I live in Germany for over 6 years, and come from Russia. I don’t appreciate generalisation, but some things he mentioned just ring the bell. Some Germans I met definitely fit the description, but not the others.

I don’t think art here is complacent, but I also see how artists from outside of Germany (and generally, foreigners), often tune down their criticism towards Germany.

At work, my German colleagues are very sensitive if a foreigner criticizes late trains or long bureaucratic procedures. There’s a notion we should be grateful, and if we don’t like something, we should go back to places we like…

Germans themselves seem to be critical of their society though, so I wonder how it works from the inside.

Perhaps Ai Weiwei’s point is a perspective of an outsider who’s expected to express gratefulness and complacency.

It’ll still have plenty. It still trades outside of the West, it still has enough manpower. Russia would probably solidify it’s decline for decades, but it still have enough resources to squeeze for the rest of Putin’s lifetime. And, you don’t need to be a superpower to cause a lot of harm, if the intention is there.