As Donald Trump rampaged about in his first term, leadership of the free world was transferred, by general liberal acclamation, to Angela Merkel of Germany. She was cast as the embodiment of internationalist virtue: prudent, broad-minded, diplomatic, multilateralist and expertise-driven above all.
Then Trump left office, Merkel left office, and suddenly it was possible to notice that her leadership of Germany had been well-nigh disastrous.
The mismanaged eurozone crises that followed the crash of 2008 and her open door to Middle Eastern migrants both contributed mightily to the collapse of the very firewall against far-right parties she was supposedly maintaining. Much worse, she accepted, for enlightened environmentalist reasons, her country’s deindustrialization and an ever-increasing reliance on Russian oil and gas. And when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, it suddenly became clear that Merkel’s legacy wasn’t a strong alternative to Trump’s America; it was a weak European core threatened by and dependent upon an authoritarian rival to its east.
