BERLIN — Even before Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chosen successor announced this week that she would step aside, sending German politics into deeper disarray, there were complaints about German leadership in Europe.

Ms. Merkel lacked vision, was long the refrain of her critics at home and abroad. The chancellor of 14 years was risk-averse. Her nation, as a whole, had yet to shed the inhibitions that came with its history, leaving it unwilling or unable to take a decisive role in defending the multilateral system, even as President Trump has moved to trash it.

Those concerns will come into even sharper focus this week, with the opening on Friday of the annual Munich Security Conference, the foreign-policy world’s answer to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where analysts and diplomats from all over will gather to discuss the security challenges facing the world.

It is telling that, 30 years after German reunification, Germany and its stagnant government, split ideologically and with Ms. Merkel in her last year in office, will barely feature on the agenda. Ms. Merkel herself won’t be in Munich. But the German question will be a prime topic of discussion among those taking part.