September 11, 2024 | Dalibor Rohac

A lot of ink has been spilled on Germany’s supposed stinginess, hypocrisy, and lack of a geopolitical compass. The country’s 2025 draft budget, approved by the governing coalition after some acrimony, is halving aid to Ukraine to just over $4 billion and offers little prospect of future assistance while narrowly meeting NATO’s 2 percent defense spending target—all of it to satisfy the country’s strict public debt rules.

Here’s a thought. Instead of the constant hand-wringing and trying to shame Germans into playing a geopolitical role commensurate to their size and centrality in the European Union, perhaps their allies should just leave them be. Berlin does not want to turn the Bundeswehr into a formidable fighting force, project hard power, or use its defense industrial base to arm Ukraine and other Eastern European nations. And perhaps that is OK.

None of this is to downplay the assistance that Germany has already provided to Ukraine—which exceeds $16 billion, making Germany the second-largest donor after the United States—the $100 billion-plus Zeitenwende fund, or the significant economic costs of essentially decoupling the German economy from Russian natural gas.

However, it is time to drastically reduce the centrality of Germany in the U.S. conversation about the trans-Atlantic partnership—on both sides of the aisle.

Democratic administrations have long seen Berlin as their first point of contact in Europe. Postwar Germany seems to fit the Obama-esque fantasy of a country that has moved to the right side of history, chastised by historic experience and committed to taming its darker instincts and upholding the rules-based international system. As a result, Democrats—not least President Barack Obama, who in 2016 called then-Chancellor Angela Merkel “probably [his] closest international partner these last eight years”—have filtered their perception of European affairs through German lenses.

The Biden administration has continued in treating Germany as its European interlocutor of choice. This has been most notable in the escalation management involved in military assistance to Ukraine. Washington and Berlin have gone in tandem first denying and then providing vital weapons systems to Ukraine, as well as imposing restrictions on their use in order to keep the conflict contained. In some cases, such coordination was explicit—most notably the U.S. decision to supply Ukraine with M1 Abrams main battle tanks in January 2023 followed and was justified by Germany’s decision to send its own Leopard tanks.

For Republicans, especially those close to former President Donald Trump, Germany is a case study of everything that has gone wrong with U.S. alliances: an effete nation imbued with progressive dogma and free-riding selfishly on U.S. security guarantees. The war in Iraq brought U.S.-German relations to a low point during the Bush administration. Merkel’s perceived welcoming of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Europe further antagonized U.S. conservatives, as did Germany’s energy dependence on Russian energy and the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, launched after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas.

Neither lionizing nor constantly bashing Germany strengthens the trans-Atlantic partnership. Never mind the obvious naivete of a worldview in which multilateralism and trade have supposedly turned hard power obsolete. More importantly, unlike during the Cold War when Germany was a front-line state and its military had some heft, NATO is no longer about Germany. Germany’s territory is not being contested, and the country is surrounded by thoroughly benign neighbors in all directions. Should one be surprised that German voters do not support massive increases in defense spending?

Kicking Germany out of NATO is neither feasible nor desirable. However, the dirty little secret is that from the perspective of hard security, not much would happen if Germany were to somehow disappear from the alliance—perhaps with the exception of the need to find new air bases and logistical centers outside Germany. Given its size, Germany contributes disappointingly little to the alliance’s joint capabilities—yet it is also asking for very little, if anything, in return. Most importantly, the country is supremely likely to invoke Article 5, ever.

The centrality of Germany in U.S. thinking about NATO is an unhelpful remnant of the Cold War era. Today, however, NATO is about protecting the countries of its eastern flank—from Finland in the north, through the Baltics and Poland, to Romania in the south. On balance, the presence of Western European countries, including Germany, in the alliance is helpful, but it does not affect the fundamental strategic rationale for the alliance’s existence.

In other words, the imperative of deterring Russian aggression in Eastern Europe through ironclad security guarantees exists independently of Germany’s behavior. Nor is it an act of charity from Washington. Rather, it is an expression of the core national interest in keeping a single foreign power from dominating the Eurasian landmass—and in preventing another large-scale European war. Moreover, the immediate beneficiaries of Article 5 guarantees—think Poland, Finland, or Lithuania—are no free-riders. Not only do they take their obligations within the alliance seriously, but they can also be Washington’s best advocates within the EU—including, in the Lithuanian case, on the question of China.

True, given Germany’s current economic size, nothing ever happens in the EU without Germany. Yet, time and time again, not much happens with Germany either. Just as Berlin has resisted calls for a substantial military buildup, it has also thrown water repeatedly on efforts to turn the EU into a properly federalized institution with real fiscal and geopolitical heft. Especially given the state of German politics today, the prospect of a genuine German leadership on the European and global stage is akin to waiting for Godot in the eponymous play.

While engagement is necessary, the constant cycle of hectoring Berlin or building up expectations about historic turning points, which are then promptly disappointed, seems to be an inferior strategy to simply working around Germany to build up military power across NATO’s regions that are threatened by Russia. The same is true of the EU. Countries frustrated with Germany’s intransigence ought to think about building coalitions of the willing, conceivably under the rubric of so-called enhanced cooperation to proceed with projects of their mutual interest, effectively leaving Germany behind. Such an approach may become completely unavoidable if the next federal election brings the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to power—or indeed if it results in yet another broad and dysfunctional coalition designed to keep the AfD out of power.

No U.S. policymakers get upset over Austria’s or Switzerland’s supposed neutrality—it is simply taken for granted that the foreign policy of otherwise friendly nations operates within different parameters from the United States’ own and that the perception of no outside threats breeds complacency.

The same is largely true of Germany. Yes, Berlin remains a treaty ally—but so are several countries with which the United States does not see eye to eye on important strategic issues, such as Turkey or Hungary. To be sure, we should be hoping for a more strategically minded German leadership than the assortment of box-ticking accountants who occupy most, though not all, positions of influence in Berlin. But, as things stand, the United States shouldn’t just grant Germany its current privileged position to shape the trans-Atlantic relationship, nor should it go on an anti-European crusade simply to punish German fecklessness.