John Kampfner

1 week ago | johnkampfner.substack.com | John Kampfner

Every day it seems Berlin’s main roads are blocked off as the motorcades speed through. Perhaps it’s my imagination, but the number of world statesmen coming here seems more than usual. Today it’s Volodymyr Zelensky. Shortly before that it was the Israeli president (I think I saw armoured personnel carriers). Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor, is doing what all new leaders do when times are tough domestically, and focusing on foreign policy.

2 weeks ago | foreignpolicy.com | John Kampfner

Few world leaders have taken up the job so late in life yet have so little experience. Few can have won an election and been so unpopular even on victory. Few can have faced the enormity of the challenges that Friedrich Merz faces with so little confidence among his citizens that he can meet them. Germany’s 10th postwar chancellor is only weeks into office, but judgments were being made about him even before he took over.

3 weeks ago | msn.com | John Kampfner

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3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | John Kampfner

What does a boat seized from the Italian island of Lampedusa, a piece of the Berlin Wall, two giant bright blue slippers and a New York City bus made of fabric have in common with paintings by Hans Holbein the Younger and Willem de Kooning? They all vie for space in a new museum, opening this week in Rotterdam, which focuses entirely on migration, the movement of peoples that defines each century of humanity and which in recent years has acquired a new political toxicity.

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | John Kampfner

The world’s most populous country is not the world’s most powerful country. Nowhere close. At first glance, this assertion might seem incongruous, as its prime minister Narendra Modi struts the world stage and foreign chancelleries roll out the red carpet. He has given short shrift to those at home and abroad who criticise his less-than-fulsome commitment to democracy. He seeks to project strength at all costs, as the latest of many skirmishes with Pakistan has shown.