NYT - Priorities Are Clear as Mud in Germany - by John Vinocur

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Priorities Are Clear as Mud in Germany - by John Vinocur

Germany’s year of recession and its current election campaign, which could have been a windfall period for refashioning its international perspectives, have instead left a jumbled, even discomforting picture of the country’s priorities as a potential leader in Europe and a significant voice in the world. Once, those priorities were unwavering: unselfish engagement in the European Union to the point where it was synonymous with German identity and self-interest, and a commitment to a relationship with the United States that provided the notion of a trans-Atlantic security community with substance and reliability.

But Germany’s intra-European solidarity is no longer a reflex or a self-imposed duty. An Atlantic partnership with the United States, which Mrs. Merkel was supposed to revive to the status of an affair of the heart? It has returned neither to enthusiasm or full confidence — in part because of Germany’s increasingly ambiguous relations with Russia, and regardless of Germans’ appreciation of President Barack Obama in public opinion polls.