How the US Went From ‘Older Brother’ to ‘Big Brother’

Saying goodbye to a great love is always painful, even if both promise they will always remain close friends. That’s a bit how it is with the relationship between Germany and the United States.

How greatly did we (West) Germans worship the Americans after World War II, or more recently, ever since our occupiers became our protectors first and finally, our friends. Of course, there were occasional low points in the relationship: the war in Vietnam and again with the invasion of Iraq, not to mention the whole George W. Bush administration, for example. However, a new wave of sympathy always followed these, most recently with the election of Barack Obama as president.

However, there’s a difference between what the U.S. does in other parts of the world — in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Guantanamo — and when we suddenly find ourselves a victim of U.S. activities where we previously thought of ourselves as their friends and partners: That’s how it currently is in Germany.

Many Germans, and most of all Chancellor Merkel, find themselves waking from a delusion. We recognize that all those pretty speeches about close ties and shared values — or simply put, the much-vaunted German-American relationship — don’t count for much, except when they apply only to American superpower interests. The much-idolized great love turns out to be just a frigid, despicable egoist.

The estrangement between the two nations has been going on for quite some time, beginning shortly after that fateful day: Sept. 11, 2001. Germany, more than anyone else, showed a deeply rooted solidarity with the United States, which then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder unwisely characterized as “unconditional,” but then, he ran into a totally different mood among his own people.

Many Germans thought this was an opportunity to pay back some of the solidarity they had enjoyed from the U.S. in the post-World War II era, only to be rejected because President George W. Bush and his ideologically blinded advisors didn’t see the change in attitude in much of the world as any reason to shift to a more cooperative foreign policy. Instead, they exploited the global situation in order to consolidate their own position as the world’s only remaining superpower.

Then came the drama of the Iraq invasion, which Gerhard Schröder initially supported. Angela Merkel had a different opinion. For the former East German resident, the U.S. had always been her dream destination. After the Berlin Wall fell, her first trip was to California, but this too became the start of the great disappointment she is experiencing today.

When she became chancellor, relations between Germany and the U.S. relaxed, and she even got along well with George W. Bush; Obama took an even more internationally oriented course. Hope arose that America under Obama was coming to its senses and returning to its previous values of democracy, liberty, and the welfare of its citizenry, but those hopes were dashed when they collided with the Washington power structure. The old adage held for Obama as it had for all other presidents: The man doesn’t change the office; the office changes the man.

This was never more clearly shown than his approval of, if not outright order for, Osama bin Laden’s assassination. Those who prefer to kill their enemies rather than arraign them in a court of law distance themselves further from the basic tenets of a constitutional government than the physical distance between Washington and Berlin. Merkel’s public approval of the assassination was a declaration of loyalty to the U.S. that Obama rewarded with the medal of freedom and a pretty speech, but nothing changed his government’s lack of respect for an ally to whom he only paid ample lip service at the time.

The Merkel government has been asking for explanations of America’s espionage activities in Germany and has repeatedly been put off and conned. Meanwhile, the U.S. intelligence community simply continues with its espionage activities. It’s typical for our government that they are quick to get angry, but it has since come to light that its agents have been investigating their own people. What’s with the wholesale spying on German citizens?

The American “older brother,” who first gave a helping hand to little Germany, has long since become “Big Brother,” the omnipresent guard. The German government now realizes that as well. The expulsion of a U.S. agent is the first symbolic act. Germany has begun to replace its naïve, fanciful trust of the U.S. with a sober and serious attitude, as painful as that may be.