Announcing on Sunday that she will seek a fourth term in office, Germany's Angela Merkel faces perhaps the biggest test of her career: defending the European and trans-Atlantic status quo amid huge uncertainty for both.
Already chancellor for 11 years, she must now anchor a Western alliance shaken by Donald Trump's U.S. election victory, and bind together a European Union in which Germany has forged its postwar identity but which now risks breaking apart.
What is more, with the imminent departure of U.S. President Barack Obama, Merkel alone stands as the West's last great hope for liberal democracy — a mantle she must assume from a position of diminished standing at home, and which may prove too much.