Germany has a new leader and Trump has a new challenge

Express Tribune

02-03-2025

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The expected happened in the German elections held on Sunday, February 23, 2025. The turnout was the largest in decades. The electorate gave the most votes to the Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union. "We have won it," said Frederich Merz, who will soon be the German Chancellor. He is a businessman, tall even by German standards and flies his own plane. Once he is in the office, he has a lot of work to do.
The Germans share Europe's many economic and social problems. The most serious of these is the demographic change that is resulting in declining and ageing populations. If Europe has the ambition to revive its faltering economy, it must work to create a balanced population in which the youth have a larger presence. One way of accomplishing this is to have women more chidden.
Demographers believe that 2.1 children per woman is the rate at which populations remain steady; below that, populations decline, above that they increase. Currently all of Europe has a fertility rate below 2.1. This means that the continent has a declining and ageing population. This will lead to a loss of economic dynamism.
Long-serving German Chancellor Angela Merkel understood this and she opened the borders of her country to immigrants. More than a million refugees from the Middle East came into the country, escaping the civil wars in their many countries. This infusion helped the German economy. According to a study carried out by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, migration into Germany added 0.3 per cent to growth in the country's GDP. This happened over the short term as private enterprises were able to find the workers they needed. Over the long term, the increase in GDP was estimated at 0.5 per cent a year. Immigration is handsomely rewarding Germany.
However, while the arrival of newcomers, who were mostly people of colour and of Islamic faith, was good for the economy, they created other problems for the European nations. Like most of Europe, Germany wishes to remain white and Christian. Admitting many Muslims who were not white in colour produced a backslash which has had political problems. These manifested themselves in the form of the rise of rightist parties such the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which opposed migration and campaigned for closing the country's borders. Donald Trump, the American President, and his Vice President, JD Vance gave open support to AfD.
In a speech given at the annual security meeting held at the German city of Munich, Vance chided the European political establishment for excluding extreme parties, with a clear reference to the AfD. The Vance speech jolted the once-sleepy election campaign awake.
Elon Musk joined Vance in giving support to the German rightist party, advocating an anti-migration view which paralleled the one they were following in their own country. AfD doubled its share in votes from four years ago after the party sought to make political gains out of a series of deadly attacks by immigrants in recent months, including in the final days of the campaign.
But the positions taken by the prominent American leaders may have worked in the opposite direction. It may have mobilised a late burst of support for Die Linke, Germany's far left party. Die Linke, which is German for 'the left', gained support in a few months because of the alienation felt by the youth who lost faith in the old political establishment. The youth felt that Germans had to have new leadership to gain noticeable standing in Europe which the Germans once had. By interfering in the campaign, Trump, Vance and Musk energised the young voters who went in the opposite direction from the one espoused by prominent figures from across the Atlantic.
Elections in Germany were held at a time when the global order was being rearranged. China had emerged as global economic and military power which Washington read as a major challenge to the position it had occupied since the end of the Second World War.
The United States was behind the development of a new world order that had several features. It was to be based on democratic principles on which most of all the countries around the world had an equal voice. Trump and his associates – in particular Elon Musk, the world's richest man – are openly supporting two ambitions. They are for making America great again, or MAGA, and America will go alone.
There were other institutional arrangements to manage global finance and world trade. The United Nations had all countries of the world as its members. War and peace decisions were taken by the Security Council of the United Nations. However, Trump aided by Musk, his billionaire associate, has no interest in preserving the old international system. Together they would make America great again by going alone. In this approach, the Europeans see a disaster for their continent. The basis of the European Union is mutual trust and support.
The Europeans are also worried about the close relationship between Vladmir Putin and Donald Trump. The Germans well remember the end of the Second World War when tens of thousands of Russian troops descended on the country and split it into two parts, East Germany and West Germany. Although located in the western part, Berlin, the capital, was also divided into two parts, West Berlin and East Berlin. Former Chancellor Merkel had strong support from the Eastern part of the country.
However, the German youth who voted in large numbers for Die Link are fearful of Russia and what they see as the intentions towards their continent of Putin, the Russian president. Trump is openly courting Putin. "Trump seems to have adopted the rhetoric of Russia's president Vladimir Putin," wrote Natan Sharansky for the popular newspaper, The Free Press. "He repeated a line from the Kremlin that sounded like Soviet-style propaganda: that Zelensky is not a legitimate leader. When Putin, the seemingly eternal leader of Russia says it, it's laughable. When the president of the United States says it, it's alarming, tragic, and does not comply with common sense." Sharansky and The Free Press were speaking for most of Europe. Trump may be winning Putin but he was losing Europe, in particular the continent's youth.