Schlagwort-Archive: German Politics

German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

The Rationale Behind Open Opposition

Joshua Micah Marshall offers one more reason behind the unusual open and vocal Old European resistance to the Bush administration’s policy on Iraq.

“… The fact that Brent Scowcroft, the president’s father’s foreign policy guru, keeps on having to resort to the opinion pages to warn the president away from some new foreign policy disaster? (These public missives, of course, are widely and I think correctly seen as veiled messages from former President Bush.)”

Now if even Bush senior is going through the media to talk to his son, I think the conclusion becomes unavoidable that talking to W does not really help to influence his policy decisions. So which option remains for those sceptical of his course? They have to take their opinion out to the street… and there we are.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

News From Brussels.

So the EU Council has issued a new joint foreign policy declaration on the Iraq question. The core element reads as follows:

“We want to achieve this peacefully. It is clear that this is what the people of Europe want. War is not inevitable. Force should be used only as a last resort. It is for the Iraqi regime to end this crisis by complying with the demands of the Security Council. We reiterate our full support for the ongoing work of U.N. inspectors. They must be given the time and resources that the U.N. Security Council believes they need. However, inspections cannot continue indefinitely in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation.”

Amiland, as well as many others, including Spiegel online[link in German], think Schroeder is the loser of the day.

I don’t. I think he is the big winner.

Following last Friday’s UN Security Council meeting he has been able to rather quietly modify his irresponsible and entirely inflexible adamant “no-to-everything-whatever-new-information-may-become-available” by hiding behind a common EU position. Moreover, he can argue that it was more important to save the idea of a common European foreign policy than to – explicitly – stick to his former position.

I think it was a wise move. Sure, there will be people to claim he just “weaseled out”. But I guess he had realised that weaseling to some extent had become inevitable in order to regain some kind of diplomatic flexibility. So the most important problems were the reasons to explain such a move as well as its perceived salience in the “march to war”. Saving the idea of a common European foreign policy was most certainly the right reason – a motive that even the most ardent anti-warriors will likely swallow. And now that so many people have indeed again started to hope for a peaceful solution to the problem – think of the worlds stock markets as an indicator -, after the anti-war demonstrations last weekend and given the hawks sudden, and probably rather unexpected, difficulties in the UN Security Council, the perceived salience of his concession is likely much lower than it would have been should Germany have been forced to modify Schroeder’s aggressive “no” in the light of any new information convincing other doveish Security Council members of the necessity to make use of the means of last resort.

So this EU foreign policy declaration allowed Schroeder a relatively cheap way to unbind himself. And he used it. This semi-disguised semi-acceptance of the theoretical possibilty of war on Iraq as well as of Germany supporting a possible second UN resolution legitimising it could have indeed saved himself the chancellorship, should such a vote become unavoidable. In my interpretation, this makes Schroeder the big winner of this EU summit.

So what’s the current situation? Chirac seemingly holds the keys to the Security Council’s support now – assuming that Russia and China won’t veto a second resolution should France favour one and thus probably to war. I doubt Blair would send troops without a second resolution – he has consistently said he needs a second one for the British public. He may have proven some of his critics wrong about his poll-led governmental style. He may well support war against the British polls. But he’s not suicidal, in my opinion. He would most certainly not order the Britsh military to attack Iraq without a straightforward resolution supporting military action.

So now the big question is – would the US actually go to war without even the British? Militarily, why not. Politically, the “Coalition Of The Willing” looks even less impressive without the British.

Too hard to tell.

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German Politics, US Politics

Honestly.

Have you ever watched Ally McBeal? When Ally could not convince the jury of the case she was presenting she asked Richard Fish for a quick Fishism or told John Cage to squeak and distract the judge or undermine the trustworthiness of a main witness. Apparently, we have arrived at point of the discussion where commenting on global political developments is being turned into an American Court Room – with the Washington Post’s readership as jury.

These day’s Ally is Michael Kelly, who has published a regrettable attempt to discredit German foreign minister Joschka Fischer because of his political biography. Even though most of the things he writes are actually true, Mr Kelly is clearly guilty of forgetting to mention most of what Mr Fischer has said or done after 1968. Sometimes omitting important facts is pretty close to lying.

Joschka Fischer was a member of a violent extra-parliamentary opposition group during the ’68 period. He has always said so. He has always explained – when asked – that he very much regrets his violent past. Moreover, just like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and many others – he has become a respected and balanced politician. The streets of ’68 may have been an unuasual school, but they were indeed the breeding ground for some very talented political autodidacts. Times change. People can change. Joschka Fischer certainly has.

He has come a long way from being a violent pacifist to a statesman delivering his party’s parliamentary votes in Novermber 2001, when Schroeder put his government at risk by coupling a vote of confidence with the question of deploying troops for operation “Enduring Freedom” – I mention this just in case anyone would like to start another “gratefulness” discussion.

The fact that he has embarrassed Donald Rumsfeld by telling a world audience in English last Saturday that he is not convinced by the simplistic WMD based case for invading Iraq which the American government is consistently feeding its population should be taken seriously by those making this case. Cornering him is not wise. He’s the one who votes for Germany in the security council. And should he lift his arm – he’s the one who could single handedly split the ruling German coalition, his party and create a seismic shift in German politics reminiscent of the 1982 vote on the Pershing rearmament, when the FDP suddenly changed sides. This time, it’s not going to be the party. But it could be Joschka Fischer – indeed Germany’s Mr. Tough Guy – should he deem it necessary. I don’t think he will. And you know why – not because of German or party politics. But because he’s not convinced.

Before go on to read Mr Kelly’s commentary, I would like you to check the following excerpt taken from an interview conducted by CNN with George W Bush during the 1999 primaries. If you think that it is all there is to be said about President Bush (whatever your personal opinion of him is) then you might as well believe that Mr Kelly said all there is to be said about Joschka Fischer.

COOPER: […] Is there any lapse in judgment in your personal life that would make you think twice about running for president?

BUSH: No. I mean I have said many times that there’s nothing in my background that would disqualify me for being governor of Texas much less president.

COOPER: What about alcohol?

BUSH: Probably no more so than others that you know. But I quit drinking. I quit drinking for a couple of reasons. One I was drinking too much at times. But remember during this period of life I was a Sunday school teacher. I was a little league coach. I was a husband. I was a dad, but alcohol began to compete with my energies.

COOPER: Have you ever used drugs? Marijuana, cocaine?

BUSH: I’m not going talk about what I did as a child. What I’m going to talk about and I’m going to say this consistently: It is irrelevant what I did 20 to 30 years ago. What’s relevant is that I have learned from any mistakes that I made. I do not want to send signals to anybody that what Governor Bush did 30 years ago is cool to try.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

William Safire. Again.

William Safire does have a problem. He is seemingly fascinated with a country he does not have a real clue about – Germany. However, as opposed to his recent rantings about Franco-German attempts to dominate the world, in today’s NYTimes column he does make two real points.

Firstly, he is talking about last week’s PR campaign by 8-10 European leaders and the problem of “representing Europe”, secondly, he thinks about the necessity of basing US troops in Germany following teh end of the Cold War and a thought-experiment by a US general.

First things first. Mr Safire writes –

“Leaders of eight European nations – not just Britain, but Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Denmark – had signed an op-ed statement supporting the U.S. stand on Saddam and in effect asserting that Germany and France did not speak for Europe. Schröder was flabbergasted; he had no idea that this rejection of his anti-U.S. crusade was in the works. Think about that: a Wall Street Journal request started the round-robin letter; eight nations weighed in on its drafting and redrafting for days; but Germany’s chancellor, with his vast intelligence system and diplomatic corps, was totally in the dark.”

There’s a lot in this paragraph: Firstly, Schroeder in all likelihood knew about the letter, as Welt am Sonntag reported yesterday. However, that does not make much of a difference in any political sense – he did not sign the letter, which, by the way, does not even really differ from the German position. Did you read it? It is a call for peaceful disarmement and expression of gratitude for US involvement in Europe since WW2.

Schroeder could have signed it without factually compromising his position on Iraq. But, obviously, the world’s (and worse, the German) media would have framed it differently. So he did not do i – days before important by-elections which his party seemed bound to lose (and lose it did, big time). On the other hand, the fact that Schroeder could have signed indicates that the letter’s content is not too controversial in Europe.

Secondly, there’s the question of “speaking for Europe”. However much I am personally disappointed by the way Schroeder is doing everything he can to make things worse – don’t get me started on last weekend’s “proposal” -, he would never claim to speak for Europe. I believe that it was the US media which created a rift between “Europe” and the “US” which then led to a perception in which “the Weasels” represent “Europe”. Donny complicated things with his “age”-qualifiers. However, the opinion of European peoples is in all likelihood a lot closer to the rethoric of Chirac and Schroeder than it is to the one of the likes of Richard Perle. Even though no British person would ever admit it, according to most polls I see, even British opinion (including that of Blair’s backbenchers) is better represented by Schroeder or Chirac than by their own Prime Minister. Also, thinking about representation, here’s a nice extract written by Charles Utwater II in a comment to a post in Brad DeLong’s blog. I could not have stated it better myself..

While the Wall Street Journal, with the connivance of Tony Blair and the Prime Minister of Spain managed to get the signatures of eight European leaders, those signatures do not represent the will of the people of those countries. Indeed, Vaclav Havel resigned the day after signing, and the Czech government repudiated his signature. The Spanish Prime Minister was taken to task by the president. Silvio Berlusconi of Italy is under threat of indictment as a mafioso and is not a particularly popular figure at the moment. Italy has had some of the largest anti-war demonstrations in Europe. And so on down the list. About 70% of Europeans oppose war in Iraq under current conditions, and even if the UN produces a resolution, about 40-50% oppose.

I think that says it all. Surely, the will of the people is not as important in a democracy as the will of their leaders if it comes to deploying troops. But it still is of minor importance every now and then in elections. Ask W., he should know about the intricacies of electoral systems.

The point being? Even though Schroeder is handling the current situation as badly as Richard Perle must have hoped for, he is not totally out of tune with the European public.

Then, Mr Safire goes on to tell us straight to the face how little he knows about Germany –

“Germany’s new opposition leader, the Thatcheresque Angela Merkel, joined the defining issue as her conservative party’s past candidate had failed to do. She said of the anti-Saddam op-ed: “if we had been in government, Germany would have signed that letter.”

Thatcherite (isn’t it?) Angela Merkel. I am in stitches. She will love it, too. I bet she has alreay printed a copy of the column and hung next to the Helmut Kohl portrait in her office. I’m kidding. But let’s remember – Margaret Thatcher was a tough British Prime Minister. Angela Merkel is a rather weak German opposition leader. She’s not even uncontested in her own party. And she’s the leader of an opposition that is continuously embarrassing itself by not being able and/or willing to take any real stance in the Iraq issue. Let’s face it – Angela Merkel is as thatcherite as W is a Democrat. She does not have a firm (published) opinion on Iraq and neither has her party. She probably would not have signed the letter as party-leader as it was published before the by-elections in Hessen and Lower-Saxony. And I bet she would not have signed the letter as a chancellor. But as opposition leader without a firm opinion, after the by-elections, and without having been asked to sign in first place, she can now say whatever she wants without the fear of having to act on it later on.

The point being? Mr. Safire entirely misrepresents the mood and the leadership of the CDU/CSU conservative opposition (which is now, after the by elections, via the upper chamber, the Bundesrat, effectively a part of the federal government for all important legislative initiatives).

The last part of the article is concerned with the “European free riding” argument I made several times before. Even though Mr. Safire admits that proposed plans for deployment reductions in Germany are not some sort of punishment for the German chancellor, I suppose it’s not entirely coincidental that the US are starting to think about their continental European bases right now – this is what he refers to.

“a briefing in Brussels Friday of a U.S. Congressional delegation led by McCain and Lieberman by the new NATO supreme commander, U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones,
revealed a developing U.S. strategy. It holds that the 70,000 U.S. troops garrisoned in Germany, accompanied by their 70,000 dependents, make up too many forces with too outdated a mission stationed too far from potential trouble at too high a cost.”

Concerning this potentially crucial development, there are two main political issues which will have to be decided rather quickly following the Iraq war – will the imperialists remain the dominating force of the Republican party or can the libertarians regain some ground, especially in foreign policy? The former faction will not be too interested in closing bases. The latter likely will. Secondly, realizing this, what will Germany’s and Europe’s reaction be? Backing down for free security? Not an unlikely possibility given the budgetary situation of many European countries, especially Germany. Or will Europe begin to invest more into its own security? The last alternative will likely mean more distributive battles and less political stability in the medium run, with an uncertain long run.

Difficult alternatives. But no one said being Chancellor would be easy.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

Further Right.

An article published by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at Washington’s libertarian Cato Institute and former advisor to Ronald Reagon, indicates to me that the real rift concerning foreign policy could be neither the Atlantic nor the middle aisles in the chambers of the US Congress. It indicates to me that there seems to be a deep divide between socially conservative Republicans and Libertarian Reoublicans in the US.

The conservative, traditional, hierarchical model of social coordination favoured by the former is usually abhorred by the latter’s assertion that laisser-faire is the only just way to organise a society/economy. Of course, a two party system does not offer too many alternatives if you want to “make votes count” (Gary W. Cox’ book is really brilliant!), so both faction have teamed-up due to their even stronger disgust of the plans for social and! economic reengineering proposed by those who sit on the other side of the aisles. But from time to time, the internal divisions surface. Current US foreign policy is an example thereof.

In this article, which appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last Friday (link in English), Bandow pratically asks France and Germany to stand firm in their opposition to a US led war on Iraq –

“If Berlin and Paris back down after publicly avowing their opposition to war in such strong terms, they will reinforce the justifiable contempt in which they are held in Washington. And U.S. administrations will continue to ignore them in foreign crises. The credibility of European and other critics of Washington is at stake. Giving in will feed Washington’s conviction that it can impose its will without constraint.”

Bandow’s opinion does not look too isolated if you have a look at this page, which is listing the body of work Cato scholars have done since 911 regarding a potential U.S. war with Iraq.

However, if you compare Bandow’s view (or even the piece by Eric Alterman I already linked some days ago) to this interpretation of the US-European problems by the Carnegy Endowment’s (neoconservative) Robert Kagan, you’ll clearly sense a difference not only in style, but in content, too.

Kagan is a vocal proponent of what he calls “American benevolent hegemony“. And it seems, those who share his opinion are willing to pick up the tab for continued American hegemony – inducing all the parallels I already referred to on January 20th. Bandow, on the other hand does not see a point in paying for hegemony – and this is not just a different financial assessment. It’s a different world-view.

“Still, it is understandable why Europe has so little influence over American policy. Europe as a whole is a security black hole for America. … Providing a handful of special forces and lending a couple of AWACS planes would not have been necessary were the U.S. not devoting a substantial share of its military to defending Europe.

The Europeans would do far more for America by simply garrisoning their own continent, instead of expecting the U.S. to maintain 100,000 troops to protect populous, prosperous industrialized states, as well as another 13,000 to enforce order in the Balkans, a region of no strategic interest to America.”

He realises that Europe’s attitude may be one of rational free riding. But that, of course, feeds US demands of eternal subservience, which Europe is seemingly less willing to swallow these days.

In the end, the Iraq crisis is teaching all parties involved that it’s impossible to have the cake, and eat it, too – in Bandow’s words (from last September) –

“… neither side has conducted itself with much maturity in the ongoing international spat. The Bush administration believes that allies such as Germany should do what it says, no questions asked. The Schroeder administration believes that Germany deserves a significant say in international relations, while shrinking its military and relying on Washington to resolve tough global problems. … The administration wants doormats, not allies. Germany and Europe don’t have to remain irrelevant, however. The Schroeder- Bush fight offers Berlin and other European states a unique opportunity to strike a more independent course. It’s time for Washington to encourage such a change.”

As for the last sentence of the quote, the current administration does not seem to listen to Mr Bandow. At least, not yet. As always, time will tell.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

Now we’re talking…

Now look at that.

If ‘old’ Europe’s support were indeed as damn irrelevant to the US administration as many of its senior officials have repeatedly stated – why, then, would someone like Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s defense advisory board and one of the key figures behind the Bush administration’s Irak policy, find the time to appear on German tv for a six minute interview on the day of the President’s “State Of The Union” address?

And believe it or not – while firmly restating the well known simple WMD based argument for attacking Iraq – he often referred to European “friends“, not weasels, that do not share the US administration’s point of view in many respects. I have to say, for someone who (seriously?) stated after last year’s German election that

“[t]he best thing would be for [German chancellor Gerhard Schröder] to resign…”,

this appears to be a quite remarkable change of communication strategy.

So maybe Bush won’t add France and Germany to the “Axis of Evil” tonight ;-). And maybe, his speechwriters have realised by now that they are not simply writing for their neoconservative constituency. Maybe, they have realised that a lot of Americans do care about the world’s, and thus – also – ‘old’ Europe’s opinion, and that international opposition can damage approval ratings – at least before America goes to war. Maybe they have realised that Harvard’s Joseph Nye may have had a point (even though he was a Clinton official, and thus also some sort of honorary weasel) when he described The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone. Maybe they have realised that, tonight, their words will be examined by the entire world.

Maybe this is wishful thinking. But maybe, the world will be spared from another “Axis of Evil” tonight – I certainly hope so.

I recently read a review of “The Right Man”, a book containing some insights into the Bush administration, written by David Frum, a former speechwriter. In this review, Jeffrey A. Tucker writes –

“Remember the famous “Axis of Evil” phrase? It was originally “Axis of Hatred,” and it was written by Frum. Why? Frum writes: “Bush decided that the United States was no longer a status-quo power in the Middle East. He wanted to see plans for overthrowing Saddam, and he wanted a speech that explained to the world why Iraq’s dictator must go. And from that presidential decision, bump, bump, bump down the hierarchy… to me.”

Again, what can this mean? Bush knew he wanted to get rid of Saddam but didn’t know why? He hires people like Frum to drum up some, any, rationale?”

Stories like these do not automatically disqualify the political goal to oust Saddam. But they are clearly not helpful to win a sceptical world’s support. So now, let’s hear what the US President is going to tell us this year. Oh, and while we’re watching, we might as well have a little fun.

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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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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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compulsory reading, German Politics

The Real Problem Of The German Social Democracy: Brackets

In an interview with Gerhard Schroeder, printed in this week’s issue of “Der Spiegel” (in German), the journalists interviewing the chancellor rightly alleged that people like them – those who hold a lot of human capital, who represent the backbone of our knowledge based economy but are unable to pick a regulatory regime like those predominantly owning financial capital – would be the ones to have to pick up the tap for continued non-growth in this country. The chancellor answered sarcastically that the thought of their deprived economic situation really shook to him to his core, that he was close to tears. I was just a joke, but I fear there was a little bit more to it. It was also an unconscious expression of the fundamental conflict within the German Social Democracy – brackets, more precisely, income brackets.

A few weeks ago, I had a discussion with my friend American friend Sonya about the difference between perceived and actual relative income positions. Our conversation was based on a CNN poll, according to which 20% of US citizens believe they belong to the top one percent income bracket. Another 19% think they will be there at some point in their life. In Europe, things are bit different. Over here, many people tend to believe they belong to a lower relative income bracket than they actually do.

In both cases, the consequences for the economic policies implemented are severe. In the US, economists like Princeton professor Paul Krugman have begun to talk about the construction of a Plutocracy. In Europe, overregulation and suffocating marginal tax rates strangle more and more economic activity – or drive it into illegality. While some in the US deplore the lack a European style welfare system, welfare systems have evidently contributed significantly to the distortion of incentive structures on this side of the pond. It was this simple observation that prompted former LSE director Tony Giddens to write his now largely discredited book about “The Third Way”, which helped the other Tony to rebrand the British Labour party back in the mid 1990s.

While there may not be just one Third Way, it seems almost self evident to me that any economy/society must get both elements, individual motivation as well as redistribution of income, at least roughly right. “New Labour” seems to have understood this, but a large number of German Social Democrats still seems to have a hard time grasping the point. While the chancellor spent the rest of the interview explaining just how he wants to get the incentives right, and while his little sarcastic remark may not even tell us about his personal attitude, it certainly captures the mood of a significant part of his party. All reform rethoric aside, it appears many Social Democrats still do not really regard the professional middle class (the group they called “Neue Mitte” in their 1998 election campaign), working in human capital intensive jobs as those who add the most value to our economy. Many economists as well as political scientists have written extensively about the societal consequences of changing patterns of economic activity, and most of arguments are necessarily a lot more complex than the simple one I am making here [ the following link leads to a particularly good paper by Fritz Scharpf, concerned with sectoral changes and welfare regimes in competition ]. Nonetheless, I believe this is the core of the SPD’s internal conflict – those within the party who have not already done so need to realign their perceived structure of income brackets.

In the US, when political Robin Hoods demand to take from the rich and give to the poor, they probably do not plan to take it predominantly from working professionals earning, say, 60,000 Dollars. When some German Social Democrats talk about taxing the rich, those earning 60,000 Euros should beware. Don’t get me wrong – I am by no means saying that there should be no significant tax progression up to 60,000 Euros – of course there should be. Someone earning this amount is evidently able to bear a much larger part of common good than a struggling single mother earning a mere 15,000. No doubt about that.

But I seriously believe that people in this country need to realize that the most important problem of our economy is not lack of capital or demand (well, there is a cyclical lack of demand on top of the structural problems) but a lack of both powerful intrinsic (like the American Dream as a social institution) and extrinsic (monetary compensation) incentive structures. Isn’t it telling that the largest group among German university graduates wants to join the public service where they expect job security and predictable income increases for their entire working life? An economy that is devoting more than 50% of its time and money to administrating itself is probably not a particularly creative or productive one. And creativity is just what is needed to pull ourselves out of the self-designed slump we’re in.

Isn’t it time to realize that supporting those who actually deliver this creativity with some extrinsic motivation will be great for the common good? Isn’t it time for still traditionalist Social Democrats to finally leave the remains of cherished working-class-struggle rhetoric and policies where they belong – in history books?

I think it is. And I really hope Schroeder does, too.

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