Angela Merkel announced last Thursday (12^th April) that there would be no German deployment of military force against Syria in response to the chemical attack on 7^th April in Douma. A not untypically characteristic response from Mutti, the German Kanzlerin entering her 4^th term in office heading the government of Europe’s largest state. As expected, the love-child of caution and moderation, this towering giant of predictability and lack of imagination, did exactly what was expected of her by her party colleagues and her most fervent admirers (if such a thing exists for one so ordinary) in the electorate. The Germans stayed at home, as they have done by and large since 1945, but supported the choices of their allies in Europe and across the Atlantic who did take action against Assad’s regime for its alleged use of chemical weaponry against the Syrian people. Not exactly what the German left wanted from her, hoping instead for a little more robust questioning of the logic and justification for increased western military activity in Syria, directed now specifically against the regime which has, with Russian and Iranian support, being clinging on despite the Civil War raging in that country for the past 7 years. Perhaps also not what some foreign policy hawks in Germany – if any truly exist – would have wanted to see from the recently elected Chancellor. Many had predicted around the turn of the century that with Germany the undisputed strongest power in Europe, now free of its Cold War obligations and perhaps even ready to turn its brooding gaze away from its own Nazi past, that Germany might start to flex its muscles a degree more confidently on the international stage as the 21^st Century progressed.

Alas, what we have gotten from German leaders since 2000 is much of the same class of politician as from the previous half-century, if not even lower calibre. Gone is the daring of Helmut Kohl, who, faced with the imminent collapse of the Communist bloc, chose to make the charge headlong for German unity and reunification in 1989 – before many were even certain that the time of the DDR was up. Gone is the cool determination of Willy Brandt, who took the plunge and ended the confrontational, not aggressive but certainly hostile, relationship with the East and began the road to détente with the Neue Ostpolitik in 1969. Gone even is the cunning and shrewdness of Konrad Adenauer, who, taking advantage of the Suez débâcle, put the choice to the French ‘it’s either share a voice with us, or surrender yours like Britain to the Americans’.

Don’t misunderstand me, these Chancellors were not willing nor capable of conquering the world – that was precisely their most desirable asset – but they had a sense of the place Germany held in the brave new post-war world, and the game West German leaders had to play to achieve what little international objectives they could allow themselves. Perhaps precisely since the place Germany holds in the current world order is so nameless and shrouded in uncertainty, German chancellors have struggled to rise to the challenge of their predecessors. Gehard Schröder and Angela Merkel, I sincerely doubt, will not go down in the Hall of Fame of European history, and will struggle to find space in the German one. They both found themselves in the jubilations and utopianism of the fin-de-siècle: the end of the Cold War, the ‘end of history’, and the emergence of the ‘Third Way’, and they fully embraced it. Schröder kept Germany out of the Iraq War ostensibly and yet gladly facilitated America’s waging of that war. Merkel has repeated history in word and no doubt will in action if it is required of her; German planes are already deployed in reconnaissance for NATO’s activity’s against other forces in Syria; if America scales up its efforts against Assad himself, Germany will be there as much as is necessary (and nothing more) to keep up its commitment to the Western military superstructure. As much as is necessary, and no more. Such is the order of the day in the konsens-demokratie typified by the third ‘Grand Coalition’ in 12 years (now reduced to a not-so-grand 56% of the seats in the chamber) and its most loyal architect, Chancellor Merkel.

Meanwhile what was announced back in Blighty? Something to the effect of ‘The cabinet believes the 7^th April attack requires a response’, or, put more clearly ‘We will do whatever our masters in Washington require’. Was parliament given a vote? Only symbolically, after air attacks were ordered. Is it certain Assad was responsible for the poison gas attack in Douma? No, the OPCW’s fact-finding team was only sent this week, and strangely right before this attack, Trump was considering pulling ending America’s presence in Syria. It seems the greatest strategic blunder Assad could commit at this point would be a chemical attack like this; nonetheless America decided Assad was responsible which meant the British government had to as well. The logic of Brexit dictates that this would be the May Ministry’s response to American manoeuvring on Syria. Admittedly this is not the first time a British government has taken the American position when it comes to foreign intervention, nor the first time a neo-imperialist joyride in the Arab world has been seen as a good idea by the political establishment of a Western state. However, the situation is different this time. Britain is leaving the European Union, the only entity capable of giving European states a voice independent of the whims of the political establishment across the Atlantic. Having made a clear sign that coordinating policy in Brussels with the rest of Europe was no longer on Britain’s agenda, it has left London with only one other option to exercise any kind of influence in the world – take shelter firmly under the American wing.

Of course, some may say, the French under its come-again Jupiter, Emmanuel Macron, also leapt headlong into the pool of military belligerence, even sooner than Britain in fact. However, a read of the context of the French decision shows that it comes from a different place to the British one. Paris aimed to show decisiveness in quickly responding to Douma with a call to arms; London could scarcely do the same, lacking all sense of an autonomous foreign policy, especially when it is so inwardly consumed in the black-hole-like Brexit conundrum. It’s clear Britain is seen as something of a sorry sight by the rest of Europe; our elite, uncertain of how to proceed in an increasingly globalised world, clearly thought itself too clever by half in its attempt to gain greater global influence by throwing all its European influence in the bin and all its time into the abyss of legislating Brexit. Whatever Johnson and Gove and their allies in finance and industry told the British people, disillusioned by the pre-2016 status quo, in their mind the prize was clear: get off the European bus and drive wheeling and dealing straight up the neoliberal motorway of Globalisation alone. Key to this will be the old-(un)faithful, the ‘Special Relationship’ with Washington.

Merkel knows she has nothing to prove. Macron does have something to prove. May also has something to prove; that she will do anything to get on the good side of the American government. Having seen to it that cooperation with Europe should be, to say the least, complicated from now on, Britain finds itself having to take shelter under the American yolk increasingly often, mimicking the repeated actions of British governments in the 50s and 60s which, sceptical over Europe, chose time and again to submit to American positions under the guise of the ‘special relationship’. This term has always been strange to me – there seems nothing special or unique about this particular submissive-dominant relationship – but it only became more out of place when it was clear that Germany, not Britain, is in fact America’s most important ally on the Old Continent since 1945. Britain has only crumbled and weakened since the end of the last European war; Germany has, from the broken wreckage of the Hitler regime, only gotten stronger. It found its approach to the world post-1945, and even with the situation clearly changed since 1989, it has a far greater sense of where it is and what it should be doing than my dear homeland Britain.

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Yet again we in Europe find discussion of military action plastered across the papers and broadcast across the continent. Sabre-rattling, to-war-by-jingo-ism is dominating the airwaves. It seems hard to believe but things get more and more tedious year by year as Western efforts at diplomacy seem to lack all the energy required to make them successful, while our efforts with regards to waging war seem to know no bounds when more is demanded. The comparison is often made, that when more money is demanded for healthcare, social welfare and so on, questions of where the money is supposed to come from and how can we justify this extra spending immediately emerge; when it comes to war, there are no such questions. Curious. The argument might be made that financial considerations can scarcely deter us from waging a war for freedom and democracy against one of the world’s most heinous dictators. The assumptions of this argument are questionable – such wars have been a total failure in the past and not only have failed to bring freedom or democracy but have undermined all semblance of stability in that part of the world. But let us accept the argument for a moment; surely the righteousness of spending money on healthcare, pensions for our elderly, support for the disabled and for students in education is equally unquestionable? How can world-class healthcare, education and support for the old and disabled be less defensible causes than waging war in distant parts of the world, to the extent that immediately financial considerations take primary concern? Is this really what we are expected to believe?

It is true that every time the idea of conducting warfare in the Middle East gets floated our motor memory leads to the same reflex responses such as the right-wing going “ra ra, men like Assad only respond to the raised hand” and the left-wing going “more war can never bring about lasting peace” and it is true that this dance is starting to get a little stale. One gets the sense that this is becoming purely motor memory, rather than giving the required amount of time and thought on the particular issue and its particular context. It seems like much political debate these days involves looking for the recognisable signposts and following the well-trodden paths and roads that lead us exactly to the place we find ourselves in, every time these signposted arguments and events are shown to us – history repeats itself as we all know, because humans can’t help themselves. However, the key difference between the right and the left particularly on the issue of war is that when war is discussed, it is rarely ever that the left-wing preference for a course of action is taken. Even in Iraq in 2003, despite an ostensibly (perhaps formerly, though now relapsed) left-wing party was in government in Britain, the right-wing course of war was chosen, in the face of some of the largest demonstrations seen in the history of Europe and America. So, it is no surprise that the Left keeps repeating itself whenever war is mooted, because war has been the Right and the Establishment’s response so many times when it comes to Middle Eastern questions, and the Left’s battle cry (ironically) “enough with the bombing!” seems ever more irrelevant each and every time.

As we go round and round in circles spitting the same lines at each other as we have every other time, except with ever-increasing venom, those with the power to act and an interest in perpetual war will continue to proceed unaccountable and unimpeded without an end in sight.