The Germans Won’t Budge on their Vision of Europe

Posted: June 28th, 2017

By Thomas Wright

Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Previously, he was executive director of studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security. Wright has a doctorate from Georgetown University, a Master of Philosophy from Cambridge University, and a bachelor's and master's from University College Dublin. He has also held a pre-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a post doctoral fellowship at Princeton University. His book All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Wright's writings have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Orbis, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, and The Washington Post, as well as a number of international newspapers and media outlets.

French President Emmanuel Macron clinched a major win in the country’s recent parliamentary elections, and as Germany looks toward federal elections in September, Chancellor Angela Merkel has a good shot at being reelected for a fourth term. With Britain leaving the European Union and the U.S. somewhat disengaging from the continent, the idea of a liberal democratic Franco-German engine leading the EU to a renewed position of strength is once again being discussed. The Cipher Brief’s Kaitlin Lavinder spoke with Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, to ask him what a Franco-German led Europe would like and whether it’s a real possibility.

The Cipher Brief: What are your thoughts on this idea of a Franco-German engine in Europe?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+