Germany’s Appeasement Delusion
Friday Flashpoint: May 8th AD2026
Welcome to Friday Flashpoint where I analyze and expose important historical and social developments impacting America in the world
There are many events I could cover this week from the on-again, off-again cease fire between the US president/Israel and Iran. Or the just announced cease fire between Russia and Ukraine out of respect for the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany and part of World War Two which begins May 9 is set to expire on May 11. Or I mention the Virginia redistricting failure while the Republican Party in the South moves at breakneck speed to do what it was known they would do, and eliminate as many minority-majority —and by extension mostly minority represented — Congressional districts. But I think the spat with Germany is more important. Europe is still moving away from the US and is rearming itself, even if the Germans are hesitant to embrace reality. However, Germany cannot run from history or from the present geopolitical reality.
The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result…—Friedrich Merz
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Iran is humiliating the United States,1 and new reports are coming out that the American people have been deceived about the extent of the damage inflicted on American assets. Additionally the Strait of Hormuz remains closed at the will of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a consequence of Israel’s regime change by decapitating the inept older generation of leaders. The Young Peacocks of Iran want to strut upon the wreckage of America’s martial reputation. Some Germans are angry at Merz for speaking the truth.
They are wrong.
The German political establishment is currently haunted by a ghost—the specter of an Atlanticism that died a year ago. Member of the German Parliament, MdB2 Roderich Kiesewetter’s recent criticism of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s straight talk is a symptom of profound strategic delusion. Kiesewetter is a member of Merz’s ruling party the Christian Democratic Union and he thinks the solution to getting on America’s good side is for Europe to play nice and convince the Americans they are good security partners. However, to suggest that Europe can buy “relevance” in Washington through a “fair burden-sharing arrangement” is more than a policy disagreement; it is self-deception born of a lack of national confidence.
Mr. Kiesewetter operates on a 1995 system in desperate need of a 2026 update. In the current American landscape, burden-sharing is not a ticket to the high table of Western statecraft. It is the rent required to avoid eviction from the security architecture. The current American federal CEO does not view European defense spending as a collaborative strategic investment; he views it as a mandatory contract for American hardware. To believe that purchasing a fleet of F-35s earns Germany a partnership is to mistake a vendor-customer relationship for a diplomatic alliance.
Europe must be clear-eyed about the nature of the current US administration. The American hegemon is currently consumed by a domestic agenda focused on settling internal scores and erecting trade barriers against its own allies. When a superpower turns ravenous with such ferocity, it stops looking for partners. It looks for compliance. If that is not forthcoming, it simply looks away or roars to see who flinches.
Furthermore, the lethargy of the American opposition—the Democrats’ peculiar silence regarding escalating foreign policy threats against Greenland or Canada for instance—has not gone unnoticed, least of all by the Canadians. The Western alliance is witnessing a Washington that is too transactional and uncivilized to care. In this vacuum, seeking relevance through traditional channels is a fool’s errand. America needs an opposition party that can articulate an opposing foreign policy. In the meantime Europe should operate as if the American position will not change simply with a switch in governing party. The French get this, the Germans need to wake up.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth for Berlin is not the US president’s policies, but his persona. German commentators have spent years dismissing the POTUS’s behavior as “New York” eccentricity or Manhattan boorishness. This is a psychological defense mechanism. It allows the German elite to externalize a leadership style that is actually a mirror of an unreformed German nature. The proud grandson of German immigrants is the mirror of their pasts.
The president’s uncompromising will to humiliate, his patriarchal dominance, and his allergic reaction to multilateral consensus are not Americanisms. They are atavistic Germanic traits. German elites are agitated by the current POTUS because they recognize in him the archetypes they have spent 80 years trying to legislate out of existence. By labeling him a “New Yorker,” Berlin avoids a reckoning with the fact that it is being pushed around by the old version of itself.
Winston Churchill famously remarked that the Germans were “always either at your throat, or at your feet.” Today, the world needs Germany on its feet—and speaking clearly, without the customary diplomatic throat-clearing.
If Mr. Merz backs down to the out-of-date Atlanticist wing of the CDU, he ensures that Germany remains a strategic object—a piece on the board to be moved by others. If he grovels and apologizes to the American leader in an effort to avert the withdrawal of additional US troops from Germany, Merz will lose respect in Washington and be under greater threat from the neo-fascist adjacent Alternative for Germany (AfD), the party supported by the US vice president. The AfD deliberately rejects the German culture of guilt and shame over the Nazi regime; many younger Germans are ready to be a more assertive country. Merz could show German youth how to do this constructively. But the old establishment must get out of his way, and he must take up the challenge. Furthermore, this US administration respects foes far more than compliant friends. Respect in 2026 is not granted to those who follow the rules; it is reserved for those who command enough regional power to change them.
Europe must get tougher if it wants to be a force for good. Germany needs to adapt.
A force for good still requires force. As part of gaining this force, Germany must grow up. Mr. Merz’s straight talking is not a diplomatic lapse—it is the first sign of a necessary, albeit painful, maturation of the German state.
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