as a challenge to the United States, but simply as a natural evolution that posed no problem. Whereas the United States once proceeded out of habit, the decade ahead will require focused rethinking and planning.

  When the American response to September 11 opened up the first significant breach with the Franco-German bloc, it also revealed a serious split in Europe. The United States wanted far more direct military help in Afghanistan than it got, and it wanted at least political cover for the war in Iraq. On the votes taken by NATO—such as guaranteeing support for Turkey if it supported the U.S. in Iraq—the overwhelming majority of countries sided implicitly with the United States, but only four countries voted against that support: Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxemburg. It should be noted that any NATO action requires unanimity. Nonetheless, many of the nations that supported the resolution sent at least token forces to Iraq, while Britain made major contributions.

  The geography of this support is extremely important. The European heartland, with the exception of the Netherlands, opposed the United States. Most of the periphery—the Intermarium countries in particular—supported the United States, at least initially. Many of the countries that fell in with the United States did so not because they genuinely endorsed the American action but because of uneasiness with the Franco-German bloc. They did not want to be merely subordinate members of Europe, and they saw the United States as an important counterweight to the French and Germans. There was a particularly interestin
g confrontation between French president Jacques Chirac and the representatives of the Intermarium countries, who had signed a letter rejecting the Franco-German stand and supporting the United States. When that letter appeared, Chirac scolded them for being, in his terms, “badly brought up.” At that point, the breach between these countries and France—and Germany, for that matter—could not have been deeper. The split in Europe over the Iraq war will, I think, become a rough framework for strategic disagreements in Europe, and will redefine U.S. alliances there in the decade ahead.

  Tension between the United States and France has varied, but even after Barack Obama took office, the Germans were resolute on the subject of confrontation with Islam. They did not like Obama’s management of the conflict any more than they liked Bush’s, and they did not want to be drawn into it. As should be obvious by now, the United States and the Franco-German bloc simply have different interests.

  It is difficult to imagine the Americans convincing the Germans to return to their prior relationship with the United States, or Germany convincing the United States to be indifferent to the rise of Russia. In the next ten years, an ideal solution from the American point of view would be to split the Franco-German bloc, and in fact the president should work to open as wide a breach as possible between the two countries. Still, this can’t be the foundation of his strategy. The United States has little to offer France, while its relationship with Germany provides that country both security and economic advantages.

  The United States must focus on limiting the power of the center while simultaneously doing all it can to thwart a Russo-German entente. In other words, it must apply the principle of balance of power to Europe, much as Britain did. Ironically, the first phase of this U.S. strategy must be to retain its current relationship with Britain. The two countries share economic interests, and both are maritime nations dependent on the Atlantic. The geographical position that benefited Britain can now be used by the United States with continuing benefits for Britain. In return, Britain provides the United States with an ally inside the European Union, as well as a platform for influencing other countries on the Atlantic periphery, from Scandinavia to Iberia, where Britain has close trading and political ties. These would include Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. In the decade to come, American and British national strategies will coincide to a great extent.

  This U.S. balancing act in Europe also requires that the United States cultivate its relationship with Turkey. As we discussed in the chapter on the Middle East, a strong alliance with Turkey gives the United States influence in the Black Sea and counters any Mediterranean strategy that France might wish to develop. One of the things that will aid this alliance will be European immigration policy. Europeans’ fear of Turkish immigration will cause them to block Turkey’s entrance into the EU. Turkey is certainly going to become stronger over the next decade, but it is not ready to operate on its own. The region around it is too unstable, and threats from Russia in the Caucasus will force it to maintain a strong relationship with the United States. This will not be entirely to the Turks’ liking, but they have little choice.

  Whatever the United States does on the periphery of Europe, the question of Germany remains paramount and will dominate the foreign policy of many nations in the coming years. The United States must avoid the appearance of being hostile to Germany or indifferent to Europe. It must not abandon NATO, regardless of its ineffectiveness, but must treat all multilateral institutions with respect and all European countries as if they are significant powers. In other words, the United States must create a sense of normality in Europe, lest it stampede the periphery into the Franco-German camp. If the United States drives the relationship to a crisis too soon, it will only strengthen Germany’s hand in the region. The inherent tension between Germany (or France and Germany) and the other European countries will mature on its own. There is no need for the United States to rush things along, because it is Germany that is under pressure, not the Americans.

  At the same time, the United States must, in this relatively friendly context, take the necessary steps to deal with the possibility of a Russo-German entente. To do this, the president must begin moving toward bilateral relations with some key European countries, and he must do so outside the usual framework of multilateral relations. The model to use is Britain, a part of NATO and the EU, yet with a robust relationship with the United States on its own. Over the next few years the United States must emphasize bilateral relations with countries on the periphery of Europe, bypassing NATO while paying lip service to it.

  The choice of relationships can be somewhat random, serving as they do mostly to reinforce the image of the United States as benign and content with whatever Germany does. But some countries are genuinely important to American interests. Denmark controls access to the Atlantic for the Russians while providing access to the Baltic for the United States. Italy is a country that has both a substantial economy and a strategic position in the Mediterranean. Norway, always closer to Britain than to the rest of Europe, can provide strategic advantages for the United States, from military bases to the prospect of partnerships in the Norwegian oil industry. And of course a relationship with Turkey provides the United States with options in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, and the Arab world. But the United States should not focus on these valuable countries by themselves. It should reach out to a range of countries, some of which might be much more a burden than an advantage. The Germans and French both look down on the United States as unsophisticated. The United States should take advantage of this in the next decade by making purposeful moves along with some that seem arbitrary. Everything must be done to lead the Germans and perhaps the French to a sense that the United States is unfocused in its actions.

  These relationships are not ends in themselves—they are a cover for the crucial prize of Poland and the Intermarium (Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania), which provide the geography for containing Russia. And here the American strategy once again needs to be consciously deceptive. It must lull Europe into a sense that the United States is simply drawing closer to those countries that want to be drawn closer, and that among these countries are Poland, the rest of the Intermarium, and the Baltics. Any indication that the United States is directly seeking to block Germany or to create a crisis with Russia will generate a counterreaction in Europe that might drive the periphery back into the arms of the center. Europe as a whole does not want to be drawn into a confrontation. At the same time, the desire to have an alternative to a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis will be strong, and if the cost is low, the periphery will be attracted to the United States—or Britain—as that alternative. At all costs, the United States must prevent the geographical amalgamation of Russia and the European peninsula, because that would create a power the United States would be hard-pressed to contain.

  Credibility will be the key point, particularly for Poland. The United States must make a twofold argument to overcome Poland’s historical scars. First, it must argue that the Poles deluded themselves in believing that the French and British could defend them against the Germans in 1939, which was geographically impossible. Second, the United States must offer the unpleasant reminder that the Poles did not resist long enough for anyone to come to their assistance—they collapsed in the first week of a German conquest that took only six weeks to complete. Poland, and the rest of the EU countries, cannot be helped if they can’t help themselves.

  This is the challenge for the American president as we enter the next decade. He must move with misdirection in order not to create concern in Moscow or Berlin that might make those governments increase the intensity of their relationship before the United States can create a structure to limit it. At the same time, the United States must reassure Poland and other countries of the seriousness of its commitment to their interests. These things can be done, but success will require the studied lack of sophistication of a Ronald Reagan and the casual dishonesty of an FDR. The president must appear to be
not very bright yet be able to lie convincingly. The target of this charade will not be future allies but potential enemies. The United States needs to buy time.

  The ideal American strategy will be to supply aid to support the development of indigenous military power that can deter attackers, or that can at least hold out long enough for help to arrive. U.S. aid can also create an environment of economic growth, both by building the economy and by providing access to American markets. During the Cold War, this is how the United States induced West Germany, Japan, and South Korea, among others, to take the risk of resisting the Communists.

  Whatever argument the United States makes to Poland in the next few years, the Poles’ willingness and ability to serve American purposes will depend on three things. The first is U.S. economic and technical support to build a native Polish military force. The second is the transfer of military technology to build up domestic industry, both in support of national defense and for civilian use. The third is to supply sufficient American forces in Poland to convince the Poles that the American stake in their country is entirely credible.

  This relationship must focus on Poland but be extended to the other Intermarium countries, particularly Hungary and Romania. Both of these are critical to holding the Carpathian line, and both can respond effectively to the kinds of incentives the United States is making available to them. The Baltics represent a separate case. They are indefensible, but if war can be avoided, the Baltics make an attractive bone to place in the Russians’ throat.

  In all of this maneuvering, the point is first to avoid a war and second to limit a relationship between Russia and Germany that could, in succeeding decades, create a power that could challenge American hegemony. The present intentions of the Russians and Germans would be much more modest than that, but the American president must focus not on what others think now but what they will think later, when circumstances change.