EXPERT INTERVIEW – In Germany, the votes are in, and the winner in a critical election is the party whose leader is a strong advocate for Ukraine and a vocal critic of the Trump Administration.
Germany’s largest turnout in decades (more than 80%) brought victory to the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its standard-bearer Friedrich Merz, a businessman who has long sought the chancellorship. A far-right party, the AfD, took second, while the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz finished third.
Rarely in recent memory has an election in Germany carried so much impact beyond the country’s borders – in part because it’s rare to find the continent of Europe in such geopolitical tumult. The election was held on the eve of the third anniversary of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and in the immediate wake of an unprecedented breach in the the nearly eight-decade post-World War II U.S.-Europe alliance. The latter helped explain Merz’s post-election vow to bring "real independence" from the U.S.
Merz said Sunday that his "absolute priority" would be to "strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we can achieve real independence from the U.S.” On Monday, Merz warned the U.S. against turning its back on its European allies but also urged Europeans to build up their own defenses, saying that in security terms it is now “five minutes to midnight for Europe.”
While many leaders in Europe – and elsewhere – have sought to flatter Donald Trump, or at least limit criticism of his administration, Merz blasted the White House for its “shocking” accommodation to Russia, its naming of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator” responsible for the war, and above all its “outrageous” statements supporting the far-right AfD party during the German campaign.
He argued that the U.S. had become "largely indifferent" to Europe's fate, and that Trump’s claims about Zelensky were "a classic substitution of the criminal for the victim.”
Merz’s statements and the German results have raised questions about how Germany and Europe writ large might wean themselves from the political and military support that successive U.S. administrations have provided for decades.
After the election, Liana Fix, Senior Europe Fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations, wrote that while Merz was “a longtime supporter of NATO and strong security ties with the United States, he has spoken surprisingly clearly about the need for Europe to become step-by-step independent from the United States.”
On Monday, Fix spoke with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: In the aftermath of his party's victory, Mr. Merz said that his “absolute priority…would be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can achieve real independence from the United States.” That struck me as an astonishing thing to hear from a German leader. How did it strike you?
Fix: Yes, absolutely. And Friedrich Merz is not a center-left or leftist politician who has always been critical of U.S. hegemony or U.S. imperialism. He was born in 1955, grew up with Germany's integration with the West, the transatlantic relationship, and NATO. Those are the main pillars of his socialization as a politician. So for him to say that, it's a huge step. And that's what makes it so remarkable.
It also tells us something about how it wasn’t necessarily Donald Trump's election, but the U-turn on Russia policy that the Trump administration seems to have done, that has really shaken German politics more than just the election result. Because there was always the assumption we can work with Donald Trump. German politicians and European politicians can make deals – something is going to work out.
Now there is a real feeling that because of the unpredictability, because of the U-turn on Russia, Europe needs to stand up for itself. And such a moment of clarity – a moment of insecurity, but also a willingness to act – is rare for Europe.
The Cipher Brief: Since Trump’s election, many leaders, not just in Europe, seem to have been looking for an accommodation. Some are flattering him, some are looking for deals, and so forth. There was none of that from Merz, was there?
Fix: Well, he has backtracked a little bit. Someone must have shown him the congratulatory note from Donald Trump, who was quite positive about Friedrich Merz. So there was some relief in Berlin that Donald Trump is not following in the footsteps of JD Vance and Elon Musk, implicitly advocating for the radical far-right Alternative for Germany party, but instead welcoming the conservatives, who are the firewall against the radical right wing in Germany.
But it's clear that Merz will pursue a two-track approach. On the one hand, try to work with the United States. On the other hand, as he said, a step-by-step building up of European defense capabilities. And that's the most important part. It's not only about strengthening Europe in NATO, but it's about building up European defense capabilities which can stand on their own outside of NATO or in a NATO-minus format, without the United States.
The Cipher Brief: And on that point, this conversation was already underway last week, and I guess it's a conversation in almost every European capital right now. How prepared do you think Germany is to make that kind of break with the United States, even if it is, as Merz said, a step-by-step approach?
Fix: There is a strong tendency in the German public to see the United States as the good guys, as the protector of Germany's security. And so this adjustment to see the United States in a more transactional relationship will take time. But at the same time, the majority of Germans support a stronger German army, and support stronger European defense efforts.
The most important part of that is the money, though. You can't get to that point [of stronger defense] without your public supporting you spending money on that. And there, the crucial item in the German context is the self-imposed debt break, which gives Germany some fiscal flexibility if the debt break is reformed or eliminated to invest in defense for Germany and for the European Union. And if that money is [released], which a majority of Germans support, then we can see real progress on the German level, and on the European level, towards investments into European defense.
The Cipher Brief: And just to be clear, the debt break is a bit like the debt ceiling in this country, except here we always blow right through the debt ceiling, right?
Fix: Yes, it's basically part of the German constitution. There have been some workarounds with special budgets and so on, but basically the debt break limits Germany's defense spending to 0.35 % of GDP. And at the same time, you also have debt savings on the European level, which limit European countries. And so all these ceilings make it difficult to just get out the credit card and say, let's buy those tanks, let's buy those strategic enablers, let's buy those airlift capabilities that we need.
The Cipher Brief: And related to this, of course, is the German economy, which right now is sputtering.
Fix: It's probably in its worst state since 1945. It's the third consecutive year of a recession in Germany, which has never been the case before. Germany is one of the lowest-growing economies in the European Union – the sick man of Europe again. Merz wants to reinvigorate the economy, but one of the big structural problems is that the German economy has been so reliant on exports. Now in a world of tariffs, and in a world of Chinese overcapacity, dumping everything from electric vehicles to more modern machinery tools on markets with high subsidies from the Chinese states, it's just incredibly difficult to compete for an export-oriented country like Germany. So it will have to reorient its economy towards other sources of growth. And that's the huge challenge that Merz is facing.
The Cipher Brief: You referenced German attitudes towards Russia. I saw a poll that was released after the election that said that among voters, 65 % were worried that Germany is “helpless” against President Trump and President Putin of Russia. Unpack that a little for us.
Fix: “Helpless” is a big word. And I think in the German debate, one has to be careful not to place the United States on the same level as Russia and China. This is something that Germans do very quickly – they very quickly talk about the strongman in the U.S., in China, and in Russia. And I always say, well, even a Donald Trump that is hostile to Europe or Germany is still someone who's very different from Xi Jinping and from Vladimir Putin.
But this feeling of helplessness basically comes from a realization that to have a role in international affairs, you need a military basis. And Germany, which has always thought about itself as a pacifist civilian country, is only now coming to the realization that just having your values on the right side of history doesn't help you. If you want your values to be worth anything, you need to support those values with hard military power. And that's an entirely new lesson for Germany, post-1945. And the German public is embarrassed by the state of the German Bundeswehr, the German army. It is embarrassed by the fact that even if Europe wanted to become more independent from the United States, it could not do that without somehow accommodating Russia and China.
The Cipher Brief: What does all this mean for Ukraine? In the early days of the war, Chancellor Scholz talked about the Zeitenwende, the historical turning point that was going to come, the big change in terms of Germany's approach and its defense policy and aid for Ukraine. And here we are three years later, and Germany has been criticized along with some other European countries for not doing enough. How do you think Mr. Merz’s election is being received in Ukraine?
Fix: I think it's perceived with relief, because Olaf Scholz has increasingly been perceived as someone who wants to have it both ways – on the one hand, support Ukraine, but on the other hand, not support Ukraine too much, to prevent escalation.
But now the election of Donald Trump – or the radical change in Donald Trump's approach towards Europe, Ukraine and Russia – all that is a second Zeitenwende. And this one is much more difficult to ignore, because now you not only have an aggressor in Russia, but you also are without a protector.
And in this understanding of the situation, Merz is very clear that Ukraine is an asset to Europe, that Ukraine is the one frontline that is defending against Russia, if Russia becomes a threat to Europe. He was open to delivering long-range German Taurus missiles to Ukraine. He is very clear on saying that Ukraine must win this war. So for Ukraine, it's certainly good news that Friedrich Merz will be the next chancellor.
The Cipher Brief: We would be remiss to have this conversation about the vote and not discuss the AfD party, the right-wing party which Elon Musk supported, and which JD Vance gave more time than anybody else in his recent visit to Germany. They came in second, and they're not going to get into the coalition, but what should we take away from their performance – even if they don't wind up being in the government?
Fix: The AfD is triumphant when it comes to the election results. They are also triumphant because they feel that there is an international movement that is supporting them, from the United States and from right-wing parties in Europe. And there is a concern in Germany that if this government doesn't get it right, especially on migration, on the economy, but also on security, this is the last election where the firewall can still hold. And in the next elections, the AfD could be too big to form a firewall against it. So that's an apocalyptic view, but it's not necessarily far-fetched.
And that's what makes Friedrich Merz a really historic chancellor. The stakes for his chancellorship are incredibly high. He will have to move fast, but the historical circumstances give him the opportunity to be a bold leader, both domestically and in foreign affairs.
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