Unlike Merkel, Schäuble was a federalist, eager to move the hard core of Europe to a higher stage of integration. What they shared was not a desire to dominate Europe. There was no grand hegemonic project in early-twenty-first-century Berlin. What they had in common was their belief that it is not just Germany’s right but its proper historical role to act as a self-confident veto player in European affairs. Germany’s terrible history forbids strategies of domination or even overly assertive leadership. But the success of the Federal Republic gives it the right to insist that European solutions
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