Pax Germanica

Pax Germanica Authored by Conor Gallagher via NakedCapitalism.com, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week decried the end of Pax Americana and declared that Germany will fill the void: “The decades of Pax Americana for Europe and Germany are largely over for us. It no longer exists as we knew it. Nostalgia will not help us, and I would be the last person to give in to this nostalgia. This is a reality! The Americans are now very fiercely defending their interests. And that is why we must now defend our interests.” What were the first acts in defending those interests? Germany approved a nearly $60 billion spending package-believed to be the largest in post WWII German history- that provided a boost to defense stocks, which have begun to come down slightly from their record highs. And on Friday the EU approved 90 billion euros in joint debt in an attempt to keep Project Ukraine limping along. What does it all mean? Is Germany seriously considering conflict with Russia or is it more subterfuge to push the train down the dual tracks of enriching the capital class while holding together the supranational European project? Probably both-but as the European elite bust out their own countries, run up the tab on rearmament, and do all they can to antagonize Russia in Ukraine and elsewhere, when exactly is common sense supposed to kick in? Let’s start with what we know. The German political class has been going on about the end of Pax Americana for years now, just as they’ve been talking about rearmament for years. What these discussions allude to is a Pax Germanica taking the place of Washington in the European theater. 🧵 Part 1/2 - Merz stood before his CDSU party and did two things in the same speech that should have stopped Europe cold. - THE ISLANDER (@IslanderWORLD) He declared that “Pax Americana is over.” And he reached for Europe’s darkest memory... Munich, the Sudetenland, Hitler, to argue that Russia “won’t... pic.twitter.com/msPDyUSvbC December 14, 2025 Yes, perhaps it should have “stopped Europe cold”, but then, so should have much of the events of the past four years or so. Yet whether by design or folly, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the vaunted German efficiency is a myth. They keep pouring money into the rearmament black hole while hollowing out the economy and cutting social spending. It was fitting that on the same day the Bundestag approved the $60 billion in defense spending, the government also moved to cut welfare payments. Merz’s speech was similar to Angela Merkel’s 2017 warning that Trump’s America was turning its back on Europe. But Merz goes much further by arguing that Europe “is no longer in peace” and that only a strong Germany can return it to such a state. This argument is similar to the much-discussed Zeitenwende of Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz. The Zeitenwende has surely been a turn, just not so much in the way it was marketed. It was supposed to...

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