Germany’s prosperity rested on a carefully balanced triangle of relationships with the world’s major powers for decades. Cheap Russian energy fueled its industry, China absorbed its exports and integrated German firms into global growth, and the United States guaranteed security while anchoring Germany to the western political and economic order. That model is now broken. Berlin has severed ties with Moscow, deliberately complicated relations with Beijing, and is increasingly distancing itself from Washington under a second, openly hostile Trump presidency. The idea that Germany can simply “de-risk” from all major powers at once, however, borders on illusion.
The collapse began with Russia. Germany’s decision to abandon Russian gas marked a historic rupture in a relationship that had underpinned the country’s post-Cold War economic success. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 accelerated a process that the government, particularly under Green economy minister Robert Habeck, had already embraced: ending what was framed as a dangerous dependency. The argument was that energy dependence made Germany vulnerable to blackmail.
Yet the economic shock was immediate and lasting. High energy prices weakened industry across the board, from heavy manufacturing to small businesses. Politically, the consequences were equally profound. Support for the far-right AfD surged after 2022, particularly in eastern Germany, where industries and households were hit hardest by the loss of Russian gas and oil. The rise of the AfD cannot be explained by migration fears alone; it is also rooted in economic insecurity caused by the energy rupture.
Having fallen out with Moscow, Berlin then turned to China. In 2023, the government introduced a new strategic mantra: “de-risking,” often paired with the more confrontational notion of “decoupling.” China was increasingly framed not as a partner but as a systemic rival. Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock publicly labeled China’s president a dictator and lectured Beijing with values-based rhetoric, a move that played well domestically but inflamed tensions.
The assumption behind this shift seemed to be that Germany could slow or discipline China by deliberately reducing economic ties. That assumption ignored reality. China has surged ahead in critical future industries, from electric vehicles and green technologies to semiconductors and advanced electronics. For years, China was a reliable and mutually beneficial trading partner for Germany. To abandon that relationship in the hope of constraining a rising power looks less like strategy than self-inflicted damage. Now the United States has become the third pillar to crack. Since Donald Trump’s return to power and his openly hostile rhetoric toward Europe, it has become clear that Washington itself is a major source of risk. Europe, and Germany in particular, remains deeply dependent on the US: on software and hardware, on financial infrastructure such as Visa, PayPal and Swift, on military protection, and increasingly on energy. If Elon Musk were to deactivate Starlink, Ukraine would face immediate and severe consequences. No other major power concentrates so much unpredictable leverage in the hands of a single political leadership.
Energy once again illustrates the dilemma. In 2024, 96% of the liquefied natural gas imported through Germany’s hastily built LNG terminals came from the United States. Across the EU, the American share of LNG imports rose from 5% in 2021 to 27%. Germany may have freed itself from Russian energy, but it has replaced one dependency with another—this time on a partner that openly uses economic power as a political weapon. The question practically asks itself: who, exactly, has made themselves vulnerable to blackmail?
Officially, Berlin and Brussels insist that diversification will soften the blow. New trade agreements are celebrated, whether with Mercosur or India, even though negotiations often took decades. Yet this optimism increasingly resembles self-deception. Other Western leaders are already adjusting course. Canada’s prime minister has described deeper ties with China as pragmatic diversification. Britain’s prime minister recently ended years of diplomatic distance, calling for “mature relations” with Beijing. Germany, by contrast, still clings to a moralized confrontational posture—at least rhetorically.
In practice, German business is moving ahead without waiting for political permission. According to the German Economic Institute, companies increased direct investment in China by more than €7bn last year, the highest level since 2021. At the same time, German direct investment in the United States fell sharply—down 45% during the first months of Trump’s second term. Markets, unlike governments, adapt quickly to risk. One genuine success story stands out: renewable energy. The expansion of wind and solar power has quietly become Germany’s most effective de-risking strategy. Around 64% of electricity now comes from renewable sources, energy that neither Vladimir Putin nor Donald Trump can turn off. Ironically, this is precisely the area most fiercely attacked by the AfD, which has called for dismantling wind turbines while claiming to protect nature. Polls show that more than 80% of Germans support renewables, suggesting that public sentiment is far more pragmatic than ideological debates suggest.
Complete independence from great powers is, of course, a fantasy. Autarky exists only in extreme cases like North Korea, where isolation is elevated to state ideology at immense human cost. Germany’s challenge is not to withdraw from the world, but to rebalance relationships realistically. Russia cannot be treated as a permanent pariah forever, China cannot be pushed aside as the world’s second-largest economy, and the United States cannot be ignored despite its volatility.
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