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All at sea

March 25, 2021

"This mistake is mine and mine alone."

Angela Merkel's apology for a German lockdown plan abandoned within 48 hours was a singular moment in politics. It adds to her reputation as that rare political animal, a principled leader, and probably won't do her personal legacy any harm.

But it's a different story for her party, plumbing new depths in the polls five months before a federal ballot that it must fight without the chancellor, its main electoral asset.

Merkel's mea culpa also shows how Germany, after its level-headed handling of the initial stages of the pandemic, is flailing around for solutions to a third wave of cases.

The shambolic events in Berlin this week are symbolic of Europe's struggles as more infectious versions of Covid-19 fill intensive care units from Lisbon to Budapest.

The coronavirus is also straining the limits of democratic politics.

Denied the vaccine stocks that the U.S. and the U.K. have secured and held onto, the European Union is clutching at straws. A joint statement with the U.K. at least seems to have eased immediate tensions over EU threats to ban exports of vaccines made on the continent.

But as EU leaders meet for a virtual summit today — where U.S. President Joe Biden will also speak — they know that voters need some kind of perspective. So we'll be told that vaccines will start arriving in earnest in April. Plans for vaccine passports will be agreed.

Germany's difficulties show that all of Europe, rich or poor, is in the same boat. If nothing else, the third wave makes the case for Europe to overcome its sluggishness and display unity in the face of adversity.  — Alan Crawford 

Protesters against lockdown measures clash with police officers in Kassel, Germany on March 20.

Photographer: Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images Europe

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Global Headlines

Debut performance | Biden holds his first press conference today since taking office, a high-stakes appearance on live television from the White House. As Justin Sink reports, the president will face tough questions about two recent mass shootings, a surge in migrant children at the U.S. southern border and the pandemic.

  • Republicans like former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo are already readying for possible presidential runs in 2024.
  • Unaccompanied migrant children will be housed on military bases in Texas as waves of people from Central America continue to arrive at the Mexico border.

Asylum seekers walk towards a U.S. checkpoint after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico on Tuesday.

Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images North America

Costly jam | A massive container ship is stuck in the Suez Canal for a third day, with LLoyd's List calculating the snarl-up has halted about $9.6 billion in daily marine traffic. Tugs and diggers are resuming work today to re-float the Ever Given, which is 400 meters long and weighs 200,000 metric tons, while as many as 185 vessels wait to transit through arguably the world's most important waterway.

Warning shot | North Korea fired its first ballistic missiles in a year, an early challenge for Biden as he forms his policy toward Kim Jong Un's regime. Japanese and South Korean officials said two ballistic missiles flew about 280 miles at an altitude of under 100 kms, a distance and trajectory suggesting they were similar to the nuclear-capable short-range missiles North Korea tested during Donald Trump's time as U.S. president.

Healthy distance | Boris Johnson said the U.K. may need tougher border measures "very soon" to safeguard the country's successful vaccine roll-out against coronavirus variants from continental Europe. The prime minister told lawmakers yesterday that while Britain depends heavily on cross-Channel deliveries of food and medicines, the government will "interrupt those flows if we think that is necessary to protect public health."

  • Calls for a referendum to reunify Ireland are growing amid the forces unleashed by Brexit and shifting demographics.

Overlooked war | Africa's biggest-ever private investment is in jeopardy. Matthew Hill and Paul Burkhardt lay out why an insurgency linked to Islamic State in northeastern Mozambique threatens to delay plans by energy giants such as Exxon Mobil to spend as much as $120 billion on its natural-gas industry.

What to Watch

  • One of Brazil's most powerful politicians told President Jair Bolsonaro to ramp up the response to one of the world's worst coronavirus crises or face the consequences.

  • Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he wants to promote more women amid speculation he's preparing to reshuffle the cabinet as sexual assault and harassment allegations plague his government.

  • African countries' easing of Covid-19 controls and the emergence of more transmissible variants fueled a second wave of infections more severe than the first, according to a study in The Lancet.

  • Clashes between Venezuelan security forces and illegal armed groups have sent civilians fleeing into neighboring Colombia.

  • Caught in a broader struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the conflict in Yemen has become one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

And finally ... Western retail brands in China such as H&M and Nike are increasingly caught in a Catch-22: If they embrace cotton from the contentious Xinjiang region, they come under attack in the West, while rejecting it risks a boycott in the world's second-biggest economy. The Communist Party is targeting companies over Xinjiang as Beijing seeks to impose real costs for those that criticize its human-rights record.

Farmers picking cotton in Xinjiang in October 2018.

Source: AFP

 
 

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