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Meeting

CFR Fellows’ Book Launch Series—Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions

Event date



From CFR Fellows' Book Launch Series and Europe Program.

Speaker

  • Liana FixCFR Expert
    Author, Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions; Senior Fellow for Europe, Council on Foreign Relations

Presider

  • David E. Sanger
    White House and National Security Correspondent, New York Times; Member, Board of Directors, Council on Foreign Relations

In Germany Rearmed: The Return of War and the End of Illusions, Liana Fix examines how, for eighty years, German strategic culture rested on a “myth of pacifism”—a conviction that military force belonged to a darker past. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the upheavals in the transatlantic relationship have shattered those assumptions, triggering a German rearmament of historic proportion. Can Germany become the security provider Europe now needs when America may not? Will it assume a greater military role without reviving old anxieties among its neighbors, especially as right-wing populism rises at home? And what does a rearmed Germany mean for U.S. interests and the future of NATO?