Rather as the US is an outlier among developed countries in equating freedom with gun ownership, Germany is almost unique in defining liberty as the absence of speed limits on the autobahn. That mentality, however, is now slamming into the imperative to save energy, which is in turn part of the…

The next step in the conflict between the West and Russian President Vladimir Putin was supposed to be a European boycott on Russian coal, oil and natural gas. It may instead be a gas embargo by Putin on Europe. It comes to much the same. The countries of the European Union must accept what…

Beware the “lessons of history” as drawn by charlatans, ignoramuses or tyrants, for they will be daft, wrong and possibly disastrous. The self-serving amateur historiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin is an example. Last year, he invented a narrative “On the Historical Unity of…

Three months after Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, the war is entering a new phase. This change requires all involved — the Kremlin as well as Kyiv and its supporters in the West — to rethink scenarios, goals and strategies. For the aggressor, it appears, all possible outcomes are shades…

Rather like children in playgrounds, countries throughout history have had to decide how to deal with a bully. Appease him in the hope that he becomes meek? Avoid provoking him, at the cost of acquiescing to his brutality? Or counter with strength and willpower to stop and contain him? If the…

Remember Azovstal. Some phrase like that could soon take the part of “Remember the Alamo” in Ukraine’s heroic war of self-defense against Russia. Azovstal is a giant steel plant in Mariupol, the city in eastern Ukraine that Russian forces are pounding into submission and, in effect, extinction…

As a dual citizen who hangs out with polyglots carrying several passports each, I can attest that identity is a complicated thing. It’ll never be captured adequately by lists of checkboxes — from age and sex to race, religion, profession or indeed citizenship. Just glance across Europe right now. …

“J’accuse…!” This was the famous title of a withering public letter Emile Zola wrote in 1898 to the president of France. In it, the author accused the government, and by extension the whole country, of anti-Semitism. “Ich klage an…!” This, in effect, would be the German version of Zola’s letter…

On the day Russia launched its all-out attack on Ukraine, Svitlana Krakovska was holed up in her home city of Kyiv, working feverishly to finish a report. As leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), she and scientists around the world were dotting…

We must assume that a man like Vladimir Putin is capable of anything, even the use of nuclear weapons. The Russian President has made abundantly clear that human life is worth nothing to him unless it’s his own. And there are scenarios in which he might calculate diabolically that launching one or…