Joseph Beuys on his lecture “Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler – Auf dem Weg zur Freiheitsgestalt des sozialen Organismus” photographed by Rainer Rappmann [de] in Achberg, Germany, 1978. CC BY-SA 3.0

Defiant Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has lately been critical of Germany, but when he complained to Zeit Magazin that the country’s Chinese restaurants lacked culinary diversity, I was surprised. China had just overtaken the US as Germany’s biggest trading partner—take note, America—but I had expected more from an artist of his scope.

From art to politics, the West’s self-critique is consistent, if not coherent. On the other side of the Channel, the unimaginative UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was saying that leaving the EU had created more damage than expected, as if this were news too. The dynamics of this are outlined in A More Perfect Union, a new book by barrister—and Boris Johnson’s ex-wife—Marina Wheeler KC. Weirdly, Dominic Cummings was lecturing on Bismarck as the rest of the UK continued obsessing over migrant boats—its only glance towards the Continent these days. Which takes us back to Germany again.

More important than Chinese restaurants, more choppy than competing trade figures, more incisive than illegal migration when legal migration is so much bigger, is sudden German flexing over its postwar military identity. With Friedrich Merz having taken over the Chancellorship in May of this year, his policy ambitions—particularly around military expansion—signal a profound shift. I’m not even talking about his hardline controversial calls for large expulsions of migrants from German cities. Nor the fact that Merz wants 500 billion euros—like a rabbit out of a hat?—to rescue its industry.

If volunteer numbers for the German military do fall short, which could easily happen given the bullish scale of Merz’s fresh ambition, there will........

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