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Italian Paper Says Germany "Doomed to Introversion" By Election Result

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

Excerpt from commentary by Lucio Caracciolo, "Paralysed giant", in Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 20 September

The "Greater Germany" has not yet decided what to be when it grows up. The election stalemate reflects the insecurities of a country without a plan of action. The scathing judgement issued by Gen [Charles] de Gaulle about his neighbours across the Rhine springs back to mind - a people, not a nation. Certainly, it was (numerically speaking) the greatest of the European peoples, endowed with an economy on a global scale and with a cultural heritage as enviable as it was recent but incapable of crossing the shadowy line that distinguished economic might from geopolitical influence and the anguished quest for an identity from mature self-awareness. Not a leader, in other words.

How could a people that continued to walk in fear of the very word "power" turn into one? The stagnant Germany of today seems to confirm the scepticism voiced by former Chancellor [Helmut] Schmidt when he explained that he had no faith "in our people's political constancy" - an extreme expression of the German Germanophobia that dooms Berlin to playing a supporting actor's role on the world stage because it fears what it would do in a leading role.

History tells us that Germany's problems are Europe's problems, so the ambiguous outcome of the German elections is dire news for Europe. This weak, divided, hesitant Germany is more dangerous to us than if it were strong and assertive. Nor is that all - it confirms that we are all sailing close to the coast, seeing that continental integration is inconceivable without Germany to the fore, among those pointing the way, as the great chancellors of the second half of the 20th century, from Konrad Adenauer to Helmut Kohl, managed to do. But not Gerhard Schroeder, and it is highly dubious whether whoever succeeds him - himself included - will want or be able to chart a route for Europe, being too busy charting one for Germany.

Being located at the centre of Europe is not enough to be its centre. Whatever government constellation may be set to take shape over the coming weeks, the Federal Republic looks doomed to introversion. [Passage omitted]

This vote's impact on Berlin's international position is far less easy to predict. The real geopolitical novelty ushered in by Schroeder has been alignment with Paris and Moscow, and a consequent break-away from Washington. We do not know to what extent this was strategic or merely a result of the outgoing chancellor's legendary opportunism (his friends call it pragmatism). One of the reasons why he has remained at the helm so far is his decision to oppose [US President George] Bush's adventure in Iraq, pandering to the overwhelming majority of his compatriots' fundamental pacifism. However, [French President Jacques] Chirac's and Schroeder's self- isolation on the Mesopotamian issue has confirmed that the Franco- German "locomotive" is idling. It is a clinch that is keeping the continent's two heavyweights locked together but is failing to transfer momentum to their partners in the European Union.

Schroeder has not repented about loosening the Westbindung - the pre-unification Federal Republic's undisputed postulate whereby the Western bond marked the confines of German foreign policy's narrow room for manoeuvre. On the contrary, his last deed on the international scene has been to sign an agreement on a gas pipeline under the Baltic with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, a highly geopolitical project - the future pipeline will mean that Germany will vitally depend on Russian fuel supplies, thus forming a prime strategic axis. The Poles and the Baltic peoples, bypassed by the pipeline, are proclaiming a "latter-day Rapallo" [1922 German- Russian treaty re-establishing diplomatic and trading relations]. The Americans are taking note, pending ways of punishing the Russian- German agreement, which challenges the very meaning of Atlantic victory in the Cold War.

Had the CDU [Christian Democratic Union] - CSU [Christian Social Union] - FDP [Free Democratic Party] coalition won, we would perhaps have seen a return to Germany's well-practised Euro-Atlantic (Franco- American) balancing act and the already-tiny chance of bringing Turkey into the European Union would have verged on absolute zero. Instead, anything is currently possible, until we find out who is to head the new German government and with what majority.

As for us Italians and other Europeans, we are watching Germany's contortions with a vague sense of powerlessness. In the absence of any semblance of a political Europe whosoever, our voices sound weak and exotic to the distracted German ears. That is the paradox currently facing the Europeans - our problems are similar, if not identical, the solutions are to be found on continental scale (at least) but none of us is continuing to address them with yesterday's mind and the day-before-yesterday's heart. Not even "Greater Europe" has decided what to do when it grows up.

Source: BBC Monitoring European

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