PRINCETON – By now, everyone knows that Germany is calling the shots not just in the eurozone, but across all of Europe. Inside Germany, there used be endless debates about German identity – what one historian called “the continual dispute about what being German might mean.” But, in foreign-policy terms, post-war West Germany – and, later, reunified Germany – was utterly predictable: never against the West; always for more Europe. Now, the “Berlin Republic” is very secure about its identity – and seemingly at sea in its dealings with the world. 

There are structural reasons for this change. Germany is too small to be a global player, but too big to be merely first among equals in Europe. While Germans generally see no legitimacy in a global role, even in alliance with the country’s old partners, Germany’s neighbors do not find a German-led Europe legitimate.

Contrary to the fears of many of these neighbors in 1990 (and contrary to what many analysts claim now), the Berlin Republic is not more nationalistic than the old West Germany. True, the left-liberal pacifist milieu that in the old Federal Republic disproportionately influenced published opinion with its political pieties disappeared during the 1990’s; but today’s more “normal” Germany did not begin forgetting the Nazi past and reasserting itself as a Great Power.

To the extent that there is a new German patriotism, it is ironic; if there is pride, it is pride in how thoroughly the country has dealt with the double legacy of Nazism and East German state socialism (in addition to pride in the economy and the constitution). Germans – for once not so ironically – often present themselves as world champions at “coming to terms with the past”; and their new capital’s architecture – derided by some as “antiquarian masochism” – literally gives this ethos concrete expression.

Moral disputes over history, once the most acrimonious in post-war Europe, are over, and even the Left Party – still somewhat nostalgic for East Germany – is coming around to an anti-totalitarian consensus, with real consequences for policy and political self-perception. Nobody wants to repeal citizenship legislation that makes birthplace, not bloodlines, the basis of belonging, and everybody is proud that right-wing populism has never taken off in the way that it has among some of Germany’s neighbors.

Indeed, while received opinion has moved to the right on economics and foreign policy since 1990, the party spectrum as a whole has moved to the left. The Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party, and now possibly the left-libertarian Pirates (who polled close to 9% in the recent Berlin elections, but have yet to entrench themselves nationally) potentially represent a structural majority for the left. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is in many ways de facto a social democratic, and certainly not a nationalist, party.

Germany’s behavior today is not driven by nationalism (not even economic nationalism), but by German elites’ loss of a political compass, as well as the Berlin Republic’s new domestic and international circumstances. Berlin is not sleepy Bonn, and the world of the 24-news cycle is not the same as the clubby atmosphere of the old Federal Republic, where only the opinion of one or two newspapers mattered.

In foreign policy, Germany has no real global game plan: witness its blunders over Libya, and its clumsy attempts to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In Europe, Germany is obviously the indispensable nation, yet it lacks not only a clear mandate to lead, but also a clear sense of what the European Union should look like after the great projects of peace, the common market, and enlargement are more or less completed.

Previously, the question of Europe’s final shape could be postponed or finessed. Now, Merkel has had the misfortune of inheriting an incoherent project (a currency union without fiscal and political union) – a situation that demands some type of vision from a politician famously good at everything but articulating one. Thus, Germany’s political class, confused about what it wants and generally unable to explain to citizens what it does, has responded with short-term solutions: yes, more Europe, but no European state; yes, more money to pour down fiscal black holes, but no departure from the old Bundesbank orthodoxies.

Merkel’s style has exacerbated this confusion: she prefers to lead from behind and seems incapable of the stateswoman-like speech that would bring people to accept bolder measures. Others have filled this vacuum. Even the most banal statements of Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, pronouncing from retirement on the dangers of betraying their European dream, are adored as shimmering pearls of wisdom.

The president of Germany’s Constitutional Court openly speculates that, if more Europe is needed for technocratic reasons, it might be time for the people to vote on a new constitution. Leading intellectuals recommend that Europe’s periphery be permanently disempowered for the sake of Franco-German leadership. Others wish that Germany could be like Switzerland and retreat from a complex world that poses too many moral challenges. Deep down, however, everybody knows that there is no way back to Bonn.

Unlike in the post-war decades, Germans no longer want to escape to “Europe” from their difficult fatherland. Today’s generations are far too comfortable with being German to see Europe as the answer to all of their problems.

Still, they probably would be willing to do much more with and for Europe if someone explained why it fits their ideals and interests. Talk of a new, Europe-friendly constitution indicates that they might even be willing to give up what, along with the Deutschmark, was the old Federal Republic’s most prized possession: the Basic Law, arguably the world’s most successful constitution during the last half-century. But Germans will not give it up for nothing.