Nicholas Goldberg: Why I won't cheer as Germany ends its antiwar experiment

In the first half of the 20th century, Germany was aggressive, expansionist and dangerous. Its legacy includes millions of needless war deaths and the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi regime.

After 1945, however, the country changed. Chastened, defeated and shamed, Germany demilitarized at the insistence of the victorious Allies and soon adopted a constitution banning "wars of aggression." Germans, to their credit, looked in the mirror, wrestled with their dark history and rejected violence as a tool of foreign policy going forward.

That new, improved national identity lasted a long time.

But now, eight decades