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  Obamania in Berlin: An American Idol in Germany

Obamania in Berlin An American Idol in Germany

By SPIEGEL Staff

Part 4: The US No Longer a Force for Good

Obama is ahead of McCain in most polls, even among voters in the center. Nevertheless, McCain has kept up a steady fight, especially considering that the Bush-era Republicans are plagued with approval ratings around 30 percent.

For Germany, perhaps the most important thing about the US elections is that they will end in Bush's departure. Whoever succeeds him will face the challenge of rejuvenating a difficult German-American relationship. Relations between the two countries were clear for more than 50 years. The victorious power that once subjugated and then divided Germany was quickly replaced by a protective power, a guarantor of West Germany's freedom against the expansionist ambitions of its communist neighbors.

Berlin, the former capital, symbolized this role. The Berlin Airlift and the standoff between US and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie revealed America's willingness to stand up to the Soviet Union, even if it meant going to the brink of war.

Germany's friendship with the United States became synonymous with its national interest. There were moments of dissonance now and again, such as over Germany's position in the Vietnam War and NATO rearmament, but the true core of the relationship, which was more of a family bond than an alliance between two countries, remained unchanged.

The Golden Years

In 1989, when it came time to resolve the German question, the Americans showed their appreciation to West Germany for decades of loyalty. Then President George H.W. Bush threw his unqualified support behind German reunification, much to the displeasure of Great Britain and France, which feared a new strengthening of their historic rival. Bush's successor, Bill Clinton, played the saxophone, and when it came to going to war, he preferred to do it over human rights. In that way, he was able to get the Germans on board and convince them to deploy their Tornado fighter jets in the war in the Balkans.

In retrospect, those were golden years, years of unprecedented harmony in the German-American friendship. Then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a product of the anti-American left, met with Clinton, a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood. After the meal with Schröder, as Clinton's motorcade drove down Kollwitzstrasse, the most powerful man in the world glanced longingly out of his car window, as if he would buy a condominium there if he could.

According to a poll conducted at the time by the Pew Institute, an American public opinion research group, 78 percent of Germans had a favorable image of the United States. When Pew asked Germans how they felt about the United States in 2007, its approval rating had dropped to 30 percent.

The two polls were separated by Sept. 11, 2001 and the bellicose reaction of the last remaining superpower. The Iraq controversy is a tale of mutual insults and disappointments, of tricks and betrayal, but most of all of the kinds of misunderstandings that must lead to consequences in the relationship between two closely allied nations. One of those misunderstandings occurred when Bush visited Berlin in May 2002.

When it came to their characters, Schröder and Bush were in fact not unalike. Schröder was straightforward, uninterested in pomp and, unlike the leaders in Moscow and Paris at the time, did not feel a need to hand Bush a history lesson. The two spent an hour at the Chancellery, talking about a variety of issues, but not about the preparations for regime change in Baghdad that the US government had been planning for some time.

Based on information from their advisors, both men had concluded that it would be best to avoid the topic. Schröder understood that Bush would not ask him for more troops, putting him in a politically awkward position before the September parliamentary elections in Germany. And Bush believed that Schröder would not stab him in the back if he attacked Iraq. These beliefs prepared the ground for a quarrel that has never quite been resolved, even to this day. As Bush saw it, Schröder broke his promise to win the election. And as Schröder saw it, Bush left him with no alternative by pushing for an invasion.

Fluctuation Between Admiration and Aversion

The climate at the government level has improved significantly since Merkel became chancellor, but this has not meant that the German people have a higher opinion about America today. Not a single political discussion about the United States and the war goes by without mention of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, two places associated in the German mind with barbarity. According to a recent report in the Daily Telegraph, today only 27 percent of Germans today would describe the United States as a "force for good."

Such numbers describe more than just a temporary annoyance over a nation's foreign policy. The Germans have always been divided in their relationship to America, fluctuating between admiration and aversion. Which of these two extremes dominates the opinion polls depends in part on the general political situation.

John Kornblum, the former US ambassador to Germany, has an appealing theory to explain why the relationship between sister nations is so complicated. Today's Americans, says Kornblum, are the descendants of Europeans who couldn't abide life in Europe, and who wanted something more radical and therefore emigrated. For this reason, Kornblum believes, it is wrong to expect similarities. America is, in a sense, an anti-Europe.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in Germany, because the Germans have the Americans to thank for so much: liberation from the Nazis, a functioning democracy and the basis of their prosperity.

Attention to everything American is enormous in Germany. Hardly any other nation in Old Europe is as thoroughly Americanized. The Germans are almost indistinguishable from the Americans when it comes to eating, drinking and watching television, but they never miss an opportunity to reassure themselves of just how superior they are to their relatives across the Atlantic.

Germans, in their own assessment, are not as materialistic as Americans, have more depth and culture, better washing machines and -- it goes without saying -- better cars. When there is a blackout on the American East Coast, it makes headlines on Germany's evening news. Look at those Americans, the Germans are then quick to point out, they want to rule the world and yet they can't even keep the lights on.

In this respect, George W. Bush was a godsend for Germans and their complex inventory of emotions. Never before had they been able to complain so openly about the Americans' hubris and arrogance and then feel so vindicated afterwards. Texan Bush embodies everything the Germans criticize about America: the small-minded and swaggering demeanor of a Southerner.

Dialogue and Mutual Understanding

Obama is far closer to the Germans. In fact, he seems almost European: not some Texas cowboy, but a Harvard graduate from an urban environment, and not a "straight shooter" but a man who emphasizes dialogue and mutual understanding.

But even if Obama replaces Bush, America will still be America. The United States is still the military superpower, and yet the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the limits of its superiority for the entire world to see. The United States is still the world's largest and most important democracy, and yet several countries, especially Russia and China, are doing their best to replace democracy as a forward-looking model of government.

Five years ago, the vision of a "multi-polar world order" was still a rallying cry for anti-American leftists. Today most academics see multi-polarity as a reality that must be acknowledged, for better or for worse. Richard Haass, Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department in the early part of Bush's first term, recently spoke of a "non-polar" world in which the United States is only one of many actors. Whether it is with Obama or McCain, Germany will have to find its role in this new world.

Since taking office, Foreign Minister Steinmeier has argued for a readjustment of the German-American relationship. He calls his project, somewhat awkwardly, a "new trans-Atlantic agenda" and talks a lot about climate and disarmament. But if we take a closer look, we realize that the German foreign minister is in fact operating in a trans-Atlantic world that abandoned the flowery language of an old friendship long ago.

Steinmeier believes that it is important for the nations of the West to stick together, especially if the rise of emerging economies leads to a realignment of the world map. To this end, Steinmeier warns, the West must take a pragmatic and cautious approach to defining common interests. "The attempt to reshape the West without the rest of the world would leave us with a world without the West."

Steinmeier's predecessor, Joschka Fischer, disagrees. After the Iraq war, he argued for a "reconstruction of the West." According to Kornblum, who shares Fischer's view, Europe and North America form a community of values and are thus natural allies. Germany, says Kornblum, could never achieve the same level of commonality with Russia or China. In fact, Kornblum envisions a partnership so close that relations between countries of the West would not be a matter of foreign policy, but of a "trans-Atlantic domestic policy."

Germans may discover Barack Obama's views on the matter this Thursday. By Saturday morning, it was not yet clear what the subject of his speech would be, but he will probably be directing his remarks more toward an American than a German audience. He is, after all, in the middle of an election campaign.

At the moment his speechwriter is the one with the biggest problem. Will he come up with a similarly epochal sentence to Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner?" Perhaps he won't even try. The fall of the Wall has made Berlin a better city, but it is no longer a place for words that make history.

After his visit to Berlin, as he was sitting in a plane on his way to Ireland, John F. Kennedy said: "We'll never have another day like this one." Obama will have to count himself lucky if he gives a reasonably good speech.

By Ralf Beste, Jan Fleischhauer, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Cordula Meyer, Gregor Peter Schmitz, Michael Sontheimer and Gabor Steingart

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan