On 10 February two events occurred in Berlin that said a lot about today’s Germany and today’s Europe. In the office of the Bavarian state representation in the capital, a neoclassical villa close to the Brandenburg Gate, a major report was launched. Published by the Munich Security Conference, ahead of its annual gathering of securocrats and foreign-policy wonks, it proposed that the current era in world affairs is defined by “Westlessness”. The West, argued the report, is declining both as an alliance and as an idea. The transatlantic relationship is fraying, Europe is torn between different visions of its global role, and non-Western powers such as China and India are on the rise.
It was serious stuff, with which members of Germany’s political class need to engage. Yet their attentions were instead directed at the nearby Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, the glass-and-steel headquarters of Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrat Union (CDU), where Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was formally announcing her resignation as party leader. She had secured the job in December 2018 after Merkel, looking ahead to her retirement in 2021, had given it up. The chancellor’s preferred candidate and a fellow CDU moderate, “AKK” had become the frontrunner to take over from Merkel. Yet there she stood, 14 months and many gaffes and missteps later, giving up her position and destroying Merkel’s carefully laid succession plan.
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