CIAO DATE: 12/02

Did German-US relations change from pre-Bush and Bush to post-9/11-Bush?

Michaela C. Hertkorn, Ph.D.

September 2002

Columbia International Affairs Online

 

Introduction

"There is the perception that, while France is a complicated country, but not posing a problem, Germany is not a complicated case, but can pose a problem."

"America and Germany will never drift apart. We have never been closer. Any tensions are simply due to 'Reibungsverluste durch Nähe'. It is a relationship of grown up kids with their parents."

The May/June edition of Foreign Affairs argued, "transatlantic relations will improve only, if US leaders climb down from their bully pulpit — and Europeans resist the temptation to climb up." An article in the Economist of March 31, 2001 titled "Doubts on both sides of the Atlantic." It asked, whether George Bush may succeed, where European leaders have not, in finally forging a common European foreign and security policy, and uniting Europe as a counterbalance to the United States? During the European Union Summit in Stockholm of March 2001, European leaders stressed the necessity to "step in," where the US either stepped back, or decided to take a more hardliner approach. Was this meant to be the "hour for Europe"? Would the European Union be able to match a common foreign policy with corresponding resources? What about the role of Germany as a regional key player, without whose larger financial contribution ESDP, the European security and defense policy, might be doomed to fail? A decade after its reunification, Germany arguably is still a newcomer in foreign policy. It is united, but is it truly sovereign? German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, by late April 2001 offered again a plan to remake the European Union. The New York Times of May 1, 2001 speculated, whether this proposal reflected a long tradition in German foreign policy of giving up sovereignty, in order to increase, indirectly, Germany's influence over Europe? Then, by early October 2001, the so-called Schröder doctrine indicates support for the use of military and calls for Germany to become "Europe' s most important policeman."

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