France and Germany's Ukraine rift runs deeper than Macron and Scholz

A growing rift has opened up between Europe’s two largest powers over the war in Ukraine. France is overstepping; Germany is stepping back.

At a time when American leadership in the world is receding, intra-European disagreements are most unwelcome. Current Franco-German tensions are not due to personal animosities between national leaders. Nor do they stem from the policies of Ukraine or Russia.

Rather, the source of this rift can be traced to structural shifts in the countries’ domestic political coalitions—shifts which are likely to persist for some time.

Observers of European geopolitics regularly note that the success of the continent's "experiment" with ever closer union and, by extension, its role on the world stage, critically depends on the French-German relationship.

Conventional wisdom holds that this relationship starts at the top with the French President and the German Chancellor. For instance, in the 1970s the friendship between France’s Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Germany’s Helmut Schmidt was instrumental in efforts to centralise decision-making power and lay the foundation for a European Union.

Similarly, the task of keeping Europe intact in the wake of the Great Recession of 2008 largely succeeded thanks to a renewed France-Germany alliance under the “Merkozys,” as President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel came to be known. When the two get along in style and substance, the claim goes, good things happen.

The war in Ukraine provides the most recent test of the French-German relationship. Will France and Germany once again rise to meet the occasion? Or will the pressures of interstate conflict unveil a divide? In recent weeks the case increasingly appears to be the latter.

Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron hinted that Western troops may be sent to Ukraine, saying "nothing should be ruled out." Predictably, this statement ran afoul of France’s Western allies, who preferred internal consultation over going rogue.

Macron’s hawkish comment was especially poorly received by Germany. Earlier in the Ukraine conflict, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz boldly signalled a more active role for his country in overseas conflicts.

In his now-famous Zeitenwende speech in February 2022, Scholz committed to transforming Germany from a pacifist to a military actor for the first time since World War II. With this one speech, it appeared that the ever-cautious, ever-prudent Germany was moving to meet the more belligerent France where it was to create a more muscular Europe.

Two years later, however, things look much different. Current goings-on, such as Scholz’s refusal on "prudence" grounds to send Taurus missiles to aid in the fight, give the impression that Germany has reverted to its typical postwar character as a robust economy (though on that score it is losing ground) paired with passive leadership in foreign policy.

So where do we go from here? The conventional expectation is that leaders of Europe’s two largest nations will meet behind closed doors, talk through their differences, and re-emerge united.

This is what happened after the stagnant decade of the 1970s with Giscard and Schmidt. This is what happened after the Great Recession with Sarkozy and Merkel. However, this time is different. This is not because global strategies have shifted, nor is it because Macron and Scholz lack personal connections.

The reason instead can be traced to longer-term shifts in domestic politics—in Germany, France, and also in the United States—which will stand in the way of a renewed partnership. In Germany, past leadership was limited by the memory of the past and the need to steer clear from foreign entanglements.

On this, all parties agreed. But today, the German elite is divided, even within the governing coalition. None of the partners in the current coalition of the Social Democrats and junior partner Greens and Free Democrats embraces a muscular internationalism.

But even if the government changed tomorrow, stronger support for Ukraine would be unlikely. While the centre-right Christian Democrats are the most globalist of the bunch, their strength is compromised by a rising Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party.

Along with its sceptical take on European integration, the far-right AfD advocates dialogue with Moscow rather than funding the war effort.

In France, the presidents of the Fifth Republic have projected state strength, from Charles de Gaulle on the right to François Mitterrand on the left. Macron appears to be reading from their script, European allies be damned.

But it is difficult to see how a French president can continue championing liberal internationalism. Term-limited, Macron will not seek the presidency for a third time, and his successor on the centre of the political spectrum, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, is not well known.

Recent public opinion polls hint at a victory for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to win the next presidential election. Though predicting an election outcome more than two years into the future is a fool’s errand, it does speak to the weakness of Macron’s position.

Like Germany, the political elite in France is no longer of a single mind when it comes to the country’s role in global and European conflicts.

Finally, past iterations of the Franco-German axis have been cast against the background of a very different United States. For most of the postwar era, the US played the role of what political scientists call the "hegemon," or superpower that takes on the burden of underwriting the global political-economic system.

As hegemon, American policy gave structure to the European security environment. And just as in Germany and France, American politicians on the centre-left and centre-right shared the basic tenets of this postwar international order. But this too is no more. Much like Macron, President Joe Biden’s internationalism appears to be in short supply moving forward.

Republicans have veered right to embrace former President Donald Trump’s "America First" isolationism while Democrats are torn between fighting aggressors overseas and social problems at home.

Two years on, the war in Ukraine appears to have reached a key moment. However the Franco-German alliance is an unreliable mechanism for ensuring European involvement in the conflict, be it via munitions or manpower.

It is therefore all the more critical that others in the West, like the Americans, find a way to break from past domestic political dynamics and take an active role in safeguarding democracy in Europe.