An analysis published by FAZ examines two competing descriptions of Germany. One casts the country as Europe's "sick man" again, weakened by years of neglect and a deep crisis of confidence because the old success model will not return. The other says Germany is not so weak, has learned from mistakes and can rely on old strengths to master the current crises. The article argues that the optimists are right on one point: Germany has learned that strength cannot be derived only from economic power, but must also include military capacity. No state can call itself strong if it has nothing to counter external threats.
According to the analysis, the shock of being "blank" in this respect and of having underestimated the risk of war sat deep in the state leadership. The federal president apologised for failures and the chancellor proclaimed a "Zeitenwende". The governments that followed, first the traffic-light coalition and then the black-red coalition, drew consequences. After years of creeping weakening, the article calls this an expression of strength. But it stresses that Germany is not yet truly strong. The turnaround is above all a burden: rearmament means unprecedented debt, euphemistically called a "Sondervermögen", or special fund. The burden is doubled because old priorities have not been abandoned and new civilian priorities have been added, also financed through special funds. All of this is taking place in a precarious political environment.
The article says war and peace are splitting the party landscape. Unlike the Cold War, not even the enemy is clearly identified by all. Only communist splinter groups sided with the Soviet Union then; today, support for Ukraine against Putin's war is opposed by a camp of Putin friends and "Putin understanders". This divide is deeper than the old contrast between Cold Warriors and détente politicians and cuts across the parties. After Europe and migration, the AfD has found a third pillar in Russia policy, the analysis says, bringing nationalists and former communists closer together on at least this point.
This polarisation weakens Germany, according to the article, because it affects not only the foundations of foreign policy but also the decades-old domestic consensus among defenders of the constitution. It was once unthinkable that parties would threaten each other with annihilation. The AfD phrase "We will hunt them" has a different tone from the constitutional business of opposition. The CDU, which sees itself as a party that upholds the state, is said to face for the first time in its history a competing party's will to destroy it. At least here, the article notes, friend and enemy are clear.
One possible answer would be to destroy the enemy in turn by banning the AfD. The analysis says the ban debate involves much more than whether a militant democracy is obliged to reverse the hunt and eliminate the enemies of freedom. The consequences would be immense: all parliaments in Germany, including the Bundestag, would have to be re-elected. Even if a ban were pronounced in the name of the people, the parliaments would no longer represent the popular will the day after the decision. The article also says the ban debate expresses a strange longing for a past that is only good in retrospect: a time of manageable contrasts, pleasant pluralism, a homogeneous society, secure prosperity and a parliament carried by democratic consensus.
The analysis rejects that nostalgic view on two grounds. First, it says the past was not like that. West Germany's rise rested on hard decisions: the market economy, rearmament, Western integration, Ostpolitik, NATO rearmament, reunification, the euro and Agenda 2010. These milestones were not based on consensus and harmony. The article argues that it is wrong to see the strength of liberal democracy in a consensus democracy that finds fulfilment in compromise. The consensus of the past two decades went so far that a real change of power was no longer discussed, and the article asks whether this era caused Germany's multifaceted weakness rather than success. It adds that pluralism and organised interest groups were just as pronounced in the old West Germany: governments fell over wage demands, violence broke out in protests against nuclear power and NATO, and terrorism threatened the state leadership. Anyone who sees homogeneity as a precondition for growth did not experience the old Federal Republic, the article says, and certainly not East Germany.
Second, the article argues that a return to the "good old days" is not desirable. The counter-image of the present rests on what did not yet exist then. For about ten years, migration has occupied German public debate and politics as never before, leaving deep marks on European, education, social, housing and economic policy. The idea that a society must be homogeneous and shielded in order to have a future has fuelled a revival of a concept of the people that clashes with the West German credo that Germany is and must be an immigration country because of skilled labour shortages. But an anti-pluralist, shielded society that acts against its own heterogeneity is exposed to arbitrariness: who decides where the boundaries of diversity lie and what counts as foreign? By contrast, a society that accepts cultural diversity, competition among interests and economic competition is not only freer but also more productive, the article argues. It points to the contrast between West and East Germany and to immigration countries, though it notes that the American model is reaching limits, with autocratic leader democracy competing against liberal debate democracy.
The analysis says this contrast will remain. For both sides, it should be a learning process that success in politics and business is guaranteed neither by worshipping authoritarian decisiveness nor by idealising consensus. The wish to show strength through "just doing it" quickly becomes the creed of a soul despairing at complexity, while populism understands change as clearing the table. Successful policy, the article says, consists of dispute, toil, patience and the slow drilling of hard boards, so "disruptive" approaches must fail. It also criticises the step-by-step politics of the Merkel era: it pretends that politics faces only thick boards rather than hard ones and conveys the impression that nothing can really be changed thoroughly. The problem is not Germany's objective situation but this impression, which no longer allows thoughts of strength, change or renewal. The list of tasks is long: military, infrastructure, social contributions, climate, migration, housing, schools, bureaucracy, artificial intelligence and taxes.
The article says it is easy to paint an apocalyptic picture, adding "Germans are dying out" to "Germany is dying off". This pessimistic description has deep roots and appears whenever the economy declines, but it is doomed to fail. Changes cannot be made popular by painting the apocalypse, and appeals to roll up one's sleeves reach their limits. What helps is the opposite: not the gate to hell but the gate to paradise, with a clear idea of where Germany wants to go. Germans, the article says, are victims of one of their greatest strengths: seeing paradise in the fact that everything is regulated down to the last detail. Without that, nothing works, but with only that, soon nothing works at all. The sentence that shaped the consensus era was "It doesn't work", justified by the claim that law binds politics rather than the reverse. This has created fetters in energy, migration, planning law, digital policy, housing and social policy. Politics must reclaim its genuine right to change and set law.
After the era of "asymmetric demobilisation", the article concludes, Germany will have to get used to the fact that the years of consensus democracy are over. It will find itself in a new party landscape and must adapt to hard fights that are harder and more lasting than those of the West German Biedermeier. That need not make Germany weaker. If politics proceeds by democratic and liberal standards, the article argues, there is no better way for the country to become stronger.
Sources: FAZ.