By weaponising the natural gas on which Germany’s mighty industrial base relies, the Russian president is eating away at the world’s fourth-biggest economy and its third-biggest exporter of goods and at the same time, Germany’s largest trading partner, China, which bought €100bn ($101bn) of Germany’s goods last year, including cars, medical equipment and chemicals, is in the midst of a severe slowdown, too. Almost 80 years later Vladimir Putin might achieve some of what Morgenthau, whose parents were both born in Germany, had in mind. Do you think that Germany is likely to go back to agriculture ?

