Scale of crisis demands new thinking - EU responds to refugee crisis

IT is a reassuring victory for humanity and the power of redemption — one of the great and underestimated forces of conscience and decency — that Germany has assumed the role of Europe’s moral leader by spearheading the EU’s response to the refugee crisis.

That a country that just a lifetime ago was the cause of Europe’s last great refugee crisis — in 1943 the International Labour Office estimated that “more than 30m of the inhabitants of Europe have been transplanted or torn from their homes since the beginning of the war” — can offer such a very different and challenging leadership may be the silver lining of a very dark cloud. It shows a society defined and ravaged by war just a few decades ago can see beyond its devastating, heartbreaking history and understand how to respond in a moral way to the millions now threatened or destitute because of terror, corruption, poverty, religious lunacy, climate change, or unrelenting despotism.

Just as the Marshall Plan was central to Europe’s rejuvenation after 1945, Germany’s clear and challenging response to today’s calamity may help resolve the refugee crisis in a way that reminds us of our obligations to our fellow man. By showing the kind of humanity that this crisis makes obligatory, we can strike a blow, maybe not a final one, but nevertheless a telling one, against the extremism forcing millions from their homes right across Africa and central Asia.