For this, however, he must make gravity-defying leaps of faith. Schäuble’s proposal for a reorganization of Europe can only be understood as a product of despair: a last attempt to keep alive something like a minimally credible prospect of European strategic independence. The general rule, per Schäuble, must always be: ‘everything with NATO, nothing against it.’ ‘What France must deliver’, in return for the German co-financing of its nuclear force, ‘is that everything must fit in NATO.’ In fact, one reason why Schäuble wants Poland coopted into his directorate is that Warsaw would guarantee that ‘European defence would not be an alternative but complementary to NATO’. Repeatedly, Schäuble insists that none of this must contradict the three states’ commitment to NATO – in other words, to American military leadership. And since ‘Putin’s aides (!) threaten us every day with a nuclear strike’, Schäuble argues, it is clear that, ‘in return for a joint nuclear deterrence, we Germans must make a financial contribution to French military power’ and ‘engage in enhanced strategic planning with Paris’. If France has the bombs, Germany has the money. The main task for the triumvirate would be to build up a European nuclear arsenal. So far so good.īut this is only the beginning. In the longer run, it might sideline the Brussels establishment as a whole in favour of a multinational strategic alliance, led by the three sovereign states. The attentive reader notes that this would result in a ‘Europe à la carte’, replacing the EU’s supra-national institutions with what in Brussels is called, with an obligatory shudder of disgust, inter-governmentalism. The same principle would also apply to issues like immigration and asylum policy. Berlin, Paris and Warsaw would invite other European states to join their ‘coalition of the willing’, as Schäuble agrees with the interviewer it will be. The three would operate outside the European Union, since provisions for defence under the Lisbon Treaty ‘do not measure up to current challenges’. Therefore, he proposes, Poland should be invited in – ‘as an equal and equally important member of the leadership for European unification’ – to make it a triumvirate, a directorate of three. So, in Schäuble’s view, what geo-strategic moves might convert Europe into a sovereign power, after the Zeitenwende? The French-German tandem has clearly failed to prevent the war, or even to have a say in it. The vision he produced was, however, so unworldly as to suggest – coming from a figure known for his ruthless political realism – the opposite: a subversive admission that, with the war, all dreams – left or right – of a Europe with what Macron calls ‘strategic sovereignty’ are nothing but pipe dreams now. Apparently, with the war in Ukraine, the possibility of even imagining a sovereign Europe with an independent foreign policy now required more than that. In it, Schäuble publicly renounced his life-long vision of a French-German Kerneuropa, or core Europe. In late July, former German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble gave an interview to Welt am Sonntag, a centre-right Sunday paper. When a famously hard-headed statesman starts believing fairy tales, it may be a sign that all is not right with the world.
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