12 - The Shock of the New CenturyThree Crises (and a Near Miss)

Summary

The new millennium started on an anxious note, although the much-feared millennium bug proved uneventful. What followed, though, was a series of crises until 2020 involving financial meltdown, a nuclear disaster, and a pandemic. Japan and Germany, like the rest of the world, emerged bruised and battered by the first and last of these calamities. Japan suffered the middle one on its own, although Fukushima also galvanised Germany’s opposition to nuclear power. This in turn reinforced the European country’s longstanding overreliance on Russian gas, a folly laid bare when Russia invaded Ukraine in spring 2022. Taken together, the crises exposed some of the vulnerabilities and deficiencies of Japanese and German capitalisms as they have evolved since the Second World War. But they also highlighted key sources of strength, not least resilience and adaptability in the face of extreme adversity. On balance, the two countries therefore weathered the crises better than most.