A lurch onto the world stage

A YEAR ago Germany’s elite launched a giant debate about the country’s foreign policy. There was a perception abroad, President Joachim Gauck said in a solemn speech, that Germany was “the shirker in the international community” and had used its Nazi past as an excuse to duck out of rough-and-tumble diplomacy.

Soon after, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, began an earnest public consultation called Review 2014. It involved 60 town-hall meetings with German voters and online debates with foreign experts. All were asked: what is wrong with German foreign policy and how should it change? The reactions, some vague and some utopian, were released in a big data dump this week.