James Jackson is a writer, translator, and broadcast journalist based in Berlin.
The German government’s reluctance to join an anti-Russian bandwagon owes at least as much to commercial interests as to historical guilt. But calls for Berlin to play a stronger role in NATO should be emphatically resisted.
Polls for today’s German election point to a once unlikely victory for Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. The party’s campaign has focused on Scholz’s personal credentials as a future chancellor — yet his record suggests he will never stand up to the powerful.