The West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, told his countrymen the soothing fairy tale that reunification would not cost as much as they feared. “We’ll pay these expenses out of our pocket change,” he promised them. And like a profane messiah, he promised East Germans “blossoming landscapes.” Quite a while later, Kohl’s promises have proved at least to be half-true: The West was not bankrupted by the $2 trillion it spent to rebuild the East. And in eastern Germany, some cities and landscapes are blossoming more beautifully than many cities and communities in the west of our country. [...]
For me, a traumatized child of the world, in the heart of Europe, it is clear — and I’ve learned this truth firsthand — that the most imperfect democracy is better than the best dictatorship. Three years ago, in an emergency situation, Ms. Merkel chose not to use barbed wire, clubs, water guns, machine guns and tanks to chase away thousands of desperate refugees on the German border, not to chase them back to Austria, Hungary, Greece, Turkey and possibly back to the war in Syria or Afghanistan. Yes, yes, it was a mistake. But it was the smaller, better mistake. The “right” mistake. [...]
At this time, Ms. Merkel is trying to persuade the more advanced of the European states, if not all of them, to uphold the politics of a liberal Europe. Toward that end, she has convened a meeting of the European Union’s top politicians this week. The question on the agenda: How can the European states come to an agreement on securing their external borders without abandoning the notion of a humane asylum policy? In Europe, we are arguing over the question of how to distribute the refugees fairly. If this question should trip Ms. Merkel up, it would be a mere setback for this strong chancellor; for Europe, however, it would be a disaster.
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