Merkel’s Twin Mission with Trump: NATO and Trade
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel has her first face-to-face meeting with President Trump in Washington on March 17,* she will have two key tests. Can she take the sting out of …
A New Narrative for German-American Relations
This essay will be published later this year in Mandarin by the Tongji University Center for German Studies in their “Annual Development Report of Germany 2017.” Download the full article. It is said …
A New Narrative for German-American Relations
It is said that Mark Twain once commented, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Maybe a more accurate version is that history doesn’t repeat itself, but people often do—for better or for worse.
A German Blueprint for Europe
German leadership has been crucial to the efforts to hold the EU together—while also trying to articulate Berlin’s vision without alienating its neighbors. The domestic debate over German foreign policy …
Donald Trump – Aggravator or Catalyzer of the European Crises?
This text was originally presented at a public lecture at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, on February 15, 2017. Introduction One might reasonably ask what is actually special about …
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Principle, Policy, and Purpose: The Balance of Values and Interests
The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once stated that the essence of statecraft is locating the point of concurrence between the parochial and the general interest, between the national and international common good.[1] Niebuhr emphasizes that realism implies an obligation to see the world as it actually is, not as we might like it to be. He warned that hubris can blind realism, finding expression in outsized confidence in both the power as well as the values of a country as being universal. Any country is susceptible to such temptations.
Germany Cannot Replace the U.S., But Europe Can Live with Trump
There is ample evidence that there has been a major shift toward a greater international role for Germany and that the public is gradually accepting such a bigger role. Germany …
The Transatlantic Alliance: Between Reassurance and Renewal
There is a well-known warning to all politicians seeking to sound convincing to their audiences: if you have to explain too much, you are losing them. If there are too many ambiguities in a message, you trip yourself up justifying them. The platform of the Munich Security Conference is a tough testing ground for all politicians given the enormous concentration on what is discussed there. This year’s meeting was no exception.
Uncertainty Surrounds the Putin-Trump Relationship
Few issues stir more concerns—and confusion—about where the Trump administration is heading than relations with Russia. Several Cabinet secretaries, during their confirmation hearings and subsequent statements, voiced strong support for …
From the AGI Bookshelf: A World in Disarray
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has to have a broad horizon when looking at the world, as he shows in his latest book, A World in …
In a World of Cyber Threats, Isolationism Will Never Win
President Trump has said cybersecurity is a priority for his administration. It is also one of the fastest growing spending priorities for the U.S. government this fiscal year. Across the …
At War with Radical Islam: A Recipe for the Wrong Kind of Leadership in the Twenty-First Century
In the summer of 2014, Stephen Bannon gave a talk at the Institute for Human Dignity in Rome via Skype saying that “we are in an outright war against jihadist …
