German Chancellor: ‘The U.S. Claim to Leadership Has Been Challenged and Possibly Lost’

EXCERPT:

MERZ (via translator): "First of all, we see Russia's violent revisionism, its brutal war against Ukraine against our political order with daily cruel war crimes, but this is only the shrillest expression we see on a daily basis. We see other developments in the world, as well, that are different to what we in this room would have expected or discussed in the years before. China wants to be a leader in shaping the world, and it has paved the ground for that over many years with strategic patience. In the foreseeable future, Beijing could be on an equal footing with the United States in military term. China systematically uses dependencies of others, and it redefines the international order in its own favor. If there had been a unipolar moment after the fall of the Berlin, a unipolar moment in history, it has long passed. The United States' claim to leadership has been challenged and possibly lost.”