IT WAS a friendly, local political event: a sweaty tent at a street festival in Munich on a Sunday afternoon. Angela Merkel arrived to a brass-band serenade and battled her way through the beery crowd to reach the podium. But her speech on May 28th made global news. Alluding to America and Britain, the chancellor said: “The times in which we could totally rely on others are to some extent over, as I have experienced in the past few days.” To prolonged cheers she added: “We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands.”
This followed NATO and G7 summits at which Donald Trump offended European sensibilities. The president attacked the continent’s leaders for (mostly) failing to meet the alliance’s target for defence spending of 2% of GDP, and pointedly neglected to mention Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defence clause. In one meeting he reportedly called Germany “bad, very bad”, and threatened tariffs on the country’s car exports to America. Mrs Merkel was venting her...Continue reading
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