![]() Germany’s biggest companies have become worryingly dependent on an authoritarian China, which has morphed from a win-win trade and investment partner into a formidable industrial competitor and systemic rival. The United States, its security guarantor for decades, is no longer the reliable ally it once was. All of this is reason for concern.Īfter decades of gemütlichkeit, or comfort, the world has taken an unsettling turn for Germany. ![]() In 2019, he received an embarrassing endorsement from Gerhard Schroder, the politically toxic former chancellor known for his personal ties to Putin and lobbying work on behalf of Russian energy interests. He has also questioned whether Germany should shoulder a heavier military burden, voiced support for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and came out against an exclusion of Chinese telecommunications group Huawei from Germany’s next generation 5G network. Writing in Foreign Policy last year, I detailed how in the past Laschet had warned against demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin for his annexation of Crimea, criticized Washington for backing rebels trying to overthrow Syrian strongman President Bashar al-Assad, and voiced support for deepening Germany’s relationship with Beijing. “Perhaps I am not the man who puts on the best show, but I am Armin Laschet,” he said, in a speech littered with folksy allusions to his coal miner father.Ī cautious moderate who has governed North-Rhine Westphalia since 2017, Laschet has shown a tendency to cozy up to authoritarians and put narrow business interests over broader strategic aims. In his speech to party delegates before the vote, he painted himself as the person to unite the party and safeguard the trust that Merkel has earned from voters in over 15 years of steady leadership. Laschet, leader of Germany’s most populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia, and now the frontrunner to replace Merkel as chancellor in late 2021, was the candidate of continuity in a race against two political rivals-old-school conservative Friedrich Merz and modernizer Norbert Rottgen-who were promising to take the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Germany in a new direction. For anyone hoping for a decisive break from the strategic ambiguity of the Angela Merkel era, the election of Armin Laschet this past weekend to lead her party into the next German election was a disappointment. ![]()
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