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Police during a Chinese National Day protest in Hong Kong
Photo: Jayne Russell / AFP
The more days go by, the greater the horror of what happened in the United States a week ago.
An incited mob, a stormed parliament, five dead.
One can only hope that this balance sheet was the last upsurge of Trump's populism in its democracy-destroying fire hazard.
On January 20th, Joe Biden will be sworn in, a US president who, unlike his predecessor, wants to protect the foundations of liberal democracy.
In the end, the democratic institutions of the USA will have proven to be stronger than populism - even if the culturally pessimistic to right-wing extremist danger on both sides of the Atlantic has by no means been averted.
What worries us deeply, however, should have brought joy to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
While the West is preoccupied with itself, China’s president in particular creates facts: In Hong Kong, under the new "security law", dozen democratic politicians are arrested and freedom in the city is razed.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of Alibaba founder Jack Ma on the mainland makes it clear even to the last skeptic that no one and nothing is safe in Communist Party China.
Except: total control, unprecedented digital surveillance and control, brutal human rights violations - and ever more aggressive reaching into the world.
Johannes Vogel
Johannes Vogel is deputy chairman of the Sino-German parliamentary group in the German Bundestag and general secretary of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia.
This challenge of finally strategically thinking through this system competition of a completely new kind as western democracies and accepting it as a unity must now be the linchpin of the revival of the transatlantic alliance.
“Start with why” is the basis of every renewal process - including the renewal of the West.
The common struggle to find the right path to this question can not only heal wounds, but also create a new identity.
Joe Biden wants to bring US society back together, but to do this he also has to find a "common ground" with the responsible rest of the Republicans, who are about the legacy of John McCain.
Because even McCain, a passionate contemptor of Trump, advocated a tougher approach to China Xi Jinping.
But the Democrat and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, once called being tough on China as the only point on which she agreed with Trump.
This will therefore also apply to a Biden Harris America - and rightly so.
The success of the next US presidency will also depend on how well this works together with other allies.
Europe, in turn, will in future demand a stronger partnership on an equal footing and is considering more »strategic autonomy«.
In order for this to be understood not as a code for anti-American distancing, but as a more global assumption of responsibility, we Germans must leave comfort zones and draw three conclusions:
Even the most delicate indications that the Bundeswehr should be fully functional still regularly result in a vulgar-pacifist expression dance in Germany.
First, if you want to be heard, you have to give your voice power.
To achieve this, Europe must grow up in terms of foreign and security policy.
The principle of unanimity in decisions in the European Union must fall.
A coherent and robust common security policy is a prerequisite for surviving both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
We should have learned that at the latest from the European failure in Syria, which resulted in the flight of millions of people.
This also includes: Germany must be prepared to spend more money on its military.
Even the most delicate indications that the Bundeswehr may be properly equipped, however, still regularly result in a vulgar pacifist dance of expression in Germany.
However, a larger German defense contribution is necessary.
The new US administration would also see this as a long overdue offer to assume responsibility, within the Alliance and, if necessary, in the South China Sea.
The fact that the French Navy is taking part in Freedom of Navigation missions there, but that a German frigate has never crossed the Taiwan Strait, is a symbol that is unfortunately understood all over the world - and one that has to change.
Second: Germany must promote a renaissance of free trade.
That will not be easy, because just as the protectionist Trump railed against German cars, the enemy image of the chlorine chicken was previously fought against American poultry in Germany and the transatlantic trade and investment partnership was torpedoed.
Now, however, there is a chance for a new attempt with the aim of strengthening trade and investments with politically free regions of the world around the Atlantic and the Pacific - and reducing dependency on the Chinese market.
To this end, Europe should develop a foreign trade strategy beyond China together with the USA and think big.
In any case, nice words do not impress Xi Jinping.
Market power and good negotiating positions do.
With the Chinese Communist Party, we must also be ready to show tough trade in the short term in order to achieve real economic equality and reliable humanitarian commitments.
The Chinese cherry-picking in the WTO must not be repeated in the investment protection agreement.
As the protectionist Trump railed against German cars, the enemy image of the chlorine chicken was previously fought against American poultry in Germany.
Third: Western politics must admit that the traditional international organizations alone are no longer sufficient and that the Atlantic West is too small for the 21st century.
Too many transatlanticists have unfortunately limited themselves to the necessary defense of NATO, but have not developed any political impetus for decades.
There is an obvious organizational void: there is simply no organization in which all the market-based democracies of the world are among themselves.
Such an organization could, however, be the anchor of freedom in the Pacific century that NATO was in the Cold War.
Countries like Canada and South Korea, Estonia and Japan, Australia and Portugal are now politically closer than the geographical distances suggest.
Yet there is simply no forum where all these and only these states come together as a political alliance.
It cannot be the United Nations because
all
states should come together
here
, regardless of fundamental political differences, to tackle global human issues, such as pandemics and above all climate change.
Together with the new American government, we Europeans should therefore approach the free nations all over the world and found a global "democratic alliance".
Not as a mere conceptual bracket or a one-off conference, but as a permanent political alliance organization - at eye level and without the dominance of the old West.
The free world today extends across all continents.
But it still needs a transatlantic gravitational field.
It is here that the door to a historical room of opportunities opens.
With the election of Trump, the Americans made their first important contribution.
Now it's our turn.
Icon: The mirror