2025-06-10
11 分钟Welcome to Editor's Picks. I'm Charlotte Howard.
I'm the co-host of our American podcast, Checks and Balance.
You are about to hear an article we have chosen from the most recent edition of The Economist.
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This time they were invited.
On May 22nd, locals cheered as German tanks rolled through the streets of Vilnius,
the Lithuanian capital once occupied by the Nazis.
City buses flashed tributes to the fraternal bonds linking the NATO allies.
Even so, when the Bundeswehr's brass band struck up a rendition of Prussia's glory,
some of the German dignitaries assembled for the inauguration of their army's 45th Panzer Brigade felt a twinge of unease.
It wasn't until they saw the beaming faces of their Lithuanian counterparts that they were able to enjoy the show.
The armoured brigade, which will number 5,000 by 2027,
is Germany's first permanent deployment abroad since the Second World War.
It is also the starkest sign of the extraordinary turn taken by a country that took full receipt of the peace dividend after 1990,
sheltering under American protection,
as its own army withered and its commercial ties with Russia strengthened.
The Lithuania decision was taken in 2023 as part of the Seitenwende, or turning point,
in a security policy instigated by Olaf Scholz,
the then-chancellor, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The €100bn spending spree he unleashed has already given Germany the world's fourth-biggest defence budget,