A curious experience

Plus: Angela Merkel - sleepwalker? The Crimea question. Putin - war criminal & Xi's gracious host

History of the Present (fortnight to 18 March 2023)

German Bundestag debates what I really said. (Might I be permitted to add a word…?)

Last Thursday (16 March) I had the curious experience of watching the German parliament debate what I had really said. Chancellor Olaf Scholz opened his statement in advance of the next European Council meeting in Brussels with a remarkable tribute to my new book Homelands – a title which he accurately translated as 'Heimatländer - im Plural.' (It's fascinating, btw, to see in which European languages you can do 'Homeland' in the plural. The emotive German word Heimat just doesn't work in the plural. We actually debated Heimatländer as a title for the German edition with the Hanser Verlag, but decided it's just a bit too clunky, so it's simply Europa: Eine persönliche Geschichte.)

After reviewing some of the events that I witnessed over the last half-century, and now describe in the book, Scholz quoted almost verbatim the conclusion of my penultimate chapter ('Delphi') that we should 'defend, improve and extend' the free Europe we have achieved. (At this point, applause from the left in the Bundestag.) He added, 'I'm grateful to Timothy Garton Ash that he, as a historian, identifies what is really at stake in European politics today'.

No author (or publisher) could ask for more! But then the leader of the CDU/CSU opposition took a sideswipe at Scholz, saying – inaccurately – that this same TGA had translated into English the term 'scholzing' and defined it as 'communicating good intentions, only then to find every possible reason to delay or prevent these [from being realised]'. (Applause from the right.) Question: Did he have the text of Scholz's speech in advance? Or did he really know that definition off by heart?

Later in the debate, two other MPs, one from the Greens and one from Scholz's Social Democrats, corrected him, the latter (Johannes Schraps) describing as 'shabby' the conservative opposition leader's attempt to 'instrumentalise Timothy Garton Ash for [his, Merz's] populism.' (The Phoenix TV video clip gives a small taste of the exchanges.)

Now I'm up for a bit of parliamentary knockabout as much as anyone, and 'Scholzing' like its predecessors 'Merkeling' and 'Genschering', is a wickedly amusing coinage. I continue to think that the Scholz government has been too slow and hesitant with arms supplies to Ukraine, when speed is of the essence for that embattled country. But, as those two MPs from parties belonging to the governing 'traffic light' coalition rightly pointed out, I have documented (in an easily available newspaper column, in both English and German) the fact that I was retweeting a Ukrainian mockup (already in English, and giving precisely that definition) which itself drew on Ukrainian versions of 'Scholzing', such as this one, going back to last summer. And if anyone has a right to be bitingly sarcastic, it's Ukrainians who are fighting and dying to defend, precisely, a free Europe. But it's also fair to acknowledge that the German government's position has moved a long way, and that Germany is now one of the largest military as well as economic supporters of Ukraine.

As for myself, I would rather be heard for fifty years' work writing the history of the present than for five seconds' retweeting. Yet all of this is supremely unimportant compared to the question of whether the government Scholz leads will actually do what it takes to defend, improve and extend that free Europe.

Reading the rest of his statement, which concentrates on economic and environmental issues before turning to Ukraine, I feel confident that Germany will do everything it can to ensure the economic strength of Europe in general (and Germany in particular). I'm slightly less confident on the environmental front after the recent German move to prolong the life of the internal combustion engine across the EU – but nonetheless, Berlin is clearly serious about a green economic transition.

For me the big question is whether the Scholz government will really operationalise the agenda he laid out in his Prague speech last August for a big new eastern enlargement of the EU, including at least the Western Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova – and Georgia, if that country follows the wishes of its brave citizens waving the European flag. For that would mean both widening and deepening the European Union very significantly. (More on this in a forthcoming essay in Foreign Affairs). If it does – and it's still a big if – then his Chancellorship, after a slow and hesitant start, could even look better in the history books than that of Angela Merkel, which looked so good at the time, but much less so now, with benefit of hindsight…

Angela Merkel - sleepwalker?

One of the most enjoyable events I have done so far, in the inevitable round of promotional brouhaha around a new book, was a discussion last week in Cambridge with a historian whose work I greatly admire, Christopher Clark. His book about the origins of the First World War, The Sleepwalkers, is a modern classic. Nowhere did it have more impact than in Germany, and one of its greatest admirers was none other than Angela Merkel. As she herself explained, she was determined to avoid the mistakes that had led Europe into the First World War, by patient continued engagement, constantly seeking to understand the perspective of the other side – especially Russia – in order to preserve peace.

The supreme irony, it seems to me, is that Merkel, in trying to avoid the mistakes of those sleepwalkers who took us into the First World War, herself sleepwalked into the biggest war in Europe since 1945. And she did so in a way more comparable with the conduct of the also well-intentioned and peace-loving appeasers before the Second World War. It will be fascinating to see to what extent she is ready and able to acknowledge this in her memoirs. She certainly hasn't gone very far to doing so thus far.

Ukraine and the Crimea question

Answering my carefully formulated question, which the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) kindly inserted into one of their well-respected regular surveys, 68% of Ukrainians say they should continue to try to liberate all of Ukraine 'including Crimea, even if that means a longer war with Russia and diminishing help from the West'.

They prefer this to what many in the West would consider to be the highly desirable alternative of 'a firm Western commitment to help liberate and defend the rest of Ukraine's sovereign territory, including Donbas' (only 24%).

This is a domestic political reality which President Zelensky, however popular, and every other Ukrainian politician is bound to recognise, if and when it comes to a peace negotiation, or the West pressing for a peace negotiation.

As I found in Kyiv last month, there's also potential military reality of Ukraine seriously threatening Russian-occupied Crimea if a Ukrainian counteroffensive southward towards the Sea of Azov is successful with the help of Western-equipped and trained troops.

So can Western leaders go on publicly parroting 'it's up to the Ukrainians' & 'territorial integrity' while privately saying 'Ukraine shouldn't go for Crimea' (fearing escalation)? Western policymakers should face up to the Crimea question and work out what their real position is.

Vladimir Putin – war criminal and gracious host to Xi Jinping

One of the best pieces of news this week was the indictment of Putin by the ICC for the criminal abduction of at least 6,000 - Ukrainian sources say as many as 16,000 - Ukrainian children to Russia. Three cheers for the ICC. Whether or not Putin ever follows Slobodan Milošević into the courtroom in The Hague, this sends an important signal, also to Russian society and Russia's allies around the world.

Yet simultaneously, we have Xi Jinping about to make a state visit to Moscow.

There you have the two worlds we analysed in our recent ECFR/Europe in a Changing World study. That of the West, and that of the Rest – especially the non-Western great powers. The liberal internationalist optimism of the late 20th century; the nationalist and imperialist 'realism' of the early 21st century.

https://www.timothygartonash.com/homelands.php