America, the Baleful

This past summer, however, the German public television network ZDF shook up the seasonal television doldrums with a sensational three-part documentary titled simply The Bomb. Broadcast over three evenings in late July and early August, it was hosted (and co-written) by ZDF’s star primetime news anchor, the ever dour Claus Kleber. The tone of the 132-minute documentary is downright apocalyptic, promising nothing less than the “end of the world” if the nuclear issue is not tackled swiftly. To emphasize the urgency, each episode begins with a countdown recited by small children from around the world and interspersed with images of missiles and jet-fighters and mushroom clouds–and then a control panel switch being turned to “launch.”

The Bomb would appear to be good news for transatlantic relations and the prospects of forming a united European-American front against Iran, North Korea, and other potential nuclear proliferators.

Unless, that is, one watches it.

For the overriding message of The Bomb is that the nuclear threat is not constituted by Iran, North Korea, and other potential rogue possessors of nuclear weapons, but by the established nuclear powers and first and foremost by the United States. According to the odd sort of nuclear theology proposed by the film, it is the United States that committed the original sin by developing the first nuclear weapons, and the current risk of proliferation is merely the consequence of America’s transgression.

The viewer gets a first hint of this tenet barely two minutes into the film. Kleber is touring New York harbor with a police patrol boat assigned to protect the city from potential nuclear terror attacks. “The consequences of the Manhattan Project, the construction of the first bomb, come back to haunt its inventors–as a weapon of terror,” Kleber intones.

The consequences of the Manhattan Project? It is as if the Manhattan Project occurred in a vacuum rather than in the midst of the Second World War, with America racing to beat Nazi Germany to the bomb.

Later on in part one, Kleber sits down in Islamabad with Hendrina Kahn, the wife of the world’s most notorious proliferator of nuclear know-how: A.Q. Khan. Asked about the possibility of extremists taking control of the Pakistani government–and hence of its nuclear arsenal–Hendrina observes matter-of-factly, “but that’s the way it is with nuclear weapons.” Then, striking a schoolmarmish pose, she responds with a question of her own. “But who is the only country that has used them?” she asks, “You tell me.” Far from in any way challenging the pertinence of the question, The Bomb both underscores it and provides the answer by immediately cutting to a map of the United States.

The map is superimposed on images of snow-dusted American prairie rolling by a car window. Kleber is on his way to the nuclear weapons facility at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. As if dutifully following the instructions of Hendrina Kahn, he is going to view the root of the evil. As his car rolls up to four heavily armed soldiers guarding the gates of the missile command center, Kleber notes that the motto of the base is “extreme weapons, extreme standards.” “Absolute perfection,” he continues, “from carrying out the order for the apocalypse to the security check of the rare visitor.”

The style of Kleber’s interviews with military personnel resembles that of Sacha Baron Cohen’s fictional television journalist Borat–but without the humor. The interviews are set-ups. Kleber has a point to make about the evil of American nuclear power and the unsuspecting servicemen and women are mere props. Thus, in one particularly creepy sequence, Kleber stares into space with a bored expression as his guide, Lieutenant Colonel David Stone, enumerates various physical features of the underground command module. Then, all of a sudden, Kleber cuts to the chase: “But you don’t have any decisions to make, right? You are all just a tool of a political decision that is made far above your heads, and you are personally not responsible for anything.”

As the narration has only just specified that the political decision in question would unleash “the apocalypse,” the question is loaded. Reared on guilt-ridden debates about the personal responsibility of German soldiers in Nazi war crimes–the famous “just taking orders” motif–it is even more obviously loaded for a German audience.

“That is absolutely right,” a wide-eyed Stone replies.

Watching the two-person team in the command module practicing a launch drill, Kleber observes that “stress and routine convert young soldiers into machines.” The remark is especially heavy with contempt given that Kleber has only just finished interviewing the two soldiers about their personal reasons for volunteering for the duty.

Base commander Colonel Michael Fortney attempts to explain to Kleber the rationale for the existence of the facility, noting, reasonably enough, that nuclear weapons “cannot be uninvented,” that “the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.” But he might as well be talking to a wall. The common sense of the American officer cannot dampen the religious fervor of the German anchorman. A glum-looking Kleber is next shown staring through a chain-link fence at the concrete top of the command center. “For years I have tried to understand the doctrine of [nuclear] deterrence from books,” Kleber intones, “and then a concrete cover in the Montana prairie makes clear to me what it means. We have truly constructed the gates to Hell.” Viewers may be forgiven for failing to comprehend just how a slab of concrete could have provoked Kleber’s epiphany. But they will, in any case, have understood that the “we” is merely a figure of speech. In ZDF’s The Bomb, there is just one guilty party.

If the segment in Montana is characterized by palpable disdain for the American military personnel and their mission, the long segment in Tehran displays empathy and even unabashed admiration for Iran’s nuclear “achievements.” Over images of a high-tech Iranian nuclear installation and yellow-cake being spun in a giant vat, Kleber comments:

“George Bush dared to include Iran in the Axis of Evil: the ancient and cultured nation of Iran,” Kleber continues, before adding with a dash of schadenfreude: “They showed him.” Instead of being an entirely predictable outcome of the weakness of the U.N. sanctions regime, the progress of the Iranian nuclear program is stylized by Kleber and ZDF into an “almost incomprehensible” demonstration of the greatness of Iranian civilization.

Kleber’s amazement is all the more unwarranted in light of Germany’s large role in blocking harsher sanctions. In September 2007, Germany reportedly broke ranks with its Western allies in the “P5+1” group (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) and opposed sanctions aimed at forcing Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities. At around the same time, French president Nicolas Sarkozy was pitching a plan for the EU independently to apply sanctions on Iran. Under the Sarkozy proposal, the EU states would bypass the U.N. Security Council and form a sort of economic “coalition of the willing” with the United States. This proposal too was opposed by Germany.

Germany’s recalcitrance is especially significant given the crucial importance of its products to the Iranian economy. According to official statistics, Germany is Iran’s second largest supplier of imports, trailing only the United Arab Emirates. Since the UAE is known to serve as a transit country for imports ultimately originating elsewhere, Germany is presumably in fact Iran’s largest supplier. (In November 2007, the German ambassador to Tehran, Herbert Honsowitz, told Iran’s Press TV that “a significant part” of German exports to Iran were being routed via the UAE.) Just as important as the volume is the largely industrial nature of the goods exported to Iran by Germany. Given Iranian industry’s well-known preference for the “made in Germany” label, there is reason to doubt that the high-tech robots and machine tools shown in the ZDF documentary were in fact “made in Iran,” as Kleber admiringly suggests. As it so happens, in December 2007 the German wire service ddp, citing intelligence sources, reported that an Iranian smuggling ring was acquiring prohibited dual-use technologies from German suppliers.

“For his nuclear program, Ahmadinejad can always play the national card,” Kleber says over images of the Iranian president reviewing a military parade: “This is to say, the memory that Iraq invaded Iran”–and then after a dramatic pause–“with American help.” The “with American help” is tossed out without any substantiation or explanation. The viewer is given no idea in what the alleged American help is supposed to have consisted. What we do know, however, is that the Iranians themselves received American help: the covert arms shipments at the heart of the Iran-contra scandal. The film makes no mention of this fact.

“The war began in 1980 and lasted eight terrible years. No one here has forgotten,” Kleber continues. “This is so deeply entrenched in the national consciousness that with words alone a Barack Obama cannot smooth over it.” Smooth over what? Again, the insinuation is that America was somehow responsible for Iranian suffering. In case anyone might miss the point, Kleber narrates these words as he is seen walking past a mural of Lady Liberty with a death’s head on the background of the American flag. The viewer is even treated to a close-up.

Over images of mourners reciting prayers in a cemetery near the Imam Khomeini Mausoleum, Kleber remarks that he has “never seen so many young people in a military graveyard.” “The oath that Iran must never again be permitted to be so defenseless is also their oath.” Moments later, he is visiting a small shop in Tehran that sells portraits of Iranian “martyrs” and graphic images of victims of atrocities. “That’s horrible,” Kleber notes dryly, as a shop clerk shows him a photo of a decapitated body, “Nobody wants to see that.” “People have to know what happened to our fighters on the front,” the shop clerk explains. “The American criminals with their helpers and the Iraqis committed these crimes against our sons.” Far be it from Kleber to disagree, let alone to ask just how Americans were supposed to have been involved in the unfortunate man’s beheading.

Kleber does wonder vaguely what it would mean “if such fanaticism was armed with nuclear weapons” and, over images of yet another anti-American mural in Tehran, he notes that “a country that glorifies martyrdom cannot do without enemies.” At no point, however, does he suggest that a nuclear Iran might pose a specific threat to any other country. The Iranian regime’s virulent hostility to Israel, for example, is never mentioned. While the camera repeatedly dwells on the regime’s anti-American propaganda, Kleber and his crew appear somehow to have missed the anti-Israeli murals in Tehran. The overall effect of the segment, moreover, is to suggest that Iran’s enemies are by no means imaginary and that its pursuit of nuclear weapons is not in fact driven by fanaticism, but rather by rational self-interest.

Since America and the other traditional nuclear powers are identified by The Bomb as being at the metaphysical root of the problem, it follows, of course, that the elimination of the nuclear threat must begin with their disarmament. On the view of Kleber and ZDF, nuclear proliferation is merely a secondary issue and it will apparently take care of itself once the established nuclear powers take the plunge into denuclearization. America is clearly invited to jump first.

“It is only a matter of time and of place when and where the next Hiroshima happens,” Kleber says in concluding part one of the series,

In part three, subtitled “Ending the Madness,” Kleber interviews outgoing IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. “I can’t continue with a straight face to go and tell those who do not have nuclear weapons that I need to tighten the screws and have better verification,” ElBaradei tells him,

“Are you saying,” Kleber asks, “that if the old nuclear powers, like Russia and America, do not renounce their weapons, this could mean the end of the world?” “Absolutely,” ElBaradei responds. Or at least in the German voiceover, ElBaradei appears to be assenting to a proposition of downright apocalyptic significance. The interview is conducted in English, however, and Kleber’s actual words are audible. What he in fact asked ElBaradei is whether there “will not be a sustainable system.”

Henry Kissinger is repeatedly trotted out by the ZDF producers as a sort of unimpeachable star witness on behalf of their disarmament agenda: unimpeachable because, as Kleber reminds us, he was once himself a hawk. On ZDF’s account, he has in the meanwhile done an “astounding about-face.” There is little evidence, however, of any about-face in what Kissinger actually says to Kleber. In keeping with his recent statements in the American press, he emphasizes the dangers posed by proliferators, not any ostensible danger emanating from the established nuclear powers–much less any supposed need for the latter unilaterally to disarm.

It is thus left to the chainsmoking German elder statesmen Helmut Schmidt to sum up the message of the film. Asked about the potential for a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, Schmidt responds:

It should be recalled that the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to which Schmidt refers were also the five major Allied powers that defeated the Axis in World War II. On the other hand, one of the supposedly underprivileged states that, on Schmidt’s account, was pressured into renouncing its right to nuclear weapons was, of course, the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. The former Wehrmacht officer Schmidt was the country’s minister of defense when West Germany signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1969. He would become chancellor five years later. It is hardly surprising that a film that propagates such a resentment-laden view of the NPT would display sympathy for the nuclear aspirations of Iran.

According to conventional wisdom, the divisions in the P5+1 group are a matter of West versus East. But as the very designation P5+1 ought to remind us, there is another more substantial division affecting the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program: namely, to paraphrase ElBaradei, between the P5 nuclear “haves” consecrated by the NPT and the “have-nots.”

As haves, all the P5 powers, including Russia and China, share an objective and obvious interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and thus crashing their still relatively exclusive club. As a have-not, Germany does not. Indeed, that Germany has, in effect, adopted the role of champion of the nuclear have-nots is one of the main theses of a heavily documented new book on German-Iranian relations by political scientist–and WEEKLY STANDARD contributor–Matthias Küntzel. (The book is thus far available only in German.)

If ZDF’s proselytism for nuclear disarmament sounds oddly similar to the tenor of recent pronouncements by a certain American politician, it is no accident. In ZDF’s theological narrative of sin and impending apocalypse, Barack Obama is clearly assigned the role of redeemer. “We had ignored the nuclear threat,” Kleber intones at the start of part one over images of Taliban fighters and Osama bin Laden, “A dangerous mistake, which has perhaps now been recognized only just in time.” And then cut to a clip of Barack Obama solemnly declaring in Prague in April 2009: “The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons.”

We ignored the nuclear threat? In light of eight years of a Bush administration that placed combating nuclear proliferation at the very center of its foreign policy agenda, the claim is as mindboggling as it is revisionist. The full effect of the voiceover and images is even more perverse. The Bush administration constantly warned of the special dangers of rogue nuclear states joining forces with terrorist organizations.

But the actual meaning of the phrase becomes clearer once we realize that the nuclear threat in question is not in fact the threat posed by proliferation, but rather that ostensibly represented by the very existence of nuclear weapons–including those in the possession of the United States. Thus, part three likewise starts with Obama and the very same speech in Prague. Now, however, the real novelty of Obama’s speech is brought into focus. “The world is moving towards nuclear conflict in more places than ever before,” Kleber intones as the camera pans over a crowd milling around in Hradcany Square. “Without leadership,” he continues. And then after a slight pause: “Until now.” At which point we are looking at the face of Obama.

“The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War,” Obama says. “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he continues. (In the actual speech, this phrase in fact preceded Obama’s pledge.) Obama’s remark about America’s “moral responsibility,” in effect, completes a thought introduced by Kleber in the segment in Tehran: the suggestion that “words alone” cannot undo the harm caused by America’s alleged acts of aggression against Iran. If not words, then what? Obama’s Prague speech provides the answer: America must disarm–as penance for its previous “crimes.”

The Bomb concludes with yet another Obama speech: then-candidate Obama’s July 2008 address in Berlin. The speech is portrayed by ZDF as a sort of Sermon on the Mount in which the antinuclear messiah begins his earthly ministry. “It began among us,” Kleber says proudly, “in Berlin.” “This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama tells the cheering throngs. “This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.” The words seemed so otherworldly at the time that they were hardly even noticed by American commentators. But they were not so novel for Germans. For ZDF’s myth of Obama as prophet of a “redeemed” nuclear-free world is just that: a myth. It may well have begun in Berlin. But it did not begin with Obama.

“The danger of a dramatic propagation of nuclear-armed states and the associated massive loss of security underscore the need to stick to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.” Those words were spoken in Berlin two years before Obama’s speech, by then German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The occasion was a conference organized by Steinmeier’s Social Democratic party (SPD) on the topic of “Achieving Peace through Disarmament.”

Discussions underway at the U.N. would shortly give rise to the new P5+1 format for negotiations with Iran. Just one week earlier, in conversation with the news weekly Der Spiegel, Steinmeier made it clear that the German perspective on the issue was hugely different from that of the P5 powers. “We are for the effective application of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Steinmeier told Der Spiegel (May 17, 2006):

Thereafter Steinmeier ceaselessly beat the drum for nuclear disarmament. In keeping with the thesis of his party comrade Schmidt, moreover, he would always take pains to suggest a “close connection” (as he put it in a speech at -Harvard University in 2008) between disarmament and nonproliferation. “If we emphasize and insist on nonproliferation, at the same time we must create a new dynamic in favor of nuclear disarmament,” he stated in a declaration issued on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the IAEA. “Only if the possessors of nuclear weapons disarm will others be prepared to do without them in the long term.”

By shifting the burden onto the established nuclear powers, Steinmeier provided an obvious escape hatch for Iran in the ongoing negotiations on its nuclear program. After all, on Steinmeier’s account, the P5 powers were not complying with their obligations either. “We have put disarmament back on the international agenda,” Steinmeier proudly told the Kölnische Rundschau in early July 2008, three weeks before Obama’s Berlin speech.

Steinmeier has a brief cameo in The Bomb. The film touts his “concrete plan” for an international nuclear fuel bank, which would ostensibly render the nuclear programs of countries like North Korea and Iran superfluous. “But before such a way out is even conceivable,” Kleber notes, “the great powers must take the first step and themselves disarm.”

Obama’s disarmament rhetoric is taken over wholesale from the nuclear disarmament campaign launched by Steinmeier and the German SPD. In Obama’s usage, however, it is shorn of the argumentation that makes explicit the grave implications for international efforts to prevent an Iranian bomb. It is likewise, of course, removed from the specific German context of historical resentments and strategic interests that lends some sense to such rhetoric. From the point of view of American interests and sensibilities, it clearly makes no sense at all. It is undoubtedly on account of this disembodied, selfless character that Obama’s own disarmament campaign has taken on the trappings of a quasi-religious mission.

If there is good news for Americans–or indeed for anyone concerned about halting Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power–it is that the SPD went down to a crushing defeat to Angela Merkel and her Christian Democrats in September’s general elections. With Steinmeier as the party’s candidate for chancellor, the SPD garnered merely 23 percent of the vote: the party’s worst result in the postwar era. As a consequence, Chancellor Merkel has been able to forgo the Social Democrats as coalition partners, and Steinmeier is now in the opposition. In her new coalition–with the Free Democratic party (FDP)–Chancellor Merkel should have greater control over German foreign policy, and she is perhaps the most genuinely Atlanticist politician in all of Germany. Her stated positions on the Iranian nuclear program are hardline not only by German standards, but also by American.

German governments, however, come and go. The German state remains, and an underlying strain of hostility to American power is firmly anchored in German state institutions and cuts across the German political spectrum. Inasmuch as it is a publicly funded network, ZDF’s The Bomb is itself evidence of this. Only days before the elections, the series was awarded the German television prize for “Best News Report.”

Further symptomatic evidence is provided by the Berlin address at which the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats negotiated the contract that forms the basis for their coalition. The meetings took place at the Berlin offices of the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia on .  .  . Hiroshima Street.

Germany’s new foreign minister, FDP chief Guido Westerwelle, has embraced the “goal of a world without nuclear weapons” in terms that are barely distinguishable from those of his predecessor. He has even called for all American nuclear warheads to be removed from German territory as “Germany’s contribution” to achieving this goal. In the past, Westerwelle had also gone on record as opposing further economic sanctions on Iran. The coalition contract, however, states the government’s preparedness to adopt harsher sanctions “if necessary,” and during a recent trip to Israel, Westerwelle signaled his adherence to this line.

It remains to be seen whether Chancellor Merkel will be able to refocus German policy on the specific and immediate threat of a nuclear Iran. The domestic resistance to any such reorientation of German policy would inevitably be great. And why should the chancellor even try, after all, when the current administration in Washington appears to share ZDF’s view of the nuclear threat and is asking nothing of her?

John Rosenthal writes regularly on European politics and transatlantic relations. His work has appeared in such publications as Policy Review, the Claremont Review of Books, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur.