When Brandt resigned, Helmut Schmidt was in the wings since Schröder, it has lacked serious and appealing leaders. For a party that produced Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and even Gerhard Schröder, its lack of any credible, let alone dynamic, leaders is both surprising and fatal. It even lost in its stronghold of Bremen in the recent election there, not to mention its abysmal results in the recent European Parliamentary election. It has been eclipsed on the left and center by the Greens. Its working-class base has shrunk and much of it has moved to the Greens, die Linke, and the AfD. The Social Democrats are now, in Kurt Kister’s phrase, a milieu party without a milieu. While the AfD may have maxed out its support level at 14 percent nationally (albeit much higher in eastern Germany), the result is not only an increase of anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic sentiment, but a six-party system that has paralyzed German politics and made it much uglier. The AfD came to life just as the Extra Parliamentary Opposition or APO did during the Grand Coalition of the 1960s but, unlike other extreme right-wing parties like the NPD and Republikaner, has become a fixture in the party landscape. It is now clear that this was a fatal error for the SPD and for German leadership.Įveryone except the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Greens lost as a result. The Social Democrats were then dragged into another coalition with Angela Merkel, something they had long resisted with good reason.
#Merkels latest challenge leading lame duck free#
This unloved government was the result of Christian Lindner’s pique when he pulled his Free Democrats (FDP) out of the negotiations with the Christian Democrats and Greens in late 2017. The abrupt resignation of Andrea Nahles as chair of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is another sign that the Grand Coalition government is a zombie, still walking but otherwise quite dead. The Successor Generation: International Perspectives of Postwar Europeans, The Diplomacy of German Unification, Parting Ways: The Crisis in the German-American Relationship, and Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-Economics. He has published widely on European and German politics and foreign policies, including. In addition to SAIS, he has taught at the Hertie School of Governance, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Political Science from Georgetown University and has been a fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the American Academy in Berlin, as well as serving as Research Director at AICGS. He served as Professor of National Security Affairs at the National War College, National Defense University (1982-1990). Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Szabo was Interim Dean and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and taught European Studies at The Paul H. Prior to joining the German Marshall Fund in 2007, Dr.
Until June 1, he was the Executive Director of the Transatlantic Academy, a Washington, DC, based forum for research and dialogue between scholars, policy experts, and authors from both sides of the Atlantic. Szabo is a Senior Fellow at AICGS, where he focuses on German foreign and security policies and the new German role in Europe and beyond.
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