A new age in Europe, 30 years later

It was, for the continent of Europe, the end of an era. The geopolitical picture in Europe is shaping up a bit like “Back to the Future,” dominated by two historical rivals: Germany and Russia. Without the steady hand of late US President George H.W. Bush, it’s not at all clear that the fall of the wall would have led to the reunification of Germany, only a few decades after a world war in which Nazi aggression had scarred the memory of Europe. And without the stewardship of German Chancellor Angela Merkel since 2005 – who last week passed on the leadership of her Christian Democratic Union party, and has confirmed this term will be her last – the tensions with Vladimir Putin’s Russia over the former Soviet-bloc countries of Eastern Europe would have been even harder to navigate.

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