No Longer the Elephant Outside the Room: Why the Ukraine Crisis Reflects a Deeper Shift Towards German Leadership of European Foreign Policy
Journal: German Politics
Year: 2018

Germany’s position as Europe’s predominant economic power has long been recognised. In recent years it has also emerged as a leading European foreign policy actor, although its willingness and capacity to play an explicit leadership role are debated. In particular, the ‘geo-economic’ analyses of Kundnani (The Paradox of German Power, 2014) and Szabo (Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-Economics, 2015) argue that German foreign policy is increasingly focused on narrow calculations of national in