Germany is no longer Europe’s most troublesome player. It’s now an indispensable nation. The power of this transformation is personified by Chancellor Angela Merkel and her delicate political and diplomatic balancing act.
Should Assad fall, the ensuing chaos and difficulty will be immense, and calls will rise for U.S. humanitarian intervention. Ambitious initiatives likely will fail, but compelling arguments can be made for going in small.
Radicals of the democracy-promotion movement embody the very thing they are fighting against—a closed-minded conviction that they represent the one true path for all societies and thus possess a monopoly on social, ethical and political truth.
