Episode 134: Europe’s Strategic Dependencies
Anna Sauerbrey
Die Zeit
Anna Sauerbrey has been the foreign editor at Die Zeit since 2022. She also regularly writes about Germany for international publication such as the New York Times and CNN Opinion and comments on current political events on German public radio and TV. Previously, she was deputy editor-in-chief at Der Tagesspiegel. She is particularly interested in transatlantic relations and frequently travels to the United States for reporting. Most recently, she was a John F. Kennedy Memorial Policy Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard.
Jeff Rathke
President of AGI
Jeffrey Rathke is the President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.
Prior to joining AICGS, Jeff was a senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at CSIS, where his work focused on transatlantic relations and U.S. security and defense policy. Jeff joined CSIS in 2015 from the State Department, after a 24-year career as a Foreign Service Officer, dedicated primarily to U.S. relations with Europe. He was director of the State Department Press Office from 2014 to 2015, briefing the State Department press corps and managing the Department's engagement with U.S. print and electronic media. Jeff led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that, he was deputy chief of staff to the NATO Secretary General in Brussels. He also served in Berlin as minister-counselor for political affairs (2006–2009), his second tour of duty in Germany. His Washington assignments have included deputy director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs and duty officer in the White House Situation Room and State Department Operations Center.
Mr. Rathke was a Weinberg Fellow at Princeton University (2003–2004), winning the Master’s in Public Policy Prize. He also served at U.S. Embassies in Dublin, Moscow, and Riga, which he helped open after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Rathke has been awarded national honors by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as several State Department awards. He holds an M.P.P. degree from Princeton University and B.A. and B.S. degrees from Cornell University. He speaks German, Russian, and Latvian.
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The dynamics of the transatlantic relationship are changing. As Europe faces the changing policies of the United States toward its alliances, Germany is investing in its armed forces at a historic rate and working to rebalance NATO’s burden-sharing. Die Zeit’s foreign editor Anna Sauerbrey joins this episode of The Zeitgeist to discuss how the Trump administration’s “America First” policies are reshaping the German and European approaches to security and economic policy and Germans’ evolving view of the country’s place in the world.
Host
Jeff Rathke, President, AGI
Guest
Anna Sauerbrey, Foreign Editor, Die Zeit
Transcript
Jeff Rathke
I’m very pleased to have our listeners back with us for this episode of The Zeitgeist. And I’m also especially pleased to welcome our guest, Anna Sauerbrey. Anna, welcome.
Anna Sauerbrey
Hello, good to be here.
Jeff Rathke
Dr. Anna Sauerbrey is the foreign editor of Die Zeit, one of Germany’s leading papers. She previously was deputy editor-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel, a Berlin-based paper, and has been a foreign affairs writer for many years. Going back further, she was also a guest journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Was that a few years ago, Anna?
Anna Sauerbrey
That’s actually 11 years ago.
Jeff Rathke
So someone who has spent time in the United States in a journalistic capacity, among other things. We are speaking on the 17th of September. And Anna, you are joining us from Utah. Is that correct?
Anna Sauerbrey
Yes, I have been reporting from Orem, Utah, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated one week ago today. And I will go on to Phoenix next to report on the funeral and the memorial service the Trump administration is holding for him there down there.
Jeff Rathke
Anna is in the midst of a longer journalistic trip through the United States, but she is based in Berlin. I thought it would be interesting to take the opportunity of her presence here to bridge two questions: what is interesting in the United States for German readership and policymakers, and how the United States factors into German policymaking these days and what are the trends we can observe. That’s what we had in mind.
If I start from 2022, Chancellor Scholz, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announced a sea change in Germany’s foreign policy, including massive reinvestment in defense and shifting the burden sharing within NATO back in the direction of Europe. That has intensified since the election of Donald Trump, the start of the second Trump second term, and the election of Friedrich Merz as chancellor earlier this year. As we see Germany and Chancellor Merz trying to create a workable relationship with the Trump administration, I want to start, Anna, by asking: what are the key elements of Germany’s strategy for relations with the United States as you observe them?
Anna Sauerbrey
Looking at the time since Trump took office for the second time in January, I would say that after a brief period of shock—like a deer gazing into the headlights—European leaders, and they have been coordinating very closely on this under the leadership of Friedrich Merz, have adopted a strategy of buying time. We saw that from the Munich Security Conference in February, which was the initial shock moment, up to the NATO summit, where every European leader traveled to the United States and flattered Donald Trump to an extent that many, particularly when it comes to NATO chief Mark Rutte, many thought was embarrassing. There’s a German term, Fremdscham. I don’t know, Jeff, whether you have a good word for that in English—when you feel embarrassed for somebody else.
Jeff Rathke
I think that’s the best word we’ve got.
Anna Sauerbrey
At the June summit, everybody took a deep breath of relief, thinking: this didn’t go too badly, our strategy is pretty much working. Since then, though, domestic developments in the United States have made it more difficult for Europeans so be optimistic about the transatlantic relationship. They have also learned that every success with Donald Trump is always preliminary. They thought they had secured his benevolent disinterest when it comes to Ukraine, but then he invited Vladimir Putin to the summit in Alaska. A week later, all the European leaders, including Mark Rutte, had to rush to Washington, DC, to keep him from doing anything on Ukraine that is not in the European interest – such as unconditionally giving away large swaths of Ukranian territory or agreeing to a demilitarized Ukraine or whatever the fears were. I think they’ve learned they must take things step by step and try to work with Trump in whatever situation they’re in right now.
Jeff Rathke
A couple of things in your answer jump out at me, but maybe let me start with this one. Is it your impression that German and other European leaders believe this strategy is working?
Anna Sauerbrey
I mean, just today, Donald Trump is in the United Kingdom. And that’s just another part of the strategy. It’s a continuation of the flattery and appealing to his royal instincts. And we will see another state visit with military parades and state dinners in Buckingham Palace, and a visit to the late Queen Elizabeth’s grave. I think they think it’s not completely unsuccessful, because they do continue it. I think at the same time, there is a sense of realism that, of course, it might go wrong and that European countries have to prepare for the moment where maybe he decides to let Europe down—be it on Ukraine, because he has done it before. He has stopped weapons deliveries to Ukraine twice. There will certainly be no more financial aid to Ukraine in the near future. So yes, I think they’re going to prepare for that. But having said that, they also know they need that time, because preparing means becoming more independent of America’s defense industry. And that just is a long road ahead.
Jeff Rathke
You’ve described this almost, Sisyphus-like work that European leaders have taken on in the short term to try to keep the balloon in the air—to keep the Trump administration, and Trump personally, engaged with and supportive of the issues that are so crucial for Europe’s security and prosperity. But of course, there is this factor of European dependency on the United States: the defense and security dependency, the trade and economic relationship, also the technology relationship—that is a critical element there. There’s the saying, that diplomacy is the art of saying “nice doggy, nice doggy” while you look around for a rock. So, the question is, are European leaders looking for that rock? Is there a concerted effort that is going to yield results to decrease their individual dependencies and perhaps their collective dependencies on America for their own future? Is the urgency there that you would consider necessary to accomplish that?
Anna Sauerbrey
I do think the urgency is there. I think that, especially given what has happened here in the past weeks and is picking up speed, I would not yet, maybe, call it “authoritarian,” but the “authoritarian remake” of the United States of America is something that is being observed in Germany, that people are very aware of, and that they know may complicate relations between the United States and Europe even more. And I think it’s rather that they know that speeding up independence is really hard to do. It’s easy for us pundits and journalists to call for that—and Die Zeit has often done so—but I do see the restraints: building a defense industry in our country and coordinating it with other European countries, because that’s the plan, to have more of a European defense industry. The EU Commission is putting money into that. France and Germany are coordinating, I think, on five large common defense projects. But all these things are processes that take place over a decade or so. So, we need that time to prepare. And then, of course, the United States is not the only country we would be, as Germans, happy to divest from; we are trying at the same time to divest from China. These are the two big markets Germany is trading with. And I think companies have only so much room for maneuver. And there again, there’s the idea of trading more with countries of the Global South and Latin America, getting the MERCOSUR agreement over the finishing line. But I think that, too, is something that would take years—to shift trade from China and the United States to other countries. So, in the meantime, what we see now is that companies are investing more in the United States because they want to please Donald Trump, and they go in to buy that time and maybe think about other partners they could invest in. But for the moment, as much as there is awareness, I think it’s hard to realize the policy that would be needed.
Jeff Rathke
Another thing that you have talked about is the leadership that German Chancellor Merz has demonstrated in orchestrating the engagement of European leaders with Donald Trump personally and the Trump administration more broadly. The question of leadership in European and international affairs is always one that has been challenging for Germany, for different reasons at different times in the post-war period, but it is still, at times, a problem. In this case, what we see is Germany’s leadership directed at a goal of preserving what can be preserved of the transatlantic security partnership, for example. I’d be interested in your thoughts on how those discontinuities that we see in the first eight or nine months of the Trump administration are affecting Germans’ views about their own country’s role, either in regard to its European partners or more generally in the international sphere. Is there a change you notice there, and what does it look like?
Anna Sauerbrey
I think there is a change, but there, too, we have a lot of slowing factors, and we see that in Germany’s policy. I think there is an awareness that Germany has become more independent on defense —something that is necessary. A buildup of the Bundeswehr and closer coordination with European partners already was necessary before Donald Trump came into office because of the war in Ukraine, and it’s even more necessary now. How quickly European leaders, and particularly Friedrich Merz, move on it, of course depends on how they perceive the willingness of the German population to go along. And I think the debate we’ve had in Germany in recent weeks about a mandatory draft or reintroducing the mandatory draft in Germany is a good example for that, because I think everybody in the Bundeswehr and many Christian Democratic defense experts find it necessary, because the Bundeswehr has had large difficulties already finding the personnel it would need to get to the strength it wants to have. But what the government is doing now is—if I want to be maybe a bit sarcastic—like another ad campaign. They have introduced legislation to the Bundestag, and they will now register younger people and send them letters inviting them to join the Bundeswehr. And this will probably not work. And most people who know the system closely, and people who have younger children in Germany—also policymakers—know that this generation is not really ready to join the Bundeswehr. And the question is, when do we stop just watching it not working and shift policies? But I think, right now, the assessment of Friedrich Merz—and particularly in the Social Democratic Party—is that the German public is not yet aware enough of how bad the situation is we are in, both in the transatlantic context and in the European security context, which is of course related, that they would agree to such painful measures. Because, of course, there’s a lot of political cost to it, and it’s an infringement on the freedoms of a full generation of young German men—and possibly women, too. So that is a great cost; I don’t want to belittle that. But I think, weighing those two against each other, we see that the German government’s belief is that the German public is not ready. So they have sort of taken this sidestep again. And you could look at other policy fields and say the same.
Jeff Rathke
I would refer listeners to the most recent episode of this podcast where we talked with Hubertus Heil, a politician from the Social Democratic Party, former minister, now a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag. And we talked about this topic specifically. As you say, Anna, I think there is a widespread recognition among analysts of defense affairs that this effort to expand the Bundeswehr purely on the basis of volunteer soldiers is unlikely to succeed. I think if people think it’s going to succeed, they’re kind of fooling themselves. So the question I asked of Hubertus Heil was: when is the point when the German government and the parliament will assess whether this has been successful and take the next step, if needed, which would be some form of conscription rather than a purely voluntary system? And his answer was, not during this legislative period. So, in other words, you’re saying it will be at least four years before you have a new legislative framework beyond what they’re currently working on. And if you are worried about American disengagement from European security and the possibility that Russia will be able and interested in challenging NATO in Europe by the end of this decade, then that is a timeline that’s pretty hard to defend for ensuring that the armed forces are sufficient to do the job that they might be called on to do.
Anna Sauerbrey
How did he defend it, Hubertus Heil?
Jeff Rathke
Well, I would refer listeners back, but I think his point—and I must say we didn’t go super deep on the topic—was, if I’m being fair to him: his point was, we have agreed to try this. And the obligation of the political leadership in the coalition parties and of the government is to make it work, to do everything possible to make it work. And so it doesn’t make sense to begin immediately planning for the failure of a policy that you’ve just agreed on. So I can accept that that is an approach that is necessary for someone who has to answer for, and communicate to, and defend to voters—as you said, Anna—this demand for the time and even potentially the lives of young people in Germany by taking the step of conscription. So it’s not something to enter into lightly. His argument was, we need to put all of our energies into making this—what they call the Swedish model—successful and not immediately undermining ourselves by thinking about the next step.
This brings me to one last topic that I’d be really interested in your perspective on, Anna, and that has to do with Germany and the question of leadership. As I mentioned earlier, German politicians often have a reluctance to play a leadership role internationally. In part, I’ve had so many German politicians of all political stripes say, well, you know, we need to be careful about how our neighbors would look at greater German leadership. I think that’s often a hurdle in the minds of German leaders more than it is in the minds of Germany’s neighbors. But anyway, Friedrich Merz has been meeting in a variety of formats, in smaller groups, with his European partners and trying, I think, to innovate a bit in the way Germany gets things done. What do you see there as critical or particularly effective or promising in the way that this government is rethinking the way that it goes about pursuing its objectives on the European stage and internationally?
Anna Sauerbrey
I’ll answer that, but I just wanted to make one more point on the question of where Germany and the United States stand. And I think that’s related to the question of German leadership. When we speak about the urgency—and you’ve raised all of the important topics like defense independence, economic independence, a need for Europe and Germany particularly to go faster on those—but I think one option that I see arising, or one historic—another historic Zeitenwende—that I see arising is that the United States might not only retract from Europe their support, their interest, their money in our defense system, but they might become actively hostile towards Europe. And I think that’s one possibility that is even harder to prepare for, and that is not quite yet as well understood as the other points we’ve raised here. I think the development here in the United States is simply stunning—what we’ve seen in the past weeks in the ideology becoming more extreme, particularly on the issue of what the American conservative right would call free speech. And this will have an effect on Europe, too. After the death of Charlie Kirk here in the United States—this brutal assassination—there’s a sea change in the policies that the United States are rolling out domestically, I believe. There will be, I think, more active infringements on NGOs; they have already attacked a couple of media companies here in the United States. They will continue to do so; they’ve just done so with the New York Times. They are threatening pretty much each and everybody who’s speaking badly about Kirk. And this has been an issue that JD Vance has raised at the Munich Security Conference. They tie it to the Digital Services Act of the European Union, which they see as infringing on American companies’ freedom to promote free speech in Europe or offer platforms for free speech in Europe. And both Trump and JD Vance have mentioned it a couple more times in the past weeks, and I think now that they have made it such a big topic here, it will become a more important topic in United States foreign policy, too. And I think that European states need to prepare for that. Also, we’ve just seen Elon Musk, who was just a couple of months ago still an important figure in U.S. government and still an important figure in public life in the United States, meet and support—or, he didn’t meet; he was digitally at—a really far-right rally in the UK, where it was not Marine Le Pen speaking, but Eric Zemmour speaking—so the very fringe French far right—and the very fringe British right with Robinson. Sorry, I’m getting a bit long, but I think this is an important point that there really is an ideological sea change. And I think Friedrich Merz has to answer to that, too. He’s done a really good job, I think, in bringing together Europeans. And I think that’s the type of leadership he’s looking at—being first among equals, so to speak, bringing together the group, realizing what has always been the hardest part in Europe: that we are strongest together. We are strong as a full EU economy. But each and every one of these countries—even Germany as the largest one—is not strong enough to put up with the United States. And I think it will be his role to coordinate also a response to possibly more hostile American foreign policy towards Europe, because this only can be answered within the European context; each and every one of them is not strong enough. And of course it’s European legislation that they will probably go after first.
Jeff Rathke
Well, I think we’ve covered a lot of ground in this half hour. And I want to thank you for your time, Anna, and I’m sure we’ll be in touch again sometime in the future to discuss these and other issues further. But for the time being, I’ll let you go, and I will encourage all of our listeners out there who read German to follow Anna’s reporting, not only from the United States, but also her analysis in Die Zeit. Her work appears also from time to time in American publications in English, so keep an eye out. And thank you for spending time with us today.
Anna Sauerbrey
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Rathke
And I look forward to having all of our listeners with us on the next episode of The Zeitgeist.
