Germany is casting around for a foreign policy. To say Angela Merkel’s government has embraced the task with unbridled enthusiasm would be an overstatement. Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall most Germans would still prefer to hide behind history. Selling cars and machine tools overseas is one thing; marking out an active role in a disordered world quite another. Russia’s march into Ukraine has robbed Ms Merkel of the choice.
Ask diplomats who is managing the west’s response to Vladimir Putin’s revanchism and the answer is Ms Merkel. It is not often you hear US officials volunteer that their president is playing second fiddle. But Barack Obama has other things on his mind – the Middle East’s descent into violent chaos, Ebola and China among them. And anyway Ukraine is in Europe’s backyard. So Ms Merkel makes the calls to Moscow.
Life was simpler during the cold war. The Bonn government set its foreign policy compass by two objectives: reunification with the East and reconciliation in an integrated Europe. Helmut Kohl saw his mission as making a united Germany safe for Europe. The pursuit of this existential goal required nothing more complicated than a close relationship with Washington and an even closer partnership with Paris.