Auf Wiedersehen to the West - Haaretz

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Sun., October 14, 2007 ,

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Auf Wiedersehen to the West

By Jacques Schuster

Recently, an advisor to former German chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke out in favor of seeking a close strategic collaboration with Russia. Ulrich Weisser, a retired vice-admiral and former head of the German Defense Ministry's planning staff, said it would be wrong to side with Germany's Central European allies in their support of the planned American missile-defense system for the region. According to Weisser, Berlin's interests "dictate a different approach," not least because Russia has been promoting "peace and stability" for years now, while U.S. foreign policy is constantly at risk of turning into an "automatic, negative escalation" as one can observe in Iraq.

Weisser's opinions are not an isolated phenomenon. Although Germans consider Russia anything but appealing, in comparison with the U.S., the Eastern empire doesn't seem so bad at all. They consider Washington's intention to fend off Iranian nuclear missiles with the help of a missile- defense system to be part of an American need to step once more into the boxing ring with the Russian madman.

Caught in a whirlpool of outrage, Germans completely overlook Russian behavior. This summer, Vladimir Putin threatened more than once to launch his missiles on European cities. He warned that Russia's ballistic rockets could soon be stationed in Kaliningrad, that is, "very close to Europe."

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Yet in 2003, 45 percent of Germans felt threatened by their most important ally, the U.S. Although that number has dropped since Angela Merkel became chancellor, a deep distrust and an ill- tempered suspicion remain. The German soul bears a grudge and this anger is not directed solely at the U.S. government, the White House or President Bush. The Germans are aggrieved with the U.S. as a nation.

According to the latest polls of the German Marshall Fund, only 38 percent of Germans consider Washington's global leadership role desirable. Since 2002, trust in NATO too has rapidly declined. Back then, 74 percent of Germans were still convinced of the alliance's reason for existence, whereas today that number has sunk to 55 percent.

The alliance is the only institution through which Europeans and Americans are constantly in touch with each other. For years its mere existence gave the Germans confidence and the knowledge that they were a part of the West. Actually, nothing should have changed in this regard. After all, who but the U.S. can withstand the threats emanating from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan? Who could stand by Germany's side if there were to be an attack on Hamburg, Munich or Berlin? Yet most Germans see the U.S. as a country of warmongering polluters, who, out of a sense of fake piety, want to convert the world to their imperialist-capitalist ideas. Those who don't comply will be sent to Guantanamo.

A growing number of Germans oppose the U.S., gleefully observe the increasing rift between the two countries and react sullenly when someone reminds them of the U.S. role in Europe's liberation. They are annoyed about Europe's dependence on the U.S., while masking their own weakness as a moral strength. In their view, Germany is an island of virtue whose citizens know how to turn swords into ploughshares.

Since 2003 anti-Americanism has become a permanent and important feature of German society. It has filtered down to all population strata and been spreading like a plague ever since former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's attacks on the allegedly hot-headed Americans.

Even if many of the criticisms of the U.S. and its president are legitimate, Germans seem unable to separate them from the fact that their long-term interests in remaining independent and free should clearly put them in the camp of the West. George Bush will be gone in another year and a half, but Vladimir Putin's plan to dominate Europe's economy is just warming up.

A restless spirit is sweeping society. It drips with nostalgic longing for an alternative future in a different system of alliances, or - if everything else fails - on its own. Germany is de-Westernizing itself, in a creeping manner, but steadily. The more the past fades, the more its ghosts are rising. Fritz Stern, an expert on German history at Columbia University - who is anything but a neo-con - witnessed this trend in his recently published memoirs, where he wrote how "the revolt against 'the West,' its alleged materialism and its so-called spiritual emptiness, coupled with a hegemonic arrogance, has spread."

Since the beginning of the 1990s, surveys in Germany have shown that the value of political freedom has been losing ground at the expense of economic equality and social security. Whereas in 1976 almost two-thirds of West Germans said they preferred freedom over equality, in 1997 this number had decreased to 45 percent, and by 2003, a mere 36 percent of West Germans and 24 percent of East Germans chose freedom over social security.

The lessons of this development are already evident. Sooner or later the leftist union - the alliance of Social Democrats, Communists and Greens - will become acceptable to a majority of Germans. Germany's foreign policy will become increasingly torn, unpredictable and full of a vociferous moral rigor. In 1877, Dostoyevsky wrote about "Germany, the protesting empire." May reason triumph, so that we need not have to remember his other, approving characterization of Germany: "Already from the first moment of its arrival in the historical world, the characteristic and major trait of this great, proud and special people was that it never wanted to unite with the Western world, neither in its destiny nor in its basic morals."

Jacques Schuster is a senior editor at the German daily newspaper Die Welt.

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