German Foreign Policy Has Finally Grown Up |
Foreign & Public Diplomacy
To understand the shortcomings of German foreign policy, you would be advised to visit a village in North Dakota. It was there, at a barbecue with a farming family in the summer of 2000, that the journalist Jörg Lau learned why Americans might not appreciate being sent to fight for Europe. Or at least, as Lau writes a quarter of a century later, he should have learned. But like almost all his compatriots and politicians—indeed, like pretty much every European—he didn’t.
His host, a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy from the prairies called John Wald, said his son was about to be sent to Kosovo as a soldier for the United Nations peacekeeping force there. It was his second stint, and John was concerned.
To understand the shortcomings of German foreign policy, you would be advised to visit a village in North Dakota. It was there, at a barbecue with a farming family in the summer of 2000, that the journalist Jörg Lau learned why Americans might not appreciate being sent to fight for Europe. Or at least, as Lau writes a quarter of a century later, he should have learned. But like almost all his compatriots and politicians—indeed, like pretty much every European—he didn’t.
His host, a salt-of-the-earth kind of guy from the prairies called John Wald, said his son was about to be sent to Kosovo as a soldier for the United Nations peacekeeping force there. It was his second stint, and John was concerned.
“Why do we have to send our sons to Kosovo?” he asked, beer in hand, ever so gently. “Just so that I understand.”
Lau recalls that he gave him a “long and complex explanation of European politics and the differences between the various Balkan states. John looked skeptical and confused but replied politely, ‘Yes, it does all sound a bit complicated.’”
The author reflects now: “When I today see the mix of fury, disappointment, and arrogance that America’s retreat from its role as defender of the world order in Europe has unleashed, I think back at this warm summer’s evening. I hadn’t been able to give a plausible explanation to John about why his son had........