It is politically incorrect to say so but the essence of socialism is semi-Communism. Many countries of Europe, particularly the Scandinavian ones, have seen the writing on the wall and are drifting to the right. They had traditionally featured high taxes and robust welfare budgets that acted as magnets for migrants from poor countries of Asia and Africa. They are gradually reducing market regulation and public spending to improve competitiveness. Some of their neighbours like the Netherlands have shown even more prominent drift; in the 2023 elections, a right-wing government came to power, dominated by the fire-spewing far-right Geert Wilders. The ambivalence is still very much present in the European mind and this government has suffered defections from its ranks in the current year. The two largest countries of Europe, France and Germany, however, continue to have centrist governments, though they too are witnessing a far-right surge.

What has all this to do with Trump’s China visit? We have to go to the roots of NATO for an answer. Though allied to the West after Germany’s betrayal, the Soviet Union, even before the fall of Berlin, had displayed clear signs of rivalry with the West and showed designs of spreading Communism across Europe. Germany and Berlin were divided, Stalin imposed a blockade on West Berlin and the city was sustained only because of a massive airlift of supplies. Truman visualised that only a European-American alliance would ensure lasting US involvement in European security. Thus arose NATO in 1949; its Charter does not explicitly mention Communism but it will be naïve to conclude anything except that the organisation’s raison d’être was the threat of the westward expansion of Communism in Europe. Yet, over time, many European countries forgot their history and drifted towards socialism, took cudgels with NATO and reduced their defence spending. Trump’s recent nudges in this regard were derided by many though there has been grudging compliance too, in terms of increase in defence spending. France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz, however, continue to confront and deride Trump while seeing their countries on the brink of descending into far-right control. Let us examine the German Chancellor’s recent broadside, characterising the Iran War as humiliation for the US, in this light.

Gratitude has no place in geopolitics, although in some situations, there is a reasonable expectation of this sentiment. Germany, for entirely its own fault, suffered immense destruction during WWII. The share of the Marshall Plan in its post-War recovery may be debatable but the US-encouraged economic liberalisation did play a crucial role in Germany’s rapid reconstruction, as it did for many other countries of Europe. By 1998, Germany had emerged as the third largest economy of the world. That strength made it ready for the reunification of Germany; it could transfer Euro 2 trillion to the east to modernize the dilapidated Soviet era infrastructure. US policies played a critical role in achieving the unification, for securing Soviet leader Gorbachev’s approval for the historic change as well as for keeping the unified nation within NATO by initiating the Two-Plus-Four Framework (two Germanies and the four WWII allies, USA, UK, France and USSR). Both France and Britain had concerns about Germany becoming dominant again and it was the US that assuaged those concerns emphasising the necessity of embedding the unified Germany in NATO as well as in European institutions.

Merkel, who grew up in Communist-ruled East Germany and was a member of the communist youth movement called Free German Youth, was proud of her Schwarze Null or black zero budgets, the term indicating abhorrence for deficit financing; the consequent austerity measures and tax cuts made her popular among voters but seriously hurt periphery eurozone countries. During her 16 years as Chancellor, she liberally funded welfare but long-term infrastructure investments were neglected. While she could say that the economy grew by a third during her period, and she handled the 2008 economic crisis as well as the Covid pandemic well, the infrastructure deficiency started showing its effects shortly after her departure. German spending on migrant welfare doubled during Merkel’s time and attracted close to one million illegal migrants during the 2015 migration crisis. Her socialist leanings endeared her to China and she officially visited that country 12 times. Trade with China boomed to almost $200 billion as did German investments in China accompanied with a tapering down of domestic production. The German industrial base is still suffering the impact of that decline.

The economic and geopolitical path taken by Merkel had two consequences; on the home front, it helped the rise of the far-right AfD and beyond the borders, it led to souring of relations with the US, which had started seeing China as a geopolitical strategic threat. Now Merz has further dented Germany’s relations with the US by saying that the latter has been “humiliated” by Iran; this may not stand factual scrutiny. The US has suffered losses as would any nation in a war but the losses suffered by Iran are undeniably huge. While Iran retains to some extent its capability to produce and launch missiles and drones, its navy, air force and air defence systems have been decimated. Trump’s blockade has shut off its economic lifeline. The fact that the US troops are boarding and seizing Iranian ships in Iran’s neighbourhood and the theocracy has not done much about it except issuing threats, calls a lie to Merz’s perception.

Even if the perception was true, it was not expected of an important NATO ally to air the insult. Trump had been right about NATO’s lethargy and stingy defence spending which in Germany had been exacerbated during Merkel’s black zero budgets that cut defence spending by $9.4 billion between 2011 and 2014. It suffered further during the Covid pandemic.

Trump has a jumbo-sized ego and woe betide even an ally who tries to prick it. He initially responded by saying that Merz doesn’t know what he is talking about. He cautioned that not only the US but the whole world will be held hostage once the Iranian clerics have a nuclear weapon. He also mentioned that Germany is doing so poorly, economically and otherwise.

Two days later, Trump advised Merz to focus more on Ukraine and on fixing his “broken country,” making a special mention of immigration, on which he had already said a lot in the US National Security Strategy 2025. Both the statements, that of Merz and of Trump, look as if they were speaking for the AfD, which wants Germany to steer clear of Putin’s war and wants not only to stop Asian and African migration into Germany but also wants to deport those who are already there. It wants reassessment of Germany’s membership of NATO, a course now aired by Putin too. Afd had earlier asked for withdrawal of US troops from Germany which is now the new threat from Trump. Trump is in China to do something about the Communist dragon’s fire.

Merz had publicly vowed that he would not cooperate with the far-right AfD. After his latest outburst, Germany may yet mend fences with Trump who has the habit of offending and then mollifying. It is the far-right, buoyant after Merz’s statement, that may present him the real bill of the political cost of his unwise comments. Trump’s China visit is not only about the dragon’s threat to the US; the Communist inferno has always been a threat for Europe too. The prospects of the far-right coming to power in Germany and France during the next elections make one thing absolutely clear. The democracies in Europe face a no-choice situation more starkly than even the US; if the European nations do not strengthen NATO to keep Communism at Bay, they will be swallowed by the far-right. / DAILY WORLD /

( R N prasher is a former IAS officer. The views expressed are his personal.)