It always puzzled me, and at times amazed me, that the Bush administration really seemed to think that a new government in Germany headed by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would pursue much better relations with the US.
True, the current German government is a Grand Coalition of the CDU and the Social Democrats. And both parties actually did want to improve relations with the United States.
But Condi Rice's visit to Germany this week illustrates how hard the Bush administration makes it for democratic nations to be friendly to the United States now. In the EU nations, the news about the secret CIA prisons/torture facilities in Europe (reportedly in Poland and Romania) has been a real scandal. More recently, an uproar has arisen over the CIA transiting EU airports while sending suspects to countries where they are likely to be tortured, the process known as "rendition".
Der Spiegel's English-language site has provided a summary of the way the controversy is playing in various EU countries: US Extraordinary Renditions: Condoleezza Rice Visits CIA's Europe by Charles Hawley Der Spiegel International 12/06/05.
In a joint press conference with Rice on Tuesday, Chancellor Merkel said that the US admitted to a mistake in the case of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who the CIA kidnapped, sent Afghanistan and detained there. He claims that he was repeatedly beaten by the Americans while in captivity. And he just filed suit over his kidnapping and detention. (See Germany's victim of extraordinary rendition sues in US courts as Rice is forced on defensive by Leonard Doyle and Tony Paterson The Independent 12/07/05; German sues Tenet, cites CIA detention by Shaun Waterman Washington Times/UPI 12/07/05)
"The American administration has admitted that this man was erroneously taken," Merkel told reporters.
But senior US officials, who are travelling with Rice on her European tour, disagreed with Merkel's interpretation. After the news conference, they met with the chancellor's aides and asked for a explanation, saying Rice had not actually admitted to a US mistake over Masri.
"We are not quite sure what was in her head," a senior US administration official told Reuters.
Maybe one thing that was in her head is the way the administration repaid EU countries like Germany for erring on the side of not impeding the Americans more than they did. Major figures in the previous red-green coalition government - Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Interior Minister Otto Shily - are all under criticism now for not doing objecting to the American rendition flights and kidnappings more forcefully and publicly.
Let me repeat that: The previous German government, the one that Bush fans loved to hate, that government is now being criticized by German members of parliament across the political spectrum for not being more opposed to the Americans on this issue.
The Bush administration apparently decided to approach it with a similar argument that they use against Democratic critics on the Iraq War: well, the European governments supported it, they say! So they're hypocrites for criticizing it now! Steve Soto did a good essay on this a couple of days ago at The Left Coaster: Watching Condi Overplay The Rendition Flights Issue 12/05/05. Soto writes:
So here we have Condi, getting ready to display her latest “See how big my balls are” routine Tuesday when she will challenge our allies and humiliate them, giving no quarter and using the weasel Wilkinson to spread her image building at the expense of our allies. But in typical Bush fashion, in her efforts to show the Europeans who is the boss, she is about to let a genie out of the bottle that the White House cannot control. First, in the UK, her efforts are about to embarrass and undermine the Blair government, which is now being forced to admit publicly their knowledge and level of support for the renditions and the use of British airspace, a revelation that will seriously harm not only Tony Blair but will also cut off further use of British airspace for these flights.
Then there is the case of Germany, whose new chancellor was anticipating developing a warm relationship with Bush, only to see Condi overplay this issue now amidst the revelation that the Germans had over 400 rendition flights through their airspace since 9/11, again a revelation that will lead to a humiliation of the new government and a termination of any future flights.
How can this be phrased nicely? In the United States, we have the Vice President openly campaigning to allow the CIA to legally torture people. In Germany, even the suggestion that German officials were indirectly involved by looking the other way rather than trying actively to block the US "renditions" is a scandalous thing. And it may wind up damaging politicians' and security officials' careers, or even lead to legal charges. (Italy currently has warrants out for 22 CIA officers over a kidnapping in Italy.)
Our lazy "press corp" in the US doesn't seem to be very eager to explore the implications of all this. But in these cases, European democracies were trying to discretely help out the Bush administration even though they didn't approve of the "renditions", at least help them to the extent of not publicly embarassing them. And the result is not only do they get embarassed (and for some officials maybe prosecuted) for trying to help the US in this way. But the Bush administration even goes out of its way to be confrontational over the issue.
Christian Bommarius in the Berliner Zeitung complains that the Bush administration has made many European governments complicit in crimes against international law, such as a preventive war in Iraq and torture, and questions whether the US is becoming a rogue state: Wir Komplizen 07.12.05.
Knut Pries in the Frankfurter Rundschau complains that in the controversy over torture and "renditions" which from the European point of view should not be used, "According the American [viewpoint], scruples can be soothed by a little bit of speech cosmetics" such as labeling suspects "enemy combatants". ("Nach amerikanischem können die Skrupel durch ein bisschen Sprach-Kosmetik geheilt werden"; Im schwankenden Boot 06.12.05)
The public diplomacy around Rice's visit seems to confirm the general assessment Regina Carp makes in the Autumn 2005 Washington Quarterly (The New German Foreign Policy Consensus). She argues that the German political parties have tended to develop broad consensus around major foreign policy directions, such that a change in government doesn't mean repudiation of even controversial policies begun by the previous one. She uses Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik and Helmut Kohl's policies on international engagement post-unification as examples.
Her expectation was that a Merkel government would not make a drastic change in the position's that the red-green government took over questions like the Iraq War. And, indeed, she has confirmed the policy of keeping German troops out of Iraq but continuing to train Iraqi police outside of Iraq. Carp writes:
A significant consequence of foreign policy consensus has been the fundamental transformation of parliamentary opposition. It is no longer about offering policy alternatives; legislators now work to ensure that policies are marketed effectively. German governments distinguish themselves by style, not by substance. It therefore came as no surprise that in the run-up to the September 18, 2005, general elections, Angela Merkel, the CDU candidate for chancellor, and her senior foreign policy advisers emphasized foreign policy continuity. The CDU’s critique of the Schröder-Fischer government did not demand any policy reversals but rather called for more adept policy implementation. All too often, some argued, sensitive issues were publicly debated in the Schröder government, reducing the possibility of quiet diplomacy and compromise. In Germany’s relations with the Bush administration, for example, Schröder’s often aggressive rhetoric aggravated an already complex situation and virtually ruled out the possibility of compromise. A CDU-led government would not have sent troops into Iraq either, but, according to Merkel and her advisers, less populist and less confrontational solutions should have been found. ...
A CDU-led government would assure that mistakes in style would not inadvertently be perceived as changes in substance. These are laudable reminders that etiquette matters. In essence, however, the era of Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982–1998) is part of history and cannot be revived. Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier know that the clock cannot be turned back. As Kurt Biedenkopf, a former CDU leader, explained, Schröder “did away with this fiction of the European interest being the same as the German interest. You can talk of the German national interest in a much more relaxed way today. The time was ripe for this and he acknowledged it.” With solid support for the substance of foreign policy secure and Germany increasingly finding its distinct voice in international affairs, changes in leadership no longer herald foreign policy surprises. As one adviser to Merkel stated during the election campaign, “[S]hould we win, there will be much more continuity in foreign policy than some might expect.” (my emphasis)
But recent events make it problematic whether Bush administration policy will even allow Merkel's government to pursue those "less confrontational solutions".
[An index of Old Hickory's Weblog posts related to Germany is available here at this link.]
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