Just the other day, Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, stood in a cage on a podium in his native Aachen, wearing a funny hat and doing his best to be, you know, hilarious. That’s one of his roles in German politics. It was also his job that day, because he was receiving an award […]
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret…But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies […]
From the beginning to the end of the war that he and his government had launched, Hitler and his associates concluded that their paranoid fantasy of an international Jewish conspiracy was the key to contemporary history. Read Here – The National Interest
Two things make Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany look like an exemplary head of government: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. Measured against the poorest of benchmarks, Ms. Merkel’s chancellorship, even after 14 years in office, appears stable, wise and exemplary. Measured against the leadership Germany and Europe need, it lacks all of the above. Read […]
Nov. 9 marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. There will be no lack of commemoration — but there will also be very little celebration. Today the country is once again divided along East-West lines, and growing more so. As it does, the historical narrative of what really happened in the […]
In terms of harshness, the Yalta and Potsdam accords of 1945 were far tougher (on the Germans) than Versailles — and far more successful in keeping the peace. The failure of Versailles remains a tragic lesson about the eternal rules of war and human nature itself — 100 years ago this summer. Read Here – […]
It has taken nearly 30 years, but half of all eastern German regions finally have a positive migration balance with western German states. For the first time, more people are moving from West to East than the other way around. That is primarily due to the fact that fewer and fewer people are leaving the […]
One of the most celebrated diplomats of his generation, Richard Holbrooke helped normalise U.S. relations with China; served as U.S. ambassador to a newly reunified Germany and then to the United Nations; and, most famously, negotiated the 1995 Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. But he began and ended his career struggling […]
For decades, Europe has served as a steward of the post-war liberal order, ensuring that economic rules are enforced and that national ambitions are subordinated to shared goals within multilateral bodies. But with the United States and China increasingly mixing economics with nationalist foreign-policy agendas, Europe will have to adapt. Read Here – Project Syndicate
NATO is celebrating its 70th birthday next week, but rather than blowing out 70 candles, the foreign-policy establishment is pondering whether it should still exist. In truth, we’ve been having this argument since 1992, after the Soviet collapse, and maybe since France pulled its military out of the alliance in 1966… Read Here – Bloomberg
looking beyond borders 