Russell Berman

Russell Berman

Russell A. Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. Berman specializes in the study of German literary history and cultural politics and is a member of both the Department of German Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University (of which he is currently chair). From 1992 through 2000 he served as director of the Stanford Overseas Studies Program. He is the author of numerous articles and books including Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1998) and The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (1986), both of which won the Outstanding Book Award of the German Studies Association. He most recently published Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad (2010).

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    • The Hour of Europe?

    | April 10, 2013 | 2:30 am

     

    That the tide of American might is retreating from its outposts is unmistakable.  The US military presence in Western Europe, a legacy of the Second World War, melted away after the collapse of the Soviet empire. In the Middle East, the hegemonic role of the US that emerged as a result of the decline of the old European colonial powers is also disappearing. The Obama regime chose to withdraw from Iraq, despite the sacrifice that American soldiers made to topple the Baathist dictatorship, through its refusal to negotiate an appropriate status agreement. Now it is running to the exits in Afghanistan before any modicum of stability has been achieved. In addition, Washington was conspicuous by its absence in ending the Gaddafi regime in Libya, and it remained willfully ignorant of the post-Gaddafi dangers, as seen in the tragic events in Benghazi.

    Clearly, the US is not seeking exposure in the broad swath of geography stretching from Morocco to Central Asia. While America was prepared to mobilize against the Soviet enemy in the Cold War, it has little appetite for the messy business of failed states, Islamist radicalism, and terrorist campaigns. In addition, the declining dependence on Middle East oil simply reduces interest in the area altogether—surely a short-sighted calculation since so many of our allies, Europe and Japan, rely on the Saudi fields. Perhaps this retreat just reflects crude political motives: the Obama campaign wanted to point to the withdrawal in order to support its foreign policy narrative in the 2012 election. In that case, a future administration might reverse the decisions: yet this seems unlikely, not only due to budget constraints, but because strategic leadership once surrendered cannot easily be regained.

    Can Europe step into the breach? Much speaks against this unlikely prospect. Europe has been investing at only very low levels in its military; it does not have the hardware to project power effectively.  Nor will its welfare state budgets allow it to do much better in the future. In addition, Germany maintains a profoundly pacifist predisposition that makes any overseas deployments highly controversial and politically costly. Finally, to make matters worse, the EU requires unanimity among its 27 members in matters of foreign policy: hardly a structure designed for bold decision-making.

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    About that Flexibility, Mr. President

    | November 28, 2012 | 2:31 am

     

    In your well reported aside to Vladimir Putin, you promised him greater flexibility after the election. That moment has come. Your critics have been fearing that this flexibility could lead you to take steps that would compromise American security interests and disqualify you in the eyes of voters. Luckily, you don’t have to feel constrained by meddlesome voters anymore: you have a freer hand. How will you use it?

    Please remember that your reelection also frees you from another constraint, the isolationist and anti-military currents in your party. To your credit, you have already pursued wise counter-terrorism strategies even though they irritate progressives: drone warfare abroad and tough security measures at home. Nonetheless, you had to play to that left for electoral purposes. With your reelection you finally have a chance to make a clean break with your McGovernite base through new policy initiatives, especially in the Middle East. It’s up to you to seize the moment.

    First, killing Osama bin Laden bolstered your standing with the public. Bravo. For domestic political reasons, however, you had to oversell that singular event with untenable claims that it meant the full defeat of al-Qaida and the disappearance of a terrorist threat. These overstatements helped your reelection. Unfortunately they are false. You do not serve the nation—or your own reputation—well by minimizing the threat of Islamist terrorism. Misleading the nation on the terrorist murder of Ambassador Stephens was not your best hour. You still have time to articulate the urgency of robust security and counter-terrorism strategies. You have the bully pulpit to educate the nation that the danger continues. Use it.

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    Promoting Democracy, Promoting Change: European Lessons

    | August 12, 2012 | 2:30 am

    Lessons from Europe can shed light on the challenge of Islamism in power. The experience of two world wars seemed to prove that Germans could never accept democracy. Yet Germany became an exemplary liberal democracy and the anchor for European stability. This transformation points to prospects in the Arab world: can Islamism evolve from the cultural radicalism of its extremist wings into a moderate force for modernization? What can the US do to promote this evolution?

    There are plenty of reasons for skepticism. Islamism led to 9/11. Islamist sympathizers sheltered Bin Laden in Abbotobad and fought American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Islamist agitators still preach radical messages across Europe and recruit new foot soldiers for jihad. Vigilant security strategies measures remain necessary.

    Yet the field of Islamist politics is not monolithic. Extremist Imams in the mosques of London are not the same as mujahideen in the border regions of Pakistan, and they in turn are far away from legislators in Ankara and Cairo. We need sophistication to recognize these differences (which means developing more effective intelligence networks). We need to understand how operate in this complex landscape. And we need to distinguish between incorrigible enemies and potential friends.

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    Candidates in Europe

    | August 06, 2012 | 10:17 am

    The US Presidential election will be won and lost on the domestic economy, so Mitt Romney’s recent trip to three capitals –London, Jerusalem and Warsaw—provided some distraction in the summer lead-up to the party conventions and the start of the real campaign season in the fall. His itinerary gave the presumptive Republican candidate an opportunity to profile himself to the American electorate: as a successful executive who had organized the Salt Lake City Olympics, as a firm supporter of Israel (in contrast to President Obama who has refrained from visiting there while in office), and as an advocate of the liberty of Eastern Europe. The warm support from Lech Walesa this summer will serve him well in the ballot boxes of western Pennsylvania in November.

    Yet Romney is not the first American presidential candidate to campaign through European capitals, and his travels abroad invite a comparison with Barack Obama’s tour just four years ago, especially the main event, the speech at the Victory Column in Berlin in front of an enormous crowd of 200, 000 or more. That demonstration of Obama’s charisma and popularity in Europe certainly strengthened his credibility among American voters, frustrated with the apparent fraying of the Atlantic alliance during the administration of George W. Bush. Obama promised to calm the waters, restore old friendships and build a robust cooperation between the US and Europe.

    The Romney visit is a chance to reevaluate the Obama visit and ask: has Obama fulfilled the hope to change the trans-Atlantic divide?

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    A Tale of Two Courts: From Health Care to the Eurozone

    | July 02, 2012 | 2:00 am

    Fallout from the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act will stretch through the presidential election and beyond, and legal commentators have plenty of questions to address: the limitations on the Commerce Clause, the ambiguity in the relationship of taxes to penalties, the implications for federalism in the treatment of Medicaid and, perhaps most ominously, the extent to which the Chief Justice may have been swayed by the political campaign waged in the press. None of these topics will be clarified quickly. While conservative commentators have expressed divergent evaluations of the outcome, there is one point of agreement: the Affordable Care Act represents a major increase in the reach of federal power, profoundly rearranging relationships among Washington, the states and individuals. The health care debate is a struggle over constitutional order.

    Just as this drama has been playing out in Washington, the potential role of the judiciary in preserving democracy and the rule of law has come to the fore across the Atlantic in a remarkably similar conflict. A constitutional conflict is emerging through the Euro crisis.

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    The Great Retreat

    | April 16, 2012 | 6:53 am

    As the 2014 promised departure from Afghanistan draws nearer, popular support for the war is dwindling, and not only in the United States. German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière recently complained, in a moment of stunning candor for a prominent politician, “that much of the rejection of the Afghanistan campaign in parts of the [German] population is due to the fact that people have the feeling that they have not been told the truth.” A painful gap stretches between the violence of the war and the vacuity of political rhetoric.

    In 2008 candidate Obama waged his presidential campaign with the claim that the Bush administration had ignored the Afghan front in order to pursue the wrong war in Iraq. Yet President Obama never explained why Afghanistan was the right war to win. At best, he suggested that winning only involved minimalist goals—killing bin Laden or destabilizing al-Qaeda but never defeating the Taliban and certainly not the maximalist goal: establishing a stable, pro-American regime.

    The US has succeeded in accomplishing only the narrowest war goal, and the cost of that raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbotobad has been high in terms of the deterioration of relations with Islamabad. As the administration joins in the frantic rush to the exits—leaving behind an emboldened Taliban, a fragmented Afghani political landscape, and Pakistan teetering on the edge of instability—the Bush era benign neglect of Kabul in order to focus on Baghdad increasingly looks like the more rational policy choice. Instead, Obama has chosen to retreat from both Afghanistan and Iraq.

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    Achtung! It’s Syria!

    | March 02, 2012 | 6:25 pm

    In the high stakes drama over the future of the Euro, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Germany has emerged as the predominant power as a unified European economic policy begins to take shape. This was not always the case. Not long ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried to promote an alternative strategy of higher spending and less austerity; now Sarkozy has become Merkel’s junior partner, dependent on her political support in his bid for reelection. British Prime Minister David Cameron too has been pushed aside over the question of taxing financial transactions. American efforts to influence European policy have also fallen flat: Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner’s attempts to lecture the Europeans had little impact, beyond the damage he did to his own credibility.

    The shape of the unified European economic policy has become unmistakably German: structural reforms to restrain spending—the so-called Schuldenbremse—plus austerity measures and the prospects of higher taxation. Merkel has won the game.

    Meanwhile the future of a unified European foreign policy is also coming into focus. It too will be defined by Germany, and it will therefore display some of the structural features of German history and Germany’s place in Europe. Understanding these elements is crucial to gauging the prospects for Europe’s future role on the world stage.

    Mention of German history immediately conjures up the dark side of its past, like the world wars, Hitler, and the Holocaust. Opponents of Merkel’s economic agenda have been quick to attack her with Nazi symbolism. Yet most of the European public has recognized the irrelevance of this name-calling by anti-German protestors in the streets of Athens. Since World War II, Germany has developed a profound sense of its responsibility for past crimes and has matured into a stable liberal democracy.

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    The Turkish Option

    | February 23, 2012 | 2:02 pm

    The cruel violence that the Assad regime is directing against the Syrian population has elicited words of condemnation across the world. Fleeing the wrath of the Syrian military, refugees have poured over the borders into Jordan, Lebanon and, especially, Turkey. Meanwhile in embattled cities like Homs and Aleppo, the Syrian government shows its true face by ordering the army to keep hospitals under surveillance, prohibiting doctors from treating wounded civilians.

    Blame for these atrocities belongs squarely with President Bashar al-Assad, and his protectors in Tehran and Moscow. Blame does not belong in Washington (although some of the tenacity with which Assad clings to power can be attributed to Nancy Pelosi’s embarrassing 2007 junket to Damascus, when she toadied up to the dictator). Nor should one imagine the U.S. single-handedly intervening to end the bloodshed. Yet the longer the fighting goes on, the clearer the inability of the American administration to exercise any influence at all. The Syrian crisis is therefore both a crucial moment in the battle between democracy and dictatorship in the Arab world and an important “stress test” on the viability of American power.

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    Auf Wedersehen to European Unity

    | December 14, 2011 | 2:12 pm

    The conclusion of the Brussels summit seemed to bring the lingering crisis of the Euro and the European economies a big step closer toward a resolution. All the key players could declare victory: French President Nicolas Sarkozy has protected the large French banks from exposure to southern European sovereign debt; German Chancellor Angela Merkel has succeeded in establishing the expectation of disciplined budgeting; and even British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose principles or recalcitrance—depending on your perspective—has led to the United Kingdom’s isolation within Europe, was able to return to London to the applause of the many Euroskeptics in his party and the public at large.

    Of course, in all countries, there are significant oppositional voices. The Brussels agreement has contributed to tensions within the German ruling coalition because of very realistic concerns that Germany will end up footing the bill for its spendthrift neighbors. The post-summit worries are surely most articulate in Britain, where critics fear that the UK is sliding out of the European community and toward international irrelevance.

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