Germany must relearn the language of power-politics

‘This government is fascist’, a high-level German official at the European Commission in Brussels told me last year. ‘Hannah Arendt wrote that fascism feeds on exclusion and the persecution of minorities. This government follows that script. And now it arms itself. Nothing worries me more than its power.’

It would have been one thing had the EU official been speaking about the regime in Moscow. He was, however, referring to Friedrich Merz’s government, particularly its migration policies and rearmament programme. Eccentric as it sounds, the statement epitomises a long-standing German fetish: a self-centred, often disproportionate fear of one’s own strength.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany has come a long way. It has largely accepted that countering the Russian threat requires credible deterrence and, in Defence Minister Boris Pistorius’ words, ‘war-readiness’. Budgets are rising, procurement is slowly picking up, and Germany has become Ukraine’s most important ally.

Yet the country’s deep-seated unease with power has made it a natural target for the Kremlin’s sabotage campaign. The logic is straightforward: stoke German angst about war and horizontal escalation, weaken centrist parties, and scare Berlin off military aid to Ukraine, knowing that if the German pillar cracks, European support could collapse with it.

Germany must respond and, beyond simply restoring its hard-power base, relearn the language and pursue a strategy of power politics – Machtpolitik.

To understand the difficulties involved, one must set this task against the backdrop of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and its foreign policy traditions. Two maxims have shaped the identity of the Federal Republic after the Third Reich threw the continent into the abyss: ‘Never Again Fascism’ and ‘Never Again Germany’.

‘Never Again Fascism’ establishes an anti-authoritarian imperative. Germans remind themselves to ‘resist the beginnings’, staying alert to the erosion of democratic institutions that, in the German experience, led to the gas chambers. Today, walking through universities and other cultural institutions, the lesson endures. The phrase ‘Never again is now’ emblazons German cityscapes, warning of the extreme right’s threat to democracy.

A related response to the Third Reich was ‘Never Again Germany’. Coined by the political left, the slogan was never embraced literally by the centre. Nevertheless, its essence has shaped thinking across the political spectrum: a firm rejection of imperial ambitions and, in its more doctrinal readings, a post-national reluctance even to define German interests, let alone acknowledge hard-power necessities.

It is true that, in the postwar period, German anti-imperialism had a stabilising impact on the continent. The Ostpolitik of Willy Brandt, West German Chancellor between 1969-74, acknowledged power realities in Central Europe by recognising the postwar German-Polish border. Reunification-era liberal conservatives cemented this shift through the 2+4 Accords. Unlike the Weimar Republic, which harboured revanchist impulses, the Federal Republic of Germany built a national consensus around anti-imperialism, rejecting extraterritorial fantasies across Germany’s political spectrum.

More broadly, memories of Nazi crimes and wartime trauma deepened discomfort with German power and provided a persistent argument for strategic restraint. By 1985, the political scientist Hans-Peter Schwarz already spoke of ‘the tamed Germans’, who, once driven by Machtbesessenheit (power obsession), had drifted into Machtvergessenheit (power oblivion).

During the Cold War, ‘Never Again Fascism’ and ‘Never Again Germany’ coexisted with tolerable friction, during which West Germany was NATO’s frontline state against the Soviet bloc. By the Cold War’s end, about 4,200 Soviet tanks occupied East Germany, a reality that kept minds focused on accepting the costs of deterrence. In this context, membership of the transatlantic alliance shielded the vulnerable Federal Republic. At the same time, the country eased its discomfort with power by actively engaging in international institutions and cultivating the identity of a peace-loving nation, while carving out autonomy in its search for common ground with the Soviets.

Germans welcomed the ‘end of history’, believing the international system’s anarchy and security dilemma had been overcome. Many credited Cold War victory to Brandt’s Ostpolitik, arguing that it softened socialist regimes, paving the way for ‘the miracle Gorbachev’. This overlooks less convenient explanations – that the Soviet Union collapsed under the collective weight of military overreach, a failing economy and the increasingly untenable costs of propping up its socialist empire.

The narrative resonated with Germany’s reluctance to think about, or use, power. In Germany’s mainstream, hard power was viewed as a relic from a catastrophic past, something wielded in the modern day only by a cowboyish Washington. After America’s failed Iraq adventure, many in Berlin felt vindicated – Germany’s leaders reassured themselves that they had prudently chosen not to follow US excess.

Over time, power-wariness hardened into a moralising mission. Having overcome hard power, Berlin assumed that others would slowly coalesce into an ever more peaceful and institutionalised international order. In practice, the retreat from hard power became total, doctrinal, rendering the Federal Republic and its leadership unresponsive to events abroad. When the core premise of this worldview – to be ‘surrounded by friends’ – unravelled, Germans did not adjust.

The problem was never Germany’s desire to strengthen political, cultural and societal ties with Russia. It was that many Germans treated Russia as a projection of their own biases, ambitions and dogmas. Reconciliation with the Soviet Union’s successor was regarded as a moral trophy, a way of righting the wrongs of the Nazi past. Accordingly, the incorporation of a pacified Russia into Europe’s security architecture became the overriding vision of a particular worldview. The near-doctrinal aversion to power distorted Germany’s self-perception – and its reading of others.

Sober analysis would have recognised that Russia’s strategic elites spoke in the language of power and spheres of influence, and that their vision of German-Russian relations served a different purpose: a Moscow-Berlin axis, inspired by the model of the 1922 Rapallo Treaty, as the core for a new European order, designed to pull Europe away from the United States.

Yet so powerful and alluring was the vision of reconciliation that, even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and war returned to Europe, Germany lingered in a state of geopolitical self-denial. The end of the ‘end of history’ was only recognised after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s failed attempt to blackmail Germany by cutting gas supplies.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has opened a faultline at the heart of German identity, revealing a clash between ‘Never Again Fascism’ and ‘Never Again Germany’. What if, this time, Germany is not the aggressor? What if, this time, being faithful to anti-fascism requires a return to German Machtpolitik? Yet Germany’s anti-fascism tends to remain inward-looking: a warning against German excesses, meant to tame the nationalist beast within, rather than a universal commitment to oppose authoritarianism and imperialism, both at home and abroad.

Crucial lessons from Europe’s Nazi disaster never made it into Germany’s mantras: that a well-meaning withdrawal from power politics can invite fascism from abroad, and that power remains a constant in international relations, whether recognised or not. Indeed, the same Schwarz, who wrote of ‘tamed Germans’, also warned that the French of the 1930s, who said ‘Better Hitler than war’, ended up with both.

Germans should remember this lesson when confronting the Russian threat. Some see the war in Ukraine as an intra-Slavic conflict of limited significance to the FRG. They think that pressuring Ukraine to cede territory could solve the Russian problem, restore gas supplies and avoid painful debates over hard-power demands and their costly implications.

They are mistaken. The war already poses a serious, even if not yet existential, threat to German security. If Ukraine falls, the Baltics could be next, and NATO’s Article 5 – the foundation of the Federal Republic’s security for 71 years – will be tested like never before. Germans would then face a blunt choice: send troops or watch their core security guarantee erode. A resilient Ukraine is the best defence for both the Baltics and Germany. Any Russian attack on the Baltics would have to reckon with a vast front in Ukraine, held by a battle-hardened army determined to liberate occupied territory.

German power is crucial to sustaining Ukraine and containing Russian aggression. While France and Britain appear to be consumed by domestic crises, political and financial, Germany has the fiscal capacity and industrial strength to rise to the challenge.

Above all, this is a test of German identity. It abandons its ideals if it lets an aggressor ravage Central and Eastern Europe, a region scarred by the mass violence of the Second World War. Treating ‘Never Again Germany’ as a means of avoiding power betrays ‘Never Again Fascism’, reducing this moral imperative to a hollow, self-righteous excuse for an inward-looking national pacifism.

What, then, should a power‑conscious German strategy to deter and contain Vladimir Putin look like?

It begins with a reorientation of Germany’s strategic mindset. Its foreign policy still clings to a legalistic worldview that treats multilateralism as a universal reference point. Instead, Germany should prioritise core interests in Eastern Europe and accept its limits elsewhere. That means shedding reflexive, performative moralism, while acknowledging that focusing on areas of real influence is not hypocritical.

Germany needs its own Ukraine strategy. Even after announcing his Zeitenwende, the former Chancellor Olaf Scholz reverted to a worn-out Cold War playbook, outsourcing strategic decisions to the United States. When pressure mounted to send Leopard tanks, Washington eased his resistance with a token pledge of Abrams tanks, allowing Scholz to claim Germany acted ‘always together and never alone’. That script is now exhausted.

Friedrich Merz recognises this, but deterring Moscow requires more resolve. For more than three years, Germany has watched Russia’s shadow‑fleet tankers slip through the Baltic under cover of the law of the sea, and met Russian drone incursions over Poland with tired sermons about the ‘lack of respect for international law’. The Kremlin could not care less about such pieties.

Attributing the Leipzig airport drone incident to Russia and linking countermeasures to it were therefore steps in the right direction, but the Kremlin must be deterred explicitly from further stunts. There is a telling precedent: after Russian fighter jets violated Estonian airspace in September 2025, Trump declared that future intruders could be shot down. None followed.

This is the measured game that Germany’s Baltic allies have played with Russia since 1991: probe, push back, draw lines, while avoiding escalation. Russia, meanwhile, has spent years boiling the German frog — turning up the heat and widening its room for manoeuvre. Germany must finally push back.

Friedrich Merz should privately signal to the Kremlin that any incidents similar to what happened at the Leipzig airport would trigger the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine: a means of vertical escalation that hurts the Russian war machine.

In office, Merz abandoned his earlier push to deliver the system. Scholz had resisted, arguing that Taurus deliveries require German soldiers on Ukrainian soil. France and Britain, by contrast, have sent personnel to Kyiv to help guide Storm Shadow and SCALP strikes. It is no coincidence that Europe’s two nuclear powers are willing to take greater risks.

This exposes a greater weakness: without a nuclear deterrent, Germany is vulnerable to blackmail. Berlin must anticipate and pre-empt all forms of coercion. Imagine Russia attacking a Baltic border town while issuing explicit nuclear threats against Germany. Even if the threat’s credibility was low, would Germans be willing to defend the Baltics with their own survival on the line?

Berlin has repeatedly misread an adversary that has turned recklessness and hostility into its strategic asset. For years, Germany assumed that Moscow would neither launch a full-scale war nor weaponise energy, citing the apparent reliability of Soviet deliveries during the Cold War. Both assumptions have collapsed. Past underestimation does not predetermine the direction of future errors. Yet the costs of underestimating the Kremlin’s maliciousness far exceed the risks of overestimation.

Long accustomed to wishing for the best possible outcome, Germany must anticipate a worst-case scenario in its dealings with Russia. Only credible mutually assured destruction can protect Berlin from nuclear blackmail. It is difficult to see how anything short of a German nuclear capability could supply that credibility. Germany should neither tempt Moscow to test whether ‘America First’ ideologues or a newly elected French populist would risk New York or Paris for Berlin, nor assume the Kremlin would never dare play that game.

Pursuing a homegrown bomb is dangerous, however. The gap between launching a programme and fielding weapons would be a phase of acute vulnerability, inviting intensified Russian hybrid warfare, explicit threats, even strikes against the programme itself. With Russia stoking German angst, the federal government would face fierce domestic backlash.

In that light, a more unorthodox option arises: Germany might acquire a small nuclear arsenal, along with diversified delivery systems (supplementing existing ones) from the United States or France. Such an arrangement would be extraordinary, breaking with decades of US non-proliferation policy. During the Cold War, Washington reassured West Germany by tying it into NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements. Yet a German bomb remained taboo, as the US guided Bonn into the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

France is an even less intuitive partner. The force de frappe is a sacred symbol of national sovereignty, under exclusive French command. The prospect of France handing nuclear weapons to Germany – its ancient foe – seems hors de question. In debates on nuclear sharing, French leaders have been explicit: ultimate authority stays in the Élysée.

Yet Germany has room to manoeuvre. A narrow opening exists with both allies. France could be won over by granting Germany operational control while retaining strict material oversight: warheads and delivery systems would be drawn from a French pool and sustained by French technical support — much as Britain depends on the United States for its American-built Trident missiles.

The offer could also be sweetened financially. France’s domestic quagmire pushes the country towards a sovereign debt crisis. Germany, by contrast, retains the confidence of international capital markets. A major German contribution to the French programme could ease that strain — both governments would benefit from trading security for fiscal space.

Likewise, the waning credibility of the US nuclear umbrella may contain the seeds of a solution. Donald Trump’s MAGA base mistrusts foreign entanglements. That opens the door to a deal. A large, golden cheque to relieve overstretched America of a security burden could appeal to the current administration. This insurgent presidency appears loosely tied to traditional foreign policy principles. In Seoul, facing a similar predicament, officials note that Trump’s inner circle appears open to allied nuclearisation if it reduces US commitments. Germany should move first and demonstrate to its allies both the will and the capacity to build a bomb. Confronted with the prospect of a German programme, Paris and Washington might prefer to maintain influence and profits rather than watch the world’s third largest economy develop its own deterrent.

A return to Machtpolitik requires trust in Germany’s democratic institutions and a rejection of the absurd notion that fascism is somehow intrinsic to Germany’s national identity. Rather, fascism and the spirit of revenge fester in humiliated societies such as Russia after 1991, just as it did in Germany after 1919.

It is an awkward moment to embrace Machtpolitik, with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) leading in polls. Yet, for democratic Germany, there is no alternative to double victory, at home and abroad. Defeat at home would empower those who celebrate at the Russian embassy. Defeat abroad – Russian influence in Eastern Europe, fears of war, and mass migration from the East – would strengthen extremists claiming to hold the key to the Kremlin.

Chancellor Merz has grasped the gravity of the moment. He has spent political capital shielding Kyiv from Donald Trump, attempting to rally Europe behind the use of Russia’s frozen assets and reinforcing the material base of German power. But he is not ahead of the curve. He should take unprecedented steps himself: cast off the one-sided shackles of international law and pursue a German nuclear deterrent to contain Putin.

For power-averse Germans, like the bureaucrat in Brussels, it’s time to face reality; otherwise, events will soon expose their moralism as shallow virtue-signalling. Genuine anti-fascists should embrace a return to Machtpolitik directed against a regime in Moscow that Hannah Arendt would have thoroughly despised.