Germany Stops Short of Saying 'I Told You So'
By Robert J. McCartney
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 3, 2003; Page A33
BERLIN, April 2 -- The German government believes that the troubles encountered in the first two weeks of the Iraq war vindicate its opposition to the conflict and justify further resistance to unilateral U.S. policies even at the cost of a long friendship with the United States, according to government sources and political analysts.
Germany is particularly worried about the wave of anti-U.S. feeling in the Muslim world triggered by the war, and by the initial hostility of much of the Iraqi population. While Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government is certain that U.S. and British forces will triumph, it fears that the ensuing occupation of Iraq will be marred by continuing violence as in the West Bank and Gaza, Northern Ireland and Chechnya.
Though the government remains opposed to the attack, it has toned down its antiwar rhetoric, apparently believing that it needlessly complicates relations. This evening, it said formally for the first time that it favored the defeat of President Saddam Hussein's government.
"We hope the regime will collapse as soon as possible, and we'll have no further loss of life, civilians or soldiers," Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said before a meeting here with his British counterpart, Jack Straw.
But other officials said developments in the war so far demonstrate that Germany's worries about the conflict were justified.
"We are very concerned by the reaction in the Arab and Islamic world, and this reaction confirms our bad predictions" prior to the war, said Ludger Volmer, a close associate of Fischer and foreign policy spokesman in parliament for the Green Party, the junior partner in Schroeder's governing coalition.
"We don't say, 'I told you so,' but we did warn about these risks," said a German official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Some media commentators have had no such qualms, in a country where polls show more than four-fifths of the population view the war as unjustified.
"The Germans had a bad feeling about this war from the beginning. And are they not right? The advance to Baghdad has stagnated, the uprisings of the Shiites and other regime opponents are not occurring, and almost every day brings new pictures of civilian victims," said a front-page column in today's Tagesspiegel newspaper.
The German reaction underlines what many analysts here view as a fundamental, historic shift toward cooler relations between the United States and the richest, most populous country in Europe. For the first time since West Germany emerged as the most important U.S. ally in continental Europe following World War II, the German government has actively opposed the United States on a major foreign policy issue.
Schroeder and President Bush have not spoken since November, and sources on both sides say the German chancellor has effectively given up on trying to repair their personal relationship. Moreover, Germany for the first time has abandoned its traditional strategy of striking a balance in its friendships with its neighbor, France, and the United States.
"France always wanted to build Europe as a counterweight to the United States. Germany has always said no to that. This time, Germany for the first time supported that French ambition," said Friedbert Pflueger, foreign policy spokesman in parliament for the opposition Christian Democrats.
The German government is unhappy about the deterioration in relations with the United States and would like to patch things up. Fischer is particularly eager to do that, and he continues to speak regularly with his counterpart, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
Although Germany formally opposes the war, it is supporting the U.S. effort through such steps as overflight rights and special security at U.S. bases in Germany. Officials say Germany is doing more for the war than any country except Britain, and that they do this because the United States remains an ally.
But in other ways, the government is unwilling to compromise. Until tonight's declaration by Fischer, the government had rejected calls from the opposition to say publicly that it hoped for a U.S.-British victory, saying that would legitimize the war after the fact. Fischer said tonight that he would welcome the fall of the Iraqi government because it would reduce the human cost of the war. "The humanitarian situation is very alarming," Fischer said.
Some analysts said they believed Germany was shifting its position because it increasingly recognized that the United States would win and wanted to sidle a bit closer to the United States.
"They may have begun to understand you don't just take on Mr. Big, that America is more than just an administration they don't like, a war they don't like, but the most powerful force on this whole planet. You don't want to overdo tangling with Mr. Big," said Josef Joffe, editor of the weekly Die Zeit.
The Germans also see major differences with the United States looming in the aftermath of the Iraqi war. They would strongly oppose establishment of a U.S.-led military administration in Iraq, as the Pentagon reportedly favors.
Like the rest of the 15-country European Union, Germany wants the United Nations to play the central role in overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq.
Germany may refuse to provide reconstruction funds that the United States and Britain are likely to seek. "It cannot be that the Americans and Brits bomb, and 'old Europe' pays," Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, minister for economic cooperation and development, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper last week.
However, officials said the Foreign Ministry will probably support providing such assistance if the United Nations is in charge of the operation.
Germany is also signaling that it would fiercely oppose moves by the United States to follow up a presumed victory in Iraq with military action against other so-called rogue states in the Middle East. The government is unhappy about recent warnings issued by the United States to Syria and Iran against helping Iraq.
Lothar Brock, professor of political science at Goethe University in Frankfurt and a director at the Peace Research Institute there, said Germany hoped for a short war, but there could be a downside to such an outcome: "If this proves to be an easy task for the U.S., they will go ahead and do this again in other cases, and they will mess up the whole world," Brock said.
Schroeder is motivated to stick to his anti-U.S. position in part because of domestic politics. His antiwar position is the only one of his policies that currently attracts significant voter support, according to political analysts and opinion surveys.
If he feels a temptation to second-guess the United States over the war, he has so far resisted it in public. In an interview in last week's Die Zeit, Schroeder said, "There are no signs of self-justification or arrogance with me or the foreign minister." But he also noted that Germany's stance had plenty of support around the world. "I am pleased that all this talk about an apparent isolation of Germany . . . has proven to be unfounded," he said.
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04-03-2003, 08:44 PM
