The View from Right Field

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years On. #BerlinWall30

This Saturday is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Readers of this blog will know that I have written about the Wall a lot.  You can find what I wrote on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Wall by clicking on “Berlin” in the list of Categories in the right margin.  The 25th anniversary, which we were lucky enough to be in Berlin for, was especially great.  But things seem to have changed since then.

Events are going the wrong direction in parts of eastern Europe and eastern Germany.  Viktor Orban is solidifying control in Hungary.  Law and Justice recently won re-election in Poland.  And in eastern Germany, the AfD increased its vote in state elections.  The populism that has come to the West is also increasing in eastern Europe.  

Happy Birthday, NATO

NATO has a birthday coming up.  On April 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will turn 70.  The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949.  Its first twelve members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  Greece and Turkey joined in 1952, and West Germany in 1955.  Post-Franco Spain joined in 1982.  With the fall of the Berlin Wall, countries in eastern Europe rushed to join, thirteen more so far, with North Macedonia being the thirtieth soon.

There will be a number of articles on NATO’s anniversary in the next few days.  The Economist has already published a lengthy piece on “NATO at 70” in its March 16 issue.  Ivo Daalder, former ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. wrote an excellent article in last Friday’s Chicago Tribune.  While these articles cover the subject of NATO and its future better than I can, I would like to add a few thoughts to the birthday celebration for what has been best defensive military alliance in history, thoughts related to its future.

Concerns about NATO’s future have increased, especially among the foreign policy elite, since Donald Trump was elected president 2016.  President Trump, after all, said NATO was obsolete while on the campaign trail in 2016,¹ and he has been pretty obnoxious since then about the failure of many NATO countries to increase up their defense spending in line with commitments they have made in 2014 to get their defense spending up to 2% of GDP by 2024.

What’s Going to Happen In Venezuela?

Venezuela is starving.  Literally.  Aid is on its borders, but President Nicholas Maduro is refusing to let it in because the aid has been organized by opposition leader Juan Guaido (and countries supporting him).  Already, at least four people have been killed and hundreds injured, reportedly by Venezuelan security forces, including militia. 

What happens next?  Obviously, nobody knows, but 2019 is the 30th anniversary of two possible outcomes.  The first is Tiananmen Square.  In 1989, people in China were starting to demonstrate for more rights and liberties.  The protests reached a peak in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in early June.  The Army faced off with the protesters.  The Army won because it was willing to shoot the protesters until they disbanded and left.  Deng Xiaoping was willing to put his economic reforms on hold to maintain political power.

70th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

I don’t have enough time to write a proper post on this subject, but I cannot ignore the 70th anniversary of the first flight of the Berlin Airlift, on June 26, 1948.  As I have said before, the story of the Airlift is amazing.  On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked the western land routes to Berlin.  Two days later, and just three years after the Allies had defeated the Germans in a war that lasted almost six years for the British, the U.S. and Britain started an around-the-clock airlift to supply West Berlin with everything it needed to survive, from food to coal.  The Airlift lasted fifteen months, and turned enemies into fast friends.  It may have been the biggest defeat the Soviets suffered in the Cold War until the Wall itself came down in 1989.

When Trump Meets Putin: Will He Agree NATO Should Not Have Expanded East?

It looks like Donald Trump may be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vienna before the NATO meeting in mid-July.  If they meet, I am sure President Putin will raise his complaint about Eastern European countries joining NATO.  Given that President Trump agreed with Kim Jong Un of North Korea that U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers constituted “war games” and were “very provocative,” the very terms that North Korea uses in its propaganda to criticize the maneuvers, it is entirely possible President Trump will agree with President Putin.  The fact President Trump thinks NATO members are ripping off the United States perhaps makes it even more likely he will agree with President Putin.

However, if President Trump does agree with Russia on this, then he will be wrong, very wrong.  The historical record is unclear as to what the United States and USSR agreed with respect to NATO expansion when Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to German unification and the right of a united Germany to stay in NATO.  While the official documents didn’t contain any promises about NATO expansion, it is possible the Soviets understood NATO wouldn’t expand as it did.  But regardless of what the Soviets, now Russians, understood back then, there is nothing wrong with the NATO expansion that occurred. 

An Historic Day for Berlin – and the World

The Berlin Wall has now been down longer than it was up.  For those of us of a certain age, the Berlin Wall seemed like a permanent part of our world.  It was built when we were just children, and it was still there when we entered middle age.  When Erich Honecker said, in January of 1989, that the Wall would be standing in another 50 or even 100 years, we believed him.  We had no reason not to.  And yet, less than ten months after he said that, the Wall was down, and joy reigned not just in Berlin but around the world.

For something that seemed so permanent, it is amazing that it probably doesn’t even register for many people alive today.  For them, the Wall is just something in history that they may or may not have heard of, like the Battle of Midway, Appomattox, or the Second Continental Congress.  But the Wall is just as important as those, if we understand its lesson.

Smart Diplomacy Is More Than Just a Phrase

With President Trump’s new national security strategy coming out, Andrew Browne writes in The Wall Street Journal¹ about the potential risk and challenge of a rising China

“How would a U.S.-China military standoff in the South China Sea play out?

In one hypothetical scenario – laid out by the Australian strategic-studies professor Hugh White – Chinese ships defy U.S. warnings and steam toward a Chinese-built reef in disputed waters.

In the Situation Room, the U.S. president is briefed on his options.  Sinking a Chinese vessel is one.  But it may lead to war – conceivably a nuclear exchange. 

‘General, tell the Navy to pull our ships back and let the Chinese pass,’ the president orders.  ‘I’m not willing to risk a major war.’

Martin Luther’s 500th Anniversary – And a Visit to a Country That No Longer Exists

“Martin Luther’s 500th Anniversary” refers, of course, to the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517.  This date and this act are usually seen as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. 

This 500th anniversary of Martin Luther brings to mind an earlier 500th anniversary of Martin Luther, the 500th anniversary of his birth, which was celebrated in 1983 (he was born on November 10, 1483).  The 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth was celebrated under somewhat different circumstances than the current celebration, however, because Wittenberg, as well as most of the other Luther sites, were in East Germany at the time.

When the Germany Democratic Republic was founded in 1949, Martin Luther was persona non grata for the East German communists.  Even in 1979, when we first visited East Germany, the Luther sites were open, but they weren’t promoted.  By 1983, however, things had changed.  The East German leadership was now seeing Martin Luther as the “initiator of a grand revolutionary movement,” in the words of Erich Honecker, the head of the East German Communist Party, and was promoting his legacy, at least as they interpreted it.¹  Whether this was to attract hard currency from Western tourists or gain support from Lutherans in East Germany, I don’t know.  Probably, both.

This reminded me of an article I wrote about our travels to East Germany in 1979 and 1982.  When I wrote the article in the summer of 1983, it was a sort of travelogue.  It is still a travelogue, but now it’s a travelogue to a country that no longer exists – for good reason. 

Thoughts Upon Germany's Election: Perhaps a Way for Parties to Win Votes Is to Have Good Leaders

As The Wall Street Journal predicted on Saturday, while Angela Merkel has won re-election in the German elections today, the parties on the fringe of German politics have grown.  With the established center-right and center left parties¹ getting a combined total of less than 55% of the total vote², Germany seems to be following the trend in other European countries.  As the Journal noted:

“In swaths of Continental Europe, the established center-right and center-left parties have suffered far more dramatic collapses, while populist movements from the nationalist right to the anticapitalist left have become strong enough to aspire to power.”

The Journal tries to identify the reason(s):

The German Election: The Future of the AfD – and the Tea Party

Germany is voting on Sunday, and with Angela Merkel widely expected to win another term, the one big question is how the right-wing AfD, Alternative for Germany, will do.  Support for the populist, anti-immigrant (and anti-Muslim) AfD took off with the 2015 refugee influx into Germany.  If the AfD does make it into the Bundestag, which basically requires 5% of the vote, it will be the first time a right-wing party has been in the German parliament since the 1950s.

What is most interesting to me about the AfD, however, is where it started and how it changed into the kind of party it is today.  The AfD did not start out because as a nationalist, anti-immigrant party.  Rather, according to The Financial Times: