, as well as the new combat tank to replace the Leopard 2 and Leclerc (MGCS), and maritime patrol aircraft (MAWS). He turned to Israel's Arrow 3 for air defence. Germany launched a unilateral €200bn energy bail-out without EU consultation, sweeping aside Mr Macron's pleas for a combined EU response to avert damaging beggar-thy-neighbour policies. France is itself spending €100bn one way or another, but mostly helping households with fuel bills rather than distorting cross-bord){kind=link}
A Faustian pact with Xi Jinping is no solution to Germany’s existential economic threat
Large parts of the German government have been working for months on a 60-page grand strategy to confront Xi Jinping’s totalitarian and revanchist China, a regime openly pursuing global supremacy on terms that cannot coexist with liberal democracy.
They have been coordinating with the German foreign ministry – under hawkish Green control – and with intelligence analysts at the Bundesnachrichtendienst, alarmed by China’s push to gain access to critical infrastructure and sensitive technology.
They have been working with Brussels on a joint EU approach fit for the new reality of Maoist China after Xi’s purge of every member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee who were thought to seek better relations with the West. They have been trying to convince Washington that they are still worthwhile allies after the sorry saga of Putin appeasement before and immediately after the invasion of Ukraine.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has cocked a snook at them all. He has rammed through approval for a stake in the Port of Hamburg by China’s COSCO in defiance of his own coalition partners.