The lifelong Atlanticist was frank after his election victory: Nato is on the brink, and Germany must reassess its core beliefs on defence<\/p>\n
It is hard to overstate the importance of Friedrich Merz\u2019s urgent message to the nation<\/a> after his win in the German elections. This, after all, is the beginning of a new, dangerous era in European security. It would be his \u201cabsolute priority\u201d, Merz said, immediately after victory for the CDU\/CSU was confirmed, to create unity in Europe as quickly as possible, \u201cso that, step by step, we can achieve independence from the US\u201d. He added: \u201cI never thought I would have to say something like this on a television programme.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed. For the leader of the conservative CDU, a lifelong believer in the transatlantic security alliance, this is a significant reversal. And it is highly personal for Merz: there is hardly a more pro-American politician in Germany than the man who worked for the investment company BlackRock and was the long-serving chairman of the influential lobbying group Atlantik-Br\u00fccke (Atlantic Bridge).<\/p>\n J\u00f6rg Lau is an international correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The lifelong Atlanticist was frank after his election victory: Nato is on the brink, and Germany must reassess its core beliefs on defence It is hard to overstate the importance of Friedrich Merz\u2019s urgent message to the nation after his win in the German elections. This, after all, is the beginning of a new, dangerous … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}