MESOPOTAMIA NEWS : WELLKNOWN GERMAN MAGAZINE DOESN’T LIKE UNITED STATES

USA: Americans, go home?

Yes please, says the US historian Stephen Wertheim: The United States’ quest for supremacy is bad both for itself and for the rest of the world. Franziska Brantner, foreign policy expert of Germany’s Green Party, objects: For all the legitimate criticism, Europe needs the United States

Interview: Jochen Bittner und Jörg Lau 24. März 2021 Quelle: DIE ZEIT Nr. 13/2021, 25. März 2021

DIE ZEIT: Stephen Wertheim, President Biden says “America is back”. You as an American historian think this idea is dead wrong – while Franziska Brantner, as a German member of parliament, is relieved to hear the message. What is so wrong about an America that embarks again on common missions with Europe like combatting climate change or countering authoritarian threats?

Franziska Brantner

(41) is one of the most important foreign policy voices of the German Green Party and Spokesperson for European Policy of their Bundestag group. Until 2013, she was a Member of the European Parliament. As a political scientist, prior to her party career, she consultedthe UN and the EUon foreign policy issues.

Stephen Wertheim: There’s nothing wrong with cooperating on common threats like these. I just don’t think that that’s what the United States has mainly been doing in the world for several decades. I worry that “America is back” means a return to the United States putting its global military dominance at the center of its foreign policy. This quest for dominance divides the world into subordinate allies and permanent adversaries.

ZEIT: Franziska Brantner, as a Foreign Policy expert of the Green Party, do you feel that Germany is a “subordinate ally” to the United States?

Franziska Brantner: No. I’m happy that we are an ally again and no longer a foe, as Donald Trump put it. I think Biden has rightly recognized that we face a global competition between democratic and authoritarian forces – between nations, but also within our democracies. Biden acknowledges that we must fight authoritarianism at home and abroad, and that our enemies unfortunately do cooperate quite well.

Stephen Wertheim

(35) is Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a new bipartisan think tank in Washington DC. With his book Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy, he has sparked a debate on whether America has been on a fundamentally wrong track in pursuing global dominance.