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Both here and around the world the bedrock social consensus has begun to erode; in fact, many people now fail to understand the necessity of well-functioning international relations of a kind that will sustain German and European prosperity. In this context, on the occasion of an ambassadors‹ conference in the foreign office in 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasized that »our engagement abroad serves the preservation of freedom, peace, and prosperity in the domestic arena.«
The German model of peace and prosperity is grounded on both domestic and foreign pillars. At home, Germany thrives on its strong exports in the industrial sector and smoothly functioning social partnerships. But those advantages in the domestic sphere depend on favorable circumstances abroad: European integration, open markets, and reliable rules and standards. The foundations of both pillars have been shaken in the past several years. Multiple crises and lagging investment have weighed down the German economy, diminishing both its productivity and marketing prowess. Meanwhile, international systems of rules and organizations gradually have been weakened. Those developments have accelerated ever since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.

»The German model has a bright future if we finally recognize that its internal and external conditions are two sides of the same coin.«

With Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. President, the crises noted above have become crises of the entire world order. They raise the question of how and whether Germany can preserve its successful model under such altered conditions. The German model will have a bright future if we finally recognize that its internal and external conditions are two sides of the same coin. A highly productive and sustainable industrial base will be durable only if Germany moves ahead with European integration while it fosters and orchestrates the preservation of the rules-based international order through cross-national partnerships.

Being partner-oriented requires listening.

The strategic triad of foreign, security, and development policy requires that we take a serious interest in the concerns and views of our partners and include them in our chosen course of action rather than treating the national perspective as the sole criterion for policymaking. And that demands competent listening, the goal of which is to come to grips with the social, political, and economic parameters and options of those partners. Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it in a nutshell when he declared, »But above all, aspects of our cooperation must be accompanied by respect and recognition. The countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are understandably sensitive about any form of Western tutelage or even moral double standards.«

In a globalized world it is imperative that we first endeavor to understand the context in which our partners operate and then accept the challenges that emerge from it. It is only when a third stage has been reached that we should seek changes in our partners‹ policies and behavior. That may mean something like this: Of course, we have an interest in high environmental and social standards, but we also must be aware of the interests of our partner countries that go beyond those standards. In other words, we have to make them attractive offers. Toward that end we need to display realism and openness rather than cling to dogmas. Europe has already pulled itself up by its own bootstraps out of the swamp once before. Under Jacques Delors’s leadership there was a massive push for integration that permanently strengthened the competitiveness of European economies. The actors in the German-French axis around Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand recognized that in a globalized world it would be impossible to bring about major political shifts within a single country unless those were compatible with EU policies.

A model of variable speeds for Europe with the EU at its core, supplemented by other forums and organizations.

We will get nowhere without new arenas and models of consensus, both within and outside of the EU, especially when it comes to defense and security policy. The most significant meetings no longer take place within the EU. Instead, the five most important European countries –Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland – meet to move ahead jointly with defense planning. Currently, Great Britain and France coordinate a coalition of the willing to develop a possible peace plan for Ukraine. At stake here is a model of variable speeds for Europe in which the EU may indeed remain the institutional core, but which will be supplemented by other forums and organizations.

At the same time, Germany must take care that more advanced integration among the few does not drive a wedge between them and other EU member states. Here, the main desideratum is to avoid linking integration to penalties for the reluctant countries, and instead to promise rewards to the ones that do take part. The recommendations submitted by a German-French working group led by Daniela Schwarzer (Bertelsmann Foundation) and Olivier Costa (Science Po) are constructive on that point. Their proposals combine a broad application of qualified-majority decision-making with the deepening of democratic participation at the European level..

But in addition to the institutional reform of European integration, a more substantial reconfiguration of foreign and security policies is also in the works. Besides heightened economic security in the European internal market, which should function in a more integrated way, there ought to be more investment in infrastructure as part of the so-called Global Gateway Partnerships. The November summit between the EU and the African Union, the strategic EU-India Agenda, and deepened cooperation between Europe and ASEAN all set targets for attaining those goals. As far as trade is concerned, bilateral and multilateral Clean Trade and investment Partnerships should be pursued. However, the danger latent in those deals is that they will not be implemented with the same degree of forcefulness that we have observed with the Clean Industrial Deal inside the EU. Any such half-

Despite all the doomsaying, no significant anti-Western alliance has yet emerged. Instead, while there are plenty of countries that may look at the West with a critical eye, they are keeping their options open. What unites those countries is their desire to maintain a rules-based order as we do in Germany and Europe as a whole. 

But to win them over as partners, two things are needed: First, the willingness to reform existing sets of rules and organizations so as to grant more significant rights of participation to the countries of the global South, while making such agreements more useful to them. The future pact approved in the fall of 2024 under the aegis of Germany and Namibia is an important step in that direction. We may attribute the failure of Russia’s attempts to torpedo its approval at the last minute partly to the fact that the pact acknowledges important interests of the South. Those include not only improved representation in international institutions, but also the reform of the international financial architecture and enhanced efforts to implement the UN’s sustainability agenda. So, Germany now must do its part to put these verbal commitments into practice.

Second, if we want to forge lasting partnerships with countries of the global South, we will have be less pushy in demanding that they enforce our values. While many states in the global South may have an interest in upholding the rules-based order, they don’t necessarily endorse its liberal-democratic version. Thus, the trick is to forge a new relationship between interests and values. That means engaging in a strategic re-evaluation of which interests Germany and Europe should pursue, on the basis of which values, and vis-à-vis whom.

A vital starting point for advancing partnerships such as these is to undertake a reform of the world trade regime and the World Trade Organization. While the WTO designs the broad framework of the trading order, that framework needs to be supplemented in specific policy areas like standard-setting and agricultural commodity trading. Similarly, it could be supplemented by newer and fairer rules concerning the development of high technology. Those topics are of crucial significance to middle- and low-income countries, but they also have a payoff for Germany’s and Europe’s interest in open, productive markets. In regard to such partnerships, a sequenced series of bilateral and multilateral accords with key countries such as India, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil as well as select African countries tops the agenda. 

So, what must happen in the multipolar world of tomorrow for us to continue confronting global challenges in a spirit of unity? Foreign and domestic policies should not be separated. The European Union must be strengthened and a new Delors moment must arrive. Partnerships with low- and middle-income countries and with select industrial countries must be expanded and deepened, Let’s invest in listening so that these efforts succeed!

(I wish to extend a special thanks to Miriam Leidinger for her active support.)