Herder's Critique of the Enlightenment: Cultural Community versus Cosmopolitan Rationalism

Herder's Critique of the Enlightenment: Cultural Community versus Cosmopolitan Rationalism

Brian J. Whitton

Recent continental social theory has seen the emergence of a body of literature which represents a radical challenge to the primary concerns and assumptions of traditional Western social and political thought. While this challenge involves a number of aspects and embraces a heterogeneous group of thinkers, one theme common to them all is their opposition to the attempts of traditional scientific, social, and political disciplines to construct general theoretical programs as aguides to the practical actualization of a rational order within human society, however defined. What is most objectionable about this general project for such thinkers, included among them figures like Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida, is its implicit assumption of the possibility of establishing a hierarchy in the forms of knowledge - an ordering of discourses in accordance with theri relative approximation to the objetive principles of an ultimate discourse of reason or truth. Their special sensivity to language, and their shared belief in the infinite creative potencial of human linguistic activity, led these thinkers to arrack such "totalizing" rationalist discourses as legitimating forms of exclusionary practices which repress the full diversity of discursive interpretations of the real implicit in human linguistic activity in favor of one dominant, repressive discourse. Far from being unique to the postmodernist writters of the late twentieth century, however, this type of relativistic critique of totalizing discourses has some notable antecedents in modern social thought. The purpose of this article is to examine one such precursor of this form of critique presented in the writtings of the eighteenth century theorist, Johann Gottfried von Herder.

In his theory of history Herder presents a radical critique of the rationalist discourse of cosmopolitan human development advanced by the Enlightenment thinkers of his day, one wich is predicated upon a profound sentitivity to the importance of language in the process of historical human development. In the first part of this article I will outline Herder's critique of the Enlightenment perspective and the main features of the particularistic conception of human cultural community which he develops in opposition to it. In so doing I will suggest some interesting parallels wich can be drawn between Herder's relativistic conception of cultural community and the ideas on language abd human cultural development presented in the recent writtings of the postmodernist, Francois Lyotard. I then proceed to advance certain criticisms of the relativistic vision of human cultural development and community advanced in Herder's thought.

I

Before considering Herder's thought in detail, I will briefly outline some of the main themes of Lyotard's recent book, The Postmodern Condition. This will provide the basis for a comparison of the theories of Herder and Lyotard later in the paper. Central to an understanding of Lyotard's work is his view of language games as the defining aspect of any social system. He argues that:

"language games are the minimun relation required for society to exist; even before he is born . . . the human child is already positioned as the referent in the story recounted by those around him, in relation to which he will inveitably char his course . . . the question of social bond is itself a language game."

According to Lyotard each culture is constituted by such language games and it is the knowledge forms to which these give rise which govern the life of the culture. In his work he distinguishes two major knowledge forms arising from these language games in the course of human history. These are, first, the traditional popular narrative form and, second, the modern scientific form. Narrative knowledges, identified as synonymous with traditional tribal cultures, are distinguished by their inmmediacy with the life of the culture and the spontaneous manner by which they legitimate its institutions of authority. As the determinant of criteria of social competence and how those criteria are applied, of "what has the right to be said and done in the culture," such narrative knowledge forms are integral to the culture, "legitimated by the simple fact that they do what they do." Popular narrative kwoledge, Lyotard notes, "does not give priority to the question of its own legitimation. . . . It certifies itself in the pragmatics of its own transmission without havin recourse to argumentation and proof."

This traditional knowledge form is in direct contrast to the scientific form of modern Western culture. What sets the latter apart first and foremost according to Lyotard is its claim to objective legitimation, its supposed capacity to establish the truth of its propositions through the objetive processes of verification and falsification. In accordance with this claim to objective legitimation, it is only those discourses capable of objective validation which are appropriated into the corpus of acceptable knowledge withon the modern cultural order. Here Lyotard discerns the inherent hegemonic tendency of the scientific knowledge form. He notes that "scientific knowledge requires that one language game, denotation, be retained and all other excluded. [For this knowledge form] a statement's truth-value is the criterion determining its acceptability. This principle renders problematic the status of the traditional narrative form of knowledge within modern society.

"The scientist questions the validity of narrative statements and concludes that they are never subject to argumentation or proof. He classifies them as belonging to a different mentality: savage, primitive, underdeveloped, backward. . . .At best, attempts are made to throw some rays of light into this obscurantism, to civilize, educate, develop."

According to Lyotard, where the traditional knowledge form of popular narrative lends itself to the expression of a diversity of narrative discourses or different narrative understandings of the world, the modern scientific form is, by its very nature,  exclusionary of discursive diversity.

It is at this point that Lyotard notes the paradoxical nature of the scientific knowledge form upon which Western culture is predicated. For the latter, he argues, is itself dependet upon a form of narrative for its ultimate legitimacy.

"Scientific knowledge cannot know and make know that it is true knowledge without resorting to the other, narrative kind of knowledge, which from its point of view is no knowledge at all. Without such recourse it would be in the position of presupposing its own validity . . . [of] proceeding on prejudice."

The main forms which this recourse to narrative assumes is the appeal to the meta-narrative - the legitimating story of the subject wich unforlds itself in the process of history to discover its being in the knowledge of science. Only through the invocation of this epic story of the self-realizing subject, in its dual forms of the unfolding of the absolute idea (Hegel) and the emancipation of the concrete subject of humanity (the Enlightenment), has the culturally limited language game of modern science succeeded in sustaining its claim to superiority over other knowledge forms in modern society.

However, for Lyotard the advend of the present postmodern condition spells the death of this legitimating metanarrative within the represive dominance of the scientific knowledge form. The processes of delegitimation associated with the emerging postmodern era have, he maintains, seen the decline of the unifying power of the grand narrative and the violence it has visited upon the plurarity of language games. In place of the old "objetivizing" pragmatics of modern science, Lyotard notes the beginnins of the development of a new social pragmatics within postmodern society containing the possibility for a new relativistic idea and practice of justice -- one bases upon a "recognition of the hereromorphous nature of language games . . . [and] a renunciation of terror, which assumes that they are isomorphic and tries to make them so." 

 

II

The broad themes elaborated above which preoccupy the thought of Lyotard bear a marked similarity to the idea implicit in Herder's philosophy of history. The emphasis upon the essentially pluralistic nature of cultural forms of knowledge, the critique of the universal narrative as the legitimating form a particular, hegemonic cultural discourse which obstructs the free expression of alternative cultural discourses -- these are central features of the particularistic conception of cultural development which Herder elaborates within the broader context of his critical encounter with the Enlightenment conception of history dominant in his day. In turning now to examine Herder's thought, I shall first provide a brief account of the Enlightenment conception of history which forms the focus of Herder's criticisms. I then proceed to outline Herder's theory of the historical development of the Volk or nation as it emerges from his critique of the rationalist, cosmopolitan perspective of the philosophes. Having done this I shall be in a position to indicate the similarities in the work of Herder and Lyotard and to offer some criticisms of the relativistic conception of historical human development which Herder advances as the basic alternative to the Enlightenment perspective.

In the writings of some prominent thinkers of the French Enlightenment, we find articulared a highly optimistic view of human history as the linear progression of humanity towards a condition of inevitable perfectibility. For thinkers like Condorcet and Turgot, history is understood as the story of the progressive advancement of humanity towards an enlightened condition of human association ultimately embracing the whole of humankind, based upon the principles of reason. Of particular importance for our concerns are those more basic assumptions upon which this cosmopolitan conception of history rested. Underlying this optimistic view of human history is the distinctive rationalist conception of human nature characterizing the philosophy of the Enlightenment. According to this view, human beings have access to certain timeless, immutable principles or laws intrinsic to their nature. Moreover, as Becker notes, it was thought that, by the use of their natural reason, these principles could be grasped by people and applied to human affairs enabling them to "bring ther ideas and conduct and hence the institutions by which they lived, into harmony with the universal, natural order." On this view, then, human history involved the progressive apprehension of these constant and universal principles of human nature previously obscured by superstition and custom by which the affairs of all people may be rationally organized.

A logical corollary of this rationalist conception of history as the inexorable progression of humandkind to a cosmopolitan condition of rational perfectibility was the tendency of Enlightenment philosophers to demean or deride those cultures, past and present, which lacked consciousness of the principles of the enlightened reason. Such cultures tended to be seen as lesser stages in the development towards this enlightened perfect end. Hence, in the view of Condorcet, it was the good fortune of the barbarous, unenlightened cultures of his day that they could acquire these rational principles of Enlightenment directly from the enlightened culture of European society. "The progress of these peoples [he notes] is likely to be more rapid and certain because they can receive from us . . . these simple truths and infallible methods which we have acquired only after long error."

In elaborating this theory of history as the evolution of the Volk community, Herder presents a thoroughgoing critique of the basic assumptions of this Enlightenment conception of history. At the heart of this critique is Herder's opposition to the way this rationalist perspective abstracts historical human development from all connection with the contingent elements fo human historical linguistic and cultural practice. Against the static, ahistorical concepction of human nature espoused by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, Herder opposes a radical new development account of human nature and reason. Here the notion of human nature as something existing apriori, independient of contigent historical circumstances, is rejected. Human nature, Herder argues, is "not the vessell of an absolute, unchanging happiness as the defined by the philosophers; everywhere it attracts the measure of happiness of which it is capable; it is a pliant clay which assumes a different shape under different . . . circumstances." Human nature is an ever-changing, constantly developing substance altering in response to diverse historical needs and circumstances.

In terms of this new, dinamic historical conception of human development, Herder stresses the historical specificity of the human condition. Humans must develop through struggle within their natural and social environment. Among the influences affecting their development, Herder identifies climate, or their geographical location, which exercises a definite influence on their conscious development. "The spirit has varied in direct proportion to climate and its effects."

But by far the most crucial element for Herder in this dynamic process of human historical transformation is language. He notes that "the whole structure of man's humanity is connected by a spiritual genesis," a connection which takes the form of the elaboration of the uniquely human capacity for speech. As an attribute specific to human beings, language is seen by Herder as the central expression of a uniquely human, reflective consciousness. In developing their language, individuals give shape to their inner conscious nature, formulating their ideas and preconceptions through reflection on their experiences of the external world. Hence

"the more experience man gains, the more he learns to know diverse things from diverse aspects, he richer grow his language. The more he repeats what he has learnt and the words he has gained in doing so, the more permanent and fluent his language becomes. The more the differentiates and classifies the more it becomes organizes."

According to Herder, the process of conscious linguistic development outlined here, the elaboration of the unique human power of conscious discourse, is conceivable only as a social process. The conscious development of the individual is part and parcel of his inclusion in a broader linguistic community, and inherited stream of words and images which he must accept on trust. The ideational form of language constitutes the natural force integrating people within a dynamic historical community of cultural development which Herder identifies as the Volk o nation. Moreover, rather than a substantive stucture standing over and above the individual, the Volk community forms a spiritual unity whose historical evolution  involves the conscious integration of the individual and the social in the progresive expression of a unique national, cultural consciousness embodied in the linguistic products of the nation.

What are the specific features of this conception of cultural community which Herder develops in opposition to the Enlightenment theory of cosmopolitanism and, in particular, what are the specific processes by which the cultural personality of the Volk community is historically actualized? Here Herder stress social education, understood in broad terms as the molding process of socialization and tradition. In the course of assimilating their language during everyday social activity, individuals incorporate their cultural heritage. They are brought into connection with the history, poetry, and religion of the nation and the social wisdom embodied in these cultural forms. The famliy unit assumes a vital role in this educational process. Acording to Herder, paternal love makes possible an education which is social and continuous, acting as a major instrument for the transmission of the values and prejudicesof succesive generations. The parent, herder argues, is the natural instructor of the child. "Each individual is son or daughter. . . . He or she receives from the earliest moments of life part of the cultural treasures of ancestral heritage. . . [which he or she] in turn passes on." Through parental instruction the individual is brought into communion with the "ways of feeling and thinking of his progenitors. . . . He repeats, with every newly acquired word, not only sounds but certain ways of looking at the world."

By virtue of this process of social education borne by family, teachers, and friends, there is established through the successive generations of the Vold community a "chain of unity and continuity in which each link . . . [receives and transmits] the cultural heritage of the Volk [in a process which entails] language and its continuous growth". The national language, as the medium of the transmission of the cultural spirit of the Volk, connects its members in a organic community embracing the ideas, wisdom, and values of past, present, and future generations. Moreover, this historical transmission of the cultural heritage of the Volk community involves a definite dialectical dimension in its operation. Herder notes that parents "never teach their children language without the concurrent inventive activity of the child." The process of cultural education is a complex one wherein each generation, in receiving the prejudices of the Volk language, subjects them to reappraisal and re-evalutation in accordance with its own historical needs and circumstances. "The generations renew themselves in a continuous flux . . . . In spite of the linear, prescriptive tendencies of tradition, each son continues to write in his own particular way." It is through this historical transformation of the Volk language that traditional conceptions and beliefs are continually synthesized with those of the new generations. "The opposites assist and promote one another . . . [and] by their reconciliation there emerges a new world." Thus the national language forms the living, psycological medium within which the national culture is perpetuated, transformed, and reiched over time. As such it constitutes the central agency in the historical extension of the creative powers of humans as conscious, self-constitutive members of the Volk.  

There are a number of points arising from this highly original account of human cultural development which it is important to note here. The first of these is Herder's emphasis upon the natural, internally generated nature of this dynamic condition of cultural community. The historical transmission of the national culture is both genetic and organic in nature, "genetic by virtue of the manner in which the transmission takes place [that is, through paternal instruction] and organic by virtue of the [dialectical] manner in which that which is being transmitted is assimilated and applied." The primary agents of national development (notably the national languague and the powers of the synthesizing mind) represent for Herder naturally evolving forces developing within  abd through the members of the Volk as opposed to what he considers the artificial, externally imposed economic and political forces operating on and uniting people from without. Indeed it is a basic tenet of Herder's thought that human communities, if they are to be effective and lasting in nature, must be predicated upon these natural, immediate cultural forces which link "minds through ideas, hearts through inclinations and impulses . . . and generations through examples, modes of living and education."

A second major aspecto of Herder's theory flowing from its naturalistic cultural conception of human community is his stress upon the essential plurality of human values and their relativity to specific nationa, historical communities. For Herder each distinct nation contains within itself ots own perfection independent of comparation with that of other cultures, a standard defined in accordance with its specific cultural traditions and values. Further, the image of what is morally right or wrong varies frpm cultura to culture, making all comparison between different cultures unprofitable. In his view:

"when the inner sense of happiness has altered, this or that attitude has changed; when the external circumstances . . . fashion and fortify this new sentiment, who can then compare the different forms of satisfaction perceived by different senses in different worlds. . . .Each nation has its own centre of happiness within itself, just as every sphere has its own centre gravity."

To engage in the critical judgment of past cultures in terms of the ideals and values of one's own time, as the Enlightenment historians tended to do, is, on this view, fundamentally problematic. According to Herder each historical culture represents a distinctive and unique manifestation of that which is specifically human. "From the shapeless rocks with which the Chinese ornaments his garden, to the . . .  ideal beauty of Greece, the plan of a reflective human understanding is everywhere observable."

In accordance with this pluralistic, culture-relative conception of human values, Herder stresses the necessity for any adequate understanding of the diverse cultures of human history to grasp the distinctive assumptions and prejudices implicit in the cultural consciousness of any given national community. However, such knowledge is not easily acquired, as Herder was well aware. Historical understanding of this type required the cultivation of one's capacity for sympathetic identification with the culture under consideration. Individuals must

"enter into the spirit of a nation before . . . [they] can share even one of its thoughts or deeds. . . . [They] must penetrate deeply into this century, this reigion, this entire history and feel it inside  . . . [themselves] - then only will . . . [they] be in a position to understand."

Only by entering into the life of a culture, its beliefs and prejudices expressed in its cultural products, Herder maintained, can its intrinsic value and historical significance be grasped.

Lacking this capacity for sympathetic identification with the cultural consciousness of civilizations other than their own, the philosophes are criticized for their fundamental insensitivity to these crucial elements of human cultural community. Instead they are seen to engage in a mechanized form of thinking which abstracts human development and community form its life blood: the sensuous world of human cultural diversity. For Herder the inevitable consequence of this simplistic historical perspective is the creation of an abstract cosmopolitanism, a "paper culture" predicated upon an idealized conception of eighteenth-century European cultural life. He notes how

"the general philosophical, philanthropic tone of our century wishes to extend our own ideal of virtue and happiness to each distant nation, to even the remotest age of history. . . . [It] has taken words for works, enlightenment for happiness, greater sophistication for virtue and, in this way, invented the fiction of the general amelioration of the world."

This condition, the philosophes believed, would ultimately embrace all of mankind with the progress of enlightenment.

From Herder's standpoint, however, the actualization of a general philosophy of this kind, with its "rational axioms of human behaviour, . . .   commonplaces about what is right and good; views of all times and all peoples for all times and all peoples," could only have disastrous consequences. Such a cosmopolitan condition, he believed, could take no other form than subjection of the great diversity of national cultures to the limited cultural standards of European society. Herder is particulary sensitive to the way in which such abstract, rationalist principles as equality, liberty, and fraternity may be invoked to justify a condition of manifest domination of one culture over the many. "The garment of generalities which characterize our [enlightened] philosophy can conceal oppressions and infringements of the . . . freedom of men and countries, of citizens and peoples." A cosmopolitan world of the type proposed by the philosophes would, Herder believed, be a world where all spontaneous, creative drives of the different cultural communities would be stifled in favor of an externally imposed European cultural ideal and human life reduced to a dull, routine existence. Within this artificial condition where the internal cultural ties binding people in a dynamic creative unity are suppressed, the natural basis of conscious human creativity would cease to exit and all meaningful human development be excluded. For Herder, a cosmopolitan society would be no more than a patched up fragile structure wholly devoid of life whose component parts would be conected through mechanical contrivances instead of bonds of human sentiment.

Herder's own particularistic conception of a cultural community as we have presented it, with its emphasis upon the naturally generated character of the Volk as an organic condition of cultural beloging, represents his humanistic alternative to the "inhuman" implications perceived as implict in the abstract cosmopolitan perspective. In opposition to the philosophes' belief in the infinite perfectibility of human nature Herder asserts the naturally limited potential of human beings for meaningful associations and creative interaction.

"Neither our head nor our heart is formed for an infinitely increasing store of thougths and feelings. . . .That mind which embraces much within its sphere of activity as part of itself achieves happiness whilst one which over-extends its feelings is bound to dissipate them into mere words and reaps nothing by misery."

Only when people possess this feeling of oneness with the national group do they feel at ease and free to develop their creative powers. Once they lose this sense of communion with the Volk community, human beings become alienated and are no longer able to act in an unself-conscious creative manner. Hence, to attempt to extend the realms of human socialization beyond the organic, cultural unity of the Volk is to overstep the natural limits constraining the development of conscious affinity among people.

This conception of the natural human condition as one of conscious integration in the cultural life of the Volk, o nation, was to form an important influence upon the later development of the political ideology of nationalism through its incorporation in the theorical writings of such later German thinkers as Fitche, Jahn and Arndt. However, as it is outlined in Herder's theory of cultural community this notion of cultural nationality is an essentially tolerant one, free of the aggressive tendencies of later political versions. In effect Herder's theory of cultural nationality is, first and foremost, a theory of freedom of all national groups to express their cultural identities to the fullest extent. Against the Enlightenment preocupation with the prospective emergence of a unified, integrated world predicated upon a single set of universal laws, Herder look a world of infinite cultural diversity and his writings represent a celebration of cultural divesity as the source of all that is rich and progressive in human life.

Viewed from this perspective Herder's acount of the historical development of the Volk community forms part of a larger vision within his thought involving a process of spiritual evolution which embraces humankind as a whole. The essence of his larger dimension of Herder's work is captured in his notion of Humanität --- the common human essence manifest iin the cultural forms of each national community. Herder observes that, while human cultural existence may be modified in a thousand different ways, "within itself a unique variation on the theme of humanity and corresponding tendency to develop this variant to its fullest extent. Thus, despite the vast panorama of cultural change and diversity in human history, Herder contends that the divine mind has everywere combined the greatest possible multiplicity with unity. Humanität has been dispersed all over the earth. 

"Since one form of mankind and one region could no encompass it, it has been distributed in a thousand forms, changing shape like an eternal Proteus throughout the continents and centuries. And even it it does no strive towards the greater hapiness of the individual. . . nonetheless a plan of progresive endeavour becomes apparent."

The progresive unfolding of this common human essence would appear to involve a seemingly unending process as, with each new national community, there emerge new and unique expressions of Humanität. Ultimately, then, within Herder's relativistic cultural perspective the historical elaboration of the diverse cultural forms constitutes and endless drama, "God's epic throught all the centuries . . . a fable with a thousand variations full of meaning."

 

III

The preceding analisis brings out clearly the nature of Herder's arguments against the universalistic claims and assumptions of the Enlightement conception of history, rooted as they are in a profound belief in the intrinsic value of human cultural diversity. I want now to indicate more explicitly the important areas of commonality between the theory of cultural community presented above and the relativistic conception of human cultural development formulated by Lyotard.

What both Herder and Lyotard are attacking in ther writtings, albeit at very different stages of its historical development, is the paradigm of cultural knowledge arising from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Moreover, despite the important differences in their historical backgrounds, the basic character and aims of their critiques of the Enlightenment paradigm of knowledge are remarkably similar. At the core of both critiques is a rejection of the pretensions to objectivity of this paradigm and, consequent upon this, its claim to constitute a higher form of knowledge than those cultural forms of knowledge differing from it by virtue of its capacity for rational legitimation. Proceeding from a view of the inherently relative, pluralistic nature of human cultural knowledge as an arbitrary linguistic construct, both Herder and Lyotard reject such claims to objectivity as based upon an artificial reification of a particular, limited cultural form to the status of universality.

In Herder's theory, this claim to epistemological superiority advanced by the Enlightenment philosophers is seen to be based on their erroneous belief in the existence of a set of eternal, abstract rational principles inherent in human nature, existing independently of the contingent, formative processes of history. As conceived by the critical reason of the philosophes, these rational principles were thought to transcend the superstitions and myths of earlier ages, forming the measure against which earlier, unenlightened cultures were judged and ultimately found wanting. In elaborating his historical, culture-relative conception of human development, Herder seeks to expose the contingent nature of the claims of this Enlightenment culture to universal validity and, in so doing, to reveal the true basis of this "universalistic" discourse in the reified categories of a limited European culture.

Similarly, in Lyotard's theory the claim of the modern scientific knowledge form to epistemological superiority is predicated upon the purported ability of the scientific language game to verify its knowledge claims by reference to objective principles of verification or proof. Moreover, it is their inability to stand up to the rigors of objective testing based on these scientific principles which determines the inadmissibility of the knowledge forms of traditional cultures to the body of knowledge accepted as legitimate and meaningful by the modern scientific culture. However, in a manner similar to Herder, Lyotard emphasizes the perilous nature of the claims of the modern scientific discourse to universal objectivity. As only one of many knowledge forms historically generated within the arbitrary language games of human cultures the modern scientific knowledge form is ultimately unable to validate its claims to objectivity in its own terms. Rather, its claims to epistemological superiory are seen to rely upon an appeal to a more fundamental, legitimating discourse of the same narrative form which its own denotative paradigm specifically excludes. This legitimating discourse turns out to be the meta-narrative of the historical emancipation of the rational human subject-- the same universalistic discourse of the Enlightenment which is the focus of Herder's critique.

For both Herder and Lyotard then, the success of the claims of the Enlightenment knowledge form to objective legitimation is made possible only through its reification, by its abstraction from the reality of its origins in those constitutive processes of linguistic cultural practice which represent the common source of all forms of knowledge. The hegemonic status of this modern cultural discourse is sustainable only insofar as it suppresses its own contingent, culture-relative nature -- an act of denial which inevitably entails the repression of those other, historically diverse cultural forms which present to it the true face of its own limited arbitrary nature. It is only with the demise of this modern rationalist cultural form, they believe, that the opressive implications of the demand for the objective validation of knowledge threatening the perpetuation of diverse cultural perspectives will be overcome.

While their critiques of the Enlightenment paradigm of knowledge thus exhibit remarkable similarities, it is also important to note the significant differences in the perspectives of Herder an Lyotard -- differences which emerge most clearly in theier respective views concerning the process of the breakdown of this hegemonic cultural discourse and the nature of the relativistic world deriving drom this disintegrative process. In outlining these points of divergence in their thought, some consideration needs to be given to the very different cultural milieux within which the basic conceptions of language and culture embraced by these two thinkers are formed. For it is the manner in which these contemporary influences shape their understanding of language and culture as the central medium of creative human development which acounts, in large part, fot the differences alluded to here.

In Herder's case the critique which he directs against the cultural knowledge form of the Enlightenment is properly situated as part of a larger current of German intellectual thought of the time, centering around the radical ideas of the Sturm und Drang. This movement of literary and artistic criticism, which included among its number figures like the young Goethe and Schiller, was to prove the source of some of the central ideas associated with the German Romantic movement. But, as Taylor has observed, its most distinctive characteristic eas the overriding aspiration of the Sturmer und Dranger to recapture the fundamental unity of human experience rent asunder by the dichotomizing reason of the Enlightenment. In opposition to the latter's "artificial" bifurcation of human experience into the antithetical categories of thought and feelings, reason and emotions, and humanity and nature, they aspired to an ideal conception of life as the harmonious unity of humans with themselves (their spiritual nature) and their larger natural and social world. The attainment of this unity with one's world was of foremost importance for the Sturmer insofar as it constituted the indispensable condition for human spiritual self expression --- the essential requirement for the realization of humans' authentic being. Moreover, it was language and the cultural creations generated by human linguistic activity which were identified as the essential medium whereby this creative, expresive unity achieved its actualization. In the natural creations of human language, the Sturmer believed, one could discern the aesthetic expression of the harmonious community of people with the greater spiritual whole which formed their world.

Through their personal literary creatuibs the different members of the Sturm und Drang sought to articulate their profound sense of the contemporary fragmentation of this creative, spiritual unity of human existence consequent upon the impact of the culture of the Enlightenment upon the existing social order. This pessimistic assessment of the character of contemporary cultural life also encouraged a more general tendency among many of the Sturmer to identify with the traditional life forms of the lower orders of German society as the embodiment of their ideal. The social world of the German peasants, farmers, and crafts-people, their customs and cultural traditions deriving from a simple life of interaction with nature largely untouched by the "artificiality" affecting the higher social orders of German society, seemed to epitomize, for many of thr Sturmer, that harmonious, spiritually fulfilling existence to which they themselves aspired. Accordingly, in their writtings, we find the first expression of the idealized conception of the common people o Volk and the celebration of German folklore and language which were to become dominant themes of the later German Romantic movement.

These general themes of the Sturm und Drang received powerful expression in Herder's thought. We have seen how he constructs a distinctive philosophy of history which identifies the natural organic unity of the individual and the larger cultural community as the essential condition for the realization of those creative, spiritual powers distinguishing humans as conscious linguistic beings. Moreover, for Herder, the perpetuation of this process of creative cultural development presupposes the preservation of that immediate, spontaneous unity of human beings with the Volk and its traditional cultural forms facilitated by the cohering, integrative power of the naturally evolving national language. Insofar as it threatens to fragment this natural, harmonious unity the artificial Enlightenment knowledge form can have no place within this historical proccess of cultural development. By eroding the organically evolved customs and traditions underpinning the historical process of cultural development, this divisive knowledge form would effectively destroy the foundations upon which the continued expression of the diverse cultural life forms of the species is dependent. Accordingly, Herder is uncompromising in his total rejection of the "unnatural" cultural paradigm of the Enlightenment in favor of the preservation of a prerationalistic world in which the multiplicity of traditionally evolved cultures receives full expression.

Writing at a much later stage in the development of the Enlightenment knowledge form and responding to very different cultural  influences, Lyotard's vision of a evolving, relativistic, postmodern condition of cultural diversity contrasts markedly with Herder's perspective. In his writtings we find no notion of a possible return a premodern, nonscientific order embracing the traditional cultures of narrative knowledge. In fact, Lyotard's is a more dialectical approach, one shaped by his sensitivity to the impact of the information revolution upon contemporary Western society. It is his assessment of the latter's implications for the nature of life within modern society -- an assessment strongly colored by the Nietzschean influences pervading his thought -- which is the major factor shaping his conception of this emerging postmodern world.

[History and Theory, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 1988) , pp. 146-168]

L'Allemagne à la croisée des chemins

 

 

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1997

L'Allemagne à la croisée des chemins

Intervention de Robert Steuckers au séminaire d'Ile-de-France de «Synergies Européennes», le 26 octobre 1997

 

Généralement, les observateurs des réalités allemandes en dehors de l'espace linguistique germanophone sont assez peu attentifs à certaines définitions que les Allemands donnent d'eux-mêmes. Certes, la culture allemande mettant principalement l'accent sur le particulier, ces définitions varient à l'infini: elles dépendent des options idéologiques ou philosophiques personnelles des auteurs, de leurs idiosyncrasies. Mais il en est une qui résume bien l'inquiétude voire la névrose allemande: c'est la définition de l'Allemagne comme “verspätete Nation”, comme nation retardée, comme nation “en retard”, comme nation “tard-venue” sur l'échiquier européen et international. Ce concept de “verspätete Nation” a été forgé par le philosophe Helmuth Plessner, peu connu des germanistes français et a fortiori du grand public, malgré qu'il ait été un opposant au régime hitlérien, contraint à l'exil. Pour Plessner, les Allemands, en tant que “tard-venus” sur la scène politique internationale, ne parviennent pas à rattraper le retard qui les sépare des Français ou des Anglais, voire des Russes, essayent de développer des idéologies de l'accélération, cherchent désespérément à se débarrasser de ballasts du passé, conservent une certaine immaturité politique (qui se traduit par le moralisme, le chauvinisme, l'exaltation, etc.), due à l'absence de “grandes idées incontestables” (au sens où l'entendaient en France Hauriaux ou Charles Benoist).

 

Plessner et tous ceux qui partagent sa vision de l'histoire allemande constatent que du XVIIième siècle à Bismarck, le Reich est un territoire éclaté, à la merci de toutes les puissances voisines, en dépit de la lente puis fulgurante ascension de la Prusse. Richelieu s'était érigé en protecteur des “libertés allemandes”, entendons par là le protecteur de tous les séparatismes et de tous les particula­rismes, qui tirent à hue et à dia, empêchant les diverses compo­santes de la germanité continentale de fusionner en une unité politique cohérente. Churchill en 1945-46 prônait une version britannique de cette stratégie en cherchant à imposer au Reich vaincu un fédéralisme séparatiste, que les critiques allemands nommeront bien vite “fédéralisme d'octroi”. A ce morcellement territorial s'ajoute la division confessionnelle entre catholiques et protestants. Même si cette division s'estompe aujourd'hui, elle a eu des effets calamiteux à long terme sur l'histoire allemande: l'Empereur Ferdinand II, champion du camp catholique, annonçait à tout qui voulait l'entendre qu'il préférait régner sur un désert plutôt que sur un pays peuplé d'hérétiques. La logique d'une guerre civile sans compromis, menée jusqu'à l'absurde et la folie, a frappé l'Allemagne dès les premières décennies du XVIIième siècle. Wallenstein, génial chef de guerre au service de cet Empereur catholique fanatique, s'est rapidement rendu compte de la folie et de l'aveuglement du monarque: il a fait de timides propositions de paix, suggéré un plan de réconciliation. Il a été assassiné.

 

«Grand siècle» et «Siècle des malheurs»

 

La mécompréhension fondamentale entre Allemands et Français, qui a débouché sur les trois guerres franco-allemandes de ces 150 dernières années, provient directement des événements terribles du XVIIième siècle. La France a connu à cette époque son grand siècle et y a forgé les puissants ressorts de sa culture et de son prestige. L'Allemagne a été plongée dans l'horreur et la misère. Les manuels scolaires français parlent du “Grand Siècle”, tandis que leurs équivalents belges parlent du “Siècle des malheurs” et que la littérature allemande a produit cette grande fresque tragique de Grimmelshausen, qui brosse un tableau de feu et de cendres: celui des misères de la guerre de Trente Ans, affrontées avec un stoïcisme amer par “Mère Courage”, l'héroïne de Grimmelshausen qui a inspiré Brecht en ce siècle.

 

Au XVIIIième siècle, quand le mariage entre Louis XVI et Marie-Antoinette induit une trêve dans la guerre séculaire entre la monarchie française, alliée des Turcs, et l'Autriche, porteuse de la dignité impériale, la philosophie de l'histoire de Herder prône un retour aux Grecs, aux Germains, aux héritages pré-chrétiens et aux racines premières des cultures européennes. Cette orientation philosophique s'explique partiellement par une volonté de dépasser les clivages confessionnels, générateurs de guerres civiles atroces et sans solution. Pour éviter la césure protestantisme/catholicisme, pour éviter toute réédition du “siècle des malheurs”, la philosophie se laïcise; le néo-paganisme dérivé d'une lecture anti-chrétienne de Herder (chez Reynitzsch par exemple), le jacobinisme mystique et national de Fichte, sont les manifestations diverses d'une volonté de paix civile: si l'Allemagne dépasse les clivages religieux qui la traversent, si un néo-paganisme dépasse les confessions chrétiennes qui se sont entredéchirées, si l'idéologie idéaliste et nationaliste de l'unité nationale triomphe, paix et prospérité reviendront et la culture s'épanouira, pensent à cette époque les philosophes allemands, avec une certaine dose de naïveté.

 

De Bismarck à Weimar

 

Au début du XIXième siècle, le nationalisme radical, exprimé par des figures comme Arndt ou Jahn, est une idéologie unificatrice voire centralisatrice appelé à effacer sur le territoire allemand le morcellement politique dû à la diplomatie de Richelieu. Bismarck, quelques décennies plus tard, fournit à son pays un appareil diplomatique solide, visant un équilibre des puissances en Europe, notamment par des accords tacites avec la Russie. Guillaume II ruinera cet équilibre en multipliant les maladresses. L'effondrement de l'équilibre bismarckien a conduit aux boucheries de la Grande Guerre et, pour l'Allemagne, à la défaite de 1918 et à la proclamation de la République de Weimar.

 

Cette république de Weimar dispose d'une souveraineté limitée, avec une armée réduite (qui esquive toutefois les clauses du Traité de Versailles en coopérant en Russie avec l'Armée Rouge), avec une monnaie anéantie et une économie “pénétrée” par les capitaux américains. A tout cela s'ajoute une occupation militaire française en Rhénanie et dans la Ruhr, à laquelle succède la démilitarisation de la rive gauche du Rhin. Les Allemands perçoivent cette situation comme une terrible vexation, injuste à leurs yeux car leur nation, disent-ils, est importante et grande sur les plans démographique, culturel et scientifique. Les Alliés, dit la propagande nationaliste sous Weimar, prouvent leur barbarie en confisquant tout avenir aux enfants allemands, en méprisant les productions culturelles et scientifiques allemandes, pourtant indépassables.

 

1945: finis Germaniae

 

En 1945, après l'effondrement du IIIième Reich, la défaite est encore plus cuisante et humiliante. La totalité du territoire  —et non plus les seules régions de Rhénanie et de la Ruhr—  est divisée en quatre zones d'occupation (quant aux provinces de Poméranie, de Posnanie et de Silésie, elles passent sous “administration polonaise” avant d'être purement et simplement annexées). Pendant quatre ans, de 1945 à 1949, le pouvoir est exercée par les Alliés, y compris le pouvoir judiciaire. En dépit de la naissance des deux Etats allemands en 1949, la RFA, à l'Ouest,  est jugulée dans sa souveraineté. A partir de 1955, 90% des effectifs de l'armée ouest-allemande sont versés dans les unités de l'OTAN, donc se retrouvent sous commandement américain (seuls quelques régiments de police en Bavière et dans le Baden-Wurtemberg et les régiments de gardes-frontières sont sous commandement allemand autonome). C'est dans les 10% hors OTAN que se sont recrutées récemment les unités de l'Eurocorps.

 

Il me paraît bon de rappeler sommairement, pour des raisons didactiques, quelques grandes étapes de l'histoire de la RFA:

1. De 1945 à 1949, nous avons donc un système d'occupation totale, sans aucun espace de souveraineté allemand.

2. En 1949, la RFA se donne une constitution fédérale, avec l'approbation des Alliés occidentaux qui croient ainsi affaiblir l'Etat allemand. La zone soviétique se constitue en un Etat de facture soviétique.

3. En 1952, Staline propose la réunification allemande, le rétablissement de la souveraineté allemande dans un Etat démocratique fort, neutre et soustrait à l'influence directe des puissances occidentales.

4. En 1955, la RFA adhère à l'OTAN et récupère la Sarre que la France voulait annexer. Le retour de la Sarre à la mère-patrie allemande a été baptisé la “petite réunification”, dans la mesure où la RFA a mis au point un système d'“annexion monétaire”, répété à plus grande échelle lors de la “grande réunification” de 1989/90. La France s'en tire avec une consolation: elle garde une station de radio (Europe n°1) en Sarre et espère influencer les esprits. Ce sera un échec, mais cette politique est pratiquée aujourd'hui, avec des visées annexionistes au Luxembourg (via RTL), en Wallonie et dans la périphérie de Bruxelles.

5. En 1963, on assiste au rapprochement franco-allemand.

6. En 1967/68, l'Allemagne est secouée par l'effervescence étudiante et contestatrice, qui introduit les manies de 68 dans la société allemande, restée jusque là très traditionnelle et conventionnelle. Cependant, Rudi Dutschke, leader contestataire, est en faveur de la souveraineté nationale, contrairement aux soixante-huitards français, qui ont contribué à torpiller la voie indépen­dan­tiste et non alignée du gaullisme des années 60.

7. Après l'effervescence étudiante, s'ouvre l'Ostpolitik (= la politique à l'Est) de la “grande coalition” socialiste et démocrate-chrétienne (CDU + SPD), orchestrée par Kiesinger et Willy Brandt. Cette ouver­ture au bloc de l'Est inquiète la France, la Grande-Bretagne et les Etats-Unis, qui craignent un nouveau rapprochement germano-so­viétique.

8. De 1980 à 1983, l'affaire des euromissiles secoue durablement la société allemande et interpelle la gauche, dont les intellectuels redécouvrent subitement la valeur “nation”. On voit éclore le “natio­nal-pacifisme”, le “national-neutralisme”, discutés avec passion à droite comme à gauche, sans aucune exclusion ni anathème. Dans ces débats innombrables, on propose une réunification allemande dans la neutralité, comme pour l'Autriche, où les Verts rêvent d'une démilitarisation quasi totale, tandis que les nationalistes (de droite) entendent protéger cette neutralité par un surarmement et par un appel à la “nation armée” sur les modèles de la Suisse et de la RDA communiste (Be­triebskampfgruppen, etc. [= Groupes de combat organisés dans les entreprises de l'Etat socialiste est-allemand]).

9. En 1985, Gorbatchev annonce la glasnost et la perestroïka, assouplissant du même coup, après la parenthèse du premier mandat de Reagan, les rapports Est-Ouest. L'espoir de voir advenir une réunification et une neutralisation de l'Allemagne augmente.

10. En 1989, la réunification est un fait accompli, mais

a) les esprits n'y étaient pas préparés, aucun des scénarii prévus ne s'est réalisé et

b) le nationalisme traditionnel, qui croyait être le seul à pouvoir suggérer des solutions acceptables, bien ancrée dans lestraditions historiques, a été pris de cours. Quant à la gauche “nationale-pacifiste”, ses scenarii n'ont pas davantage été mis en pratique. La réunification a laissé les intellectuels de droite comme de gauche dans un certain désarroi voire une certaine amertume.

 

Pôle franco-allemand et alliance avec les “crazy states”

 

Exemple: figure de proue de la droite conservatrice allemande, Armin Mohler, du temps du duopole américano-soviétique, avait énoncé un projet pour une politique internationale souveraine de l'Allemagne, reposant sur deux stratégies principales:

a) le renforcement du pôle franco-allemand (sa vision gaullienne), pour faire pièce aux Anglo-Saxons et aux Soviétiques et

b) le pari sur tous les Etats que les Américains qualifiaient de “crazy States” (Corée du Nord, Libye, Chine, etc.), pour échapper à l'étranglement de l'alliance atlantique, comme De Gaulle avait développé une diplomatie alternative dans les pays arabes, en Inde, en Amérique latine, en Roumanie, etc. En 1989, la Libye était quasi éliminée de la scène internationale, mise au tapis par les raids américains de 1986. Restait la Chine, mais tout rapprochement germano-chinois ne risque-t-il pas d'envenimer les relations germano-russes, d'autant plus qu'il existe virtuellement un tandem Pékin-Washington dirigé contre Moscou et régulièrement réétabli et renforcé? La Russie, abandonnant ses crispations du temps de la guerre froide, acceptant de bon gré la réunification, pouvait-elle être considérée encore comme un adversaire, ce qu'elle était du temps de la guerre froide?

 

1989 ou la fin de la foi dans le progrès

 

En 1989, le projet de Mohler, porté par un souci de dégager et la France et l'Allemagne du clivage Est-Ouest, ne peut se concrétiser. Dans la foulée de la chute du Mur et de la réunification, Hans-Peter Schwarz, éminence grise de la diplomatie allemande, ami d'Ernst Jünger et exégète de son œuvre, principal collaborateur des revues Europa Archiv, et Internationale Politik (équivalent allemand de la revue de l'IFRI français), biographe d'Adenauer, publie un ouvrage important, dont l'idée centrale est de poser l'Allemagne comme une Zentralmacht, une puissance centrale, au milieu d'un continent qui est également une civilisation (au sens où l'entend Huntington). Pour Schwarz, 1989 marque une césure dans l'histoire européenne, parce que:

1. La fin du communisme est aussi la fin de la foi dans le progrès, qui sous-tend l'idéologie dominante de la civilisation occidentale.

a) On ne peut plus croire raisonnablement aux “grands récits”, comme le signale le philosophe français Jean-François Lyotard.

b) On se rend compte des dangers énormes qui guettent notre civilisation, des dangers auxquels elle ne peut pas faire face intellectuellement donc projectuellement, vu ses fixations progressistes. Le bilan écologique de notre civilisation est désastreux (l'écologie est une thématique plus discutée et approfondie en Allemagne, même dans les cercles “conservateurs”, comme l'attestent les travaux de personnalités comme Friedrich-Georg Jünger ou Konrad Lorenz, etc.). La déforestation dans l'hémisphère nord est également catastrophique. L'épuisement des ressources naturelles, la pollution des mers, la persistance de virus non éradicables, le SIDA, le caractère invincible du cancer, prouvent que la finitude humaine est un fait incontournable et que les vœux pieux de l'idéologie progressiste n'y changeront rien.

 

2. Ce constat de la fin du progressisme induit Schwarz à demander que la RFA, élargie au territoire de l'ex-RDA, soit un Etat postmoderne, dans un concert international postmoderne, c'est-à-dire un Etat reposant sur une idéologie non progressiste, ne dépendant nullement des poncifs du progressisme dominant, dans un concert international où plus personne n'a que faire des vieilles lunes progressistes face au gâchis qu'elles ont provoqué.

 

3. La tâche d'un tel Etat est de:

- coopérer à la gestion et à l'apaisement des instabilités de l'Est, pour retrouver le sens de l'équilibre bismarckien, qui avait été bénéfique pour tous les peuples européens.

- éviter les deux écueils classiques de la politique allemande:

a) le provincialisme étriqué (souvenir du morcellement territorial), égoïste et refusant de se mettre à l'écoute des tumultes du monde;

b) la grandiloquence matamoresque à la Guillaume II, qui a braqué tous les voisins de l'Allemagne.

 

Elites défaillantes et routines incapacitantes

 

Pour Schwarz, l'Allemagne, comme tous les autres pays européens, se trouve au beau milieu d'un nouveau système international.

- Ce système nouveau a permis la réunification  —ce qui est positif—  non seulement du peuple allemand, mais aussi de tout le sous-continent européen.

- Mais la classe politique dominante n'était pas intellectuellement préparée à affronter ce changement de donne:

a) Sur le plan INTELLECTUEL, elle est inapte à saisir les nouvelles opportunités. Elle a pensé l'histoire et les relations internationales sur le mode de la division Est-Ouest, selon des critères binaires et non systémiques. Cette classe politique rejette, analyse, anathémise; elle ne cherche pas à susciter des synergies, à rétablir des liens refoulés ou tranchés par l'arbitraire de fanatiques, songeant à faire du passé rable rase. Sa pensée est segmentante; elle n'est pas systémique.

b) Cette classe politique entretient des ROUTINES INCAPACITANTES. C'est le grief principal adressé à la partitocratie traditionnelle, allemande, belge ou italienne, tant par les Verts à gauche (Scheer en Allemagne, Marie Nagy en Belgique, etc.), que par les nationalistes à droite.

c) La classe politique a peur de la nouvelle réalité internationale. Elle la commente, elle émet des idées (gedankenreich),  mais elle n'agit pas (tatenarm). Cette nouvelle réalité est celle de la globali­sation. Le monde est redevenu une jungle en même temps qu'un grand marché, qui n'autorise pas de raisonnements binaires. Il est marqué par le retour d'un certain chaos. La globalisation, en effet, n'est pas la paix, dont avaient rêvée les irénistes et qu'avaient acceptée ceux qui croyaient que les blocages de la guerre froide allaient se pérenniser à l'infini. Pour affronter cette jungle et ce grand marché, il faut une pensée de l'interdépendance entre les nations et les Etats, interdépendance qui implique une riche diversité de liens et de contacts, mais qui est aussi grosse de conflits régionaux, de guerres civiles ou de conflits de basse intensité. Cette pensée politique en termes d'interdépendance est nécessaire car, dit Schwarz, l'Allemagne ne peut être une “grande Suisse”: en effet, elle n'est pas une forteresse alpine, elle compte trop de voisins (qui peuvent lui être hostiles); il y a trop de turbulences à ses frontières (Pologne, Russie, Croatie,...).

 

Deux hantises: Kronstadt et Rapallo

 

Ces hostilités potentielles et ces turbulences sont à la base de la grande peur allemande: celle d'être encerclé. Pour Schwarz, deux hantises troublent les relations franco-allemandes: la hantise de Kronstadt (1892) qui terrifie les Allemands et celle de Rapallo (1922) qui terrifie les Français. A Kronstadt, Français et Russes s'entendent contre le Reich et le prennent en tenaille, donnant aux Allemands la désagréable sensation d'être encerclés et étouffés. A Rapallo, Allemands et Russes s'opposent de concert à l'Ouest et rassemblent leurs forces sur un espace de grande profondeur stratégique, coinçant la France contre l'Atlantique, sur une faible profondeur stratégique cette fois, que les forces conjuguées de l'Allemagne et de la Russie, modernisées et motorisées, pourraient aisément franchir d'un coup de boutoir, au contraire des forces terestres et hippomobiles de la seule Allemagne de Guillaume II, arrêtées sur la Marne par Gallieni en 1914.

 

En 1962, quand Adenauer et De Gaulle forgent l'entente franco-allemande, l'Ouest franc se donne une profondeur stratégique acceptable, capable de faire face à la Russie. Les arguments d'Adenauer ont été les suivants: en 1963, De Gaulle quitte l'OTAN, donc les Allemands doivent éviter qu'il ne négocie avec les Soviétiques et impose à Bonn un nouveau Kronstadt, plus dramatique encore, vu la présence massive des troupes soviétiques en Thuringe, à un jet de pierre du Rhin; de ce fait, argumente Adenauer, les Anglais et les Américains doivent accepter le rapprochement franco-allemand parce qu'il consolide leur dispositif de containment et constitue la garantie que la France demeurera dans le camp occidental.

 

Cette réorientation du dispositif occidental vers un pôle atlantique anglo-américain et vers un pôle européen franco-allemand a été célébrée par toute une série de manifestations symboliques, d'images fortes et médiatisables, comme le Te Deum à Reims en 1962, le développement d'une mythologie des “Champs Catalauniques” (où reliquats des légions romaines d'Occident et peuples germaniques ont uni leurs forces pour barrer la route à Attila; ces réminiscences de l'oecoumène impérial romain étaient chères à Adenauer), la parade des tankistes allemands à Mourmelon, et, après De Gaulle et Adenauer, la visite de Kohl et de Mitterrand à Douaumont en 1985, en compagnie d'Ernst Jünger.

 

Le nouveau contexte après 1989

 

Mais le nouveau contexte d'après 1989 n'est plus celui du tandem franco-allemand de De Gaulle et d'Adenauer. Quel est-il?

- En Pologne:

La Pologne, entre 1920 et 1939, appartient au “cordon sanitaire” entre l'Allemagne et l'Union Soviétique; elle en est même l'une des pièces maîtresses. La politique de Hitler a été de démanteler ce “cordon sanitaire”, par les accords de Munich qui mettent un terme à l'existence de la Tchécoslovaquie et par l'invasion de la Pologne en septembre 1939. En dépit du Pacte germano-soviétique et en dépit de l'hostilité que l'URSS avait toujours porté à la Pologne, alliée de la France, la Russie devient nerveuse en voyant ses frontières occidentales dégarnies, sans plus aucun espace-tampon, avec le géant germanique tout à coup proche de l'Ukraine et des Pays Baltes. Aujourd'hui, le Colonel Morozov, géostratège de l'armée russe, s'inquiète de voir le potentiel militaire polonais (370.000 hommes) inclus dans une OTAN qui compte aussi l'Allemagne, soit un potentiel militaire polonais à pleins effectifs, alors que la Bundeswehr est réduite, elle aussi, à 370.000 hommes pour “raisons d'économie”. Le jeu très habile des Américains consiste à créer un système de vases communiquants: diminution du potentiel allemand et augmentation du potentiel polonais, de façon à contrôler simultanément Russes et Allemands.

 

- Dans les Pays Baltes:

Les Pays Baltes faisaient partie du “cordon sanitaire”. Les Russes s'inquiètent aujourd'hui de les voir absorbés par l'économie occidentale. Allemands et Suédois investissent énormément dans ces trois petits pays d'une grande importance stratgégique. Les Allemands investissent également dans la région située entre l'Estonie et Saint-Petersbourg (Narva, Lac Peïpous, Novgorod), parce que cette zone-clef de la Russie historique est plus rentable par sa proximité avec la Baltique et que des systèmes de communications peuvent y fonctionner sans trop de problèmes (distances réduites, proximité des ports, grand centre urbain de Saint-Petersbourg, possibilité technique de dégagement des voies ferroviaires et routières en hiver, etc.). Dans cette politique d'investissement, les Allemands partagent les tâches avec les Suédois et les autres pays scandinaves.

 

- En Hongrie:

Quelques mois et quelques semaines avant la chute du Mur de Berlin, Autrichiens et Hongrois avaient commencé de concert à démanteler le Rideau de Fer le long de leur frontière. Depuis lors, la Hongrie a atteint un niveau économique acceptable, bien que non exempt de difficultés. L'Autriche connaît un boom économique, car elle retrouve son marché d'avant 1919.

 

Plusieurs options géopolitiques possibles

 

Dans ce contexte, l'Allemagne se trouve confrontée à plusieurs options géopolitiques possibles:

a) Organiser les PECO (Pays d'Europe Centrale et Orientale) selon deux axes:

1. L'axe Stettin-Trieste, renouant ainsi avec le projet du Roi de Bohème Ottokar II au moyen âge. Le souvenir de la géopolitique d'Ottokar II est le motif qui a poussé la diplomatie allemande à reconnaître rapidement la Slovénie et la Croatie. Géopolitiquement parlant, il s'agit d'unifier toute le territoire européen situé entre l'Istrie adriatique, pointe la plus avancée de la Méditerranée vers le centre du continent, et Stettin, port baltique le plus proche de cette avancée adriatique de la Méditerranée. Cette vision ottokarienne donne véritablement corps à la géopolitique continentale européenne et croise l'axe Rhin-Danube, en rendant potentiellement possible, par adjonction de canaux en Bohème et en Moravie, une synergie fluviale Elbe/Danube et Oder/Danube

2. L'axe Rhin-Main-Danube ou la diagonale Mer du Nord/Mer Noire, sans obstacle terrestre depuis le creusement du Canal Main/Danube en Allemagne. A partir de la Mer Noire, l'Europe entre en contact direct avec le Caucase et ses pétroles et, de là, avec la zone de la Mer Caspienne, avec l'Iran et l'Asie Centrale.

 

b) Organiser de concert avec la Russie, l'espace pontique (Mer Noire = Pont Euxin, dans la terminologie greco-latine, d'où l'adjectif “pontique” pour qualifier ce qui se rapporte à cet espace maritime et circum-marin) et les systèmes fluviaux russes qui y débouchent à l'Est et à l'Ouest de la Crimée et de la Mer d'Azov, et se branchent sur le Danube, puis, ipso facto, sur l'axe Danube-Rhin, sans passer par la Méditerranée, contrôlée par la VIième flotte américaine. Le blé ukrainien et les pétroles du Caucase sont susceptibles d'apporter à l'Europe l'indépendance alimentaire et énergétique, indispensable corollaire à sa puissance économique et à son éventuel avenir militaire. Les enjeux de cette région sont capitaux et vitaux.

 

c) Poursuivre le “dialogue critique” avec l'Iran, qu'avait impulsé le Ministre allemand des affaires étrangères Klaus Kinkel. L'Allemagne ne pouvait se permettre de suivre aveuglément la politique d'isolement de l'Iran imposée par Washington. Le “dialogue critique” avec Téhéran est peut-être la seule manifestation concrète, après 1989, de dialogue et de coopération avec les “crazy States”, qu'espérait généraliser Armin Mohler au temps du duopole Moscou/Washington.