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.
Leadership Profile: David McAllister, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, European Parliament
New European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman David McAllister is expected to play a prominent role in shaping the European Union’s relations with the new U.S. Administration and with a …
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 …
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Support Our WorkIn a Post-Truth World, Can Cybersecurity Save Democracy?
The Munich Security Conference this year was as much about who was in the main hall at the Bayerischer Hof, as who wasn’t. Lurking in the shadows of empty words …
From the AGI Bookshelf: What Is Populism?
With the ripple effect of Donald Trump’s election still being felt not only in the U.S., but all over the world, many are scrambling to find explanations for how that …
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.
Demolition Enterprise Trump: A Manual for Saving the Transatlantic Relationship
Transatlantic relations play an important role in how the West reacts to the challenges of the twenty-first century, and certain measures must be taken to maintain the relationship under the …
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.
