Germany signals new self-confidence on military operations
euobserver
A break with the sempiternal americanist vision of Germany of the last century, rapprochement with the French vision of European international affairs. The Franco-German couple sets the tempo for the new sovereignty Euroland;
German President Joachim Gauck has said his country should put aside World War II anxieties and play a bigger military role abroad. “While there are genuine pacifists in Germany, there are also people who use Germany’s guilt for its past as a shield for laziness,” he said on Friday (31 January) at the Munich Security Conference, a yearly meeting of European and US security chiefs. “This [guilt] gives Germany a questionable right to look the other way … Restraint can be taken too far.”
http://euobserver.com/foreign/122963