
AICGS Profiles: Boris Pistorius
Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius currently serves as the German Federal Minister of Defense. Appointed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on January 17, 2023, Pistorius succeeded Christine Lambrecht following her …

Orbán’s Enablers
German Conservatives and the EU Council’s Unanimity On December 12, 2022, as the first news of Eva Kaili’s arrest and “Qatargate,” the European Parliament’s first major corruption scandal, broke, Hungarian …

Episode 73: 2022—A Year in Review
As 2022 draws to a close, AICGS President Jeff Rathke, AICGS Senior Fellow and Director of Society, Culture, and Politics Program Eric Langenbacher and AICGS Non-Resident Senior Fellow Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger …

An Anniversary for the Ampel Coalition
The End of the Beginning Tradition holds that the first anniversary in marriage is symbolized by paper on which the future will be written. The governing coalition in Berlin is …
Recent Authors
Support the insights you need into the German-American relationship.
Support Our Work
Feet to the Fire
Critique, Accountability, and Evolution in Germany’s Emerging Security Policy Debate If, after his Zeitenwende speech on February 27, Chancellor Olaf Scholz believed he had done enough to cement his legacy …

Restarting the Franco-German Engine
After months of very visible frostiness, the Franco-German tandem is working on a reset: Berlin and Paris have realized they cannot afford the relationship to degrade further. Regardless of shifts in …

Episode 72: Germany’s Foreign Policy Reorientation—A Zeitenwende Conversation with Roderich Kiesewetter MdB
On this episode of The Zeitgeist, AICGS President Jeff Rathke sits down with Roderich Kiesewetter, ranking member of the CDU/CSU faction in the Foreign Relations Committee of the German Bundestag, …

U.S.-German Futures Forum: U.S. Department of State Announces Partnership with American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University
The U.S. Department of State will partner with the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University (AICGS) for the U.S.-German Futures Forum. The inaugural Futures Forum took …

Scholz Goes to China
Much ink has already been spilled over German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s upcoming visit to China. A chorus of skeptics and critics in Germany, around Europe, and across the Atlantic have …

Episode 70: Germany and Systemic Competition with China and Russia—A Conversation with Johannes Vogel
On this episode of The Zeitgeist, AICGS President Jeff Rathke sits down with Johannes Vogel, Deputy Chairman of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the FDP’s Chief Whip in the …

The Grand Failure
Grand New Beginning? February 24, 2022, will go down in history as a watershed moment for Europe and not the least for Germany. The day Russia invaded Ukraine spelled the …

German and American Zeitenwenden
Shared Challenges When Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared in February that Germany was facing a Zeitenwende (a turning point) in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he stated that it …

Do We Need a Digital Bretton Woods?
The development of the Internet, and thus of the digital world, has had a transformative effect on the global economy. The transatlantic economy has been at the forefront of that …