Pick Your Fights Wisely: The Value of Transatlantic Intelligence Cooperation
Chancellor Merkel’s recent visit to Washington, DC, created a number of quite remarkable moments that will be remembered as they marked a new tone in transatlantic relations. Not least, the …
Tomorrow’s Europe: A Never Closer Union
Europe is beset with multiple, intersecting challenges and crises, among them unwelcome inward migration, suffocating indebtedness in the southern tier, rising populist nationalism evident from Britain and France to Hungary …
A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step: A Chinese Way of Leadership, U.S. and Germany Must Take Note
The highly anticipated first meeting between Donald Trump and China’s president Xi Jinping concluded quietly against the backdrop of U.S. missile strikes in Syria. Despite flawlessly choreographed appearances and mutually-assured …
Brexit Day
March 29, 2017 marks an historic day for Europe: The British government has handed over the official letter for exiting the European Union to EU president Donald Tusk. This move, …
A Rocky First Date
It was an awkward date. Both recognized they had to get to know each other, but neither one was particularly keen to do so. Nevertheless, they went through the motions …
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Partners in A Changing World: The Rosy Chinese-Russian Relationship and Its Implications for the Transatlantic Relationship
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Europeans have reflected on the transatlantic relationship they’ve known for over seven decades, and which now seems to be at risk. Guided by an …
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 …
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.
