You mean that you would prefer to have a system of ethics, justice and law similar to those prevalent in say the Latin countries or the Slavic countries or even the Greeks? Really? What is the EU and what will its “culture” be? French? Italian? Polish? Swedish? Spanish? Belgian? Who will determine this? Laws can be written but how they are interpreted and enforced often has very strong cultural influences. Would you like the laws governing your country to be “influenced” a la Italy? Would you like all policy determined by an elite group of arrogant technocrats like France? What?
How is German security underpinned? From Europe? France? Russia?
What are the principles that your present government is based on? and where did they come from? Looking back at German history, which periods would you prefer to emulate? Has not 1945 to 2004 been the most peaceful period and stable in recent German history? Are you a threat or threatened by any of your neighbors?
I would say that Germany is becoming stronger and as such is making the same mistakes that Wilhelm II made when he canned von Bismark to take the reins himself. In fact, the same pompous vacuous grandiosity seems to have re-engineered itself in the vapid posturings of Fischer and Schroeder. I mean when you have a chancellor who likes to spend time “tanning” rather than working on policy, what does this say exactly?
Please read more about the previous and present security policies of your nation.
Try going to deutsche-aussenpolitik.de/ or doing a google search for anything written by Ronald Asmus over at the Marshall Foundation. You could also try anything by the Aspen Institute. Check out where your country has based its security and what its strategic interests are and then explain to me why you are not an Atlanticist.
Apologies in advance, but I would say that most Germans who are not Atlanticists actually know very little about their countries strategic and security interests and policies and are often uninformed, trending to left and generally young and “idealistic” about the environment and “international law” and such. This is not the Germany of a sensible man like Kohl who despite all his personal faults led Germany admirably through a very crucial period. What pray tell will Schroeder and Fischer be remembered for in 50 years time? How will they compare with Adenauer or Kohl? Even Schmidt/Brandt and their “Ostpolitik” have failed somewhat to stand the test of time. Given the total collapse of communism, their “accommodation” seems less worthy or far-looking now and more akin to appeasement wouldn’t you say? especially given the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany?
Anyway just a few thoughts but I really do hope that you will come around to the Atlanticist position. We, both Americans and Germans, who support Atlanticism have been a bit too over confident and have assumed for too long that the sensibility of our positions should be readily apparent. In the process, we have allowed a whole generation or two of Germans to grow up on neoMarxist claptrap “learned” at their Unis. Yet, how many political science majors or how many political science classes in Germany actually discuss Reagan, Thatcher, Atlanticism? How many teach Marx? Liberation theology? Noam Chomsky? Third World Marxist leaders like that peasant from Peru, or is it Guatemala, Roberta something Machueieicdhe whatever or Castro?
We have both Americans and Germans graduating with radical beliefs about the environment and corporations gleaned from extremist professors in our universities who do not even know the basics of Locke, Mill, Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. This “esotericism” has got to stop. When did universities start shifting from including a few “outside” voices to focusing solely on such voices? A tragedy that will take us a whole generation to recover if we start now.
