Germany is no Leader

Is Germany, as Tyler Cowen argues, the “Silicon Valley of political innovation”? Here’s why he feels so:

1)      Post-war de-Nazification: As Cowen says, “it is difficult in world history to find a comparable switch in attitudes” anywhere in the world.

2)     German unification: The unification went through with barely a glitch, despite the vast economic differences between the two sides. And in record time. Most places split up, and “Large-scale political mergers seem to belong to the era of the 17th to early 20th centuries, but Germany pulled this one off”.

It’s hard to argue with the above, but where Cowen goes wrong in my opinion is when he cites the EU (which was formed due to a large push by Germany) as yet another successful example of German innovation. What makes his view even more surprising is that he wrote this in May, 2017. After all, isn’t this the how most of us think of the EU today?

-         Britain, one the largest economies in the world, is leaving. Is this the beginning of the end for the EU?

-         German bankers lent money indiscriminately to countries like Greece that eventually led to a meltdown of Greece. And this was enabled because by joining the EU, Greece came to be treated at par with Germany in terms of risk of lending! This ridiculous assumption is built into the EU’s structure: all member states are equally credible competent or risky!

-         Despite being an economic but not political union, Germany policies like taking in Syrian immigrants are forced down the throats of rest of the EU. That in turn is why eastern Europe, and countries like Italy and Greece where African immigrants land, are increasingly anti-EU.

-         Islamic terrorism has spiked in Europe ever since the doors were opened to these immigrants, which like I said, was a German decision.

I believe the root cause of why the EU is being destroyed from within by German policies is that Germany is treating all of Europe as if they were Germans. German (social) innovation may work within Germany, and that may well be because they are a very homogenous country with little diversity.

So I shudder at the prospect that many in the West now seem to wish for, namely for German leadership given America’s (relative) decline and isolationism. Here’s why I shudder:

-         Germany as leader of the West? Them and which army? You think Putin and China tremble at this prospect? Or do they look forward to it?

-         Who exactly looks up to Germany as an example of diversity?

-         Everyone wants to go to the US; who wants to settle in Germany?

Just because people don’t like one American president doesn’t mean they should switch to a bunch of people with no track record of inclusive leadership, no military power, and zero diversity.