Germany’s efforts to keep the peace tested

Germany was fooling itself if it believed the peaceful post-WW2 neighbourhood it helped create transcended the logic of brute force, as the Ukraine crisis reveals, writes Lucian Kim.

During the Cold War, the purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) was often summed up as “keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.

Today, more than a year into Russia’s covert war against Ukraine, the old adage could be tweaked to describe a new reality in Europe: The Russians are in, the Americans on the fence, and the Germans on the up and up.