“Germany is no longer, as a matter of course or of principle, the motor, heart and savior of Europe,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “This isn’t the Europe we signed up for. It’s much larger, much poorer, and we have to take care of our own.” NYTGermany is apparently tired of being the guarantor of European economic stability, with not just Greece free-riding. Germany has been reluctant to help out the Greeks, and spurned more moderate packages.
Why do I feel just a bit of glee in all of this? Sorry, schadenfreude. Well, I have long argued that domestic interests triumph the gloss of transnational identities, so that when push comes to shove, politicians look home rather than thinking of the folks across the border as brothers/sisters/cousins. This combined with the optimistic reports about an American recovery suggest that:
So, I am a continued Euro-skeptic (see Kin or Country for more on that), although I dip my hat with a blog post using both German and French. Ironic, n'est-ce pas?plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose: the more things change, the more it remains the same.
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