A Sea Change in European Thinking. Jim Tankersley Talks to A&G

A long-time friend of The A&G Show, Jim Tankersley (The New York Times) joins us from Germany to talk to Jack Armstrong about the issues that matter Europeans the most--including some surprising attitudes about immigration.  

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That we've solved seven wars. Seven wars. Wars that were unsolvable,
was that couldn't be negotiated or done, We've done. The
US has done seven of them. The one that I
thought would be easiest would be because of my relationship
with President Putin. But he's let me down. He's really

(00:21):
let me down. Who's going to be Russia and Ukraine.
But we'll see how that turns out.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, what's the next step on that? I'd love to
know that Donald Trump. He is standing right next to
Kars Starmer, the Prime Minister of Great Britain right now,
and they're doing a press conference as Trump is over
in England, and we thought we would talk to Jim
Tankerslee and welcome back to the Armstrong and Getty Show.
He knows a lot about what's going on with European politics.

(00:47):
He's the Berlin bureau chief for the New York Times.
Jim Tankersley, welcome back, are you hey?

Speaker 3 (00:53):
My pleasure to be back. I'm doing great.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Any news out of Great britainy you think is worth
talking about to start off with?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I mean, I think what we just heard the President
talking about is what he's been saying for a while,
he really did think that this conflict was going to
be a lot easier to broker a pc alaon. He
keeps expressing varying degrees of annoyance with Vladimir Putin for
not coming to the table and broken ideal, but he's
also not you know, we didn't hear him say any

(01:23):
new big things that he's going to do to put
the pressure on So I think I think what we're
hearing from from President Trump is what a lot of
Europe has been kind of hearing and a little bit
wary about for weeks and months now, which is kind
of just like status quo. We're just kind of hoping
this is going to get better and we're not sure
how it's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Okay, well, that's really interesting. I want to ask you,
this is one of my favorite statements of the last
couple of months. Is that guy from Poland, Tusk who said,
why do we need why do we the five hundred
million need the three hundred and forty million of the
United States to protect us against one hundred and sixty million.
I love that just as a point of view of

(02:08):
why don't we take care of this ourselves? In Europe.
Do many people in Europe agree with his attitude?

Speaker 3 (02:14):
Well, I mean, you know, it's really interesting. I came
to Germany for the Times in January, and in the
time that I've been here, I think we've seen like
a real flood of Europeans toward that test perspective for
lots of reasons, but this real idea like, hey, we
we need to be spending the money here to defend ourselves,

(02:34):
to make ourselves ready, not just you know, to help Ukraine,
but to ward off possible attack from Russia. Something you
hear in Germany all the time now. I mean, the
Germans are massively increasing their ability, and it's because they
are afraid that they could be next or really they
could be drawn into some sort of Yes, I mean,
people don't believe me sometimes when I tell them this

(02:56):
back home, but the German German leaders I talked to
are constantly worried that that that Putin would not stop
at Ukraine, that he might go to some place like Lithuania,
or he might go into Poland, as we've seen Russia
flying groans over Poland already, and that you know, Berlin
is not that far away from there, and that they
need to be ready on their own, you know, with
or without help from the Americans, to defend against that

(03:19):
sort of an attack. And that's that's why they're just
going to spend a lot of money trying to build
up their defenses.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Again, Well, that's really interesting. I mean, on one hand,
I'm glad they're taking it seriously. On the other hand,
that would be insane for Putin to take on Germany
and NATO and everything that goes with it.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
It would be I mean, but I think that people
thought it would be a lot of people thought it'd
be insane for him to go into Ukraine. And and
so there's I think there is is really a sea
change in how a lot of European leaders, and by
the way, not all the public is there. There are some,
you know, East Germans in the Former East, for example,

(04:00):
who still would like to re establish much friendlier ties
with Russia and try to avoid war that way. But
particularly among the sort of German leaders I cover, there's
just been this big shift, And I got to say
part of it is because they have been shocked at
the idea that maybe America won't be there. Maybe it's like,

(04:20):
maybe America will not have our back but we hope
they do. We think they're still our friends. And either way,
we need to do the right thing for ourselves here,
which is to have our own defense capabilities get better.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Since Trump is in Great Britain, I'll ask you about this.
Let's listening to a podcast the other day with a
writer from The Telegraph talking about the financial situation that
Great Britain is. They're like, you know, several years further
down the road from us, of going insolvent because they
spend more money than they take in and they've made
all kinds of promises. They're not going to be able

(04:54):
to keep on the current trajectories. Is it that bad?
And can we look at our future ahead of us
in Great Britain?

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I mean, I as as you know, I covered you
cannot and before I came here, So it's I think
a lot about this is this is what economists call
fiscal space. How much money do you have, you know,
kind of left before it gets really hard for you
to keep borrowing, and and and and Great Britain does
have a coming fiscal space problem. France does, I mean

(05:28):
a lot of a lot of the wealthy world does.
I mean America does too, And we've been there's certainly
been a lot of warnings about it for a long time,
but the situations have worsened in all of those countries,
and so it's going that's that comes at a time
when when all three of those countries also want to
be spending a lot more on the military, and when

(05:49):
nobody frankly, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about the American debate,
but I don't hear a lot of arguments coming out
of Washington that we we should ramp back this amount
of spending, particularly on on on you know, butter, so
that we can buy more guns. And that's those are
conversations that you know, most experts, I don't do you

(06:09):
think are going to be suddenly forced across Europe and
in America.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, it's a damn interesting time for you to be
in Europe. So you have the military situation, as you
point out, spending more money, worried about actually being attacked.
You got the financial problems, and then the immigration situation
that's just roiling so many countries.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Well, the immigration situation is fascinating because the I mean,
it's it's it's not a secret, it's it's the statistics.
But the the statistics are that the flow of immigrants
to Western Europe has fallen dramatically in the last year
and the new governments. There's plenty of new governments that
have cracked down on border control. The Poland and Germany

(06:51):
both have new enhanced border checks h and they're playing
a lot of credit for restarching those flows. But the
posts don't suggest that voters are giving them a lot
of credit any of it yet. It might take a
while to sort of show them progress. But it's sort
of this weird thing that people don't realize that that, yeah,

(07:13):
they had an enormous amount of migration over the last
ten years historically for Europe, but also that that flow
of immigrants has gone down.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Before I let you go, I'm sure there's a German
Germans have good words for things. I'm sure German German
language has a good word for the feeling I've got
right now. Maybe it's just envy that you and your
family are living in Germany for a while while you
do this job. That's got to be freaking cool. As
cool as it sounds, I mean.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
If I'm going to make it sound even cooler by
telling you I'm currently on a train from Berlin down
to Munich because they have this annual event here which
for journalistic purposes I need to go visit, which is
called Octoberfest. And so, uh, you know, every we do,

(08:04):
we do a lot of we do a lot of
very uh serious and difficult reporting as reporters. And if
every once in a while you can go like I'm
going to do on on Saturday and and watch them
tap the first keg oh Wowfest for.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Journalism, for journalism. Yes, you're standing up for journalism. That's fantastic.
Good for you, man. Jim Tankersley, Berlin Bureau Cheap for
The New York Times. Thanks for your time today.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always fun.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
He's a really talented guy, so he's obviously earned it.
But man, he moved his whole family there and they've
been living in Germany for a little while. But cool
experience to get to have

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Art