Are We Still Friends?

In a recent Die Zeit article, Heinrich Welfing opined that Germany and the USA had shared values — at least in principle. What, just in principle? Not in practice?

With his restrictive approach, Welfing began to approach the question that should have been asked long ago — at least since the National Security Agency scandal and the latest revelations out of Washington concerning their mania for spying. Namely, do Germany and the United States still even have shared values, or after all the decades of “friendship flapdoodle,” as Hans-Ulrich Jörges called it in Der Stern magazine, did that dry up and blow away a long time ago?

There’s a good follow-up question that deserves a flapdoodle-free answer: Where, when and to what extent do German and American interests still overlap?

As far as shared values go, they existed principally during the 40 years of the Cold War, and mainly as the alternative to brutal communist dictatorships. This juxtaposition supplied the Western nations with an excuse to overlook their own shortcomings and differences. But when the east-west conflict ended, those came into the spotlight on center stage again, impossible to ignore.

The differences went beyond contradictory opinions on capital punishment and the constipated U.S. justice system that incarcerates 2.3 million people, 700 per every 1,000 Americans, the highest rate in the world. It’s also not about the various socio-economic philosophies that have resulted in unfettered American capitalism plunging the world into two financial and economic crises within ten years.

The major role was probably played by Washington’s use of military force to try to make the world a better place, particularly under George W. Bush. His superpower stumbling about in the Levant threw the entire Middle East into chaos. In Iraq and Afghanistan the United States lost, first and foremost, its moral superiority. Guantanamo, waterboarding and the extra-judicial treatment of suspects — including occasional torture — and turning them over to really unsavory nations for the same reason are among the things that prevent President Obama from repairing the damage to America’s reputation even to the present day.

On the contrary, Obama is allowing his 16 or 17 intelligence services to continue with their spy-mania. He of all people, a constitutional lawyer, no less, is undisturbed as he watches the NSA’s dragnet insanity pry away the rights of 300 million American citizens. That’s his business. But it’s our business that the allies, most significantly Germany, still allow the U.S. to monitor our telecommunications and spy on us against all rules of diplomatic decency and behavior between friends, a whole year after Edward Snowden exposed the extent of uncontrolled American espionage. Senator James Fulbright castigated that same arrogance of power in the 1960s, while Barack Obama sheds his friends’ outrage like water off a duck’s back.

Small wonder that German open-mindedness toward America is out the door; Germany’s big brother now looks literally like “Big Brother.” Trust has been destroyed. Can it ever be brought back?

That all depends on to what extent German and American interests can be aligned. If this can be accomplished to everyone’s satisfaction — and that may depend on foreign minister Steinmeier’s investigation findings — then the damaged community of values could be restored be that as it may. When one needs friends, even bad friends are better than none at all.

But it would certainly help if America would dial back its arrogance; if it would abandon its illusion of omnipotence as well as its innocence; and if it would pause and reflect that it need us in many respects as well. We should consider reviewing all the historical privileges Americans enjoy on German soil to see if they match up with agreements on the status of forces and NATO agreements. We have a bit of blackmail potential in that area, too.

Incidentally, maybe it’s time to revise Palmerston’s much-quoted dictum that “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” Perhaps it’s time to say the reverse is true: Nations have permanent friends and allies but sometimes divergent interests.