Arise Germany?

Roger Cohen has a wonderfully pithy op-ed this morning about the new Germany (is Germany new every five years or so?). He argues that Germany is shaking off its constraints, more or less, and seeing more of an independent role between the US and Russia in the years ahead.

Germany, these days, feels it has no choice but to pursue its self-interest. It is through with self-denial.

I am not so sure about that. Its military is quite constrained, although admittedly some of the caveats are loosening, so that limits to German power exist. They may be imposed by domestic political forces, such as pacifism, but they exist nonetheless.

The more striking and more enduring hunk of knowledge dropped by Cohen is that the current round of EU deepening is almost certainly the last:

The German Constitutional Court recently approved the Lisbon Treaty, which could give the E.U. essential new leadership if the Irish say yes in a re-run referendum this week and the Czechs check in. But the German approval was laced with warnings that no further erosion of German sovereignty was acceptable.

“The court built a concrete wall five centimeters from here saying not a step further in eroding the German national state,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a leading Green politician. “That’s the flavor of our new nationalism.”

That is a more robust and lasting reality. The fall of the SPD might be a bit more temporary, despite Cohen's assertions, as elections can be harbingers of great change or much less than that. I am no expert on Germany despite spending a week in Berlin this summer, so I cannot say anything for sure about the future of Germany's political parties. But it may be too quick to judge whether the SPD is doomed.