Mind the Gap

A strengthened Bush and a weakened Schröder make European unity more vital now than ever

"I believe what happened in the days leading up to the election was the most cynical and wretched form of foreign policy to be carried out in Germany since the end of the Second World War." The old man has spoken. Helmut Kohl, chancellor for 16 years before being voted out of office in 1998, has let loose against the coalition of Social Democrats and Greens that succeeded his in a lengthy review for the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Kohl had naturally been hoping the coalition would be booted from power in September, as it seemed it would be for months leading up to the election. The most important reason that didn't happen, according to Kohl, was that Chancellor Schröder waged a "Kriegsangstkampagne," a campaign based on fears of a US-led war with Iraq, a war Schröder promised Germany would not take part in. Schröder's stance, of course, led to the infamous rift in US-German relations (see most recently "Where's the Wall?").

But it may also have strengthened France's backbone when it more or less represented Europe at the UN as the Security Council hammered out the last "and" and/or "or" of a resolution it then passed unanimously. Granted, just as much as, say, Syria views the resolution as a way to hold off a US attack on Iraq, at least for now, so does the Bush administration see it as a thumbs-up from the world for marching in. But it was only a worldwide outcry against US unilateralism that got a new resolution -- merely symbolic as it may turn out to be -- written in the first place.

So where are we now? On one side of the Atlantic, Bush is going to be acting as if last Tuesday's mid-term elections have given him carte blanche. It doesn't matter that with a few thousand votes here, a few thousand there, the Democrats could have at least held onto the Senate. The end result will be read as a resounding mandate.

On the other side, Europe's largest economy is floundering and Germany's old-new governing coalition is bickering about what to do about it. Even Schröder's personal popularity, usually quite strong even in the worst of times, has taken a beating in just a few short weeks (see Broken Promises).

A strengthened Bush and a weakened Schröder chatted on the phone for the first time since the German election on Friday. For all of ten minutes. A bit more significantly, the two countries' defense secretaries, Donald Rumsfeld and Peter Struck, met for an hour. The gist: the US will be happy to have Germany's support on peacekeeping missions and the Germans will be happy not to fight the wars that make them necessary.

All in all, Germany's influence on what goes on in the world, meager as it's been anyway, is decreasing at a time when, as the Guardian has put it, "European leaders may well face more bullying, more unilateral disdain and a diminishing willingness to compromise." That's what makes efforts at greater European unity, such as the euro and the European Convention, more important now than ever (see What the World Needs Now).

Elsewhere

Last Thursday morning, the founder and publisher of Der Spiegel died of pneumonia. He was 79. In the Independent, Sebastian Borger sums up well the significance of his passing: "Rudolf Augstein was the last giant of post-war German journalism. Like Axel Springer, Henri Nannen and Marion Dönhoff, he had a decisive influence in establishing a free, critical, democratic press in a demoralised and devastated country." More on an astounding career from the Guardian, Telegraph and the New York Times.

"On four crucial issues -- threat perception, leadership, defense spending, and the Arab-Israeli conflict -- both Europeans and Americans harbor the mutual acrimony of their respective elite commentators." Craig Kennedy and Marshall M. Bouton in Foreign Policy on The Real Trans-Atlantic Gap.