Steinmeier’s Tragic Dance Around the Issues

For people outside Germany, the country’s pains at growing up as a foreign policy power often look wondrous and slightly bizarre — so morally charged is every debate, so infused with self-doubt, and often so faraway from the strategic realities of the day. Much ink has been spilled over this subject, but some particularly important ink has just been added to this ocean of pondering.

In the July–August 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister and one of the country’s longest-serving top politicians, published an essay entitled 'Germany’s New Global Role'. If you want to understand the continuous self-therapeutic nature of the German foreign policy debate, you need not go any farther than this article. It contains everything you need to know.

• Primary Source

ESO: Background information: Germany's defence doublespeak http://www.europeansources.info/record/germanys-defence-doublespeak/

ESO: Background information: Europe’s New Political Engine: Germany’s role in the EU’s foreign and security policy http://www.europeansources.info/record/europes-new-political-engine-germanys-role-in-the-eus-foreign-and-security-policy/

Germany: Federal Foreign Office: Information Service: Interview, 15.06.16: Germany’s New Global Role - Berlin steps up http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/Infoservice/Presse/Interview/2016/160615_Namensartikel_ForeignAffairs.html

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