Germany Interpreted

Did Friedrich Merz, the likely next chancellor, fall into a trap? Or is he forcing other mainstream parties to confront what many regard as the new reality — a harder, less welcoming Germany?

The country’s perennial yearning for reassurance is still dominating discourse — but this time around, it’s likely to be in vain.

The coming year will demand courage from the country’s politicians. But if they succumb to anxiety and idling, there will be darker days ahead.

It appears German politics is acquiring a new bitterness. And while everyone is busy accusing everyone else of letting the country down, one man has failed above all others.

Scholz now seems to view the bloc as a problem to be managed, while European institutions and member countries seem to regard him as a problem to be managed in return.

For as long as the center fails to make its case in a way that galvanizes, there will be many more like Sahra Wagenknecht.

The country’s ascendant Christian Democratic Union remains utterly baffled as to how it might wield power.

After the U.K. election, cooperation will be deliberately methodical, testing the waters along the way.

Trump will likely want to divest himself of, as he sees it, the irritation that is Ukraine. Europe should be rushing to come up with a convincing answer as to why it shouldn’t.

If Germany really is coming to terms with the notion of hard power for a moral purpose, Boris Pistorius will have played no small part in that.