Will France and Germany be able to revive the European machine in these troubled times? On the eve of crucial European elections, the two countries sought to reaffirm their unfailing bond and renew their relationship by signing a new treaty on French-German cooperation and integration, already known as the Aachen Treaty, on Jan. 22, 2019.

Initially planned for the 50^th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty in 2013, the text …

In the grand scheme of European history, the 19^th century stands out as an era of peace. However, this characterization of the epoch – defined by historians as spanning the Congress of Vienna and the start of World War I – rings only partly true. A whole series of wars dotted Europe at the time, like the Crimean War and the Italian and German wars of unification, just to …

Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) was never a revolutionary force but had always been party of reformers able to adapt to new social realities with legislation designed to improve people’s lives. That kind of SPD has not been seen for years.

How did this happen? By 1990, all the battles appeared to have been fought, and the political left – not only in Germany – gradually lost sight of the …

The year 2018 has marked a turning point in several respects. We Germans in particular must be quick to bid farewell to cherished certainties and the thorough dependability of our multilateral system of order. This much we know: achieving new safeguards and reinforced stability on the domestic and international front demands we restore our resolve to assert our model of a liberal, democratic and open society and thereby bolster Western …

As we move into 2019, a new round of US-Russian nuclear competition – Arms Race 2.0 – is clearly emerging. The risk of nuclear conflict through deliberate action or some tragic combination of mistakes and escalation is growing. While both sides are developing and deploying new offensive and defensive strategic systems, the two governments are taking actions that could lower the threshold to nuclear use.

Amid all of this, political …

Journalist Juan Moreno never actually met Claas Relotius. They spoke on the phone only once, and Moreno believes this is one of the reasons he was able to eventually expose Relotius’ many journalistic fabrications. Everyone else at the Der Spiegel seems to have fallen for the charms of the award-winning Relotius, a four-time recipient of the prestigious German Reporter Prize. Relotius had been awarded several other prominent prizes, even though …

For the third time in four terms, Germany is governed by a grand coalition. Grand – that means the center-right CDU/CSU and the center-left Social Democrats create a government together. Under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, they must cooperate in the cabinet and in the Bundestag while at the same time thinking about the next election in two years – or should we say, in two years at the …

On Jan. 1, 2019, Germany took its two-year, non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council. What are your goals in the coming years?

We’re eager to make our own contribution to the regular issues on the Security Council agenda. These include giving new mandates to various peacekeeping missions and processing reports from the UN’s Special Representatives. We also want to bring our perspective into the debate on contemporary crises, including …

As The New York Times reported in November 2018, the United States and Saudi Arabia have apparently reached a framework agreement for the sale of nuclear power stations to the Kingdom. The deal is said to be worth up to $80 billion. However, Riyadh is insisting on creating its own nuclear fuel, despite it being cheaper to buy abroad.

There can only be one plausible reason for this pursuit of …

NATO is not dead. European defense budgets have been rising steadily since 2014; American forces are staying in Europe; and Donald Trump will eventually leave the White House. Yet Europe can no longer assume the permanence of the historically exceptional strategic order created some 70 years ago. China has become the United States’ peer competitor and the Indo-Pacific is the key theater in which that relationship will play out, with …