The results of Germany’s recent federal election will have a broad impact on the Eurozone, the NATO alliance, U.S.-German transatlantic relations, and the future of the European project, Ms. Heather Conley and Dr. Constanze Stelzenmüller told Pacific Council members in the fifth and final installment of the Pacific Council’s Summer Teleconference Series.

Conley is the senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stelzenmüller is a Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. The discussion was moderated by former U.S. Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson.

This discussion took place before Germany’s federal election, which was conducted on Sunday, September 25, and resulted in German Chancellor Angela Merkel winning reelection to a fourth term. Conley, Stelzenmüller, and Emerson all predicted that Merkel would win, but also pointed out the possibility that Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a far-right, euro-skeptic, anti-immigrant, populist political party would win seats in the Bundestag for the first time, which it did. AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote and came in third after Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany and Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CDU/CSU) at 32.9 percent and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) at 20.5 percent.

"There are a whole lot of implications and possible directions coming out of this election that will not only impact what happens in Germany in the next four years but will have a broader impact on the Eurozone and the NATO alliance and obviously our own transatlantic relations."

John Emerson

Emerson laid out the pressing questions before the election: will Angela Merkel be granted a fourth term as chancellor? Will SPD leader Martin Schulz, who stepped down as the president of the European Parliament, be able to lead the Social Democrats back into the Chancellery, a place they have not occupied since the Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder chancellorship? Will the Bundestag grow from four parties to six? Will a far-right political party enter the Bundestag for the first time in over half a century?

"The most interesting question is not so much who’s given the right of putting together a governing coalition as chancellor, but what that coalition might well look like," said Emerson. "You don’t have to dig very deeply to see that there are a whole lot of implications and possible directions coming out of this election that will not only impact what happens in Germany in the next four years but will have a broader impact on the Eurozone and the NATO alliance and obviously our own transatlantic relations."

Conley agreed, adding that the governing coalition’s position on Russia, NATO, defense spending, and the future of European integration will be particularly important. Stelzenmüller said that although this was long seen as a boring election with a foregone conclusion, it had become a nail-biter in the final stretch because AfD inched into third place.

"AfD is extremely right-wing, it’s anti-democratic, it’s racist, it’s anti-Semitic, it contains people who are really on the outer right-most fringe of the German political spectrum," she said. "While they are unlikely to coalition with anybody, they are sure to change the tone and darken the political debate in Germany."

"This is going to be a test of character for many parliamentarians, and it’s going to be a test for German democracy and for Europe and the western alliance."

Constanze Stelzenmüller

Stelzenmüller said coalition negotiations may take months.

"The AfD will do everything it can to disrupt and provoke in the Bundestag," she said. "This is going to be a test of character for many parliamentarians, and it’s going to be a test for German democracy and for Europe and the western alliance."

Emerson said that he always thought Germany had a "built-in speed brake when it came to the possibility of a surge of a right-wing party, and that of course is its history." Nevertheless, he acknowledged that AfD is gaining momentum.

"What we’re seeing in the former East Germany is that the AfD and Die Linke [Germany’s far left political party] are crowding out the political center," said Conley. "The east is becoming in some ways extremely polarized. We need to reflect on this. Nearly 25 years after reunification, what does this mean?"

Conley also pointed out that Germany—as well as most advanced liberal democracies—are struggling with a leadership challenge.

"Chancellor Merkel has been incredibly successful in eliminating all of her competitors, but it is not clear who succeeds her after this term, because this will be her final term," she said.

"There are real threats out there, from Russia and elsewhere. Those who are less interested in NATO are going to have to invest in a European army."

Constanze Stelzenmüller

On the issue of raising Germany’s defense spending to 2 percent of GDP in its commitment to NATO, Emerson pointed out that the debate is not new.

"This was an issue that President Obama raised in literally every single bilateral meeting that I participated in between him and the chancellor, and there were a number of them," he said. "We made a lot of progress on it. We weren’t moving as fast as some would like but we saw in the last year and a half some real dollar progress in the last couple of budgets. Part of the problem with public jawboning, which is what we’ve seen recently, is that it makes the politics of getting something like this done even more challenging. That’s because it’s always hard for a leader to try to convince their country and fellow politicians to go along with a proposal that another country’s leader is publicly demanding that you do. It makes you look weak or inconsequential."

Stelzenmüller argued that Germany must not only spend and invest more on defense and security on behalf of its own national interests, but also on behalf of Europe and NATO.

"There are real threats out there, from Russia and elsewhere," she said. "Those who are less interested in NATO are going to have to invest in a European army."

"We have to recognize that Germany is leading the NATO battalion in Lithuania, they have forces in Mali and Afghanistan, and sometimes we don’t tout enough what the Germans are doing."

Heather Conley

Conley agreed that Germany has made progress in this area. Germany currently spends about 1.2 percent GDP on defense and have committed to raising that to 2 percent by 2024.

"They have been substantially increasing that amount," said Conley. "We have to recognize that Germany is leading the NATO battalion in Lithuania, they have forces in Mali and Afghanistan, and sometimes we don’t tout enough what the Germans are doing. That said, the Germans recognize that they have to do more because maintaining these forces and keeping an operational tempo up is a strain. Now with terrorism, there’s an internal security dimension to this as well."

Stelzenmüller pointed out that the general strategic debate about Germany’s military involvement and defense spending has "become a lot more muscular than it has been in the past. Last year’s defense white book was a case in point," she said, referring to the Bundeswehr’s 2016 White Paper on German Security Policy and the Future of the Bundeswehr. "By German standards, that was a white book that—if a [new] government is willing to implement it—could make Germany’s allies including America very happy."

Listen to the full conversation below:

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Justin Chapman is the Communications Associate at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

Read summaries of the previous discussions in the Pacific Council’s Summer Teleconference Series on America’s role in the South China Sea, Iran and Saudi Arabia’s proxy conflict in Yemen, South Asia’s water scarcity crisis, and changing security dynamics in the U.S.-Russia relationship.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.

The United States and Russia may have an adversarial relationship, but that does not mean they cannot cooperate on issues of mutual concern and interest, Dr. Agnia Grigas and Dr. Vidya Nadkarni told Pacific Council members in the fourth installment of the Pacific Council’s Summer Teleconference Series, on the changing security dynamics of the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Grigas is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Nadkarni is a professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego. The conversation was moderated by Dr. Robert English, associate professor and former director of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California.

President Trump has inherited a relationship with Russia fraught with more tension than at any point since the Cold War. Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine sparked fear that its belligerence could threaten the territorial integrity of NATO’s eastern members while raising questions about NATO’s ability to deter Russian aggression in its immediate neighborhood and beyond. In the Middle East, Russia obstructs U.S. policy in Syria by arming the Assad regime and providing diplomatic cover for its assaults on U.S.-backed Syrian rebels. Meanwhile, several investigations are underway in the United States to determine the impact Russia had in influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

"Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the U.S.-Russia relationship has always had an adversarial element, but this has not precluded pragmatic, bilateral cooperation between the two," said Nadkarni. "President Vladimir Putin was one of the first world leaders to extend a hand in cooperation after the 9/11 attacks, providing both intelligence and logistical support for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan."

"Russia’s role in Syria, Moscow’s increasingly assertive military moves in response to what is seen as NATO provocation, and the issue of sanctions will continue to roil the bilateral relationship between Russia and the United States."

Vidya Nadkarni

Nadkarni cited other examples of U.S.-Russia cooperation, including President Obama’s 2009 relations "reset." However, tensions have been under the surface with missed opportunities over the years, she said. With Putin’s return to the presidency in March 2012, U.S.-Russia relations took a pronounced downward turn. Nadkarni said that Putin was mistaken when he blamed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for inciting widespread protests in Moscow and other major cities against his 2012 election and claimed that the United States was either directly or indirectly behind all the protest movements in the post-Soviet space. In reaction, Putin attempted to block Clinton’s election to the presidency in the 2016 election.

"So far, Moscow is alleged to have intervened by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s servers and subsequently releasing selected emails through WikiLeaks, and by disseminating fake news and propaganda and using online amplifiers to spread the information to as many internet users as possible, all in an effort to thwart the election of Hillary Clinton," said Nadkarni.

In response to Russia’s election meddling, President Obama ejected 35 Russian diplomats from the United States, confiscated two Russian compounds, and placed sanctions on Moscow, which Putin hoped the incoming Trump administration would rescind. When it did not, Russia retaliated by cutting and capping staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Trump responded by halting non-immigrant visas from Russia and ordering Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco and two diplomatic annexes in New York and Washington, D.C.

With escalating retaliatory moves taking place, Nadkarni and Grigas do not see the adversarial aspect of the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in the near future.

"The future of U.S.-Russia relations is likely to be fraught and increasingly fractious," said Nadkarni. "Russia’s role in Syria, Moscow’s increasingly assertive military moves in response to what is seen as NATO provocation, and the issue of sanctions will continue to roil the bilateral relationship."

"If Russia seeks this great power role in its neighborhood in the 21st century, the current approach it is pursuing—cyber warfare, spreading propaganda and misinformation, sponsoring wars—is not going to make it very easy for them."

Agnia Grigas

Grigas agreed, however, that U.S.-Russia cooperation is possible, considering it has happened in the past when the relationship was even more adversarial.

"The United States and Russia are not geopolitical allies, they’re actually more like rivals," she said. "At the same time, it is a fact that even during the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union—despite being geopolitical rivals—did find room for cooperation and common ground on issues that are of core importance to them.

"Nonetheless, today they are nowhere near semi-equal powers as they were during the Cold War," Grigas continued. "Russia certainly is a diminished power. If Russia seeks this great power role in its neighborhood in the 21st century, the current approach it is pursuing—cyber warfare, spreading propaganda and misinformation, sponsoring wars—is not going to make it very easy for them."

Grigas said she does not believe that Putin’s leadership has been the sole factor in the souring of U.S.-Russia relations in the past 10 years, nor does it explain all of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions or aggressive behavior.

"Russia and the United States still have quite a different worldview," she said. "Even though communism is no longer Russia’s ideology, it still contrasts with the liberal democratic order led by the United States."

"As the United States and other new energy producers eat up shares of Russia’s energy market, things are going to get worse for Russia. Then we will really see if the people rise up and change the regime or the economy."

Agnia Grigas

Grigas pointed out that the United States was not the only western country in which Russia used its data hacking and misinformation campaign.

"We saw Russia’s role in trying to sway the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the reform referendum in Italy, and the national elections in the Netherlands and France, and of course Germany is gearing up for its own national election and they are already preparing for Russian cyber-attacks and trying to mitigate information warfare," said Grigas. "Russia’s toolkit has been directed toward the West, very much in a Cold War fashion."

Grigas added that Americans should keep in mind that the Russian public is not anti-American in general and that not everyone supports Putin’s government, though it may seem that way.

"There’s a lot of violence from the government in cracking down on any sort of resistance right now," she said. "How bad would it have to get for people to really go out massively into the streets? It will have to do with the economy. We really have to watch the energy market, because Russia is largely dependent on oil and gas revenues for its livelihood. Meanwhile, the United States has emerged as an energy superpower. As the United States and other new energy producers eat up shares of Russia’s energy market, things are going to get worse for Russia. Then we will really see if the people rise up and change the regime or the economy."

Listen to the full conversation below:

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Justin Chapman is the Communications Associate at the Pacific Council on International Policy.

The Pacific Council’s Summer Teleconference Series continues with a discussion about Germany’s upcoming election on September 21. Read summaries of the previous discussions in the series here.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.