It almost seemed as if international jihadism was on the retreat: the so-called caliphate also known as the Islamic State (IS) or by its Arabic acronym Daesh destroyed, the so-called caliph killed, his followers scattered to the winds. But five …

No one looking back on the past decade can do so with satisfaction, let alone complacency. The world has become unstable. The international order created after World War II is breaking down; the global institutions established as part of that …

Putin has not yet chosen a course vis-à-vis Belarus, but all signs point to his continued support for Lukashenko

After the disputed presidential election in Belarus on Aug. 9, Vladimir Putin was one of the first to congratulate Alexander Lukashenko …

Her era will have to come to an end eventually. Angela Merkel has been German chancellor since 2005; you would have to look long and hard to find another politician holding a country’s top political position for so long, autocracies …

There are Russians who see German hospitals as a salvation, and there are Russians who see them as a curse. The family of Alexei Navalny, Russia’s foremost opposition leader, arranged for him to be treated at Berlin’s Charité hospital after …

In most corners of the world, hopes are running high that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will win the upcoming US election and thus bring to a close this current dark chapter. These hopes, however, rest on less-than-sound footing, and …

There’s a new buzzterm in Western politics, culture and media, and it should come to no one’s surprise that it’s also a trigger for both sides of the ever-hardening left-right ideological divide. “Cancel culture” – or sometimes “call-out culture” – …

Natural gas and oil are a shout-out from a distant past. Several hundred millions of years passed before dead biomass at the bottom of primordial oceans formed the energy sources that run today’s motors, comprise our industrial products and heat …

Elon Musk is standing on the construction site of his European Gigafactory. Behind him in the distance, a dense arrangement of concrete pillars rises up from the ground. A traditional German “topping-out” garland swings in the wind as it hangs …

Rarely do the results of political choices become so visible so fast. After COVID-19 turned from a China-centered tragedy into a global threat some six months ago, all advanced economies faced a similar set of challenges. But they reacted differently. …

Eastern and western Germany continue to drift apart in political terms, despite economic achievements (i.e., growth, employment, wages, pensions, etc.) in the former states of the GDR. While voters in the West are increasingly going green, voters in the East …

Over the past several years, there’s one question that has dumbfounded western Germans as they gaze eastward: How is it possible that the whole “growing together” thing hasn’t worked out, even more than 30 years after the fall of the …

Non-German friends of mine like to think we Germans celebrate German Unity Day by throwing a big party. I personally don’t know anyone who actually celebrates the national holiday on Oct. 3. It’s just a day off work, a day …

In the beginning, there was a promise: “Through our joint efforts,” said Chancellor Helmut Kohl in summer 1990, “we will soon succeed in transforming the former states of the GDR into blooming landscapes where it is worthwhile to live and …

In Berlin, no one is surprised when they have to get up at five in the morning and head to the department of motor vehicles in order to register a car before noon. Or when they notice that a construction …