New German Leadership, Or Just A New Wrapper?

Angela Merkel (née Kasner), Chancellor of Germany was born in Hamburg, Germany. With her newly sworn in cabinet, she is the first female Chancellor of Germany, the first former citizen of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) to lead the re-unified Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation state in 1871. One wonders what former strongmen like Bismark and Konrad Adenauer would think? Well, it really doesn't matter, she is there now, and relationships between Germany and America my never be the same.

The United States has had an up and down history with female leaders, Margaret Thatcher of England, Golda Mier of Israel, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Corazon Aquino of Philippines and Indira Gandhi of India. Strong women all, and always having an effect on the United States relationships with that country. Will the relationships with Germany then, be different with Merkel as Chancellor?

Merkel, as was noted, was born in Hamburg, but raised in communist East Germany. In 1990 she was elected to the Bundestag. Merkel became a member of the CDU and was picked by Helmut Kohl to be the Minister of Women and Youth. In 1998, strugling with the increased costs of reunification, the Kohl government was defeated by Gerhard Schröder.

So, a new day is dawning in Germany, a new Chancellor, a tough, conservative female. What does that portend for future relationships between Germany and the United States? To begin with, much of the diplomatic warfare between these two countries had been "poisoned" by Schröder's choice to lambast the US over the Iraq war. He shamefully used increasing anti-americanism in Europer and Germany to get himself re-elected in 2002. Merkel had come out in favor of supporting the US invasion of Iraq as "unavoidable." Leading up to the elections in 2005, the CDU was significantly ahead of the SPD by some 21%. However, Merkel proposed Paul Kirchhof as head of fiscal policy but Kirchhof proposed an addition of a flat tax and Merkel proposed an increase in the value added tax to fill in the funding gaps. Both proposals convinced many Germans that the CDU was snuggling up to the rich at the expense of the poor. The CDU lost ground and the SPD merely held a position that there would be no flat tax or an increase in the VAT.

The election was extremely close with the CDU and its allies garnering 35.2% of the vote and the SPD and its allies garnering 34.2%. Both Merkel and Schröder claiming victory. Finaly, after a couple of months wrangling, a "grand coalition" was formed and Merkel named Chancellor.

The US and Germany have a long history of rocky relationships. From a previous posting:

German/American or Deutsch/Amerikanisch have, since the beginning of World War I, had a rocky relationship. Yet, our two countries are bound by more than just being adversaries, we share more common bonds than most people realize. From the first German settlers in 1683 through out the early and mid 1900's Germans came to this country in droves. . . Americans claiming German ancestry number more than 60 million, fully one fifth of our population according to the 2000 census. Our language is peppered with German words from "Cobalt" to "Waltz," from "Frankfurter" to "Sauerkraut." We have been friends, enemies and nodding acquaintences."

Merkel's ascendency to the chancellorship of Germany may be the beginning of a new chapter in the dance between our two countries. She has good conservative credentials that please many American conservatives, she quoted (actually, plagerized a la Biden) passages from Ronald Reagan in her debates with Schröder, but she has a liberal streak in her too. She noted that "The state has to be the Gardner, not the fence." Many on this side of the atlantic would dispute that. Much of Germany's economic and political problems today are that the state has over-watered, over-fertalized and under-pruned the garden.

I have observed Germany from afar for many decades, the German people are industrious, hard working and dynamic. If left alone, the boom would probably be stupendous. But, Germany, like France, Belgium, England is the "Nanny State." Its citizens have figured out that they can vote in the individuals and parties that will hand out the most goodies. One result of this social tinkering has been the growth of unemployment in Germany of a seasonally adjusted rate of 11.5%. and the unemployment amoung its "guest workers" (Gastarbeiter) are primarily of Turkish descent or immigrants, as many now, as three generations worth is greater than 21%. Germans view Turks with suspicion primarily for two, and possibly three reasons. First was September 11, 2001 and second the murder of Theo van Goeh, and the possible third? Muslim rioting in France.

How this will play out in the US-German dance is unclear but the issue cannot be ignored.

Germany has a problem according to Aaron Erlich:

Starting in the 1950s, to feed the post World War II economic miracle, Germany signed bilateral agreements with poorer Mediterranean countries to import guestworkers to fill vacant positions in the booming industrial economy. The first guestworkers came from southern European countries, mainly Italy, Croatia, Spain, and Greece. As these sources of labor dried up, the German authorities moved further afield. In the 1960s and 70s millions of Turks came to work in Germany. This Turkish population soon overtook all of the other guestworker populations and today 2,375,000 people of Turkish origin live in Germany and comprise approximately thirty percent of all those of foreign descent."

"Turks in Germany are not the educated elites from Ankara or Istanbul but come from the Anatolian Plain, a place that has not taken on the trappings of modernity and remains a cultural backwater."

So, while both countries struggle with Islamic identity within their boundaries, both countries work on their economic growth (and here the US is outstripping the German effort by far) and both countries consider how their respective leaders get along, a new day is dawning. As Angela Merkel stated in her first address to the Bundestag and reported by the German Embassy in Washington, “Let us dare to have more freedom,�... alluding to a call by Willy Brandt in 1969 to dare to have more democracy. “Let us release the brakes on growth. Let us free ourselves from bureaucracy and old-fashioned regulations.�

New conservative leadership, or the old liberal leadership in a new wrapper? Time will tell.

Posted by GM Roper at December 1, 2005 07:42 AM | TrackBack