Germany is not the new leader of the free world
Angela Merkel may sound tough on Donald Trump, but her country still depends on America
IF HELMUT KOHL, the deceased chancellor whom Germany commemorated in a ceremony on July 1st, could have looked up from his coffin to assess his country’s global standing, it would have made him proud. European and Chinese leaders were passing through Berlin for preparatory talks ahead of the annual G20 summit of large economies, which this year takes place in Hamburg from July 7th. A week earlier Angela Merkel had lambasted the isolationism and protectionism of Donald Trump’s America in a speech to the Bundestag. Once Mr Kohl’s protégée, the chancellor of his reunified Germany is sometimes dubbed the “leader of the free world” in the Anglo-Saxon media.
Yet such epithets get things wrong. To understand why, look at Germany’s relations with Africa, Poland and America.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "The Merkel doctrine"
From the July 8th 2017 edition
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