Stardate 20020923.1438

(Captain's log): Lee writes:

Just curious on your article last night about Germany: Given that Bush is supremely piqued with them right now, that he is a Jacksonian and has shown a good understanding of how to handle foreign policy, what do you think will be his likely reprisal for all of this?

It seems to me, from a strictly Machiavellian standpoint, that the best Germany should expect to get off with is a form of very public humiliation in exchange for an actual sincere apology. Assigning them grunt tasks in Afghanistan, for instance, and not consulting with them *at all* in the future regarding Iraq, would seem likely. What about the more severe possibilities? Will those bases close? Will our planes leave and not come back? You've mentioned these issues a few times, and now it seems like there's a decent chance of that happening.

So in a nutshell: Bush will almost certainly retaliate for this, I'm sure. How would you categorize the most likely outcomes for a Bush response, how might Germany try to mitigate or deflect that from this point forward, and how successful will the German response be?

I don't think it's really going to be a question of retaliation. Oh, there will be a few diplomatic moves which will express our displeasure; we've already seen some of that, in fact. Bush did not call Schröder and offer him congratulations on his victory, which is something that is usually pretty routine. Rumsfeld will be attending a NATO meeting in a few days and will meet with the defense ministers of several nations, but he says that he won't be talking to the German defense minister. We may see a week or two of that, but it will eventually stop.

You won't be seeing any large gestures, like formally announcing that we're withdrawing our troops from Germany, or some of the other grand gestures that some people who've written to me have suggested. Such things would be petulant, petty and counterproductive.

The real change will be deeper, more subtle but far more important. In a news conference, Schröder said that the US and Germany remain good friends:

But he also said he would not change his stance on Iraq -- which has brought rebukes from Washington -- and rejected suggestions that his position had damaged transatlantic ties.

"The basis of the relationship between Germany and the United States is so secure that the fears that were played up during the election campaign are unfounded," he said.

"Between friends, there can be factual differences but they should not be personalized, particularly between close allies."

I'm afraid he's wrong, and that's what is going to be changing.

In the world today, we have a very short list of nations we think of as comrades, brethren, for which we'd do pretty much anything. (It's basically Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada.) Down a step from that, there are several nations which we think of as good friends, ones where our relations involve a strong element of friendship and trust, but not at the higher level of the first group. Examples of that group would be Ireland, Sweden and Spain.

And there's another level down, nations with whom we have something to gain by cooperation but where there's little trust or long term good feelings, where the relationship is strictly utilitarian, such as Saudi Arabia. France is between the previous two groups but closer to the latter.

Germany used to be solidly in the second group, and now I think it will be considered to be in the upper reaches of the third group, more or less near where France is. We'll still work with Germany, but we'll watch them, and there will be much less altruism in the relationship.

I think you'll see less cooperation on the level of classified intelligence. (Or rather, you won't, because they don't let us see that. But I think there will be less of that.) We'll still take what Germany is willing to give us, but I think we'll be less inclined to share critical information with them.

You'll see Germany left out of any planning for Iraq. During the campaign, Schröder demanded that he be "consulted" about that plan, and that his objections be taken into account. (In essence, he was demanding the right to forbid execution of the plan.) That also won't happen. He certainly won't be consulted in any meaningful sense since there's no chance that the Bush administration will have any interest in his opinion. There may be a briefing but it won't be by Bush to Schröder; and if there is one it's going to turn out to be rather empty, high level, devoid of details and telling the Germans little that they couldn't deduce themselves or learn by reading the news.

Will it stay that way? It's impossible to tell. Schröder is Germany's DeGaulle, and Franco-American relations have never recovered from the damage done by De Gaulle, in part because De Gaulle left such a strong political legacy within France in terms of the national character. One can hope that Schröder won't have that degree of long term influence, but it's also the case that his willingness to pander with an anti-American message to German voters was inspired by the presence of a strong anti-American feeling in large segments of the populace the