In an era when diplomacy often postures as virtue signalling and foreign policy has grown allergic to nuance, Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has executed a move of startling clarity and daring. He called President Xi Jinping, not to lecture him on human rights or wave the banner of Western liberalism but to propose a deal: help end the war in Ukraine.
Merz’s appeal, couched in the anodyne language of international cooperation, was anything but soft. He told Xi that Russia’s war of…

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