Architects of Delusion: Europe, America, and the Iraq War by Simon Serfaty

Author:Simon Serfaty [Serfaty, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Europe, Western, Political Science, History, General
ISBN: 9780812203424
Google: IAKX-QTCRfIC
Goodreads: 17940521
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2007-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Travails of Leadership

In September 1998, Gerhard Schroeder’s election was a benchmark in Germany’s postwar history—arguably the birth date of yet another Germany.42 As compared to Kohl, who had been in his early teens in 1945—and thus still too young to fight but old enough to remember—Schroeder had been barely one year old when the war ended. Unlike his predecessors, therefore, he felt no guilt about Germany’s past and did not share their complexes about Germany’s future relative to France, Britain, or any of Germany’s neighbors in Europe, including Russia but also Poland.

War was not even part of Schroeder’s vocabulary—a defining conviction that had predated the end of the Cold War and from which Schroeder did not shy when he named Joschka Fischer, a radical from the 1968 days, foreign minister. Unlike any of his predecessors, the new German chancellor did not view Europe as an obligation but as a choice that Germany could now make on its own terms—a choice, that is, to lead or to follow, and if the latter, whom to follow; to abstain or to participate, and if so, where; to influence or to coerce, and if so, when. Nor did the new chancellor share his predecessors’ ever-present need to acknowledge what America had done for and in postwar Germany. Rather, he preferred to acknowledge America for what it was and ought to remain—the apostle of a hard liberalism that would know how to use its awesome power with moderation and compassion. In short, Schroeder was a German with a sharp tongue and a short memory, but he had no inclination to wear his forefathers’ boots or helmets. Admittedly, the twentieth century had ended on a good note for Germany, but now that the first postwar generations of German leaders had conquered the nation’s past, the successor generations could readily address the new issues of the twenty-first century with no complexes and without fearing criticism for their behavior, however firm or even confrontational that behavior might be.

In this context, Germany’s dependence on France looked like an imposition that had outlived its usefulness. For one, it kept Britain away from Germany and the United States ambivalent about Europe. Schroeder wanted to escape this condition and actively explore other diplomatic horizons, with Britain in Europe as well as with the United States within the Atlantic Alliance.43 That meant a will to engage Blair, whom he personally liked. But that also meant partnering with Clinton, especially as Schroeder (like Blair) associated the U.S. president with his own struggle to move his party to the center of Germany’s political spectrum—just as Schroeder had done personally when he had left behind his early dissenting days at the fringe of German politics. This, Schroeder and his followers felt, was a new Germany in a new Europe, and there was nothing left to fear from a new German way that would insist publicly on the need for close consultation “not just about the how and the when, but also,” and most ominously, “about the whether.

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