Politics & Power Quote by Horst Koehler

Koehler’s sentence is diplomacy dressed up as a mission statement, and the tailoring matters. Delivered by a German statesman shaped by postwar institutions and European integration, it argues for a Germany that is neither penitent spectator nor swaggering superpower. The key move is the pairing of ambition with restraint: “generates political ideas and leadership” signals a bid to normalize German initiative after decades of strategic self-limitation, while “capable of compromise” reassures neighbors who still read German “leadership” through the long shadow of the 20th century.

“Sovereign and yet” is the hinge. It rejects the fantasy that sovereignty means splendid isolation, a pointed jab at nationalist rhetoric that equates independence with freedom from obligations. Koehler offers a more modern sovereignty: agency exercised through alliances, not despite them. That’s why the Atlantic appears, explicitly and symmetrically: “partners on both sides of the Atlantic” binds Europe and the United States into Germany’s identity rather than treating Washington as a fallback or Brussels as a constraint. The line quietly counters two temptations at once - anti-American drift and European provincialism - by insisting Germany’s influence is maximized when it’s networked.

Subtextually, this is also a domestic nudge. He’s asking Germans to accept that leadership costs money, attention, and risk, and that compromise is not weakness but the price of credibility in the EU and NATO. In the early 21st-century context of Iraq-era fractures, EU enlargement, and globalization anxieties, it’s a call for Germany to stop hiding behind history and start shaping it, without forgetting why its partners still watch its hands.