Schlagwort-Archive: European Politics

US Politics

USA Oui! Bush Non!

The Nation’s Eric Alterman has written a rather witty account of the myths concerning European anti-Americanism enstrangement. It’s a bit like the Timothy Garton Ash piece – but written looking at the Eiffel Tower instead of the Empire State building. And it’s a bit more fun to read.

One of the most surprising things he says is that for him, even these days, Europe is the cooler America. He even (somewhat) denies that there is real Anti-Americanism in Europe –

“You can tell a lot about a continent by the way it reacts to Bruce Springsteen. Tonight, at the Bercy Stadium, the typically multigenerational, sold-out Springsteen audience could be from Anytown, USA. […] You can’t be anti-American if you love Bruce Springsteen. You can criticize America. You can march against America’s actions in the world. You can take issue with the policies of its unelected, unusually aggressive and unthinking Administration, and you can even get annoyed with its ubiquitous cultural and commercial presence in your life. But you can’t be anti-American.”

– and –

“What most Europeans seem to recognize is that this is a big, beautiful and damn complicated country. For every George Bush, we have a Spike Lee. For every Charlton Heston, we have a Paul Newman. For every Lee Greenwood, there’s a Lauryn Hill or a Wynton Marsalis.”

However, he draws the same conclusion regarding the American political and social divide as Garton Ash and so many other do these days. And he cites an article from “Le Monde Diplomatique” sharing my opinion that “old” Europe might have even gone along with a US led invasion of Iraq had the case been made by Bill Clinton instead of W –

“It’s not as if Europeans can’t stand the idea of a conservative Republican President. To a surprising degree, they warmed to Ronald Reagan, as Alain Frachon, who writes about foreign affairs on the editorial page of Le Monde, explains. ‘When Reagan was President, we never had the impression he was motivated by fundamentalism. He was divorced. He had worked in Hollywood. But this George Bush is totally foreign to us. He quotes the Bible every two or three sentences. He is surrounded by Christian fundamentalists. He says he has no problem sleeping after sending someone to death. There was a dose of charm, humor, of Hollywood to Reagan. But not to Bush. It’s another world and one we find extraordinarily hypocritical. No one told us that the Republicans had moved this far to the right.’ Things were quite different under Bill Clinton. As Serge Halimi, the leftist editor of Le Monde diplomatique, the publication that is frequently accused of being the intellectual home of the anti-American worldview, argues, ‘The hostility to US policy would be lessened with Clinton in the White House, even assuming that these policies were exactly the same as Bush’s.'”

And just as I do, Mr Alterman believes there is hope for the eagle and the weasel –

“There is a pro-American world out there, in Europe in particular but elsewhere as well. It is just waiting for an America it can respect as well as admire. For all the intentional insults this Administration has thrown their way, our European well-wishers have not given up on what’s best in us, no matter how often they feel forced to voice their frustration with the leaders our fundamentally flawed political system presents them with.” (emphasis added)

But there is one thing in the article which, I think, is not exactly true, and which some people in the British Tory party will find clearly insulting –

“Even most of the conservative parties in Europe are to the left of the Democrats in [America].”

Oh my, should Ian Duncan Smith read this he will make them shift even further to the right…

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German Politics, intellectual property rights

The Other War

One of the real problems of the Iraq induced congestion of the media is that there is so much more important stuff going on that no body hears about – well, at least, that a lot less people hear about than should hear about it.

One of the big issues which currently receive a lot less attention than they deserve is the war concerning intellectual property rights. Yesterday, Berkeley’s Bradford DeLong posteda list of what he believes are the five most important questions facing the world economy today. Number three reads as follows –

“3. How will the current intellectual property wars be resolved? Will they be resolved in a way that greatly increases the profits of CD and movie companies and that slows the adoption of broadband and other advanced information technologies? Or will they be resolved in a way that implicitly or explicitly confiscates a bunch of the intellectual property of CD and movie companies, but that gives consumers and other users enormous incentives to adopt broadband and other advanced information technologies? It is clear to me that the second would be better for economic growth, but that the first is more likely.”

He’s right. Ttwo weeks ago, the US Supreme Court ruled in the case Eldred vs. Ashcroft that it was legal for the US Congress to extend the copyright protection, the “Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act”, which extended by 20 years both existing copyrights and future copyrights, for the law does not extend the protection forever. For Disney (and the like), it was a case about cash flow from exploiting the Mickey Mouse’s of this world. For everybody else (immediately only for those living in the US, of course), it was a case about the balance of private vs. public interests – in the economic realm but also far beyond. The plaintiff’s case had been supported by an amazing amount of intellectual capacity, including various Nobel Price laureates.

But private interests prevailed. It really looks as if owners of intellectual property are able to use their current economic clout and and a socialised narrow, conventional definition of property to put their short term interests above the social long term ones.

The next big battle in the IP war is probably the EU directive 2001/29/EG, which is an attempt to harmonize European copyright regimes with respect to the digital age. While theoretically maintaining the right to a limited amount of personal digital copies of copyrighted work one owns, the directive also contains a clause prohibiting the circumvention of any technical copyright device in order to exercise the right to a personal copy. Thus the private copy clause will in all likelihood be useless following the implementation of the EU directive into the member states’ national legal frameworks.

But resistance is not futile. So far, the directive has only become national law in Greece and Denmark. All other nations let the deadline pass. Debate and opposition are growing, and there are even legal doubts about the directive’s validity. It may be late, but not too late. Click here for a summary of the state of the national legislative processes of all EU member states.

The site also features the web addresses of online petitions in most European countries. It is not too late to sign.

To sign the German petition, just click here.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, media, US Politics, USA

What does it take to publish in the NY Times?

Firstly, let me admit that I chose this entry’s title to avoid Brad DeLong’s (in)famous “Why does the NY Times publish such Dreck”. Secondly, let me answer the question: Apparently, at least sometimes, not too much, it seems to me.

Yesterday, William Safire, a Pulitzer Price winner, published a tale about Germany’s self-evident imperial ambitions in Europe, the usually spineless French, and a Chancellor, who “does not share the free speech values of the West”. Since I do value free speech, I would like to assert that, of course, Mr. Safire is, just as everyone else, entitled to whichever opinion he chooses to hold, be it stupid or intelligent, informed or ignorant. Likewise, he is obviously entitled to have it published it in whichever form he – or a publisher – sees fit.

However, quality becomes an issue when innocent, unwitting others rely on published opinion because they think the person actually does know a little about the stuff he is writing about. In his latest book, Stupid White Men, the American author and director Michael Moore – who is, in my opinion, in many respects just as stupid as the (other) white men to whom he dedicated the book (“Bowling For Columbine” is so much better!) – presented an interesting example of the problem I am talking about. In the chapter titled “Idiot Nation” he speculates that America’s

“… problem is isn’t just that [the] kids don’t know nothin’ but that the adults who pay their tuition are no better … What if we were to give a pop quiz to the commentators who cram our TVs and radios with all their nonstop nonsense.”

He then describes how a magazine columnist called Fred Barnes (who I suppose might be somewhat famous in the US) whined in a talk-show

“… about the sorry state of American education, blaming the teachers and their evil union for [the fact that] … ‘These kids don’t even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are!”. But when Moore called Barnes the next day to find out what exactly The Iliad and The Odyssey are the only thing Barnes could reply was “Well, they’re… uh… you know… uh… okay, fine, you got me – I don’t know what they’re about. Happy now?” (all quotes from the English Penguin edition, page 91)

The quality of arguments becomes even more important if it should be true that, as more and more people seem to assume, serious public policy debates in the USA are confined to the pages of the “liberally biased” NY Times and the Washington Post these days (note to European readers: I always find the American use of “liberal” extremely confusing, it means something once represented by the “Whig” faction in Parliament, but is clearly different from the European (political) usage of the word, either with a small or a capital “l”.)

Thus, if it weren’t for the fact that Mr Safire’s essay has been published (and is #7 of the 25 most emailed NY Times articles) on the day on which Donald Rumsfeld stated that France and Germany have become “problems”, I would have had a good laugh, shaken my head in disbelief and then turned the page. There are clearly more important things to worry about than the demons haunting a seemingly notorious Kraut-basher.

I stated often enough that I don’t mind Kraut bashing. But Mr Safire’s column amounts at least to blatant misrepresentation, and possibly to worse.
After repeating that Schroeder won last September’s elections on an anti-American ticket, which is true to some extent, but mostly overstated in relation to the boost his campaign got from managing the floods in East Germany, he goes on to describe how Schroeder went to Paris last week in order to “rule the world” – the most stunning feature of the column. Germany allegedly

“offered Chirac an offer he could not refuse: to permanently assert Franco-German dominance over the 23 other nations of Continental Europe … The German design is apparently to saw off the Atlantic part of the Atlantic Alliance, separating Britain and the U.S. from a federal Europe dominated by Germany and France (with France destined to become the junior partner).”

Am I hallucinating or did I just read this for real?

Mr Safire is evidently referring to last week’s Franco-German proposal to create a double-headed European Union leadership by creating an government-elected President of the Council (“a Franco-German Czar“, according to Mr Safire – should he be referring to Dennis MacShane’s FT interview he should note that Mr MacShane was talking about a single elected commission president, when he warned of a new European “Kaiser“) and a parliament-elected and Council-approved President of the European Commission.

Entirely disregarding the vocal German opposition to the proposal which more than anything else displayed a rift between the chancellor, who is said to have favoured the French institutional propositions, and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, who has always favoured a single, parliament-elected head for the EU, as well as the longstanding and well-known British position to oppose any institutional design but a single long-term elected President of the Council, Mr Safire continues – “In a stunning power play in Brussels, Germany and France moved to change the practice of having a rotating presidency of the European Council, which now gives smaller nations influence, to a system with a long-term president.” I won’t go into all the details or even seriously argue for reasons of time and space, but let me just tell you that his “argument” doesn’t end here.

This is probably the most ridiculous, blatant, and unashamed display of ignorance regarding the complex decision making process of the European Union I have ever read. Let me restate this: I hope it *is* simply a most ridiculous, blatant, and unashamed display of ignorance, because if it is not just that, the only possible alternative is malevolent propaganda.

But let me state one thing I read last year in a strategic US policy report on post cold war France by Steven Phillip Kramer. Clearly, the Franco-German post-WW2 alliance of “the bomb and the Bundesbank” had to readjust following the seismic shock which the German reunification signified. But even back in 1994, Mr Kramer warned US policy makers not to force Germany to decide between its two most prominent allies and friends, the US and France. Germany, he wrote, does not want to choose. But any American administration should know that, if once forced to decide between the two, Germany would opt for France, for an endless number of historical and geostrategic reasons. I am not sure yet, but maybe we are witnessing the making of this decision.

The last section of Mr. Safire’s essay is concerned with Schroeder’s judicial victoriey prohibiting the German press from reprinting last year’s allegation that he could dye his hair (hence the title of the column – Bad Herr Dye) or any story about marital problems without any proof. This injunction, he says, reminds him of “an unfortunate tradition of judicial deference to executive policies once demonstrated by German courts.” Now here, he must be kidding. How a serious journalist can actually allege that vain attempts to keep up a journalistic ethos are reminiscient of a fascist court system is beyond me. It must have something to do with the demons I invoked above.

The following paragraph is also startling – he restates the inadequacy of the current UN security council veto right system (since France has threatened to veto a second resolution on Iraq following next Monday’s presentation of the weapon inspectors’ current results) saying that

“… the idle French threat … reminds populous and powerful nations like India and Japan of the inequity of mid-sized France having the veto power, and of the need to prevent Germany from getting it.”

Sure, I guess there is hardly anyone in this world who would not agree that a system designed immediately after WW2 and designed to prevent the nuclear holocaust is not necessarily an institution representing today’s geostrategic reality. But as no veto power will ever voluntarily renounce to their veto if the UN structure is not entirely redesigned at the same time, I actually don’t wonder what Condi (Rice) would say to his proposal to let India and Japan (or Brasil, or Pakistan) in as well. I’m sure she would be thrilled by the idea…

In the end, Mr Safire offers at least some insight into his worldview –

The chancellor’s Pyrrhic victories are part of the backdrop to the existential crisis that the Security Council is bringing on itself. The Iraq issue is not war vs. peace. It is collective security vs. every nation for itself.” So if the Security Council is not willing to comply with the US proposal that is in itself proof enough the system is in an existencial crisis. Let me translate for you: only if the world does what America wants can a system of collective security work. Donny (Rumsfeld) will be proud of his words.

And why, exactly, is it that some – well meaning – Americans wonder why there are people in Europe who forget the risk the Iraq poses while oppposing the “Bush junta” (as John LeCarre formulated in the London Times last week). Clearly, Chirac and Schroeder are none of those. But there’s a real chance people might actually listen to what the US has today (and they do have something to say) if the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and William Safire actually learned how to talk.

I don’t know about Schroeder’s hair. But it seems to me, William Safire plays with a too hot straightening iron while writing his columns…

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Political Theory, US Politics

Universal Draft.

The whole Iraq thing makes me think about draft armies.

Going into Iraq or not is not simply a question of removing Saddams WMDs or his entire regime [ note: did anybody see today’s Dubya footage on CNN? He said, and I think I am quoting, “that guy has WMDs. Those are the worst weapons available”. Seriously, I am willing to try not to underestimate W because of his apparent lack of eloquence and good marks in college (like, eg, Norman Mailer and about 95% of Europeans do) but there is a limit to what I can bear in the name of populistic simplification. Quotes like the one above are way beyond that threshold. ] long term energy supply or even helping one of the many oppressed peoples of this world to rid themselves of those villains who pose as their government. It is also a question shaking some of the core values of liberal democracy.

War cannot be regarded as a just another cost category in a diplomatic game. It is not barely an extension of the political – the times of von Clausewitz have long passed. Or so most people, and I think, politicicians, used to think.

The changing geo-strategic landscape during the 1990s led me to the conclusion that large universal draft armies will likely be worse than smaller, professional volunteer armies when it comes to providing international security in a rapidly changing environment. In a world surprised by new varieties of mostly ethnically, nationally, or religiously motivated armed (often distributional) conflicts. The nature of threats to national security had changed, as was most dramatcially illustrated on September 11, 2001. As a consequence, a universal draft seemed no longer justified to many. The most prominent example thereof is certainly the French draft abandonment in 1997.

Small, mobile volunteer armies (navies, air forces) clearly are better equipped and trained than a draft army could ever be. Their professionality allows a peace-keeping and peace-making deployments in areas and conflicts unconceivable for draft armies whose predominant task was to defend their own country.

However, in conjunction with the public’s perceived virtualisation of war (just think of this one image of the flat-screen laden US control cetre in Quatar that CNN airs all the time), a lowered individual risk for the soldiers involved reduces the political risk associated with the pursuit of armed conflicts. Sure, moral convictions will matter to most – to some extent. Chances are, we are wittnessing that war is again becoming publicly perceived of as just another means of politics, just as it was – a long time ago. Of course, from a perspective of Realpolitik (one of the few non violent German contributions to the English language…) the use of military power was, and will probably always depend on a political and economic cost/benefit calculation. But, among many others, the very fact that this was not an acceptable argument kept the costs higher than they seem to be today.

I doubt this sentiment is uniquely American, although the US is clearly the concept’s most prominent advocate at the moment. But I suppose things are going to change in Europe, too. On New Year’s Eve, I bet a German officer that Germany is going to build a first Aircraft Carrier until 2010. This is troubling, of course. The kind of conflicts we are facing today are unlikely to disappear in the near future. Volunteer armies clearly are the best military response – should response be deemed unavoidable. Thus the problem – is the disappearance of draft armies indicating an inflation of “unavoidable” conflicts? Just as the Vietnam experience demonstrated to the US that non defensive draft soldier deployments are almost unfeasable in a democracy because of societal opposition.

As said above, draft armies would be far less effective in most modern kinds of conflict (well, according to those who pretend to know about these things). So universal draft would not actually solve the problem at hand – how can today’s liberal democracies keep a professional army as well as create new cost categories for decision makers to increase the political risk associated with armed conflicts without a unversial draft?

I have no idea. But I think that is actually a very important question.

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compulsory reading, Iraq, US Politics

Parallels.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about some historic parallels that could provide a usually forgotten perspective concerning the “transatlantic rift“.

I’ve been thinking about a tale of exploitation from Eastern Europe. At least from the 1980s on, probably even before, Eastern European satellite states materially exploited the Soviet Union because they traded administratively overpriced low quality manufactured goods for world market priced raw materials. The Soviets probably knew what was going on, but thinking about Poland’s Solidarnosc experience they supposedly realised that there was a price to pay for continued hegemony in the 1980s.

I know I am restating the obvious but as the world does certainly not suffer from scarcity of misunderstanding these days – let me be clear about this: I am by no means implying that the US-European relationship is even slightly reminiscient of the Russian Cold War imperialism in Eastern Europe.

I should also say that the argument below is based on the assumption that the Iraqi government will be changed forcefully at some point this year, which I am, personally, very sceptical about. My position is probably most accurately reflected by the French one. I’m against war. But if I can’t avoid it anymore, I would at least like to retain some influence over the process, please.

Well, one interpretation of the (generalised) European attitude towards American activities to improve the reliability of Middle Eastern natural energy resource supply as well as US attempts to reshape the political landscape of the region by redistributing the oil profits – ok, the last argument is clearly speculative, but popular large scale redistributions of formerly privatised oil-income would be the obvious starting point for me if I were to convince sceptic Arab polulations of my good intentions as a hegemonic power and the benefits of “democracy” – could be that Europe is taking advantage of American policies in a way reminding me of the former Eastern European trading patterns. It could be that Europe behaves as a rational free rider of American policy.

The world oil market is one big pool and everyone gets the same prices. Given such a pool, it is probably correct to assume that a straightforward American control of the oil-to-market interfaces in the Middle East will also benefit the European economy – in case oil prices as well as oil price volatility come down as a long term result of increased security in the region.

But should the overall impact of a hostile takeover be unfortunate (in all possible respects), Europe will still be able to say, ‘look, Dubya, we told you so.’ Then, however, Europe might be forced out of its free rider position because its clout in the region will have grown substancially. Then it will be expected to act accordingly.

Either way, and moral troubles aside for the moment, things don’t look too bleak for Europe. If the US policy will be succesful in the short run –(definition: get rid of Saddamq quickly and without too many civilian and American victims, not too much bad press, no upward impact on the oil prices that would further shock a world economy already in doldrums, and most importantly, no large scale terrorist attacks in the US (and to a lesser extent, elsewhere in the West.)) – as well as in the long run – (definition: bringing unused Iraqi oil reserves to market thereby reducing the salience of Saudi Arabia as swing producer (easy part), establishing a pro US government as well as a longer term presence in Iraq as a local home base for the “New Great Game” (less easy), redistributing Oil proceeds in a way beneficial to the long term goal of helping the “Islamic reformation”, that is, education, education, education (very difficult), shaking up the Arab peninsula in order to get rid of the weak autocratic regimes without creating too many Mohammed Attas) – it is clearly good for Europe.

In this case, it’s also going to be a bit good cop, bad cop (or Venus and Mars…) – the US might want reduce her visibility as hegemonic power and European nations would step in to manage the nation-building process. European politicians mostly talk about this kind of burden-sharing engagement as “picking up the reconstruction bill“.

But let’s face it – even if that were the case, if the overall outcome of the conflict is not too desastrous, it would probably be a good investment and enhance the European clout in the region. And given that nation-building (including the redistributive policies mentioned above) will in all likelihood be paid out of oil revenues (which the US will not be able to use to pay for the invasion itself) it looks like it’s predominantly the bad cop that will pay the bill this time.

Of course, the free rider argument does not explain the current situation in its entirety. But it does shed some light on the fact that European governments might have had to choose from a slightly different set of policy options if it weren’t for the determined American military presence. Do you really think that Europeans would be able to pose as noble minded people all the time if they had to the dirty work of ensuring energy supply themselves?

Hardly.

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US Politics

Wise Words.

Those of you, my gentle readers, who are frequent visitors will certainly have realised that the issue of the seeming “transatlantic rift” has received considerable attention in this blog. Now I just received an email from a very knowledgeable American friend telling me about his understanding thereof. And he comes up with a very good one-phrase summary of the issue, which I decided to share with you –

“I think the most accurate “truism” about transatlantic relations is that for Americans 9/11 changed the world, but for Europeans 9/11 changed America.”

Of course, the sentence contains a lot to argue with. But none the less, I think it does capture the current transatlantic climate as accurate as it is possible for a single sentence. Wise Words.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, US Politics, USA

Another Tale of Mars and Venus: The two Americas.

The Carnegie Endowment’s Robert Kagan’s quip that Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus – citing the famous “Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships” to describe why American and Europe seem to be drifting apart in value terms has quickly become a household argument in published opinion. And for a reason: Last year’s US foreign policy as well as the European reaction has provided plenty of opportunity to interprete the US-European couple’s relationship as one in which one wants to make love and the other one war. Right or wrong, there seems to be a growing lack of understanding for the other one’s position on both sides of the pond.

In September last year, I already linked some documents providing some scientific context regarding the seemingly growing transatlantic rift. This week, the Economist provides us with the results of three recent studies – and tells Europe to think about American diversity. The article includes a very interesting diagram plotting some country’s relative positions in a multivariate value-space.

And in this diagram,

“America’s position is odd … On the quality-of-life axis, it is like Europe … But now look at America’s position on the traditional-secular axis. It is far more traditional than any west European country except Ireland. It is more traditional than any place at all in central or Eastern Europe”.

The reason for this strange position is, according to the economist, is,

“…to generalise wildly, that [the] average is made up of two Americas: one that is almost as secular as Europe (and tends to vote Democratic), and one that is more traditionalist than the average (and tends to vote Republican).”

I guess, a lot of people suspected this kind of division all along. But it’s always good to get some figures to back up the argument. And there’s one more thing that is strikingin this study – that all of Europe is indeed clustered in the same corner. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something to the argument of common European values.

I will close with a brief note to my British friends: Have a loook at the British position on the value plot – you seem indeed to be a part of Europe – socially, you’re not even a bit of an “awkward partner”. Great news, no?

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almost a diary, compulsory reading

Kraut-bashing. Some personal context.

Kraut-bashing is *so* passé. That is at least what the British comedian Frank Skinner tried to tell his countrymen when he publicized his support for the German team before last year’s World Cup final. His arguments have been summarised and endorsed by the BBC but as the article tells us, there was not just enthusiastic support for his stance. The Sun subsequently called Skinner “Franz” and digi-dressed him wearing lederhosen – they had gone Brazil nuts!

No one should have been surprised by this display of journalistic creativity. Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids as well as all other specimen of British quality publishing like to spice up dull English headlines with some Tscherman words from time to time. And it is certainly true that a vicious circle of linguistic militarism is fueled by them as well as by those English fans whose choice of words demonstrates that football can be so much more than just a game whenever a match between the old Germanic rivals looms on the playground. Their strange confusion of war and sports is very visible on the famous 1918-1945-1966-T-shirts.

But I suppose to some, T-Shirts and Blitzkrieg-laden headlines are only side effects, as Der Spiegel’s recent suspicion (link in German) that Germans have become “prisoners of history”, at least in Britain, shows. The magazine’s attention had been sparked by an article, published in the Guardian earlier last December, in which the new German ambassador to the United Kingdom, Thomas Matussek, lashed out against the country’s history curriculum –

“I want to see a more modern history curriculum in schools. I was very much surprised when I learned that at A-level one of the three most chosen subjects was the Nazis.”

– alleging that it contributed to an anti-German sentiment responsible not only for hunny headlines but also for physical and psychological violence committed against Germans in the United Kingdom.

“You see in the press headlines like ‘We want to beat you Fritz’. It ceases to be funny the moment when little kids get beaten up…”.

The ambassador’s remarks point to an incident in October last year, when two German schoolbays on an exchange programme were assaulted by a gang of British youth in Morden, south London. According to the Guardian, they were heckled as Nazis before one had his glasses broken and the other was shoved into a bush.

I am terribly sorry for the pupils’ experience. And I think it is entirely appropriate for a German ambassador to demand a more prominent place for the post ’45 “model Germany” in British textbooks. But I don’t believe that those studying the Nazi dictatorship for their A-level exams will become notorious Kraut-bashers – quite to the contrary.

In Britain – as everywhere else – physical violence against Germans for ascriptive reasons is de facto nonexistent and most instances of verbal Kraut-bashing are likely not of malevolent intent. They are simply an element of the usually acclaimed British humour Germans often have a hard time to find funny.

There are plenty of stories like the one a young German Navy officer told me last week. When he went to the UK on NATO business recently, he was greeted with a joyful “Heil Hitler” by his British comrades. However, the British soldiers lifting their right arms in all likelihood did not intend to imply he was actually a Nazi or even seriously insult him. In their eyes, it probably was a joke honouring the tradition of John Cleese’s famous “Don’t mention the war”-episode of Fawlty Towers.

Although the young officer was not amused about the incident, I would like to point out that, yes, even for a Kraut, Kraut-bashing sometimes can be fun. I know I may be generalising a bit here, but people have always made fun about alleged ascriptive characteristics of other people. But only very few are serious about them. Being able to tell the difference is what is important – for both parties involved. Quite a few usually well meaning people in the UK do not seem to understand that there are different kinds and styles of Kraut-bashing. And believe me, I know what I am talking about: I have been Kraut-bashed by Brits, too.

We all know that there are inappropriate derogatory terms for people of all ethnicities and nationalities in all languages. And we all know that the same derogatory words can have a very different, sometimes positive, meaning in a different context. It’s exactly the same with Kraut bashing. My British flatmates in Paris were allowed to Kraut-bash me. Just as I kept joking about the British “cuisine”, the Empire they lost and how their German would be much better now if the US had not saved their country’s ass twice.

The way we talk to a person only depends on the kind of relationship and our mutual respect. What may be in order for a friend is likely entirely inappropriate for a stranger. And I know how much being told you are what you want to be least does hurt, especially if you’re not expecting
it.

My stranger’s name was Julia. She was the friend of a friend of one of my flatmates and in Paris for a night in Summer 1998. So we all met in a bar somewhere in the Marais (for those who know Paris). I have to say that her first attack was as much a surprise for me as it was for my British friends.

I think you get a useful idea of Julia when I tell you that the only thing she wanted (or was able?) to talk about were her freshly pedicured toenails. But being the gentleman that I am I complimented her, just as expected. But her reply was as unexpected as inappropriate – she told me that she wasn’t interested in my bloody Nazi opinion anyway.

You probably remember – the first time does hurt. And it did. I was stunned. I did not know what to say. No one had ever silenced me by telling me I were a Nazi. And she was serious about it. Not knowing how to deal with the situation, I made the fatal mistake of actually trying to explain to her that I was no Nazi, which clearly provided sufficient incentive for her to keep bashing me until she was eventually silenced by my friends.

However much it hurt that day, I now think of the episode as a valuable experience. It helped me realise the difference between those who joke about beating “Fritz” [ or decapitate the Kaiser, for instance ;-) ] and those who actually do beat him. It also taught me how to deal with the very few Julias around.

And there are only very few Julias around. Thus, in my opinion, those trying construct a theory of German victimhood around incidents like the the teenage clash mentioned above or negligeable individual experiences like mine are creating an urban myth rather than a useful representation of reality. In a letter to the publisher, a German exchange student in North England told the magazine last week that she had spent a year in Britain and never experienced anything like the alleged British anti-German sentiment. She felt “stabbed in the heart” by the article, she said.

When I lived in London, I never experienced anything even slightly reminiscent of the Julia-episode. I walked past the “Bomber Harris” memorial almost every day and never cared about it until a British friend told me how embarassed he was when the Queen (of German descent…) unveiled a memorial for a person responsible for WW2 area bombing German cities in the early 1990s.

Another interesting encounter I had with respect to the anti-German sentiment in Britain was one with an older lady, who had clearly survived at least one, if not two world wars, and who explained to me that, yes, the British fought the Germans in two world wars but, after all, they’re decent people, as opposed to those frog-eating French.

While German tourists are still scared by the myth not to speak German in London Buses to avoid trouble, there are literally tens of thousands of Germans working in the City everyday. When you enter any of the fifty Starbucks outlets between Fleet Street and Monument tube station, chances are, you will hear almost as many German conversations as English ones.

The BBC is certainly right to admit that

“British hostility to Germany simply isn’t reciprocated – [and i]t could be that by using outdated stereotypes – the British are saying more about themselves than anyone else.”

But, in my experience, less and less people are seriously thinking in those stereotypes. Kraut-bashing may not be *so* passé yet, but it is definitely passé.

Last November, the American writer, Pulitzer price laureate, and Princeton University literature professor C.K. Williams made a very interesting argument in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit (link in German, Archive.org) about how Germans have become a group no longer defined by what they actually are or what they actually do – but what they stand for. In his opinion, the eyes of the world see Germans, more than anything else, as a symbol of evil – they have become Ze Tschermans.

While my personal experience is largely different, Mr Williams is probably right to some extent – some Tschermans are still out there, on celluloid, in the history books and, most importantly, in the memories of those who suffered unspeakable horrors under the Nazi dictatorship. As long as we define ourselves as German, we have to accept the historic context which we have been handed – just like everybody else. While history does by no means excuse ascriptive prejudices, it can help explain their existence. Time may be a healer, but big wounds heal slowly.

Sometimes it is up to us to explain where we feel things are no longer funny. The young German officer clearly told his British comrades that he did not enjoy their joke. All people but the very few Julias around will not cross that line again.

And Sometimes we should just relax. Julia taught me to no longer care if some stupid person believes I am a Tscherman. Why should I? I know I am not. And those I care about do know that, too.

What else could be important?

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almost a diary, compulsory reading

Does Dennis MacShane really want to decapitate Tony Blair?

The British Minister for Europe, Dennis MacShane, apparently tried to appeal to the British public by telling the FT earlier this week that

“… the German position [of enhancing the EU commission’s president powers as opposed to the Franco-British position of electing a president from within the European Council ] is for giving all power to a new kind of European kaiser, a Commission president who will tell all the other European institutions what to do. I had long discussion with Gerhard Schröder on this and I explained that 350 years ago we separated a king’s head from his body because we didn’t want to take orders from one individual.”

I am not too firm in English history but if I remember correctly, the story of the decapitation of Charles I is slightly more complicated than alleged by Mr MacShane. He died because he lost against Chromwell’s army in a religious power struggle. Decapitating a king may have been a fundamental democratic experience, but at least the immediate consequences were limited.

Shortly thereafter, Oliver Chromwell became Lord Protector. I am certainly not trying to reduce the English/British democratic/parliamentary innovations in any way – after all, I did have the opportunity to work for an MP in the mother of Parliaments myself.

But I do find it funny that a British minister talks about the veto-prone European decision process as some sort of absolutist government given that he is part of a governmental system which many scholars of British politics have (ironically, but with slight concern) called an “elected dictatorship” because of the centrality of Prime Ministerial power and the problematic legal doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty [ by the way – this evil fascist dictator test, apparently put online by an Oxford student, gives you the opportunity to test your Prime Ministerial potential.

Apparently, according to the test’s scoring guide,

I will be a corrupt, ruthless, but surprisingly effective figure on the world stage.

[ Not bad for this time of the day, I have to say ;-) ]

But anyway – the British must have learnt to take orders from one (elected) individual by now, for I don’t think Mr MacShane is actually after Tony’s head. He’s definitely even more dependent on his employer’s goodwill than most of his compatriots.

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Allgemein

Turkey in the EU?

Turkey in the EU?

Following the EU’s recent de facto decision to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005, those fiercly opposed to Turkish membership will probably be very interested in funding field research of the country’s social reality now. Such research will certainly produce a picture quite different from the one painted by Turkish diplomats.

Tonight, AFP tells us about a study conducted by the Turkish chamber of medical doctors (link in German) revealing that at least 58% of women in Turkey are subject to domestic violence. Now I don’t know whether the study is reliable or the comparable figures for Western Europe – but I am quite confident they will be a tiny fraction of the Turkish figure.

And there’s one more thing – definitions. While there’s no justification for any kind of domestic violence, I suspect that those interviewed do have a more relaxed understanding of the term “violence” than most people over here. Thus, the figure is likely a lot higher from a western point of view than even the 58% revealed now.

Such firmly socialised behavior will not easily change, even if Europe would agree to make “real”, as opposed to “formal”, social change a prerequisite of Turkish membership (which it certainly won’t). Paper is patient. On paper, Turkish women and men have the same legal status since 1923.

But apart from geo-strategic arguments, the most important argument of those promoting Turkish membership is that of membership as “change-agent”, of importing “real” modern governance and modern social institutions through economic and political integration. It is an argument that certainly deserves to be taken seriously.

But I have to say that I have serious doubts about its actual validity in the Turkish case. EU membership would probably help to reduce culturally induced problems like domestic violence a little bit (well, changing statistical methods and perception might also cause it to rise statistically), especially through extended economic exchange. But such change would certainly take much longer than the time horizon of any European politician can possibly be.

So, geo-strategy aside for the moment, the big question behind the Turkish entry is whether the EU want to either embark on a huge benevolent neo-colonialist adventure to prove that it is not a “Christian Club” or simply ignore such cultural practices in a member state. Both alternatives cannot be appealing to a community that considers itself a ommunity of values, not just treaties. It’s a big catch 22, that Turkish membership application.

Currently, I am against the adventure. But the debate has only just begun. And I am always open to suggestions.

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