Germany – Europe’s lonely leader [Note from Berlin]

By all measures, 2016 promises to be a challenging year for Germany’s political leaders, one in which the principal domestic issues are closely linked to the principal issues in foreign policy. It comes as a discomforting thought to many of Berlin’s policy makers that the degree to which disorder has spread in the international system could be replicated within the structures of the EU and the Federal Republic. It seems that the connectivity between the internal and the external space has never been as strong as it is now. The fact that Germany will experience the externalities of conflicts elsewhere in the form of refugees is no longer just a possibility, but has become a certainty. Because of these externalities, the foreign policy performance of Germany has come to be considered alongside the pressures of domestic politics, while its instruments and concepts have failed to followed suit.