German President Joachim Gauck has said his country should put aside World War II anxieties and play a bigger military role abroad.
“While there are genuine pacifists in Germany, there are also people who use Germany’s guilt for its past as a shield for laziness or a desire to disengage from the world,” he said on Friday (31 January) at the Munich Security Conference, a yearly meeting of European and US security chiefs.
“This [guilt] gives Germany a questionable right to look the...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.