Why Germany Won’t Kiss and Make Up

last updated 8 January 2015

Germany's new chancellor has blown her chance at a fresh start with the U.S., said Ralf Beste in the national magazine Der Spiegel. When Angela Merkel took office, she planned to leave behind the anti-American rhetoric of her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, and repair the U.S. relationship. But Merkel could not ignore that the Americans had 'œkidnapped a German citizen, held him for months, and interrogated him with methods that violated his rights.' So when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Berlin last week, Merkel asked her to explain the case of Khaled el-Masri. In a subsequent press conference, Merkel said the U.S. government had admitted it made 'œa mistake.' As Rice listened to the translation through her headphones, 'œshe looked positively dumfounded.' Rice never used the word 'œmistake,' as U.S. policy was to avoid 'œofficial admission' of what everyone knew had happened. But Merkel's 'œdiplomatic faux pas' hasn't hurt her at all. The Americans are ignoring it, and the Germans are applauding it. Despite electing a new chancellor, Germans do not want a new, friendlier relationship with the Bush administration.

German 'œindignation' over el-Masri's kidnapping is intense and widespread, said Johannes Leithäuser in the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung. The country is beginning to question whether the 'œcommon values' that underpin the U.S. alliance still hold. Much of Germany feels arrogantly superior to a U.S. 'œthat recognizes as fact neither global warming nor evolution.' Coupled with this arrogance is an inability to comprehend how seriously the Americans take the war on terror. Despite the attacks on Madrid and London, terrorism remains 'œan abstract danger' for most Germans. As long as that's true, Germany will have little tolerance for the American willingness to enter moral 'œgray zones.'

It was never 'œcommon values' that bound Germany and the U.S. together, said Alexander Gauland in Berlin's Der Tagesspiegel. It was simply the common enemy of the Soviet Union. And what threatens the alliance now is not some minor spat over how to treat detainees. It's 'œthe divergence of national interests.' If German political leaders thought the U.S. were winning the war on terror, they would stifle their qualms about its methods. The problem for the German government is the growing conviction 'œthat the entire direction of U.S. policy is wrong,' that the war on terror will increase, not decrease, the danger from the Arab world—even in the long term. How can it maintain an alliance with a country that, it believes, is dragging the Western world toward catastrophe?