THE GUARDIAN: Divided over its commitment to the eurozone, riven by the resignation of its president, Germany is a nation set against itself
Talleyrand once said that the problem with Russia is that it is always both too weak and too strong at the same time. After the upheavals in the eurozone over the Greek bailout and now the resignation of the country's president over military policy, is the same now true of Germany?
Germany's position as primus inter pares in both the eurozone and the European Union always underscores her economic and political strength. The bailout for the Greeks boiled down to whether the Germans, inevitably, were prepared to take on the lion's share of the loans. In the end, in last month's fractious Bundestag vote, they did so. But German taxpayers, who (the British often forget) have spent most of the last 20 years bearing the cost of the economic rescue of East Germany, are fed up of spending so much of their money on bailouts for others.
Last month's Land election in North Rhine-Westphalia proved there is no political reward to be harvested from good deeds for others. The crisis has left Angela Merkel weakened and with few good options. As a result Germany has one large party, the CDU, which vacillates about doing the right thing and is punished, and another, more diminished party, the SPD, which would once have been ready to do the right thing but is now more interested in profiting from voter anger – as its ringing abstention in the Bundestag over Greece proved. A similar uncertainty runs through the saga of President Horst Köhler's resignation this week. >>> Martin Kettle | Wednesday, June 02, 2010
