The Hobbled State

The narrative of postwar Germany’s moral and political dilemma, as a nation unwilling to assume a leadership role in the international community, despite its size and economic might, for fear of becoming dominant, is well rehearsed. Germany’s postwar power has been bounded by the rules and requirements of international institutions and its own constitution. Economic prosperity quickly became a proxy for the conventional exercise of power. Yet, recent crises have made the country’s ambivalence to power difficult to sustain. Scholz’s declaration of a Zeitenwende (end of an era) launched questions about Germany’s international role, not least in supporting Ukraine against a Russian aggressor.


In this timely interrogation of the German state, Mark Vail traces Germany’s reluctant embrace of power from nineteenth-century industrialization and state formation to its current self-re-examination and reconsideration of national identity and international responsibility.

Mark I. Vail is Worrell Chair of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. He is the author of Liberalism in Illiberal States: Ideas and Economic Adjustment in Contemporary Europe (2018).