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- [00:00]
Renard Mansour
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 22 July 2025 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:08]
Andrew Muller
Is Syria about to fall apart all over again? What can Iran possibly still bring to the negotiating table? And one of Paris fancier neighbourhoods mans the barricades against a convenience store. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts.
- [00:32]
Tina Fordham
Foreign.
- [00:37]
Andrew Muller
Welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Tina Fordham and Renard Mansour will discuss the day's big stories and we'll meet the authors of a new book diagnosing the reasons that Germany no longer lives up to its more virtuous stereotypes. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Tina Fordham, geopolitical strategist and founder of Fordham Global Foresight, and Renard Mansour, research fellow in the Middle east and North Africa Program and project director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House. Hello to you both.
- [01:21]
Tina Fordham
Hello.
- [01:22]
Andrew Muller
Hello, Tina. You join us recently back from Montenegro, which is though it's a while since I have been there, I recall as broadly delightful. Is that still the case?
- [01:33]
Tina Fordham
Montenegro is a wonderful step back in time to the pre over tourism days in many ways, and it was wonderfully situated on the Adriatic Sea, very clear and made you feel like you were a world away. There was very little sign of poke bowls and matcha lattes that you find in every other European city and country when you travel these days.
- [02:03]
Andrew Muller
Is there a particular bit of it that's not over touristed? Because I would have assumed that by now the Bay of Kotor, which is honestly one of Europe's most stunning natural vistas, must be absolutely overrun.
- [02:15]
Tina Fordham
I think the area around Sveti Stefan, which is a very picturesque island, is very, very yachty, lots of oligarchs and yacht rock. But we scrupulously avoided that part for the more local end. Nearer to Kotor, which is a medieval UNESCO World heritage site City, 15th century cobbled streets and famous for its cats.
- [02:42]
Andrew Muller
Renard, by way of something completely different, you have recently or relatively recently been visiting Baghdad are things because obviously they have been literally as well as metaphysically in the middle of everything these last few weeks. Is there any optimism that this might work out being somehow good for Iraq if Iran has been compelled to wind its neck in somewhat.
- [03:07]
Renard Mansour
So I was thinking maybe Iraq was different to Montenegro, but as you started speaking, Tina, I realized there are some similarities still not that many poke balls.
- [03:17]
Andrew Muller
Or not as many yachts.
- [03:19]
Renard Mansour
However, there are also oligarchs. So there are similarities, I guess. For the first time in many, many years, the Middle east is on fire with conflict everywhere. But Iraq is not one of those countries. It's no longer the kind of epicenter of Middle Eastern crises and conflicts. So there is this relative calm and sense of stability and economic development because of the high oil price over the last few years. You see buildings, you see cafes, you can walk around. It's very different to the days when you were last there, Andrew. And I think, you know, there is hope that there's an election this year, but there is hope that, you know, could this be a turn in the sort of chapter? But at the same time, they know that they're connected to the many other conflicts in Syria, Iran, Israel, elsewhere that's happening. So there's also concern and anxiety.
- [04:10]
Andrew Muller
Well, we are going to start with exactly one of those, specifically Syria. When power in Syria changed hands last December, it was easy to be both optimistic and pessimistic. Optimism was sparked by the demise of President Bashar Al Qaeda Assad. Pessimism engendered by the scrutiny of the CV of his replacement, President Ahmed Al Sharrar, which includes lengthy stints in charge of various Al Qaeda offshoots and affiliates. Recent events appear a depressing vindication of the pessimists. What looks very much like sectarian violence has erupted in and around the largely Druze city of Suaida. This has drawn in Israel, which has struck targets including the Syrian Ministry of Defence in Damascus, ostensibly in the name of defence, defending the Druze. Renard. We'll first of all do the always fun part where I ask you to predict the near future. In the Middle east, there is a ceasefire of sorts currently underway between the Druze and the Bedouin tribespeople they have been fighting with. Do we think that's going to hold?
- [05:16]
Renard Mansour
It's hard to see it holding. It's hard to see any ceasefires holding in the region these days. But, you know, Syria is an incredibly difficult country to govern and it historically has been incredibly difficult to govern, particularly when the center at the moment is still fragmented and weak and trying to recover. So in the middle of this regime change and you're seeing all parts of Syria at times explode, we saw it months ago in the Alawi area and now we're seeing it between the Druze and some of these tribes in that area. So there is a ceasefire. And we know Ahmad Al Shara, the president of Syria wants stability so that he could consolidate power. But you know, from one part, there are these local demands and local grievances. And also, you know, there are regional powers that are, you know, influencing this. Israel has had a connection with the Jewish community and also attacked Damascus, central Damascus as well. So, you know, it's already difficult enough to govern Syria and that you're in the middle of a regional conflict where you're also being targeted by the influences of Israel, of Turkey and elsewhere. So to answer your question, I don't think so.
- [06:27]
Andrew Muller
Tina, is it possible to be clear on how much control over events President Al Sharrah actually has?
- [06:34]
Tina Fordham
It's not possible to be clear, but it is possible to put into perspective just how long a post conflict trajectory tends to last. So for all of the reasons already mentioned, it was inevitable that there would be score settling after such a long and brutal period under Assad. And so I think we have to appreciate that the risks for Syrian stability are manifold in addition to the external intervention. And I would just strengthen the point made about Israel and Turkey. Turkey is really unhappy about how Israel is emerging as the region's military heavyweight. And so there are more risks that might stem from this than the emergence of Syria as a big and messy power vacuum.
- [07:37]
Andrew Muller
Renard, you said earlier that Syria has always been a difficult country to govern for all that it has been governed until last December by one family for about the previous half century. But Bashar al Assad, like his father Hafez before him and like several generations now of Arab despots, made the same pitch to the west in general, which was, okay, I may be awful, but what I'm holding back is worse. Is Bashar al Assad now going to be sitting in his apartment in Moscow going, well, I told you so.
- [08:10]
Renard Mansour
That's a very hard question. I'm sure he's doing that. But, you know, I think the premise of this question is important to kind of unpack, you know, Iraqis today, two decades after their regime change, many of them say they wish it never happened. That is not to say that Syria is going through the same trajectory. They are just, you know, it's so fresh, the dictatorship and how brutal it was. Most Syrians are hopeful. You know, we have colleagues that have gone in, are there now, and what they tell us is there is a sense of hope that it doesn't need to go to the way that Iraq went or the way that Libya went. Bashar al Assad could be proven wrong. If he's sitting and saying, I told you so, so there is a sense of hope that we don't want to just complet diminish by saying, you know, history says that this will fail, but at the same time, you know, as analysts and academics, it's hard not to kind of see similar patterns emerging.
- [09:04]
Andrew Muller
Tina, you mentioned earlier Turkey's unhappiness at Israel's escalating military preeminence. How far back into Syria might they want to get? Because I think among the people who were optimistic circa last December, earlier this year was perhaps Turkey along the lines of like, well, thank God we don't have to bother ourselves with that again.
- [09:26]
Tina Fordham
I mean, what Israel says is it wants to create a buffer. And I'm not sure there's any reason to think that they want to do more than that. But they certainly take a healthy interest in what's happening in Syria and clearly have perceived what they have from Washington as a green light to, you know, clean up the neighborhood. And that's part of what makes Turkey anxious.
- [09:55]
Andrew Muller
But how far back into it might Turkey want to get? What do they see as their interest at this point?
- [10:01]
Tina Fordham
Turkey wants to have Syria as a regional bulwark that it can control to some extent. And it's also interesting to remember the, you know, very recent declaration of at least a cold peace with the pkk. So Turkey is trying to rearrange the furniture in the neighborhood to suit itself.
- [10:26]
Andrew Muller
And just finally on this renard, to look at Israel's rationale for involving itself to the extent that it has. We've heard a lot of high flown rhetoric from the Israelis about how they see the Druze as a brother people and have made reference to the numbers of Druze who live in Israel, are Israeli citizens, serve in isra, Israel Defense Forces, et cetera. Is that something we should entirely take at face value or is this Israel attempting to establish a pretext?
- [10:56]
Renard Mansour
So, you know, Israel is looking to change the shape of power in the Middle east since October 7, and part of that has been to go to war with several countries in the region, war in Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, with Syria. It's a big question. Of course it's a neighboring country and Israel has a decision to make. How much do they trust, as you said, former jihadi Sunni, you know, as the president of Syria. So although there has been overtures and even talk about normalization between the new government of Syria and Israel, at the same time Israel, I suppose, is hedging its bet. It cannot have a Syria that is at any poses any type of threat. It's better I think the bet has been made that it's better that Syria stays divided and unstable and Israel can navigate that somehow, then they support a Syria that could one day turn into what is an Arab nationalist republic.
- [11:50]
Andrew Muller
Well, moving along, but staying broadly in that region, Iran will later this week sit down in Istanbul with France, Germany and the United Kingdom to discuss its nuclear program, or what remains of it, following recent Israeli and American airstrikes. The talks, which will be conducted at deputy Foreign Minister level, appear an attempt by Iran to avert sanctions from all three of those countries, which are due to descend at the end of August if Iran does not display some semblance of seriousness about coming to terms. To boil a complex scenario down to its fundamentals, Iran claims that it does not want and never has wanted a nuclear weapon, and nobody else seems willing to take their word for it. Tina, at this point, though, what does Iran bring to a negotiation like this? Because their bluff has been well and truly called, hasn't it?
- [12:44]
Tina Fordham
I'm not sure that that's the case. I mean, we had these, you know, spectacular attacks from the United States, and they turn out not to have done so much damage. And the other point is just recall how many people were talking correctly about the fragility of the regime in Iran and the possibility of some type of popular uprising that hasn't materialized. And it's a reminder that there's nothing like an external enemy to unite people, even if it's temporary, because the regime in Iran is loathed. So what I suspect will happen is that they will try to buy time. They have made and attempted to make many concessions, but, you know, they know that there'll be a price. This is a regime for which its nuclear program is regarded as existential and they are clinging on to power.
- [13:39]
Andrew Muller
Renard, what do you think about. I guess I'll put to you a version of the same question, because it's always struck me that in the previous years of coming and going over the jcpoa, the agreement which curbed Iran's nuclear program, the elephant in the room that nobody was willing to acknowledge was the fact that Israel was always the guarantor of last resort, that Israel in extremists would do what it felt it had to do to stop Iran, much as Israel did in Iraq and in Syria. And now Israel's done that, and they have demonstrated not only that they can and they will, but the Americans will support them, that they can hit targets deep inside Iran and that Iran cannot defend its own skies.
- [14:21]
Renard Mansour
Yeah. And I think, you know, Israel has certainly shown its military might and also important to note that this war is not over. Most anticipate that there will be, you know, as we're talking about ceasefires, another, you know, iteration of these attacks. But I think it's important. How much could Israel actually get from controlling the skies of Iran? You know, there were many championing regime change and potential, you know, potential collapse of the regime. We haven't seen that. In fact, we've seen this, you know, rally around the flag in a way, because. Because as much as you can hate a regime when you are being fired at by an enemy, survival is the mode. And for Iranians right now, survival is the victory. That's their bar. As long as we survive this, we win. That's the way that they're kind of thinking about it. Of course, they're pushing for the nuclear negotiation because economically they want to get past sanctions and they want to get back into sort of the international sphere. What's the challenge? Is this question around enrichment? The Trump administration effectively says zero enrichment. Iran says every country has a sovereign right to have some enrichment. That's not to say that Iran is saying we want a weapon. However, we want some enrichment. And that's where I think some of the challenges are. But you're right, Israel does not want any of this conversation to happen. Israel sees an opportunity right now when Iran's allies across the region are weak, to strike at Iran and to change the nature of power in the region.
- [15:53]
Andrew Muller
So, Tina, what leverage, or I guess what cards does Iran still thinks it has? Like, if it goes to these talks in Istanbul and France, the United Kingdom and the other one whose name momentarily escapes me, Germany. That was the one. The so called E3, say to them, you know, get with the program or else. And you now know what the or else looks like.
- [16:19]
Tina Fordham
Is it going to be that different from Russia and Ukraine meeting in Istanbul? I mean, I think this meeting has to happen. I agree. For Iran, survival is a form of victory. And this same conversation has been replayed over and over again for a very long time. President Trump also has such a short attention span, it might not be that hard to outlast U.S. interest. Because remember, we've got less than 50 days now before Russia's back in the crosshairs. So as I'm constructing my political signpost timeline for the third quarter, it's full of these kind of fake deadlines and eventually, just like investors have figured it out, so have heads of state. If you don't like it. Wait a minute.
- [17:12]
Andrew Muller
Renard Looking at the Iranians, though, and again, it remains an open question as to whether they ever actually wanted a nuclear weapon or were just seeking to extract advantage from looking like they might. Is it too much to think or too much to hope that given what has happened in the last few weeks, the regime has at least understood that whether we wanted one or not, it's not going to happen. This is not something we can do except at absolutely appalling risk to our own country and to our regime's survival.
- [17:44]
Renard Mansour
Well, you actually have two schools of thought. There are those that said this would never have happened if we had the weapons, and there are those senior in the regime now who are saying that's the only direction that we can go. Because our previous sort of assumption was that we have these regional allies, these proxies in the region, and they can be our forward defense. That's not happening anymore. The nature of the game has changed. The only thing that can protect us like it protects countries like North Korea, Pakistan, all of this, is to have that nuclear weapon. But at the same time, other leaders haven't said that and in fact, are still sticking to the point that they want to make a deal. But again, it's a sovereign right to be able to enrich to some extent. So there are, I guess, to answer your question, there are both schools right now making those arguments. But I don't think it's a very unlikely scenario in which Iran escalates into developing a nuclear weapon.
- [18:40]
Andrew Muller
Because just finally on this, Tina, one of the other difficulties the Iranians have is that. But nobody wants them to have a nuclear weapon, not even their nominal allies like Russia and China, both of whom signed the original jcpoa. Of course, Vladimir Putin this past weekend met Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, which I think we can assume was not a social call. Is it likely, other than not that Putin was saying to him, no, it's not going to happen? Because obviously, at Iran's recent moment of peril, Russia was very much nowhere to be seen.
- [19:13]
Tina Fordham
Russia made it very clear that the agreements that they have had do not extend to protection. So Iran finds itself really without friends and in a vulnerable position. The efficacy of its proxies is very much undermined, with the possible exception of the Houthis, whom the United States dropped gigantic, expensive ballistic missiles on and still didn't manage to really undermine their capacity to, you know, to cause problems in the Red Sea. But listen, I think Iran can hope for a pause and a shift away from them. More sanctions, you know, bring it on as far as they're concerned. They're already so much hobbled by existing sanctions.
- [20:09]
Andrew Muller
Well, here in the uk, public bodies which find themselves beset by hackers seeking ransoms to unhack their system will shortly have an additional problem. The government proposes to ban them from paying the hackers off. In recent years alone, there have been major and damaging ransomware assaults upon the British Library and NHS hospitals in London. And while there is no suggestion any of them paid up, others have, especially in the private sector. And the dangers of not doing so are illustrated by the travails of KNP, a 158-year-old transport company forced out of business after being unable or unwilling to stump up what was believed to be 5 million quid. 700 people lost their jobs. Tina, is this one of those areas in which technology is always going to have a march on regulation? It's not possible to entirely keep up with this, is it?
- [21:04]
Tina Fordham
I'm not sure that they. The policies that are being proposed are going to have any effect other than shift the targets, because in the research that we've done from a geopolitical perspective, we tracked a fourfold increase in cyber attacks in the last 15 years, and 85% of them came from Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. So there is very much a power projection element to this. And the nature of the target, it seems to me, will just change and move around. I mean, it's a way of undermining your adversaries, whether it's a 180 year old transport company in the north of England or something else.
- [21:50]
Andrew Muller
Does it strike you, though, Tina, just to follow that up and going back to you and your company's own researchers into this, are there any agreed, as there often are in actual or near conflict, there's sort of tacit agreed limits between adversaries, things that are just not on, things you just don't do. Do you get any sense that culture along those lines is developing in cyber warfare?
- [22:15]
Tina Fordham
I don't, but what I tend to look at is cyber in the context of gray zone attacks. And those are multiplying. And again, they are effective ways of trying to find your adversaries, areas of weakness and to project power, whether that's Sony, WannaCry or or other means.
- [22:38]
Andrew Muller
Renard, among the many aspects of the US federal government that the Trump administration believes we can do without to some extent or another, is its cyber agency, the cisa. Is this going to end up being another area in which Europe has to come up with more money in Order to detach itself from the United States.
- [22:59]
Renard Mansour
Yeah, I think this is, you know, as you say, something we're seeing across the spectrum. I think it's one thing to put money to it. It's going back to your original question. It's another thing to see whether governments could actually keep up with this technology and the changes from the technological space. We're just living in an age where it is a frontier. And it's a frontier that, as this government's policy shows, there's only so much governments can do. And really, this isn't going to stop it. This is going to make the government feel like it's doing something that it could answer to its citizens who are very worried about their bank accounts or the train and all of this infrastructure that they use every day, that it could be hacked and that it could actually be deadly and costly. So the government has to do something. There needs to be investment in this from European states. But I think that's right. I think the structure of the problem is that technology is far out competing and outpacing the ability of governments to respond.
- [23:58]
Andrew Muller
On which subject I did want to ask you each in turn. Tina, you first. How careful paranoid your researchers in this field have made you personally, are you somebody who changes their banking passwords three times a day?
- [24:12]
Tina Fordham
That doesn't feel like a good question to answer on air.
- [24:17]
Andrew Muller
I wasn't actually going to ask you the name of your first pet.
- [24:20]
Tina Fordham
What's my first pet? And my mother's maiden name. We have people internally who take care of this and I trust and I trust, trust them, but I'm probably of the generation that isn't as savvy as I might be.
- [24:40]
Andrew Muller
Renard, are any of your passwords password?
- [24:43]
Renard Mansour
No. I mean, my passwords are.
- [24:46]
Andrew Muller
No, no, don't tell us.
- [24:47]
Tina Fordham
Your children's birthday.
- [24:49]
Renard Mansour
I would say that I was at some point a few years ago. I don't know. I wasn't the victim, but I was used by one of these Iranian candy kittens. That's a candy. Some kittens. It was an Iranian group that was using spear phishing. So using my identity, sending out to different people as it was me. LinkedIn, WhatsApp messages. It's very sophisticated. And you know, as someone.com, as someone who I think I am somewhat technological savvy. I can imagine so many people who could get easily fooled by this. It looked like me, it sounded like me. You know, they could even use AI now to record your voice.
- [25:26]
Andrew Muller
And it's a face you can trust.
- [25:28]
Renard Mansour
Yeah, exactly.
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Andrew Muller
Not anymore what actually happened? Did you ever figure out who was behind it or.
- [25:35]
Renard Mansour
So, I mean, I probably shouldn't be talking about this here, but there were some assumptions of who was behind it. The decision was made that it's best to just let it go rather than fight it. And at some point it just kind of like stopped happening because there just aren't enough tools to actually go after these types of groups. And so it was just. I didn't actually mention this ever on social media. I didn't tell people to watch out for. For this, because a decision was made. Just keep a low profile and just ignore it and the problem will go away. And for now, it has.
- [26:09]
Andrew Muller
Well, until they hear this. But to Paris now, and to what is at least so far, an unusually decorous demonstration of dissent. The fancified folk of Montparnasse, who may think such traditional Parisian expressions of discontent as hurling cafe tables at the gendarmes beneath them, have instead got up a petition to defend their neighbourhood from outlet of Carrefour City, a chain of convenience stores that the aghast left bankers. You can hear that as rhyming slang, if you like. Fear will encourage le riffraff, though they are disguising this as resistance to standardisation, which is a thing they don't want. Tina, where do your sympathies lie here?
- [26:53]
Tina Fordham
I'll give this a great deal of thought.
- [26:55]
Andrew Muller
Excellent.
- [26:57]
Tina Fordham
Because I, in one sense, I sympathize with the residents of Montparnasse. There will be delivery trucks at 4am or maybe they have better zoning laws than we have here in London, and pests and all kinds of changes. And perhaps they are really the bulwark against the kind of glasnost and perestroikization of bringing in convenience stores. I read also that this same neighborhood fought against a McDonald's, which was very much a course of, you know, a case of Don Quixote in the Windmill, wasn't it? Because McDonald's is now, I think, the most popular restaurant in France. Que l'. Heureux. And so I actually sympathize with the residents, although it is so easy to satirize them, isn't it?
- [27:49]
Andrew Muller
Oh, absolutely. Which is basically why we're doing this. And we're going to continue in that vein, Renard, by noting the response of the mayor of the 6th arrondissement, the splendidly named Jean Pierre Lecoq. He has called. And bear in mind, these are his own constituents. So this is a man confident of re election or who is tired of the job. It's one of those two things he has described them and I really am not going to. This would sound, I'm sure, so much better in French with the accent and everything. And perhaps a sting of accordion behind it. A village of spoiled children.
- [28:27]
Renard Mansour
I don't know. I mean, I think certainly. And I can empathize with those in this area seeing a big mall coming up and not wanting to change their culture. Yeah, I mean, I can see both sides here. I can see both sides here. I once lived in Beirut and this part of Beirut in a similar way that was very hip and then there was a subway that showed up. And it's the lights, it's the neon, even the colors don't match. So I kind of understand perhaps what some of these, the residents are going through. But of course there are benefits to having convenience.
- [29:08]
Andrew Muller
Is there then perhaps in some neighbourhoods, Tina, a happy medium to be struck? Because obviously on the one hand the market does have a say in this. This supermarket chain is not a charity. They would not be opening this outlet if they didn't think there was going to be a market for it in Montparnasse. And. And doubtless there will be. But nonetheless, do precautions have to be taken?
- [29:34]
Tina Fordham
Some cities do this really well. Tokyo, for example, manages to be a big modern capital city and still have a lot of independent shops.
- [29:46]
Andrew Muller
I think I've always thought Paris actually does it quite well as well.
- [29:49]
Tina Fordham
Paris does do it well. But the object lesson is probably Barcelona and the scourge of European city over tourism really does have massive trade offs for residents. People have to live in these places. And so isn't it a question of degree? And perhaps although it's really fun, we shouldn't make it into purely cartoon caricatures.
- [30:14]
Andrew Muller
Oh, come on, it's France. It's France. Renard, have there been, I don't know which part of London you live in, but have there been any chains, whether silently or overtly, you have welcomed or not welcomed to your area?
- [30:28]
Renard Mansour
I think I had a conversation and there was a chain screw fix that showed up and it upset a lot of the local businesses. I think certainly in London it's getting more expensive for many of these businesses to operate and this is where the chains are coming in. And so it's not just the cultural change, but it's also, I think, think indicative of where we are economically.
- [30:53]
Andrew Muller
Because I will say in closing, Tina, before I put the same question to you, that in my part of London, that is Godzone suburb of Leytonstone, there has been rejoicing over this last week at the fact that we now have a Marks and Spencer food Hall and therefore assume that we're basically Knightsbridge. But have there been any chains that you have or have not wanted to see where you are are.
- [31:17]
Tina Fordham
I just feel like I'm setting myself up for hate mail, you know, in, in answering this question. Well, I mean your point about the M and S, you know, similar to the Waitrose effect, I mean it's, it's demonstrated in a property price obsessed Britain that having these shops near you is a, is a badge of honor and very good for the value of, of your home should you be lucky enough to, to own one. But you know, as, as a transplanted American and someone who GRE suburbia and shopping malls, I do have a special affection and I put my money where my mouth is going to the local butcher and the baker. As long as it's not £6 50 for a loaf of sourdough.
- [32:05]
Andrew Muller
Tina Fordham and Renard Mansour, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, to Germany, a country that once stood as a shining example of the post war miracle economy, but has today fallen on harder times. A new book by two longtime Germany based journalists from Bloomberg attempts to diagnose Germany's chronic ills and offer solutions. Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes, authors of Broken the Inside Story of Germany's Descent Into Crisis, spoke with Monocle's Chris Chermak who began by asking Chris about the moment that Germany's chronic ills and the need for a book to describe them became most apparent to him.
- [32:44]
Chris Reiter
There was the energy crisis after the war in Ukraine when Russia cut off energy supplies and mainly gas supplies to Germany. And that was there were lots of fears of Germany having to shut off like factories and deciding who gets to stay warm over that winter or not. And the thing is then Germany survived that crisis. And it was kind of then that feeling where I think both Will and I had had some discussions that it was this feeling that Germany, Germany like pulled its head out of a noose like one more time. And that we had seen like from living there and reporting in the country on the politics, on the economics, that we felt that it was a false narrative that these troubles that Germany was existing and almost, you know, succumbed to during that winter were still there and still prevalent. And we weren't seeing the discussions within Germany itself about its own problems. They had blind spots to it and sort of blinded by a certain sense of hubris and a, and a tradition of success that has gone back quite a few decades and so since we both have kind of skin in the game of living in Germany and having kids in Germany, that we had to like kind of raise our hand and say that the troubles that are in Germany are deeper than even in a lot of ways than Germans themselves want to recognize.
- [34:03]
Chris Chermak
Will, I'm curious if you had a similar point, but I do also want to ask, given that I don't mind telling our listeners that we used to work together during kind of the European debt crisis. Bailouts were coming thick and fast for Greece. And I do wonder about that moment as well. It's something you write about in this book. Germany was a little too proud of itself for getting through that crisis and being the one that was providing the bailouts. Was that a moment for you that you remember thinking this is going a bit too well?
- [34:35]
Will Wilkes
Yeah, I think indeed at that time you could also see that there Germany obviously had a relatively easy 2008, 2009 and then into the euro crisis, things were looking kind of good as well. Like Germany had quite a short, sharp recession and then was growing again quickly and kind of lecturing other countries on fiscal prudence and things like that. But I think even at that time you could see the German society was more divided than this. If you're lucky to enough to work for like a successful Mittelstand firm or a big like blue chip German corpor, then you kind of in that period, your wages were growing, but already a kind of underclass was starting to develop of around kind of 20% of people who were really struggling, even in those days of glorious Merkel days. But I think from when I first kind of started living on and off in Germany from about 2005, you could tell that it wasn't as cohesive or successful as was portrayed outside or the kind of headline growth numbers suggested. So I think there's always been that.
- [35:41]
Chris Chermak
Disconnect to that point of cohesiveness. Chris, a lot of this book focuses on kind of the lack of a positive German identity, something that brings this nation together in the post war period. In particular, if there is an identity, it's kind of tied to what it is not in that it is no longer a nation run by the Nazis and has learned the lessons from that. How did Germany succeed in holding things together with that for as long as.
- [36:09]
Chris Reiter
It did did Well, a lot of it was economically related. It was all about commercial success. And as long as the economy was growing, you had prosperity that could be shared. And that was like the sort of foundational message of Germany. Like back in the 50s was called Vola, which means like prosperity for everyone. And it was sort of like their version, you could say, of trickle down economics. As long as the country was growing, there would be a like robust enough welfare system and a good enough economy that everybody could get their little piece of the pie and at least feel comfortable and stable and safe. And the problem is what we've been seeing over the last couple decades was that is that idea, that commercial idea that had kept Germany together is really strained and at risk. The whole welfare system is being gutted or is being thinned out. More people are falling into the social safety net that you have a growing level of poverty and inequality, which for a country like Germany, which is sort of based on this shared prosperity model, gnaws at the foundations of what kept the country together.
- [37:21]
Chris Chermak
And with that fabric fraying comes the rise of the alternative for Germany. And will. That also goes back to our time in the debt crisis because that's kind of when the AfD rose up more as an anti euro party to begin with, which you obviously write about in the book as well, and then moving to sort of more farther right fringes. Were you surprised by the pace of the rise of the far right AFD in Germany?
- [37:49]
Will Wilkes
Yeah, definitely. I think there was always a risk and an opening for that kind of party. But I think it has, I must admit, personally taken aback that kind of retrospectively can see the reasons why it's grown so quickly. But I think if someone had told you in 2015 this anti euro bailout party is going to like abandon this kind of sort of libertarian, fiscally hawkish position it had then and it's going to go full on ethno nationalism and it's going to be up by 2025, within 10 years it's going to be a vying with the CDU for first place in polls. That kind of has surprised, surprised me and I think it surprised a lot of people. I remember all the way through, kind of after 2015, whenever you'd sit down with German journalists or German politicians, everyone's said, you know, like the AFD is going to, when Merkel goes, it's just going to deflate. And there's, you know, the natural place for the far right in Germany is on between 5% and 10% and it's just, it's just surged and I think, you know, things start going wrong if Merz can't deliver on this infrastructure package, if Germany, German politics seems fractured and the coalition government runs into trouble or there are scandals and all or another unexpected recession, perhaps coming from tariff conflicts. The AfD is in a very strong position to make an assault on becoming first place. But if you look retrospectively, you can see those kind of vulnerabilities have created a petri dish for the AFD to grow in.
- [39:24]
Andrew Muller
That was Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes of Bloomberg speaking to Monocle's Chris Chermak. Their new book, Broken the Inside Story of Germany's Descent into Crisis, is out now and available in German and English. That is all for this edition of THE D. Thanks to our panelists today, Tina Fordham and Renard Mansour. Today's show was produced by Hassan Anderson and researched by Henry King. Our sound engineer was Lily Austin. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.