When the chief of Germany’s army quotes Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher, it signals a shift in tone. “The old world is dying, the new one struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters,” said General Alfons Mais recently. The pendulum that once swung to globalisation and rules-based order is now arcing back towards protectionism and imperial spheres of influence. The world is turning colder, harder. The West is fracturing.
This tectonic shift puts immense pressure on Germany and Europe. The Old World must finally become capable of acting as a global power. That requires a foreign and security policy that sheds the comfortable doctrines of the past. Germany can no longer preach “leadership from the centre”, as it did under Angela Merkel, or mask geopolitical inertia as “restraint”, as Olaf Scholz has done.
Germany is the most populous and economically powerful country in Europe, the second-richest NATO member and, despite challenges, still the world’s third-largest economy. The country is more potent than it feels.
Readt the full text in the 'By Invitation' column of The Economist. The complete German version was published by DGAP on April 28, 2025.
