Parting ways: the crisis in German-American relations

Parting Ways

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Parting Ways The Crisis in German-American Relations

Stephen F. Szabo

brookings institution press Washington, D.C.

about brookings The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. Its principal purpose is to bring knowledge to bear on current and emerging policy problems. The Institution maintains a position of neutrality on issues of public policy. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors. Copyright © 2004

the brookings institution 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 www.brookings.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Szabo, Stephen F. Parting ways : the crisis in German-American relations / Stephen F. Szabo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8157-8244-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Germany—Foreign relations—United States. 2. United States— Foreign relations—Germany. 3. Germany—Foreign relations—1990– 4. Anti-Americanism—Germany. 5. United States—Foreign public opinion, German. 6. Public opinion— Germany. 7. United States—Politics and government—2001—Public opinion. I. Title. DD290.3.S93 2004 327.43073'09'0511—dc22 2004019514 987654321 The paper used in this publication meets minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials: ANSI Z39.48-1992. Typeset in Minion Composition by OSP, Inc. Arlington, Virginia Printed by R. R. Donnelley Harrisonburg, Virginia

To my father,

Stephen Szabo, who has shown the way to so many, including his grateful and fortunate son

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

1

A “Poisoned” Relationship

1

2

From Unlimited Solidarity to Reckless Adventurism: Responding to 9-11

15

Partners in Contradiction: From the Election to War

34

4

Kulturkampf: A Clash of Strategic Cultures

52

5

Is It Bush or Is It America? German Images of the United States

79

3

6

Welcome to the Berlin Republic

104

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From Alliance to Alignment

131

Appendix Chronology of German-American Relations from September 11, 2001, through March 20, 2003

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Notes

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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his book really began in 1974, during my first professional encounter with Germany, thanks to the guidance of my dissertation mentor, Karl Cerny, and a generous stipend from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. I have kept a fairly steady interest in German politics, foreign policy, and German-American relations ever since. Needless to say, over three decades I have benefited from the encouragement and guidance of far too many friends and colleagues, both European and American, to thank here. I would like to single out a few, however, including David Calleo, my friend and colleague at the Nitze School; Steven Muller, President Emeritus of Johns Hopkins University; Jackson Janes of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies; Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution; Samuel F. Wells of the Wilson Center for International Scholars; Professor Emeritus Helga Haftendorn of the Free University of Berlin; Karl Kaiser of the German Council on Foreign Relations; Christian Hacke of Bonn University; and Christoph Bertram of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik. I also wish to thank the American Academy in Berlin and the Bosch Foundation, which provided me with an invaluable fellowship at the American Academy during the fall of 2002, and the academy’s inspired director, Gary Smith; Paul Stoop; and Marie Unger. Thanks also to the fellows who were in residence while I was there for providing both a stimulating intellectual environment and moral support. The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies has provided another crucial intellectual home for me and for many others who follow German and European affairs. Many thanks to all, Germans and Americans, who shared their time, inforix

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mation, and ideas with me as I tried to construct a contemporary history of this pivotal time in a pivotal relationship. And thanks to all my colleagues at SAIS for providing me with the best university environment any academic could wish for. I want to express my appreciation to everyone at the Brookings Institution Press for their advice, encouragement, and expertise, particularly the director, Bob Faherty, and the acquisitions editor, Christopher Kelaher. Special thanks go to Tanjam Jacobson and Eileen Hughes at Brookings, who shared the editing of the manuscript, and to my indispensable German graduate research assistants, Katharina Plueck, who did so much to shape the final manuscript, and Timo Behr, who worked ably on the beginning of the project. As always, I thank my wife Joan, who was there with me in Bad Godesberg when this began and continues to be my inspiration and support.

Parting Ways

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1 A “Poisoned” Relationship

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ow can you use the name of Hitler and the name of the president of the United States in the same sentence?” demanded the U.S. national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Only a few days earlier, on September 18, 2002, just before voters were to go to the polls in the most closely contested election in German history, Germany’s justice minister, Herta DäublerGmelin, had compared the methods of Bush with those of Hitler, charging that he was deliberately manufacturing a foreign crisis in Iraq to divert the American people’s attention away from domestic economic problems. Rice continued: “An atmosphere has been created in Germany that is in that sense poisoned.”1 Her outrage, shared widely by the American public, revealed how strained relations had become between formerly close allies. The German-American split was part of a larger crisis in transatlantic relations that began with the end of the cold war, increased with the coming to power of the Bush administration, and erupted with ferocity in the fall of 2002 over the war in Iraq. It reached its peak during the winter and spring of 2003. This proved to be a watershed year in a relationship that had been of central importance to the United States since the end of World War II. What began as a temporary tactical shift of the German chancellor toward Paris and away from Washington came to take on a more strategic significance. Europe had taken priority over Germany’s transatlantic tie with the United States. American power was now regarded with suspicion, not only as a stabilizing force in international relations. If the cold war ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, the post–cold war period in the German-U.S. relationship ended with the war in Iraq. Humpty Dumpty had fallen, and the pieces 1

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could not be put back together again. From the Bush administration’s point of view, Germany had become part of what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was to label “old Europe,” taking part for the first time in an active coalition against an undertaking that a U.S. administration thought was in its vital interest, in this case a preventive war against Iraq. From the German point of view, the legacy of the war in Iraq was that the biggest problem now confronting world order is U.S. power.

The Stakes The current rift between Germany and the United States should be viewed as the death of the canary in the coal mine, an early warning to both sides of the dangers of taking the other for granted and of assuming that their relationship is strong enough to withstand bad politics and bad diplomacy. It is also a reminder of the need to avoid both personalizing and sentimentalizing relations between states and to think instead in terms of both mutual interests and self-interest rather than friendship. The devaluation of the German-American relationship by both sides that followed the end of the cold war was inevitable, but if the relationship is further mishandled it could lead to a more open and even deeper split that would have major consequences for both countries, which are still important to each other in many key areas. Germany matters because Europe still matters. Europe may no longer be a high security priority for the United States, but it remains its most important and an indispensable partner in all significant global issues confronting Washington in the new century—the global economy, the environment, human rights and democracy, international development policy, high technology, and a range of other issues. As Samuel Huntington has pointed out, Europe is “the closest thing to an equal that the United States faces at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”2 Europe is not only a partner but a potential competitor. The European Union (EU), the heart of Europe, has the population base, the economic and technological capabilities, and the cultural and political attributes of a global power. In Joseph Nye’s term, Europe has the “soft power” that has increasingly become the basis of international influence in the postmodern world. As Nye rightly observes, “The key question in assessing the challenge posed by the EU is whether it will develop enough political and social-cultural cohesion to act as one unit on a wide range of international issues, or whether it will remain a limited grouping of countries with strongly different nationalisms and foreign policies.”3

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Germany, in turn, is central to the answer that Europe provides to this question. Working in tandem with France, it has long been the engine of European integration. Now that it is a unified country, questions have been raised about its continuing commitment to the project to build a more unified and coherent Europe. Will Germany remain on the postmodern track that has seen it deemphasize its national interests in favor of deeper European integration, or will its return to “normality” mean a return to a more nationalist orientation? And how will Germany balance its commitment to building a unified and cohesive European Union with the danger that its other compelling interest—enlarging the EU—could also fatally dilute Europe by expanding it to the point that it becomes so diverse as to lose its capacity to act politically? While Germany’s future course remains open, there is no doubt that Germany’s future will be crucial to Europe’s. However, whatever course Germany takes will be influenced by European as well as domestic factors. This is an especially plastic time in both European and German history. The European Union is engaged in creating something resembling a constitution at a time when it is confronted with redefining its identity in terms of both enlargement (Where does Europe end?) and in terms of immigration (What does it mean to be German or French in a time of both globalization and demographic stagnation in Europe, which has resulted in an influx or foreign residents and new citizens?). Meanwhile Germany is having to reshape its identity in the face of both European and German unification, while it deals with a growing foreign-born population of its own. Old fears of a return to what John Foster Dulles once called “the firetrap of European nationalism”—a firetrap that engulfed the United States many times in the twentieth century, from Sarajevo in 1919 to Kosovo in 1999—are largely gone, thanks to the success of the project to unify Europe. While a united Europe could become a peer competitor in the future, the prospect of European fragmentation and drift, however remote, holds greater danger for Washington than European unity. Yet there remains a real possibility that as Europe defines itself, it will do so against the United States, and here again Germany is crucial. During the crisis over war in Iraq, Germany abandoned its traditional policy of positioning itself between Washington and Paris to create a countercoalition with Russia and France against the United States. That was an entirely new tactic and it has major significance. If German leaders follow the French road toward an independent Europe that can act as a counterbalance to the American hegemon, there will be a real prospect of a split in the West, with implications for the broader world order and particu-

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larly for the U.S. position in it. It will further provoke the United States and feed the inclination of Washington—or at least of the Bush administration— to go it alone and to follow a “policy of disaggregation” that attempts to play on and exacerbate European divisions. If continued, this policy, which developed during the crisis over Iraq, will risk encouraging either the formation of a European counter power or the fragmentation of Europe. The stakes also are crucial for Berlin. With the loosening of the transatlantic ties, questions about German identity and its role in Europe, all of which had seemed settled during the cold war period, are now reopened. For the past five decades, Germany has shaped itself in the American image, subordinated its security policy to that of the United States, and used its ties to Washington to project its interests and power in a way that was not seen as threatening to its neighbors. The split over Iraq that occurred in Europe between a more pro-Bush faction led by Britain and a countercoalition led by France and Germany threatens many of the pillars of the success of German policy and opens up the possibility that the United States will form a new countercoalition against Germany in Europe.

Not Your Father’s Germany It was only thirteen years before the White House declared the relationship between Germany and the United States poisoned that George H. W. Bush, the father of George W., had called for Germany to be a “partner in leadership” with the United States at the end of the cold war. The gap between these two statements is dramatic evidence of how much has changed. The peaceful reunification of Germany as a democracy within the western alliance was the finest hour in the German-American partnership that arose from the ashes of World War II. Berlin, once the capital of the Third Reich, had become a symbol of liberty during the airlift of 1947–48 and again with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At the end of the cold war, the elder President Bush and his administration worked closely with Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans Dietrich Genscher, to unite East and West Germany. On October 3, 1990, German unification was achieved, due in large part to close German-American diplomatic cooperation despite resistance from France, Britain, and the Soviet Union, all of whom feared that a reunified Germany would upset the stable balance in Europe. In the years that followed, Germany and the United States worked closely together on such projects as the enlargement of NATO and the Balkan wars. While differences arose during the Clinton years, the relationship remained cordial.

A “Poisoned” Relationship

5

In their handling of German unification, George H. W. Bush and his administration presented a model case study in how to conduct subtle multilateral diplomacy. They patiently worked with numerous international partners and a former adversary, the Soviet Union, to shape an outcome that kept a unified Germany within NATO and close to the United States. The contrast with the approach of George W. Bush’s administration could not be greater. There is no doubt that Kohl’s successor as chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and his election campaign staff overreacted and opportunistically exploited the Iraq issue, but if the relationship has been poisoned, both sides have contributed. The second Bush administration made no secret of its desire to go it alone in Iraq rather than be slowed down by multilateralist Europeans, with their penchant for what both the White House and the Pentagon saw as “appeasement.” Not only had American policy and style changed dramatically from one Bush to the next, but Germany had changed as well. The younger U.S. president and his team came to learn that this was not his father’s Germany. It would have been unthinkable for a German cabinet minister to compare an American president to Adolf Hitler in 1990. What was most striking about Schröder’s election campaign was that criticism of an American administration would have such resonance in Germany. That was due not only to Washington’s radically new approach, but also to deeper, long-term changes in the U.S.-German relationship and in the two countries themselves. The key changes were the result of several factors: the success of the first President Bush’s diplomacy in helping to reunite Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of Russia as a major power, and the unchallenged predominance of American military and economic power. For their part, Germans were surprised to learn that the America they thought they knew and admired had been transformed by the horrific events of September 11, 2001, and their aftermath. From a high marked by Schröder’s pledge of “unlimited solidarity” with the United States and the outpouring of sympathy and support from millions of Germans in the immediate wake of the attacks, German public support for the United States dropped precipitously. In a poll taken in the summer of 2003, 19 percent of Germans believed it possible that the U.S. government was somehow involved in the attacks of 9-11, including almost a third of younger Germans.4 In addition, the German government was shocked at the callous disregard of Germany that the Bush administration displayed in retaliation for German opposition to the war in Iraq, which culminated in Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s relegation of Germany to “old” Europe.

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Most Germans believe that Bush is the problem, and once he and his right-wing administration are gone, the tensions will evaporate like “snow melting in the spring.”5 Likewise, many in the Bush administration, as well as their supporters in the media, believe that the split was due to the preelection opportunism of Gerhard Schröder and that once there is “regime change” in Berlin the old partnership will return and Germany will join “new” Europe. As two of the most vocal American neoconservatives, Richard Perle and David Frum, put it, “We are optimistic that once Chancellor Schröder leaves the scene, Germany will revert to its accustomed friendliness.”6 It is easy in an era of tabloid journalism throughout the mass media to ascribe differences and animosities to the personalities of the leaders involved, but in reality these conflicts were a mirror of deeper changes. The changes that have occurred have been at work since the reunification of Germany in 1990; Bush and Schröder simply served as catalysts. Neither the United States nor Germany need each other today as deeply as each did during the cold war. Washington now worries about the Middle East and Central and East Asia more than it does about Europe. Germany, united and free of a direct threat to its security, is increasingly focused on further developing the European Union. In addition, new generations of leaders on both sides are bringing their different historical perspectives to the relationship. Schröder and his generation came of age during the anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the late 1960s, and the generations that follow his will have little or no memory of the division of Germany and the U.S. role in defending Berlin. It does little good for the U.S. president’s national security adviser to remind Germans of their debt for what the United States did in the past, as Condoleezza Rice did. Gratitude has a short shelf life in international politics; as Bismarck once said, echoing the British statesman Lord Palmerston, “Nations have interests, not friends.” On the U.S. side, a generation of diplomats and policy experts experienced in German affairs is gone, and the ties created by U.S. military personnel and their families stationed in Germany grow weaker as the U.S. military presence there continues to drop. Finally, there are signs that a real gap in political and cultural values is developing along with a strategic gap, resulting in a rift so deep that it could signal the end of “the West” as a meaningful concept, or at least result in the creation of two Wests.

A “Poisoned” Relationship

7

Personality Conflicts and Strategic Interests Since the defeat of the Third Reich, the German-American relationship has been one of deep cooperation based on common interests, but is has had its share of serious policy disputes and personality conflicts. Neither side has lacked strong-willed leaders. The first postwar German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was an old man whose political career was shaped in the 1920s and 1930s, during the Weimar Republic. He had numerous confrontations with the young American president, John F. Kennedy, especially following the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Adenauer felt that the American president was too willing to accommodate the Soviets and too weak in his response to the building of the wall. A Rhinelander who always had looked to France, he turned to his generational counterpart Charles DeGaulle as an alternative to relying on the United States. In 1963 he signed the Elysée treaty on Franco-German cooperation as a means of shaping a new counterbalance to U.S. power. Just as Adenauer thought that Kennedy was too soft on the Soviets, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, worried over the détente policies of Chancellor Willy Brandt, known as Ostpolitik. Nixon was once heard to say of Brandt, “Good God, if this is Germany’s hope, then Germany doesn’t have much hope.”7 Personal and policy differences also strained the relationship between President Jimmy Carter and Brandt’s successor, Helmut Schmidt. Known as Schmidt the Lip for his bluntness, he made no secret of his contempt for what he considered Carter’s shifting policies and once charged that pinning down the American president was as difficult “as nailing Jell-O to a wall.” But when détente broke down after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 and Carter, pushed by a resurgent Republican right wing, took a hard line and ordered an embargo of the Moscow Olympic games in 1980, Schmidt went along because, he said, “We need the Americans in Berlin.”8 The most trying time in this generally close relationship came during the first term of Ronald Reagan’s administration. Reagan, like George W. Bush later, was regarded as a reckless cowboy whose stark anticommunism, talk of the “evil empire,” and jokes about bombing the Soviet Union were seen as dangerous and as jeopardizing West Germany’s interests in détente with the USSR and closer relations with East Germany. A serious crisis developed over NATO’s decision in 1979 to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Germany and other member countries in response to new Soviet missile deployments. (The decision was linked to NATO’s commitment to negoti-

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ate an arms control agreement with the Soviet Union that would limit or preclude the deployment of U.S. missiles.) Schmidt risked major opposition in his party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), to get support for the missile deployments and lost office after the Social Democrats failed to back him. It was only after the Christian Democrats, led by Helmut Kohl, took power in September 1982 that the deployments were approved. Yet in these and other cases of friction between Germany and the United States, the German chancellor voiced criticism but in the end supported American policy, unlike Schröder in the dispute over Iraq. In all of the cases cited, Adenauer’s “policy of strength” was based on a close alliance with the United States. He brought West Germany into NATO and allowed U.S. missiles on German soil only a decade after the end of World War II. When he had his dispute with Kennedy, the Bundestag inserted a pro-Atlanticist preamble into the Elysée treaty, undercutting its Gaullist intentions. Indeed, Adenauer was soon replaced by the Atlanticist Ludwig Erhard. Even in pursuing détente with the USSR and East Germany, Brandt based his Ostpolitik firmly on West Germany’s western alliance; indeed, West Germany would have been isolated if it had not pursued détente, because that was the prevailing course in the Washington of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, despite Kissinger’s concerns about Brandt’s policies To some extent Germans and Americans were lulled into a period of complacence by the close cooperation of Helmut Kohl with the senior George Bush and the latter’s call for Germany to be a partner in leadership. However, there were some warning signs of change in the relationship during the Clinton administration. Although Germany was a key partner in the administration’s management of the effort to enlarge NATO and adapt it to the post–cold war security environment, there was an ugly dispute when the secretary of the treasury, Lawrence Summers, blocked Chancellor Schröder’s candidate to head the International Monetary Fund. The Clinton administration’s arrogance over U.S. economic performance and its belief that the United States was a model for the West, if not the world, was on full display as Clinton hosted the G-8 economic summit in Denver in June 1997. There also were tensions over the security requirements the Americans wanted to impose in the construction of the new American embassy when the German capital was moved from Bonn to Berlin. This resulted in an open and sometimes nasty dispute between the U.S. ambassador, John Kornblum, and the Christian Democratic mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen. Kornblum reminded Diepgen about all that the United States had done for Berlin, wondering whether this was the thanks that it

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got; Diepgen responded with comments about Kornblum’s behavior, implying that the U.S. ambassador was acting like a proconsul of the Roman empire. It was a far cry from Schmidt’s resignation to the necessity of the American presence in Berlin.

Bush, Schröder, and the Failure of Leadership While the Bush-Schröder clash was part of a longer tradition of disagreement between Germany and the United States, it was more divisive because of the international and domestic environments in which it occurred. The end of the cold war and the emergence of both post–9-11 America and post–11-9 Germany (the Germans designate the date of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 11, 1989, as 11-9) had weakened the old buffers against the impact of leadership clashes. The personalities of leaders matter more when the environment is fluid.9 As one of the chancellor’s closest advisers put it, “Don’t underestimate the impact of the personalities of Bush and Schröder. Neither one wanted to take the first step and admit that he had made a mistake. Schröder wanted to avoid doing a Canossa—being kept outside the Pope’s door for days before finally being forgiven.”10 Bush, in turn, prides himself on taking decisions and sticking to them, and his administration is not known for admitting its mistakes. Yet in many ways the two politicians were polar opposites. Ideologically they were far apart, and their personal histories could not have been more different. As the chancellor’s adviser put it, “They were never on the same wavelength. Bush is very American, and Schröder never developed a deep understanding of what makes the U.S. tick.” Bush was born to privilege, in terms of both wealth and political power. In his early adulthood he lived off his family’s name and his father’s connections, the opposite of a self-made man.11 A Texas Democrat once described the first President Bush as a man who was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple; that description applied even more to his son. In sharp contrast, Gerhard Schröder’s father was killed in World War II soon after Schröder was born, and Schröder was raised by his mother, a cleaning lady. He got to the top strictly on his own, through determination and an acute sense of tactics and power. He was an entirely self-made—and frequently remade—man. As George W. Bush describes himself, he has a tendency to be emotional and to place great value on personal relationships, particularly on personal loyalty.12 He never forgave the Republicans who turned against his father when he ran for reelection. His deep and continuing anger over Schröder’s

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behavior precluded any serious attempt to limit the damage and give his German counterpart an opening to come back toward the United States, if not on Iraq then on other issues. Even as late as the summer of 2003, after Bush had pronounced the end of the military phase of the war in Iraq, he resisted attempts by Rice to get him to end the rupture with Germany.13 Bush and his advisers underestimated the depth of the changes that had occurred in Germany since unification. They thought that no German government would risk being isolated from the United States and were surprised when Schröder not only resisted U.S. policy on Iraq but went on to form a coalition to oppose it. They missed the assertiveness of the later postwar generations in Germany and the resonance that Schröder’s resistance would find in the wider German public. The White House assumed that taking a tough line against Schröder would assist his Christian Democratic opponents, and they overestimated the prospects for his defeat. Moreover, even after Schröder won the election, the White House seemed to conclude that it did not have to make any concessions to him and that he would return Germany to its traditional position between the United States and France. Once it became clear that Germany would not come around, Bush and his advisers moved toward a strategy of divide and conquer in Europe, symbolized by Rumsfeld’s old-versus-new Europe dichotomy. They were effective in playing off Spain and Italy as well as the new member states of NATO and the EU, notably Poland and Romania, against Paris and Berlin, but at the cost of further weakening the transatlantic alliance. The diplomacy of the Bush administration during this period is a case study in how not to lead. It was disastrous to American interests and to the country’s standing in the world. The administration failed to convince most nations of its case; worse, it created opposition rather than simple apathy, making it more difficult to obtain European support for the postwar reconstruction effort in Iraq. Rather than being “present at the creation,” as Dean Acheson described the American-led effort to shape a new world order after World War II, the Bush administration was present at its destruction. On the German side, Schröder also made a number of significant mistakes. If Bush overplayed a strong hand, Schröder overplayed a weak one when he stated that Germany would not support a war even if the UN Security Council issued a mandate. That was a striking break with the tradition of multilateralism in German policy and opened the door for future unilateral acts by Britain, Spain, and other members of the EU. Schröder in effect declared that German views and interests would trump the broader interests of supporting the credibility of the UN and the EU. By speaking of a “Ger-

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man Way” he reopened concerns in Europe about a new German nationalism and unilateralism, propelling the Poles and other east Europeans even closer toward the United States. His subsequent coalition with France and Russia only deepened “new” Europe’s worries of a condominium that would subordinate the interests of the other members of the EU to the interests of France and Germany. The German chancellor, along with the French president, bear a great deal of responsibility for the splitting of Europe, which the Bush administration then used for its own ends. When George W. Bush came to power, Gerhard Schröder had been chancellor for a little over two years. He brought the Social Democrats back after sixteen years in the wilderness of opposition, playing on voters’ fatigue with the “eternal chancellor,” Helmut Kohl, who had served longer than any chancellor in German history (and longer than Franklin Roosevelt served as U.S. president). Schröder offered himself as a safe alternative to Kohl, promising “to do things better but not differently.” He patterned his candidacy after that of Bill Clinton and of Tony Blair, calling for a “Third Way,” a nonideological softleft alternative, with “the New Middle” as his campaign slogan. As he talked about “running an American campaign” he was dubbed “Clintonblair.” What Schröder called “pragmatics,” or “learning from reality,” could be seen as opportunism. He told the American journalist Jane Kramer, “When reality collides with your political program, you have to consider that your political program could be wrong.”14 This approach was related to his personal background. Schröder scraped his way from the bottom of German society to its pinnacle solely through his own ambition, energy, intelligence, and remarkable determination. He did not follow the university education route, which most German political leaders did, taking instead the vocational education track and attending night school to earn his degree in law. Many of his peers in the SPD were radicalized in the student protests of the late 1960s, and they later engaged in a series of battles with the SPD’s workingclass trade union wing for control of the party. (These battles were similar to those fought in the U.S. Democratic Party during the McGovern revolt of 1972.) Schröder escaped most of this ideological conflict and emerged as a leader who changed positions as easily as he changed wives (he was in his fourth marriage when he was elected chancellor). He conveyed the image of a man with few friends and few emotions, a coolly calculating, poweroriented politician who saw politics as a means of self-assertion and recognition rather than as a matter of principle and ideology. Schröder saw himself as the CEO of Germany, Inc. His role model was not the visionary Willy Brandt, but Helmut Schmidt, der Macher, the one who got things done.

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Schröder does not appear to have strong emotions. He once told a journalist that personal relationships with other leading politicians are “helpful, but are not the precondition for successful foreign policies. . . . Personal relationships cannot be more important than interests. That is what dominates.”15 Unlike Bush, he does not bear grudges and thinks almost exclusively in terms of self-interest and tactical maneuvers. That was clear in his relationship with French president Jacques Chirac, who openly supported Schröder’s opponent, Edmund Stoiber, during the German election campaign. Yet after the election Schröder had no problem with deepening his relationship with Chirac and with France. In some ways, he may have been too grateful to Chirac for easing his isolation, and because of that he may have allowed his government to fall in step behind the French leader. While Schröder carried no anger or animosity toward Bush and respected him as a politician, he would not simply cave in to placate Washington, especially because he believed that doing so would weaken his position at home. To some extent his resolve on Iraq was the result of his opportunism. His unprincipled approach to politics had weakened him in the eyes of his own public, and his firm stand on Iraq helped to create an image of an unwavering leader. Moreover, Schröder reflects the assertiveness and confidence of his generation, as well as the perspective of a newly unified and changing Germany. As one German official put it, “It is absurd to think that Schröder’s generation will go to Washington to get its OK on the German government’s decisions. From this perspective, the White House has been too emotional about Germany. For Condi Rice and others, there was a ‘love affair’ based on their experience in German unification. They still think of Germany as West Germany and ignore the one-quarter of the German population that lives in eastern Germany. Germany is not simply a continuation of West Germany.”16 Gerhard Schröder, like George W. Bush, came to office with little experience or interest in foreign policy. He had spent most of his career at the local and state level in the state of Lower Saxony. As Jane Kramer wrote just before he was elected as chancellor in 1998, “He has a deeply provincial suspicion of anything beyond the psychic borders of his familiar world.”17 Like Bill Clinton, Schröder saw no real political payoff from foreign policy when he took office. He wanted to avoid the fate of Helmut Schmidt, a foreign policy leader who, like George H. W. Bush, lost interest in and the support of his more domestically oriented electorate. Schröder admired Clinton’s understanding of the need to focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs.” However, as foreign policy issues came to consume, by his own estimate, about half of his time, he soon

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13

learned the difference between being a governor and party leader and being chancellor.18 By the time of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Gerhard Schröder was no longer a foreign policy neophyte. Yet he remained a tactician, not a strategist. He continued to have the foreign policy vision of a governor whose primary interest was in trade, jobs, and the domestic costs and benefits of policy. He supported EU enlargement not out of a broad geostrategic vision, but because it provided markets and labor for Germany. He worked well with Russian president Vladimir Putin because Russia too was a marketplace for Germany. Yet he also learned from being chancellor during the Kosovo conflict that politics can have existential significance and that lives could hang on his decisions.19 Going against the grain of his party and its coalition partner, the Greens, he sent German military forces to Kosovo.

The Black Swan One of the most striking and disturbing lessons of the run-up to the war in Iraq was that even a relationship built on fifty years of close cooperation, extensive personal networks, and solid economic interests could deteriorate sharply in a matter of months. Leadership and personal relations matter. But the German-American relationship went bad for both personal and structural reasons. The most important long-term change has been the radical alteration of the strategic landscape that came with the end of the cold war. The relationship between Germany and the United States had rested on a solid strategic foundation: their shared perception of a common threat. In addition, West Germany was a divided, semi-sovereign country, dependent for its security on the United States. It was led by a succession of leaders who had been shaped by the tragic history of the Nazi period, World War II, and the reconstruction and phoenix-like recovery of the postwar years. These Germans were grateful to the United States, but they also needed the United States. They did not really trust themselves. They were weighed down by guilt over the war and by the realization that other nations feared their country. With the Soviet threat gone and Germany once again unified and sovereign, fundamental changes in the U.S.-German relationship were to be expected. New generations of leaders and voters, including 17 million former East Germans, have brought a new sense of identity. The impact of the history of the 1933–49 period has receded. To some extent, a certain “guilt fatigue” has set in, along with a declining sense of gratitude to the United States for its role during the cold war. Germans and Americans continue to

14

A “Poisoned” Relationship

share many political values, but they now seem more divided along social and cultural dimensions. The dispute over Iraq, then, was more than just a single policy difference that could be patched up later, perhaps by a different set of leaders. Taking a closer look at what happened may provide a look at the future. Iraq turned out to be a “black swan,” to borrow a phrase from Nicholas Taleb, a modeler of future scenarios—that is, an event that no one anticipates but whose consequences are transformative.20

2

From Unlimited Solidarity to Reckless Adventurism: Responding to 9-11

T

he Bush-Schröder relationship got off to a rocky start. On the chancellor’s first visit to Washington after Bush’s election, on March 29, 2001, the new president embarrassed him and his Green Party coalition partners by having the U.S. national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, announce half an hour before their meeting that the Kyoto Treaty on climate change was dead. That was followed by a series of blunt declarations from the new team in Washington denouncing a series of multilateral initiatives to which Germany was party, including the Chemical and Biological Weapons Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, to name just a few. It was clear that the conservative president and the Third Way chancellor were going to have problems. However, this state of affairs was quickly, though temporarily, to change. On September 11, 2001, Schröder was in his office in the massive new Chancellery in the still-under-construction government quarter in Berlin when one of his assistants burst in and told him to turn on his television.1 He watched the images of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and quickly realized the significance of what was happening. Yet he remained typically cool and analytic, methodically assembling his crisis reaction team. He sensed the longer-term implications of these acts of terrorism and considered calling new elections, given his concerns over the demands his government would now face and the fragility of his coalition. At 5:00 that afternoon he held a press conference during which he declared the “unlimited solidarity” of his government with the United States and its support of the invocation of article 5, the self-defense clause of the NATO treaty, by NATO at the initiative of its secretary general, George Robertson—without 15

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Responding to 9-11

prompting by the United States. He did this out of sympathy for the victims and because he understood that any hesitation on his part would isolate Germany from the United States and provide an opening to the Christian Democrats to accuse his government of being anti-American. He also believed that by providing support, Germany would gain the right to be consulted and thus could exercise a moderating influence on American policy.2 However, Schröder had reservations early on about the direction of U.S. policy. He had made it clear to a number of journalists that he was ready to support military action but that he also would listen to his own public and respect their reservations regarding such action. Because the terrorists, who were members of al Qaeda, had attacked a NATO ally, he could justify participating in retaliatory action against Afghanistan, whose Taliban-controlled government had supported al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, while they prepared the attacks and had refused to turn them over afterward.3 But when German foreign minister Joschka Fischer met with U.S. deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon in late September 2001, he was told that after the Taliban was removed, the next goal would be the elimination of Saddam Hussein.4 Wolfowitz further said that the only solution to the terrorist threat in the Middle East, and indeed the world, was to change the political equation in the region. Bush’s secretary of the treasury at that time, Paul O’Neil, and his chief of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, later confirmed that planning for regime change in Iraq had begun early in the Bush administration’s tenure.5 On learning of this conversation, Schröder was convinced that the U.S. position in Afghanistan would lead to a larger American presence in the Middle East. He could not support creating a tabula rasa in the region upon which the U.S. would write its own design. Schröder himself flew to New York to view the destruction at Ground Zero and then to Washington to meet with President Bush on October 9, 2001. At a joint press conference, the president praised him and his country for their role in the fight against terrorism: “There is no more steadfast friend in this coalition than Germany.”6 Schröder left with the clear impression that “they are more enraged than after Pearl Harbor.”7 The chancellor returned to a very skeptical and cautious German public. Reservations about supporting an American war on terrorism were especially widespread within his governing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens. These parties were in the forefront of opposition to the U.S. missile deployment in the 1980s and remained very reluctant to support the use of force under almost all circumstances. They had gone along with the chancellor and his Green foreign minister in supporting German participation in

Responding to 9-11

17

the Kosovo war largely on humanitarian grounds. Fischer had said at the time that his generation had learned two lessons from the Nazi past: no more wars and no more Auschwitz. When these two principles conflicted, the Germans had a moral duty to use force to prevent genocide. In the aftermath of 9-11, the German public had great sympathy for the victims of the attacks and for their families. More than 1 million people turned out in a demonstration of grief and solidarity at Berlin’s Brandenburg gate on September 14, 2001. The public was generally supportive of a measured U.S. military response, yet more ambivalent about Schröder’s call for unlimited solidarity (see chapter 3). Many were concerned that the United States would overreact and rely too heavily on military force, and they feared that war would spread beyond Afghanistan to ensnare Europe as well, making it a target for terrorist attacks and even pulling it into a wider war in the region. While a majority believed terrorism was one of the major problems facing Germany, their perception of the threat exceeded their support for the U.S. strategy for dealing with it. Schröder remained convinced that he had to support the Bush administration or risk isolating Germany. He put his government on the line on November 16 by forcing a vote of confidence over the issue of German military support for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. His government barely won, gaining a slim majority for authorizing the use of German forces in Afghanistan. The Red (SPD)-Green government deployed more than 2,500 ground forces to the theater of operations. It was to be the high point of German cooperation with the George W. Bush administration.

Signs of Troubled Times Ahead The Bush administration decided against bringing NATO, and Germany in particular, more fully into the war on al Qaeda, opting instead to go it mostly alone in the war in Afghanistan. According to Bob Woodward, who had access to the key players on the U.S. side as well as to some memorandums of conversations, in a principles meeting held on September 30, 2001, which the president did not attend, the issue of using a broader coalition came up: [National Security Adviser] Rice turned to the allies who were clamoring to participate. Getting as many of them invested with military forces in the war was essential. The coalition had to have teeth. She did not want to leave them all dressed up with no place to go.“The Aussies,

18

Responding to 9-11

the French, the Canadians, the Germans want to help,” she said. “Anything they can do to help. . . .” But Rumsfeld didn’t want other forces included for cosmetic purposes. Some German battalion or French frigate could get in the way of his operation. The coalition had to fit the conflict and not the other way around. . . . [CIA director] Tenet turned to Germany. . . . “The best thing the Germans can do is to get their act together on their own internal terrorist problems and the groups that we know are there,” he said. He was worried about more Germanbased plots.8 Clearly one of the lessons of Kosovo for the U.S. military and political leadership was to avoid another war by committee. The selectively multilateral phase of U.S. diplomacy ended with the president’s State of the Union speech on January 31, 2002, when he expanded the war on terrorism and issued a warning to the “axis of evil,” composed of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. German hopes that the administration would follow a coalition strategy began to give way to concerns about American unilateralism, which were evident well before 9-11. These concerns mounted as talk of war with Iraq increased in Washington. Moreover, CIA director George Tenet’s comment raised a crucial point: the enemy lurked within Germany itself. Al Qaeda had a number of Europebased cells, and the key planning for the 9-11 attacks had taken place in an al Qaeda cell located at Marienstrasse 54 in Hamburg. The German equivalent of the FBI, das Bundeskriminalamt, had kept the Hamburg cell under surveillance since 1999, as had the CIA. Nevertheless, Mounir Al Motassadeq, a key planner, and two of the 9-11 pilots, Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, were able to travel to Afghanistan for training, obtain visas to enter the United States, and contact flight training schools in the United States by phone and e-mail.9 The chancellor continued to support the U.S. strategy. In February, just days after the State of the Union speech, he met with President Bush in Washington and was told that there was no war plan for Iraq on the table. Schröder had no time for “theoretical discussions” and laid out four issues regarding any decision on Iraq. First, the alliance against terrorism should not be undermined. Second, there must be proof of an active link between al Qaeda and Iraq. Third, there needed to be an exit strategy. And fourth, there must be a UN mandate. Schröder wanted Bush to understand that these were high hurdles and implied that Germany would not necessarily agree with U.S. aims, but he was not explicit. Some diplomats date the beginning of the fatal misunderstanding between the U.S. and German lead-

Responding to 9-11

19

ers to this meeting. Schröder, they contend, made a decisive mistake: “He did not make it clear enough to Bush that this was a German no and thus left himself open to being misunderstood.”10 Schröder followed up in March, stating that any military participation by Germany would take place only with a UN mandate.11 On the plane returning to Berlin from Washington, Schröder told his aides that Germany could not play the same nonassertive and limited military role that it had during the cold war. Now and in the future it had to make a military contribution. This was consistent with a fundamental belief that he had brought with him to the chancellorship—that Germany’s foreign role should match its economic power and its growing geopolitical importance. This new self-assurance has been a leitmotiv of Schröder’s time in office. Germany was ready to take on more international responsibilities and expected in return to be taken more seriously by major international players.12 He told a German journalist in February, “I know that a German chancellor will not be welcome in the United States for the next twenty or thirty years if we withdraw our tanks from Kuwait.”13 In Europe, Schröder hoped to forge a common position in order to enhance the power and role of the European Union and act as a moderating influence on the Bush administration. But at the EU summit in Barcelona in March he realized that London and Paris were more interested in aligning with the United States than in shaping a common European position.14 Disappointed, the chancellor decided that Germany would not participate in this beauty contest.

The Storm Breaks The situation remained little changed until President Bush visited Schröder in Berlin on May 22 and 23, 2002. The visit later turned out to be one of the pivotal events in the unraveling of the Bush-Schröder relationship. What occurred during their meeting remains in dispute. The president’s visit had gone well. At a joint press conference, their personal relationship seemed warm and relaxed. The president appeared to go out of his way to praise the chancellor, saying, “I’m here to let the German people know how proud I am of our relationship, our personal relationship, and how proud I am of the relationship between our two countries. . . . One of the things I like about Gerhard is he’s willing to confront problems in an open way. . . . We’ve got a reliable friend and ally in Germany. This is a confident country, led by a confident man.”15 This unscripted statement was a manifestation of Bush’s

20

Responding to 9-11

belief in recognizing those who go out on a limb for him. The American ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, turned to Joschka Fischer and remarked that that was quite a statement, but that it would not go down well with the SPD. When the two leaders had met, prior to their news conference, they turned to the topic of Iraq. Their discussion was brief. The president told the chancellor, in effect, “You know my position and I’ll keep you posted,” but he said that no decision had been made. There was an implicit agreement that neither of them would make war with Iraq an issue before the German election, which was coming up in September.16 Once again, Schröder did not make his objections to German participation known to Bush. The American view of the thrust of both this meeting and the February meeting in Washington was that the chancellor had explicitly told the president that he would support a war as long as it was quick and civilian causalities were kept to a minimum. Their sense of what Schröder said was, “If you lead I will not get in your way, but be decisive, move quickly, and win.” One American present at the discussions stated that Schröder said that he did not have a problem with an engagement in Iraq as long as it did not interfere with the election. Bush assured him that nothing would happen before the election and that he would consult with the chancellor. Schröder responded, “That’s all I need to know.” The president had the clear sense that Schröder was with him. The problem was that no one knew what would happen or what being “with” the United States would mean.17 Iraq came up a number of times at a press conference at the conclusion of the president’s Berlin visit. The chancellor stated that the two leaders agreed that Saddam was a dictator who had to be pressured to allow the UN/IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) arms inspectors into Iraq to search for nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He stated that Bush said that “there is no concrete military plan of attack on Iraq.” He continued, “We will be called upon to take our decision if and when, after consultations—and we’ve been assured that such consultations are going to be happening—and then we’ll take a decision.” The president later reiterated that he had “no war plans on my desk” and confirmed Schröder’s words: “The Chancellor said that I promised consultations. I will say it again: I promise consultations with our close friend and ally.”18 The assertion that Bush made about not having any war plans on his desk was misleading. As Bob Woodward’s second book on Iraq points out, Bush had asked Rumsfeld in November of 2001 to prepare a war plan for Iraq and the president had been briefed on the plan by his field commander,

Responding to 9-11

21

General Tommy Franks, in February of 2002.19 So when Bush told Schröder that he had no war plans on his desk, the operative words were “on his desk.” The German version of the meeting is less clear. Almost two years later, when Schröder was asked about the May meeting in an interview with the Washington Post, he said, “We did not enter into any commitments. We had talks. We met and talked.”20 Sources close to the chancellor said that whatever he might have said about Iraq and the election campaign was based on the understanding that he would be consulted before any change in American policy was made. Schröder left the meeting with the feeling that not much had changed from his previous meeting with Bush in March and that Bush would keep him posted. Their May meeting in Berlin marked the last warm point in the U.S.German relationship under Bush and Schröder. As the summer progressed, several major developments occurred that changed the situation and led to the crisis in the larger relationship. Within a month of the Berlin meeting, on June 1, the president gave an important speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point in which he outlined for the first time a robust new U.S. approach to security, a clear precursor of the new strategy that would be published on September 1 (see chapter 4).21 Then in July, Schröder made a tactical decision regarding his strategy in the election campaign. In the spring he had told the SPD leadership that the party would fight the campaign alone and not in coalition with the Greens. By midsummer, though, he had become desperate and realized that he needed a broader coalition of the left. Nevertheless, all his tactics, including an attempt to paint his opponent, Edmund Stoiber of Bavaria, as a rightwing extremist, had failed. While he remained personally popular, his party and the coalition were trailing badly in the polls.22 He was searching for an issue when suddenly two emerged: devastating floods in eastern Germany and the mounting prospect of war in Iraq. August proved a pivotal month. Germany was engulfed by a series of floods, the worst in a century, with the eastern portion of the country bearing the brunt of the damage. The floods created a rare moment of national feeling and reminded voters why they had elected Schröder in the first place: because of his competence. The chancellor quickly sensed that the disaster had raised his standing as a leader in the east, giving him the opportunity to get enough votes in the former East Germany to sink the neocommunist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and consolidate the left within the SPD-Green coalition. The PDS, like other former communist parties in the old Warsaw Pact states, had been able to refurbish its image and hang on as

22

Responding to 9-11

a force in the region. While it had almost no support in the western part of the country, it maintained its position in the east by playing on the region’s deep economic problems as well as continuing resentment over what many Ossis (eastern Germans) considered to be an unfriendly takeover by the Wessis (westerners). Since German electoral law permits representation in the German parliament for any party that gains at least 5 percent of the national vote, the significant support that the PDS received in the east allowed it to maintain a national presence and to divide the left, taking votes from the Greens and the SPD. In order for Schröder to govern if he was reelected with a diminished parliamentary majority, he would have to make some arrangements at the national level with the former communists, who were still deeply unpopular in the west. His party had already done so at the state level in a few eastern states. However, his handling of the floods increased his popularity in the east to such an extent that he had now a realistic prospect of pushing the PDS below the 5 percent threshold and thus of forcing it out of the Bundestag. If that could be accomplished, the chances of the SPD and the Greens gaining a majority were greatly improved. Iraq played into this strategy because of the possibility of mobilizing the pacifists and nationalists of eastern Germany against intervention there. The Schröder campaign had polled the electorate on the Iraq issue and saw it as a wild card that could be played as a last resort. Polls had shown that eastern voters were less attached to Germany’s relationship with the United States than were western voters and that they had more concerns about war and NATO. A combination of frustration and opportunism thus led Schröder to draw Iraq, and by implication the Bush administration, into the campaign. As Steven Erlanger, then the Berlin bureau chief of the New York Times, later stated, “He did not expect to win the election and admitted that his biggest problem was with his own party. He had to unite the SPD and get votes in the east and to do this he pushed the peace button and it worked.”23 Both Schröder and Fischer had already sensed great uneasiness among crowds at campaign rallies about both the prospect of war and the perceived recklessness of Bush, and the audiences they addressed applauded any assurances that they would not be pulled into a war in Iraq.24 On August 1 Schröder told the SPD presidium and then later stated on television: “We hear unsettling news from the Middle East regarding a new danger of war. I think that we demonstrated after September 11 that we will react decisively but prudently, that we will show solidarity with our partner, but that we are not available for adventure, and we stand by that.”25

Responding to 9-11

23

The turning point came in an election speech that Schröder delivered in Hanover on August 5: “Pressure on Saddam Hussein, yes. We must get the international inspectors into Iraq. But playing games [Spielerei] with war and military intervention—against that I can only warn. This will happen without us. . . . We are not available for adventures [Abenteuer], and the time of checkbook diplomacy is finally at an end.”26 This was followed by an interview with the respected news weekly Die Zeit on August 15, in which he openly criticized the Bush administration for not consulting with Germany and declared the need for a “German Way.” He began to use charged phrases like “reckless adventure” and made it clear that there would be no German military contribution to a war in Iraq, even though the Bush administration had not asked for one. However, to Schröder, the point was not what Germany might be asked to do militarily, but rather the adventurism of the Bush administration as perceived by German voters. As Der Spiegel was later to observe, the time of “unlimited solidarity” came to an end in Hanover on August 5, and Schröder became the Chancellor of Peace. “For Willy Brandt, the German-American friendship was ‘a cornerstone in the turbulent events of international politics.’ For his political grandchild, it was the last theme in the turbulent events of an election campaign.”27 The chancellor, being a politician with a well-developed feel for power and an extraordinarily keen sense of the public mood, began to build on the positive responses he received from his audiences, escalating his rhetoric in response to the situation. In late July, his national security adviser, the veteran diplomat Dieter Kastrup, urged him to weigh his words carefully. The chancellor acknowledged that he understood what Kastrup had to say, but added, “I have to win the election.” Kastrup was never consulted on the issue again, and domestic political advisers played a larger role in shaping Schröder’s tactics. It is clear that this was more a political than a foreign policy decision, made by Schröder himself, and that there was never a full policy discussion on the German response to U.S. policy on Iraq within the government, even within the Chancellery or the Foreign Office. This does not mean that Schröder did not have real objections to the Bush strategy, only that the rhetoric used was much stronger given the electoral stakes. Schröder and his foreign minister had expended a lot of political capital and taken substantial risks to support the wars both in Kosovo and in Afghanistan. The chancellor knew that while his coalition had gone along with these policies, many of its members had done so reluctantly and with-

24

Responding to 9-11

out conviction. He knew that opposition was growing within the SPD and the Greens, and the Iraq issue gave him a way to recapture and mobilize his base. At much the same time, in mid- to late August, leading figures in the Bush administration began to escalate their rhetoric on war in Iraq. Richard Haass, at that time director of policy planning in the State Department, met with Condoleezza Rice in July 2002 to discuss the pros and cons of making Iraq a priority and was told to “save your breath—the President has already decided what he is going to do on this.”28 Questions and growing criticism of the proposed policy were raised by leading Republicans, including Representative Dick Armey and Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar, as well as traditional realists who had been in the earlier Bush administration, including James Baker, Lawrence Eagelburger, and Brent Scowcroft.29 This questioning, coupled with concerns raised by Democrats in the House, put the Iraq hawks on the defensive. In order to regain the initiative, the leading and most influential hawk, Vice President Richard Cheney, gave a tough speech on August 26 in Nashville, Tennessee, to a veterans’ group that left the impression that there was indeed going to be a preventive war.30 Listing Saddam’s numerous past violations of the inspection regime, Cheney asserted, Against that background, a person would be right to question any suggestion that we should just get inspectors back into Iraq, and then our worries will be over. Saddam has perfected the game of cheat and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception. A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions. On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow “back in his box.” He concluded with a call for regime change: In other times the world saw how the United States defeated fierce enemies, then helped rebuild their countries, forming strong bonds between our peoples and our governments. Today in Afghanistan, the world is seeing that America acts not to conquer but to liberate, and remains in friendship to help the people build a future of stability, self-determination, and peace. We would act in that same spirit after a regime change in Iraq.31 Anyone reading or listening to this address could reasonably conclude that the vice president was calling for regime change in Iraq, with or without

Responding to 9-11

25

a UN mandate. The speech had the effect, in the words of one high-ranking German official, “of kicking the ball to the German government”; it was a decisive event. Chancellor Schröder was enraged by Cheney’s speech because, contrary to the agreement with Bush, he had not been informed on developments and had learned everything he knew from the media. He had worked for three and a half years against an anti-U.S. pacifist streak within his own coalition and was angry that this was the thanks he got from Washington. He was not convinced that Bush had made the case for war and was worried by the principle of preemption and its implications under international law. If the United States could act preemptively, why couldn’t other countries, such as India or Pakistan, under the pretext of an imminent danger do the same? Cheney’s sharply unilateralist speech went against the deep multilateralist grain of German strategic culture. It also shifted the emphasis from controlling weapons of mass destruction to regime change—a new development in the eyes of Berlin. There was disagreement in the chancellor’s office and the Foreign Office over whether the speech represented the president’s thinking. Kastrup, Schröder’s top foreign policy adviser, did not see it as a major change in tone or substance, and no serious analysis of the speech was requested by the chancellor. The newly named defense minister, Peter Struck, saw no room for German influence. “The discussion is no longer over whether, but only over how and when and with what consequences.”32 The German Embassy in Washington reported that the speech was as an attempt to legitimize both in the United States and abroad the necessity of regime change in Iraq.33 When the German ambassador to Washington, Wolfgang Ischinger, tried to convey this to the chancellor, he was informed that the chancellor was on the campaign trail and could not take a call of that nature on an insecure line. Ischinger had noted a paragraph of the speech that appeared to leave open all options: In the face of such a threat, we must proceed with care, deliberation, and consultation with our allies. I know our president very well. I’ve worked beside him as he directed our response to the events of 9/11. I know that he will proceed cautiously and deliberately to consider all possible options to deal with the threat that an Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein represents. And I am confident that he will, as he has said he would, consult widely with the Congress and with our friends and allies before deciding upon a course of action. 34

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Responding to 9-11

Nevertheless, in his second televised debate with Stoiber, on September 8, Schröder stated that “the American vice president, evidently with the support of the president, two weeks ago changed the objective—namely that Saddam will be toppled without any relation to the question of the inspectors—and secondly, had made this very clear without any form of consultation. I am for being consulted not only over when and how, but also over whether.”35 Cheney’s speech was clearly manna from heaven from Schröder’s perspective. It allowed him to argue that his promise to Bush not to make Iraq an issue in the German election campaign was based on the goal of controlling WMD and not on the goal of regime change. That promise was now seen to have been broken by Cheney. On September 4, 2002, the chancellor agreed to grant an extended interview to Steven Erlanger of the New York Times. There were no advisers present, only Schröder’s wife, Doris, and it was clear to Erlanger that Schröder was speaking his own mind. Schröder felt that taking the unilateralist approach was no way to treat allies, and he believed that the United States was being disingenuous about the WMD issue and wanted to use the UN inspections issue as an excuse for regime change. In reference to the Cheney speech, Schröder asked, How can you exert pressure on someone by saying to them: Even if you accede to our demands, we will destroy you? I think this was a change of strategy in the United States—whatever the explanation may be— a change that made things difficult for others, including ourselves. . . . Consultation cannot mean that I get a call two hours in advance only to be told, “We are going in.”36 When Erlanger asked whether he thought Cheney spoke for the president, the chancellor responded, “I am not qualified to say. The problem is that he has or seems to have committed himself so strongly that it is hard to imagine how he can climb down.” The view of the speech in the White House was that although it was militant, it had to be understood in the context of the tumultuous period in which it was delivered. Moreover, the president and Condoleezza Rice had inserted a moderating paragraph in the speech, quoted previously, stating that no final decision had been made and holding out hope for a diplomatic solution. The White House did not think this would pose a problem for Schröder. However, as Erlanger later put it, “Vice presidents don’t freelance.”37 The speech seemed to be a clear signal that the Bush administration was changing the objective to regime change and was doing so without any

Responding to 9-11

27

real consultation with its allies. Information that later became available, especially Rice’s advice to Richard Haass, noted above, seems to confirm that the decision for war had been made before Cheney’s speech in Nashville. The speech presented Schröder with an ideal opportunity to escalate his opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq. He told an audience in Munich shortly after the Cheney speech, “The Americans should speak less about military questions and more over the withdrawal from the Kyoto treaty.” And in Berlin, he told another audience that an attack on Saddam was exactly the type of “adventure” that Germans should have no part of.38 Karsten Voigt, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Office, contends that whether the Cheney speech was U.S. policy or not is irrelevant, because in a parliamentary election, voters ask candidates about their positions, and candidates must respond simply. Support for Bush’s policy on Iraq had been sliding, and Cheney’s speech, as well as others by Rumsfeld, immediately intruded into the German campaign. Therefore the U.S. view that Schröder, in an earlier interview, was saying no to a request that had not been made—that is, for a military contribution to a war on Iraq—was beside the point, because parliament would have to decide whether to participate in a war, and the electorate wanted to know where the candidates stood on the issue. German chancellors had been put in difficult positions in the past because of perceived American belligerence. This time, however, Schröder did not waffle but simply said no: “To speak now about an attack on Iraq is erroneous. Germany will not participate in such a war under my leadership.”39 In contrast, his opponent, Edmund Stoiber, wavered and offered qualified support, provided that there was a UN mandate for action. Two of Stoiber’s leading spokesmen on foreign policy, Wolfgang Schäuble and Friedbert Pflüger, at first spoke of options and threats against Baghdad, and even of the possibility of an attack on Saddam without a UN mandate, but they were quickly contradicted by the leader of Stoiber’s party in the parliament, Michael Glos: “There is no intention on our part to participate anywhere in the world in a military adventure.”40 Such indecisiveness and conditionality hurt Stoiber severely in his second televised debate with Schröder. Many voters saw Schröder’s stubbornness as a sign that he had principles and that he would not bend (nicht wackeln). For someone who was widely viewed as a tactical opportunist who had no core values or convictions, that was a real plus. By August 23, days before the Cheney speech, the SPD had finally taken the lead in the polls. Suddenly the Schröder campaign was revived. As a member of the presidium of the Social Democratic party had

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commented immediately after the Cheney speech, “We have a great campaigner for us sitting in the White House.”41 The same message was delivered to Secretary Rumsfeld by a leading foreign policy adviser to Stoiber, retired General Klaus Naumann, at a meeting in early September: “If Cheney keeps this up he will be voted chairman of the SPD.” Rumsfeld shrugged and said, referring to the infighting within the administration over Iraq policy, that it was only politics. A close confidante of Cheney, when asked whether anyone considered the impact the speech might have in Germany, replied, “ Why should he care about the reaction in Germany?”42

Fanning the Flames Schröder’s position was still seen in Washington as largely campaign induced. Even before Schröder’s August 5 speech in Hanover, there was a sense on the National Security Council that he might play the anti-Bush card and that he was looking for ways to assert German sovereignty and interests. His interview with the New York Times in September brought the campaign home to the United States, especially when it was followed up by remarks such as his declaration that “I will not click my heels” in response to orders from Washington.43 Ambassador Coats, already alarmed in early August, had paid a visit to the Chancellery to convey his personal concerns. In order to avoid making this a larger issue, he met with the chancellor’s chief of staff and his national security adviser rather than with Schröder himself. During the meeting he told both Peter Steinmeier and Dieter Kastrup that they should not shoot the messenger but should listen to the message. He expressed his personal concerns about the serious consequences that Schröder’s line could have for the broader German-U.S. relationship. He made it clear that he was not speaking officially. Ambassador Coats believed that the Chancellery decided to leak the meeting and make it appear that he was trying to order the Germans to comply with the Bush line. The SPD’s leader in the Bundestag, Ludwig Stiegler, compared Coats with the former Soviet ambassador to East Germany, defiantly stating, “He does not determine the foreign policy of the German government.” Stiegler later compared Bush with a Roman emperor: “The USA is like the new Rome. Bush acts like he is Caesar Augustus and Germany is treated like the Provincia Germania.”44 Coats saw this as yet another indication that the SPD was going to tap into changing public attitudes toward the United States and play the anti-American card to divert attention from the economic problems facing Germany.

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To the White House, such statements indicated that the SPD had been unleashed to go after the United States. When President Bush met with Joschka Fischer and Jürgen Chrobog (formerly ambassador to Washington and now one of Fischer’s state secretaries) in New York around the time of his UN speech on September 12, he demanded, “When is your damn election over?” Here, again, German and American portrayals of Bush’s tone diverge, with German officials describing it as a light comment while American officials relate that it reflected real anger; one White House staffer cited George Bernard Shaw’s epigram that anger begins as a joke. However, the U.S. administration still held out hope that the relationship would be repaired and avoided taking sides in the German election (although Stoiber’s campaign implored it to do so, and Chirac had made his support for Stoiber clearly known). Then, in the last week of the campaign, came Herta Däubler-Gmelin’s remarks. Schröder’s minister of justice had been widely viewed as a competent, if not overly bright, official who had clear misgivings about the Bush Justice Department and was very critical of the use of the death penalty in the United States. On the Wednesday before the election, she met with a group of about thirty trade unionists in her constituency, in the university town of Tübingen. Feeling either exhausted from the long campaign or relaxed among a small group of supporters—and perhaps unaware that a journalist was present—she compared Bush’s tactics with those of “AdolfNazi.” According to the journalist, she had been asked by some of the unionists why Bush was pursuing such a policy toward Iraq. DäublerGmelin replied, “Bush wants to get away from his domestic political difficulties. This is a much-loved method. Hitler also used it.” She also referred to the American legal system as “lousy” and said that Bush, the former chief executive officer of an oil company, would be in jail if the United States had a law against insider trading.45 The comparison was inaccurate (Hitler’s domestic policies were popular), and the analogy better fit Schröder’s campaign, but the fact that a German politician would compare an American president with Adolf Hitler prompted outrage in the United States. It was this, more than Schröder’s statements on Iraq, that prompted Condoleezza Rice to say, I would say it’s not been a happy time with Germany. There have clearly been some things said way beyond the pale. The reported statements by the interior [sic] minister, even if half of what was reported was said, are simply unacceptable. How can you use the name Hitler

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and the name of the president of the United States in the same sentence? Particularly, how can a German, given the devotion of the U.S. in the liberation of Germany from Hitler? An atmosphere has been created in Germany that is in that sense poisoned.46 This term “poisoned” was repeated by Donald Rumsfeld. A National Security Council staffer called the German Embassy in Washington to say, “Now the glass has overflowed.”47 The White House spokesman described the remarks as “monstrous and inexplicable,” and the White House expected the chancellor to fire the justice minister immediately. Schröder was enraged by Däubler-Gmelin’s words, but he was only two days away from an election. He had just recently fired his defense minister over a personal scandal and had lost a large number of ministers in his fouryear term; he could not afford to lose another so close to the voting. He also was not sure whether the report was true, as she had at first denied saying what was quoted. In any case, Schröder sent the following letter to President Bush on Friday, September 20: I am taking this means to let you know how very much I regret that through the alleged remarks of the Justice Minister an impression was left which deeply wounded your feelings. The Minister has assured me that she did not make these alleged statements. She has also stated this publicly. I would like to assure you that there is no place at my cabinet table for anyone who connects the American President with a criminal. The White House spokesman has correctly noted the special and close relationship between the German and American people.48 The letter was disastrous. It was viewed by the White House as justifying what had happened rather than apologizing. As one White House staffer put it,“Bush felt personally betrayed. Her comments did not come out of the blue. Schröder created the general atmosphere, which encouraged these sorts of comments. During the final week there were more comments than just those of Däubler-Gmelin. Schröder was riding the Iraq issue. His letter to the President was insulting. He said, in effect, “I’m sorry that you feel angry about this.” The letter was not seen by the German Foreign Office or the German ambassador to Washington before it was sent, and some in the Chancellery had argued for a stronger reaction, including a personal telephone call to the president. The chancellor declined to follow this advice and later admitted that this was a mistake. Had he fired the justice minister immediately, it

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would, according to a White House official, have been a good sign and might have saved the situation. Rice’s strong reaction not only reflected the president’s anger but may also have been calculated to help defeat Schröder in the last week of the campaign.

What’s an Election Among Friends? In any case, Schröder went on to win the closest election in postwar German history by a total of 6,000 votes. German concerns over the Bush administration’s approach toward Iraq were based on its perceived unilateralism but also on the fear of war and a strong aversion to the use of force, a legacy of World War II that remains within broad elements of the German population, especially among older women.49 The use of the Iraq issue had a number of positive effects for the SPD’s campaign. First, it shifted attention away from domestic economic issues. Second, it mobilized the SPD and Green constituencies, many of whom were deeply skeptical of the use of military force and of the motives of the Bush administration in Iraq and elsewhere. Third, it not only helped gain the votes of many women, but also appealed to voters in eastern Germany (especially PDS supporters) who either were pacifist or simply did not trust the United States and who tended to equate its role in Germany with that of the Soviet Union in former East Germany. Finally, Iraq also allowed Schröder to take advantage of his leadership edge over Edmund Stoiber in an area where an incumbent chancellor always has the advantage over a challenger: security policy.50 The renewed emphasis on the leadership question at the end of the campaign reinforced the normal reluctance of German voters to change leadership, especially such a short way into the term of a new chancellor (by German standards, at least; Helmut Kohl served sixteen years). German voters believed that the SPD was better able to deal with the United States than was the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) (40 percent placed their confidence in the SPD, while 27 percent chose the CDU). As a report on the election results by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, a leading German opinion polling firm, concluded, “In no other policy area is the competence of the parties to deal with the issue so striking as in this one.”51 Schröder had a comfortable lead over Stoiber in the electorate’s confidence in his ability to represent German interests. A majority (52 percent) thought that the chancellor was better able to realize German interests in foreign policy, while 21 percent gave the edge to the challenger (21 percent thought there was no difference between the two).52

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One clear result of the German election campaign of 2002 was that the personal relationship between the reelected chancellor and the U.S. president was irreparably damaged. The damage was deeper in Washington than in Berlin, largely because of George W. Bush’s highly personalized approach to foreign policy. Bush believed that Schröder was a man of his word after he risked a vote of no confidence in November 2001, but when Schröder turned against Bush in the summer of 2002, the president lost all confidence in Schröder’s trustworthiness. But the estrangement was also part of the foreign policy style of the Bush administration, which believes in toughness and prefers being feared or respected to being loved.53 The White House and the Pentagon leadership wanted to send the message that there is a cost to opposing the administration, in part to punish Germany, but also to deter any future opposition from other nations. The White House also was worried about domestic opposition to war in Iraq and feared that a concerted antiwar effort by the Europeans would undermine support at home. With congressional elections only a little over a month away, polls indicated that a majority of the U.S. public at the time would support a war only if the United States had the support of its allies. The embassies of Germany and France in Washington, as well as their UN missions in New York, were receiving e-mail and letters of support from Americans who opposed the war, urging continued resistance to the administration’s efforts in this direction. The president’s speech to the UN on September 12, which had become the focal point in the struggle within the administration and among its allies over Iraq policy, was designed in part to respond to such concerns. Those who wanted to take a multilateral approach through the United Nations, most prominently Colin Powell and Tony Blair, wanted the president to use the speech to declare that the United States and Britain would seek a new UN resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein comply with UN/IAEA weapons inspectors under the threat of UN-sanctioned use of force if he failed to do so. Blair had to go the UN route to get the domestic political backing he needed to participate in a war against Iraq. Those like Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, who feared that going to the UN would only allow Saddam to prolong the crisis and avoid serious disarmament, wanted the president to simply announce that the United States did not feel that it needed a new UN resolution because Saddam was in violation of standing resolutions. Finally, after twenty-four drafts of the speech, the president called for a new UN resolution instead of taking the more explicitly unilateral option urged by Cheney.54 While the international

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response was positive, it did not have much of an impact in Germany or on German perceptions of Bush’s policy, which had been shaped by Cheney’s August speech. On the German side, fall 2002 marked the first time since the end of World War II that a German chancellor had opposed U.S. policy on a crucial issue. As Steve Erlanger summed up the situation: He did this in part on principle, and in part out of electoral opportunism in appealing to popular anger created by the Bush people. However, the German government simply capitalized on anti-Bush feelings, which were created by the Bush people themselves. The gratuitous unilateralism of the Bush Administration created the climate, and this was something they never understood. The flaunting of international law, the sense of Gulliver unbound—these people wanted to be unbound, and they should not have been surprised that they got the reaction they did.55 Many observers in both Washington and Berlin believed that once the election was behind them, the two governments would patch things up and recreate the cooperative relationship that had existed before August 2002. Yet rather than letting up, the crisis spiraled even further out of control.

3 Partners in Contradiction: From the Election to War

W

hen it became clear that Schröder had been reelected, Bush sent no congratulatory message. This break in the normal protocol, a staffer in the chancellor’s office later recalled, “had a snowball effect that resulted in a period of noncommunication at the top.”1 The day after the election, the chancellor met with the left wing of his parliamentary party and told its foreign policy spokesman, Gernot Erler, that his decision on Iraq was fundamental and unshakable. To change his approach would cost him all credibility with his party and the voters, and he had no mandate to do so.2 That promise took on added weight soon after, when he began to break his campaign promises in the areas of economic and social policy and suffered a loss of public confidence in his government right at the beginning of his new term. He could not afford to wobble on Iraq. The White House viewed the political faction of Schröder’s advisers (those from his party as opposed to the foreign policy specialists of the government bureaucracy) as “defiant.” The Bush administration believed that the chancellor was not interested in making amends and that he wanted to keep the Iraq issue alive. It was now clear that any hopes for a quick reconciliation between Germany and the United States were dashed. As a top German diplomat put it, “It is not good if the two bosses are not talking to each other. The assistants feel they have to act the same way.”3 A series of frosty encounters followed. As the German defense minister, Peter Struck, approached Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Warsaw on September 24 and 25, 2002, Rumsfeld asked the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, to draw Struck away, as the White House had told Rumsfeld not to talk to him.4 Rumsfeld later walked out during Struck’s speech to the defense ministers. 34

From the Election to War

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The main channel of communication between the two countries at this time was through their foreign ministers. The personal relationship between Colin Powell and Joschka Fischer was good, in spite of the great differences in their personal histories. When they first met, soon after Powell became secretary of state, Fischer told him that he had demonstrated against the United States while Powell was a soldier stationed in Germany. Powell simply responded, “Amazing, isn’t it?”5 Fischer traveled to Washington on October 30, but he met only with Powell and for less than one hour. He was not welcome at the White House. The idea of a meeting between Schröder and Bush was discussed, but Powell let Fischer know that there would be no private meeting at the NATO session in Prague in November. Powell made it clear that Germany could begin to heal the rift with Washington by taking command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) contingent in Afghanistan and supporting Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. But little progress was made toward neutralizing the “poison” in the relationship, although neither Powell nor Fischer used that noxious term. Fischer’s U.S. visit was followed by a short telephone conversation between Bush and Schröder on November 8 when the chancellor called to congratulate Bush on the Republican victory in the congressional elections. In that conversation, Bush told Schröder that relations between allies are based on trust and reliability and that he hoped those foundations could be rebuilt. As one White House staffer put it, Schröder was clearly not ready in November to heal the rift and did not offer anything concrete. At the NATO summit in Prague, the two leaders exchanged only a cursory handshake. The German government made an attempt to repair the relationship without surrendering its position on Iraq. Schröder announced at the end of November that the United States would have unrestricted freedom to use its airbases in Germany in the event of a war, and he agreed to supply Israel with Patriot missiles so that Israel could shoot down any missiles that Saddam might launch against it, as he had done in 1991 during the Gulf War, though they caused little damage. He also agreed to provide security for U.S. bases in Germany in case of war. The Bush administration did not respond in the same spirit, instead blocking Germany’s attempt to chair the UN committee that oversaw the sanctions imposed on Iraq.

The Struggle over Resolution 1441 Begins The situation stabilized somewhat as the Bush administration focused on diplomacy in the UN, attempting to forge a Security Council consensus for a new UN resolution on Iraq and giving the UN/IAEA weapons inspection

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regime a chance. However, this proved to be the lull before the storm, in which the German-American confrontation shifted to the arena of the United Nations. The UN Security Council set the stage on November 8, 2002, by unanimously approving Resolution 1441, which stated, “The Security Council . . . recalls . . . that the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations.”6 The struggle over the final wording was largely between France and the United States. It centered on whether the United States would have the authorization of the Security Council to go to war with Iraq if the latter was found to be in “material breach” of the UN inspection regime. The United States wanted Resolution 1441 to authorize military action without a further resolution if Saddam was found to be lying or cheating in regard to his WMD capabilities or if he failed to allow the UN inspectors free rein in looking for weapons. The French, along with Russia and China, all permanent members of the Security Council, wanted to have two resolutions, 1441 to state the demands on Iraq with regard to inspections and a second to determine what to do if Iraq did not comply or was found to possess weapons. That approach would avoid any “automaticity” of American military action and preserve the integrity of the Security Council in making the final decision for war by leaving that decision to the council, not to the U.S. government.7 The final resolution, which gave Iraq a “final opportunity” to comply with its disarmament obligations and reminded it of “serious consequences” if it did not, was ambiguous. Resolution 1441 “failed to establish an agreed mechanism if members of the Security Council disagreed over whether Saddam’s actions constituted compliance.”8 In other words, the one-versus-two-resolutions issue was not really resolved but simply postponed. According to White House officials, in mid-December the president and his closest aides made the final decision that military action was inevitable (although, as noted in chapter 2, Richard Haass was led to believe the decision had already been taken by July). The French were aware of this decision by mid-January, after Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, President Chirac’s chief diplomatic adviser, met with Condoleezza Rice on January 13.9 By a twist of fate, the Germans held a seat on the UN Security Council during the crucial period leading up to the war, and its ambassador to the UN, Gunter Pleuger, served as chairman of the council in January 2003. Being a nonpermanent member, Germany did not have a veto; the five permanent members (France, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and Russia) did. France therefore had a leading role on the council and Germany had only a supporting role to play.10

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The Germans were caught between their interest in improving relations with the United States and Schröder’s uncompromising position on a war in Iraq. In an interview with Der Spiegel in late December, the German foreign minister was asked whether it could be assumed that Germany would vote against a war in Iraq in the Security Council. Fischer responded, “That’s something no one can predict as no one knows . . . which accompanying conditions the Security Council will attach. It remains certain that we will not participate militarily in an intervention.” When he was asked later in the interview whether he agreed with his party, the Greens, that an attack on Iraq without a UN mandate would be against international law, he responded, “This discussion is somewhat moot. Resolution 1441 leaves open whether the Security Council needs to pass a second resolution. But with Resolution 1441 there is no longer any lack of a [UN] mandate.”11 Fischer’s comments prompted a strong reaction in Germany. Some in the Social Democratic (SPD) and the Green parliamentary groups were worried that the government was backing away from its strong opposition to the war, while the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary group was equally critical that the German position implied both abstention from a war and support for it in the Security Council. The chancellor was facing two important state elections, in Hesse and his home state of Lower Saxony, in early February and was worried that any perception of waffling on this issue would harm his party’s chances. He received a call from the SPD leader in Lower Saxony, Sigmar Gabriel, warning against any shift in the Iraq policy. He also was determined to stay close to the French, and in a telephone conversation on January 4, 2003, he and French president Jacques Chirac agreed that they would maintain close concordance of their policies in the important UN committees. Fischer then backtracked from his earlier comments, supporting the French in the Security Council in January and during a ministerial-level Security Council meeting in New York on January 20 to discuss terrorism. Colin Powell had been asked by the French foreign minister, Dominique De Villepin, to attend the meeting but was reluctant to do so and agreed only after De Villepin assured him that the issue of Iraq would not come up. (Unknown to De Villepin, in a twelve-minute meeting between Bush and Powell at the White House a week earlier, Bush had told Powell that he had made the decision to go to war and had asked for his support; Powell had given it.12) However, the issue of Iraq did come up, but it was raised first by Fischer, who warned of the disastrous consequences that war in Iraq would have on regional stability and the fight against terrorism. This led the Russ-

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ian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, to raise his concerns about the direction of U.S. policy on Iraq. Then, after being questioned on Iraq policy during the press conference that followed the meeting, De Villepin implied that France would use its veto in the Security Council to block a war. That infuriated Powell, who was angry both because the French had misled him on the subject of the meeting and because he believed that they had reneged on their agreement to support the United States on Iraq if Saddam did not comply with Resolution 1441. The Washington Post described the meeting as “the diplomatic equivalent of an ambush.”13 As one analysis later concluded, “It was the moment when the differences between France and the U.S. over Iraq became inescapable.”14 This assessment was shared by U.S. officials, one of whom described this as a tipping point in the UN saga.

Goodbye, Washington: Schröder Chooses France The crisis deepened after yet another state election campaign statement by Schröder, on January 21 in the town of Goslar in Lower Saxony, when he declared that Germany would not support any UN resolution that legitimized a war. As in August, the chancellor spoke without consulting his foreign policy team and created a minor rupture with his foreign minister. One German academic analyst later concluded, “After Goslar, Germany was no longer taken seriously as a partner by the United States, and friendship could no longer to be spoken of.”15 However, the Bush administration had given up on Schröder long before the Goslar speech. The real impact of the speech was felt by Chirac: it may have pushed him over the edge, to adopting a policy of confrontation with the United States. The day after, the French and German leaders met at Versailles, along with an unprecedented joint delegation of 900 members of the French and German parliaments, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Elysée treaty of French and German cooperation signed by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer on January 22, 1963. (Ironically, that treaty was an attempt to create an alternative to the close relationship between Germany and the United States.) It was remarkable how close Schröder and Chirac had become after the German general election. Chirac had made no secret of his preference for Edmund Stoiber during the campaign and was both shocked and dismayed when Schröder prevailed. But he was able to take advantage of Schröder’s postelection isolation from Washington to reinvigorate and lead a fading Franco-German alliance. In the months leading up to the Versailles ceremony, the aides of the two leaders worked more closely on

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common policies than they ever had before. This new alliance was evident as early as October 2002, when Schröder agreed on a new financing arrangement for EU farm policy that followed French guidelines. That was a major change, as the German leader had often made clear his unhappiness with Germany footing the bill for such policies, which brought more benefits to other countries than to Germany.16 And at Versailles, Schröder issued a statement with Chirac declaring that war in Iraq was a last resort and would require a UN Security Council decision. On the plane back to Berlin he told his aides, “Now you see, you can rely on the French.”17 At the same time, the French ambassador to Washington, Jean David Levitte, and the German deputy chief of mission to Washington, Eberhard Kölsch, urged American officials attending a reception in Washington to commemorate the treaty not to go for a second resolution at the UN. Levitte reiterated that recommendation in a separate meeting on February 21 with the deputy national security adviser, Steven Hadley.18 However, their advice, which represented yet another shift in the French and German position, was rejected. Moreover, British prime minister Tony Blair had made it clear that for domestic reasons he could not support a war without a second resolution. In Washington, these developments further tipped the balance toward the hawks in the administration. The leading moderate, Secretary Powell, already aware of Bush’s decision to go to war, took a harder line. He now stated that he saw no need for further inspections before moving ahead with enforcing the UN resolutions. The New York Times reported on January 23, 2003, that the Bush administration would demand that France and Germany and other skeptics agree publicly that Iraq had defied the Security Council. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld labeled France and Germany “a problem.” The day of the Versailles meeting, he told a group of foreign journalists, “You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe. You look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe. They’re not with France and Germany on this. They’re with the United States.”19 American efforts to create a countercoalition within Europe intensified and led, on January 30, to the publication in the Wall Street Journal’s European edition of the Letter of Eight in support of Bush. Coordinated by Tony Blair and the Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, the letter also was signed by six other European supporters of Bush’s policy. It was followed by another letter of support, this time from the leaders of the Vilnius 10, a group made up of the Baltic states and other eastern European and Balkan countries that were aspiring to join the EU. Crisis ensued as Europe

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became more divided that at any time in the recent past. Neither Javier Solana, the EU high representative for foreign policy, nor Chirac and Schröder were informed of the letters beforehand. This episode may have marked the beginning of a major shift in traditional U.S. policy from supporting European unity and integration to encouraging disaggregation, the “divide and conquer” strategy. The prospect of a bloc led by France and Germany opposing what the administration believed was a policy of vital national interest to the United States had shaken a lot of strategic assumptions on both sides. Schröder was outraged with the European leaders who had signed the letters, but he disclaimed any responsibility for triggering a wave of unilateralism in Europe, declaring, “It is not the result of my policies that Europe is split.”20 At the same time, the Pentagon activated more than 20,000 members of the National Guard, and American troops were streaming into the Persian Gulf region. A force of 150,000 was expected to be on the ground by midFebruary. These troop movements put pressure not only on Saddam Hussein but also on President Bush, given the costs of maintaining such a large presence in the region. He could not afford to let the troops sit there for very long, and the longer the delay, the more likely it became that a war would have to be fought in Iraq’s intense summer heat. In early February, the SPD suffered major losses in the state elections, showing that the Iraq issue did not have the impact on them that it had on the national elections. On February 5, Secretary of State Powell laid out the case against Iraq for violations of the weapons inspection in a speech to the UN Security Council. Foreign Minister Fischer argued that the evidence presented was not conclusive, and he supported his French colleague, Dominique De Villepin, in a call for giving more time to the inspectors to do their job. The next day, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld added yet more fuel to the fire by lumping Germany with Libya and Cuba on the issue of Iraq, saying that all three had refused to help either in a war or in the subsequent reconstruction of Iraq. On February 8, Rumsfeld and Fischer had a confrontation at the annual Wehrkunde (international security) conference in Munich when, in an emotional moment, the foreign minister reiterated that he was not convinced by the evidence presented by the Bush administration. It was perhaps not coincidental that the top American NATO commander, General James Jones, had briefed the U.S. congressional delegation at the conference about plans to shift U.S. forces from Germany to bases in eastern Europe. Forceful statements by such figures as Senators John McCain and Joseph Biden demonstrated the deep bipartisan anger in the United

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States over the French and German position. When Fischer returned to Berlin he told his aides, “There is nothing we can do any more.”21 On February 9, Schröder told Chirac, “I will bring Putin along. Then we can create a trilateral relationship.” As Der Spiegel later concluded, “A new phase began. Germany no longer fought against isolation, but shaped a new alliance.”22 On February 10, France, Belgium, and Germany blocked NATO preliminary defense support for Turkey in case it was attacked by Iraq, on the grounds that approving aid would imply support for war in Iraq. This set off a short but intense crisis within NATO, leaving many with real concerns about its future viability. The opposition Christian Democrats were generally critical of the positions taken by the Red (SPD)-Green coalition. They argued that these actions were isolating Germany and undermining both its influence and its security. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, the leader of the CDU, Angela Merkel, described Germany, France, and Belgium’s move to block aid to Turkey as undermining “the very basis of NATO’s legitimacy.”23 During a subsequent visit to Washington, on February 24 and 25, she supported the view that the danger from Iraq was real and that pressure must be kept on Saddam Hussein. She stated her support for the Letter of Eight and was critical of the Schröder government’s policy of criticizing the United States.24 Merkel received an especially warm welcome from U.S. officials, including meetings with all the key figures, except Bush. It was a clear signal that Washington was hoping for regime change in Berlin. However, the opposition party’s support of U.S. policy was not as solid as Merkel’s. Polls indicated that while criticism of Bush’s policy was greatest among the supporters of the governing Red-Green coalition, there was little enthusiasm for a war in Iraq among Christian Democrats. The party has a large Catholic base, and many followed the Pope and the Catholic Church in opposing military action. E-mails to party headquarters were running eight to one against Merkel’s course on the war. Many in the CDU leadership were wary of challenging a chancellor in a time of war, especially one who had the support of 85 percent of the population on the issue. Merkel herself received much negative press for criticizing the chancellor while in the country whose policies he was opposing. The CDU, therefore, remained divided and rather ineffectual in challenging Schröder’s position. Merkel, however, remained critical of Schröder’s stance even after the war began, arguing that “no one knows whether unity in pressure on Saddam Hussein would have forced him to disarm.” In her view, Germany’s place was on the American side.25

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Failure at the UN After the “ambush” of January 20 and Powell’s speech at the UN on February 5, events began to build to a climax in the United Nations Security Council in March. UN ambassador Gunter Pleuger pursued an aggressive strategy, organizing the ten nonpermanent members (E-10) of the Security Council into a bloc. When he had assumed the chair of the Security Council for the month of January, he had heard many complaints from the other nine nonpermanent members about their treatment by the permanent five (P-5). He had told their UN ambassadors that if they said yes to France or to the United States too soon, they would lose their leverage. If they got together as a group and exchanged views, they could maximize their leverage with the P-5 nations. The P-5 then would have to make their case to the E-10. The U.S. team saw this as a deliberate strategy to create a bloc against the U.S. position. They felt they had been making progress with a number of the E-10 members individually and believed that Pleuger was lobbying against them. When they asked a number of senior German Foreign Office officials whether he was following his government’s instructions or his own inclinations, they were told that he was doing much on his own. Yet it seemed clear that Pleuger—besides having direct access to Joschka Fischer—was too senior an official and had too much clout to be speaking for himself; therefore what he was doing must have represented the foreign minister’s views and German policy. Furthermore, the U.S. administration was convinced that the Germans had pulled the French into taking a more radical stance against the United States instead of playing their traditional, and expected, P-5 role of ultimately compromising to preserve the integrity of the Security Council and thus their status as a P-5 member. The administration believed that France would want to avoid being isolated in a minority position within the Security Council. From this perspective, German support on the Security Council, combined with Schröder’s position, gave Chirac and his foreign minister, De Villepin, more room to maneuver, because they knew that they would have a majority behind them. Powell’s speech on February 5 had little impact on the French, Russian, and German view that the inspectors should be given more time to do their work. Powell’s case had been countered by the reports of the chief UN inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, to the Security Council on February 14. Blix’s first report, on January 27, had been quite harsh in regard to Saddam’s disarmament efforts, but his February 14 report indicated improvement in Saddam’s cooperation with the UN inspectors. In addition, he and ElBaradei challenged a number of allegations made by Powell in his

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February 5 speech about specific Iraqi violations. This strengthened the French case that the inspectors should be given more time. However, Bush and his advisers wanted to go ahead with military action and feared that futher delays would push them to postpone it until the fall in order to avoid fighting in the heat of summer, giving Saddam more time to wiggle out of the inspections regime. Yet Bush’s key European allies, Blair and Spanish prime minister Aznar, needed to have a second UN resolution specifically authorizing military action in order to gain domestic support for any agreement to go along with Bush. On February 22, the three leaders and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, another Bush ally, agreed to go for a second resolution that would state that Saddam had failed to comply with Resolution 1441, thus allowing military action to be taken.26 The next month was filled with a major lobbying effort, especially by Blair, to gain the support of a majority of the Security Council for the second resolution. By mid-March, the Bush administration felt that it had the nine votes needed for the second resolution, but on March 14 the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, made a statement indicating his reservations and “the U.S. position went south.”27 Mexico got cold feet and pulled back into neutral territory. From the administration’s point of view, that was the final tipping point in the UN saga. The German view was that the United States and the United Kingdom were never close to a majority on the Security Council; the fact that they had not won over any of the noncommitted members was a sign of the weakness of their position. The Bush administration at this point was pursuing what one State Department official called “sacrificial diplomacy”(sacrificing its time and prestige for Blair). Its aim going into the UN had been to do enough to get the United Kingdom on board while avoiding a French veto. By the end of the first week of March, Blair’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had concluded that the United States and the United Kingdom would not gain a majority on the Security Council and should abandon their efforts for a second resolution. Blair was saved by Chirac, who stated on March 10 that France would veto a second resolution, giving Blair a facesaving way out. On March 18, he finally got support for going to war from the House of Commons. 28 The war began with joint U.S. and British airstrikes in Iraq on March 20. On the eve of the war, Gerhard Schröder addressed the German nation: The world finds itself on the eve of a war. My question was and remains: Does the extent of the threat that emanates from the Iraqi dictator justify the use of war, which will bring death to thousands of

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innocent children, men, and women? My answer in this case was and remains: No! Iraq is today a country that is controlled extensively by the UN. What the Security Council demanded in terms of steps toward disarmament is being increasingly accomplished. That is why there is no reason to interrupt the process now. My government, together with our partners, has worked hard toward the ever-greater success of Hans Blix and his colleagues. We have always understood this as our contribution to peace. I am deeply moved by the knowledge that my position matches that of the overwhelming majority of our people and also that of the majority of the Security Council and the peoples of this world. I doubt whether peace will still have a chance in the next few hours. As desirable as it may be for the dictator to lose his power, the aim of Resolution 1441 is to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.29 The ad hoc coalition that was shaped in the UN lasted from the build-up to the war through its aftermath. Germany joined with France and Russia in opposing a second resolution authorizing military action and pleaded for more time for the inspectors. At the same time, however, it allowed the United States unconstrained use of its bases in Germany and provided security for them. It expanded its military role in Afghanistan to include almost 2,000 troops and assumed command of the ISAF once the force came under NATO’s authority. It also contributed to a new NATO Reaction Force, which was established after the Prague NATO summit in the fall of 2002 to undertake counterterrorism operations. In short, Germany’s political and diplomatic opposition to the war did not impede its military cooperation in efforts outside Iraq.

Drivers of a Crisis Yet the political and diplomatic dispute that had arisen between Germany and the United States over Iraq was described by Henry Kissinger as “the gravest crisis in the Atlantic Alliance since its creation five decades ago.”30 A number of key factors lay behind its evolution. First, the German government, including the Foreign Office and the intelligence establishment, did not share the American assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. In the words of a senior German Foreign Office official, The need for a coalition against terrorism was understood, but Iraq was seen in a more rational and legalistic way. It was not seen as being

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in the framework of international terrorism. German intelligence shared assessments with British and other European intelligence and found no provable link between al Qaeda and Iraq. In addition, we did not believe Iraq had new weapons of mass destruction. The assessment was that some old pre-1998 weapons of mass destruction survived but that there was no evidence that new ones had been added. The threat perceived by some in the U.S. government was not perceived as a threat by Germany. People in the German government felt ignored and overrun by the U.S. administration, and there was no attempt at a real threat and risk analysis.31 The Bush administration’s disinclination to consult with others with regard to Iraq contrasted with its approach on missile defense early in its term. There had been a great deal of skepticism in Europe over both the desirability and the feasibility of missile defense. The administration sent high-level teams to Europe in 2001 to discuss the issue and the reasons for their strategic thinking. These consultations were extremely useful and substantially reduced European opposition to the project. One senior German diplomat observed that if this approach had been tried with Iraq, it could have made an important difference. “Bush did not consult before the decision for war was taken. Strategy remains credible only as long as the military threat is credible. There is a need to escalate, but the timing and calibration are very difficult, and in this case the military agenda overtook the political one.” He observed that although Schröder may have been moved by electoral considerations, his comments on Iraq were not off the cuff; they reflected a strategic consensus in the Foreign Office that the risks of a war in Iraq outweighed the benefits: In the Foreign Office, we assessed a number of likely scenarios. We thought that a war would destabilize Iraq itself, as it was a fragile state that had always been run in a dictatorial manner. We worried about the impact of a Kurdish state on Turkey, Iran, and Syria. If Iraq fell apart, the strategic role of Iran would be strengthened or a theocratic Shiite government would emerge, neither of which were desirable scenarios. Then there was the Israel factor—what would happen to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Would Saddam strike at Israel? What would be the impact on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt?32 Schröder, a politician in deep trouble on the domestic front, was an opportunist when it came to seizing on an issue that he thought would make a crucial difference in the election, but he was not betraying his principles

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or his assessment of the situation when he opposed Bush, although his manner and language were opportunistic. This tension led to diverging approaches regarding to the legal avenue to take. Germany agreed that there had been a material breach of the disarmament regime by Iraq but maintained that the principle of proportionality had to be observed—that the punishment had to fit the crime. The German government would have agreed that if weapons of mass destruction were found, then force could be used. The chancellor’s remarks at Goslar were quickly redressed by the Foreign Office in a statement by the chancellor on NATO aid to Turkey, in which he stated that force could be used as a last resort. If Iraq had attacked Turkey, Germany would have supported efforts to defend Turkey. And if inspections had been given more time, the German government could have gone back to its people, said that it had done all that it could, and then acceded to the U.S. military action. There was deep skepticism early on regarding the quality of intelligence on which the U.S. arguments were based. The German delegation at the UN, led by veteran diplomat Pleuger, believed that the intelligence was based on false evidence. The British government’s reliance on bad data from a decade-old PhD dissertation was one example. The case of the mobile laboratories allegedly used to move biological weapons was another. The original information on the mobile labs came from Italian sources, and the German government had warned the United States that it was not credible information. Secretary of State Powell, however, used that evidence in his February 5 speech at the UN; it was refuted by the chief UN inspector, Hans Blix, five days later. As a senior German diplomat closely involved in the events later concluded, “We were faced with a situation in which we did not believe there were justifiable grounds for war. Despite the U.S. pressure, the Security Council member states did not change their position.”33 These assessments proved to be far more accurate than those of the Bush administration, as later events were to prove. The Bush administration, for its part, remained skeptical that giving inspections a few more months would have changed the French and German positions, and it believed that doing so would simply have given Saddam more time to escape from the inspection regime. Vice President Cheney expressed this skepticism in Nashville in August 2002: Saddam has perfected the game of cheat and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception. A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions.

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On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow “back in his box.” Meanwhile, he would continue to plot. Nothing in the last dozen years has stopped him—not his agreements; not the discoveries of the inspectors; not the revelations by defectors; not criticism or ostracism by the international community; and not four days of bombings by the U.S. in 1998. What he wants is time and more time to husband his resources, to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons programs, and to gain possession of nuclear arms.34 In addition to the differences in their assessments of the threat posed by Saddam, there was confusion on the German side regarding varying U.S. statements on regime change as a rationale for action. Legal authority was required to undertake regime change; a decision to do so could not be made solely by one state. The Germans were especially sensitive to the need for a system of rules and norms to constrain the natural anarchy of a system of sovereign nation-states that can decide on their own to replace regimes they do not like. The shifting of rationales by the Bush administration also undermined the credibility of its argument for war because rather than being founded on principle, its argument seemed to shift depending on circumstances and tactics. Was the war over weapons of mass destruction, over Saddam’s support for terrorism and al Qaeda, over human rights and democratization, or something else? The fact that the rationale kept changing only fed suspicions that baser motives like oil or revenge were behind American policy.

After the Storm The quick and impressive U.S. military campaign in Iraq in the spring of 2003 was followed by the chaos of the postwar period and the failure of U.S. troops and inspectors to find significant stores of weapons of mass destruction. It also saw the UN antiwar coalition of France, Germany, and Russia continue to block the Bush administration’s attempts to gain support for postwar reconstruction without ceding significant authority to the United Nations. When the German foreign minister and the U.S. defense secretary met again at the Munich security conference in February 2004, just a year after their dramatic confrontation before the start of the war, Joschka Fischer made it clear that the German analysis had been confirmed by events:

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One year ago this conference was the venue for a frank debate—as is not unusual between friends—on the question of a war against Iraq. Our opinions differed on: —whether the threat was analyzed as sufficient to justify terminating the work of the UN inspectors —the consequences that a war would have on the fight against international terrorism —the effects of a war in Iraq on regional stability —whether the long-term consequences of the war would be controllable —and whether the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the war would dangerously reduce the sustainability so essential in the post-conflict phase. The Federal Government feels that events have proven the position it took at the time to be right. It was our political decision not to join the coalition because we were not, and are still not, convinced of the validity of the reasons for war.35 Fischer had said as much to the German journalist Michael Inacker in late 2003. Flying back from a meeting between Schröder and Putin in St. Petersburg, Fischer came over to Inacker and said, “Now will you admit that you were wrong and we were right about the war?”36

The Shift to France The events of fall 2002 through the first half of 2003 were harbingers of deeper shifts in German policy. While a close relationship to Paris has been an important element of German foreign policy since the time of Adenauer, the decisive shift toward the French side was a new development. Before fall 2002, German leaders had always positioned Germany between Washington and Paris and avoided choosing between the two. This approach allowed Germany to play the role of broker and maximized its flexibility and influence. It also reflected the importance of balancing the three key pillars, or circles, of German foreign policy: the Atlantic, the West European, and the Central European.37 All of this changed after Iraq. President Chirac, in turn, may have overplayed his hand in New York once he realized he had the weight of Germany behind his challenge to U.S. policy. The Financial Times reported that as late as December 2002 a senior French liaison officer had visited General Tommy Franks at his headquarters in Tampa to discuss the fielding of at least 15,000 French soldiers as part of

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an allied force. On January 7, 2003, Chirac had told his armed forces to be ready “for any eventuality.” However, as the newspaper noted, “In the next three weeks, the French President dug in against any early action. He knew now that he could rely on Mr. Schröder.”38 While Schröder’s support may have reinforced Chirac’s determination, however, it did not shape it. As Philip Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro conclude in their careful study of the transatlantic crisis, “Chirac, in fact, opposed the war not in order to change his relationship with Germany, but because he thought war would be a strategic mistake and did not want to set the precedent of acquiescing to the United States. . . . In forming a common front with Schröder against the war, Chirac was using his Germany policy to bolster his Iraq policy, and not the other way around.”39 In October 2002, the Schröder government was isolated. It emerged from its isolation by creating a common position first with France, then with Russia. The newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that Schröder told SPD parliamentarians of his pride in the common German, French, and Russian declaration on Iraq: “Berlin is not isolated as is contended in Washington and elsewhere. Just the opposite: ever more countries are coming behind the German position to give peace a chance.”40 Nevertheless, there were fears in Berlin that at the end of the day France would support the United States in the Security Council and abandon Germany, so there was great relief when France stayed its course. But rather than driving French policy, Berlin became a junior partner to Paris. As a Foreign Office official put it, “We were not isolated anymore, but had put ourselves behind France, without being strong enough to formulate policies and interests.”41 Foreign Minister Fischer also described the relationship with France in terms that seemed to imply subordination: France plays a very meaningful role in world politics. It has a vision of its own global role. It has a different history from ours. It is a member in full standing of the UN Security Council and is a nuclear power. Along with the United Kingdom, it has a great history, while our country has a broken history. We can’t put our country on the same level with Britain and France.42 One of the key questions to emerge from the Iraq experience concerns the extent to which the German shift toward Paris is a harbinger of a longerterm historical change in German foreign policy. Has Germany now subordinated the Atlantic to the European circle, led by France and Germany? If so, will that reduce German isolation or simply increase it? Foreign

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Minister Fischer’s characterization of the U.S.-German relationship as having shifted from being partners in leadership to being partners in contradiction (Partnerschaft im Widerspruch) may indicate a deeper divide. While officials in the Foreign Office have stressed that the German goal is a multilateral world and not a multipolar one, Chancellor Schröder seems to have come to the view that Germany must help construct a Europe whose power can balance that of the United States. Schröder told SPD parliamentarians in February 2003 that he had taken a “historic decision” that went beyond the question of war and peace to ask “whether a single power had the say in the world or whether the world would remain multipolar, not dependent on the grace of the only superpower, the USA.”43 Christian Hacke, a leading German scholar on contemporary German foreign policy, has argued that this approach represents a shift from the continuity of an Atlanticist perspective to a new Carolingian one based on the Europe of Charlemagne, which rested on a Franco-German base. This shift, he contends, will lead to the further isolation of Germany and to the splitting of Europe, which was foreshadowed by the experience in the winter and spring of 2003.44 This policy might undermine the third circle of German policy, Central Europe. According to one of Fischer’s closest advisers, Fischer knew when he became foreign minister that changes in Germany’s international role were on the way, especially in its relationship with the United States. “We knew that change was necessary, and that meant some level of conflict and pain.”45 This mirrors the view of many in the Bush administration that the German government seemed to be going out of its way to challenge the United States. As one U.S. official put it, They didn’t seem to care how what they said and did would affect the U.S. This was a time to assert their independence and to pick a fight with the United States in order to show they wouldn’t be pushed around. The issues they chose, the International Criminal Court, the death penalty, were justified “because of our [Germany’s] history.” They were aimed at the U.S. because they wanted to show that you are no different than any other society. No more preaching. We aren’t so horrible.46 Another Bush administration official had similar views: “Even before the crisis began, we had expected that Schröder would come after us. We had heard of talk in the SPD that Schröder might play the anti Bush card.”

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The German-American relationship was fundamentally altered by the events of 2002 and 2003. Bush and Schröder were catalysts for a deeper change that had been building in the strategic and political cultures of both countries between the two 9-11s—the Germans’ November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell (designated 9-11 in Germany), and the Americans’ September 11, 2001. Their assessments of threat had diverged, and their strategic relationship was now altered beyond recognition. As Christian Hacke saw it, Germany had welcomed the soft hegemony of the USA as a stability factor for decades when Germany found American dominance supportive rather than burdensome. But now the German government has given the impression that it seeks to undermine the policies of the USA by constructing a countercoalition. Here lies the revolutionary shift in German foreign policy. The German government interprets the German-American relationship as confrontational and sees it as endangering thereby the influence of German foreign policy.47 However, by mid-2004 the Bush administration also was more isolated and bore more responsibility for the clash between the countries, given its break with the cold war pattern of American diplomacy. That change, and the way it collided with German strategic culture, will now be more deeply explored.

4 Kulturkampf: A Clash of Strategic Cultures

T

he dispute between Germany and the United States over Iraq was part of a deeper clash of strategic cultures. A nation’s strategic culture is that aspect of its general political culture that relates to national security policy, including beliefs about national identity, national interest, the world and the nature of the international system, causes and effects (including the consequences of state policy and the instruments of policy), and such normative dimensions as ethics and the legitimacy of state authority.1 Strategic culture focuses on the relationship between defense strategy and culture in describing and explaining national strategic style. It is the result of the interaction of history, geography, politics, economics, and culture. The Bush revolution in foreign policy ran directly counter to the evolution of the German strategic culture. Whether it will fundamentally change the American strategic culture is a the key question for the future of transatlantic relations. It is clear, however, that the differences that emerged between Bush and Schröder over Iraq reflected fundamental differences in their political interests and strategic cultures. On January 20, 2001, when George W. Bush, standing on the steps of the Capitol, took the oath of office as the forty-third president of the United States, he was not standing there because of his security and foreign policy agenda. In fact, foreign policy had deliberately been downplayed by both the Republican and the Democratic campaigns. Bush had the least background and interest in foreign policy of any new president since Harry Truman, but he lacked Truman’s Washington experience or intellectual breadth. One observer described his stance as a “principled provincialism.” He seemed to have almost no interest or curiosity in the world: “Here is someone who by 52

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age 13 was mingling in the country club set of Houston, who then went on to Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School—and did so in the age of cut-rate international air fares—and yet he rarely traveled abroad.”2 Bush ran on a platform of “compassionate conservatism,” indicating that he might be a moderate Republican in the tradition of his father. During the presidential campaign he said, “If we are an arrogant nation they will resent us. If we are a humble nation, but strong, they will welcome us.”3 However, after assuming office, this Bush administration proved to be a radical break from the first in terms of both principle and style. Where Bush Senior’s administration had been a model of cautious realism and consensual decisionmaking, Bush Junior’s, which prided itself on discipline and staying on message, was characterized by division and open dispute among the key foreign policy principals. Under the first President Bush, Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft worked together smoothly, with few public hints of dispute over policy. The national security adviser acted as an effective honest broker in the interagency process. Under George W. Bush, policymaking was an undisguised civil war between the Pentagon’s civilian leadership and the vice president’s office on one side and the State Department and national security bureaucracy (the military leadership and intelligence agencies) on the other. The president’s national security adviser proved unwilling or unable to act as an honest broker, thereby allowing the Pentagon (with strong backing from the vice president’s office) to have unprecedented dominance over the formulation of foreign and security policy. This division was due both to the new president’s inexperience in foreign policy (in contrast to the deep expertise of George H. W. Bush) and to the radically different schools of thought within the new administration. George W. Bush’s key foreign policy appointments included representatives of three schools of conservative foreign policy: traditional realists, neoconservatives (or democratic imperialists), and nationalist conservatives or (assertive nationalists).4

The Traditional Realists Traditional realists had dominated Republican foreign policy at least from the Eisenhower through the George H. W. Bush administration. Realists hold a balance-of-power view of world politics, in which the international system is based on the struggle for power among states. Their view of the national interest is one of limits, constraints, and the nonideological use of power. Realists are pessimistic about the prospect of human nature ever

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changing. They also worry about overextending state power and participating in utopian crusades led by people who have no direct experience of war or of the limits of power. They are multilateral in the sense that they see the need for alliances and a broader international framework—which minimize the dangers of overextension and the formation of countervailing coalitions—in order to best exercise power. Realism was originally a European approach to international politics, and its leading American exponents, figures like Henry Kissinger and Hans Morgenthau, came from Europe. It is not surprising that European leaders have been comfortable with this approach and that its followers in the Bush administration became the hope of the Europeans during the run-up to war in Iraq.5 This type of traditional realism was the dominant perspective in the first President Bush’s administration, where its key proponents were James Baker, Colin Powell, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Brent Scowcroft. They came to form the core group of realist critics of neoconservatism in the new Bush administration, joined by some in the Republican caucus in the Senate, most prominently Senators Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel, and John Warner. The younger Bush included in his team of “intelligent hardliners” (to borrow Philip Taubman’s phrase) a number of realists who shared some of these perspectives, stressing geopolitics and realism over human rights and “soft power.” National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a protégé of Brent Scowcroft, had written the year before she assumed her position that when foreign policy is centered on values, “the national interest is replaced by humanitarian interests or the interests of the international community. . . . To be sure there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all of humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect.”6 The leading traditional realist in the George W. Bush administration was Secretary of State Colin Powell, the author of the Powell doctrine, which warned against the overextension of American forces and urged the use of overwhelming force once they were employed. As Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay point out, Powell “worried about the costs of alienating other countries. His time in Vietnam had left him acutely sensitive to the limits of American power and the whims of public support.”7 Dov Zakheim, who became the comptroller of the Defense Department, had written that violating another nation’s sovereignty threatens to “unravel the entire fabric of international relations.”8 In many respects this was the foreign policy of the corporate community, with its focus on free trade more than on human rights. While Rice had her origins in this group, in office she tailored her views to those of the president. Powell was therefore left as the main advo-

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cate of this perspective within the administration, as well as the primary target for the other two schools of foreign policy thinking.

Neoconservatives Traditional realism had increasingly come to be challenged by both neoconservatives and nationalist conservatives in the Ford administration and lost its dominance to these groups during the Reagan administration. Most of the first generation of “neocons” were former socialists and Democrats who had left their party in a revolt of hard-line defense Democrats against the Carter administration in the 1970s. They were described by one of their founders, Irving Kristol, as “liberals who had been mugged by reality.” Under the second President Bush, the neoconservative school of foreign policy was represented by a group of defense intellectuals who had cut their teeth during the Reagan administration— including Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby (Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff), Douglas Feith (the number-three official in the Pentagon), and John Bolton (a thorn in Powell’s side in the State Department)—as well as their allies in the conservative think tanks and media, including Richard Perle, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Robert Kagan. This second generation was more varied in its political origins and included a few, like William Kristol, who were the children of members of the first neocon generation. With their belief in the power of ideas and the universality of American values, the neocons were part of a longer tradition of American exceptionalism.9 In that view, U.S. power is a force for good and should be used aggressively to shape a new world order based on the ideals of free market economics and democracy. As Peter Steinfels wrote of the original neoconservatives in 1979, “The United States—and its military power—remains, in their eyes, a global force for good; they suspect détente and the evolution of Communist parties in Western Europe; they assertively defend Cold War anti-Communism, the CIA and images like the ‘free world.’”10 The neoconservatives despised the caution of such traditional balance-ofpower realists as Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell and led the revolt against Kissinger’s détente policies on the ground that they were a form of appeasement, of learning to live with the Soviet Union.11 Their model was Ronald Reagan and his unbridled moralism in refusing to compromise with “the evil empire.” In contrast to both traditional realists and nationalist conservatives, the neocons are optimists, hyper-Wilsonian in their belief that the world can be democratized and thus pacified.

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The most influential first-generation neocons were East Coast Jewish intellectuals who emerged from the struggle among American intellectuals over Stalinism and democratic socialism.12 As Steinfels wrote, “They were a party of intellectuals, but powerful intellectuals.”13 They were in some respects Leninist in their focus, discipline, and ruthless pursuit of their goals. Their supporters in think tanks and the press were remarkably unified in following a party line, with little evidence of dissent, self-criticism, or doubt. They demonstrated the power of a disciplined minority that has a clear operational plan and takes an “ends justify the means” approach to achieving its aims. Steinfels also noted that they “retained some elements of their early Marxism,” including impatience with “bourgeois sentimentality,” the impulse to unmask group or individual interests, and an emphasis on class.14 The neoconservatives’ ascendancy in the past decade has been achieved through a combination of the vigor of their arguments and a powerful infrastructure that both propagates those ideas and quickly and ruthlessly attacks its opponents. As Christopher Patten, the EU external relations commissioner, once put it, “I don’t agree with the neo-conservatives, but one thing you can say about them is that they are prepared to have a debate, a good old intellectual rumpus.”15 By the end of the 1990s the neoconservative school had become dominant not only in the Republican Party, but also in the larger American debate on foreign policy. Influential journals and think tanks—the National Interest, the Weekly Standard, the New Republic, and the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Project for a New American Century, the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute— influenced the discourse on foreign policy through the force of their intellectual energy and self-confidence, and a dash of paranoia, all aided by a major infusion of money from conservative foundations and supporters. An important link to the euroskeptical British Conservative Party was established through the New Atlantic Initiative, based at the American Enterprise Institute. Many of the critical views of Europe held by American conservatives were reinforced when seen through the lens of the British euroskeptics.16 This network was extended when Jeffrey Gedmin, the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative at the American Enterprise Institute, moved to Berlin to head the Aspen Institute just before the start of the crisis over Iraq. He became the voice of neoconservatism in the German capital and brought in many fellow neocons to speak and debate with German academics, journalists, and officials. This influential neocon network has been financed not only by conservatives of great wealth, such as Richard Scaife, the Coors family, and the

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Canadian media baron Conrad Black among others, but also by business interests attracted to the neoconservatives’ strong defense of business values.17 The movement has also benefited from a vacuum of ideas on the Democratic side. No comprehensive world view or strategy emerged during the Clinton years; in fact, Sandy Berger, national security adviser in Clinton’s second term, dismissed the idea of grand strategy as post hoc rationalization of policy. September 11 and the run-up up to the war in Iraq split the Democrats further, with most mainstream leaders supporting Bush’s approach. There is no equivalent network of institutes, media, and academics of the right in Europe, leading to a further clash between the foreign policy cultures of continental Europe and the United States and Britain. The neocon view of Europe was first shaped during the era of détente, with its concern over appeasement and the “Finlandization of Europe.”18 As Dana Allin wrote in his study of neoconservatism, or what he called “the power of a bad idea,” those concerns were based on “Americans’ abiding pessimism about the political stability and moral resoluteness of their European allies when faced with Soviet pressure.”19 The neoconservatives’ revolt against what they considered the dangerous turn to the left of the Democratic Party with the candidacy of George McGovern in 1972 was also a revolt against the realism of the Nixon-Kissinger years and its policy of détente. Such key neocons as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz had worked for Senator Henry Jackson, a prominent Democratic critic of détente.20 They turned on the left with the ferocity of converts who have seen the light. They had, as Allin writes, “a distinct world view, in particular, a pronounced pessimism about the Soviet threat.”21 Europe, with its preference for détente and accommodation over confrontation and resolution, was seen as weak. The 1970s and early 1980s were a time of Ostpolitik in West Germany and a general preference for détente in Europe as a whole. In describing his view of détente to a Senate hearing in 1981, Richard Perle, perhaps the most prominent voice of neoconservatism in foreign policy, explained, “Many Europeans, particularly on the left, saw the emergence of an energy relationship with the Soviets as a useful device for fostering détente. And détente, in turn, was seen as a process that could transform an essentially hostile relationship into a more cordial, and less volatile political arrangement that would lessen the need for burdensome defense budgets.”22 To Perle and other neoconservatives, however, Finlandization, Ostpolitik, and détente were all code words for appeasement. Indeed, in the George H. W. Bush administration “the very word that defined the centrists’ search for

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a less troubled and divided world—détente—was a red flag to the more ideological people in the [Republican] party. Détente meant you accepted the right of the communists to occupy a large part of the world, which was not to be tolerated.”23 This association, in turn, goes back to what was seen as a long-standing European preference for accommodation: the Munich Syndrome. In their self-righteous fervor, the neocons ignored the fact that the United States did not support Britain and France over Czechoslovakia in 1938 and in fact did not enter the war against Hitler until it was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and only after Hitler had declared war on the United States.24 This dismissal of European morals was also linked to the suspicion that prewar European antisemitism had not vanished and underlay the critical view of Israel held by many European governments. This world view based on a policy of strength was reinforced during the 1980s by the Reagan administration, the rise of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, the successful deployment of NATO missiles in Germany, and the end of the cold war, largely on U.S. terms. The fall of the Soviet Union fed the triumphalist strain in neoconservative thinking, as evidenced by the proclamation of a unipolar world led by the unparalleled power of the United States.25 Maintaining that supremacy and countering the rise of peer competitors became a key goal. Given the central role of military power in this new world order, Europe was further devalued because of its continued division and military weakness. The Balkan experience of the 1990s seemingly confirmed Europe’s weakness and ineffectiveness and also provided evidence of the split between the traditional conservative realism of the first President Bush’s administration and the more radical form of neoconservatism. The war between these two approaches was evident when George H. W. Bush became president in 1989. His secretary of state, James Baker, took delight in removing many Reaganites, saying, “Remember this is not a friendly take over.”26 Bush’s accession to power reassured European governments (with the exception of Margaret Thatcher’s), which welcomed a return to a more centrist realist foreign policy tradition in the United States. But in retrospect, it marked the end of an era. These foreign policy centrists were replaced by their more conservative challengers under George W. Bush. The views of Europe that came out of this tradition remained deeply pessimistic. In its cruder, popular forms, as expressed by William Safire, George Will, Michael Kelly, and Charles Krauthammer, Europe is dismissed as having shifted its accommodationist tendencies from communism to the Middle East and terrorism. The reasons given for the shift are various, including moral and military weakness, continued antisemitism, an overem-

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phasis on soft power and nonmilitary instruments of statecraft, and an unwillingness to reform costly welfare bureaucracies. The old Soviet threat has been replaced by the new threat of terrorism and disorder in what these observer view as the still-Hobbesian parts of the world, where force rather than law rules.27 The prominence of the neoconservatives in the new Bush administration and their alliance with the Christian right created a climate that was strongly skeptical of and hostile to Europe. Their most visible and vocal representative remained Richard Perle, the chair of Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Policy Board. He never tired of chastising the Europeans for “lacking a moral compass” and asserted that “Germany has subsided into a moral numbing pacifism.”28 In An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, their neocon manifesto after the war in Iraq, Perle and his coauthor, David Frum, who coined the term “axis of evil,” write again of European appeasement.29 This sentiment was echoed in many like-minded publications. Christopher Caldwell, for example, wrote in the Weekly Standard, “A good case can be made that constant looking backwards has deprived Germany of both optimism and dynamism. The locking of the country’s politics into atonement for World War II, necessary though it was for many decades, deserves some of the blame for the adolescent, consumerist, hedonistic, pornographic society that Germany turned into.”30 This line of thought only escalated the neocon aversion to what Rumsfeld called “old Europe.” Old Europe, led by France and Germany in an alliance with Russia, was trying to dominate the “new Europe” of the former east and central European Warsaw Pact states and to create a counterbalance to American power and purpose. According to this narrative, old Europe was using the European Union and the United Nations to thwart U.S. efforts to deal with the axis of evil, much as it had accommodated the Soviet Union during the détente era. For western Europe, Perle and Frum added, “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a moment of liberation—not for Eastern Europeans but for themselves. Now at last they could be free of the United States and of the horrible burden of gratitude.”31 The new Europeans, being personally closer to the experience, were more willing to challenge totalitarianism than the more complacent and self-satisfied old Europeans.32 The reaction in Europe and in Germany to the rise of the neoconservatives in the United States has been, not surprisingly, critical. Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat and former chancellor, opined that this “nationalist-egocentric influence of imperialistic-minded intellectuals on U.S. strategy is greater than at any time since the Second World War,” and he

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predicted that the unilateralist school would be in the ascendancy for at least a decade.33 Both the tenor and style of the neoconservatives’ criticism have badly damaged a relationship that was close for more than forty years. Suddenly American officials and intellectuals were accusing their closest allies of moral relativism, or at best naiveté and idealism. There was no attempt at real dialogue or serious consideration of European objections to U.S. strategy on Iraq. Opposition was dismissed as motivated by Schröder’s electoral opportunism, German pacifism, French opportunism, or worse. In an extreme instance, Michael Kelly, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, savaged Joschka Fischer after he had challenged Rumsfeld’s arguments for war at the 2003 Wehrkunde meeting in Munich, by raising his past as a violent protestor in the 1970s and accusing him of the worst sort of antisemitism: “You were not a terrorist yourself, but you were a good and active friend to terrorists, weren’t you Mr. Fischer? . . . You were a man for whom Munich wasn’t enough [referring to Fischer’s early support for the Palestinian Liberation Organization despite its murder of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics], the man who needed Entebbe to convince him that murdering Jews was wrong. You asked to be excused. You have been excused.”34 Kelly’s charge of antisemitism was part of a theme that linked German opposition to U.S. foreign policy to America’s pro-Israel stance. In this, the neocons fell prey to the “genetic fallacy,” a fundamental error in logic that discredits an argument on the basis of it source, not its substance. Steinfels had already noted this weakness in the 1970s: The work of the neo conservatives, taken as a whole . . . is of high quality. They are literate . . . they marshal evidence as well as emotion. They make some effort to search out principles and relate specific problems to general ideas. . . . [But] one of the neo conservatives’ major faults [is] their tendency to treat their adversaries as feebleminded or dubiously motivated, or to admit into the circle of “honorable” opponents only those who share their style or pass some ideological Wassermann test of “pro-Americanism.”35

Nationalist Conservatives A good part of this story of the change in American grand strategy and criticism of Europe is of a rather extreme element in American political thought striving for hegemony in the debate over ideas and in policy. By themselves,

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these urban neocons would not have prevailed. What was decisive for their success was their alliance with a broader “Jacksonian” school of nationalist conservatives from the South and the West, a school represented by George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. These conservatives are strongly nativist, nationalist, and religious—followers of the Christian right.36 They are concerned about limits on American sovereignty and are deeply pessimistic about the threats the rest of the world poses to American security and values. In contrast to the neocons, the nationalist conservatives do not want to remake the world; they simply strive to protect America. One analysis aptly described the difference: “The nationalists come to their views through a deep pessimism about the rest of the world, while the neo cons are permeated by optimism about the ability of America to transform it.”37 Thus one of the key differences between Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz concerned the ability of the United States to transform the Middle East into a democracy. While his deputy believed in this vision, Rumsfeld was only interested in removing what he saw as a direct threat to U.S. security.38 These “assertive nationalists” were primarily from the South and West. The Jacksonian tradition, primarily associated with middle- and workingclass white Protestants, emphasizes a version of realism that, while skeptical of humanitarian intervention and global institutions, places great weight on “honor, concern for reputation, and faith in military institutions.”39 The rise of Ronald Reagan and the election of George W. Bush represented the revival of this tradition in American politics. This view was reinforced by a Congress, especially Republicans in the House of Representatives, that was parochial, distrustful of the world, and hostile to multilateralism. The crucial player in propelling the nationalist conservatives toward the neocons on Iraq was undoubtedly Vice President Cheney. Given the inexperience and lack of self-confidence of the new president in foreign policy, he relied heavily on Cheney’s advice for both policy and staffing. The vice president assembled his own national security council, parallel to that of the president, and was instrumental in bringing Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other, lesser players into the foreign policy team. Cheney’s unfiltered and unrestricted access to the president, including a weekly one-on-one lunch, allowed him to shape foreign policy to a degree unprecedented for a vice president. Cheney turned out to be the most conservative of the key figures in the new administration, perhaps even more so than the president had expected.40 He had, in fact, been the most conservative figure in Bush Senior’s administration, where, as Frances Fitzgerald wrote, “the fundamental division lay

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between Defense Secretary Cheney and everyone else”—although “Cheney always disagreed in a thoroughly agreeable fashion.”41 In the earlier administration, his influence was limited by both the role of Scowcroft and the president’s own preferences and world view. In the later Bush administration, by contrast, Cheney faced a weaker national security adviser and an inexperienced president. He consistently took a worst-case approach to threats to American security. Early in 2001, however, Cheney was still dismissive of the neocons: “Oh, they have to sell magazines; we have to govern.”42 September 11 would push him to share the neocon approach. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush himself prefer taking a tough, nononsense approach to opponents, whether domestic or foreign. Rumsfeld has said that “weakness is a provocation,” and his leadership in the Pentagon has been described by one senior officer as “the wire brush treatment” of withering cross-examination and intimidation.43 He has directed this approach to his neoconservative aides as well. The nationalist conservatives, with their keen sense of threat, tend to dismiss their opponents as dangerously optimistic or naive. Vice President Cheney once characterized the United States as being on the twenty-first century side of the terrorism challenge, while Europe remained embedded in the twentieth century. From this perspective, the danger is imminent and so direct that there is no time for the niceties and formalities of diplomacy. Beyond this, there is a certain arrogance of power. The nationalist conservatives believe that because the United States is the world’s most powerful nation it can do what it wants in areas of vital interest; in their view, allies have little to contribute in terms of military power and only end up getting in the way. Strong American leadership would eventually win over other countries to the U.S. cause.

The Epiphany of 9-11 The dramatic events of September 11, 2001, transformed the entire constellation of forces within the George W. Bush administration and created a new coalition of nationalist conservatives and neoconservatives around the president, isolating the realists. The neocons had long held regime change in Iraq to be a high priority, believing that this was the key to putting into motion a reverse domino effect that would create a new democratic dynamic in the Middle East and also offer prospects for settling the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. But the clear preference of Bush, the Jacksonian nationalist, before 9-11 to avoid nation building was evidence of his skepticism about the neo-

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conservative project. The events of September 11 brought the president and the nationalist conservatives around to the neocon view. In the words of a senior administration official, “Without September 11, we never would have been able to put Iraq at the top of our agenda.”44 Bush came to believe that his leadership was a matter of fate, or of God’s will, and that “leading the world to peace” was the mission of the United States.45 He was resolved to do everything possible to prevent another 9-11 or worse. As one of his aides put it, “September 11 gave him a now or never again sense. He never wants to stand again before another pile of rubble. He’ll err on the side of being overly vigilant.”46 At a National Security Council meeting at the White House on September 12, as described in Bob Woodward’s insider account, Bush at War, Rumsfeld raised the question of Iraq, asking, “Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al Qaeda?” Bush made it clear that this was not the time to resolve that issue; the principal focus should be on al Qaeda. “Bush worried about making their initial target too diffuse. Let’s not make the target so broad that it misses the point and fails to draw support from normal Americans, he said. What Americans were feeling, he added, was that their country had suffered at the hands of al Qaeda.”47 This was also the position advocated by Colin Powell and it prevailed during the initial campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. But somewhere between the end of the campaign in Afghanistan and the State of the Union address in late January 2002 “came the convergence of views that would produce the war against Iraq.”48 This coincided as well with the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in early 2002. The administration began to see an identity of interests between Israel (and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s approach to counterterrorism) and the United States.49 It adopted the Likud view that the fight against terrorism was a war and that the enemy had to be met with uncompromising force.

Strategic Divergence This new constellation of forces allowed the neocons to push a broader agenda for regime change in Iraq. The most vocal and persistent advocate for this agenda was the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who stated his objective quite openly during a September 13 press briefing at the Pentagon: “It is not simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism [emphasis added].”50 He continued his drum

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beat for expanding the war to Iraq at a key meeting with all the principals, including the president, at Camp David the next day. This agenda also reflected a shift in strategic focus and emphasis from Europe to the Middle East and from traditional alliances to coalitions of the willing. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and their deputies openly diminished the importance of NATO as an alliance and clearly preferred more fluid, ad hoc coalitions of the willing for post-Afghanistan operations. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz had declared to a defense ministers’ meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels right after 9/11 that the mission would now determine the coalition, not the other way around.51 The major enlargement of NATO’s membership that took place in fall 2002 in Prague was another indication that the alliance was seen in Washington increasingly as a political institution for regional collective security and less as a military alliance for collective defense.52 The enlargement made it more difficult to shape consensus than had been the case with fewer members; in addition, because the new members had small militaries, it did not do much to close the military capabilities gap between the United States and Europe. This neocon view was deeply unsettling to Berlin, which wished to preserve NATO’s role as the central security institution in Europe. As General Klaus Naumann, the former head of NATO’s Military Committee, wrote, “European allies see NATO as a collective defense and crisis management organization, whereas the United States no longer looks at the Alliance as the military instrument of choice to use in conflict and war.”53 The decline in the perceived importance of Europe in U.S. defense policy was due both to the shift of threats to other theaters and to the growing gap in military capabilities between the United States and its European allies. It was evident in the fact that both President Bush and Secretary Powell spent less time in Europe than any of their predecessors, and in the administration’s willingness to allow the rift with Germany to drift unresolved for so long.54 The new approach was made clear in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the Bush administration’s official statement of its strategy, published in September 2002.55 This document stated plainly that deterrence and containment were appropriate for the cold war, but not for the new threats posed by “rogue states” and nonstate terrorist groups that intended to obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD): The greatest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. . . . Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America. Now, shadowy net-

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works of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. In the Cold War, weapons of mass destruction were considered weapons of last resort whose use risked the destruction of those who used them. Today our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice. Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents.56 Invoking the concept of imminent threat and revising it for contemporary conditions, the United States now claimed the right to act preemptively. This marked a shift in stated policy from deterrence and containment to preemption. The nature of the new threats to the nation’s security did not, it was contended, allow the United States the luxury of waiting to be sure that it was going to be attacked; it had to act to preempt any such event. The policy of preemption had historical precedents; indeed, it was no more than a common sense. Had the U.S. government known on December 6, 1941, that the Japanese fleet was preparing to attack Pearl Harbor, it would have acted preemptively. And in December 1993, Clinton’s first secretary of defense, Les Aspin, announced an initiative that left open both reactive and preemptive options for dealing with a Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons.57 What was new was not preemption but the embrace of preventive war under the guise of preemption. The distinctions between the two are important: —Preemptive war: initiation of war because an adversary’s attack— using existing capabilities—is believed to be imminent; —Preventive war: fighting a winnable war now to avoid risk of war later under less favorable conditions; while a threat is not imminent, the combination of intentions with a growing capability will mean that the balance of power will shift in an unfavorable direction in the future and thus action should be taken now to prevent this longerterm threat.58 History and international law have not condoned preventive wars, because they are seen as wars of aggression disguised as self-defense. In Iraq, George W. Bush’s administration fought a preventive war but justified it as a preemptive war, based on the immediate threat posed by weapons of mass destruction either possessed or soon to be possessed by Saddam Hussein.

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However, the president continually referred to a gathering danger, rather than an imminent one—and as it turned out, the threat was greatly exaggerated. The distinction and dilemma Bush faced was neatly summarized by Michael Ignatieff, who said, “The honest case for war was “preventive” – to stop a tyrant with malicious intentions from acquiring lethal capabilities or transferring those capabilities to other enemies. The case we actually heard was “pre-emptive”—to stop a tyrant who already possessed weapons and posed an imminent danger.”59 Another striking element of the new national security strategy is the stated policy of preeminence. The document explicitly states the goal of continued primacy of American power: “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”60 This is a marked shift from the official U.S. strategy of containing potential enemies and maintaining a balance of power to a new concept of order, one in which the United States is a dominant, benign hegemon because it stands not only for its own interests but also for a just world. This is a strategy based on bandwagoning (that is, jumping on the U.S. bandwagon) rather than balancing. Moreover, it rejects an alternative approach, global pluralism, that would encourage the sharing of global governance among multiple centers of power. The Bush administration chose instead a “smothering strategy,” designed to prevent the rise of any peer competitor.61 The alliance of nationalist conservatives with neoconservatives brought the hegemonist strategy to the fore. As Ikenberry puts it, “Order is created by a hegemonic state that uses power capabilities to organize relations among states.” A strong version of hegemonic order is “built around direct and coercive domination of weaker and secondary states by the hegemon. But hegemonic orders can also be more benevolent and less coercive— organized around more reciprocal, consensual and institutionalized relations.”62 Ikenberry sees the more coercive approach as an informal imperial order, while he labels the latter “liberal hegemony.” Daalder and Lindsay find five key positions underlying the hegemonist logic of Bush’s foreign policy: —The world is a dangerous place. —Self-interested nation states are the key actors in world politics. —Military power is the key factor in international relations, and power includes will. —Multilateral agreements and institutions are neither essential or conducive to American interests.

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—The United States is a unique great power that stands for good and threatens only those who oppose the spread of liberty and free markets.63 The intellectual origins of these new approaches to preeminence and preemption go back at least to the administration of George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s and a draft of defense planning guidelines written by Paul Wolfowitz and others in the Cheney Pentagon. While Wolfowitz, Libby, and others were involved in its formulation, this document was clearly a product of Cheney’s thought. As the journalist James Mann explained, “The gist of the strategy they formulated was that the United States should be the world’s dominant superpower—not merely today or 10 years from now, or when a rival such as China appears, but permanently.”64 The Clinton administration had an unstated policy that was quite similar, based on the belief that it was in America’s interest to be so dominant as to discourage any peer competitors. Many of the weapons systems that were used with such effect in Afghanistan and Iraq were developed during the Clinton years. Clinton’s approach has been called one of selective but cooperative primacy.65 But while the Clinton administration followed a policy of liberal hegemony, George W. Bush’s approach was closer to the imperial variant. This was a major difference from the European point of view.66

Terrorism: No Common Assessment of a Common Threat While this new American approach to the world began before 9-11, it was accelerated by the emergence of global terrorism. In contrast to the Soviet threat, which held the United States and its European allies together, terrorism holds the real potential of dividing them. Terrorism is defined in the U.S. Code as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”67 Michael Walzer puts its purpose succinctly: “to destroy the morale of a nation or a class, to undercut its solidarity; its method is the random murder of innocent people.”68 Terrorism is not a new phenomenon. It has been around at least since the nineteenth century, when anarchists used it as a weapon against the established order in Europe, and the term can be traced back to the French Revolution. Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent, written in 1907, is a classic exposition of the motivations and techniques of terrorism. Al Qaeda satisfied Conrad’s requirement that the ferocious act of destruction must be “so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact mad. Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate

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it either by threats, persuasion or bribes.”69 In Conrad’s time, great faith was placed in the progress promised by science. His terrorists therefore attack an observatory, as a way of shaking the fundamental assumptions and beliefs of public order. On 9-11 the targets were the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, pillars of the new world order, global finance, and American power; the instruments were civilian aircraft, symbols of the mobility in the global age. Terrorism of the sort visited on New York and Washington may have old motivations, but today its scale is far more devastating because of globalization and technology. The world is now linked by electronic media that transmit images—and fear—instantaneously to a global audience. Terrorists can use the Internet to disseminate technical know-how and to create “virtual networks” that, like computer viruses, are extremely difficult to isolate and eliminate. The vulnerability of modern urban societies to new types of terrorism, which no longer seek to limit death but on the contrary seek massive loss of life, is also new. This new form of terrorism also is inextricably linked to the end of the cold war. The collapse of the Soviet Union increased not only the risks of “loose nukes” from the old Soviet arsenal getting into the hands of terrorist groups, but also the spread of expertise by unscrupulous, unemployed, former Soviet scientists who signed on with these groups. It also freed up former client states of the Soviet Union to allow groups to operate against the United States in an unrestrained manner. Another new factor is the proliferation of nuclear weapons in such fragile states as Pakistan, or those ruled by extreme regimes, such as Iran and North Korea. While terrorism has been widespread throughout the world, especially in Europe and the Middle East, until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9-11, the United States had largely been spared. The attacks on the United States, the center of the new global system, had an epoch-making quality because of U.S. power and Americans’ sense of invulnerability. For better or for worse, U.S. power is the foundation of world order in the global age, and the events of 9-11 assaulted the entire world order. The Bush administration and also some Democrats contend that today’s terrorism is new because it is linked to weapons of mass destruction. They argue that this makes it different from the terrorism perpetrated in Europe by such groups as Baader Meinhof in Germany, the Irish Republican Army in Britain, and ETA in Spain. Vice President Cheney and other leading figures in the administration have compared the war on terrorism with the struggles against fascism

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and communism. Many in this group see it as simply the opening phase of a new global conflict, World War IV (the cold war being the third), that will last for decades. Concerns also have been raised about the sanctity of national sovereignty in an era when terrorist groups can operate within states that cannot or will not control them. Lawrence Freedman has observed that the world has gone beyond state-sponsored terrorism (as Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda note, “Osama Bin Laden’s organization, al Qaeda, flew no flag—it was the ultimate NGO”70) to terrorist-sponsored states. The Westphalian system based on nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other states may be outmoded, both because of the existence of failed states and the growing power of nonstate actors and because of the emergence of a global civil society and international norms. While these trends are undermining the role of the nation-state, no international or transnational body has yet emerged as an alternative to it. Therefore the United States, as the dominant power in the international system, has taken on the role of architect and enforcer of a new system. In doing so, it has also become the target for groups and nations that oppose the direction of change. There is widespread consensus in the United States that national security is under direct threat and that radical measures may be required to deal with it. Congress accepted the Bush administration’s comparison of the terrorist-WMD nexus to the communist threat. In his campaign for the presidency, John Kerry also referred to the “war” on terrorism, adopting Bush’s terminology. Counterterrorism and stopping the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction to rogue states and terrorist groups is now the central axiom of U.S. national security policy. A Washington Post columnist asked in June 2003 if the United States had overreacted: “Have we merely entered a world into which Europe long ago preceded us and in which terrorism should be viewed as a constant, unpleasant but not society-altering fact of life?” He answered his own question this way: In the end those who hope the terrorist threat has been overstated are likely to be disappointed. . . . Given the catastrophic damage that a small group could wreak with a biological agent or nuclear weapon, and the hatred of the West still being taught in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere, today’s vigilance is preferable to yesterday’s complacency, and the reorientation Bush imposed after 9/11 was as justified as it was belated.71

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This sense of threat is deeper in America than in Europe, both because the United States was attacked and because Americans had felt invulnerable at home. The German public and its leaders have taken a different view of today’s terrorism, one similar to the views in other European nations. While they see it as a threat, their assessment of the threat and the most appropriate strategy for dealing with it increasingly diverged from that of the United States during the run-up to the war in Iraq and also in its aftermath. A number of factors account for the difference. In contrast to the United States before the 9-11 attacks and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Germany, like many other European countries, had extensive experience with terrorism at home. In the 1970s the Baader-Meinhof group had been responsible for a series of kidnappings, bank robberies, and murders and was met with a tough, occasionally indiscriminate, response. Between 1970 and 1985 a total of 1,601 attacks occurred, with 31 people killed, 97 injured, and 163 taken hostage.72 If anything, German authorities overreacted to this challenge. The Social Democratic Party–led governments of Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt made extensive use of the police and paramilitary units and were accused by some of their own supporters of disregarding civil liberties in their efforts. The terrorists were finally rounded up and jailed; the two leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, committed suicide in a German prison. As can be seen, the Germans were not soft when confronted with home-grown terrorism. Likewise, they cracked down on al Qaeda cells in Hamburg and other German cities after 9-11. The lesson drawn in Germany from its experience was that the threat of terrorism must be taken seriously, but it must be countered with a longterm, incremental strategy relying on extensive police and intelligence work. German leaders and public alike have rejected the use of the term war in the campaign against terrorism. As one German analyst noted, “Germany does not reject the option of military steps but prefers a ‘civilian’ approach: economic incentives and international cooperation among law enforcement authorities.”73 The cooperation between the U.S. Department of Justice and the German Ministry of Interior has been so effective that the tough interior minister, Otto Schily, has become a favorite of the conservative attorney general John Ashcroft (despite Schily’s past as a defense lawyer for the Baader-Meinhof group). Germans believe that governments must be careful to maintain a balance between security and civil liberties. In this context, the treatment of the

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prisoners taken in the Afghanistan operation and held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay has been an especially sensitive issue in Germany. The German government and public also are hesitant to turn over any suspects, including suspected terrorists, who may face the death penalty in the United States. When Herta Däubler-Gmelin described the U.S. justice system as “lousy,” she reflected in a grossly exaggerated way the sentiments of many Germans who not only reject the death penalty but also were rankled by the treatment in the United States of German defendants in a couple of highprofile death penalty cases.74 Germans, like all Europeans, have learned to live with vulnerability; they therefore underestimate the impact on American society of its recent loss of invulnerability. As Christopher Patten, the EU external relations commissioner, pointed out, “I don’t think we fully comprehend the impact of grand innocence and a sense of magnificent self-confidence and invulnerability being shattered in that appalling way.”75 At the same time, Germans bring to their analysis the experience of the Weimar Republic, with its lessons about the exploitation of national trauma by nationalist forces. Moreover, Europe is more vulnerable to upheavals in the Middle East than is the United States. It is closer geographically, heavily dependent on raw materials from the region, and likely to feel spillover effects from turmoil there because of local Muslim populations. Germans, with their different historical perspective on terrorism, tend to emphasize its social, economic, and political roots more than Americans do. This approach stems from a broader view of history, philosophy, and national interest and differs greatly from that of the Bush administration. Americans tend toward a linear, or teleological, view of history, an optimistic notion of American exceptionalism and of history as progress, embodied in the metaphor of the “city on the hill.” Germans, like most continental Europeans, tend to have a more tragic and cyclical view of history, a product both of their longer history and of their failures to change the world by conquering or by colonizing other countries. Graham Greene’s novel about Vietnam, The Quiet American, portrays these two very different views of the possibilities and limits of effecting change in another society: if Europeans are gardeners, then Americans are engineers. Describing the Reagan administration’s confrontation with Libya under Muammar Qadhafi in the mid-1980s, a New York Times reporter pinpointed the differences as follows: “The stage was being set for a classic confrontation between an activist America, insistent that a perceived evil should be extirpated, and western Europeans accustomed to coexisting with unpleasant neighbors.”76

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To Europeans, the Bush administration’s approach to fighting terrorism seems excessively Manichean, a good-versus-evil, for-us-or-against-us approach that is both naive and dangerous. In Germany, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—and what is seen as U.S. one-sidedness in the dispute—is widely viewed as a major cause of the terrorism of Middle Eastern groups. This feels especially threatening, given the domestic presence of Islam in Europe and in Germany. Today about 12.2 million Muslims live in Europe—about twice as many as in the United States. Germany alone has a Muslim (largely Turkish and Kurdish) population of over 3.2 million. As a result, there is great concern about blowback from U.S. policies to the streets of Europe. The growing gap between the United States and Europe in military capabilities has also influenced the means they have chosen for dealing with terrorism. To the extent that their capabilities shape their analysis of the problem and its solution, a gulf exists between Americans, who tend to use military force early on, and Europeans, who prefer the instruments of soft power. Given the limits of the military capacity of most European states, the use of force tends either to be impracticable or far down on the list of options. Add to this the contrasting views on multilateralism in the United States and Europe. On the one hand, Germany, as a medium-size state, realizes that it needs to cooperate in multilateral organizations to make a difference in the world. On the other hand, the United States, which occupies a good part of a continent, has both the option and the inclination to “go it alone.” The differences in both analysis and strategy are hardly surprising. Finally, there was a real difference in strategic assessment about the breadth of the threat. The White House’s national security strategy stated starkly: “The enemy is terrorism.”77 Yet one of the key problems in creating a counterterrorism strategy is that terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. As Grenville Byford has noted, “Wars have typically been fought against proper nouns (Germany, say) for the good reason that proper nouns can surrender and promise not to do it again. Wars against common nouns (poverty, crime, drugs) have been less successful. Such opponents never give up.” Terrorism is in this latter category. “Victory is possible only if the United States confines itself to fighting individual terrorists rather than the tactic of terrorism itself.”78 The German leadership concluded quite early that the Bush war on terrorism would expand the definition of the threat so that it encompassed too many enemies and would strain the capabilities and cohesion of the alliance formed after 9-11 to combat al Qaeda. Immediately after 9-11 the administration was careful to focus its response on al Qaeda and those who were linked to the attacks on the United States. By doing so, it maximized

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support both at home and abroad and gave the military a mission it could handle. With the State of the Union speech in January 2002 and the announcement of an axis of evil, the nature of the threat was widened and the cohesion of the alliance began to fray. A majority of the American public both during and after the war in Iraq believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9-11 attacks. It was not until Richard Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism in Bush’s National Security Council, published his rebuttal of that claim that a real split developed in the U.S. debate over the link between the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.79 No such link was ever accepted in Germany, nor more broadly in Europe. The railroad attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004, did not, at least initially, narrow that gap. That morning, during the height of rush hour, thirteen explosive devices went off aboard four commuter trains arriving at Madrid’s central rail station. Altogether 191 people were killed and more than 1,800 were injured, making it the worst terrorist incident since the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. More than a dozen people were arrested and charged with the crime. Most of them were from Morocco and other north African countries and had links to groups associated with al Qaeda. The attacks came just days before the Spanish parliamentary elections, and the opposition Socialist party ended up winning a major victory. The result was attributed in part to revulsion against the Aznar government’s support of the U.S war in Iraq and its initial attempts to shift blame for the bombings from Islamic groups to the Basque terrorist organization, ETA. The suspicion was that Prime Minister Aznar wanted to avoid any direct link between his support of the Bush administration and the deaths in Madrid. That attempt backfired, and one of the first acts of his successor, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, was to announce the withdrawal of Spanish armed forces from Iraq. Rumsfeld’s “new Europe” consequently got substantially smaller. While many opined that a “European 9-11” would bring the United States and the Europeans closer, it was as likely that the strategy gap would only widen. Chancellor Schröder, like most European leaders, continued to emphasize the need for close cooperation in intelligence and police operations, not only by addressing the deeper social, political, and economic causes of terrorism but also by appointing an EU coordinator for counterterrorism. As Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for security policy, put it after the Madrid attack,“Europe is not at war. We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn’t change the way we live.”80 In the wake of the Madrid bombings, European concerns about “collateral damage,” the dangers of

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being too closely associated with the Americans, also have increased. The widespread belief that the war in Iraq was a mistake was reinforced, as was the tendency to see terrorism as a selective, rather than a comprehensive threat— from which many Europeans believe “they can opt out by distancing themselves from Washington.”81 Germany is part of this consensus. European and American differences on terrorism reflect divergences on how to deal with the problems of the Middle East. As two analysts of transatlantic relations have observed, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains, as it has been for almost 40 years, arguably the single greatest source of discord in transatlantic relations.”82 Volker Perthes of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin contends, “You wouldn’t do away with worldwide terrorism if you resolved it, but you’d reduce the breeding ground for extremism in the Middle East.”83 In surveys of public opinion relating to the Middle East, the greatest gaps are between Americans and Germans. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict produces one of the widest gaps. When asked in June 2003 to give thermometer readings, from 0 to 100 degrees, for the warmth of their feelings toward Middle Eastern countries, the German public rated Israel at 43 degrees and the Palestinians at 40. Comparable American ratings were 60 degrees for Israel and 39 for the Palestinians. This divergence on Israel was part of a larger European trend. In short, “Americans blame the Arabs for the conflict; Europeans blame the Israelis.”84 Germans tend to be more critical of Israel, or at least of the Sharon government, than Americans, and to see the Israeli-Palestinian dispute at the center of the problem of Middle East terrorism. The approach of the Bush administration has been that the road to peace in the Middle East leads through Baghdad, while the Germans and Europeans believe that the road to Baghdad went through Jerusalem.85 Unless some bridge can be built between these approaches, German support for a broader effort to reshape the Middle East and for any war on terrorism will be tepid. As Peter Katzenstein has noted, the 9-11 attacks are “like a strong beam of light that gets filtered by national lenses, of different self-conceptions and institutional practices, which create distinctive political responses that will severely test alliance cohesion in the years to come.”86

Civilian Power versus Power Politics While the Bush “revolution” in foreign policy was changing the American strategic culture, it also posed a frontal challenge to the German consensus on foreign policy. Perhaps the most concise formulation of the contemporary

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German strategic culture is the concept of civilian power (Zivilmacht), developed by the German political scientist Hanns W. Maull.87 This describes Germany as a civilian rather than a military power, projecting its influence and identifying its interests in a multilateral, not a national, framework. It seeks influence through cultural and economic means rather than through the use of force. This paradigm is the product of history, political culture, and the new geopolitics of Europe. Given Germany’s experience during the Third Reich and the role of the United States and western Europeans in “reeducating” Germans after the fall of Hitler, it is hardly surprising that Germans should eschew what they saw as—or were told were—the excesses of nationalism, racism, and militarism for a more “postnational” and postmodern approach. The British diplomat Robert Cooper has developed a typology of foreign policies that classifies states as either postmodern, modern, or pre-modern in their approach to the outside world: [First, there are] pre-modern states—often former colonies—whose failures have led to a Hobbesian war of all against all (countries such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan). Second, there are postimperial, postmodern states which no longer think of security primarily in terms of conquest. A third kind are the traditional “modern” states such as India, Pakistan or China which behave as states always have, following interest, power and raison d’état. The postmodern system in which we Europeans live does not rely on balance; nor does it emphasise sovereignty or the separation of domestic and foreign affairs. The European Union has become a highly developed system for mutual interference in each other’s domestic affairs, right down to beer and sausages. Members of the postmodern world do not consider invading each other. But both the modern and pre-modern zones pose threats to our security.”88 Adopting the postnationalist approach also served Germany’s interests in a Europe that was deeply suspicious of German power and intentions. By embracing what Hans Dietrich Genscher called a European Germany rather than a German Europe, Germany was able to regain its sovereignty and prevent the emergence of countervailing coalitions. 89 West Germany was roughly the same size, in terms of population, as either France or Britain, and therefore could enhance its influence only through Europe, not unilaterally. Civilian power also was appropriate for a society that was sick of nationalist adventures and yearned for peace and prosperity, that wanted resources

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to flow not into defense but into the economy and the development of an extensive welfare state. As German political scientist Klaus Larres observed, this strategic culture produced misunderstandings with the United States on at least three important dimensions: multilateralism, nationalism, and the use of force in international relations.90 Any German government, led by either Social Democrats or Christian Democrats, would be uneasy with the use of armed force. Before meeting with Chancellor Schröder in New York in September 2003, President Bush said that he knew that Germans were pacifists.91 However, while there may be more pacifists in Germany than in other large European nations, German foreign policy is not pacifist; its leaders have consistently striven to obtain a balance of power as a precondition for peace. Adenauer’s policy of strength, Brandt’s Ostpolitik, Schmidt and Kohl’s willingness to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles were all based on this key prerequisite and backed up by armed forces of almost 500,000 men and women. Originally, in 1955, the consensus on German rearmament and entry into NATO was based on integrating German forces into a multilateral system and limiting their use to the defense of NATO territory. During the cold war, force was seen as a deterrent, and the détente component was added by NATO in 1967. As Stephen Walt put it, “During the Cold War, NATO stayed intact largely because the alliance did not actually have to do anything as long as its members were not attacked.”92 With the end of the cold war, the definition of the legitimate use of force was gradually expanded by the Kohl government and then by the Red-Green coalition to include use of force beyond the NATO territorial area so long as both the justification and the deployment were multilateral. The Balkan wars created a new justification for military action, humanitarian intervention, in these cases to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” The movement to create a European defense force within the European Union also provided another rationale for enhancing Germany’s military role, namely the need for Germany to be a good European by making a contribution to a credible European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). The German public has gone along with these modifications, which have nudged the strategic culture from “a culture of reticence” (in the words of former defense minister Volker Ruehe, a Christian Democrat) to one of limited, multilateral engagement. That a Red-Green government could deploy German forces in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Afghanistan was a remarkable achievement, although the deployment of German forces outside the NATO area was no more than provisionally accepted within its activist core. However, the limits on the

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use of force by a German government remain quite explicit. Force can be used only as a last resort, and defensively but not preemptively. Force must be used for humanitarian purposes and not simply for national political or economic interests. Finally, the use of force must have a broader multilateral framework, preferably with a mandate either from the UN or NATO.93

The End of Comfortable Paradigms The unilateralism of the Bush administration and its emphasis on an early and robust use of force went against the fundamentals of the German political and strategic culture. If the administration had begun with—and stayed with—a multilateral approach focused on the issue of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s violations of UN sanctions rather than continually modifying its rationale, much less porcelain would have been broken and the tempest could have been postponed, if not avoided. Yet the concerns about the direction of American policy existed before 9-11 and would likely have grown, albeit more slowly. The strategic cultures of Germany and the United States have been diverging in fundamental ways.94 The escalating rhetoric of a potential war with Iraq, combined with the 2002 German election campaign, further divided the two countries.95 These developments were manifestations of a deeper structural change that had begun with German unification and accelerated after September 11. The strategic glue that held the alliance together is much weaker than it was during the cold war. Germany, and Berlin, are no longer divided. The U.S. security tie is no longer existential to Germany. As Joseph Joffe put it, “Alliances die when they win. . . . Germany no longer needs American strategic protection; at least the rent Berlin is willing to pay for this shelter has plummeted.”96 A similar trend can be seen with another close U.S. ally, South Korea. Although it remains a divided nation with a threat on its border, a majority of South Korea’s people, as reported in a poll taken in late 2002, believe there is little or no chance of an attack from North Korea. As two American correspondents observed, “the divide [between the United States and South Korea] has deeper roots involving [South Korea’s] rapid passage to affluence and its perception that its distant ally is heavy handed and insensitive, particularly with regard to North Korea.”97 The new threat of global terrorism may revive the security core of the German-American relationship if the leaders in both countries come to a common perception of the threat and agree on a strategy for dealing with it. That would, however, require dramatic changes in both Washington and

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Berlin. German security policy, for example, would have to shift from a European to a global focus. It would also require some consensus on a strategy for the Middle East, broadly conceived.98 For now, however, the vitality of the transatlantic circle of German policy is in question for the first time in its fifty years. This Kulturkampf, or clash of cultures, has also raised serious challenges for the civilian power approach. As Maull notes, this approach rests on three pillars: reliable partners, strong and vibrant international institutions, and a strong domestic foundation.99 The Bush revolution in U.S. foreign policy shook the first two pillars, and changes within Germany have been challenging the third, as the next chapter shows.

5 Is It Bush or Is It America? German Images of the United States

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he dispute between Germany and the United States over the war in Iraq raised broader questions about the nature of German public sentiment toward America. Henry Kissinger worried that Schröder’s critique of the Bush administration’s approach did not represent a simple divergence over policy but rather the opening of a new era in which “a kind of anti-Americanism may become a permanent temptation of German politics.”1 In contrast, public opinion polls indicate that the mainstream view in Germany holds that the split is primarily a matter of policy and personality and does not reflect a deeper anti-Americanism. Anti-Americanism can be defined as opposition to what America is perceived to stand for, not to what a particular U.S. government does. A cultural or political critique of the United States that remains the same regardless of the political orientation or policies of the administration in power reflects more deeply seated stereotypes and images; when such a critique is persistently negative, it can be characterized as anti-American. While the personality conflict between George W. Bush and Gerhard Schröder was important, it was hardly unique in postwar German-American relations. That particular clash of leaders did not seem any more severe than the clash between the young President John F. Kennedy and the aging Konrad Adenauer or the one between Jimmy Carter and Helmut Schmidt. What, then, was new about 2002? According to Friedbert Pflüger, a leading foreign policy specialist in the Christian Democratic Union, “This time and for the first time, the government was not in danger of yielding to the street, it was fueling the street.”2 It is clear that Schröder was both shaping and

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responding to a broad sense of uneasiness and concern about the Bush administration as well as its policy on Iraq. The real question is why and to what extent Schröder’s position resonated with the broader German public, including a majority of Christian Democrats. After all, Edmund Stoiber did not support going to war in Iraq either, although it is important to note that he did say that he would respect a UN mandate. He lost the crucial second television debate in the election campaign to Schröder in large part on this issue. While Stoiber tried to state conditions and qualifications, the chancellor simply vetoed any German military participation.

Traditional German Anti-Americanism Before World War II, German views of America “tended towards extremes of admiration or condescension,” always tempered and shaped by ideology.3 The liberals of the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 looked to America as the “most progressive country in the West,” whereas conservatives and national liberals saw it as “a land without culture or history.”4 German immigrants reported back either that America was a land of unlimited opportunities or that it was “an uncultured, artificial, heartless and mechanistic society.”5 The German social culture that they had left behind emphasized stability and security. The Bismarckian state stood in sharp contrast to the America of the Robber Barons and the Gilded Age. From the nineteenth century up to the cold war, German anti-Americanism varied depending on the regime in power. In general, though, it could be characterized by rejection of such aspects of American society as mass culture and materialism; “jungle capitalism,” with its ruthless competition, excessive individualism, and tolerance of great social inequality; its mix of races and ethnic groups; and the equalizing effect of an informal, nonhierarchical, classless culture that placed little value on tradition. During the cold war, however, Germany and the United States drew closer together than at any time since the first German unification, in 1871; nevertheless, both strategic assessments and more fundamental values often came into conflict. In 1980 the historian Hans W. Gatzke opined, “The similarities between the United States and West Germany at least are closer today than at any other time in their histories. Not only do the two nations share a common concern for the containment of communism, but their interests in most other respects—political, economic and cultural—are closely related and complementary.”6

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Earlier strains of German anti-Americanism were muted by a number of factors. The overwhelming geopolitical struggle with the Soviet Union and the division of Germany into East and West led to a sharing of both strategic interests and values with the United States. In addition, there was the need to rehabilitate Germany’s moral position and reinstate Germany as a sovereign nation. The United States, through its postwar strategy of integrating West Germany into NATO and the western community, served as an Ersatzvaterland (surrogate fatherland) for many West Germans of the immediate postwar generation. Besides offering a political model for what became the first successful democracy in German history, the United States was West Germany’s best hope for restoring its power and prestige. The supposedly uncultured Americans thus offered the postwar German generation a cultural model. As Jean Cocteau put it,“America is America; Germany, however, will be both Germany and America.”7 Yet German admiration for America was tempered by resentment of its moralism. In the German view, America saw itself as the “good” country that gave “bad” Germany a chance for salvation. This implied that Germany had to concede moral superiority to the United States and accept a teacher-pupil relationship. German idealization of the United States was bound to be short lived, and in many respects it peaked in the 1950s. German views of America, both as a society and a world power, began to change in the 1960s and the early 1970s. The civil rights disturbances of the 1960s, combined with the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, began to tarnish the moral image of America in German eyes, especially among the generation that came of age in the late 1960s. Yet this generation focused more on the culpability of its parents’ participation in the Third Reich than on that of the United States in Vietnam. The emergence of the Holocaust as a historical, moral, and political issue in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s reinforced the role of America as the moralizer and that of Germany as the eternal supplicant. There was also another side of the German Amerikabild (image of America). Admiration for American dynamism and democracy was always tempered with doubts about the United States as a world power. Although America’s role in Europe at the end of World War II and the beginning of the cold war was praised, memories of the ruthless devastation visited on Germany by U.S. armed forces during the war lived on. Images of a bombed out Dresden remained below the surface, to reemerge in the debate over Iraq. These concerns combined with a new pacifism, which became an important aspect of German strategic culture—that is, perceptions of security and strategy based on political culture, economics, demographics, geography,

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and history—after the destruction the country experienced during World War II and the subsequent demilitarization of German society. Doubts about America’s leadership role had begun to grow during the Vietnam War and grew even more during the Reagan era. In 1960 only 20 percent of Germans polled had doubts about whether the United States was playing a positive or wise role in international affairs, but by the early to mid-1980s, the proportion of doubters had grown to between 46 and 54 percent. 8 During the debate in the 1980s over the deployment of the intermediate-range nuclear force missiles (INF) in Germany, some of the old fears about “dangerous America” began to return. Ronald Reagan was viewed by many Germans as an unpredictable, rash, and unreflective leader who spoke too freely about the “evil empire” and the use of military power. The left, in particular, revived many of its criticisms of a capitalist and imperialist America, and a new generation of peace advocates came of age with the sense that both superpowers, not just the Soviet Union, endangered world peace and stability.9 Different historical lessons were drawn from the end of the cold war. The majority of West Germans credited Ostpolitik, détente, and Russian premier Mikhail Gorbachev with ending the cold war, while only a minority, mainly on the Christian Democratic right, credited Reagan and his policy of maintaining U.S. might. The historian John Lukacs noted the conflict: [T]his world historical change, the end of an epoch, the decline of the Soviet Union and its astonishing retreat from Europe, was due to one man, Ronald Reagan, who with his brilliant armaments program and his star wars, forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy. . . . The Germans don’t believe this. They know the Russians better than most. They know what they owe to Gorbachev, which is to their credit.10 In Germany, reconciliation and compromise were seen as more decisive in bringing about the end of the Soviet Union than threats and military might. In German eyes, the success of Germany’s unification was epitomized by George H. W. Bush and his team of cautious realists, whose restraint was characterized by Bush, who said, “I won’t beat my chest and dance on the wall,” not by Ronald Reagan urging, “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev.”11

The German Public’s Image of 9-11 and of the War in Iraq September 11, 2001, is the single most important factor in contemporary Germans’ image of the United States. Three of four Germans list the terrorist attacks as having shaped their view of America, followed by 53 percent

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listing the visit of John F. Kennedy; 44 percent, the Vietnam War; 43 percent, popular music; and 40 percent, the Berlin Airlift.12 The terrorist attacks of September 11 unleashed a great wave of public sympathy throughout Germany, and massive demonstrations of moral support took place at the Brandenburg Gate on September 14. Polls taken immediately after 9-11 found that a majority of Germans believed that life would never be the same again; in their opinion, it would be less secure and terror attacks could be expected in Germany as well. As did many in the United States, most Germans found that 9-11 reaffirmed their commitment to nonmaterial values, such as the importance of family, friends, children, and free time. However, unlike in the United States, religious belief did not seem to increase in importance as a result of the events, consistent with the widespread secularization of German society. Three-fourths of Germans in one survey reported being horrified by the attacks, with western Germans more devastated than eastern Germans and women more than men. About three in four Germans feared that similar attacks would occur in Germany, and although few would have supported an indiscriminate response merely for revenge, a clear majority thought the United States had the right to respond militarily and two-thirds believed that Germany should offer military support.13 In sum, initial public reaction was quite supportive of a measured but strong U.S. military response and of the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, although West Germans were far more supportive and sympathetic than East Germans. There also was broad approval of NATO’s invocation of Article 5, the NATO charter’s self-defense clause. Even at this early stage, however, there were signs of ambivalence. The German public was about equally divided over the statement by the Social Democratic defense minister, Peter Struck, that “now we are all Americans.” Only 44 percent agreed with Schröder’s declaration of “unlimited solidarity” with the United States, while 47 percent wished he had been more cautious.14 During the first two years of George W. Bush’s administration, the proportion of Germans holding a favorable opinion of the United States dropped sharply. While they still had substantial doubts about Bush’s leadership, Bush gained support among Germans after 9-11. Even as late as his visit to Berlin in May 2002, the public seemed to approve of his efforts to deal with terrorism. Two-thirds of those surveyed believed that Germany should comply with the wishes of the United States and should furthermore support it in the struggle against terrorism. More than half (56 percent) evaluated the German-American relationship as good, and only 10 percent believed that it was bad (31 percent believed that it was neither good nor bad). Fifty-five

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percent believed that Bush was doing a good job as president, while 38 percent thought that he was doing a bad job. However, views of Bush were clearly divided along partisan lines, with only 25 percent of Greens and 14 percent of supporters of the neocommunist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) having a positive image, compared with 68 percent of supporters of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and 66 percent of supporters of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Those identifying with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) were slightly positive (51 percent, compared with 42 percent negative). However, even at this last high point, a majority thought that there were more differences than similarities between American and European values (50 percent, compared with 42 percent who found more similarities).15 These extensive surveys demonstrate that there was broad support for U.S. efforts to combat terrorism and that in this context German pacifism was a minor motif. Nevertheless, partisan and east-west differences were apparent, and they created special problems for Schröder in terms of how far he could go in supporting Bush’s approach without losing his core electorate. Confidence in Bush was rather thin across the board, but especially in the Red-Green coalition and in the former East Germany. Clearly, public support was broken not by the war on terrorism but rather by the impending war in Iraq. The May 2002 poll cited above found that the Iraq issue shattered German solidarity with the United States. Sixty-three percent of the public opposed German participation in U.S. efforts to deal with Iraq, and of the 30 percent who supported those efforts, only 15 percent supported military action. Opposition was as widespread in the CDU/CSU as it was in the SPD, and it went even deeper among the Greens and the PDS. The escalation of the Iraq issue, first during the 2002 election campaign and later in the fall and through the following spring, caused the German image of both Bush and the United States to nosedive. By November 2002, only one-fifth of the German public thought that the government should strongly support the United States in a war in Iraq, while one-quarter strongly opposed such support and one-half thought that allowing Americans to use German bases was support enough. Almost 90 percent of those polled in November 2002 thought that the motives of the United States for overthrowing Saddam Hussein were related to its need for oil. Two-thirds believed that the fight against terrorism also was a reason, while less than a quarter believed that either building democracy in Iraq or humanitarian concerns were behind U.S. policy. The public was evenly split over whether George Bush or Saddam Hussein was a greater threat to world peace.16

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By February 2003, at the height of the crisis in the UN, 71 percent of Germans polled said that they supported their government’s refusal to support military intervention in Iraq, while only 24 percent opposed it. Support for Schröder’s policy among Greens and SPD partisans was close to 90 percent; levels were lower in the opposition (FDP, 66 percent; CDU/CSU, 56 percent). A majority (56 percent) continued to believe that the Iraq issue would not cause long-term damage to the broader German-American relationship, although pessimism on this score was greater among the opposition than in the governing coalition.17 By March 2003, however, 48 percent believed that German-American relations had been severely damaged, while 38 percent disagreed.18

The Bush Problem There is no doubt that the image of George W. Bush among Germans suffered heavily because of Iraq, a result that was part of a longer-term decline in Bush’s image from its high point after 9-11. The proportion of Germans who held a good opinion of Bush had fallen to a new low of 10 percent at the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003, when 73 percent had a bad opinion of him.19 Personal trust in Bush also had fallen by March: 35 percent of Germans expressed great or some trust in the president, while 63 percent expressed little trust. Only CDU/CSU supporters mustered a slight advantage for Bush. Less than two years after 9-11, one poll found that 19 percent of those surveyed believed it possible that the U.S. government had been involved somehow in the attacks. One-third of those under the age of thirty held that view.20 When asked “What is the problem with the U.S.?” 74 percent of Germans identified Bush, while only 22 percent thought it was America in general.21 In an international poll of world leaders, Bush received very low ratings on leadership from Germans, who gave the highest ratings to French president Jacques Chirac, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and UN secretary general Kofi Annan. In the United States, by contrast, the highest-ranked leaders were British prime minister Tony Blair, Bush, and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.22 The implicit hope behind this analysis is that if the problem lies in Bush himself, once Bush is gone America will return to a more sensible and centrist approach. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, is viewed by the German intellectual and political elite and public alike as a reckless and not very smart cowboy, inexperienced in the ways of the world and dangerously naive and ideological. In addition, Bush is seen by many in Germany

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as blending conservative politics with evangelical messianism. Both Reagan and Bush held office during times of national trauma, Reagan having come to office at a time when American confidence was at a low point following the Iran hostage crisis, the economy was besieged by inflation and unemployment, Japan appeared to be surpassing the United States as an economic powerhouse, and the tide of history seemed to be running in the direction of the Soviet Union and its allies with its invasion of Afghanistan. Both used a highly nationalist approach to revive American pride and optimism. This sort of approach sets off alarm bells in post–World War II Germany. Mindful of Hitler, Germans remain suspicious of strong, charismatic leaders who make emotional appeals to nationalism. Germans also were distrustful of what they viewed as the militaristic approach of the Bush administration. While 76 percent of Germans surveyed in a June 2003 Pew Research Center poll believed that Iraq was better off without Saddam Hussein, 80 percent supported their government’s decision not to join the war effort.23 A majority believed that the United States did not try hard enough to avoid casualties, and almost three of four Germans thought that the U.S.-led coalition was doing only a fair or poor job of addressing the needs of the Iraqi people. Support for a U.S.-led war on terrorism also had dropped, by 10 points, since the previous survey in June 2002 but remained at a healthy 60 percent. However, a majority opposed the right of preemptive attack, holding the view that the use of force against nations that threaten but have not actually attacked one’s country is rarely or never justified.24 It is not surprising that both the total devastation of their country during World War II and the deliberate efforts of American governments to eradicate all vestiges of militarism and nationalism in postwar Germany have made Germans especially sensitive to the prospect of war. An international survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund in summer 2003 found that Germans stood out in their unwillingness to believe that some wars could be just. When asked whether, under some conditions, war is necessary to obtain justice, only 39 percent of Germans agreed, compared with 74 percent of Britons and 84 percent of Americans.25 Furthermore, Germans have difficulty understanding the American sense of invulnerability that existed before 9-11 and the resulting traumatization of American society in the wake of the attacks. Many Germans fear that this trauma will be used by the Bush administration for its own ends, just as Hitler took advantage of the German trauma in the Weimar period. Finally, the lessons of German history also raise the fear that America will fall prey to the hubris of unchallenged power.26

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Over the course of the fateful year from summer 2002 to summer 2003, not only was there deep disagreement with U.S. policy on Iraq, there also was even deeper concern about U.S. power and leadership. In Germany and in Europe generally, the perception crystallized that the United States disregards the views of others in carrying out its policies. In a 2002 Pew survey, 53 percent of Germans believed that U.S. foreign policy considers the views of others, while 45 percent believed that it does not. While the latter figure is higher than in other European samples—44 percent in Britain, 36 percent in Italy, and 21 percent in France—it reveals a strong pool of Germans who have concerns about American unilateralism.27 That concern was voiced by a number of German officials interviewed for this book. One senior diplomat put it this way: “It was incomprehensible that although we disagreed in one area, we got treated as a foe. After a whole generation had been raised with a transatlantic vision, the sense of partnership had changed. There is still trust, but more caution and distance. All that had been developed over decades was suddenly worthless, in light of U.S. remarks.”28 The administrations of Bush Senior and Bush Junior represented polar opposites in their approaches to the world and in their reception in Germany and Europe. The elder Bush’s traditional realist perspective, limited in both aspirations and commitments, was close to the basic world view of Europeans, who believed that realistic management of problems was far less dangerous than utopian ideas about ridding the world of evil. The ideological voices of the leaders of the younger Bush’s administration, by contrast, reawakened German fears and stereotypes. George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” as well as Reagan’s “evil empire” suggested that America was a rather reckless and dangerous place where such terms were used loosely.29 The strongly unilateralist style of George W. Bush’s administration also contrasted sharply with the coalition-based approach of his father. The leadership style of the younger Bush’s White House and the Pentagon was characterized by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld: “It is less important to have unanimity than it is to be making the right decisions and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it may seem lonesome.”30 While one person’s “unilateralism” is another’s “leadership,” it is clear that the style of the Bush administration could not have been more ill suited to dealing with a newly unified and sovereign Germany led by a government that has avowed a foreign policy based on stronger assertion of Germany’s interests. This new psychology is reflected in the statements by the SPD-Green government, from the chancellor and foreign minister down, that Germany will not “click

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its heels” in obedience to the United States and likewise in the analogies drawn between the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, and the former Soviet ambassador to East Germany, Pjotr Abrassimov, and between President Bush and Caesar Augustus. Even a leading figure in the Christian Democratic opposition, Wolfgang Schäuble, noted of Rumsfeld’s snub of Struck at the NATO defense ministers’ meeting just after the German election, “The way in which Rumsfeld handled Struck was not the way that adults deal with each other. A great power must act in a generous way.”31 In many respects, these concerns were not uniquely German but broadly shared in Europe, and they ran deeper still in France. As Tony Judt wrote during the war, Anti-Americanism today is fueled by a new consideration, and it is no longer confined to intellectuals. Most Europeans and other foreigners today are untroubled by American products. . . . They are familiar with the American “way of life,” which they often envy and dislike in equal parts. . . . What upsets them is U.S. foreign policy; and they don’t trust America’s current president . . . in part for the policies he pursues and for the manner in which he pursues it.32 The general level of German confidence in the ability of the United States to deal responsibly with world problems has varied greatly since polls started asking this question in 1960. (The question was originally asked by the U.S. Information Agency in polls it commissioned from German firms; the question was later picked up and used by independent German polling firms.) Data for West Germany from 1960 to 1990 indicate a great deal of volatility in attitudes, with quick and rather dramatic shifts based largely on events. Given this volatility, means are not very useful measures, but they do give a general indication of the direction of trends. During the 1980s, mean ratings were 42.5 percent confident and 45.6 percent not confident, although confidence in U.S. leadership soared during the unification process. In unified Germany from 1991 to 2002, mean ratings were 59.7 percent confident and 35.4 percent not confident. The postunification glow faded during the first half of the 1990s. Roughly half to two-thirds of the public had confidence in U.S. leadership from the mid-1990s until just before the outbreak of the Iraq crisis, when the proportion fell to about 49 percent. It is noteworthy that confidence levels had dropped prior to the beginning of the Schröder campaign for reelection. He and his polling organization had picked up on this sentiment and played on it when he was looking for an issue to increase his support among the electorate. The lowest levels of confidence in the United

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States before the issue of the war in Iraq arose were recorded during Reagan’s first term, at the height of the debate over the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Germany. In 1983 only 35 percent of Germans surveyed had confidence in the U.S. leadership, while 59 percent did not. Although there was some recovery after agreement was reached on the missile issue with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, confidence levels stayed at or below 44 percent until the last few months of Reagan’s second term. The administration of George H. W. Bush did much to regain German confidence, and levels held up well during most of Clinton’s presidency, reaching a high of 65 percent at the end of his second term in 2000.33

The America Problem While Germans tend to see the rift with the United States as primarily a problem with George W. Bush, distinctions between a nation and its leadership are hardly watertight and there tends to be a spillover effect in both directions. As David Morris points out in his study of German opinion during the Reagan era, “The more the German image of America is shaped by its policies, the stronger the person responsible for these policies becomes the focus, namely the President of the United States.”34 As Reagan began to pursue a policy of détente with Mikhail Gorbachev, the German public’s image of Reagan and its confidence in U.S. policy both improved, even though Reagan never was a popular figure in Germany and he never enjoyed the level of confidence there that Kennedy, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, or Bill Clinton did. There are indications that the negative German image of the current Bush administration is having a spillover effect on the broader Amerikabild. Polls by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen found a link between “liking” Americans and supporting German participation in a war in Iraq with a UN mandate. Of those who said they do not like Americans, 71 percent would not support a war in Iraq under any circumstances, whereas only 47 percent of those who liked Americans took this stance.35 This result poses the chicken-or-egg problem, but there is probably a good deal of interaction between the two variables. Those with a negative image of America are likely to be critical of its government’s policies. But those who are favorably inclined toward the United States but oppose the policies of its government, in this case the majority of Germans, may experience cognitive dissonance and therefore be forced to modify either their image of Bush or of America. The latter seems to be the case as many, especially younger, Germans are beginning to develop

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a more critical or differentiated view of the United States as a society. As during the cold war, the German left tends to be more skeptical or negative about both U.S. policies and American society than the more conservative elements.36 Public opinion studies reveal that there is still a reserve of goodwill toward the United States, but it has diminished since the Iraq crisis began. When asked in November 2002 about their feelings about “the American way of life,” the German public was fairly evenly split, with 38 percent negative and 37 percent positive (25 percent were neither positive nor negative). In this poll, younger people were more positive about the American way of life than those aged forty-five and older. The Green voter base, along with the CDU/CSU voters, were the most positive, while supporters of the SPD were most negative.37 Attitudes toward the United States among those living in the former East Germany are not surprisingly more reserved and skeptical toward the United States, given that their political socialization has differed from that of residents in the western part of the country. In this respect, eastern Germans also are distinctive from citizens of other former Soviet bloc countries, such as Poland, Romania, and Hungary, which are strongly proAmerican. This is due to a number of factors, including east Germans’ disappointment over unification and their sense of powerlessness. Resentment directed toward western Germans also shapes resentment toward the United States. To some degree east Germans blame their poor economic conditions on capitalism and the American model.38 However, Amerikakritik (criticism of America) has grown with Germany’s distancing on foreign policy. After all the turmoil between the United States and Europe associated with Iraq, the June 2003 Pew survey found that substantial damage had been done to the U.S.-German relationship. Those holding a favorable view of the United States had fallen from 61 percent in summer 2002, just before the most damaging episodes of the election campaign, to 25 percent in March 2003, at the start of the war.39 Even well after the dust of the war had settled and Bush and Schröder had done much to repair their personal relationship, evidence of longer-lasting public damage was still apparent. In an Allensbach survey conducted in February 2004, 71 percent of respondents believed that the United States pursued its interests in an egotistical and inconsiderate manner, and about half continued to lack confidence in the ability of the United States to solve international problems, given its inability to deal with its many domestic problems. A mere 20 percent agreed with the proposition that only the United States, as the sole superpower, could bring peace to the world’s cri-

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sis areas.40 These results reflect not only the impact of the Bush administration’s style during the crisis, but also the administration’s loss of credibility over the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and its inability to bring order to Iraq after the war. In Germany, Bush’s leadership style produced the view that Americans did not like Germans. Although 55 percent of Germans polled in 1989 thought that Americans had sympathy for Germans, in mid-2003 only 32 percent believed that Americans liked Germans, while 31 percent believed that they did not. When asked toward which countries they felt especially sympathetic, only 11 percent of Germans in February-March 2003 named the United States, a steep drop from the 27 to 30 percent who named the United States consistently in the period from 1995 to 2001. In addition, those who thought that the widespread American influence on the German way of life was good fell from 37 percent in 1997 to 30 percent in early 2003, while those who did not like the U.S. influence grew from 39 percent to 51 percent.41 Although one in five Germans today has a relative who immigrated to the United States, polls have found that almost two in three Germans believed that the influence of the United States on the politics, economics, and culture of Germany is too great (25 percent believed that it was just about right and 5 percent believed that it was too little.) When asked in March 2003 whether America was still a model, almost 90 percent of Germans said no, while 9 percent thought it was.42 Close to a majority believed that Germany and the United States have been growing apart since the end of the cold war and that there is a significant gap between the countries’ values. When Germans were asked which themes they associate with America, there was some consistency and some change over the period from March 1991 to March 2003, slightly more than a decade. At both times more than or close to 90 percent of respondents mentioned world power (94 to 95 percent), criminality (92 to 95 percent), military power (88 to 92 percent), and drugs (86 to 95 percent). Americans now are also viewed as inconsiderate, willing to use force, and arrogant, while there has been a substantial drop in the positive qualities attributed to them, such as being honest, peace loving, and responsible.43 With the end of the cold war and the absence of a common threat, more traditional German concerns about American society have returned. These can be grouped under the following themes: globalization, inequality, and the costs of risk taking; religion and secularism; race and multiethnicity; and nationalism, sovereignty, and the postmodern state.

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Globalization, Democracy, and Anti-Americanism Many of the themes that Schröder repeated during the election campaign tapped into deeper reservations about the direction the United States is taking. Schröder’s use of the term “German Way” referred not to foreign policy but to social and economic models and to his desire to distance Germany from the “American system” and the Anglo-American social and economic model. As he put it, The term German Way has nothing to do with international politics. What was meant is the balance between capital and labor we have created domestically. . . . This is what we call Modell Deutschland. This phrase should make it clear that what has developed in Europe is not only a single market, but a type of social interaction.44 His use of the term amerikanische Verhältnisse, or American system, was meant to distance the German social democratic model from the “AngloSaxon” model of Reagan, Thatcher, and the younger Bush. This aversion is reflected in German public opinion, which also rejects this model. As a Pew survey found, In Germany and five of six Eastern European countries surveyed, broader attitudes concerning the role of government are linked to opinion of the U.S. approach to democracy. People who say it is up to the government to insure that no citizens are in need tend to reject American-style democracy. By contrast, those who favor a more minimalist government role favor the American form of democracy by higher margins.45 While these concerns have been heightened by the wave of corporate scandals in the United States, they also reflect the more traditional German ambivalence about America as a social and economic model. Although it is influenced and tempered by ideology and social class, a broader sense of a social economy remains in Germany than in post-Reagan America. The Soziale Marktwirtschaft, or social market economy, is based on the extensive role of the German state as regulator and guarantor of social equality and security. It was developed not by the left but by the Christian Democrats under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer and his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard. It is based on a German concept of democracy that emphasizes positive over negative freedom, with positive freedom emphasizing an active state role in ensuring the existence of the social and economic conditions necessary for equality. In contrast, the American idea of democracy is based

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on negative freedom, which stresses freedom from the state, with an emphasis on equality of opportunity. German concepts are more rooted in the rights of the group; the American tradition places greater weight on individual rights. The longer German tradition was reinforced by the wild swings during the twentieth century in Germany’s experience of both political and economic instability. After the rampant inflation of the interwar and immediate post–World War II periods and the specter of mass unemployment, the German political culture has placed a premium on stability, predictability, and security. Almost every German national political campaign has been run on slogans such as “No Experiments” and promises of security. These differences are behind the traditional German reservations about American-style capitalism, with its emphasis on competition, on winners and losers instead of social equality. Worries about the American system reflect the risk aversion that runs deep in German political culture. When asked in 2003 whether they would rather live in a country in which risk taking was rewarded or one in which greater value was placed on security, 71 percent of Germans picked security; only 17 percent preferred more risk taking. There were no real differences between eastern and western Germans on this question.46 The comparison with the United States is striking. When asked whether it is more important for the government to guarantee that no one is in need or for an individual to be free of the government to pursue goals, 57 percent of Germans but only 34 percent of Americans opted for the security option while 39 percent of Germans and 58 percent of Americans opted for more freedom for the individual. The same 2003 survey found that by a ratio of 65 to 32 percent Americans disagreed with the statement that “success was determined by forces outside our control,” while the percentages were reversed in Germany, where 68 percent agreed and only 31 percent thought they were in control of their own success. 47 While these themes have greater resonance on the left with the Social Democrats and former communists (PDS), they also find an audience on the center and the right. Germany has never had a Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan who remade the national political economy. Not only were the Christian Democrats the creators of the social market economy, they also have always had a strong social or labor wing. The only party that has been liberal in the European sense of free market liberalism has been the Free Democrats, and they have remained a distinct minority. The Greens, with their greater individualism, have emerged in recent years as neoliberal in some respects when it comes to economic reform, but they too remain a minority.

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Even during the cold war Germans tended to distance themselves from capitalism. Polls conducted in 1986, for example, found that only a third of West Germans believed the concept of capitalism to be positive, and although not more than a quarter favored socialism, a majority did not oppose it. The Pew and Marshall Fund surveys as well as the World Values survey conducted by the University of Michigan reveal other important divergences between Germans and Americans. A vast majority (70 percent) of Germans believed that U.S. policies widen the global economic divide. And although there was widespread approval of American popular culture and admiration for American technology, only about one-quarter (28 percent) believed that the spread of U.S. ideas and customs is good. About two-thirds (67 percent) thought that it is bad, a percentage second only to that in France. There is a gap between Germans and Americans over ideas of democracy and also over the state of democracy in Bush’s America. Germans, like most Europeans, are evenly divided over American ideas about democracy, with 47 percent answering that they like them and 45 percent saying that they do not. 48 This reflects, in part, the deep democratization of German political culture since 1949. Germans no longer doubt the efficacy and desirability of democracy, as many did during the Weimar Republic, but rather embrace it and apply its standards to the behavior of other states. This is especially salient in their views of America, given its status as the gold standard of democratic practice for postwar Germans. There is a sense that since 9-11 Americans have sacrificed democracy for security and have failed to live up to their own standards in regard to the treatment of the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. Negative attitudes toward John Ashcroft, the Patriot Act, and what is seen as the general tendency to suppress civil liberties have been reinforced by the popularity of the films and books of the social critic Michael Moore. All this is reflected in polls showing a drop— from 67 percent in 1991 to 54 percent in 2003—in the number of Germans who associated democracy with America.49 In some respects, then, the criticism of American democracy is a sign of the maturity of German democracy, and it ties into the debate on post 9-11 civil liberties that is occurring in the United States. The debate over the need to reform the German economy, which has reached a high point under Schröder, reflects the tension between the German yearning for security and social equality and the pressures of global competition. For many Germans, on both the right and the left, globalization has meant “Americanization,” at the cost of cultural identity and social

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stability. Therefore German criticism of American democracy is linked to the broader angst over change and the loss of security in a more competitive, bottom line–oriented world. Finally, Germans tend to be more cautious about the export of democracy than most Americans. The tradition of what de Tocqueville called “American exceptionalism,” which sees the American mission as tied to the export of American democratic values, differs from the German view. Germans also believe in exporting democracy, but they see it as a long and fundamentally indigenous process. Democratization can be fostered by institutions like the European Union, but the process is viewed as more akin to gardening than engineering, with large doses of development aid and assistance through political foundations and other institutions. The introduction of democracy from the outside through force is seen as unlikely to be successful. In addition, most Germans do not view the war in Iraq as primarily or even largely motivated by the desire to build democracy, but rather by economic and political considerations in the U.S. quest for power. To some extent German criticism of the United States is also criticism of globalization. Many aspects of globalization—including the rapid spread of popular culture, the increase in travel and communication, the immigration of large numbers of people to countries that think of themselves as countries of emigration, the growing impact of trade and international finance, and increases in both the standard of living and social inequality—are closely linked to the growing American presence in the lives of people everywhere. Nevertheless, polls do not show too much divergence between American and German opinion on globalization. On the overall question on the effect of globalization on their country, 62 percent of Americans and 67 percent of Germans thought it was generally good while only 23 percent of Americans and 26 percent of Germans thought it was bad. In Germany as throughout Europe, the young (ages eighteen through twenty-nine) were the most likely to think globalization was a good thing. The main reservations about globalization were with the rapid rate of change and pace of modern life, the pervasiveness of commercialism and consumerism, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and, especially for eastern Germans, the lack of well-paying jobs.50

Multiculturalism and Identity While the American social model has been a target of the left, American popular culture and aspects of the U.S. social model have been anathema to elements of the right. The American way of life has represented mass soci-

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ety, cultureless materialism, and racial mixing or multiculturalism to those on the right who reject the westernization of Germany as a loss of Germany’s distinctiveness between the Slavic east and a west that in the past was considered to exhibit a shopkeeper’s mentality and base materialism. As Ian Buruma points out, “To ethnic nationalists in Germany and elsewhere, Britain and France, with their relative openness to immigrants, were seen as mongrel nations, where citizenship could be bought for a crock of gold. This is what Hitler meant when he called France, Britain and the United States ‘Jewified.’”51 For the new right as for the old, the American way of life represented rootlessness and loss of national identity. During the cold war, some linked the identity question to the division of Germany, which they saw as being perpetuated by the United States. After unification and the end of the threat of the Soviet Union, however, the right was open to a new European Third Way, between a Slavic Russia in the east and American materialism in the west.52 Discussions among the Christian Democrats contrasted the American multicultural model and a Leitkultur, or leading cultural model, for Germany. Schröder’s unilateralism and talk of the German Way appeals to these elements on the right. The growing challenge of integrating more than 7 million foreigners (9 percent of the population) has reopened German fears of loss of national identity. The increase in the foreign-born population is part of the broader challenge posed by an aging society and low birth rates among Germans. Germany has had a negative birth rate since 1973; without immigration, the population will shrink from the current level of 82 million to around 72 million by 2030 and to 59 million by 2050.53 The working-age population (twenty to sixty-five year olds) will drop by 12 million by 2030 and by 20 million by 2050. Thus, even given immigration rates of 200,000 a year, there will be a drop in the working-age population of 13 million by 2050. This means that Germany will need to bring in 500,000 workers a year just to keep a working population of 42 million by 2050 (the current working-age population is 51 million).54 While Germans do not consider Germany a land of immigration, the country experienced major waves of immigration in the nineteenth century and especially after World War II. Between 1945 and 1949, 12 million people emigrated or were expelled from what was German territory before World War II or from areas where large numbers of Germans lived, largely in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In the period before the Berlin Wall was constructed (1945–61), 3.8 million Germans moved from East Germany

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to West Germany, and an additional 400,000 emigrated from 1961 to 1988. There was another big increase after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR, so that between 1988 and 2000 about 2.7 million people with some German heritage (referred to as Aussiedler) immigrated to Germany. While the influx of these groups has caused social dislocations, it is the integration of non-German minorities that has proved most difficult culturally and politically. Many foreign workers came originally under the Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program from the late 1950s to 1973 in response to a labor shortage prompted by Germany’s economic recovery. After the construction of the Berlin Wall and the consequent reduction of the number of German emigrants from East Germany, West Germany intensified its recruitment of guest workers. Up until 1973, when recruitment was halted, foreigners increased in terms of both numbers and share of the labor force. The labor force participation of immigrants, however, has decreased. Since then there has been growth in the second-generation foreign population, but unlike in the United States and elsewhere, these children were not granted German citizenship at birth, and they remained foreigners under the law. The Schröder government modified the law in 2000 to allow those born in Germany to acquire German citizenship by age twenty-three, but only if they give up any claim to dual citizenship.55 In 2000, the number of legally resident foreigners was 7.3 million, 8.9 percent of the total population. Citizens of the former guest worker countries continued to make up the largest share of this number, which notably included 2 million Turkish citizens, of whom 750,000 were born in Germany. Another 425,000 Turks have been naturalized since 1972 and do not show up in the foreign population statistics. In addition, a large number of asylum seekers made their way to Germany after the end of the cold war. While 57,400 individuals applied for asylum in 1987, by 1992 the total had risen to 440,000. The public reaction against this influx led to severe restrictions on granting political asylum, to the point that only 78,564 applications were filed in 2000.56 The existence of terrorist cells in Germany is related to this large influx of asylum seekers, some of whom came from countries that suppress Islamic fundamentalist movements. Approximately twenty Islamic organizations with a total of 32,000 members were under observation by German authorities in 2001, and police estimated that around 100 radicals living in Germany in 2001 had trained in al Qaeda camps. In a 2004 article on al Qaeda’s base in Germany, Der Spiegel reported that 270 fundamentalists were under close surveillance.57

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The proportion of immigrants is smaller in the United States than in Germany, but Americans continue to see their country as a land of immigrants. In a Pew survey conducted in 2003, Americans expressed more tolerance toward ethnic minorities than did Germans. When white Americans were asked whether African Americans and Hispanics have a good influence on the country, 78 percent agreed in the case of African Americans and 67 percent were positive about Hispanics. When the same question was asked of Germans regarding Turks living in Germany, 47 percent were positive and 41 percent were negative; 53 percent also took a negative view of eastern Europeans living in Germany. However, while Germans were evenly split on the proposition that their way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence (51 percent agreed while 48 percent disagreed), more Americans were concerned about this (64 percent agreed; 32 percent disagreed), and 46 percent of Americans wanted to limit entry of foreigners into the country. 58 As one German analyst has observed, “It is the rejection of the ideal of a society as a homogeneous unity which gives American society its extraordinary sense of common identity and insures its special quality of renewal.”59 In Germany and more broadly in Europe, the melting pot ideal is rejected. As Anne Applebaum writes,“Immigrants . . . change the nature of the societies in which they make their home. And many Europeans do not want their societies to change.”60 These are societies based on a particular ethnic and cultural identity. In some, such as France, citizenship means not multiculturalism but assimilation—accepting the culture of the existing society, its language, religion, and customs. In Germany, citizenship has been based on “blood,” on German ancestry, although the changes in the citizenship law may be a step toward acceptance of a broader, more civic concept of citizenship. The clash between the American and German concepts of identity and citizenship will lead to more clashes in the future if Americans decide that they want to apply the standards of their model of a multicultural society to Germany and Europe. These are societies with different social and cultural identities that require a sense of cultural and social cohesion, especially as Europe integrates and globalizes. In many ways, the rest of the world is closer to Europe and the United States is exceptional in this regard. During the 2002 election campaign, Michael Glos, the spokesman for Edmund Stoiber, stated that the Christian Democrats rejected the ideal of a multicultural society. As Applebaum concludes,“European national traditions have served Europe well . . . giving Europeans secure and comfortable national identities, creating the social cohesion necessary for democracy and prosperity. We

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should hope they find ways to preserve them in the present.”61 On the German side, the danger exists that in reacting against the multicultural model, Germans may fall back into old prejudices about America as a polyglot society without an identity or soul. Clearly this is an area that could lead either to transatlantic tension or to a transatlantic learning process in which Germany adapts itself to the diversity of a multicultural society. Another aspect of the demographic issue is the implication of a growing and relatively youthful United States facing an aging and more conservative Germany and Europe. As John Parker pointed out in his Economist survey, “By the middle of this century America’s population could be 440–550 million, larger than the EU’s even after enlargement, and nearly half China’s rather than a quarter. . . . America will be noticeably younger then and ethnically more varied.”62 He goes on to note that the median age in the United States today is roughly the same as that in Europe (thirty-six to Europe’s thirty-eight) but that by mid-century the median age in the United States will still be around thirty-six while it will be fifty-three in Europe. While predicting long-term demographic trends has been risky at least since the time of Malthus, there are some real risks for the transatlantic relationship related to a widening of the value gap between the countries involved because of contrasts in their demographic dynamism and ethnic diversity. As for the German-American relationship, these aspects of America are not a problem but rather a model for many Germans, especially for the progressive left, the Greens, and younger members of the SPD, who have embraced American popular culture and the American lifestyle as well as multiculturalism. This segment of the left loves America but hates the Bush administration, while the right has supported the administration while hating the influence of American popular culture.

Secularism and Patriotism In spite of the Americanization of large parts of German popular culture, a number of surveys have found significant and growing differences between American and European views on secularism, patriotism, and the international order. The gap between contemporary Europe and the United States on secularism and the role of religion in politics widened substantially in the 1990s as Americans became more religious.63 Eighty percent of Americans believe in God, and 39 percent describe themselves as born-again Christians; almost two in three believe that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. Surveys have found that Americans are much more likely to attend a church or synagogue and to hold religious beliefs than are Europeans. They

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are more likely to believe in God, miracles, and the existence of the devil and to believe that the world will end in a battle at Armageddon between Jesus and the Antichrist. 64 The University of Michigan’s World Values Survey found that Americans tend to be both more patriotic and more religious than Europeans, especially those in post-Protestant countries such as Germany and Sweden. America is almost unique in combining self-expression with traditional values, while Germany follows the northern or Protestant European tendency to rank high on both self-expression and secularism. This gap has widened with unification, as eastern Germans are even more secular than their western counterparts. As a summary of the findings concludes, “Patriotism is one of the core traditional values and there is an obvious link between it, military might and popular willingness to sustain large defense budgets. There may be a link between America’s religiosity and its tendency to see foreign policy in moral terms. To Americans, evil exists and can be fought in their lives and in their world. Compared with Europeans, this is a different worldview in both senses: different prevailing attitudes, differing ways at looking at the world.”65 This tendency toward moral certainty has grown over the past two decades. In 1981, 35 percent of Americans and 22 percent of West Germans believed that clear standards of right and wrong existed that allied to everyone. By the year 2001, the number of Americans who held that belief had risen to 59 percent while the German proportion was 30 percent.66 What is worrisome to Germans and other Europeans is the link between the Christian right and the political right. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, 63 percent of those who went to church more than once a week voted for George W. Bush and 40 percent of Bush’s total vote came from evangelical Christians. The Christian right has built up a formidable network of institutions that have provided crucial financial and other support to the political right, to the extent that in many respects the political and religious movements have merged. A Pew survey concluded that “over the past 15 years, religion and religious faith also have become more strongly aligned with partisan and ideological identification.”67 In 1987–88 Republicans and Democrats were equally likely to express strong personal religious attitudes, but by 2002–03 a seven-point gap had opened up between the two parties on this dimension. On the ideological dimension, 81 percent of self-identified conservatives but only 54 percent of liberals agreed with three religious belief–based positions.68 For many evangelical Christians, 9-11 was proof of the sad moral state of the United States. As Jerry Falwell put it, “God continues to lift the curtain

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and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. . . . I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists and the gays and lesbians . . . all of them who have tried to secularize America— I point the finger in their face and say: You helped this happen.”69 Bush and his presidency were transformed by 9-11. One observer has labeled this an “epiphany” for Bush, defining the true purpose of his presidency and offering a mission and purpose for a life that he had squandered in youthful excess before experiencing religious conversion.70 A senior administration figure said more than a year after the attacks that Bush “really believes he was placed here to do this as part of a divine plan.”71 The president’s emphasis on good and evil and his evangelical language stand in sharp contrast to the secularism of Europe and of Schröder. When Schröder took the oath of office for his first term in 1998, he specifically declined the option to say “So help me God,” the first postwar chancellor not to do so. He regarded Bush’s religious conviction with anxiety, fearing it would spill over into a rationale for a larger war against evil throughout the world. The impact of this growing values gap in foreign policy has not been lost on European leaders. Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for foreign policy and former secretary general of NATO, observed that the United States and Europe were growing further apart as part of a “cultural phenomenon” that goes beyond the previous pattern of U.S. foreign policy swings. Today there is a new unilateralist approach driven by religion: “It is a kind of binary model. It is all or nothing. For us Europeans, it is difficult to deal with because we are secular. We do not see the world in such black and white terms.”72 Solana went on to note that “the choice of language on the two sides of the Atlantic is revealing. . . . What for the U.S. is a war on terrorism, for Europe is a fight against terrorism.” He posited that a religious society perceives evil in terms of moral choice and free will while a secular one explains the causes of evil in political or psychological terms.73 As Tony Judt has observed, it is this “unique mix of moralist religiosity, minimal provision for public welfare, and maximal market freedom . . . coupled with a missionary foreign policy ostensibly directed at exporting that same cluster of values and practices” that frustrates Europeans and is driving a deeper split in the West. 74 Some German interpretations of this link emphasize the fear that September 11 unified the Christian and political right and created both a dualist and unilateralist world view that sees terrorism not as a perversion of Islam but rather as deeply rooted in Islamic tradition. A number of leading Christian conservatives, including an army

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general at the Pentagon, have made Islam the enemy, raising the specter of a clash of civilizations, which Europeans wish to avoid.75 Thus the distinction between the Bush problem and the America problem may not be as clear cut as many believe. It is important to remember that the United States is hardly monolithic and that it is in the middle of its own Kulturkampf (cultural struggle). There are at least two Americas, “one that is almost as secular as Europe (and tends to vote Democratic), and one that is more traditionalist than the average (and tends to vote Republican).”76 While this divide subsided in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, it had reemerged by the fall of 2003. A Pew survey conducted at that time found that the spirit of 9-11 “has dissolved amid rising political polarization and anger.”77 While it found a widespread sense of both patriotism and threat from terrorism, it also discovered major gaps between Republicans and Democrats on foreign and defense policy, which now is greater than at any time since the late 1980s. Yet it is probable that the Republicans will dominate the House of Representatives for at least a decade and act as a major constraint on any Democratic president. In addition, the trauma of 9-11 has strengthened the patriotic, nationalist element in the political and strategic culture and, as became clear, in Democratic support for the war in Iraq. More important may be the impact of the changing international structure on strategic culture. As David Morris concluded in his study of the German public’s views of America, changes in German views are linked to the greater fluidity of the international system. The growth in support for working with both superpowers during the 1980s and early 1990s reflected the changes in the leadership and policies of the Soviet Union, followed by its collapse. “As each image is a form of illusion, the change in the German image of Americans to some extent is a form of disillusionment. . . . One can only approve that Germans in 1990 no longer felt bound to emotion-laden categories, which were tied to the stark dichotomy of the Cold War. . . . The Germans saw the Americans less as a treasured friend than as a highly valued partner, powerful, essential, but also less than perfect.”78 Morris wrote of a “healthy realism” emerging in the new environment. It is clear that by the middle of 2003 the relationship still contained strong positive sentiments that could lead to a new and more balanced relationship. But the danger also exists that the two sides could continue to diverge. The German election of 2002 was a watershed event not only in U.S.-German relations but also in German political culture. It is striking how many taboos in German politics were either confronted or, in some cases, broken. Not only did a German chancellor say no to a U.S. president on a crucial issue,

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but he also broke the long-standing tradition of German multilateralism with the use of the term “the German Way” and by his refusal to go along no matter what NATO, the EU, or the UN decided. In addition, Jürgen Möllemann challenged, although unsuccessfully, the antisemitism taboo by attacking both Israel and prominent German Jews in the key last week of the election. Finally, the idea of Germans as victims in World War II emerged as a serious new theme in German politics and historiography.

Diverging Values and Diverging Interests The events of the 2002 election signified that something deep was changing in Germany itself as well as in the transatlantic relationship. What has been happening is a gradual divergence between the United States and Germany, fueled by longer-term forces and accelerated by policy differences between the Bush and Schröder governments. As the Economist concluded in its look at the growing values gap, “What is different now? Two things. The first is that the values gap may be widening a little, and starting to affect perceptions of foreign policy interest on which the trans-Atlantic alliance is based. The second is that, in the past, cultural differences have been suppressed by the shared values of American and European elites —and elite opinion is now even more sharply divided than popular opinion.”79 A third point needs to be made. The strategic glue that has held the two nations together is weakening and no longer serves to halt the drift. The fact is that Europe and the United States have always diverged on political, economic, and social values and that the cold war was a period of artificial closeness during which the two sides seemed to agree more than they did in fact because of strategic necessity. The Soviet Union posed both a strategic and ideological threat, which did much to create “the West” as a political and cultural concept. With the end of both aspects of that threat comes the end of the era of transatlantic convergence—and growing divergence.80 These trends will be most important in Germany because of the special link between German political culture and the United States. The German identity during the cold war was intimately shaped both with and against America. Anti-Americanism was never as deep as it was in France and perhaps Britain. Germans have tended to admire the United States since the downfall of Hitler, and the drop in the public’s estimation of the Bush administration has had a far deeper and longer-term effect there than it has elsewhere in “old Europe.” In many respects Germans have expected more of American leaders, and the Bush years have been more unsettling as a result.

6 Welcome to the Berlin Republic

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he election campaign of 2002 was conclusive proof that the Berlin republic had replaced the Bonn republic, the republic of West Germany. Centered in the Rhineland and facing west, Bonn was close geographically and culturally to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. It was small, even cozy, and it reassured rather than frightened both the German people and their neighbors. It was a town—and a republic—without much history. Its scale was modest, as were its pretensions. The seat of the Berlin republic, in contrast, is a city of 3.5 million inhabitants, located within an hour of the Polish border. The city itself stretches over 343 square miles, making it one of the largest in Europe in geographical area. Historical reminders and monuments are everywhere. There is the Brandenburg Gate; the Reichstag building, torched during the Hitler era; August Bebel Platz, where the book burnings took place in 1934; the column celebrating the victory over France in the Franco-Prussian war; the Landwehr canal, into which Rosa Luxembourg’s body was thrown in 1919. There are, of course, remnants of the division of the country into east and west during the cold war: the few remaining segments of the Berlin Wall, for example, and the ugly and cavernous Palast der Republik, which housed the East German parliament. The scale of Berlin symbolizes the new Berlin republic. The new government quarter, centered around a renovated Reichstag and a monumentally large chancellery (which Schröder described to Bush as “my White House”) is vivid proof of the new self-image of a more ambitious, sovereign, and Central European Germany. The politics of Berlin are less contained as well. Berlin has a large working-class population, major intellectual and academic 104

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communities, and a substantial immigrant population of Turks and Germans from Russia, Poland, and other parts east. The politics of the street and mass demonstrations is an old Berlin tradition. At the same time, the role of ideas and of ideology is more prominent than it was in Bonn, given Berlin’s three universities and its large artistic and literary communities. On the other hand, business and the commercial middle class are underrepresented. What is most striking, besides Berlin’s scale and sense of history, is its easternness. There are still two Berlins, east and west, but the east is now the larger and has received most of the private and public investment since unification. Well over half of the population of the capital lived their lives in East Germany, and Berlin was selected to replace Bonn in part because it represented a visible commitment to unification. Yet the socialization, political culture, and economic prospects of the more than 17 million Germans who were born and raised in the former East Germany have been very different from those of their western compatriots. As the discussion of public opinion in the previous chapter indicates, eastern Germans’ views of the United States, both as a socioeconomic model and as a world power, are more restrained and suspicious than those of western Germans.

Berlin Is Not Bonn Early in the Bonn republic, a famous book titled Bonn ist nicht Weimar argued that the Bonn republic would avoid the fate of the Weimar Republic because of the remade political culture.1 Today it is equally appropriate to add that Berlin is not Weimar, but it also is not Bonn. The 2002 election suggested the first political and cultural clues to how the Berlin republic would differ from that of Bonn, and the debate over the war in Iraq reinforced the initial indications. During the campaign, a number of key taboos of the Bonn republic were openly challenged or abandoned, including the taboo against speaking of Germans as victims of World War II, the taboo against voicing any criticism that might appear to be anti-Semitic, the aversion to declaring an independent German Way, and of course, the taboo against a German government openly opposing a major U.S. policy that Washington saw as vital to its national security. Berlin’s opposition to the war in Iraq also created a major new departure in German policy toward France, as Germany abandoned its old practice of positioning itself between Paris and Washington and instead openly sided with Paris against Washington, creating, in fact, a counter-coalition that included Russia. Not bad for one year.

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Germans as Victims History has been an unhappy burden for post-Hitler Germany, and numerous attempts have been made to come to terms with it or to lessen its weight. While Germans have been quite forthright in examining the past, there had been a number of attempts to relativize it. Helmut Kohl described himself as being of the generation that had been spared direct guilt for the Holocaust, and he tried to create a new, “normal” Germany, by which he meant a Germany that would be treated like Britain and France. The most vivid and painful demonstration of this attempt was President Reagan’s visit to the cemetery at Bitburg in May 1985. As one writer noted at the time, “For Kohl, age is an important part of his credentials. As he viewed the date on his birth certificate, he felt that he had been given a special mission. For forty years Germans had lived in psychological isolation, and 1985 was the year he was going to lead the German people out of the desert.”2 The problem was that the Bitburg cemetery included not only the graves of German army soldiers, but those of SS members as well. What Kohl hoped to do with the wreath laying was what he succeeded in doing with François Mitterrand at Verdun: to create a symbolic reconciliation of former enemies. He also wanted to make World War II look more like World War I.3 As the American historian Charles Maier wrote a few years after the Reagan visit,“Bitburg history unites oppressors and victims, Nazi perpetrators of violence with those who were struck down by it, in a common dialectic.”4 This was part of a longer-term effort by a number of leading German politicians to avoid the “singularization” of Germany (which in the German political lexicon means being singled out and treated differently because of Hitler), whether it was in the deployment of nuclear weapons (when German leaders demanded that Germany not be the only NATO state on the continent to accept the missiles on it soil) or in the Two Plus Four negotiations over German unification. One of Kohl’s main points during these negotiations was that the treaty on German unification should not be regarded as a peace treaty ending Germany’s World War II enemy status and that Germans should not be placed in the position of paying reparations to Poland. This political track paralleled a new debate among German historians about the Third Reich, which also took place in 1986, set off in part by events at Bitburg. This debate (Historikerstreit) centered on the uniqueness of German guilt and of the Holocaust. Charles Maier characterized the central issue of the debate as “whether Nazi crimes were unique, a legacy of evil in a class by themselves, irreparably burdening any concept of German nation-

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hood, or whether they are comparable to other national atrocities, especially Stalinist terror.”5 Maier went on to argue that the issue of uniqueness is crucial, because if the Final Solution is not comparable to other cases of genocide, then “the past may never be ‘worked through,’ the future never normalized, and German nationhood may remain forever tainted.”6 However, as the Dutch journalist Ian Buruma has pointed out, the German people’s historical burden is based not simply on guilt over the Holocaust but also on “the sense of utter impotence that followed their defeat.”7 During the election campaign and even more during the buildup to the war in Iraq, something important happened to Germans’ view of themselves. Before the pivotal year of 2002, Germans regarded themselves as the aggressors and criminals of World War II, as perpetrators rather than victims. The suffering of German civilians during the war was a taboo subject: “As far as right-minded Germans are concerned—they got what they deserved for electing Adolf Hitler and supporting his criminal campaigns.”8 Even though there had been discussion and criticism of the Allied bombing of such cities as Hamburg and Dresden and some attempts to relativize German guilt by arguing that the Allied tactics were as criminal and savage as those of the armed forces of the Third Reich, still the brunt of guilt remained firmly on the German side.9 Postwar German writers, as the novelist Peter Schneider wrote,“considered it a moral and aesthetic impossibility to describe Germans, the German nation responsible for the world war, as being among the victims of the war.”10 However, with the publication in Germany in 2003 of Günter Grass’s novel Krebsgang (Crab Walk) and a number of studies of the bombing of German cities during World War II, Germans began to look at their history in a more nuanced way. Grass’s novel tells the story of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German transport ship named after a Nazi hero who was murdered by a Jew in Switzerland. The ship, which was carrying German refugees, was sunk by Russian torpedoes in early 1945, resulting in the death of somewhere between 5,000 and 9,000 women and children.11 As Grass writes: This business has been gnawing at the old boy [referring to Grass himself]. Actually, he says, his generation should have been the one. It should have found the words for the hardships endured by the Germans fleeing East Prussia: the westward treks in the depths of winter, people dying in blinding snowstorms, expiring by the side of the road or in holes in the ice. . . . Never, he said, should his generation have kept silent about such misery, merely because its own sense of guilt was so

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overwhelming, merely because for years the need to accept responsibility and show remorse took precedence, with the result that they abandoned the topic to the right wing. This failure, he says, was staggering.”12 The Grass novel was a bestseller in Germany, and it is notable because it was written by a left-wing intellectual who has no sympathy with the Nazi regime. Grass writes, “We Germans have come up with expressions to help us deal with the past: we are to atone for it, come to terms with it, go through a grieving process.”13 Grass’s novel is the story of three generations, a mother who survived the sinking of the Gustloff; her son, who is part of the 1968 generation; and his son, who “wants acknowledgement for Nazi martyrs such as Gustloff, whose pompous monuments were obliterated by occupying armies after 1945.”14 When the son, Konny, goes on trial for murdering someone he thought was a Jew, his father and mother (now divorced) have an argument, which the father recalls: “I argued that our son’s unhappiness—and its dreadful consequences—started when he was prohibited from presenting his view of 30 January 1933 [the date of Hitler’s accession to power] and also the social significance of the Nazi organization, Strength through Joy, but Gabi [the ex-wife] interrupted me: ‘Perfectly understandable that the teacher had to put a stop to it.’”15 Repression of the past, Grass argues, is more dangerous than allowing it to be discussed in the open. As one historian put it, “Too little openness about the past breeds Konny’s.”16 These works were followed by television programs and journalistic accounts reexamining the fate of the more than 12 million Germans expelled from German territory in the east in what is now Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic, of whom 1. 4 million died in their forced flight westward.17 A dispute between the German and Czech governments broke out over the legitimacy of the so-called Benes Decrees issued at the end of World War II by the prime minister of Czechoslovakia, which took away all rights of the Sudeten Germans expelled from that country to restitution for their property. Many of these people now live in Bavaria, and they form an important pressure group within the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian affiliate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Pressure from these groups has led even the Schröder government to agree to the establishment of a Center against Expulsions (Zentrum gegen Vertreibungen). The center was the idea of a CDU member of Parliament and chair of the Association of Expellees, Erika Steinbach, and it is supported by Peter Glotz, a prominent Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician and intellectual. Both of them are from families of expellees, although they were too

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young to have shared that experience. A dispute has raged over where the center would be located, with Steinbach and her supporters pushing for Berlin while the Schröder government, sensitive to Polish and other Central European concerns, is promoting a more European center to be based in Poland. Leading figures in the SPD, including its presidential candidate in 2003, Gesine Schwan, have argued that locating the new center in Berlin would emphasize the Germanness of the project and would reawaken mistrust of Germany by its neighbors. It would also sit in the same city with the Holocaust memorial that is being built near the Brandenburg Gate and so might symbolize an equivalence between the suffering experienced by victims of the Holocaust and that of the expellees.18 While these works and developments raise the question of whether the massive firebombing of civilians or their expulsion from their homes is a justifiable response to massive aggression launched by a murderous regime, more important is what they may reveal about how Germany is changing as it moves further from the Third Reich. Are concerns justified that this wave of reexaminations of the past may be a prelude to a desire for revenge and to revanchism? “Is there a danger that the Germans will conflate their suffering with the vastly greater and more unforgivable suffering they inflicted on millions of others,”19 or should all this be seen rather as a normal and not unhealthy development in the collective consciousness and identity of unified Germany, “which opens their eyes to and enhances their understanding of the destruction that the Nazi Germans brought upon other nations?”20 Why this discussion, and why now? Peter Schneider, a leading postwar novelist and interpreter of postwar and postunification Germany, has linked this change to generation change, arguing that “it was too much to expect our generation [the 68ers] to identify the perpetrators of the Nazi generation on the one hand and to consider the fate of German civilians and of those who were deported on the other.”21 The historical experience and values of the generations that have followed the 68ers are quite different. These generations are even further removed from the crimes of the Third Reich, and they view themselves as ordinary citizens and their country as a “normal” one, similar to France and Britain. This change in historical perspective was bound to come, but it was accelerated by the war in Iraq, not only because the “shock and awe” bombing campaign called up images from World War II but also—and more important—because the war gave Germans a “rare and intoxicating taste of the moral high ground.”22 It allowed many to see themselves as morally superior to Americans, who seemed only too eager to use force in a war that did not

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have a clear justification, a war launched not as a response to a clear aggression but as a matter of choice and for what many believed were for the old imperialist reasons, especially oil. Another conclusion could have been drawn—namely that the Germans, of all people, should have been the first to celebrate the demise of a brutal and murderous dictatorship—but the condemnation of the unbridled use of American power trumped the benefits of toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. This image of an imperial America is one that will not be soon forgotten, and it has had an important part in the reshaping of German strategic culture.

Jews and Israel The renewed discussion about the past is inextricably linked to a new assessment of Jews and Germany’s relations with Israel, another special taboo in the postwar German political and strategic cultures. Successive German governments and political leaders have consistently recognized the special nature of the relationship between Germans and Jews given the horrible legacy of the Holocaust. This has taken the form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (the overcoming of the past) as well as a policy of reconciliation with the state of Israel.23 Germans have accepted their responsibility for the murder of European Jews and have taught the lessons of that experience in their classrooms as well as examined it in books, the media, and countless discussions and conferences. As noted, the German government is going ahead with the construction of a major Holocaust memorial in the heart of Berlin. The small Jewish community that survived the Third Reich had grown to only about 30,000 in 1988, although it began to expand with the end of the cold war and the emigration of Jews from Russia. Currently, less than 100,000 of a total of approximately 200,000 Jews now living in Germany live a Jewish religious life. In 2002 the immigration rate to Germany, 19,000, was greater than the immigration rate to Israel.24 Studies continue to indicate that the levels of antisemitism in Germany are lower than in most western countries.25 The discussion of Germans as victims has been linked to the broader issue of German guilt for the murder of Jews and Germany’s relationship with Sharon’s Israel. In Crabwalk, Konny represents the younger generation, which wants to lash out at the constraints imposed by the past. His generational foil is a young man named David, who engages in a heated Internet exchange with the neo-Nazi Konny. Although David portrays himself as a Jew, he is a gentile named Wolfgang who, in the words of his mother,“became so obsessed with thoughts of atonement for the wartime atrocities and mass killings,

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which, God knows, were constantly harped on in society, that eventually everything Jewish became somehow sacred to him.”26 In their increasingly virulent chat room exchanges, terms like “Jewish scum” and “Auschwitz liar” are hurled back and forth, leading to this passage: “‘Death to all Jews’ bubbled to the digital surface of contemporary reality: foaming hate, a maelstrom of hate. Good God, how much of this has been dammed up all this time, is growing day by day, building pressure for action.”27 The Grass novel was accompanied by Martin Walser’s Death of a Critic, in which the German protagonist murders a German-Jewish critic, leaving the impression that the murder was “tantamount to killing a tyrant.”28 This followed a famous speech given by Walser in 1998, in which he opposed the construction of the Holocaust memorial and suggested that the Auschwitz chapter be closed so that Germans could live their lives as normal people. Walser argued that the principle of never forgetting the past had been “instrumentalized” for the purposes of “negative nationalism,” that is, to justify the division of Germany on the grounds that a reunified Germany would lead to a new Auschwitz. According to Walser, a Holocaust memorial “in the center of the capital will be a football field–sized nightmare” representing the “banality of the good.”29 This cultural climate was reflected in the political arena near the end of the election campaign of 2002, when a leading German politician, Jürgen Möllemann, a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, challenged the taboo of antisemitism. Sensing that this could tip the election to a coalition of his Free Democrats and the Christian Democrats, Möllemann became openly critical of Israel and of prominent German Jews. He denied that his statements were meant to be antisemitic, but they were clearly on the borderline. Möllemann had been involved with Arab nations and interests for many years and was one of the most open advocates of closer German-Arab ties, so it is problematic to link his sentiments to a broader antisemitism. In any case, he set off a larger discussion of antisemitism in Germany. He explicitly stated in an interview with Der Spiegel that the public should be prepared for more breaking of taboos in the future: “We must speak out on things that other politicians for whatever reasons have also made taboo. The gap between what the political class says and what people feel is great.”30 At the beginning of the German election campaign, on April 4, 2002, Möllemann stated in a newspaper interview on the issue of Palestinian terrorism against Israel, “ What would one do if Germany were occupied? I would defend myself too, with force. . . . And I would do this not only in my country but also in the country of the aggressor.”31

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He was openly critical of Michel Friedman, a prominent German Jew, television talk show host, and vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, as well as of Israel. In his personal attacks he used language that made it clear that Friedman’s religion and the link between being a Jew and being a supporter of Israel were his main targets. He accused Friedman, “with his intolerant and hateful manner” of expressing himself, of sharing in the responsibility for the increase in antisemitism in Germany, saying, “I repeat my unfortunately deep impression that the policies of Mr. Sharon and the unacceptably aggressive and arrogant style of Mr. Friedman against any critic of Mr. Sharon has unfortunately awakened anti-Israel and antisemitic resentments.”32 He later issued a half-hearted apology, which was rejected by Paul Spiegel, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The attacks on both Friedman and Israel by Möllemann set off a debate in the FDP between the older Möllemann and the younger party leader, Guido Westerwelle. Westerwelle at one point was quoted as saying, “I am proud to be a German. The young want to be free of the pressure of having to go around with a bowed head and slouching through life.”33 Westerwelle never took a strong position against Möllemann, leading to speculation that in its quest to gain 18 percent of the vote, the new FDP had decided on a populist Haider strategy to pull in disaffected Germans.34 If so, the strategy had little impact; an analysis of the vote indicated that the “Möllemann effect” had little influence on the final vote. What hurt the FDP was not Möllemann but its failure to declare itself as a partner in a CDU/CSU government.35 When asked to assess the Möllemann effect, a leading specialist on German-Jewish relations concluded, “Society reacted correctly— although it took the FDP a long time—and distanced itself from Mr. Möllemann. Had the FDP received 2 percent more votes in the parliamentary election, we would have had a different republic. Antisemitism would have been acceptable again.”36 Möllemann committed suicide the next year, but his death did not mean that the well he tried to tap was entirely dry. Möllemann was the vice chair of the FDP and the leader of its largest state party, in North Rhine–Westphalia. Under his leadership the FDP gained a large 9.8 percent of the vote in the May 2000 state elections in North Rhine–Westphalia, with the key slogan being “breaking taboos.”37 A year after the election of 2002, a CDU member of Parliament was forced out of the Bundestag when he made antisemitic comments. There were other indications that old taboos were either collapsing or being challenged. In Jörg Friedrich’s The Fire, he uses language that had previously been used only in connection with the Holocaust, refer-

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ring to the Allied bombings of Germany as “death by gassing” and using the word “crematorium” to describe the incendiary effects of the fire bombing.38 What was also striking in the Möllemann case was the lack of much public opposition to his statements by leading groups like the churches or the trade unions. The Central Council of Jews in Germany was left pretty much on its own.39 There was a clear and growing link between the growing conflict in the Middle East and the breaking of the antisemitism taboo in Germany. As Michael Wolffsohn, a German Jew, has observed, “The historical-psychological chemistry between the two populations (Germans and Israelis) doesn’t mix.”40 Israel remains one of the most unpopular countries in Germans’ mental map of the world, and the Israelis are “the unloved Jews.” Why? The historical lessons drawn by both countries from the Holocaust could not be more different. While the Germans have turned against nationalism, Israel was formed on the premise that only a nation-state could protect Jews. While Germany is thoroughly secular, Israel is a religious state. The binding of Israelis to the land brings back memories of the discredited Blut und Boden ideology of the Third Reich, in which Germany was described as a nation exclusively for Germans. Finally, Germans and Israelis have very different views about the legitimacy of the use of force and of war as an instrument of politics, differences that have deepened with the rise of the Likud and the Sharon government. While Germans stress multilateralism and cooperative security agreements, Israelis view rejecting the use of force without reciprocal action by the Palestinians as “appeasement.”41 Rather than the cosmopolitanism of the prewar German Jews—which was so bitterly attacked by the racist and nationalist right in Germany—Germans now confront the nationalism of the Jewish state at a time when Germany itself has embraced a postnationalist cosmopolitanism. The criticism of Israel is linked to that of the United States for the same reason, namely that “both anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism oppose modern nation-states that insist on older ideas of power.”42 As one leading German Jew put it, “There was practically no Jew in Germany who demonstrated against the American war in Iraq. . . . The USA is regarded in the Jewish world as a guarantor of Jewish security, not only in Israel but also in Germany.”43 The spillover of these varying images of legitimacy and power into U.S.German relations is also apparent regarding the neocons and Germany. The neocons are strong supporters of Israel and, in many cases, of the Likud version of Israel’s security interests. Peter Steinfels wrote of their origins

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that “many of them were, of course, Jews coming of age in a decade that saw fascism triumph and Nazi power swell till it exploded into world war and the Holocaust.”44 As Stanley Hoffmann wrote, “there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States— two democracies that, they say, are both surrounded by foes and both forced to rely on military power to survive.”45 The neocons were sensitive to any evidence of antisemitism, first in the Soviet Union (Richard Perle was a key figure in shaping the Jackson-Vanik amendment linking progress toward détente with the USSR to the liberalizing of Jewish immigration) and later in Europe and the Middle East. The long shadow of the Holocaust was especially important to them, and they considered strong support of Israel essential to avoiding another Holocaust. They also tended to view the world in terms similar to those of Likud members, emphasizing the need for toughness in dealing with terrorism and seeing any attempts at accommodation with groups or causes linked to terrorism as dangerous appeasement. The links among the neoconservatives, evangelical Christians, foreign policy hardliners, and lobbyists for the Israeli government in Washington are, as Ian Buruma notes, united by “a shared vision of American destiny and the conviction that American force and a tough Israeli line on the Arabs are the best ways to make the United States strong, Israel safe, and the world a better place. . . . If one thing ties neoconservatives, Likudnik, and post–cold war hawks together, it is the conviction that liberalism is for sissies.”46 German attitudes about the United States and Israel are more subtly linked in that both America and Israel have served as models for Germany. The new criticism allows Germans some psychic relief in the sense that if the desire for power is behind the actions of the United States and Israel, then perhaps the Germans were not so distinctive in their evil. The Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex put it concisely, “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.”47 Germans remain extremely uneasy in their relationship to Jews, and images of Israeli bombing of Palestinian civilians allows them to regain some of the moral high ground. The link between German views of the United States and Israel has been reinforced by the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. It is instructive that the former justice minister, Däubler-Gmelin, directly compared President George W. Bush with Hitler. By “killing the fathers,” American as well as German, new generations of Germans can emerge with a more “normal” identity. Thus the dynamic between Germans’ views of Israel and of Jews has some important similarities to the dynamic between their views of Bush and of the

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United States. Germans believe that it is possible to separate the two: they can be critical of Bush without being anti-American and critical of Sharon without being anti-Israel or antisemitic. Logically and perhaps even empirically, that is true. Yet there is also a subterranean element at work, and it should not be ignored. Generational change is creating a new mix of both rational and subconscious elements.

The German Way and Europe The 2002 election campaign damaged the Schröder government’s relationship not only with the United States but also with some of its key partners in the EU and especially with some of the states joining the EU in 2004. While Germany was not significantly isolated within Europe on the question of Iraq, Berlin’s break with a common European approach was unsettling to its EU partners and harmed efforts toward a serious European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). With the end of the cold war and the unification of Germany, concerns arose in both Europe and the United States that a unified Germany would be more unilateral. Both Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand tried to block German unification in 1989 and 1990 for fear that a unified Germany would mean a dominant Germany and lead to a German Europe rather than Genscher’s European Germany.48 Although the first Bush administration was a strong supporter of German unification, by 1992 concerns already were apparent in the United States that “America’s future competitors would be Germany and Japan.“ Henry Kissinger had argued that growing “German domination of Europe” was lessening American influence there, and Brent Scowcroft, George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser, worried about increasing “West-West” conflict.49 Many of these concerns subsided during the 1990s due to the strong multilateral and Euro-Atlanticist orientation of Helmut Kohl as well as Germany’s preoccupation with the reintegration of eastern Germany. However, they reemerged in 2002. A new discussion about the German role in Europe was raised by Chancellor Schröder’s use of the term deutscher Weg during the 2002 campaign. While he claimed to have used the term to emphasize a domestic Modell Deutschland, its invocation evoked memories of the Sonderweg, or special German path, especially among Germany’s European partners.50 As one commentator noted, Historically, the German Way has stood for a separate national way, a going it alone . . . for a special role that Germany had taken for a vari-

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ety of reasons. . . . In Schröder’s campaign speech of August 5 in Hanover, he moved himself away from neoliberalism and bankrupt capitalism; he separated himself from the no-longer-role-model U.S. and retreated from unconditional submission to American foreign and military policy. He looked for a formula to give meaning to his mood and found a false one . . . with the detour of the German Way.51 The evocation of the German Way and the refusal to participate in a war in Iraq, even if sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, marked a real break from the multilateralist consensus of Zivilmacht (civilian power) Germany. It helped to weaken the role of the UN during the Iraq crisis and placed severe limits on Germany’s role. This proved not to be a singular event. It was followed by a more unilateral approach in the European Union, reflected in Germany’s open violation of the limits on deficit spending set by the Growth and Stability Pact (whose anti-inflationary guidelines were insisted upon by the Kohl government and the Bundesbank) and its push for the recognition of the rights of the large EU states during negotiations on the EU constitution, which were finally concluded in 2004. This marked an important departure from what the German scholar Joachim Krause has called the German school of multilateralism. This school, grounded in the Ostpolitik experience and the diplomacy involved in German unification, seemed to prove “that determined efforts to negotiate with adversaries and to entangle them in an endless debate have the potential to solve problems as fundamental and deeply rooted as the East-West conflict.”52 It depended on the strict observance of international law, reliance on multilateralism and consensus building, renouncing the use of force without a UN mandate, and broadly defining security to include human rights and protection of the environment. Or as another German scholar, Gunther Hellmann, succinctly put it, the criterion for real multilateralism is “foreign policy initiatives that strengthen rules and norms and thereby narrow the room for states to maneuver.”53 The actions of the Schröder government were increasingly outside of this paradigm and signaled a more made-in-Berlin approach to both the United States and Europe. This new approach was not designed to strengthen international norms and institutions at the expense of German independence, but rather to enhance German freedom of action, even if it meant weakening international institutions. This reflected a new sense among both the German public and the elite that Germany should take a less sentimental or emotional approach toward its key partners and say no when its interests clash with those

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of its partners. It was part of what Hellmann described as the “power politics resocialization of German foreign policy.” The “normalization” of German policy had occurred, but under a Red-Green rather than a Christian Democratic government, and it implied, rather than a European Germany,“that not only Germany, but also Europe, would be more German.”54

No More Kohls: New Generations of German Leaders The challenging of taboos can be explained not only by the changed strategic circumstances of the post–cold war world, but also by generational change. The U.S.-German relationship is facing what the German journalist Jochen Thies has called “a double generational break” on both sides of the Atlantic.55 The implications of a changed international environment are being drawn on both sides of the Atlantic by new generations of leaders who, as Henry Kissinger observed at the beginning of the crisis, “have not shared the experience of the war and of postwar reconstruction.”56 A generation’s identity is based on its adoption of a set of similar values and perspectives that distinguishes it from other age cohorts and continues to do so throughout its existence. This contrasts with identity based on stage of life, according to which the young are always more open to change (progressive or radical) than their parents but become more like their parents as they age and take on social responsibilities. Generations are shaped by one, or both, of two sets of major influences. One set is associated with radically different historical contexts and experiences, which tend to separate one generation from another given the different lessons and values that they draw from living in different historical epochs. Generations that are shaped by war or depression are likely to have different political and social values than those shaped by peace and prosperity. The gap between the World War II generation and the baby boomers in the United States is an example of the impact of sharply different historical experiences on different generations’ values and political agendas. While historical events like major wars or the attacks of 9-11 are dramatic markers for new generations, a rapidly changing social milieu associated with rapid economic growth also creates a generational effect. The concept of postmaterialism in advanced industrial societies illustrates the link between economic change and value change, with a strong emphasis on generational change.57 The postmaterialist generations have been shaped by the prosperity of the postwar social welfare state, who tend to place values associated with self-fulfillment above those associated with material security. Generations

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shaped by the depression and the scarcity of postwar Germany, for example, are more likely to place a higher priority on economic security and on law and order, creating a gap with the generations that were brought up in a prosperous and secure West Germany. Generational change is especially important in Germany because of the number of dramatic historical breaks in the twentieth-century German experience and because of the rapid social and economic transformation of the country after World War II. The changing German self-image has coincided with the coming to power of the first fully postwar generation, the 68ers—those born right after World War II through the early 1950s and shaped by the protests of the late 1960s. The current leadership comes from this generation. However, Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer are not classic 68ers. Although both were activists during the protests against U.S. policy in Vietnam, neither attended a university and consequently neither was part of the best educated and therefore leading element of their generation. Yet their experience during their formative years, like that of the classic 68ers, shaped their view of the United States, which accepts an American lifestyle while remaining critical of the country’s global role. The left-leaning leadership of this generation came of age opposing U.S. policy, not, as in Kohl’s and Schmidt’s generation, supporting it. As a column in the Financial Times put it, “Former Chancellor Kohl’s government was very much one of technocrats with socially conservative values. With Gerhard Schröder’s SPD, the 68 generation came to power; former student activists, civil rights campaigners, and BaaderMeinhof defense lawyers are all present in the upper echelons.”58 The extent to which Schröder was willing to use criticism of the Bush administration as a theme in his reelection campaign and the positive response it received from much of the electorate—not to mention the more critical references made by other leading figures in the SPD—indicates the difference between this generation and that of Kohl as well as the changing generational makeup of the public. As Der Spiegel put it, “Joschka Fischer was nineteen years old when he threw stones at the police in Stuttgart. In essence, the street protesters of that time, who today occupy the highest positions in government, have repeated their resistance against an American war organized and directed from the White House and Pentagon.”59 These generational perspectives could be seen in the new Red-Green foreign policy. The new German chancellor, delivering his first official statement of government policy to the new Bundestag in November 1998, declared that his government represented “a generational change in the life of our nation.”60 The constraints that had weighed down the previous gen-

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eration had been overcome to the point that Germans had long been a “normal people” and the new generation could look to the future “without guilt complexes” and “unselfconsciously represent their own interests.”61 Schröder and Fischer had little time for the pathos of the Kohl era, for the hand holding with Mitterrand at Verdun or with Reagan at Bitburg. Schröder saw himself as Germany’s CEO and his policies as based on rational cost-benefit analysis rather than the emotions and symbols of the past.62 Fischer saw himself as the leader of the Realo, or realist, faction of the Greens, which believed that nothing could be accomplished without power and that ideology had to be compromised to attain it. Much of Schröder’s policy toward the United States was based on his belief that Germany had earned a place at the table by committing its armed forces in Kosovo and Afghanistan and behaving as a “normal” nation. As the Iraq crisis demonstrated, he was bitter when he felt he was not consulted and involved in decisionmaking. As his biographer Jürgen Hogrefe put it, “Schröder wants a new role for Germany—self-confident and insistent. He wants to define a national interest that doesn’t dissolve into the EU or NATO.”63 Both Schröder and Fischer wanted to create a foreign policy with a more distinctive profile, highlighting its differences with the United States in order to demonstrate the new German self-confidence. Yet they were initially frustrated in their attempt by the need to support the United States in both Kosovo and Afghanistan while fuming at what they saw as the unilateralist provocations of the Bush administration over the Kyoto treaty, the International Criminal Court, and other multilateral projects. The pressure to resist also grew within both the left faction of the SPD and the Greens. Not only do the 68ers have an ambivalent view of the United States, their view of Europe also is quite different from that of the Kohl generation. Schröder was the first chancellor who did not feel emotionally bound to the postwar consensus that European integration should take priority over German national interests and policies.64 His relation to Europe is entirely pragmatic and instrumental, unencumbered by the emotional and historically driven commitment to Europe of both Adenauer and Kohl. Where Kohl saw European enlargement as part of a vision of a Europe whole and free—and even as a matter of war or peace—Schröder focused on the costs of enlargement to Germany and was sensitive to the public’s worries that Germany would become the paymaster of Europe. The 68ers have had an impact in the areas of environmental policy and immigration law, and they have broadened the growing consensus that Germany should engage only in the limited and multilateral use of force.

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They remain, however, sandwiched between the World War II and immediate postwar generations, which shaped the Federal Republic after the war, and the Gen Xers and 89ers, which will soon follow them. The 68ers were not shaped by major political events but rather by the prosperity and rapid economic growth of West Germany. They are a political generation that believed in mass political action and that, in addition to creating the ecopax movement (the merger of the environmental and the peace movements) and the Greens, streamed into the SPD. Their contribution to the German political culture was the “killing of the fathers,” their revolt against the generation that had collaborated with or actively participated in the Third Reich. Yet this is a generation of leaders largely inexperienced in world politics and international economics. They spent most of their careers in the opposition during the long reign of the Schmidt and Kohl governments; in many respects they reflect the parochialism of many of their generational counterparts in the United States. For them it was the Primat der Innenpolitik, the primacy of domestic politics over foreign policy. The parliamentary parties had a difficult time recruiting foreign and defense policy specialists from this generation, much as the parties in the U.S. Congress before September 11 had a difficult time getting high-flyers to take assignments on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the House International Relations Committee. No one in the Greens has the interest or experience in foreign affairs to succeed Fischer, and the depth chart is not much better for the SPD or for the CDU. The second postwar generation, often called the Gen Xers, will succeed the 68ers. Also referred to as the Generation Golf, after the bestselling novel of that name, these are people born in the mid-1950s to early 1960s, who are now in their forties.65 Their views were shaped by the oil crises of the 1970s and the economic shocks of the 1980s. They were the first to come of age during the “limits of growth” era, the first since the end of World War II to experience lower expectations of growth. Ecological issues and the great missile debate of the 1980s, in both the east and west, also shaped their views. Their image of America was one of Reagan and of a certain U.S. recklessness, and they credit Gorbachev, not Reagan, with ending the cold war. When the Berlin Wall came down, members of this generation in the western part of Germany were more wary of unification than the Kohl generation and in this regard shared the skepticism of another prominent 68er, Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democratic candidate who lost to Helmut Kohl in 1990. In the east, this generation was on the cusp between those who would benefit from unification and those left behind.66

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A third postwar generation, the 89ers, is waiting in the wings. It has been shaped by a great historical event, the end of the cold war and the unification of Germany. Born roughly between the 1970s and early 1980s, members of this generation have come of age in a time of slow economic growth and talk of Germany as the new sick man of Europe. Unlike the 68ers (and partly because of the 68ers), who used Germany’s past against their fathers, this group has a much weaker link to and feeling of responsibility for that past. They feel that while the past cannot be forgotten, they should not continue to be held responsible for the crimes of previous generations and that in some respects the past “was often used as a pretext for inaction.”67 They remain concerned about political and social issues, and much of their agenda is a postmaterialist one. Unlike the 68ers, they are not attracted to the SPD. They tend to be social and liberal at the same time, and many support the Greens, yet they are far more skeptical of politics than the 68ers and have not streamed into the major political parties. They focus their efforts on pragmatic results at the local level, working through personal networks, the Internet, and NGOs. They are concerned about practical problems that affect them directly. This is a cohort whose members can be characterized as “pragmatic idealists”; they do not think of themselves as a generation because they do not believe in collective identities. They are more likely to shift their allegiance depending on the personalities of the leaders, especially if they are seen as charismatic, rather than remain loyal to the same party, and they may be the precursor of a more volatile Berlin republic. This generation has come of age during the rise and crash of the German shareholder economy and its technology-driven Neuer Markt. 68 Members of the youngest segment of this cohort (now in their late teens to mid-twenties) place greater stress than the next two older cohorts on performance, security, and power. They also have less interest in the environment than their predecessors in the mid-1980s.69 These will be the leaders of the new, “normal” Germany. They tend to be pro-European, with about half wanting the EU to develop into one state, and they tend to favor enlargement of the EU to incorporate countries to Germany’s east. As one major study of their attitudes concluded, “Europe is a reality for the young.”70 They also regard Germany’s new role in a pragmatic manner, free of the old left-right dichotomy. About 42 percent want to see Germany speak up for its interests in the world more, and a third want to see Germany have more influence. About a third want to maintain current levels of cooperation with the United States, with about a fifth each wanting either to decrease or increase it. A clear relative majority supports the inter-

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national involvement of the German armed forces in UN and other internationally sanctioned operations. A more assertive approach to foreign policy, what Schröder called for as a “new self-confident German foreign policy,” finds resonance with the younger generations. The big question concerns the impact of the Iraq war on those born in the early to mid-1980s, who now are of high school and university age. Like the generation of 1989, this group, which might be called the Golfkrieg Generation, or Gulf War generation, has no memory of the Berlin Wall and the division of Germany.71 Its image of America has been shaped by the pervasive American popular culture but now also by the George W. Bush administration. This group was more likely to participate in anti–Iraq war demonstrations. While one in six Germans claims to have participated in a demonstration against the Iraq war, the proportion of those between the ages of fourteen and nineteen was one in three. 72 They remain wary of the political parties as vehicles for collective action but clearly do not fit the stereotype of an “apolitical generation.”73 They seem to be more open to the concept of a just war than previous German postwar cohorts and in this respect are “not naïve peace children.”74 The eighteen- to twenty-four-yearolds (at least in mid-2003, at the end of the first phase of the war) were more understanding of the American justification for the war than older groups. They were more likely to believe that Saddam was a dictator who held his people in the grip of fear and that he had murdered Kurds. As one gymnasium (academic track high school) student said in response to Schröder’s unconditional no to war, “I don’t exclude war as a last resort if human rights are being damaged, as in Kosovo.” Yet there was almost unanimous support for and pride in the stand Schröder took. As one seventeen-year-old put it, “I am happy that we have a government that can say no to America, that remains true to its own opinion and will not allow itself to be influenced.”75 Many saw Iraq as a chance for Germany to demonstrate a new sovereignty and felt anger over what they viewed as an American tendency to see all Germans as Nazis. For the first time, many felt proud of their country and its stand as being unambiguously on the side of peace. The Bush-Rumsfeld style of leadership was guaranteed to collide with the values of this new generation. A poll conducted by the CDU’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation in February 2004, almost a year after the height of the crisis in U.S.-German relations, found that 71.7 percent of Germans believed that “hardly any other country represents its interests in such an uncaring and egoistic manner as the USA.”76 The combination of chiding Germans for their lack of gratitude for what the United States had done for them in the

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past and telling them either to follow or to get out of the way was bound to go against the grain of the younger generations in Germany. Only a relatively few Germans were old enough to have directly experienced such key events as the Berlin blockade, the building of the Berlin Wall, or the Kennedy visit to Berlin. The unification itself is a dim memory to the young and a reminder of Germany’s new sovereignty to the middle aged. As one high school student in an East Berlin high school said just before the war in Iraq began, “I think Germany has been grateful for more than fifty years. I think after fifty years one can start being independent. The idea that we have to be grateful to the Americans—why? We financed the Gulf War. Why should we be grateful? Thirty thousand refugees were bombed in Dresden, so we have to be grateful? Why?”77 While this reflects the perspective of an eastern German, it also speaks for a generation. In discussions with about 100 high school students in mid-2003, a reporter for Die Zeit found a widespread belief that the American leadership was arrogant and egotistical and had little regard for international norms and institutions. This was an America that “listened to no one” and one that treated the UN as a “high school parliament.”78 Iraq and the Bush administration’s leadership style were a catalyst for the deep changes already under way in German political culture, reinforcing the trend toward a more assertive and sovereign Germany. These changes are paralleled by trends in the United States.

No More McCloys: The New American Generation of Leaders Generational change in the United States has been similar to that in Germany. The old hands who shaped American postwar policy in Germany are gone, and they have no successors. During the cold war Germany was the fulcrum of U.S. policy, and some of the best and brightest American foreign policymakers—John McCloy, George F. Kennan, Lucius Clay, Henry Kissinger—made Germany a center of their attention. This was the time when the influence of the East Coast establishment on foreign policy was at its height. Composed of bankers and financiers with strong European ties and, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “leavened by some émigrés,” the establishment knew and cared a great deal about Germany and Europe. A look at the ambassadors that the United States sent to Germany indicates the seriousness with which that country was taken: Walter Stoessel, Arthur Burns, George McGhee, Richard Burt, and Vernon Walters all were senior figures who had had distinguished careers in the Foreign Service, the military, journalism, or finance. In addition, there was a slew of lesser-known

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but key German hands in the second tier of the State Department. Helmut Schmidt has placed great emphasis on the impact on U.S.-European relations of the East Coast foreign policy elite and the later shift of power to the southern and western states, as well as of the shift in the composition of the U.S. population away from those of European ancestry.79 The decline of U.S. interest and expertise in Germany was due less to any decline in the East Coast establishment than to the relative weight of both Europe and Germany in the world balance. Germany was the cockpit of the cold war, which ended when the division of Germany ended. As U.S. interests and priorities shifted to other parts of the world, ambitious foreign policy players began to make their careers in other regions rather than as specialists in European or German affairs. The reshaping of the U.S. Foreign Service, which was based on fears that officers who spent the bulk of their careers in one region were going native and taking on too much of the perspective of those regions, also worked against allowing diplomats to develop real expertise in the affairs of a particular country. The last generation of German hands, figures like John Kornblum and J. D. Bindenagel, has now left the Foreign Service, with no apparent successors. While Richard Holbrooke was an influential ambassador during the Clinton administration, his tenure was brief and his posting was a consolation prize for not getting his first choice, Japan. Holbrooke had made his career in Asian policy and in finance, not in European or German affairs, before he arrived in Bonn. The American ambassador during the Iraq crisis, Daniel Coats, was a former Republican senator from Indiana who was given Berlin as a consolation prize after being rejected for the secretary of defense position by Bush and Cheney. He had no real expertise or interest in Germany prior to his appointment, and he was a very political ambassador, ruffling German sensitivities with his open criticism of Schröder’s policies. He and his wife were active evangelical Christians whose attempts to proselytize did not sit well in the secular German culture. The strong link provided by the stationing of U.S. armed forces in Germany, especially the U.S. army, also weakened as the military presence fell from a high of more than 200,000 troops in the 1980s to only about 50,000 in 2003. More than 12 million American service members and their families had lived in Germany during the cold war, and both they and their families served as important intermediaries between the two countries and the two militaries. However, as U.S. military strategy was transformed during George W. Bush’s administration under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld, the prospect of even further reductions of both U.S. military personnel and

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their dependents seemed quite high. Rather than maintain large troop deployments in Europe, the Defense Department shifted to a strategy of maintaining lily-pad bases to serve as platforms for troops jumping from the United States and a few European bases to points south and east of Europe. Plans were to move U.S. forces to new, smaller bases in Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania and to keep only the key U.S. airbase in Ramstein and a few other facilities in Germany. While these plans had been gestating for a long time, the timing made it appear to many Germans that Germany was being punished for its opposition to the war in Iraq and that the states that had supported the administration were being rewarded. Whatever the case, the end result would be a further weakening of the U.S. presence in Germany and an inevitable weakening of U.S.-German military ties. The fact that the U.S.-German public dialogue could degenerate so quickly after five decades of partnership was due in part to the weakening generational ties on both sides. With the end of the cold war, the growth of parochialism in both countries became marked. Not only was it difficult to get members of Congress to take foreign policy–related committee assignments, but foreign trips, especially to affluent countries such as those of Europe, were quickly labeled “junkets” by their political opponents and the media. While there is no doubt a junket quality to a trip to a European capital, members of Congress have much to gain from maintaining contacts with their foreign counterparts and developing a sense of foreign perspectives. The large U.S. and German stake in bilateral trade and investment creates some links between the countries. The United States has more than $300 billion in assets in Germany, more than its total assets in Latin America. Germany accounted for $61.4 billion (4.4 percent) of all U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2001 and ranked sixth in the list of top destinations for American FDI. The U.S. market was even more important to Germany, with $152.8 billion (11.6 percent) of German FDI going to the United States, making Germany the fourth-largest investor in the United States. U.S. companies employed more than 400,000 Germans while Germany employed about 730,000 Americans, making it the second-largest foreign employer in the United States after the United Kingdom. German exports to the United States increased by 106 percent in the period 1990–2001 while U.S. exports to Germany rose by 80 percent.80 Beyond this substantial stake is a common business culture that is developing among executives of German and American multinational corporations. A large number of German CEOs and key managers have MBAs from American business schools and think in the same terms as their

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U.S. counterparts. The business communities on both sides were shaken by the split over Iraq and its potential consequences for trade and investment, and as a group they brought pressure on both governments to moderate the dispute. German business in particular was concerned and financed a number of efforts to help rebuild ties, although there was no real damage done to business and investment flows during the crisis (in contrast to the losses suffered by French concerns). Yet business is global and mobile and does not carry the weight of strategic ties and interests. The profit motive cannot substitute for strategic interests. The same can be said in regard to popular culture. American popular and high culture are widely accepted and admired in Germany. Yet that acceptance has not served as a buffer against political divergence. On the contrary, it may have increased the dissonance because the openness of both societies means that differences are immediately reported and perhaps inflated by the wide variety of media that connects the countries.

The Bush Generation As already noted, George W. Bush was remarkably provincial when he became president, especially so given his social and political background. He was born in 1946, two years after Gerhard Schröder, but he was of an entirely different political persuasion. While Schröder reflected the values of his generation, Bush rebelled against his generational counterparts at Yale during the Vietnam period. He disliked what he regarded as a weak and exclusive intellectual elite, best represented by his classmate Strobe Talbott or by Bill Clinton, another generational counterpart. As James Mann observes in his study of the leading figures in the Bush foreign policy team, Americans usually think of the 1960s as the time when the United States turned to the intellectual left. . . . Amid the campus tumult, attracting remarkably little notice, there arose a separate strand of intellectual development. It was conservative in the literal sense of the word . . . this seemingly contrapuntal campus movement has had arguably a more significant and enduring effect on American policy than did the antiwar movement.81 The American generations do not entirely parallel those in Germany given different historical breakpoints. Neil Howe, a leading analyst of generational change in the United States, has categorized five postwar American generations.82

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The Bush foreign policy team includes members of the Silent Generation (Donald Rumsfeld); an in-between group (pre-boomers) born during World War II but too young for the boomer generation (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Colin Powell); baby boomers (Bush, Hadley, and Libby); and a Gen Xer (Rice). The key neocons, such as Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, and Richard Perle, are second-generation neocons and either boomers or preboomers. The first generation of neocons was born in the 1920s and shaped by the struggles over Stalinism and fascism during the 1930s. As Peter Steinfels wrote, “The political reality that loomed over those years, and that provided the formative political experience of these men, was the rise of totalitarianism and the failure of socialism in the face of that threat.”83 The second generation of neocons were boomers who were shaped by the growing legacy of the Holocaust, the rise of a Likudist Israel, and the Reaganite approach to the struggle with communism and the USSR. The nationalist conservatives had more of a generational mix, including Rumsfeld from the Silent Generation, Cheney from the pre-boomers, and Bush from the boomers. They were shaped by the Soviet threat and the cold war, and they supported the war in Vietnam but did not play an active role in it. Cheney was once asked why he did not serve in the military during that time, and he replied, “I had other priorities.” Bush used family connections to serve in the National Guard. None of the leading neocons had served in the military, in Vietnam or elsewhere, leading to a real clash with Colin Powell, his deputy Rich Armitage, and others who did. Powell and Wolfowitz had a running battle over policy, which was intensified by Powell’s disdain for those who urged war without having actually experienced it, the so-called chicken hawks.84 On a late summer evening in September 2003, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt was the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the German ambassador to the United States, Wolfgang Ischinger, and his wife, Jutta Falke-Ischinger, at the ambassador’s residence. Among those attending was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, and a host of foreign policy specialists. In his remarks after dinner Schmidt reminisced about his many visits to the United States and his friendship with Greenspan, Gerald Ford, and a host of other prominent Americans. Schmidt’s summoning of the past offered a startling contrast to the present; one could not imagine either Gerhard Schröder or George W. Bush giving a similar talk.85 In his study of George W. Bush’s key foreign policy team, known as the Vulcans, James Mann contrasted them to the other key generations of postwar American leaders, the Wise Men and the Best and the Brightest. The

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Wise Men—including Dean Acheson, Averrell Harriman, John McCloy, Charles Bohlen, Robert Lovett, and George F. Kennan (and Paul H. Nitze)— were the Truman administration’s foreign policy team and by far the most successful team in the history of American foreign policy.86 As Mann notes, they “had come to government from the worlds of business, banking and international law; their spiritual home was Wall Street and the network of investment banks and law firms connected to it. . . . [and they] had concentrated on constructing institutions, both international and in Washington, that would help to preserve democracy and capitalism in a threatened Europe.”87 The memoir of one of the most important of the wise men, Dean Acheson, was aptly titled Present at the Creation, because they created the great multilateral institutions of the cold war period: the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and NATO. The Best and the Brightest of the Kennedy administration (Robert McNamara, McGeorge and William Bundy, and Walt and Eugene Rostow) were far less successful.88 They came from academia and “their spiritual home was Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Harvard campus where many had studied or taught.”89 They had attempted to use academic expertise to counter the Soviet threat and to extend American influence in the developing world. Many were veterans of World War II who served, as their president did, as junior officers. They were much like their young president, feeling that they represented a generation whose time had come, one that would bring new vigor and purpose after Eisenhower’s cautious and perhaps tired administration. While this group failed badly and tragically in Vietnam, it was wildly successful in Europe. The high point may well have been President Kennedy’s famous visit to Berlin in the summer of 1963, of which the British journalist Henry Brandon would write, “No other president spoke for Europe with such understanding as he did, and I dare say none ever will. [Kennedy created the impression] of being a living fusion of the American and European cultures.”90 Kennedy remains an icon in Germany today, and his administration still inspires Germans of all generations. The generation of the George W. Bush administration, in contrast, is one that Mann describes as a “military generation.” Their wellspring, the common institution in their careers, was the Pentagon, although, as stated previously, they did not serve in the military but worked there as civilians.91 Because of their background in planning, not fighting, wars, they were denigrated as “chicken hawks” by their critics during the war in Iraq. They called themselves the Vulcans after the Roman god of fire, his forge and instruments signifying their sense of power, toughness, resilience, and durability.92

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It is not surprising that the Pentagon has played so large a role not only in the Bush administration’s defense policy but in its overall foreign policy. The mission of this group was to first restore, then enhance, American military power and to make the American military unchallengeable in the twenty-first century. With the exception of Colin Powell, few of the current American group had much real experience with Germany. Rice, a former Soviet specialist, was involved in the negotiations leading to German unification, and the others had some NATO experience, particularly Rumsfeld, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO. When the crisis between Schröder and Bush broke, there was no Kissinger or Scowcroft who could pick up the phone and call a German counterpart with whom he shared confidence and friendship. In previous administrations, the German hands could help ease tensions. Even when Henry Kissinger had deep suspicions about the intentions of Willy Brandt and his key aide, Egon Bahr, over Ostpolitik, he and his advisers still had what the Germans would call a Fingerspitzengefühl, a feel for the cultural and political context, which kept differences manageable.93 During 1989 and 1990, when tumultuous events were occurring at breakneck speed, George H. W. Bush knew all the key international players intimately and spent hours in personal conversations with Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, and others. The current crop of neocons did not trust the Germans and some held them—and the rest of “old” Europe—in contempt. The nationalist conservatives, who first worried that Germany would challenge U.S. power immediately after unification, came to regard Germany as irrelevant, assuming that “if we lead, they will follow.” The images of this group had been shaped by a Europe that had failed the moral test of Hitler and failed again in the Balkans, a Europe in demographic, economic, social, and even moral decline. Worse yet, the European countries were no longer serious military powers that could bring real capabilities to the table. In summary, the generational cycles in both countries seemed to be shaping leaders who were more inward looking and nationalistic and who had few friends, associates, or experiences in other nations from which to draw support in times of stress. To know others may not be to love them, but at least one can hope to understand their interests and motives. At a session at the German Historical Institute in Washington held on March 18, 2003, in which both Henry Kissinger and Egon Bahr took part, Kissinger remarked that he never thought that the German-American relationship could get so bad so fast. The rapid decline was the result of serious weakening of the ties

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of both sentiment and strategic interest. Part is clearly generational, but the shifting of interests cannot be overlooked. Finally there is the problem of the arrogance of power. The leadership of the George W. Bush administration has been far less cautious than that of his father, not only because of the predominance of realists and of the G.I. and Silent Generations in the first administration but also because the power of the Soviet Union served to restrain American unilateralism. The leaders in Bush II are the first in U.S. history to be unconstrained by other great powers. The tendency toward arrogance was already apparent during the Clinton years, when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright labeled the United States “the indispensable nation” and remarked that the United States “sees further than other countries into the future.”94 On the German side, the costs of challenging the United States also have diminished. For a leadership that no longer felt as constrained by geography, history, or strategic threats, killing the fathers, American and German, was a means of shaping a new independent identity. Given these longer-term trends, the pre-2002 relationship is gone, and a new one will have to be constructed by new leaders under new circumstances.

7 From Alliance to Alignment

On September 24, 2003, months after the United States declared the end of military action in Iraq, Gerhard Schröder and George W. Bush met at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, where both were attending a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The mini-summit was the first since their meeting in Berlin in May 2002, and it lasted forty minutes, longer than the half-hour originally planned. Every minute carried symbolic weight. As Der Spiegel commented, “the entire fate of the German-American relationship hung on this half hour.” The meeting went well, and the president referred to the chancellor by his first name, declaring, “We’ve had our differences and they’re over, and we’re going to work together.” The chancellor responded, “We very much feel that the differences there have been have been left behind and put aside by now.”1 Television cameras filmed the handshakes and smiles. That meeting was followed by one at the White House on February 27, 2004. It was characterized as warm and resulted in the declaration of the “German-American Alliance for the 21st Century.”2 This marked the formal end of the diplomatic crisis that had begun in the summer of 2002, but it did not imply that things were the same as they were in May 2002. Before he met with Bush in New York, the chancellor had said that he did not want to kindle a “love affair” with the Americans (“keine ‘Liebesbeziehung’ zu den Amerikanern entfachen”) but rather to continue with “entirely normal conversations.”3 When after the Washington meeting he was asked whether relations between him and the president had been restored, he answered, “We have a good working relationship.”4 These carefully chosen words gave

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expression to how much had changed in the tone and style of what had been a close alliance. If the cold war ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, the post–cold war period ended with the war in Iraq. While the chancellor and the president both stated that they wanted to look to the future, not dwell on the past, some summing up of what happened and why is needed to develop a realistic picture of what to expect going forward. In assessing what happened, it is necessary to consider first whether the crisis could have been avoided, then to look at what remains of common interests that the two nations could use to form a new, different sort of partnership. Finally, new problems, both German and American, must be considered.

A Failure of Leadership When one looks back at events from September 11, 2001, through the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a number of questions arise. How much of the crisis was due to a personality conflict? Could alternative actions have been taken that would have avoided or ameliorated the crisis? As noted at the beginning of this book, the personalities involved mattered a great deal. As one adviser in the chancellor’s office put it, “Don’t underestimate the impact of the personalities of Bush and Schröder. Neither one wanted to take the first step and admit that he had made a mistake.”5 The Bush administration decided to pursue its policies with or without Germany. Condoleezza Rice’s characterization of the post-Iraq strategy as one that would “punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia” reflected the administration’s faulty assessment that Germany did not count.6 The White House had concluded that Germany’s ailing economy and demographic decline meant a loss of dynamism and clout; those factors, combined with the nation’s reluctance to use military force, made Germany irrelevant in the Bush administration’s Hobbesian view of the post 9-11 world. By choosing to lead without worrying too much about who followed and by being quite explicit in its contempt for those who opposed it, the administration created ideal conditions for the formation of a countercoalition. In dealing with the situation, European nations divided into two broad camps, joining the German-French-Russian coalition or Tony Blair and his “new European” allies, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the countries of eastern Europe. Blair too had real worries about American unilateralism and the direction in which Bush was headed. He was concerned about the impact on

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the world of a unilateralist United States but calculated that by working as a close partner he would gain the confidence of the U.S. leadership and thus some leverage on its policies.7 The U.S. decision to follow the UN track through Resolution 1441 and the attempt to gain a second resolution was due to Blair’s influence, as was the commitment of President Bush to the Middle East peace road map worked out with the United Nations, the EU, and Russia ( known as the Quartet) in the fall of 2002. Yet Blair failed to prevent the war, and his campaign for a second resolution probably made the situation worse, both because of the resentment it created within key elements of the Bush administration and because of the humiliating retreat and defeat that London and Washington suffered when it became clear that they did not have the votes they needed in the Security Council. He also paid a price in Europe. His attempt to build a bridge between the United States and Europe was rightly dismissed by Chancellor Schröder as working only in one direction, from Europe to the United States, and he failed to make the European case in Washington. Worse yet, he worked with Berlusconi, Aznar, and others to further split Europe and pushed Germany deeper into the French camp, thus undercutting his European policy and the pivotal power role he wished for Britain. Because of Iraq, the prime minister’s position at home was weaker while that of both Chirac and Schröder was stronger, at least in the short run. The Franco-German strategy was quite different, although its objectives were similar to those pursued by Blair. The Chirac-Schröder strategy attempted to enmesh U.S. power in a larger multilateral framework, both to temper it and to provide it with some legitimacy. To them, the problem of U.S. power was bigger than any threat posed by Saddam. They believed that by creating a countervailing coalition, they might channel that power in a more realistic and restrained direction. It is unlikely that Chirac, even in his most megalomaniacal moments, thought, as Thomas Friedman was to write later, that “France wants America to sink in a quagmire there [in Iraq] in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its ‘rightful place’ as America’s equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.”8 As Philip Stephens concisely put the difference in strategies: “The Blair perspective had Europe influencing U.S. policy from within. The French view saw an imperative to challenge it from within.”9 Both Chirac and Blair had hoped to enmesh American power within a broader multilateral framework, and both failed. Schröder also has spoken about Germany working to create a European counterbalance to the United States. Yet one of his closest advisers describes

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his view as one that emphasizes rights and responsibilities. “It is more than just counterbalancing. One can’t be the slave of the others. Unilateralism, cherry-picking alliances, can’t be the way. We want to go with the French but not against the United States. Schröder is not a European power guy, but he thinks Germany has the right to be consulted and included in a broader alliance.”10 Blair told the Polish foreign minister on March 13, 2003, that “I had dinner with Chancellor Schröder last night, and he does not want to be part of an anti-American alliance.”11 In any case, Germany under Schröder renewed its choice of France as a close partner, and the ramifications of that choice will extend beyond Iraq. Surveys of German public opinion done after the end of the war found both a steep drop in confidence in the leadership of the United States and a sharp rise in support for the European over the Atlanticist option, seemingly confirming Schröder’s choice.12 However, Schröder’s close alliance with France was a fundamental alteration of traditional policy, under which Germany positioned itself between Washington and Paris and thereby gained maximum leverage. By firmly joining the French camp and subordinating its policies to those of France, Germany lost a good deal of that leverage and flexibility. Schröder did this more for tactical than strategic reasons, in an attempt to ease the isolation in which he found himself after being frozen out by the Bush administration. To some extent Schröder may have emboldened Chirac to pursue a counterbalancing strategy more forcefully than he would have otherwise, contributing to the deadlock in the UN and the confrontation with the United States. Schröder was convinced that an early, unilateral war in Iraq was strategically unsound and could lead to a more unstable and dangerous Middle East as well as undermine the fight against terrorism. He would have pursued this policy even if an election campaign had not been going on at the time, although his rhetoric might have been different. Yet he miscalculated Germany’s weight and leverage with the Bush administration just as the administration underestimated Germany’s importance. He did not seem to fully appreciate the difficulty of confronting a superpower, and he failed to prevent a war he thought unwise. Could he have found a middle position between Chirac and Blair and mobilized an EU consensus around it? Could he have tried to broker a deal at the UN rather than side with France and Russia? Would he have been better off even by joining Blair in his approach to the United States? The effect of the approach that Schröder did take was to weaken the German-American relationship as well as diminish the credibility of both NATO and the UN. Germany’s calling since the catastrophe of

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Hitler had been to create and sustain an effective multilateral approach to international problem solving. In this case its strategy had the opposite effect. Both Schröder and Bush were responsible for the personalization of the problem. Here more of the blame goes to Bush, both because of the greater weight of the United States and the responsibilities that go with leadership of a great alliance and because of his general tendency to overpersonalize his approach to foreign policy. After the Däubler-Gmelin affair, the president was so angry that he told his staff that he wanted to read every statement on Germany coming out of the White House. He left the impression that he had decided to personally oversee the U.S. reaction. His deep and continuing anger foreclosed any serious attempt to limit the damage and give his German counterpart an opening to come back toward the United States, if not on Iraq then on other issues. Tony Blair tried to play the intermediary. In a meeting with Bush at Camp David near the end of the German election campaign, he told Bush “that Schröder had his back to the wall and with public opinion he had to say the things he did. Blair said he was sure Schröder would want to rebuild bridges. Crucially, Blair told Bush that after the election, if Schröder did win, he could ‘turn him’, bring him round to supporting the Americans, or at the very least to refrain from opposing them.”13 In a meeting with Blair two days after Schröder’s election victory, the chancellor sought Blair’s advice on how to repair relations with the United States. Blair advised him to “make clear that his statements on Iraq during the campaign were a ‘one-off ’,” meaning that they had been made once but would not be repeated. 14 Schröder tempered the tone of his statements but wisely decided that “doing a Canossa” would only earn him contempt, not only at home but in Washington. Schröder had sent a number of signals in the fall that he wanted to repair relations, but each time the White House forbade U.S. officials to respond. This may have had the result of pushing the chancellor further toward Chirac and the French than he wanted to go, thus creating the countercoalition in the United Nations. Blair in the meantime had become convinced by reports from British intelligence that Chirac “had decided that Blair had usurped his own position as natural leader of Europe. It was time for the French president to reassert himself and to clip the wings of perfidious Albion.”15 Chirac, by this account, was concerned about the close Blair-Schröder relationship and saw it as a threat to the Franco-German engine that had driven Europe for so long. Both Bush and Schröder bear responsibility for the misunderstanding that emerged over Iraq. They often were vague, brief, and colloquial in their

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conversations on this important international issue. The German leader thought that he was clear in his reservations about going to war in Iraq, but he raised his concerns as questions rather than as clear reservations or objections. Bush, not surprisingly, thought that this meant that Schröder was on board or would at least go along. Bush was equally vague, telling the chancellor on at least two different occasions that he had not made a decision about invading Iraq and that he would consult Schröder before he did. In none of these instances was a clear decision reached or articulated. No one said, “All right, this is what we have agreed to do, and this is how we will do it.” Subordinates had no directions on how to follow up, and things just languished. Both Bush and Schröder were gifted domestic politicians with little interest in foreign policy. They tended to follow their tactical instincts in their relationship with each other, and that led to a series of unpremeditated events whose consequences escalated beyond their control. The Iraq case offers a number of lessons in leadership. The first is that leadership ability and personalities matter, especially in a fluid environment. The second is that personalizing policy is almost always a bad idea. Not only did George W. Bush personalize his struggle with Saddam Hussein, with disastrous results, he also overpersonalized his relationships with key allies to the point that he lost both flexibility and sight of deeper political and national interests. Carrying a grudge or trying to punish a perceived breach of faith is a luxury that a leader of a great power cannot afford. More generally, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld style of leadership does not put any value on “buy in,” on gaining the agreement and support of others. This may be in part the result of the politically polarized climate in Washington, in which the personalization of the political dialogue had reached new lows in the 1990s. However, that style defies most of the literature on effective leadership, which emphasizes consultation, inclusion, and nonhierarchical forms of leadership.16 It should not have been surprising that the German leadership would feel free to oppose a decision in which they had no real input, particularly when they were treated at best as if Germany were a U.S. satellite. Secretary Rumsfeld’s gratuitous insults in particular were sure to result not only in Germany’s distancing of itself from the United States, but in its active opposition to U.S. actions. Schröder also may have been guilty of an element of personalization. Having fought his way to the top against great odds, he seemed to crave power as a means of gaining control of a hostile environment and of securing the respect of others and a sense of self-worth. He may have linked his personal insecurity to his view of Germany and Germany’s role in the world,

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exaggerating its power and influence. He seems to have lost his tactical sense after his election victory, giving up his flexibility and handing the initiative to Chirac. While he gained at home, he damaged Germany’s foreign policy role. In addition, he excluded his key foreign policy advisers, both in the Chancellery and the Foreign Office, and made a decision with major strategic implications largely on the recommendations of a few political advisers who had little background in foreign policy.

Beyond Leadership: Deeper Currents of Change As shown throughout this book, the relationship between Germany and the United States changed not only because of the personal failings of their leaders but also because of changes in the international power structure and in domestic politics and political culture. The weakening of the strategic relationship between the United States and Germany and the greater fluidity of the international political system, especially in Europe, gave freer rein to personality and to domestic politics. The crisis over Iraq simply could not have happened in the bipolar era of the cold war. It could not have happened in a divided Germany. It could not have happened in the political culture of the Bonn republic or under any of Germany’s postwar leaders before Gerhard Schröder. It also could not have happened while the United States was engaged in a global competition with a peer power like the Soviet Union. It could not have happened in an America led by members of the generations that shaped the international role of the United States after World War II, all of whom left the scene at the end of the first Bush administration. And it could not have happened without an America traumatized by the events of 9-11 and the novel and frightening sense of vulnerability that they left in their wake. Finally, it would not have happened without the radical leadership of the Bush II administration. All the shared values and the extensive economic network that bound the United States and Europe could not prevent the astonishingly rapid deterioration of relations between nations that had been close allies for fifty years. In fact, the political and strategic conflict both reflected and accelerated a growing values gap between Germans and Americans. Although many argue that democracies are the best safeguard against war and that democracies do not fight other democracies, the Iraq case proves that democracies can fight wars without the broader support of international institutions and international law and may even flaunt their rules and norms. It also demonstrates that democracies can have ugly disputes with other democracies and

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that differing perceptions of strategic interests or domestic political imperatives can trump the comity of democratic states. The behavior during this period of much of the mass media in both Germany and the United States, but especially in the United States, did not generate much confidence in the power of the free press to promote tempered debate or the sensible resolution of problems. The vilification in the United States of Europeans who resisted American policy, especially the French but also the Germans, was unworthy of a great democracy. It underlined the degradation of the public debate and of journalism in an age of tabloids and partisan cable television “news” reporting.17 Nevertheless, the strong economic ties between Germany and the United States remained stable throughout the crisis. While the Franco-American dispute had serious economic effects on the French, that was not the case in the German-American flare up, which produced little evidence of boycotts on either side. However, while the economic interdependence of Germany and the United States is simply too great to be put at risk by spillover from the political sphere, it did little to prevent the crisis, although key business leaders lobbied their respective governments to damp down the conflict. Those who think that the nations’ economic ties will replace their former strategic ties as the bond in a new transatlantic relationship are likely to be disappointed. The logic of the private sector is quite different from the logic of strategic interests. One of the most striking consequences of the Iraq crisis was the damage done to the image of the United States in Germany. One example of the change has been the growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about 9-11, a phenomenon that had been limited in Germany although not in Europe. By fall 2003, however, many Germans had come to believe that either the U.S. government had been involved in the attacks or knew of them beforehand but let them occur so that it could pursue a larger agenda. The CIA and the 11th of September, a book by Andreas von Bülow, a former Social Democratic parliamentarian and official in the Defense Ministry, implied that the U.S. government was involved in the plot and that the highjackers were still alive; it sold more than 90,000 copies, becoming a bestseller. While the book also met with great skepticism, the author won greater approval for his claim that the United States was no longer a model of democracy but had become an unreliable and dangerous power.“We Europeans,” he stated,“shouldn’t be arrogant. Each of our countries has in the past tried to be the dominant world power. But I don’t want to be dragged into another world war, one that will last for years and years.”18 Von Bülow contended that “Muslims wouldn’t

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do this because they would know that it would hurt the Muslim world.” Revelations that surfaced in the United States in 2004 that 9-11 may have been a pretext for waging a war already planned against Iraq will only deepen such suspicions.19 A German Marshall Fund survey conducted in June 2003 found that of all the European publics polled, the Germans exhibited the most dramatic loss of confidence in the United States and growth in their preference for a European alternative to American leadership.20 In spring 2004, polls conducted by both the Pew Research Center and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation found that the damage remained deep. The Pew survey found that Germans continued to have favorable opinions of Americans and made a distinction between the Bush administration and the American people. Yet it found that 63 percent of Germans wanted Germany to be more independent of the United States while only 36 percent wanted to remain as close as before; moreover, 70 percent thought that it would be a good thing if the EU were as powerful as the United States.21 In the Adenauer Foundation survey, conducted in February 2004, 71 percent of respondents believed that the United States pursues its interests in a reckless and egotistical manner and one-half did not have confidence in the ability of the United States as a world power because it has so many problems at home that it has not been able to deal with.22 At the same time, the German public understands the importance of Germany’s relationship with the United States. In the same Adenauer Foundation poll, 90.4 percent agreed with the statement that a good relationship with the United States is important for Germany and 80.9 percent believed that a bad relationship would harm the German economy. However, 68 percent agreed with the view that a close relationship would increase the danger of terrorist attacks against Germany.23 The American public’s image of Europeans had recovered somewhat from May 2003; still, only half of Americans had a favorable view of Germans, down from the 83 percent favorable rating they held in 2002. The American public was much less shaken than the German public by the crisis in the relationship. More than half (55 percent) believed that the United States should remain as close to Europe as in the past, and only 36 percent favored a more independent approach. Unsurprisingly, conservative Republicans were much more in favor of looser security and diplomatic ties with Europe (44 percent) than liberal Democrats (24 percent).24 Germans now regard the United States as a power like any other great power, interested primarily in expanding its power. It has lost much of its moral authority and

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its credibility. It has drained its reserves of moral and sentimental support in Germany, and they are unlikely to be replenished. As one longtime American German watcher, Ronald Asmus, describes it, “Whereas U.S. military prowess may be at an all-time high, Washington’s political and moral authority has hit a new low,” a casualty of the actions of the U.S. government as well as Germany’s changing sense of its own identity.25 The distance between the two societies has grown. The future of the German-American relationship will not be founded on sentiment, friendship, or common values, but rather on the cold calculation of self-interest. No amount of good feeling or renewed pledges of friendship will overcome the absence of the mutual strategic interests that bound the countries during the cold war. The German political culture will no longer give any U.S. government the benefit of the doubt. The key question for the future is whether the common strategic interests that remain can be shaped to give the relationship a realistic basis.

We Can’t Bring Back the Wall: New Challenges and New Interests The future of the relationship between Germany and the United States after Iraq will be depend on the lessons the countries draw from the experience and their interpretation of their national interest and the challenges of the post 9-11 world. Crises also bring opportunities to reshape and rejuvenate institutions and relationships. The Iraq case drove Washington and Berlin apart, but it also brought them closer to new agreement in some areas. The challenge of terrorism has been taken seriously by both nations, and the level of cooperation between their police, immigration, and intelligence agencies has been by all accounts excellent. The United States may yet emerge from the Iraq experience understanding that both hard power and unilateralism have real limits and that a war on terrorism has to be multilateral; moreover, it has to include state and society building as well as the threat of force. Germans also have gained a better appreciation for the dangers of the new form of terrorism represented by al Qaeda and its spinoffs. As a leading German researcher associated with the Frankfurt Institute of Peace Research concluded just before the war in Iraq began, “American capabilities in the fight against transnational ‘megaterrorism’ remain an asset for European security. The same is true for the U.S. capacity to serve as a stabilizer for regions in which Europe has a strong interest but is not capable by itself to

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pacify, such as the Persian Gulf.”26 Germans understand the dangers posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and its nexus with terrorism. The German government has acknowledged the need for a military element to any nonproliferation strategy, has extended its military role in Afghanistan, and has pushed for a broader mandate for the NATO force there, a force co-led for a time by Germany. It has provided more than 7,950 peacekeeping troops in the Balkans and in Afghanistan, the secondlargest contingent after that of the United States. This includes 1,790 forces on the ground in the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan, and another 610 in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and in the Horn of Africa, where they are engaged in the struggle against al Qaeda. After the Iraq war began, the German government decided to extend German troop involvement beyond Kabul to Kundus. The money spent on peacekeeping has jumped from around 131 million in 1995 to more than 1.5 billion in 2002. The German contribution, however, has been consistently denigrated by leading neocons and some senior members of the Bush administration. Just days before Secretary Rumsfeld’s trip to Germany in June 2003, four German peacekeeping troops were killed in Kabul, yet he made no mention of this sacrifice in his speech to the Marshall Center in Garmisch, a speech attended by his German counterpart, Peter Struck. Germans have a right to complain, as Harald Müller has, that “it is all the more disturbing that leading U.S. conservative intellectuals badly underrate the military contribution Europe is making to Western security, despite the gulf between European and U.S. capabilities. Even more disturbing, people advising the U.S. government, such as Richard Perle and members of the Administration itself, depict the Europeans as a pacifist bunch of wimps. . . . the Atlantic Alliance will not survive if European blood is shed on America’s behalf and yet this arrogant attitude within the U.S. conservative elite persists.”27

The Strategic Agenda According to a number of analysts on both sides of the Atlantic, the future of the alliance now lies in creating a new strategic consensus on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and on principles for military intervention in failed states. Two great regional issues, the European agenda and the stability of the greater Middle East, also will play a large role.28 What are the elements of any new consensus likely to be?

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Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction The German-American divergence over strategy remains deep. The German strategic culture will not accept unilateral preventive wars. However, in the wake of the war in Iraq, Germany participated in the EU’s effort to develop a security strategy to respond to the U.S. National Security Strategy and has begun to accept that an arms control and cooperative security regime must be underpinned by the threat of force as a last resort.29 After the Iraq war, on October 21, 2003, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer led a team including the French and British foreign ministers to Tehran, where they negotiated an agreement aimed at ending Iran’s development of a nuclear program. The Marshall Fund survey found that the number of Germans supporting the use of military force against North Korea or Iran increased substantially if it was done under a UN mandate. For example, only 20 percent of respondents supported the use of military force by the United States against a nuclear-armed North Korea to force it to give up its weapons of mass destruction. Support increased to 34 percent if NATO decided to attack and to 33 percent if the UN Security Council did so. These proportions, however, are substantially lower than those in France, Britain, and the United States.30 At the same time, the Bush administration’s approach to the problem of weapons of mass destruction in the cases of both Iran and North Korea indicates some acceptance of a multilateral approach and of nonproliferation agreements backed up by inspections.31 The great damage to the credibility of the United States caused by its use of faulty or possibly fabricated intelligence data to justify the charge that Saddam Hussein had an extensive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction—and every intention of using them—will strengthen the case for obtaining international consensus before countering WMD threats in the future.

Failed States and Principles of Intervention Both Germany and the United States agreed in the case of the Balkans that military force should be used to stop genocide and other massive abuses of human rights. In the Kosovo war, the Schröder Red-Green government agreed to send German forces without a UN mandate to stop ethnic cleansing, even though legally Kosovo was a part of Serbia and was not even a NATO or EU member state. The German government, therefore, accepted the principle of limited sovereignty. In the case of Afghanistan, again the Schröder government sent German forces, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, on the grounds that the Taliban regime had allowed a terrorist

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group to launch an attack on a NATO ally. It opposed the war of choice the U.S. fought in Iraq in part on principle and in part on strategic grounds. Yet it has agreed that NATO has a role outside of Europe and is participating in the NATO Reaction Force, which will intervene in countries that either support terrorism or are unable to prevent it. The Westphalian principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states has clearly been weakened by the emergence of the new threats posed by nonstate actors as well as by the emergence of a new global acceptance of the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds. There remains a wide gap between a doctrine of preemptive and preventive armed intervention, or what American officials call “anticipatory self-defense,” and the German view of when such intervention is justified, but both sides see the need to develop criteria and procedures for dealing with the problem of nonstate terrorism. Given the heavy cost of the war in Iraq, even a conservative American administration will be constrained from launching another preventive war. There also will be a need for a common approach to the administration of international protectorates, failed states that go into international receivership.

The Regional Agendas These broad issues are being played out in specific regions, and they have to be addressed within the differing political and cultural contexts of those regions. There are two broad regional areas that are likely to be at the center of the German-American relationship over the next decade. One is Europe, the focus of the U.S.-German alliance in the past, and the other is the Middle East, where the two countries have never been as close.

The Eastern Agenda Germany and the United States were close partners in the effort to include eastern European countries in NATO and continue to share an interest in stabilizing the part of eastern Europe that lies between Germany and Russia. The second stage of NATO enlargement, agreed on in Prague in November 2002, will be followed both by EU enlargement and further extensions of NATO. Major challenges confront both Berlin and Washington in regard to the democratization of Ukraine and Belarus as well as the continuing problem of the democratization of Russia and the Caucasus and the stabilization of their relationship with Europe. The goal of both Germany and the United States is to lock in democratic and market-oriented systems in the countries

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of the region and integrate them into the larger pan-European and transatlantic security system. They both want a Russia that is democratic and open to the outside world, a place that through the effective and consistent rule of law will prove reliable for foreign investment. They both also have an interest in developing the Russian energy sector and reducing their dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The Russia-France-Germany triangle that emerged during the Iraq crisis is unlikely to lead to a new long-term alliance against the United States because it would risk isolating these countries and further splitting “old” and “new” Europe.32 From the German perspective, it would risk reopening fears in Poland of a new German-Russian condominium in eastern Europe and thus risk creating a countercoalition within both the EU and NATO. Nonetheless, Iraq provided indications that the German-Russian relationship is far more fluid than it was during the cold war and that Russia and Germany are now ad hoc partners. In addition, Russian and German views on the role of the UN and other international institutions are closer than German-American views, and Moscow and Berlin have had a common vision for a UN authority in Iraq. Even so, the overall prospects for cooperation between Germany and the United States on the eastern agenda look promising given the convergence of the nations’ interests in the region.

The Greater Middle East One of the enduring facts to arise from the conflict in Iraq is that the status quo in the Middle East is no longer tenable. Both Germans and Americans have a stake in ensuring peace and stability in the Middle East, and they are going to have to look for new approaches and strategies if they hope to succeed. In some important ways the German and European stake is even greater than that of the United States, given the proximity of the Middle East to Europe and Europe’s greater vulnerability to turmoil there. A strong case also can be made that the Middle East and Central Asia now have replaced Europe as one crucial area of potential crisis, the other being East Asia. The Middle East is the region where megaterrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the absence of stable and democratic states, and the virulent and destructive ideology of radical Islamists are all converging. Yet this has always been a region where Europe and the United States have diverged in terms of perceived interests and strategies. The gap between Germany and the United States on the PalestinianIsraeli conflict is one of the widest, dividing both the nations’ publics and governments. The divergence on Israel is part of a larger European trend, not

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one limited simply to Germany. However, there is broader agreement between Germans (and Europeans) and Americans on specific policy options and on the long-term objective of a democratic Israel coexisting with an independent, democratic Palestinian state. The embrace by the Bush administration of the road map approach to peace was a sign of a willingness in Washington to work with the EU, Russia, and the UN toward a common resolution of this contentious issue. Neither the U.S. approach, that the road to Middle East peace led through Baghdad, or the European approach, that the road to Middle East peace had to go through Jerusalem, has proven correct.33 Yet the announcement in April 2004 by Bush and Sharon of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that did not include the Europeans has reopened the gap and renewed European concerns about American unilateralism.34 Whether a consensus can be forged given both the vagaries of the region and the differences in U.S. and European attitudes toward Israel and terrorism remains to be seen, but a strong EU-U.S. and possibly NATO role in ensuring a peace settlement would be a major step to reshaping both NATO and the U.S.-European relationship. The Bush administration has a clear interest, after Iraq, in finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, given its broader agenda in the Middle East. However, Germany and the EU continue to work with Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Council and remain its major outside funders. Whether Berlin and Washington agree or diverge on a strategy for settling this dispute will be an important factor in shaping their longer-term new relationship. Beyond the Palestinian-Israeli issue lie other contentious problems, including Iran, Iraq, and the broader Middle East. Both the American and European approaches toward regime change in Iran have proven flawed and ineffective. Yet there is room for a common approach. The Bush administration, chastened perhaps by the difficulty of dealing with postwar Iraq, has embraced a more multilateral approach toward dealing with the problem of a possible nuclear weapons program in Iran, while Europe, including Germany, realizes that the “critical dialogue” approach, which relies on open dialogue and the incentive of economic cooperation, has its limits. Germany’s political and economic contacts with Iran are more extensive than those of the United States, and if Germany decides to use its leverage on the nuclear issue it would both strengthen the nonproliferation regime and gain respect in Washington. An important test will be the ability of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom to follow up on their October 2003 agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue.

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Postwar Iraq will continue to be a threat to the U.S.-German relationship. The Schröder government will offer support for the reconstruction effort only if there is a realistic prospect of genuine authority being transferred to the UN and Iraqi groups. While it has a common interest with the United States in avoiding chaos in Iraq, it knows that there is little public support in Germany for much German engagement in the country. It also understands that the United States is committed to making Iraq work. A combination of the temptation to be a free-rider and strong domestic economic and political constraints will limit German involvement to offering such minor assistance as training Iraqi police in Germany. The Germans also are likely to continue with the current division of labor, in which they will play a role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan while leaving Iraq to the Americans. The German and broader European engagement in Afghanistan is a case study in how the transatlantic relationship should be managed. Here, where a broad coalition with a broad international mandate is linked by a common perception of threat and a common strategy, the creation of an indigenous political authority has proved far less divisive than in Iraq. Only a return to this type of approach by Washington will offer the prospect of broader international cooperation in the Middle East.

The America Problem Beyond these extensive strategic and regional challenges lies the broader area of trade and development. Germany and the United States remain the two largest trading nations in the world, and both share a deep commitment to promoting a liberal international trade regime. They will need to work together closely to continue the momentum toward further liberalization of world trade and investment against strong protectionist pressures in both the United States and Europe. On global issues such as an international environmental regime, development assistance, international crime, immigration, and the broadening of an international legal regime, there is bound to be both conflict and cooperation. It should be remembered that the crisis over the Kyoto Treaty preceded the Iraq crisis, and the environment of suspicion and recrimination that it helped create deepened dramatically over Iraq. The future of the relationship between Germany and the United States is likely to depend on the resolution of these broad global governance issues. On the U.S. side, there must be a return to a coalition approach and to the

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earlier American tradition of constructing and renewing international institutions; there also must be respect for a system of international law. Americans have a liberal internationalist tradition as well as a unilateralist, or Jacksonian, tradition. As G. John Ikenberry has put it, “Two distinct strategies are competing for primacy. One is the liberal multilateralism that generally characterized the approach of the previous Bush and Clinton administrations as well as American policy toward the West in the postSecond World War era. . . . [The other is] a more unilateral—even imperial— grand strategy, based on a starkly realist vision of American interests and global realities.”35 The Bush administration clearly chose the latter strategy, and the result was a transatlantic train wreck that severely damaged the relationship that had been built by the U.S. and German governments over the more than five decades since the defeat of Hitler. If the United States continues with this strategy and seeks to divide Europe between old and new, the German-American relationship will only worsen. This strategy will only enhance the French-German-Russian entente that emerged in 2003, and it also will isolate the closest U.S. ally in Europe, the United Kingdom, forcing it to make an unambiguous Atlanticist choice or pushing it closer to old Europe. In particular, if the United States feels overstretched and in need of legitimacy and material support, it will need a strong European partner. A policy of disaggregation, however, will make it much less likely to find one. Ronald Asmus and others are right to advocate that the United States “settle its differences with France and Germany, the two leading powers on the continent.”36 This points to one of the central questions posed by the Iraq crisis: is this a power problem or simply a George W. Bush or a style problem? In his critique of Europe, Robert Kagan wrote, “Today’s transatlantic problem, in short, is not a George Bush problem. It is a power problem.” He contended that when it comes to the use of force, “Democrats have more in common with Republicans than with European Social Democrats.”37 Andrew Bacevich also contends that “American militarism, if that’s what it is, has deep roots, extended back several decades at the very least. Thus history complicates the question of assigning responsibility for . . . a perversion of U.S. policy. Indeed, it suggests the possibility that a militarized policy may not be a perversion at all, but an authentic expression of American statecraft.”38 This question may be answered when a Democratic administration returns to power. But it raises the deeper question of whether the current bad state of transatlantic relations goes deeper than ideology, party, or a particular set of leaders. Is it structural, in the sense that it has to do with the

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accumulation of too much unbalanced power? Here the opinions of a founding father of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, are especially relevant. Madison warned about the tyranny of majority factions in the Federalist Papers, and the entire U.S. governmental system is designed to prevent any faction from accumulating excessive power. Kagan and many other Americans dismiss attempts by the Europeans to balance American power as misguided, but the leadership of the Bush administration has offered Europeans a stark choice: “You’re either a poodle or an enemy.”39 Or in Bush’s words, “You are either with us or against us.” The accumulation of great, unchecked power leads to hubris. This rule does not hold just for dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes, but for democracies as well. During the cold war the United States worked to achieve its national interests within a multilateral framework because it needed to balance the power of the Soviet Union. In a strange and often unacknowledged way, the Soviets were a check on American hubris. Today the only check is the system of checks and balances designed by Madison and his cofounders and embedded in the U.S. system of government. These checks and balances are not inconsiderable, and such systems are the reason that democracies seem to cope with the problem of power better than nondemocratic systems. Yet in post 9-11 America, there are signs that these internal checks, while necessary, may not be sufficient to prevent the U.S. government from abusing its power. The democracies of Europe are the best equipped to deal with this problem. As David Calleo argues, “Thanks to its own tragic history, today’s Europe is very much aware of power—above all aware of the terrible temptations and dangers of unbalanced power.”40 In the end, Kagan and other neocons associate power with wisdom and assume that European divergences from American leadership are based on weakness. While it may be true that their limited military capabilities mean that Europeans are more likely to look for nonmilitary options to solving problems, more often it simply has to do with differences in judgment and an understanding of both the dangers of a too-ready resort to military power and the advantages of “soft power” in a globalizing milieu. The tone of Kagan’s analysis and that of too many others emanating from the United States are warning signs, not of European tendencies toward appeasement, but of hubris and resentment in Washington. Even Kagan concedes this when he urges a greater “generosity of spirit” on the administration in dealing with its European allies and invokes Thomas Jefferson’s call for “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.”Yet he still believes that Europe has little to offer the United States in strategic military terms “except a Europe at

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peace.” It is this hubris, if followed for much longer, that will undermine America’s global leadership and isolate it in much the way that Kaiser Wilhelm II isolated Germany before World War I. As Martin Wolf warns, “If the U.S. behaves solely as a nineteenth-century power—be it liberal imperialist or nationalist—of a kind it once abhorred, it will promote a nineteenth-century world.”41

Return of the German Problem? The emergence of the America problem has reopened the German problem. The increasing fluidity of the international environment combined with the changing politico-cultural context of the Berlin republic means that many of the constants of the comfortable Bonn republic are gone. The Berlin republic now faces, to paraphrase John Foster Dulles, an “agonizing reappraisal” of its foreign policy options. Does this leave the leaders of the Berlin republic with the Bismarckian strategy of maintaining shifting coalitions and risk reopening the old German question about an unanchored Germany? The German problem was the central strategic and political issue confronting twentieth-century Europe. The strategic problem concerned the role of German power within the broader European system and the inability of the major European powers to balance and contain the rising power of unified Germany between 1871 and 1945. Two non-European powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, had to enter the European system in order to create a new equilibrium, one that was quite stable during the fortyplus years of the cold war, when Germany was divided into two separate states, and the bigger one, West Germany, was not much larger in population than France, Britain, or Italy.42 This problem of power was linked to Germany’s late unification and its geographical setting in the heart of Europe. Germany unified later than the other major European nations, and thus when it emerged as a major power at the end of the nineteenth century, it was a challenge to the more established older states. Its location in the heart of Europe meant that any expansion of its territory or influence would challenge a number of states that bordered it or were close to it, in both western and eastern Europe. In short, even with good intentions, Germany would have been a problem for the European state system, and, of course, its leadership and intentions were hardly benign for most of this period.43 German reunification in 1990 reopened fears of a resurgence of the German problem as a geopolitical challenge, because of both the new imbalance it created within the European system and the assertiveness of a newly sov-

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ereign Germany led by a new postwar generation less constrained by the Nazi legacy and the transatlantic community. However, the decade following reunification did not confirm those fears. Unified Germany, led by the firmly Europeanist Helmut Kohl, did not seem to conform to the expectations of the realists, who believed that a more fluid international environment combined with an increase in national power would lead to a more nationalist Germany. While it began to enhance its military role, it did so within a multilateral context and generally continued within a modified form of the civilian power paradigm. The academic consensus on the German problem at the end of the century was that Germany had been transformed. Constructivist and neoliberal paradigms seemed to better explain Germany’s role in the new Europe than those of the realists. Thomas Banchoff, in his study of German foreign policy from 1945 through 1995, concluded that the German problem had been transformed by an institutional and domestic political configuration that constrained German reactions to changes in the international environment: “In contrast to the pre-1945 decades, however, German power is embedded in a dense web of institutions while avowed German interests in a peaceful multilateral and supranational foreign policy rest upon a democratic political consensus.”44 There have always been two dimensions to the German problem, internal and external. The internal German problem was related to the failure of democracy. As Heinrich August Winkler concluded in his study of Germany’s way to westernization, “It was not the solution of the question of national unity that stood at the beginning of the road to catastrophe, but the failure to settle the question of freedom.”45 The internal problem has been solved. Germany is a mature and stable democracy. In a survey of much of the literature on postunification German foreign policy, Alison McCartney concluded: “This new international order and Germany’s power/position in it are not the most important determinants of actual policy choices. Domestic politics, history, and norms also play crucial roles in defining and making choices. As such Germany offers further evidence of the limitations of neo-realist theory.”46 The 1990s may prove, however, to be an interregnum between two eras, opening with German unification in 1990 and closing on September 11, 2001. There have been three fundamental circles to German foreign policy: the transatlantic, the west European, and the central European (or Mitteleuropa) circles. The German problem has been reopened with respect to the central importance of the link between the United States and the Berlin republic. Here the trend seems to suggest a longer-term drifting apart of the

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two formerly close partners. This drift may yet turn into an open break, raising questions about German identity, which to a great extent has been shaped by the presence and influence of the United States. It also suggests a danger for Germany: that any weakening of its transatlantic ties may raise renewed fears in Europe about a Germany unbound. The American connection assured Germany’s European partners that there were restraints on German power. If that tie is substantially weakened, then old concerns may return, especially among the newer member states of NATO and the EU, especially Poland. The result could be a return of the Bismarckian dilemma—that a powerful Germany in the heart of Europe will create countervailing coalitions around it—if Europe itself does not prove strong enough to provide a new framework for German power and aspirations. Otto von Bismarck was keenly aware of this dilemma; as described by the historian Hajo Holborn: He . . . most deliberately avoided wrecking the system under which Europe was ruled by five major powers. The continuity of the international order of Europe was a conscious aim of Bismarckian diplomacy, since it would contribute to the security of Germany. In this sense Bismarck was not only a German but also a European statesman in the tradition of Metternich, as he liked to state his rejection of all Great German and Pan-German designs with the Metternichian phrase that “Germany was saturated.”47 Or as Bismarck himself put it, “When there are five, try to be a trois.” The German historian Michael Stürmer has written that “the German Question, put in its crudest form, has always been twofold: To whom does Germany belong, and to whom do the Germans owe their allegiance? In 1990 it was in the fine print of the ‘Two Plus Four’ agreement that united Germany should continue to be firmly rooted in the European Union . . . and be the most loyal member of the Atlantic Alliance.”48 Now that the Atlantic pillar is weakened if not crumbling, how resilient will the European pillar of German policy be? David Calleo has posed the German problem in this broader context: The Atlantic Alliance assumed Europe to be intrinsically unstable and therefore to require an external balancing power. The European Union assumed that Europe was not irremediably unstable: Europeans in general, and French and Germans in particular, were capable of reconciling their national interests and of harmonizing them into a collective interest with a common institution.49

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The answer to the new German question rests, therefore, on whether the European construction can and will hold. For Germany, the European pillar really consists of the west and central European circles of German policy. German policy since unification has attempted to reconcile these two circles by integrating the old Mitteleuropa into the west European pillar by expanding the membership of the EU and NATO. However, the Iraq crisis, the violation by Germany and France of the EU’s public deficit limits (limits that were insisted on by the Kohl government to ensure that the euro would be as stable as the German mark), and the uncertain future of the new EU constitution have raised the specter of a divided Europe and a slowing or reversal of the trend toward ever-greater European integration. Added to this is the prospect of a weak and drifting Germany, preoccupied with economic and demographic stagnation and less and less able to fund the largest share of the EU’s budget, which could have serious implications for the Common Agricultural Policy and the financing of the enlargement of the EU to the east and south. Given the parochialism of the current generation of German leaders, the danger signs are abundant that the German question, in a new form, is about to return to center stage in Europe. Germany, therefore, faces the prospect of a return to the Bismarckian dilemma if it confronts a more fluid transatlantic and European milieu than that which existed during the cold war and the 1990s. Germany has turned to France and the Franco-German pillar as a means of avoiding the countercoalitions against German power that occurred after 1871, but whether that will provide for stability in a larger and more fluid Europe remains uncertain. The United States and Germany continue to need each other, and they must find a new, realistic basis for their relationship. As Zbignew Brzezinski has persuasively argued, “An essentially multilateralist Europe and a somewhat unilateralist America make for a perfect global marriage of convenience. . . . Neither America nor Europe could do as well without the other. Together, they are the core of global stability.”50 In order for this marriage to have a chance, both the American and German problems must be solved. U.S. leaders must return to the more enlightened form of leadership provided by the generation of the Wise Men and work toward building a constructive partnership with a unifying Europe rather than pursue the chimera of a “policy of disaggregation” that seeks to divide and conquer. European leaders, with Germany’s leadership being central, must avoid the temptation to act as a rival of the United States. They will be much more likely to do so if the American problem is resolved. In this scenario, Germany could return to a

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central position in Europe and would regain some flexibility in its position by renewing ties with Britain, Poland, and the central European states and resisting the French temptation to form a new directorate for Europe. If Germany and the United States part ways, this scenario will be in great jeopardy. Yet given all the changes—both domestic and international—that have occurred since 9-11, there will be some parting of the ways, a tendency toward distancing rather than balancing. If there is to be a new partnership, it will have to be more one of equals, of real partners, and that will require great adjustments on both sides of the Atlantic. At the same time, the serious possibility of a deepening and more permanent rift and the emergence of a relationship based on rivalry—in short, a split in the West—are greater than at any time since the end of World War II. Ultimately, those in power in both Washington and Berlin will be the ones who decide whether to recreate or destroy a relationship that has proven to be the guarantor of European stability for more than half a century.

appendix

Chronology of German-American Relations September 11, 2001–March 20, 2003

2001 September 11 Terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Chancellor Schröder announces “unconditional solidarity” with the United States. September 12 UN Security Council passes Resolution 1368 (2001), which acknowledges the attacks as an attack on the United States. Statement by Chancellor Schröder to Bundestag. September 14 Two hundred thousand people participate in a demonstration, Keine Macht dem Terror (No Power to Terrorism), in Berlin. October 2 NATO invokes Article 5, its self-defense clause. November 7 Operation Enduring Freedom begins. The German government agrees that German soldiers can participate in antiterrorist missions. There is substantial resistance from parts of the SPD and Greens. November 13 Schröder connects a vote in the Bundestag on military missions with a vote of confidence for his government. November 16 The Bundestag agrees that German forces can participate with allies in military actions in the fight against terrorism. A maximum force of 3,900 soldiers is approved for a period of twelve months. Schröder wins the vote of confidence.

2002 January 29 Bush gives a State of the Union address describing Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an “axis of evil.” 154

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February 1 Meeting between Chancellor Schröder and President Bush in Washington. Schröder announces that Germany will take on a larger role in the war against terrorism. May 22–May 23 President Bush visits Germany. Bush denies having concrete plans for a war against Iraq and believes that Schröder has agreed not to make Iraq an issue in the German election campaign. June 2 In a speech at West Point, President Bush floats the idea of “preemptive strike” for the first time. Beginning of August Heavy floods occur in eastern Germany. August 2 Chancellor Schröder cautions the United States not to attack Iraq. August 5 For the first time, Schröder uses the phrase the “German way” in connection with his policy toward Iraq. In a campaign speech in Hanover, he states that Germany will not undertake “any adventures” under his leadership. August 18 U.S. ambassador Coats voices the discontent of the Bush administration with Schröder’s current stance on Iraq. August 23 First TV debate between Schröder and Edmund Stoiber. August 26 In a speech in Nashville, Cheney describes the possible return of weapons inspectors to Iraq as a secondary consideration in any U.S. decision on whether to wage war. He defends the doctrine of preemptive strikes. September 3 Chancellor Schröder excludes the possibility of German support in a war against Iraq, even if the UN passes an authorizing resolution. U.S. ambassador Coats describes Germany’s position on Iraq as damaging for U.S.-German relations. September 7 In an interview with the Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Ludwig Stiegler, leader of the SPD Bundestag caucus, compares Ambassador Coats to the former Soviet ambassador, Pjotr Abrassimov. September 8 In the Münchner Merkur, Ludwig Stiegler compares Bush to Caesar Augustus and calls Washington the new Rome. Second TV debate between Stoiber and Schröder; the Iraq issue swings the debate in favor of Schröder. September 12 In a speech at the UN, President Bush asks for a UN resolution to force Iraq to disarm or face the consequences. September 17 Jürgen Mölleman, deputy leader of the FDP, distributes a flyer justifying his attacks on Ariel Sharon and Michel Friedman, the leader of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. September 18 In a meeting with trade unionists, Minister of Justice Däubler-Gmelin compares the Bush government’s methods with Hitler’s.

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September 19 Ari Fleischer, Bush’s press secretary, condemns DäublerGmelin’s remarks. White House releases new national security strategy, which includes a clause on preventive action. September 20 Chancellor Schröder sends letter concerning the DäublerGmelin affair to President Bush. September 21 Condoleezza Rice in interview describes atmosphere between United States and Germany as poisoned. September 22 The SPD and Greens return to power with a slim majority in the new Bundestag. September 24 Secretary Rumsfeld avoids any contact with Minister of Defense Struck at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Warsaw. October 30 Meeting of Secretary of State Powell and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. November 8 Meeting of Secretary Rumsfeld and Minister of Defense Peter Struck in Washington. Rumsfeld calls ties “unpoisoned.” November 8 First telephone conversation between Chancellor Schröder and President Bush since the elections. The UN Security Council unanimously adopts Resolution 1441, threatening Iraq with “serious consequences” if it does not comply with previous resolutions. November 21/22 Chancellor Schröder and President Bush avoid each other at the NATO summit in Prague; their only contact is a single handshake. November 27 Chancellor Schröder promises that the United States can use its bases in Germany in a war against Iraq.

2003 January 7 French prime minister Jacques Chirac tells armed forces chiefs to be ready “for any eventuality.” January 13 Meeting between Maurice Gourdault-Montagne and Condoleezza Rice, from which France concludes that U.S. military action against Iraq is inevitable. January 20 So-called “ambush” of Colin Powell at UN by France and Germany. January 21 At a campaign rally in Goslar, Schröder says that Germany would not vote in favor of a UN resolution legitimizing a war against Iraq. January 22 Schröder and Chirac issue statement in Versailles declaring that war was a last resort and would require a UN Security Council decision. Rumsfeld labels France and Germany part of “old Europe.”

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January 27 Hans Blix tells the UN Security Council after sixty days of inspections that Iraq is defying international demands to disarm. January 30 Wall Street Journal publishes a letter signed by British prime minister Tony Blair, Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, and six other European leaders supporting the United States. February 2 SDP suffers major losses in state elections. February 5 Powell addresses the UN Security Council, offering what he calls detailed proof that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction and maintaining links to al Qaeda. February 6 Rumsfeld groups Germany with Libya and Cuba on the Iraq issue. February 7 Schröder tells SPD parliamentarians that Iraq represents a “historic decision” with respect to whether one nation will dictate world affairs. February 8 Confrontation between Rumsfeld and Fischer at the Wehrkunde conference in Munich. February 9 Schröder tells Chirac in a telephone conversation, “I will bring Putin along. Then we can create a trilateral relationship.” February 10 Major row erupts within NATO after France, Belgium, and Germany block a request that the alliance prepare to aid Turkey in case Turkey is attacked by Iraq. February 14 UN Security Council holds a crucial meeting to hear an updated report by the chief weapons inspectors. February 15 Millions of people across the globe take to the streets to protest U.S. plans for war. March 5 France, Germany, and Russia vow to oppose a new UN resolution backing military action against Iraq. March 7 Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei present a new report to the UN Security Council that is more positive about Sadaam’s cooperation on disarmament. March 10 Chirac goes on national television to say that “France will vote no” to a second resolution authorizing war on Iraq whatever the circumstances. Russia also vows to veto such a resolution. March 13 Reacting bitterly to France’s refusal to approve a new UN resolution, Tony Blair says a vote on the resolution is now less likely than ever. March 13 White House backtracks, dropping demands for a new UN Security Council vote on war with Iraq and hinting that it may forgo UN approval for military action altogether.

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March 14 President of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, indicates his country’s hesitation regarding voting for second resolution. March 15 Hundreds of thousands of people join antiwar marches around the world. March 16 Britain, Spain, and the United States hold a summit meeting on the Portuguese Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic. March 17 United States tells UN arms inspectors to pack their bags and leave Iraq. March 18 Bush goes on national television and gives Saddam Hussein and his sons forty-eight hours to flee Iraq or face a U.S.-led invasion. March 18 UN pulls its inspectors out of Iraq. March 20 War in Iraq begins. Source: Compiled by Katharina Plueck and Timo Behr with reference to chronologies in Associated Press World Stream, February 25 and March 26, 2004; and Agence France-Presse, December 17, 2003.

Notes

Notes to Chapter One 1. Quoted in Steven Erlanger, “Germans Vote in a Tight Election in which Bush, Hitler, and Israel Became Key Issues,” New York Times, September 22, 2002, p. 14. 2. Samuel Huntington, “The U.S.–Decline or Renewal?” Foreign Affairs (Winter 1998–99), p. 93. Elsewhere Huntington writes, “Healthy cooperation with Europe is the prime antidote for the loneliness of U.S. superpowerdom”; Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs (March–April 1999), p. 48. 3. Joseph Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.1–12, quote on p. 29. 4.“Jeder dritte Jugendliche protestiert gegen den Krieg,” Spiegel Online, March 29, 2003 (www.spiegel.de). See also Ian Johnson, “Conspiracy Theories about Sept. 11 Get Hearing in Germany,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2003, p. A12. 5. This phrase was used by German defense minister Peter Struck, in trying to minimize the depth of damage done to the German-U.S. relationship, when he met with Donald Rumsfeld just after the German election. 6. David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 248. 7. “Freund oder Feind?” Der Spiegel, no. 40, September 30, 2002, p. 118. 8. Schmidt made this remark at the height of the conflict to a group at the Hamburg state mission in Bonn, in the author’s presence. 9. The concept of “action dispensability,” which is used in the study of the impact of personality in politics, is relevant in this context. It refers to the circumstances under which the actions of single individuals are likely to have a greater or lesser effect on the course of events. The more malleable the environment, the greater the impact of individual personalities. See, for example, Gordon J. Di Renzo, “Perspectives on Personality and Political Behavior,” in Personality and Politics, edited by Gordon J. Di Renzo (New York: Anchor Books, 1974), pp. 3–28. 159

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10. Interview with author. I conducted a number of interviews in both Germany and the United States with officials of both governments; the interviews were done on a confidential basis in order to encourage frankness. The official’s institutional affiliation and the date of the interview, when available, are noted. The reference is to Pope Gregory VII, who compelled the German emperor Henry IV to do penance for three days in the snow at Canossa, where he had come in January 1077 to beg for his excommunication to be lifted. 11. For an extensive and unsympathetic treatment of the Bush dynasty, see Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (New York: Viking, 2004). 12. See the description of the importance of the personal relationship in Bush’s dealings with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 119. 13. Quoted in Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Foreign Policy,” New York Times, January 7, 2004, p. A1. Bush was finally persuaded to meet with Schröder in September 2003. As the article recounts, “Mr. Bush, simply put, did not trust him.” 14. Jane Kramer, “The Once and Future Chancellor,” New Yorker, September 14, 1998, p. 10. 15. Jürgen Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder: Ein Porträt (Berlin: Siedler, 2002), p. 215. 16. Interview with Foreign Office official, December 2002. 17. Kramer, “The Once and Future Chancellor,” p. 9. 18. See Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder, pp. 199, 208. 19. Ibid., p. 207. 20. “A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect white swans because that’s what their experience tells them. A black swan is by definition a surprise.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “Learning to Expect the Unexpected,” New York Times, April 8, 2004, p. A27.

Notes to Chapter Two 1. A chronology of the key events from September 11 through the outbreak of the war in Iraq on March 20, 2003, can be found in the appendix of this book. 2. Jürgen Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder: Ein Porträt (Berlin: Siedler, 2002), pp. 209–11. 3. For a concise description of the Taliban–al Qaeda link, see the report of the 9-11 Commission: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “Overview of the Enemy: Staff Statement 15,” June 16–17, 2004 (www.911commission.gov [July 16, 2004]). 4. Gunther Hofmann, “Der lange Weg zum lauten Nein,” Die Zeit, May 2003 (www.zeit.de ). 5. Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Edu-

Notes to Pages 16–21

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cation of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). Also see “Bush Sought ‘Way’ to Invade Iraq?” CBS, 60 Minutes, January 11, 2004 (www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2004/01/09/60minutes/main592330.shtml [March 2004]); and Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004). 6. Office of the Press Secretary, “German Leader Reiterates Solidarity with U.S.,” White House, October 9, 2001. 7. Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder, pp. 211–12. 8. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 179–80. Schröder reportedly was disappointed that Bush did not appreciate the risk he had taken with the vote of confidence. 9. Oliver Schröm, “Im Visier der besonnenen Fahnder,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, January 12, 2003, p. 45. 10. Hofmann, “Der lange Weg zum lauten Nein.” 11. Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder, pp. 211–12. 12. Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder, p. 208; also based on an interview with Michael Inacker, November 8, 2002. 13. Interview with Inacker. 14. Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder, pp. 211–12. 15. Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Bush and Chancellor Schröder of Germany in Press Availability,” White House, May 23, 2002. 16. The Christian Democratic opposition came to believe that Schröder had actually given Bush a letter stating that he would support a war in Iraq, but there is no credible substantiation for this suspicion. Ambassador Coats also believed that Schröder had clearly agreed not to openly oppose the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq. See also Hofmann, “Der lange Weg zum lauten Nein.” 17. Conversations with staff member of the National Security Council, July 7, 2003. 18. Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by President Bush and Chancellor Schröder.” 19. Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 1, 98–103. 20. Lally Weymouth, “Schröder: We Have a Good Relationship,” Washington Post, February 29, 2004, p. B7. 21. “President Bush Delivers Graduation Speech at West Point,” June 1, 2002, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06 [June 2002]. 22. The major polling organizations had the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) with 38 to 40 percent and the SPD with between 33 and 36 percent in early July 2002. Most alarming, the SPD trailed in its power center, the state of North Rhine–Westphalia, and with only 42 percent support in an early July 2002 poll trailed by almost 5 percent its margin there at the same time in the 1998 campaign. At the end of July, just before Schröder launched a cam-

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paign against U.S. policy in Iraq, the SPD had lost another 5 points in the polls and the opposition had gained 2 points, so that the SPD was trailing the CDU/CSU by a margin of 43 to 35 percent. “‘Ich oder der’: Gerhard Schröder gegen Edmund Stoiber—das Protokoll eines Machtkampfes,” Der Spiegel, no. 38 (2002), pp. 62, 66. 23. Interview with Steven Erlanger, July 11, 2003. 24. “Krieg der Worte,” Der Spiegel, no. 38 (2002), p. 20. 25. “Schröder: Keine Beteiligung an Krieg gegen den Irak,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 5, 2002, p.1. German text reads: “Schröder sagte öffentlich: ‘Wir hören wirklich Nachrichten aus dem Nahen Osten, die beunruhigen, bis hin zu neuer Kriegsgefahr. Ich denke, wir haben nach dem 11 September bewiesen, daß wir besonnen, auch entschieden reagieren, aber immer besonnen, daß wir Solidarität mit unseren Partnern leisten, aber für Abenteuer nicht zur Verfügung stehen, und dabei wird es bleiben.” 26. “Rede von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder zum Wahlkampfauftakt am Montag, 5. August 2002, in Hannover (Opernplatz).” He also said, “And for those who believe that this country, this government, will take the comfortable way out, as Kohl did, and remain out while paying—at that time 18 billion marks—they are wrong. To them I say, this Germany is a self-confident country. We have not shied away from the international struggle against terrorism.” (www.spd.de/servlet/ PB/show/1019520/Schr%F6der%20Rede%20WahlkampfauftaktHannover.doc [July 27, 2004]). 27. “Ich oder der,” Der Spiegel, p. 66. 28. Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Foreign Policy,” New York Times, January 7, 2004, p. A6. 29. For a discussion of the ideological divisions on foreign policy within the Bush administration, see chapter 4. 30. The distinction between preemptive and preventive war is discussed in chapter 4. Preemptive war is conducted to counter a direct and immediate threat; a preventive war is fought to prevent a threat from developing down the road—what President Bush often referred to as a “gathering threat.” 31. Office of the Vice President,“Vice President Cheney Speaks at Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention, August 26, 2002” (www.whitehouse.gov [July 19, 2004]). 32. “Krieg der Worte,” Der Spiegel, p. 21. 33. Ibid. 34. Office of the Vie President, “Vice President Cheney Speaks.” 35. “Bundestagswahlkampf: TV-Duell: Stoiber Gegen Schröder,” transcript of TV debate on ARD and ZDF on September 8, 2002. 36. Steven Erlanger, “German Leader’s Warning: War Plan Is a Huge Mistake,” New York Times, September 5, 2002, p. A9. 37. Interview with Erlanger, July 11, 2003. 38. “Krieg der Worte,” Der Spiegel, p. 21.

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39. “Ich oder der,” Der Spiegel, p. 70. 40. “Krieg der Worte,” Der Spiegel, p. 22. 41. “Ich oder der,” Der Spiegel, p. 70. 42. Conversation with author, March 2003. 43. “Schroeder verlangt neue Ethik in der Wirtschaft; Ablehnung von Krieg gegen Irak verteidigt,” Associated Press World Stream-German, September 10, 2002. See also Michael Bourne, “German Poison,” September 26, 2002, USNew.com (www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_020926.htm [July 19, 2004]). 44. “Der Krieg der Worte vor Fischer’s Mission,” Die Tageszeitung (taz) Nr. 6894, November 2, 2002, p.5. 45. The story was originally written by Christoph Müller and published in a regional newspaper, Schwäbisches Tagblatt. This and other articles on the topic were published on September 20, 2002, and reprinted on the website of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on November 19, 2002. See “Hitler: Herta Däubler Gmelin und das gesprochene Wort,” FAZ NET, November 19, 2002. 46. Interview with Condoleezza Rice in Haig Simonian and others, “U.S. condemns ‘poisoned relations’ with Berlin,” Financial Times, September 21, 2002, p. 6. 47. Rolf Beste and others, “Du musst das hochziehen,” Der Spiegel, no. 13 (2003), p. 56. 48. FAZ NET (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), November 19, 2002. The German text, dated 20. September 2002, reads: “Ich möchte Dich auf diesem Wege wissen lassen, wie sehr ich bedauere, dass durch angebliche Äusserungen der deutschen Justizministerin ein Eindruck enstanden ist, der Deine Gefühle tief verletzt hat. Die Ministerin hat mir versichert, dass sie die ihr zugeschriebenen Aussagen nicht gemacht hat. Sie hat dies auch öffentlich erklärt. Ich möchte Dir versichern, dass an meinem Kabinettstisch niemand Platz hat, der den amerikanischen Präsidenten mit einem Verbrecher in Verbindung bringt. Der Sprecher des Weißen Hauses hat mit Recht auf die besonderen und engen Beziehungen zwischen dem deutschen und amerikanischen Volk hingewiesen.” 49. The rejection of German participation in a war against Iraq was stronger among women than men and was especially pronounced among women over the age of sixty, two-thirds of whom expressed this view. Dieter Roth and Mattias Jung, “Ablösung der Regierung vertagt: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2002,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vols. 49–50 (December 9, 2002), p.12. For a full analysis, with data, see Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW) e.V. Mannheim, Bundestagswahl: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2002, Bericht Nr. 108 (Mannheim: Institut für Wahlanalysen und Gesellschaftsbeobachtung, September 2002). See also Wolfgang Hartenstein and Rita Müller-Hilmer, “Die Bundestagswahl 2002: Neue Themen—Neue Allianzen,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vols. 49–50 (December 9, 2002), p. 23. 50. Roth and Jung, “Ablösung der Regierung vertagt,” pp. 12–13. 51. Ibid., p. 12. Confidence in the SPD’s handling of relations with the United

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States dropped from 41 percent in September 2002 to 34 percent in October, but with only 27 percent having confidence in the CDU instead: Hartenstein and MüllerHilmer, “Die Bundestagswahl 2002,” pp. 48–49. Comparable figures for the month after the election, from the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, can be found in “Der Kanzler verliert seinen Vertrauensbonus,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 19, 2002, p. 7. 52. Hartenstein and Müller-Hilmer, “Die Bundestagswahl 2002,” p. 38. 53. See, for example, Bill Keller, “Reagan’s Son,” New York Times Magazine, January 26, 2003, p. 62. Keller describes Bush’s vision for the world as “America rampant—unfettered by international law, unflinching when challenged, unmatchable in its might, more interested in being respected than in being loved.” This attitude is also quite apparent in James Mann’s intellectual biography of the Bush team, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004). 54. See Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 174–85; for Blair’s role, see also Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader (New York: Viking, 2004), pp. 215–19. 55. Interview with Erlanger, July 11, 2003.

Notes to Chapter Three 1. Interview with an official in the chancellor’s office, October 2002. I conducted a number of interviews in both Germany and the United States with officials of both governments; the interviews were done on a confidential basis in order to encourage frankness. The official’s institutional affiliation and the date of the interview, when available, are noted. 2. Rolf Beste and others, “Du musst das hochziehen,” Der Spiegel, no. 13 (2003), p. 56. 3. Interview with senior Foreign Office official, July 2003. 4. Interview with Steven Erlanger, July 11, 2003. 5. Eckart Lohse, “Die Zeit, der grosse Heiler, “ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 1, 2002, p. 3. 6. United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1441, November 8, 2002, p. 5. 7. For a full description of the Franco-American negotiations over Resolution 1441, see Philip H. Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), pp. 103–14; for the discussions within the Bush administration, see Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004), pp. 220–27; for Tony Blair’s role, see Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader (New York: Viking, 2004), pp. 215–19. 8. Gordon and Shapiro, Allies at War, p. 114. 9. Quentin Peel and others, “War in Iraq: How the Die Was Cast before Transatlantic Diplomacy Failed,” Financial Times, May 27, 2003, p. 11. 10. One of Schröder’s demands has been for Germany to be granted, along with

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Japan and other large and important states, a permanent seat on the Security Council. Germany and Japan are the second- and third-largest contributors to the UN budget, and they feel that they should have a larger role in the decisionmaking process. 11. “Die Hoffung wird immer kleiner,” Der Spiegel, December 30, 2002. 12. Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 269–74. 13. See Gordon and Shapiro, Allies at War, pp. 121–25. 14. Peel and others, “War in Iraq,” p. 11. 15. Christian Hacke, “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vols. 24–25 (June 10, 2003), p. 9. 16. Peel and others, “War in Iraq,” p. 11. 17. Beste and others, “Du musst das hochziehen,” p. 58. 18. Gordon and Shapiro, Allies at War, chapter 5. 19. Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Set to Demand That Allies Agree Iraq Is Defying U.N.,” New York Times, January 23, 2003. 20.“Es ist nicht Ergebnis meiner Politik, dass Europa gespalten ist,” Spiegel Online, February 4, 2003 (www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0.1518,233749,00.html). 21. “The Rift Turns Nasty: The Plot That Split Old and New Europe Asunder,” Financial Times, May 28, 2003, p. 13. 22. Beste and others, “Du musst das hochziehen,” p. 60. 23. Angela Merkel, “Schröder Doesn’t Speak for All Germans,” Washington Post, February 20, 2003, p. A39. 24. “Pro-Kriegs-Kurs: Merkels Brief and die Bürger,” Spiegel Online, March 28 2003 (www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,242482,00.html [March 2003]). 25. “Pro-Kriegs-Kurs.” 26. See Woodward, Plan of Attack, pp. 319–20; and Stephens, Tony Blair, pp. 229–37. 27. Interview with senior State Department official, July 2003. 28. Stephens, Tony Blair, pp. 234–37. 29. “Die Schröder Rede im Wortlaut,” Die Tagesschau, March 18, 2003 (www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,2044,OID1649966_TYP4,00.html [March 2003]). 30. Henry A. Kissinger, “Role Reversal and Alliance Realities,” Washington Post, February 10, 2003, p. A21. See also Ivo H. Daalder, “The End of Atlanticism,” Survival, vol. 45 (Summer 2003), p. 147. 31. Interview with senior German Foreign Office official, June 2003. 32. Interview with senior German diplomat, July 2003. 33. Interview with senior German diplomat, July 2003. 34. “Eyes on Iraq; In Cheney’s Words: The Administration’s Case for Removing Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, August 27, 2002, p. A8. 35. Joschka Fischer, federal minister for foreign affairs, speech to the 40th Munich Conference on Security Policy, Munich, February 7, 2004 (www.auswaertigesamt.de/www/en/ausgabe_archiv?archiv_id=5338 [February 23, 2004]).

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36. Remarks in a presentation by Inacker at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, January 7, 2004. 37. For background on the German-French-American triangle, see Helga Haftendorn, Stephen F. Szabo, and Samuel F. Wells, eds., The Strategic Triangle: France, Germany, the United States and the Shaping of the New Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming). See also Christian Hacke, “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” and Robert Graham and Haig Simonian, “Prospects for the FrancoGerman Relationship: The Elysée Treaty and After,” both in AICGS Policy Report 4 (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2003). On the concept of circles of German foreign policy, see David P. Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 1978), and David P. Calleo, Rethinking Europe’s Future (Princeton University Press, 2001). 38. Peel and others, “War in Iraq,” p. 11. 39. Gordon and Shapiro, Allies at War, chapter 5. 40. Markus Deggerich, “Schröders größtes Solo,” Spiegel Online, February 11, 2003. 41. Interview with senior German Foreign Office official, June 2003. 42. Quoted in Hacke, “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” p. 9. 43. Deggerich, “Schröders größtes Solo.” This contrasted with public statements made by Fischer and Foreign Office officials who contended that what Germany was seeking was a multilateral, not a multipolar, world “in which issues of importance are decided through discussion and on the basis of international law.” John Vinocur, “German Official Says Europe Must Be U.S. Friend, Not Rival,” New York Times, July 19, 2003, p. A5. 44. Hacke, “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” p. 13. 45. Conversation with close Foreign Service adviser to Joschka Fischer, July 2003. 46. Interview with senior State Department official, July 2003. 47. Hacke “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” p. 10.

Notes to Chapter Four 1. For a more thorough definition and discussion of strategic culture, see James Duffield, World Power Foresaken (Stanford University Press, 1998), chapter 2; Stephen F. Szabo, The Changing Politics of German Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990); Stephen F. Szabo and Mary Hampton, Reinventing the German Military, Policy Report 11 (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2003); Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review, no. 113 (June/July 2002), pp. 3–28; Elizabeth Kier, “Culture and Military Doctrine,” International Security, vol. 19 (Spring 1995), pp. 65–93; Douglas Porch, “Military Culture and the Fall of France 1940: A Review Essay,” International Security, vol. 24 (Spring 2000), pp.

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157–80; Stephen Szabo and Joachim Krause, Redefining German Security (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2002) (www.aicgs.org [March 2003]); and Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, “Gulf War: The German Resistance,” Survival, vol. 45 (Spring 2003), pp. 99–116. 2. Philip Taubman, “The Bush Years: W’s World,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, January 14, 2001, p. 30. 3. Address delivered at Wake Forest University, October 2000; quoted in Stephen Fidler and Gerald Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists: How the Neo-Conservatives Rose from Humility to Empire in Two Years,” Financial Times, March 6, 2003, p. 11. See also James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004). 4. These classifications are modifications of those offered by Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11. The terms democratic imperialists and assertive nationalists originate with Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University (both of whom are cited by Fidler and Baker), and are more fully elaborated in Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2003), especially chapters 1 and 3. 5. Realism “is the most elegant and time-honored theory of international order: order is the result of balancing by states under conditions of anarchy to counter opposing power concentrations or threats. In this view, American preponderance is unsustainable: it poses a basic threat to other states and balancing reactions are inevitable.” G. John Ikenberry, “Introduction,” in America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power, edited by G. John Ikenberry (Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 3. 6. Condoleezza Rice, “Promoting the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 79 (January-February 2000), p. 47. 7. Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, p. 46. 8. Taubman, “The Bush Years,” p. 28. 9. The term was originally coined by Alexis de Tocqueville. For a recent discussion of its expression in post-9-11 America, see John Parker, “A Nation Apart: A Survey of America,” Economist, November 8, 2003. See also Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, pp. 6, 45. 10. Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 50. 11. See Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans. 12. For a history of the struggle over Stalinism among New York intellectuals, see William Barrett, The Truants: Adventures among the Intellectuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1982). One of the earliest studies of the neoconservative movement is Steinfels, The Neo Conservatives; see also Elisabeth Drew, “The Neo Cons in Power,” New York Review of Books, June 12, 2003, pp. 20–22; and Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans. 13. Steinfels, The Neo Conservatives, p. 7.

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14. Steinfels, The Neo Conservatives, p. 28. 15. Philip Stephens, “Top of the High Table,” Financial Times, August 9/10, 2003, p. W3. 16. Euroskeptic is a term used to describe those in Britain who are skeptical of the idea of European integration and seek to defend British sovereignty against what they see as the encroachments of the EU. They are very pro-NATO and strive to guard the “special relationship” that Britain has with the United States. 17. As Steinfels wrote of their origins, “Yet neo conservatism’s quarrel with a liberal intelligentsia persistently critical of commercial civilization and big business power has set in operation the old law, ’the enemy of the enemy is my friend.’ Neo conservatism has become out-rightly protective of business interests. Needless to say, business, long unhappy about the relative lack of ideological support it receives from the academy, has welcomed the neo conservatives enthusiastically.” The Neo Conservatives, p. 10. For more on the influence of Conrad Black, see Jacques Steinberg and Geraldine Fabrikant, “Friendship and Business Blur in the World of a Media Baron,” New York Times, December, 22, 2003, pp. A1, A25. 18. Finlandization was a conservative term of opprobrium referring to neutral Finland, which, due to its proximity to the Soviet Union, did not pursue policies that would be considered offensive by its large neighbor—in short, appeasement behind a facade of neutrality and independence. 19. Dana H. Allin, Cold War Illusions: America, Europe and Soviet Power 1969–1989 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. xi, xiii. 20. See Robert G. Kaufman, Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (University of Washington Press, 2000). 21. Allin, Cold War Illusions, p. 54. Coral Bell wrote, “The neo-conservative approach is not so historically relativist: It implies instead that the Soviet challenge is unique and irreconcilable”; The Reagan Paradox: American Foreign Policy in the 1980s (Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 11–13. 22. Quoted in Allin, Cold War Illusions, p. 133. 23. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals (New York: Touchstone, 2001), p. 60. 24. For more on the weaknesses of the appeasement argument, and its more recent misuse in the case of Iraq, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, “No Road from Munich to Iraq,” Washington Post, November 3, 2002, p. B4. 25. Charles Krauthammer,“The Lonely Superpower,” New Republic, July 29, 1991, p. 23. 26. Quoted in Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, p. 73. 27. Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the post Cold War (New York: Random House, 2000). 28. Edward Pilkington and Ewen MacAskill, “Europe Lacks Moral Fibre Says US Hawk,” Guardian, November 13, 2002.

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29. David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), especially chapter 8. 30. Christopher Caldwell, “The Angry Adolescent of Europe,” Weekly Standard, October 7, 2002 (www.weeklystandard.com). 31. Frum and Perle, An End to Evil, p. 246 (emphasis added). 32. For a litany of neocon concerns about Europe, see “Continental Drift,” American Enterprise (December 2002), pp. 24–41; Charles Krauthammer, “Don’t Go Back to the U.N.,” Washington Post, March 21, 2003, p. A37; and also Krauthammer, “The French Challenge,” Washington Post, February 21, 2003, p. A27. 33. Helmut Schmidt, “Europa braucht keinen Vormund,” Die Zeit, August 5, 2002 (www.zeit.de). 34. Michael Kelly, “Germany’s Mister Tough Guy,” Washington Post, February 12, 2003, p. A29. 35. Steinfels, The Neo Conservatives, p. 13. 36. Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11; and Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, pp. 177–97. 37. Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11. 38. See Thomas E. Ricks, “Holding Their Ground,” Washington Post, December 23, 2003, pp. C1–2. 39. Walter Russell Mead, “The Jacksonian Tradition and American Foreign Policy,” National Interest (Winter 1999/2000), p. 17. See also Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, chapters 1 and 3. 40. See Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11. 41. Frances Fitzgerald, “George Bush and the World,” New York Review of Books, September 26, 2002, p. 80. 42. Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11. 43. Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Rumsfeld Seeks Consensus through Jousting,” New York Times, March 19, 2003, p. A16. 44. Quoted in Steven R. Weisman, “Preemption: Idea with a Lineage Whose Time Has Come,” New York Times, March 23, 2003, p. B1. 45. Dana Milbank, “For Bush, War Defines Presidency,” Washington Post, February 9, 2003, p. A20. 46. Ibid. 47. Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 48, 49. 48. Fidler and Baker, “America’s Democratic Imperialists,” p. 11. 49. See Timothy Garton Ash, “Anti-Europeanism in America,” New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003, p. 34; and Stanley Hoffmann, “The High and the Mighty,” American Prospect, January 13, 2003, pp. 28–31. 50. Quoted in Woodward, Bush at War, p. 60. 51. “Wolfowitz at Informal Meeting at NATO Headquarters on September 26, 2001, Department of Defense Briefing, September 26, 2001, Federal News Service, Inc. Also available on www.nato.int/docu/comm/2001/0109-hq/0109-hq.htm#sp.

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52. Gunther Hellmann, “Der ‘deutsche Weg,’” Internationale Politik (September 2002), p. 4. 53. Klaus Naumann, “Crunch Time for the Alliance,” NATO Review (Summer 2002). 54. See Patrick E. Tyler, “As Cold War Link Itself Grows Cold, Europe Seems to Lose Value for Bush,” New York Times, February 12, 2003, p. A14. 55. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (White House, September 2002). 56. Ibid., p. 15. 57. Judith Miller, “Keeping the U.S. No. 1: Is It Wise? Is It New?” New York Times, October 26, 2002, p. B9. 58. Taken from D. Robert Worley, Waging Ancient War: Limits on Preemptive Force (Carlisle, Penn.: U.S. Army War College, February 2003), pp. 20–21. 59. Quoted in Geoffrey Wheatcroft,“The Tragedy of Tony Blair,” Atlantic Monthly, June 2004, p. 67. 60. The National Security Strategy, p. 30. 61. Ted Galen Carpenter, Peace and Freedom: Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic (Washington: Cato Institute, 2002), cited in Quentin Peel, “Caught in the Web of Nation Building,” Financial Times, October 16, 2002, p. 15. For a broad survey of the intellectual origins of the Bush strategy, see Fitzgerald, “George Bush and the World,” pp. 80–86; and Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans. 62. Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled, p. 9. 63. Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, pp. 41–45. 64. See James Mann, “The True Rationale? It’s a Decade Old,” Washington Post, March 7, 2004, p. B2, and his full account in The Rise of the Vulcans, chapter 12. See also Fitzgerald, “George Bush and the World.” 65. Worley, Waging Ancient War, p. 22; and Barry R. Posen and Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, vol. 21 (Winter 1996–97), pp. 5–53. 66. For more on the theme of varieties of hegemony, see Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2002). See also Daalder and Lindsay, America Unbound, pp. 41–45. 67. Title 22, U.S. Code, section 2656 f (d), cited in Worley, Aging Ancient War, p. 3. 68. Quoted in Worley, Waging Ancient War, p. 3. 69. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (New York: Modern Library, 1998 [1907]), p. 28. 70. Lawrence Freedman,“The Third World War?” Survival, vol. 43 (Winter 2001), pp. 61–88; Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, eds., The Age of Terror (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. xi. 71. Fred Hiatt, “Challenging Bush’s World View,” Washington Post, June 9, 2003, p. A21. 72. Peter Katzenstein, “Same War, Different View: Germany, Japan, and Counter Terrorism,” International Organization, vol. 57 (Fall 2003), pp. 731–60.

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73. Markus Kaim, “Friendship under Strain or Fundamental Alienation? Germany-U.S. Relations after the Iraq War,” International Journal, vol. 59 (Winter 2003–04), p. 6. 74. In one prominent case, two German brothers, Karl and Walter LeGrand, were arrested in Arizona in 1999, and German consular authorities were denied access to them, in violation of the 1963 consular rights convention. Unable to get a competent defense attorney, they were convicted of murdering a bank director and were sentenced to death. They were both executed. The United States was held to be in violation of international law by the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Currently two other brothers, Michael and Rudi Apelt, are being held in Arizona for the murder of Michael’s American wife for insurance money. This time the German government has had contact with the defendants and is assisting in their defense; both are facing the death penalty. The Bonn parliament passed resolutions condemning American barbarism. Diplomats met with former governor Jane Hull and appealed to President Clinton. Germany’s leading psychiatric associations decried the planned execution of Rudi Apelt as immoral, and the German ambassador has attended the proceedings and made his government’s objections to the death penalty known. “Ambassador Speaks Out against the Death Penalty,” Germany Info– Government and Politics (Washington: German Embassy, October 2003); see also Georg Bönisch and Gisela Leske, “Gas, Gift oder lebenslänglich,” Der Spiegel (September 22, 2003), p. 64. 75. Christopher Patten, quoted by Steven Erlanger, “Europe Seethes as the U.S. Flies Solo in World Affairs,” New York Times, February 23, 2002 (www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0223-02.htm [July 28, 2004]). 76. James M. Markham,“Fighting Words: Europe Has Its Reasons for Turning the Other Cheek,” New York Times, January 12, 1986, section 4, p.1. 77. The National Security Strategy, p. 5. 78. Grenville Byford, “The Wrong War,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 81 (July/August 2002), p. 34. 79. Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism (New York: Free Press, 2004). 80. Quoted by Glenn Frankel, “Europe, U.S. Diverge on How to Fight Terrorism,” Washington Post, March 28, 2004, p. A15. 81. Ibid., p. A26. 82. Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon, “The Moral Psychology of U.S. Support for Israel,” Survival, vol. 45, no. 3 (Autumn 2003), p. 123. 83. Quoted in Frankel, “Europe, U.S. Diverge on How to Fight Terrorism,” p. A27. 84. Allin and Simon, “The Moral Psychology of U.S. Support for Israel,” p. 124. 85. See Jon B. Alterman, The Promise of Partnership: U.S.-EU Coordination in the Middle East, AICGS Policy Report 10 (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2003).

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Notes to Pages 74–77

86. Katzenstein, “Same War, Different View,” p. 731. 87. See Sebastian Harnisch and Hanns W. Maull, eds., Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Manchester University Press, 2001); Hanns W. Maull, “Zivilmacht Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Europa Archiv, vol. 47, no. 10 (1992), pp. 269–78; and Hanns W. Maull, “Germany and Japan: The New Civilian Powers,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 69 (Winter 1990/91), pp. 91–106. 88. Robert Cooper, “Why We Still Need Empires,” Observer, April 7, 2002. For the full version see Cooper’s The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the TwentyFirst Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2003). In Cooper’s typology, America is a modern state whose culture and approach to the world clashes with the postmodern EU. 89. A comprehensive treatment of this strategy can be found in Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Random House, 1993). 90. Klaus Larres, “Mutual Incomprehension: U.S.-German Value Gaps beyond Iraq,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 2 (Spring 2003), pp. 23–42. 91. Interview with Fox News on September 22, 2003 (www.foxnews.com/ story/0,2933,98006,00.html [July 28, 2004]).The relevant part of the interview reads: “Question: What has happened with the Germans? Have you been in touch with Schroeder? What’s going on there? Bush: I haven’t had a chance to visit with him yet. . . . I just look forward to talking to him. I think that the idea of—he needs to answer this question better than me, but I think he got into an election and the German people are essentially pacifists because of their—many still remember the experience of World War II. And they may not have seen Saddam Hussein as evil a person as a lot of other people have.” 92. Stephen M. Walt, “Two Cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 79 (March/April 2000), p. 68. 93. For a concise formulation of these restraints, see Dalgaard-Nielsen, “Gulf War.” 94. Gunther Hellman, “Deutschland in Europa: eine symbiotische Beziehung,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 48 (2002), p. 26. “On central questions of international politics, from climate change to the International Criminal Court and to policy toward Iraq, the two most important members of NATO were marching more decisively than ever in different directions.” 95. While 76 percent of the German public found German-American relations to be “good” or “very good” in September 2002, at the end of the election campaign, 46 percent opposed the participation of German troops in a war against Iraq, even with a UN mandate, while 50 percent supported participation with a UN mandate. Only one month after the election, those numbers had shifted slightly more in favor of military participation with a UN mandate. Confidence in the Social Democratic Party’s handling of relations with the United States dropped from 41 percent in September to 34 percent in October—although only 27 percent expressed confi-

Notes to Pages 77–82

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dence in the Christian Democratic Union’s policy toward America. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW) e.V. Mannheim, Bundestagswahl: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2002, Bericht Nr. 108 (Mannheim: Institut für Wahlanalysen und Gesellschaftsbeobachtung), pp. 48–49; figures from the FGW for the month after the election can be found in “Der Kanzler verliert seinen Vertrauensbonus,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 19–20, 2002, p. 7. 96. Josef Joffe, “The Alliance Is Dead. Long Live the New Alliance,” New York Times, September 29, 2002, sec. 4, p. 3. 97. Howard W. French and Don Kirk, “Amid Mounting Protests, U.S.-Korean Relations Reach a Low,” International Herald Tribune, December 12, 2002, p. 4. 98. See Ronald D. Asmus and Kenneth Pollack, “The New Transatlantic Project,” Policy Review, vol. 115 (2002), pp. 3–18; Daniel Hamilton, German-American Relations and the Campaign against Terrorism (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Relations, 2002); and Peter Rudolf, “Deutschland und die USA—eine Beziehungskrise?” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 48 (2002), p. 23. 99. Hanns W. Maull, seminar presentation at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, March 22, 2004.

Notes to Chapter Five 1. Henry A. Kissinger, “The ‘Made in Berlin’ Generation,” Washington Post, October 30, 2002, p. A23. 2. Quoted in John Vinocur, “U.S. and Germany Still Estranged,” International Herald Tribune, November 20, 2002, p. 1; See also Christian Hacke, “Deutschland, Europa und der Irakkonflikt,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vols. 24–25 (June 10, 2003), p. 14. 3. Quote from Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A Special Relationship? (Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 48. 4. Norbert Seitz,“Der Juniorpartner ist’s zufrieden: Zum deutsch-amerikanischen Verhältnis,” in Europa oder Amerika? Zur Zukunft des Westens, edited by Karl Heinz Bohrer and Kurt Scheel, in a special edition of a quarterly journal, Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken, Sonderheft 617/618 (2000), pp. 1021–25. 5. Gatzke, Germany and the United States, p. 32. 6. Ibid., p. 5. 7. Seitz, “Der Juniorpartner ist’s zufrieden,” p. 1022. 8. David B. Morris, “Auf dem Weg zur Reife: Amerikabilder in der westdeutschen Öffentlichkeit,” in Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges: 1968–1990, vol. 2, edited by Detlef Junker (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), p. 766. 9. See Stephen F. Szabo, The Changing Politics of German Security (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), and Morris, “Auf dem Weg zur Reife.” See also Helga Haftendorn, Security and Détente (New York: Praeger, 1985), and the essays by Philipp

174

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Gassert, “Mit Amerika gegen Amerika,” pp. 740–49, Kori Schake, “NATO-Strategie und das deutsch-amerikanische Verhältnis,” pp. 211–21, and Michael Broer, “Zwischen Konsens und Konflikt: Der NATO Doppelbeschluss, der INF Vertrag und die SNF Kontroverse, pp. 234–44, in Junker, ed., Die USA und Deutschland. 10. John Lukacs, The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1993), p. 86. A notable exception was Helmut Kohl, who viewed the deployment of INF missiles in Germany as the key to German unification and the peaceful end of the cold war: Helmut Kohl, with Kai Diekmann and Ralf Georg Reuth, Ich Wollte Deutschlands Einheit (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 1996). See also Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 14–16. 11. The Bush quote can be found in Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 105; Reagan made his famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on June 12, 1987. 12. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Ein Gefühl echter Freundschaft: Die Deutschen haben großes Vertrauen zu Frankreich (Allensbach: Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, May 14, 2003), table 5; also published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 14, 2003. 13. Poll results from a survey conducted by Forsa and published on November 7, 2001. All of these surveys were provided by Forsa; I have the tabulated data tables. Forsa, a polling organization like Gallup, is located in Berlin; its official title and address are Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung und statistische Analysen mbH, MaxBeer-Straße 2, 10119 Berlin. 14. Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, “Terror in Amerika: Die Einschätzung in Deutschland,” telephone poll, September 13, 2001; Renate Köcher, Neue Agenda der inneren und äußeren Sicherheit (Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, October 17, 2001). See also Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, “Terror in America: Assessments of the Attacks and Their Impact in Germany,” International Journal of Public Opinion Research, vol. 14 (2002), pp. 93–98. 15. Forsa, Meinungen zum deutsch-amerikanischen Verhältnis vor dem Besuch des amerikanischen Präsidenten in Deutschland, survey released May 22, 2002. 16. Forsa, Meinungen zum Verhalten der Bundesrepublik gegenüber den USA bei einem Irak Krieg, survey published November 30, 2002. 17. Forsa, Meinungen zum Verhalten der Bundesrepublik im Irak Konflikt, survey published February 7 and 8, 2003. 18. Forsa, Meinungen zum Verhältnis Deutschlands zu den USA, survey published February 13 and 14, 2003; Thomas Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle: Die Auseinandersetzung um den Irak Konflikt schadet der deutsch-amerikanischen Freundschaft (Allensbach: Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, March 19, 2003). 19. Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle. For a report on these findings, see Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 19, 2003, p. 5.

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20. The survey was conducted by Forsa for Die Zeit and was reported in Spiegel Online, July 23, 2003 (www.spiegel.de). 21. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Views of a Changing World: June 2003, Second Major Report of the Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, June 2003), pp. 19, 22 (www.people-press.org [June 2003]). 22. Ibid., p. 30. 23. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Views of a Changing World. 24. Ibid., p. 28. Interestingly, not only did the publics of the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada believe that military preemption may be justified, but 42 percent in France also held this view. 25. German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia Di San Paolo, Transatlantic Trends 2003, a report released by the German Marshall Fund in Washington in the summer of 2003, p. 14. The Germans, however, were generally in the European mainstream on this question, although on the low end. The average for all Europeans polled in this survey was 48 percent. 26. Gustav Stesemann, foreign minister during the Weimar period, once commented that it was remarkable how consistently American ideals corresponded to American material interests. See Ulf Poschardt, “Lieben oder hassen wir die Amerikaner?” Welt am Sontag, September 9, 2002 (www.welt.de/daten/ 2002/09/29/0929pg359365.htx). 27. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, What the World Thinks in 2002, Pew Global Attitudes Project (Washington, June 2003), p. 58 (www.peoplepress.org [June 2002]). 28. Interview with senior Foreign Office official, June 2003. 29. The struggle between the ideological and realist wings in Bush Senior’s administration is described by David Halberstam in War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001); see especially pp. 57–75. 30. Quoted in Philip H. Gordon, “Bridging the Atlantic Divide,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82 (2003), p. 80. 31. Quoted in Poschardt, “Lieben oder hassen.” 32. Tony Judt, “Anti-Americans Abroad,” New York Review of Books, May 1, 2003, pp. 24–27, quote on p. 25. 33. U.S. Department of State, Office of Research, Europeans and Anti-Americanism: Fact vs. Fiction (September 2002), table A.2, pp. 42–44. 34. Morris, “Auf dem Weg zur Reife,” p. 770. 35. This paragraph is based on data reported by Dieter Roth of Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW) at a conference sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Washington, December 16, 2002. 36. FGW data confirm that around the time of the German national election of 2002, about 52 percent of Germans thought that Germany’s most important partner was the United States, followed by about 41 percent who saw France in this role.

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Notes to Pages 90–96

The Christian Democrats were more pro–United States on this measure: 63 percent identified the United States as Germany’s most important partner, followed by 51 percent of SPD supporters and 42 percent of Greens. Germans also continued to report that they “like” Americans: about 72 percent in western Germany and about 57 percent in the east. These proportions did not vary significantly from equivalent data reported in 1991. 37. Forsa, Meinungen zum Verhalten der Bundesrepublik gegenüber den USA bei einem Irak Krieg, November 30, 2002. 38. For example, while only 16 percent of those living in what had been West Germany believed it possible that the U.S. government was involved in the 9-11 attacks, 29 percent of those in the former East Germany held this view. Forsa poll reported in “Umfrage zu 11. September: Jeder Fünfte glaubt an U.S. Verschwörung,” Spiegel Online, July 23, 2003 (http://premium-link.net/$62535$1349223697$/ 0,1518,258299_eza_00050-258299,00.html). For more on the distinctiveness of east Germans from the publics in other former Soviet bloc countries see Richard Bernstein, “The Germans Who Toppled Communism Resent the U.S.,” New York Times, February 12, 2003, p. A7. 39. See Pew Research Center, Views of a Changing World, p. 19. 40. “Den Deutschen ist Amerika zu rücksichtlos,” Spiegel Online (www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/[February 27, 2004]) 41. Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle. 42. Forsa, Meinungen zum Verhalten der Bundesrepublik im Irak Konflikt, February 7 and 8, 2003; Forsa, Meinungen zu den USA und einer Erhöhung des Verteidigungsetats, March 27 and 28, 2003. 43. Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle, tables 1 and A12. 44. “Am Ende der ersten Halbzeit,” Die Zeit, August 15, 2002, p. 3; for a stimulating and data-filled discussion of this concept and of German misconceptions of the U.S. social and economic model, see Olaf Gersemann, Amerikanische Verhältnisse: Die falsche Angst der Deutschen vor dem Cowboy-Kapitalismus (Munich: FinanzBuch, 2003). 45. Pew Research Center, What the World Thinks in 2002, p. 64. 46. Elisabeth Noelle, Ein Gefühl echter Freundschaft, table 4. 47. Pew Research Center, Views of a Changing World, pp. 105, 108. 48. For a summary of the University of Michigan data see “Living with a Superpower,” Special Report: American Values, Economist, January 4, 2003, p. 20. For data on the cold war period see Gassert, “Mit Amerika gegen Amerika,” p. 751. 49. Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle, table A12. 50. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, The 2004 Political Landscape: Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized (Washington, November 5, 2003), pp. 71–91. 51. Ian Buruma, “How to Talk About Israel,” New York Times Magazine, August 31, 2003, p. 33. As Michael Teitelbaum, program director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York and coauthor with Jay Winter of A Question of Numbers: High

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Migration, Low Fertility and the Politics of National Identity (Hill and Wang, 1998), put it: “The French think that what they call the Anglo-Saxon model is a multicultural model of integration in which everyone speaks their own language and doesn’t necessarily learn the common language—and they don’t really become British, Canadian or American”; quoted in Barbara Crosette, “Europe Stares at a Future Built by Immigrants,” New York Times, January 2, 2000, section 4, p.1. 52. See Gassert, “Mit Amerika gegen Amerika,” pp. 759–60. 53. The birth rate is 1.3 children per woman; a rate of 2.2 is needed to maintain current population levels. 54. Josef Schmid, “Bevölkerungsentwicklung und Migration in Deutschland,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 43 (October 2001), pp. 20–30; Philip Martin, “Germany: Managing Migration After 9-11” (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, April 11, 2002) (www.aicgs.org). 55. For the first time, children born to foreigners in Germany automatically receive German citizenship, provided one parent has been a legal resident for at least eight years. Children also can hold the nationality of their parents, but they must decide to be citizens of one country or the other before age twenty-three. In August 2000, Germany introduced a “green card” system to help satisfy the demand for highly qualified information technology experts. In contrast with the American green card, which allows for permanent residency, the German version limits residency to a maximum of five years. Through this new immigration program, about 9,200 highly skilled workers entered Germany through August 2001, with 1,935 Indians accounting for the largest group. Veysel Oezcan, “Germany: Immigration in Transition,” Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, July 2004 (www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?id=235 [July 30, 2004]). 56. Oezcan, “Germany: Immigration in Transition.” 57. Dominik Cziesche and others, “Als Wäret Ihr im Krieg,” Der Spiegel, no. 13 (2004), pp. 24–38. 58. Pew Research Center, Views of a Changing World, pp. 94, 96, and 112. 59. Richard Herzinger, “Was für den Westen zählt, oder: Sind amerikanische Werte auch unsere Werte?” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (May 3, 2002), p. 5. 60. Anne Applebaum, “Europe, Not Sure What to Make of Itself,” Washington Post: Outlook, May 5, 2002, p. B1. 61. Ibid. 62. John Parker, “A Nation Apart: A Survey of America,” Economist, November 8, 2003, p. 7. 63. This gap with Europe includes Canada as well. See Clifford Krauss, “Canada Stance on Social Issues Is Opening Rifts with the U.S.,” New York Times, December 1, 2003, p. A1; Pew Research Center, The 2004 Political Landscape, pp. 65–72. 64. See figures cited in Judt, “Anti-Americans Abroad,” p. 27. See also Krauss, “Canada Stance on Social Issues,” p. A1, and Parker, “A Nation Apart.” 65. “Living with a Superpower,” p. 20. For more detailed analyses of the World

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Notes to Pages 100–107

Values Survey, see Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review, vol. 65 (February 2000), pp. 19–51. 66. Petersen, Verletzte Gefühle, table A13. 67. Pew Research Center, The 2004 Political Landscape, p. 67. 68. Ibid. 69. John F. Harris, “God Gave U.S. What We Deserve, Falwell Says,” Washington Post, September 14, 2001. 70. Ivo H. Daalder, “The End of Atlanticism,” Survival, vol. 45, no.2 (Summer 2003), p. 158. 71. Laurie Goldstein, “A President Puts His Faith in Providence,” New York Times, February 9, 2003, section 5, p. 5; quoted in Daalder, “The End of Atlanticism,” p. 158–59. 72. Judy Demsey, “Solana Laments Rift between Europe and Religious U.S.,” Financial Times, January 8, 2003. 73. Ibid. 74. Judt, “Anti-Americans Abroad,” p. 27. 75. See Michael Minkenberg, “Die Christliche Rechte und die amerikanische Politik von der ersten bis zur zweiten Bush-Administration,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, vol. 46 (2003), p. 31. 76. “Living with a Superpower,” p. 20, and Parker, “A Nation Apart.” 77. Pew Research Center, The 2004 Political Landscape, p. 1. 78. Morris, “Auf dem Weg zur Reife,” pp. 773–74. 79. “Living with a Superpower,” p. 20. 80. For more on the thesis of divergence see Parker, “A Nation Apart,” p. 20.

Notes to Chapter Six 1. Fritz René Allemann, Bonn ist nicht Weimar (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1956). 2. Geoffrey Hartman, Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 16. 3. Ibid., p. 23. 4. Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 14. 5. Ibid., p. 1. 6. Ibid. 7. Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994), p. 21. 8. Giles MacDonogh, “Remembrance to Heal Your Soul,” Financial Times, November 12, 2003, p. W4; see also “Another Taboo Broken,” Economist, November 23, 2002, p. 47.

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9. For attempts of relativizing German guilt in the 1980s, see Meier, The Unmasterable Past. 10. Peter Schneider, “The Germans Are Breaking an Old Taboo,” New York Times, January 18, 2003, p. A17, 19. 11. Günter Grass, Crabwalk, translated by Krishna Winston (New York: Harcourt, 2003). The more notable and widest read works include Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand (The Fire) (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 2002); W. G. Sebald, “A Natural History of Destruction,” New Yorker, November 4, 2002, pp. 66–77; and Anthony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (Viking Books, 2002). 12. Grass, Crabwalk, p. 103. 13. Grass, Crabwalk, p. 122. 14. MacDonogh, “Remembrance to Heal Your Soul,” p. W4. 15. Grass, Crabwalk, pp. 201–02. 16. MacDonogh, “Remembrance to Heal Your Soul,” p. W4. 17. See Stephan Burgdorff and Stefan Aust, eds., Die Flucht (München: DVA/Der Spiegel, 2002). 18. See “ Warum nicht Berlin?” Stuttgarter Zeitung, August 2, 2004, Kultur, p. 31, and “Vertreibungs-Zentrum sorgt für neuen Streit,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 19, 2004, p. 7. 19. Richard Bernstein, “Germans Revisit War’s Agony, Ending a Taboo,” New York Times, March 15, 2003, p. A3. 20. Schneider, “The Germans are Breaking an Old Taboo,” p. A19. 21. Ibid. He also writes, “I belong to the generation that declared war on the Nazi generation with its rebellion in 1968. The student revolutionaries of 1968 simply banished from their version of history all stories about Germans that did not fit with the picture of the ‘generation of perpetrators.’ It was the frantic attempt to shake off the shackles that bound them to the guilty generation and regain their innocence by identifying with the victims of Nazism.” 22. Bernstein, “Germans Revisit War’s Agony,” p. A19. 23. The standard work on this topic is Lily Gardner Feldman, The Special Relationship between West Germany and Israel (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1984). 24. Interview with Julius Schoeps, professor of contemporary history and director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam,“Mehr Juden kommen nach Deutschland als nach Israel,” Das Parlament 53/31-32, July 28–August 4, 2003, p. 11. 25. Michael Wolffsohn, “Endlos nach der ‘Endlösung’: Deutsche und Juden,” Aus Politik und Zeitsgeschichte, vols. 35–36 (September 2002), p. 4. 26. Grass, Crabwalk, p. 199. 27. Grass, Crabwalk, p. 160. 28. MacDonogh, “Remembrance to Heal Your Soul,” p. W4. 29. Martin Walser, Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 1998 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), pp. 18, 20; see also MacDonogh, “Remembrance to Heal Your Soul,” p. W4.

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Notes to Pages 111–116

30. Petra Bornhoeft and others, “Die Probebohrung,” Der Spiegel, May 27, 2002, p. 22. 31. Julia Naumann, “Chronologie des Antisemitismus–Streits in der FDP,” Agence France-Presse–German, May 31, 2002. 32. “Mit dem Wirbel um Karsli fing es an: Chronik zu Jürgen Möllemann: vom Streit mit der FDP bis zum vorläufigen Abschluss des Ermittlungsverfahrens zu seinem Tod,” Associated Press, July 9, 2003. 33. Bornhoeft and others, “Die Probebohrung,” p. 22. The fact that the FDP did better among the youngest voters in both western and eastern Germany may be related to this declaration. See Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (FGW), Bundestagswahl: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2002 (Mannheim: Institut für Wahlanalysen und Gesellschaftsbeobachtung, September 2002), p. 55. 34. Bornhoeft and others, “Die Probebohrung,” p. 22. 35. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Bundestagswahl, p. 33. 36. Schoeps, “Mehr Juden kommen nach Deutschland als nach Israel,” p. 11. 37. Bornhoeft and others, “Die Probebohrung,” p. 22. 38. Bernstein, “Germans Revisit War’s Agony,” p. A3. 39. Bornhoeft and others, “Die Probebohrung,” p. 22. 40. Wolffsohn, “Endlos nach der ‘Endlösung,’” p. 3. 41. Wolffsohn, “Endlos nach der ‘Endlösung,’” pp. 3–6, and Edward Rothstein, “Mutating Virus: Hatred of Jews,” New York Times, May 17, 2003, p. A 21. 42. Rothstein, “Mutating Virus,” p. A21. 43. Schoeps, “Mehr Juden kommen nach Deutschland als nach Israel,” p. 11. 44. Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives:The Men Who Are Changing America’s Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 26. 45. Stanley Hoffmann, “The High and Mighty,” American Prospect, January 13, 2003, quoted in Timothy Garton Ash, “Anti-Europeanism in America,” New York Review of Books, February 13, 2003, p. 34. 46. Ian Buruma, “How to Talk About Israel,” New York Times Magazine, August 31, 2003, pp. 30, 32. 47. This quote has been cited often. One such citation is Josef Joffe, “The Demons of Europe,” Commentary, vol. 117, no. 1 (January 2004) ( www.commentarymagazine.com/Summaries/V117I1P31-1.htm [July 30, 2004]). 48. See Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), pp. 46–51, 70–72, and 122; and Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 96–101, 114–18, 165. 49. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), pp. 210–11. 50. See Schröder’s interview with Die Zeit, “Am Ende der ersten Halbzeit,” Die Zeit, August 15, 2002, p. 3. 51. Heribert Prantl, “Schröder’s Rucksack,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 8, 2002 (www.sueddeutsche.de [July 2, 2004]).

Notes to Pages 116–120

181

52. Joachim Krause, “Multilateralism: Behind European Views,” Washington Quarterly, vol. 27 (Spring 2004), p. 49. 53. Gunther Hellmann, “Wider die machtpolitische Resozialisierung der deutschen Außenpolitik,” Welt Trends, vol. 12 (2004), pp. 82–83. 54. Ibid., pp.81, 86. A 2004 poll conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation found that support for a foreign policy that put German interests first was stronger among supporters of the CDU/CSU than among Green and SPD supporters but that 45.3 percent of all Germans polled favored this approach while 37.8 percent favored a human rights–oriented approach and 31.2 percent favored one in which Germany supports European unification. Respondents were not limited to one response. Viola Neu, Die Deutschen und die Außen- und Europapolitik: Eine Umfrage der Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2004), p. 14. 55. Jochen Thies, “Das Ringen um eine neue Weltordnung,” APZG 25 (June 21, 2002), p. 3. 56. Henry A. Kissinger,“The ‘Made in Berlin’ Generation,” Washington Post, October 30, 2002, p. A23. 57. Ronald Inglehart, “Globalization and Postmodern Values,” Washington Quarterly (Winter 2000), pp. 215–28. 58. Rachel Seiffert,“Generation Gap,” Financial Times Weekend, September 21/22, 2002, p. I. There is a large literature on the generation of 1968 in Europe, including the following: Ronald Fraser, ed., 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (New York: Pantheon, 1988); H. Stuart Hughes, Sophisticated Rebels: The Political Culture of European Dissent 1968–1987 (Harvard University Press, 1988); and, for a good general overview, William L. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe: The Turbulent History of a Divided Continent (New York: Doubleday, 2002), pp. 243–68. 59. Karen Andresen and others, “Freund oder Feind,” Der Spiegel, no. 40 (2002), p. 113. 60. Quoted in Gunther Hellmann, “Deutschland in Europa: Eine symbiotische Beziehung,” APZG 48 (December 2, 2002), p. 24. 61. Schröder interview with Die Zeit, February 4, 1999, pp. 33–34, quoted in Hellmann, “Deutschland in Europa,” p. 24. 62. Werner Weidenfeld, Zeitenwechsel: Von Kohl zu Schröder (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1999), p. 57 63. Conversation with author, April 2003. See also Jürgen Hogrefe, Gerhard Schröder: Ein Portrait (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 2002), pp. 208–16. 64. Michael Thurmann and Constanze Stelzenmüller, “Mit Gewehr, aber ohne Kompass,” Die Zeit 38/2002 (www.zeit.de). 65. Florian Illies, Generation Golf: Eine Inspektion (Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 2002), cited in Rachel Seiffert, “Generation Gap,” Financial Times, September 21–22, 2002, p. I. 66. See Peter Merkl, German Unification in the European Context (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), pp. 40–50.

182

Notes to Pages 121–126

67. Seiffert, “Generation Gap,” p. I. 68. Neuer Markt (new market) refers to the rise and fall of the equity market in the high-tech sector. This was a bold experiment in a country with few individual investors in the stock market; its rapid rise and collapse dashed the hopes of many young aspiring entrepreneurs in Germany. 69. Matthias Albert and others, “Zusammenfassung und Hauptergebnisse,” Jugend 2002: 14 Shell Jugendstudie (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, August 2002), p. 3. However, the voting patterns in the 2002 federal election indicate that the 89ers and the Gen Xers voted more heavily for the Greens and the Liberals (FDP), while the Christian Democrats depended disproportionately on the World War II generation. The 68ers were slightly more likely to vote SPD and Green. Women of the younger generations were even more supportive of the Greens and the SPD. Young eastern Germans followed similar patterns, although the support for the Greens was much less than in the western part of the country. This is consistent with data indicating that the number of postmaterialists in eastern Germany dropped during the past decade and that materialists exceed postmaterialists by 7 points. The neocommunist PDS lost support among the young; it is clearly a party of middle-aged and old supporters. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Bundestagswahl, pp. 53–56. 70. Albert and others, “Zusammenfassung und Hauptergebnisse,” p. 9. 71. Susanne Gaschke, “Die Postnaiven Friedenskinder,” Die Zeit, September 8, 2003. 72. “Jeder dritte Jugendliche protestiert gegen den Krieg,” Spiegel Online, March 29, 2003 (www.spiegel.de). 73. Markus Deggerich,“Generation Golfkrieg: Augen zu und Finger hoch,” Spiegel Online, March 29, 2003 (www.spiegel.de). 74. Gaschke, “Die postnaiven Friedenskinder.” 75. Quoted in Gaschke, “Die Postnaiven Friedenskinder.” 76. Viola Neu, Die Deutschen und die Außen- und Europapolitik, p. 26. While the numbers were predictably worse among supporters of the Greens and SPD, 66.1 percent of CDU/CSU supporters agreed with this statement. 77. Nina Bernstein, “Young Germans Ask: Thanks for What?” New York Times, March 9, 2003, p. 3. 78. Quoted in Gaschke, “Die Postnaiven Friedenskinder.” 79. See, for example, Helmut Schmidt, Menschen und Mächte (Berlin: Siedler, 1987), pp. 264–80. 80. For these data see Joseph P. Quinlan, Drifting Apart or Growing Together? The Primacy of the Transatlantic Economy (Washington: Center for Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 2003). 81. Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, p. 21. 82. They include the G.I. Generation, Silent Generation, Boomers, Generation X,

Notes to Pages 127–131

183

and the Millennial Generation. Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (New York: Vintage, 2000). 83. Steinfels, The Neoconservatives, p. 26. 84. Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans. James Bamford referred to the Cheney quote in an opinion piece, “Untested Administration Hawks Clamor for War,” USA Today, September 12, 2002: “Last month, Vice President Cheney emerged briefly to give several two-gun talks before veterans groups in which he spoke of ‘regime change’ and a ‘liberated Iraq.’ ‘We must take the battle to the enemy,’ he said of the war on terrorism. Cheney went on to praise the virtue of military service. ‘The single most important asset we have,’ he said, ‘is the man or woman who steps forward and puts on the uniform of this great nation.’ But during the bloodiest years of the Vietnam War, Cheney decided against wearing that uniform. Instead, he used multiple deferments to avoid military service altogether. ‘I had other priorities in the ‘60s than military service,’ he once said. ” 85. Based on author’s impressions as a guest at the event, September 16, 2003. 86. The phrase is taken from the book by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986). 87. Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, p. xiii. 88. The term comes from David Halberstam’s devastating study, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969). 89. Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, p. xiii. 90. Quoted in Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: The Shadow of Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 10. 91. Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans, p. xiii. 92. Ibid., p. x. 93. For Kissinger’s concerns, see Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979). 94. Transcript of NBC’s Today Show, February 19, 1998, “Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Discusses Her Visit to Ohio to Get Support from American People for Military Action against Iraq”: Albright: “But if we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. And I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy, and the American way of life.”

Notes to Chapter Seven 1. Dana Milbank and Colum Lynch, “Bush Fails to Gain Pledges on Troops or Funds for Iraq,” Washington Post, September 25, 2003, p. A22; see also “Die Gerd und George Show,” Spiegel Online, September 25, 2003.

184

Notes to Pages 131–139

2. “Schmeicheleien im Oval Office,” Spiegel Online, February 27, 2004 (www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/0,1518,288256,00.html). 3. Matthias Streitz, “Sticheleien vor dem Treffen,” Spiegel Online, September 24, 2003 (www.spiegel.de). 4. Lally Weymouth, “Schroeder: ‘We Have a Good Relationship,’” Washington Post, February 29, 2004, p. B7. 5. Interview with Chancellery official, June 2003. 6. Quoted by Jim Hoagland, “Three Miscreants,” Washington Post, April 13, 2003, p. B7. 7. See John Kampfner, Blair’s Wars (London: Free Press, 2003), chapters 12 –14; Peter Stothard, Thirty Days: Tony Blair and the Test of History (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 87; and Philip Stephens, Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader (New York: Viking, 2004), ch.12. 8. Thomas Friedman, “Our War with France,” New York Times, September 18, 2003, p. A27. 9. Stephens, Tony Blair, p. 227. 10. Interview with author, April 2003. 11. Quoted in Stothard, Thirty Days, p. 42. 12. A Year after Iraq War Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists (Washington: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, March 16, 2004), pp. 6–9; Viola Neu, Die Deutschen und die Außen- und Europapolitik: Eine Umfrage der Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2004), pp. 25–26. 13. Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p. 242. 14. Kampfner, Blair’s Wars, p. 243. 15. Stephens, Tony Blair, p. 226. 16. For a good survey of this literature, see Peter G. Northouse, Leadership Theory and Practice (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2004) and Harvard Business Review on What Makes a Leader (Harvard Business School, 2001), pp. 1–25, 153–76. 17. A study done by PIPA of the views of Americans regarding their information levels and the accuracy of people’s views of the facts during the Iraq war found that those who got most of their news from Fox News and CBS were the least well informed on the facts of the war while those who received their information from Public Broadcast news and television were the best informed, followed by those who watched NBC news. Steven Kull, Clay Ramsay, and Evan Lewis, “Misperception, the Media, and the Iraq War,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 118, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004), pp. 569–98; see especially pp. 581–86. 18. Ian Johnson, “Conspiracy Theories about Sept. 11 Get Hearing in Germany,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2003, p. A12. 19. See, for example, the books by Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the

Notes to Pages 139–147

185

White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004); and Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terrorism (New York: Free Press, 2004). 20. The German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia Di San Paolo, Transatlantic Trends 2003, a report released by the German Marshall Fund in Washington in the summer of 2003, pp. 8–11. 21. Pew Research Center, Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, pp. 8–9. 22. Pew Research Center, Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, pp. 7–9; Neu, Die Deutschen und die Außen- und Europapolitik, pp. 25–26. 23. Neu, Die Deutschen und die Außen- und Europapolitik, p. 27. 24. Pew Research Center, Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, p. 8. 25. Ronald D. Asmus, “Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 82, no. 5 (September-October 2003), p. 22. 26. Harald Müller, “Terrorism, Proliferation: A European Threat Assessment,” Chaillot Papers, no. 58 (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, March 2003), p. 87. 27. Müller, “Terrorism, Proliferation,” p. 88. 28. See, for example, Asmus, “Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance,” pp. 23–31; and Charles Grant, Transatlantic Rift: Bringing the Two Sides Together (London: Centre for European Reform, 2003); and Henry A. Kissinger and Lawrence H. Summers, Renewing the Atlantic Partnership (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2004). 29. The original version of this strategy was presented in what was known as the Solana paper, after Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy: Javier Solana, “A Secure Europe in a Better World” (Thessaloniki,Greece: European Council), June 6, 2003 (http://ue.eu.int). 30. The comparable numbers supporting participation in military action were, in France, 41 percent (United States only), 47 percent (NATO), and 45 percent (UN); in the United Kingdom, 37 percent (United States), 55 percent (NATO), and 56 percent (UN); in the United States, 58 percent (United States), 68 percent (NATO), and 72 percent (UN): German Marshall Fund and Compagnia Di San Paolo, Transatlantic Trends 2003, pp. 29–31. 31. For more on this topic, see Charles Grant, Transatlantic Rift, pp. 84–91. 32. For more on this trilateral relationship, see Karin L. Johnston, “The United States, Russia, and Germany: A New Alignment in a Post-Iraq World?” AICGS Policy Report 9 (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2003). 33. See Jon B. Alterman, “The Promise of Partnership: U.S.-EU Coordination in the Middle East,” AICGS Policy Report 10 (Washington: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, 2003). 34. Judy Demsey and Heba Safeh, “EU condemns Bush over Israel stance,” Financial Times, April 16, 2004, p. 1. 35. G. John Ikenberry, “American Grand Strategy in the Age of Terror,” Survival vol. 43/4 (Winter 2001–02), p. 25.

186

Notes to Pages 147–152

36. Asmus, “Rebuilding the Atlantic Alliance,” p. 29. 37. Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review no. 113 (June/July 2002), pp. 3–28. 38. Andrew J. Bacevich, “Vicious Circles,” Washington Post Book World, February 29, 2004, p. 5. See also Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (Harvard University Press, 2002). 39. Quoted in Jeffrey Fleishman, “Iraq One Year Later: U.S.-European Relations Turn Pragmatic,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2004, Part A, p. 1. 40. David P. Calleo, “Power, Wealth, and Wisdom: The United States and Europe after Iraq,” National Interest, vol. 72 (Summer 2003), p.15. 41. Martin Wolf, “America May Not Like the New World It Is About to Create,” Financial Times, March 12, 2003, p. 13. 42. The classic formulation of this interpretation remains that of A.W. DePorte, Europe between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (Yale University Press, 1979). 43. See David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered (Cambridge University Press, 1978). 44. Thomas Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed: Institutions, Politics and Foreign Policy, 1945–1995 (University of Michigan Press, 1999), p. 175. See also John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken: Political Culture, International Institutions, and German Security Policy after Unification (Stanford University Press, 1998); Alison McCartney, ”International Structure Versus Domestic Politics: German Foreign Policy in the Post Cold War Era,” International Politics, vol. 39, no.1 (March 2002), pp. 101–10. 45. Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen: vom Dritten Reich bis zur Wiedervereinigung, vol. 2 (Munich: Beck Verlag, 2000), p. 655. 46. McCartney, “International Structure,” p. 109. See also Volker Rittberger, “Approaches to the Study of Foreign Policy Derived from International Relations Theories,” in Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis: Theories and Methods, edited by Margaret Hermann and Bengt Sundelius (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2004). 47. Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany 1840–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 236. 48. Michael Stürmer, “Welcome to the German Question, Once Again,” draft article for publication in Die Welt. 49. Calleo, Rethinking Europe’s Future (Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 27. 50. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Domination or Leadership (New York: Basic Books, 2004); the quote is taken from the review written by David Ignatius, “Voice of Experience,” Washington Post Book World, February 29, 2004, p. 5.

Index

Acheson, Dean, 128 Adenauer, Konrad, 7, 8, 76, 79, 92 Afghanistan: German military support in, 17, 23, 44, 76, 141, 142; Schröder on U.S. policy in, 16; U.S. unilateralism in, 17 Albright, Madeline, 130 Allin, Dana, 57 Al Motassadeq, Mounir, 18 al Qaeda, 16, 18, 63, 67, 72; in Germany, 70, 97. See also Terrorism Al-Shehhi, Marwan, 18 American Enterprise Institute, 56 Anti-Americanism, 79–82, 88, 89–103, 113, 118 Antisemitism: in Europe, 58; in Germany, 60, 103, 105, 110–12; neoconservative reaction to, 114 Applebaum, Anne, 98 Ashcroft, John, 70, 94 Asmus, Ronald, 147 Aspin, Les, 65 Asylum refugees in Germany, 97 Atta, Mohammed, 18 Aznar, José María, 39, 43, 73, 133 Baader, Andreas, 70 Baader Meinhof, 68, 70

Bacevich, Andrew, 147 Baker, James, 24, 53, 54, 58 Balkan conflict, 58, 141, 142 Banchoff, Thomas, 150 Basque terrorists. See ETA Benes Decrees, 108 Berger, Sandy, 57 Berlin, 104–05 Berlusconi, Silvio, 43, 133 Bindenagel, J.D., 124 bin Laden, Osama, 16 Bismarck, Otto von, 151 Blair, Tony: on German position in Europe, 134; as intermediary between U.S. and Germany, 135; and need for second UN resolution, 32, 43, 133; U.S. public opinion of, 85; U.S. relations and position in Europe, 132–33 Blix, Hans, 42–43, 46 Bohlen, Charles, 128 Bolton, John, 55 Bonn republic, 105–23 Brandon, Henry, 128 Brandt, Willy, 7, 8, 70, 76 Brzezinski, Zbignew, 152 Burns, Arthur, 123 Burt, Richard, 123 187

188

Index

Buruma, Ian, 107, 114 Bush, George H. W.: comparison to G. W. Bush administration, 5, 53, 62, 87, 130; foreign policy, 53, 58, 62, 67, 87; German public opinion, 89; on German unification, 5, 82, 115; on pacifism of Germany, 76; relations with world leaders, 129; and traditional realists, 54, 58; on U.S.German relations, 4, 8, 10 Bush, George W.: attitude toward Europe, 5; background, 9, 52–53, 126; and Cheney’s speech, 26; comparison to G. H. W. Bush administration, 5, 53, 62, 87, 130; foreign policy, 52–53, 54, 55, 61; on future of German relations, 6; German public opinion, 82–89, 91; Pentagon-State Department feud, 53; and UN speech (9/02), 32; on war on terrorism, 18. See also BushSchröder relationship Bush-Schröder relationship: background, 9–13; in Berlin (5/02), 19–22; Bush’s praise of German ally, 19, 131; Daübler-Gmelin’s remarks, 30–31, 135; failure of leadership, 132–37; in NYC (9/03), 131; personality differences, 6, 9–12, 132, 135, 136; and reaction to September 11, 15–17; and reelection of Schröder, 28–29, 31–32; telephone conversation (11/02), 35; in Washington (10/01), 16; in Washington (2/02), 18; in Washington (2/04), 131–32 Byford, Grenville, 72 Caldwell, Christopher, 59 Calleo, David, 148, 151 Capitalism, German views on, 93–94 Carter, Jimmy, 7, 79 Catholic Church, 41 CDU. See Christian Democratic Union

Center against Expulsions, 108–09 Central Council of Jews in Germany, 112, 113 Chanda, Nayan, 69 Chemical and Biological Weapons Treaty, 15 Cheney, Richard: in Bush (G. H. W.) administration, 53, 61; nationalist conservative foreign policy, 61–62; on preeminence of U.S., 67; on regime change in Iraq (8/02), 24–25; on terrorism, 68; and UN resolutions on Iraq, 32; on weapons inspections in Iraq, 46–47 Chile, on Iraq war resolution, 43 Chirac, Jacques: on Blair-Schröder relationship, 135; German public opinion of, 85; opposed to Iraq war, 42, 43, 48–49; relationship with Schröder, 12, 37, 38–41, 133, 134. See also French-German relations Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 16, 31; on American way of life, 90; and Bavarian affiliate, 108; on Bush administration, 84; foreign policy experience of, 120; and German political economy, 93; on multiculturalism, 98; and national identity, 96; on NATO missile deployment, 8; opposition to Schröder’s Iraq policy, 41; opposition to U.S. Iraq policy, 41, 84 Christian right in U.S., 100–01 Christian Social Union, 108 Civilian power in Germany, 74–77 Civil liberties vs. national security, 70–71, 94 Clarke, Richard, 16, 73 Clay, Lucius, 123 Clinton, Bill, 4, 8, 67, 89 Coats, Daniel, 20, 28, 124 Cocteau, Jean, 81 Cold war: as check on U.S. hubris, 148;

Index and German-U.S. relationship, 80–81, 103; German vs. U.S. views on end of, 82, 120; and neoconservative thinking, 58. See also Détente Conrad, Joseph, 67–68 Cooper, Robert, 75 Culture clash, 52–78; civilian power in Germany, 74–76; German-U.S. divergence, 77–78, 103; military force in Germany, 76–77; nationalist conservative viewpoint in U.S., 60–62; neoconservative viewpoint in U.S., 55–60; traditional realist viewpoint in U.S., 53–55 Czech-German relations, 108 Daalder, Ivo, 54, 66 Däubler-Gmelin, Herta, 1, 29–30, 114, 135 Democracy, German view of, 92–95 Détente, 7, 57–58, 76 De Villepin, Dominique, 37–38, 40, 42 Diepgen, Eberhard, 8–9 Dresden fire bombings, 107, 113 Eagelburger, Lawrence, 24, 54 Eastern agenda and U.S.-German relationship, 143–44 Eastern German public opinion, 83, 84, 100, 105, 123 Economic views of Germans, 93–94 89ers, 121–22 ElBaradei, Mohamed, 42–43 Election procedure in Germany, 22 An End to Evil (Perle and Frum), 59 Erhard, Ludwig, 8, 92 Erlanger, Steven, 22, 26, 28 ETA, 68, 73 Europe: Bush (G. W.) administration view of, 64–65; German question as focus of, 152; nationalism, 3; neoconservative views on, 57, 59; old vs. new, 10, 59; preference for accom-

189

modation, 58; support for Bush’s Iraq policy, 39–40 European Union (EU): coordinator for counterterrorism, 73; defense force for, 76; German role in, 3, 6, 13, 19, 39, 115, 152; potential power of, 2; relations with U.S., 2–4; Turkish membership proposed, 35 Evangelical Christians, 114 Falwell, Jerry, 100–01 FDP. See Free Democratic Party Feith, Douglas, 55 Finlandization of Europe, 57 Fischer, Joschka: background, 118; on German relationship with France, 49; on German relationship with U.S., 50; in Iran nuclear program negotiations, 142; Kelly’s criticism of, 60; on lack of evidence for Iraq war, 40–41, 47–48; leadership style, 119; on lessons of Nazi past, 17; on public attitude toward war in Iraq, 22; relationship with Powell, 35; on UN Resolution 1441, 37; Wolfowitz meeting (9/01), 16 Fitzgerald, Frances, 61–62 Floods in Germany, 21–22 Foreign policy. See specific countries and leaders France: anti-American sentiment of, 88; antiwar sentiment, 48–49; EU role, 3; knowledge of U.S. plans in Iraq, 36; and UN Resolution 1441, 36, 38. See also French-German relations Free Democratic Party (FDP), 84, 93, 112 Freedman, Lawrence, 69 French-German relations: coalition formation, 3, 11, 12, 38–41, 44, 48–51, 105, 133–34, 144, 152; Elysée treaty, 7, 8, 38; on Iraq war policy, 37, 38–41, 49

190

Index

Friedman, Michel, 112 Friedman, Thomas, 133 Friedrich, Jörg, 112–13 Frum, David, 6, 59 Gabriel, Sigmar, 37 Gatzke, Hans W., 80 Gedmin, Jeffrey, 56 Generation change: in Bush administration, 126–27; 89ers, 121–22; Gen Xers, 120; and German views on World War II, 109; Gulf War generation, 122; in leadership, 117–26; 68ers, 109, 118, 119–20 Genscher, Hans Dietrich, 4, 75 Gen Xers, 120 German public opinion: anti-Americanism, 80–82, 89–103; on Bush administration, 82–89, 91, 122; on democracy, 92–95; and generation change, 117–23; on globalization, 94–95; images of U.S., 79–103; on Iraq, 27, 37, 41, 82–85, 109–10; loss of confidence in Schröder, 34; loss of confidence in U.S., 139–40; on military action against nucleararmed countries, 142; on multiculturalism and national identity, 95–99; on patriotism, 99–103; response to September 11, 17, 82–85; response to U.S. policy on Iraq, 5–6, 31, 33, 84; Schröder on antiwar sentiment of, 22–23, 45–46; on secularism, 99–103. See also Eastern German public opinion German Way. See Schröder, Gerhard German-U.S. relations. See U.S.-German relations Globalization: German view of, 94–95; terrorism and, 68 Glos, Michael, 27, 98 Glotz, Peter, 108–09 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 82, 89, 120

Gordon, Philip, 49 Gourdault-Montagne, Maurice, 36 Grass, Günter, 107–08 Greene, Graham, 71 Greens: anti-U.S. sentiment of, 16, 90; and economic reform, 93; foreign policy experience of, 120; and Iraq issue, 31, 37; and reelection of Schröder, 21, 24 Greenspan, Alan, 127 Growth and Stability Pact, 116 Guantanamo Bay prisoners, 71, 94 Guest worker program, 97 Haass, Richard, 24 Hacke, Christian, 50, 51 Hagel, Chuck, 24, 54 Harriman, Averrell, 128 Hegemonist strategy, 66–67 Hellmann, Gunther, 116, 117 Heritage Foundation, 56 Hitler, Bush compared to, 1, 29, 114, 135 Hoffmann, Stanley, 114 Hogrefe, Jürgen, 119 Holborn, Hajo, 151 Holbrooke, Richard, 124 Holocaust, 106–08, 110–11 Hoover Institution, 56 Howe, Neil, 126 Hudson Institute, 56 Huntington, Samuel, 2 Hussein, Saddam, 16, 20, 73. See also Iraq war Ignatieff, Michael, 66 Ikenberry, G. John, 147 Immigration to Germany, 80, 96–98, 110; Jewish, 110 International Criminal Court, 15, 119 International Monetary Fund, 8 Iran nuclear program, 142, 145 Iraq: dispute prior to war, 44–47; post-

Index war events, 47–48; reconstruction efforts, 146; Spain’s withdrawal from, 73. See also Iraq war Iraq war: Bush’s concerns, 63; European view of, 74; French and U.S. differences, 37–38; German assistance announced, 35; German conditions for entering, 18–19; German public opinion, 84, 122; Schröder’s stance in reelection, 22–28; start of, 43–44; UN failure to authorize, 42–44; U.S. intelligence as basis for, 46; U.S. public opinion, 32; U.S. troop movements prior to, 40 Ischinger, Wolfgang, 25, 127 Islam, American view of, 101–02 Islamist fundamentalists in Germany, 97 Israel: European views of, 58, 74, 144–45; German assistance promised during Iraq war, 34; German views of, 74, 110, 113–15, 144–45; Iraq war seen in terms of U.S. policy in, 63; neoconservatives support for, 113–14. See also Middle East conflict Ivanov, Igor, 38 Jackson, Henry, 57 Jackson-Vanik amendment, 114 Jews, 110–15. See also Antisemitism; Holocaust Joffe, Joseph, 77 Jones, James, 40 Judt, Tony, 88, 101 Kagan, Robert, 55, 147, 148 Kastrup, Dieter, 23, 25 Katzenstein, Peter, 74 Kelly, Michael, 58, 60 Kennan, George F., 123, 128 Kennedy, John F., 7, 79, 89, 128

191

Kerry, John, 69 Kissinger, Henry: on generational changes in leadership, 117; on German-American relations, 44, 79, 129; on German unification, 115; neoconservative views of, 55; U.S. foreign policy under, 7, 8, 123 Kohl, Helmut, 4, 8, 11, 76, 106, 115, 118 Kölsch, Eberhard, 39 Kornblum, John, 8–9, 124 Kosovo war: German participation in, 17, 23, 76, 119, 142; lessons learned from, 18 Kramer, Jane, 12 Krause, Joachim, 116 Krauthammer, Charles, 55, 58 Kristol, Irving, 55 Kristol, William, 55 Kyoto Treaty, 15, 119, 146 Lafontaine, Oskar, 120 Lagos, Ricardo, 43 Larres, Klaus, 76 Letter of Eight, 39, 41 Levitte, Jean David, 39 Libby, I. Lewis (“Scooter”), 55, 67, 127 Libya, 71 Likud party, 113, 114 Lindsay, James, 54, 66 Lovett, Robert, 128 Lugar, Richard, 24, 54 Lukacs, John, 82 Madison, James, 148 Madrid, terrorist bombings in, 73 Maier, Charles, 106–07 Mann, James, 67, 126, 127–28 Maull, Hanns W., 75, 78 McCartney, Alison, 150 McCloy, John, 123, 128 McGhee, George, 123 Meinhof, Ulrike, 70 Merkel, Angela, 41

192

Index

Mexico, on Iraq war resolution, 43 Middle East conflict: escalation of, 63; European vs. U.S. view of, 71, 74; German view of Palestinian terrorism, 111; strategic agenda of U.S. and Germany in, 78, 144–46 Military bases (U.S.) in Germany, 35, 124–25 Military force of Germany, 76–77 Mitterrand, François, 115 Möllemann, Jürgen, 103, 111–12, 113 Moore, Michael, 94 Morris, David, 89, 102 Müller, Harald, 141 Multiculturalism, German view of, 95–99 Munich Syndrome, 58 National identity in Germany, 95–99 National Interest, 56 Nationalism, German suspicions of, 86 Nationalist conservatives in U.S. foreign policy, 60–62, 127 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 64–65 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Naumann, Klaus, 28, 64 Neoconservatives in U.S. foreign policy, 55–60; on Israel, 113–14; in relations with Germany, 127, 129, 141; after September 11, 62–63 New Atlantic Initiative, 56 New Republic, 56 Nitze, Paul H., 128 Nixon, Richard, 7, 89 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): defense support to Turkey, 41, 46; diminished importance, 64; enlargement of, 64, 143; Germany’s role in, 8, 44, 64, 76, 143; and missile deployment in Germany, 7–8, 58; Reaction Force for counterterrorism

operations, 44, 143; and war on terrorism, 17 North Korea, 77, 142 Nye, Joseph, 2 O’Neil, Paul, 16 Operation Enduring Freedom, 17, 141, 142. See also Afghanistan Ostpolitik, 7, 8, 57, 76, 116, 129 Pacifism of Germany, 76, 81, 84 Palestinian terrorism, 111 Parker, John, 99 Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), 21–22 Patten, Christopher, 56, 71 Perle, Richard, 6, 55, 57, 59, 114, 127, 141 Perthes, Volker, 74 Pflüger, Friedbert, 27, 79 Pleuger, Guenter, 36, 42, 46 Powell, Colin: on Iraq war, 63; on need for second UN resolution, 32, 39; relationship with Fischer, 35; as traditional realist, 54–55, 127; at UN ministerial-level Security Council meeting (1/03), 37–38; UN speech justifying war on Iraq, 40, 42 Powell doctrine, 54 Preemptive military force, 65–67, 86, 143 Preventive war, 65–66, 143 Putin, Vladimir, 13, 85 Qadhafi, Muammar, 71 Reagan, Ronald: at Bitburg cemetery, 106; German view of, 7, 82, 85–86, 89, 120; neoconservatives and, 55, 58 Red party. See Social Democrats (SPD) Reelection of Schröder, 31–33; and German political parties, 21, 24, 27;

Index and Schröder’s stand on Iraq war, 22–28, 31, 118; U.S. misassessment of Schröder’s chances, 10 Religious beliefs of Americans, 99–101 Rex, Zvi, 114 Rice, Condoleezza: and Cheney’s speech, 26; on countries that did not support Iraq war, 132; on Daübler-Gmelin’s remarks, 1, 29–30, 31; on Iraq war decision, 24, 27; on Kyoto Treaty, 15; as traditional realist, 54; view of Germany, 10, 12, 129 Robertson, George, 15–16 Rodriquez Zapatero, Jose Luis, 73 Rumsfeld, Donald: background, 127, 129; dealings with Struck, 34, 88; on French-German stand on Iraq, 39; on German refusal to support Iraq war, 40; ignoring German peacekeepers, 141; on Middle East policy, 61; as nationalist conservative on foreign policy, 62; and UN resolutions on Iraq, 32; on U.S.-German relations, 28, 30; on U.S. unilateralism, 87 Russia: in coalition with France and Germany, 3, 11, 41, 44, 105, 144; German relations, 13 Safire, William, 58 Schäuble, Wolfgang, 27, 88 Schily, Otto, 70 Schmidt, Helmut, 7–8, 59–60, 70, 76, 79, 124, 127 Schneider, Peter, 107, 109 Schröder, Gerhard: background, 9, 11–12, 118; on Cheney’s speech, 25, 26; Erlanger interview (9/02), 26, 28; foreign policy, 12–13; on German Way, 10–11, 92, 96, 103, 105, 115–17; leadership style, 119; on opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq,

193

10, 27, 43–44, 134; relationship with Blair, 135; relationship with Chirac, 12, 37, 38–41, 133, 135; secularism, 101; Stoiber debate (9/02), 26. See also Bush-Schröder relationship; Reelection of Schröder Schwan, Gesine, 109 Scowcroft, Brent, 24, 53, 54, 62, 115 Security: German views on, 93; U.S. focus after September 11, 69 September 11 terrorist attacks: Bush’s epiphany, 101; conspiracy theory, 138–39; effect of, 68; German response, 17, 70, 82–85; U.S. foreign policy after, 62–63, 70 Shapiro, Jeremy, 49 Sharon, Ariel, 63, 85 68ers, 109, 118, 119–20 Social Democrats (SPD): anti-U.S. sentiment of, 16, 28–29; on Center against Expulsions, 109; foreign policy experience, 120; and Iraq issue, 31, 37; on missile deployment, 8; and reelection of Schröder, 21, 24, 27; Schröder’s relationship with, 11; state election losses, 40 Solana, Javier, 40, 73, 101 South Korea, 77 Spain, 73 SPD. See Social Democrats Spiegel, Paul, 112 Steinbach, Erika, 108–09 Steinfels, Peter, 55, 56, 60, 113–14, 127 Stephens, Philip, 133 Stiegler, Ludwig, 28 Stoessel, Walter, 123 Stoiber, Edmund, 12, 21, 26, 27, 38, 80 Straw, Jack, 43 Struck, Peter, 25, 34, 83, 88 Stürmer, Michael, 151 Summers, Lawrence, 8 Talbott, Strobe, 69, 126

194

Index

Tenet, George, 18 Terrorism, 15–33, 67–74; BushSchröder conflict over, 17–19; European readiness to accommodate, 58–59; European readiness to counter, 44; European view of war on, 70–74; globalization and, 68; history of, 67–68; Madrid bombings, 73; and Schröder’s reelection campaign, 19–33; terrorist-sponsored states, 69; U.S. view of war on, 68–70, 73. See also September 11 terrorist attacks Thatcher, Margaret, 58, 115 Thies, Jochen, 117 Trade issues, 146 Traditional realists in U.S. foreign policy, 53–55 Truman administration foreign policy team, 128 Turkey, 35, 41, 46 Turks in German population, 97 Unification of Germany, 4, 104–30, 149–50; British and French efforts to block, 115; Bush (G. H. W.) policy on, 5, 82, 115 Unilateralism of Europe, 40 Unilateralism of U.S., 18, 77; encouraged by European countercoalition, 3–4; German view of, 31, 87; longterm effect, 147; in Middle East, 145; nationalist conservative view, 62; preeminence as goal of, 66–67; Schröder’s position on, 26 United Nations (UN): and Bush position on Iraq, 32, 42–44; Iraq mandate as German preference, 19; postwar reconstruction of Iraq, 47; weapons inspections in Iraq, 42–43. See also UN Resolution 1441 United Nations Security Council: failure to pass Iraq war resolution,

42–44; German and French roles in, 36, 42; Powell’s speech, 40, 42. See also UN Resolution 1441 UN Resolution 1441, 35–44; FrenchRussian-Chinese goal, 36; German decision not to support war policy, 38–41, 43–44; and need for second UN resolution, 32, 39, 43, 133; unanimous approval, 36; U.S. goal, 36; wording, 36 U.S. foreign policy: nationalist conservative view, 60–62; neoconservative view, 55–60; preeminence of U.S. as goal of, 66–67; preemption vs. deterrence, 65–67; after September 11 terrorist attacks, 62–63; traditional realist view, 53–55. See also Unilateralism of U.S.; specific presidents and countries U.S.-German relations: background, 7–9, 80–82; business links, 125–26; chronology, 154–58; and culture clash, 52–78; damage after Schröder reelection, 32–33; and DäublerGmelin’s remarks, 1, 29–30; discussions on war (2/02), 17–19; discussions on war (5/02), 20–21; eastern Europe agenda, 143–44; failure of leadership, 132–37; future of, 6, 140–43, 146–49, 152–53; and generational change in leadership, 117–26; German security and, 77; import of rift, 2–4, 44, 137–40; Middle East agenda, 144–46; neoconservative view, 59–60; strategic shift in, 1–2, 3, 13–14, 44–47, 50–51, 132; U.S. conditions for healing, 35. See also Bush-Schröder relationship Victimization viewpoint. See World War II Vilnius 10, 39

Index Voigt, Karsten, 27 Von Bülow, Andreas, 138–39 Walser, Martin, 111 Walt, Stephen, 76 Walters, Vernon, 123 Walzer, Michael, 67 Warner, John, 54 War on terrorism. See Afghanistan; Operation Enduring Freedom; Terrorism Weapons of mass destruction: faulty intelligence on, 40–41, 46, 47–48; strategy to prevent proliferation of, 141, 142; and terrorism, 68, 69; U.S. foreign policy on, 64–65. See also UN Resolution 1441

195

Weekly Standard, 56, 59 Westerwelle, Guido, 112 Will, George, 58 Winkler, Heinrich August, 150 Wolf, Martin, 149 Wolffsohn, Michael, 113 Wolfowitz, Paul: Fischer meeting (9/01), 16; on Iraq war, 63–64; on Middle East policy, 61; neoconservative views, 55, 127; on U.S. preeminence, 67 Woodward, Bob, 17–18, 20–21, 63 World War II, German view of, 103, 105, 106–10 Zakheim, Dov, 54