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Angela Merkel and
the Bush administration, German politics ANGELA Merkel, leader of
Germany's Christian Democratic Union, seems to be a politician in a hurry.
She has been making waves lately, both in the Bundestag as well as within
her party.
Her speech on US-German
relations at the Aspen Institute, a US policy research body, in Berlin was
notable for her views and the impression they made, leading the
institute's director Jeff Gedmin to exclaim that the politician was a
"true friend" of the United States. The
lady, also dubbed as 'potential chancellor' of Germany, has sought to
further strengthen her credentials by dashing across the Atlantic and
meeting with top officials in Washington to make friends and influence
people in the Bush administration in what has been seen as a balancing act
vis-ˆ-vis the very unpopular Schrder government's hard line vis-ˆ-vis
the Iraq conflict. She is also scheduled to visit New York and meet with
UN officials. In
the process, however, Angela Merkel committed a faux pas that has
infuriated the German government. She breached an unwritten rule of
international diplomacy that precludes criticism of one's own government
in foreign lands by publishing an opinion piece in the Washington Post
before her arrival. Entitled
"Schrder does not speak for all Germans", the article found
Merkel criticising the German government for its stance on Iraq, Had her
party been in office, she said, Germany would have joined the eight
European countries that put out a declaration supporting American policy. Merkel's
rallying cry - "dictators understand only the language of
threat" - has served to boost her party's image and has fallen in
line with the thinking of the US administration. After much dilly-dallying
hitherto on her party's stance, she has now backed both military
intervention, if peaceful attempts to disarm Iraq failed, and German
participation "in accordance with our means". All
this endeared her to her hosts in Washington, where she met with US
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, among others. In her conversations, the
CDU leader reportedly reiterated the opposition's loyalty to Germany's
most important ally while stressing that there was "no special path
for Germany". Media
reports state that during talks, Merkel said that it was imperative for
the German government to find its feet again in foreign policy as well as
its own legitimate role in international relations, rather than ride on
the coat-tails of others, referring to the recent Franco-German-Russian
initiative, without mentioning any country by name. "Germany
now stands in political retreat," said Merkel, adding that its
foreign policy position went far beyond Iraq in that Germany also had an
enormously important role to play in the shaping of a future Nato. The
CDU leader pleased her hosts in the US capital by repeatedly stressing
that a united Europe could not be built on the plank of anti-US relations.
In a pointed reference to the cold shoulder being received by Germany in
the current political climate, she stated that she had received assurances
that the "US will continue to consult with Germany, despite the
foreign policy course of the red-green coalition in Berlin". In
the meantime, the reactions in Berlin have been predictable. "Schrder
speaks for 80 per cent of Germans. For whom does the lady speak?"
said an angry SPD spokesman, while pointing out that it was preposterous
that a politician had dared to break the taboo, referring to the article
in the Washington Post. "German-American
relations have been made worse than they were," said Karsten Voigt,
in-charge of the American desk at the German Foreign Office, criticising
the opposition and Merkel - and parts of the media for good measure - for
deepening the trans-Atlantic rift that has already shocked Germany. It was
recently dismissed as "old Europe" by the US Defence Secretary
Rumsfeld. Many
observers see the reasons for the new low in diplomatic relations between
Berlin and Washington, not so much in rational arguments, systemic
differences or differing moral values between Germany and the US, but in
interpersonal problems between the two leaders. In fact, SPD party
functionaries have opined that the damage to German-US relationship, at
the very top, is almost irreparable. THE genesis may be seen
in the pre-election rhetoric of the German chancellor who responded to the
American president's watchword of "either my way or the highway"
by pointing in a similar vein to "the German way", even though
it irritated his European neighbours. The
chancellor has stated that his government will not change its position on
the Iraq issue and has described the CDU's vehement criticism of his
policy as "arising from political motives". He has said that he
had instead expected, support of the opposition while Germany propagated a
policy for peace. Stories
doing the rounds in the political circles of Berlin point to the depth of
bilateral relations. German diplomats and officials are not well received
in Washington and their telephone calls are cut short in the chambers of
private secretaries of their US counterparts, media reports have stated. Television
talk shows in Germany discuss the deteriorating US-German relations almost
routinely. If European critics thought that they were mainly a matter of
interpersonal relations with the man in the White House, recent weeks have
raised speculation that the disaffection seems to have spread among
sizable chunks of the French and German populations as well. The
recent security policy conference in Munich may have exacerbated the issue
further. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, speaking immediately
after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, exclaimed rather emotionally:
"Excuse me, I'm not convinced". The tone, rather than the
substance, seems to have caused much damage. There has been a de facto
cessation of diplomatic relations - at least at the decision-making level
- between the two nations after this outburst, observers say. THERE has been talk about
possible US economic sanctions with respect to France and Germany. If push
came to shove, a boycott of French drinks and mineral water, of which
Americans consume some 65 million gallons per year, is high on the agenda,
media sources have said. Whether
German products such as BMWs and Mercedes can be successfully boycotted is
a moot point but the latest DaimlerChrysler annual report, for instance,
points to an even stronger offtake of its vehicles in the US market, at
least in 2002. The average German still has a deep admiration of American
values, and immense gratitude for America's role in liberating Germany
from the Nazi yoke, building it up after the war, and supporting its
reunification. Nearly 90 per cent of Germans, say pollsters, believe that
the US will continue to be an important partner. Fresh
polls also show that 74 per cent of the Germans think that the US has
"too much power"; over half think it a greater threat to world
peace than Iraq or North Korea. Many
Germans, especially eastern Germans - a great many of them voted for
Schrder last autumn - are beginning to view Merkel in the mould of a Tony
Blair. And the Merkel position is not even uniformly popular within her
party. But
Merkel is unapologetic. "Germany must ask: 'What is in German
interest?' It is not merely giving thanks to the US for history. It is
also aiding the US. She reiterates that Germans are convinced that if
anything happens to them, the US will bail them out. "They don't
realise that if we don't help America, America won't help us," she
says with disarming simplicity. Merkel,
with her unabashed embrace of the US, has established herself as a true
radical and one in a minority. Whether trans-Atlantic relations will
become less squeaky, only time will tell.
Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.
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