Germany's New Chancellor: Bad News for France, Good News for the US and the Rest of Europe

It took three weeks after the election for Germany to get a new government, but an agreement has finally been reached between the right-wing Christian Democrats and the left-wing Social-Democrats. Christian Democrat Angel Merkel will be Chancellor. From that position she will be able to soothe relations with the US, relations that were badly damaged by the previous Social-Democratic government. That will not be good news for France, which had been Germany's ally in attempting to establish the European Union as a counter to US global hegemony. But the situation for French pretensions is made still worse by the fact that the Social-Democrats will retain two critical ministries, Labor and Finance, from which they will be able to block critical economic reforms. The continued German economic slump that this promises will weaken the EU economically in its competition with the United States. This is equally good news for EU members states in the east, north, and south who oppose an EU dominated by the Paris-Berlin axis that had emerged under the previous German Social-Democratic government.