If you pull up a stool at any diner between Columbus and Des Moines and ask about national defense, you will hear a version of the same old common sense: lock your doors, keep your powder dry, and never mistake a wolf for a stray dog. It is an uncomplicated way of looking at the world, honed by folks who know that order does not maintain itself. Across the Atlantic, however, the political class in Berlin spent the better part of thirty years pretending that human nature had fundamentally changed and that the harsh realities of statecraft could be permanently retired.
Now comes the rude awakening. The German government is moving to grant its domestic and foreign intelligence services sweeping new authorities to track down saboteurs, foreign agents, and extremists. Lawmakers there are scrambling to counter what modern bureaucrats love to call hybrid threats—which is mostly just a twenty-dollar term for the age-old business of foreign adversaries probing your weak spots, cutting your cables, and funding troublemakers inside your borders. After decades of relying on American military might while lecturing the world about the supremacy of international rules, Berlin is suddenly realizing that its house is made of glass.
Edmund Burke once wrote that society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. That partnership rests on the basic, unglamorous duty of the sovereign to protect its people from external ruin. When leaders shirk that obligation in favor of comfortable illusions, they do not usher in an era of peace; they simply invite aggression. Germany shuttered its nuclear plants to appease green activists, tethered its industrial heartland to Russian gas pipelines, and let its armed forces atrophy into a bureaucratic punchline. They acted as though trade and moral righteousness would tame Moscow and Beijing. They were wrong, and ordinary citizens are the ones left holding the bill.
Yet there is an irony here that any conservative should view with a healthy dose of caution. In their haste to fix the vulnerabilities created by their own soft-headed policies, German officials are reaching for the standard tool of the modern administrative state: an expansion of surveillance and police powers. While a nation must certainly defend itself against espionage and physical sabotage, handing state agencies greater leeway to snoop on communications and monitor domestic activity is always a double-edged sword. Governments that fail at the basics of deterrence abroad often end up overreaching against their own citizens at home.
This scramble is not happening in a vacuum; it is deeply tied to the political panic currently gripping Western European capitals. Voters across the continent, much like working-class Americans, have grown sick and tired of establishment politicians who seem indifferent to national sovereignty. In Germany, the rise of populist alternatives is a direct reaction to an elite that opened the nation's borders, compromised its energy independence, and hollowed out its security apparatus. Having failed to project strength outward, Berlin’s governing coalition is terrified of the political backlash brewing on its own streets.
There is a vital lesson here for our own leaders in Washington, especially the crowd that takes its cues from Davos panels and Georgetown cocktail parties. For years, American liberals have pointed to Western Europe as the model of enlightened, post-national governance. We were told that hard borders, robust defense budgets, and traditional national interests were backward relics that enlightened nations ought to outgrow. But as Germany’s belated turn toward intelligence crackdowns demonstrates, you can ignore reality for only so long before it kicks your front door off its hinges.
National security is not an intellectual exercise, and peace is not preserved by signing treaties or issuing sternly worded communiques from Brussels. It is maintained through quiet vigilance, self-reliance, and the kind of hard strength that makes adversaries think twice before stepping across your lawn. Germany is finally taking a small, reluctant step toward self-preservation, but expanding the remit of secret police is no substitute for national purpose and spine. Berlin let the fence rot for a generation, and no amount of midnight wiretapping will quickly rebuild the wall.