German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent meeting with the Dalai Lama at her official residence in Berlin has caused a strong political backlash, not only from Beijing but also, more surprisingly, from Merkel’s left-wing SPD coalition partner as well as Germany’s business community. The Chinese, for their part, reacted immediately by canceling a bilateral human rights conference and calling off a number of senior political bilateral meetings, including one between German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi at the UN General Assembly in New York. After the diplomatic fall-out with Beijing it was Steinmeier–a deputy SPD party chairman who was also made vice chancellor two weeks ago–who attacked Merkel in rather harsh terms, accusing her of pursuing short-sighted “display-window policies” vis-Ã -vis China that, in essence, harmed Germany’s long-term strategic and economic engagement with Asia’s key power. Finally, Germany’s leading business federation, BDI, called for “a return to constructive dialogue” after “the irritations of recent weeks” between Berlin and Beijing. Several German top CEOs had expressed concern that the Dalai Lama visit would negatively affect their business with China. Foreign minister Steinmeier also recently criticized Merkel’s Russia policy, arguing that the Chancellor was always “looking fearfully at how newspaper headlines back home” would view her relationship with President Putin, whom she has criticized repeatedly for the increasing violations of human rights and press freedom in Russia. To top it off, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made a very controversial statement in which he indirectly attributed Merkel’s “emotional,” human rights-based foreign policy to her upbringing in former Communist East Germany. The rather hard-nosed “realpolitik” approach proposed by Messrs. Steinmeier and Schroeder was backed up this week by veteran left-wing SPD politician Erhard Eppler, who published an op-ed titled “Europe can’t afford to antagonize Russia and China” in Munich’s influential daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. In essence, 80-year old Eppler, who served as German Development Minister from 1968-1974 and has long retired from elected office, argues that Europe and Germany must prepare for the advent of a multi-polar world in which countries such as Russia and China are on the rise while America is in decline.
The good news for Merkel so far is that, in general, more than 70 percent of the German population approve of her values-based foreign policy, which also puts a premium on environmental issues such as fighting global climate change. It remains to be seen whether the SPD party and Foreign Minister Steinmeier, a potential challenger to Merkel in the next federal elections to be held by the fall of 2009, can effectively attack the Chancellor’s foreign policy record, which until recently appeared to be unassailable and arguably her biggest trump card. However, it is certainly interesting to note that new opinion polls indicate Steinmeier’s political fortunes are on the rise. Since last week, for the first time ever, he’s now viewed as Germany’s “most important” politician; a position he wrestled from his boss Chancellor Merkel who dropped sharply in the ratings. Upcoming regional elections in several German state next spring and fall will provide a good indication of the relative strength of the conservative CDU/CSU parties and their current left-wing SPD “grand coalition” partner. In the meantime, Chancellor Merkel has vowed to hold true to her principled, value-based foreign policy. In a speech to the Bundestag on Wednesday she made her intentions very clear: “I will continue to chose the guests I meet and the places I visit based on what I see as being correctly in Germany’s interests.”
