BERLIN — This is as bad a moment as there has been in German-American relations in the postwar years. The poison of the United States surveillance scandal, absent an apology from Washington, continues to seep through a society where the right to personal privacy is a paramount value shaped by history.
With the end of the Cold War division of Europe now a quarter-century distant, and the old strategic imperatives of trans-Atlantic cohesion long gone, much is made of the shared values of Europe and the United States as the glue that binds them. But in the case of Germany this argument no longer holds. If anything, a cultural gulf has emerged.
The clash of three traumas — the Nazis and then the Stasi in Germany, and 9/11 in the United States — has left each society with a different appreciation of the relative value of privacy and personal freedom on the one hand and security on the other. Or at least that is the way they perceive each other. Few things summon the nightmarish past in Germany quite like revelations that their personal data and chat is being vacuumed up. Get over it, say Americans, a chief 9/11 plotter lived in Hamburg. Being a world power and a regional power are not the same.
A leaked conversation in which Victoria Nuland, the top American diplomat for Europe, used the f-word to sum up her sentiments about the European Union and its efforts at diplomacy in Ukraine infuriated Chancellor Angela Merkel, who through her spokesman called the remarks “absolutely unacceptable.” Merkel still feels angry, betrayed and humiliated by the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping on her cellphone. She recently told one politician close to her that she misses George W. Bush.
The relationship between Europe’s most powerful leader and President Obama is strained. It got off to a bad start and never recovered. Obama was not pleased that Merkel refused his request to speak at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate when he was candidate in 2008; Merkel thought the idea hubristic, Obama was not yet president after all.
She hates soaring rhetoric and feels Obama over-promises and under-delivers (Guantánamo, climate change, nuclear Global Zero). Obama has qualms of his own: the German opt-out on Libya and austerity-driven recipes for the European Union. This, in any event, is the first postwar American president for whom trans-Atlantic sentiments are more duty-bound than heartfelt. The so-called United States pivot to Asia reflected shifting power but also personal inclination.
Now, perhaps all this is not so bad. For decades, Germany was America’s problem. The postwar republic emerged under American tutelage. As that parental relationship ended, there were bound to be difficulties. This is the best Germany there has ever been, prosperous and at peace with its neighbors. One senior official told me: “It’s O.K. not to be the problem any longer. But how can we be problem-solvers together?”
The question is hanging there as an ever-stronger Germany reconsiders its foreign policy and appraises the lingering surveillance-scandal damage. The first weeks of Merkel’s new government have seen a marked rhetorical shift away from restraint. Joachim Gauck, the German president, has lambasted those “who use Germany’s guilt for its past as a shield for laziness or a desire to disengage from the world.” He has said the time for distrust is past; it is now a time for greater German responsibility.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, who is in Moscow this week, has also inveighed against a culture of sitting on the sidelines. A sweeping review of foreign policy involving town hall debates and online forums is underway. As always in Germany the balance between assertiveness and meekness is delicate. But the pendulum has swung toward a Germany that holds back less.
How these words translate into action remains to be seen. The dispatch of a few German soldiers to Africa, help in the disposal of Syrian chemical weapons, a reinvigorated German-French relationship, and Steinmeier’s Putin diplomacy on Ukraine are initial signs. There will be more.
It is unquestionably in America’s interest to work closely with Germany as this needed adjustment unfolds. For that, a way past the current estrangement has to be found. Steinmeier has warned that the loss of trust, particularly among young Germans, “will not heal by itself.” He has proposed a trans-Atlantic forum to address the question of how fundamental civil rights are maintained in the era of big data. He has said the young generation of Germans needs to be won over anew to the trans-Atlantic bond.
Steinmeier is right about all this. But despite talk from Secretary of State John Kerry of a trans-Atlantic “renaissance,” the response from Washington has been frustrating to Germany. One Obama interview with German TV did not cut it. The wound has been underestimated. A bon mot in Germany has it that Americans no longer listen, they merely listen in.
