In comments made on 23 October 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin is reported to have suggested that the role of the United States had waned, along with that of Britain and France, while Beijing and Berlin – in terms of political and economic weight – were heading for superpower status. He reportedly said that Washington could no longer lay claim to exceptionalism and questioned why it would want to.
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In German politics, a strong party taboo was broken when Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Party joined with the centrist Free Democrat Party leader in Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich, to form a government with the support of the right wing Alternative for Germany. The breaking of the taboo might reflect the passing of the generation of Angela Merkel, shaped by the complex social, political and economic legacy of the Nazi past, a divided Germany, post-Soviet national reunification and the emergence of the European Union.
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