“Death to the Aspen Institute”

A gentleman who approached me in front of the swank shops on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin echoed similar sentiments. “I’m a friend of America’s,” he insisted. But he added that he was “so disgusted” by American behavior in the world, he would never visit the States again. Another friend of the United States–a businessman who insists he’s really not anti-American–sends me e-mails with photographs of Iraqis injured or killed in the war. One comes with the inscription: “You disgust me.” Another: “I’d like to hit you in the head with these photos.”

Whatever you call it, these can be tricky days for an American in Berlin. There’s the coarser stuff. The signs and chants of demonstrators like: “Baghdad=Dresden,” “Bush=Hitler,” “USA=Mass Murder Central,” “North Korea Needs Nuclear Weapons,” and so forth. Then there’s the fan mail (I spend a lot of time on German television defending the war against Saddam Hussein) that says I’m a “war criminal,” a “coward,” an “ideological pornographer,” a “son of whore,” a “U.S. Goebbels,” a “mentally ill asshole,” a “Jew f—er,” and, incidentally, that I am “not welcome here.” One woman named Stephanie (yes, they often sign these) calls for “death to the Aspen Institute.”

Stranger than all this, though, is the mainstreaming of, shall we say, those skeptical and ambivalent attitudes toward the United States. A high school teacher arrived at the Aspen Institute with 45 students before the war for a discussion of the issues of the day. The teacher himself asked whether a motive for the war was the need for the Pentagon to test its newest weapons (he was not kidding).

You might even get the feeling some do not want us to win the war. A television anchor asked a military expert about the U.S. technological edge and wondered aloud whether this war was really “a fair fight.” A recent letter to the editor of Die Zeit explains the dilemma: “Josef Joffe wants a quick end to the war. I have an internal conflict. Of course, I want an end to the suffering of the Iraqi people . . . but I do not want America rewarded for this illegal policy.” Gerhard Schröder himself finally announced that he wanted the coalition to prevail–but only late in the game when U.S. troops stood 15 miles outside Baghdad.

What is this all about? Of course, there are differing views on Iraq, disarmament, international law, and the United Nations. After two world wars and the Holocaust, some Germans still have a strong pacifist streak, too–and thank God some will say. But it’s not hard to think that the German-Iraq debate is ultimately not about Iraq at all.

Wir sind wieder Wer! (We’re somebody again!) It’s a core theme. We Americans surely underestimated how difficult it must have been for our allies to play junior partner during the Cold War. Especially, perhaps, for Germany. At least France was never divided and had nuclear weapons and its independent foreign policy. Germans have talked frequently in recent years about their “emancipation” from the United States. Berlin has been itching to play a leadership role in the new Europe–and for the E.U. to bestride the world stage. Alas. The Germans have a medium-sized country, with no permanent seat on the Security Council, spend meagerly on defense, face daunting economic challenges and a serious demographic crisis. Europe is divided. And those bloody, boasting Yankees keep going strong as ever.

Germany is changing. Schröder’s Social Democratic party (SPD) has become the party of “isms”: Gaullism, nationalism, pacifism, isolationism, E.U.-firstism, anti-Americanism–anything and everything but good old fashioned Atlanticism. Despite Angela Merkel’s pro-U.S. course, her Christian Democrats are divided. Karl Lamers, the recently retired foreign policy spokesman, rejects Germany’s role as a “passive appendage” of the United States. Helmut Kohl’s former press spokesman Peter Boenisch, who opposes the Iraq war, says preemption is a “crime,” even if it’s labeled “Made in the USA.” Boenisch says Germans will no longer accept it, “when Washington says: Everyone, follow my commands.”

Public opinion is no less estranged. According to a recent poll of the Allensbach Institute, 18 percent of the Germans believe America is a “peace loving” nation. Four out of five say Americans cannot be trusted. The German foreign ministry has become activist. A February cable from Germany’s U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, to Berlin called for a concerted campaign against the “U.S. Lobby machine.” The campaign included the attempt to join other Security Council members in blocking the Americans from using the U.N. as cover for an intervention in Iraq. It would be “better . . . to force the U.S. to act unilaterally” so that the Americans “would be seen as being forced to return . . . with regret to the Security Council” when it comes to the issue of reconstruction.

It’s popular to assert that this is all a reaction to George W. Bush. Let’s admit it. The American president has a language and body language that are not culturally legible for some parts of the world. There have been mistakes. The way the administration handled Kyoto was a fiasco. Nor has the selling of the war against Saddam been a roaring success either. We help at times to fuel the resentment.

But imagine if Bush were to pursue Euro-friendly things like the paying of our U.N. arrears, rejoining UNESCO, and pledging more foreign aid. And that, per our allies request, he were to remain engaged in the Balkans, seek partnership with Russia, act in Afghanistan multilaterally (90 nations no less!), or for that matter try to solve Iraq through the Security Council. Well, he did do all these things, with little to show.

It’s a national sport to ridicule the president. I just heard a businessman–to the laughter of the room–say, “What can you expect from a man who begins and ends every speech with a reference to God?” Like Sharon with Israel, Bush surely gives people a cover for expressing something deeper. As Hannes Stein, an editor at Die Welt, says, “The subconscious has no concept of time. And the truth is, some Germans have never forgotten being humiliated by gum-chewing black Americans who ‘liberated’ them from Hitler.” Conflicted feelings? A protester’s sign planted in front of the American embassy reads: “Mr. Bush, Remember Nürnberg 1945–Death by Hanging!”

What to do? For starters, “reconnect to the Germans through reconstruction in Iraq,” says one administration official, “if they are ready to join us on a ‘non-Gaullist’ basis.” Good idea. But what do the Germans really want?

Jeffrey Gedmin is director of the Aspen Institute Berlin.