Europe | The reluctant hegemon

Germany is being forced to take a leadership role it never wanted

But thirty years after reunification, it is finding its stride

Oct 3rd 2020

IN UNGUARDED MOMENTS, British and French diplomats 30 years ago might quietly admit that they could happily live with a divided Germany. Its partition, however unjust, contained the problem of a country that, in Henry Kissinger’s words, was “too big for Europe, too small for the world”. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Margaret Thatcher sought to recruit François Mitterrand, France’s president, in a fruitless plot to block, or at least delay, reunification, fearing an enlarged Germany would upset Europe’s balance or even threaten its security. Among European leaders only Felipe González, Spain’s then prime minister, unequivocally backed a united Germany.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Waking Europe’s sleeping giant”