Schröder winning in Germany by losing in the US

By Emma O”Brien October 2002

Jubilant after a close win for his red/green coalition in Sunday’s elections, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder now faces the task of winning back the favour of the US. After pre-election comments by an SPD minister comparing Bush with Hitler, and Schröder’s firmly oppositional stance to an attack on Iraq, the task won’t be an easy one.

After a tension-filled election night that saw the result swing from a close win for the Social-Democrat/Greens coalition, to victory for the Union and the neo-liberal Free Democratic party, then back to red/green within the space of a few hours, Schröder and his cabinet met early Monday morning. Healing the US-German relationship was number one on the list of post-election must-dos.

From France they came, Russia, Great Britain and the European Union: letters and phone calls of congratulation for Germany’s re-elected Chancellor. Of all the government heads to offer the victorious Schröder their best wishes, George Bush was not one of them. Washington stayed silent in what is being viewed on both sides as a pointed snub against the Social Democrat for his anti-Iraq war stance (even with a UN mandate), throughout the election campaign.

Finally, on Monday afternoon, the White House issued a statement. “The German voters have spoken,” said the spokesperson. “The USA will continue to work with the German government on issues of mutual interest.” The comments are being described in the German media as intentionally cold and disapproving. When asked if Bush had any intention of contacting Schröder to congratulate him, as is standard between leaders of democratic nations, the spokesman had “no comment”.

Schröder’s seemingly steadfast ‘No’ to an Iraq attack – credited with securing him victory – is not the only thing to get up the US nose. Just days before Sunday’s election, a member of Schröder’s cabinet, Justice Minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin, came under fire from both sides of the Atlantic for being quoted in a local rag comparing Bush’s war-mongering over Iraq with the methods practised by Hitler in the lead-up to 1939. The scandal made the front of The New York Times, and elicited a scathing response from Republican firebrand and US Security Affairs Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. Rice said the US-German relationship had been “poisoned” by the comments. “How can you compare George Bush, the President of the United States, with Hitler?” she said.

In a last-minute attempt to placate the situation, Schröder sent Bush a letter reportedly apologising for his minister’s comments. The US did not accept the gesture as a satisfactory apology. “We read it more as an explanation than an apology,” said Chief White House press spokesman, Ari Fleischer (whose name, incidentally, translates as ‘butcher’ in German).

In Poland for a meeting of NATO, US Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld was similarly acerbic. Echoing Rice, he also labelled the countries’ bilateral relationship as poisoned, and professed no plans to meet with his German counterpart, Peter Struck, arriving in Warsaw on Tuesday.

Germany’s major national broadsheet, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, quoted one NATO representative as describing the relationship between the US and Germany as “heavily damaged … Germany will have great difficulty saving face in this situation,” said the representative.

Germany’s most popular politician, the Greens’ Joschka Fischer, has retained his position as Foreign Minister and is expected to soon head to Washington where, unlike Schröder, he is much liked. The former factory worker, taxi driver and left-wing dissident has been credited for much of the Greens’ success in the polls. The party scored 8.6% of the primary vote, up almost 2% on their 1998 election result.

Back on the home front Schröder is continuing to weed his cabinet in order to make room for an extra cabinet position for the Greens, who are expected to get justice minister on top of retaining the foreign, agricultural and environment portfolios. Schröder is also expected to make changes in the ministries for women and family and employment.

The conservative Union, running on early results on election night declaring them the majority party in parliament, cheered along to the premature victory speech of their leader Edmund Stoiber. Yet by the end of the night their result was equal with the SPD’s at 38.5%, and the poor performance of their most likely coalition partner, the FDP, reduced Stoiber’s Chancellorship hopes to rubble. In a spirited address to the press on Monday morning in his native Bavaria, where his party polled almost 60%, Stoiber declared the fight not yet won, predicting the fall of Schröder’s coalition. With final results giving red/green a six seat majority, that looks unlikely.

Stoiber has said he will remain Premier of Bavaria, Germany’s biggest, and richest, state, ceding the party leadership to former East German, Angela Merkel. Stoiber is scheduled to make a three-week trip to the US, and repairing US-German relations is one of his reported priorities.

The big losers were most definitely the Free Democrats and the post-communist Party of German Socialists (PDS), the successor to the SED party of the former GDR. The FDP, whose campaign focused on lowering tax, were hurt by statements against Israel made by their Vice-President throughout the campaign that have been widely perceived as anti-semitic. Jurgen Mollemann criticised Ariel Sharon in an interview with the neo-nazi youth newspaper and then featured attacks on Israel’s defence minister in his campaign material. He stood down immediately after the election, taking full responsibility for the party’s miserable 7.3%, which lost them the status of being the third biggest force in the German parliament.

The PDS came out of Sunday’s election decimated, winning only two directly elected seats in Berlin and only 4% of the party vote – 1% short of fielding up to 25 candidates in the Bundestag. Under Germany’s Mixed Member Proportional election system, when a party wins 5% of the party vote it automatically gets a large number of ‘listed’ candidates in parliament, even if those candidates have not won in a particular electorate. The party leaders met at their headquarters in the ‘Karl-Liebkneckt House’ in Berlin on the Monday after the election to dissect their poor performance and diminished popularity in the east, where support for the SPD was particularly high.

Amidst all of this, Adolf Hitler’s name continues to pop up. Yet another outspoken politician, this time on the Union side, compared the red/green win with the propaganda-driven Nazi victory of 1932. Angela Merkel, the new Union head and likely Chancellor candidate for 2006, distanced herself from the party member’s statement. “Such comments are unacceptable,” she said. The member himself, a former historian from Berlin, refused to apologise and retract his remarks.

The re-elected government has a host of problems it must take on to prove itself to the German electorate, including reducing unemployment and fostering economic growth, which last year lagged at 0.5%. Resolving their response on Iraq, however, is definitely the most important priority.

When asked by journalists in New Jersey on the Monday after the election about his stance on Germany’s refusal to take part in an attack on Iraq, George Bush replied: “I have made it clear to the world, that you are either for us or for the enemy, and this will continue to be my doctrine.”

With Britain’s unbridled support for the Iraq war, recently backed up by the release of a British government paper on the extent of Iraq’s weapon capabilities, and with possible UN endorsement, Germany, as the largest mainland European economy, is certainly under extreme pressure to join the Bush offensive. Yet within Germany, Schröder’s win is being viewed as the electorate giving red-green ‘one last chance’. Their majority is relatively slim, which means just six of them would have to cross the floor if the decision to become involved in Iraq came to a vote. But if Schröder and his coalition were to renege on their main election promise it would be viewed by voters as not just hypocritical, but unforgivable.