The concern of European allies about American
electronic eavesdropping on their citizens is both reasonable and
unresolved. What it needn’t be is close to panic-stricken.
Thus opines
John Vinocur in his
International Herald Tribune column.
France, with its own remarkably effective intelligence services,
approaches the question with very controlled and limited indignation.
The Dutch treat the issue next to not at all, in line with their model
of centuries of success in avoiding controversy that holds no promise of
practical yield.
But here in Germany, the political class is in an uproar. The geschrei
is of American betrayal, of a government kneeling before the Yanks, and
the forsaken state of the unprotected Deutsche Volk.
Since Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor,
dumped his accusations about the N.S.A.’s intrusive reach into European
private life more than six weeks ago, Germany’s political Chicken
Littles have made it the attention-getting issue in the country’s
national election campaign.
As a result, politicians have been telling voters they are victims of
unlawful scrutiny and taking comfortable, sound-bite roles as accusers
of the United States.
By way of resistance, the country’s second most powerful politician,
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble — in a sly poke that doesn’t exclude
Chancellor Angela Merkel — complained that he can’t comprehend the
outrage emanating from both the government and opposition. A former
interior minister who intimately knows the world of spying and
disinformation, Schäuble said, “My European colleagues are not worked up
about this. ... How else do you want to track down terrorist networks
that operate internationally?”
Sharper still was Otto Schily, the Social Democrat interior minister
during Gerhard Schröder’s time as chancellor. He dismissed the current
German fear of the state as “partially lunatic stuff.”
Still, this is a hullabaloo that went into the streets last weekend with
demonstrations against official eavesdropping. The shrillness of the
moment was exemplified in a petition from 32 writers sent to the
chancellor. Drum roll, solemn music:
“We are experiencing a historical attack on our democratic state of law
that stands on its head one-million-fold the principle of presumption of
innocence.”
That tone works here. Years back, Angela Merkel said that Gerhard
Schröder’s opposition in 2002 to war Iraq was electorally motivated, as
was his talk then of “German emancipation” from the United States. He
ran and won as an incumbent chancellor that year.
The old strategy looks intact. Sept. 22 is election day. And there’s a
ready-made, if shaky, we-know-best rationale for Germans’ acute
sensitivity: their experience with state surveillance during the Nazi
and East German eras.
In more incisive and introspective terms, the federal president, Joachim
Gauck, was described last year by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
reporter as seeing the country engaged in a continual search for its
next big angst. Now the newspaper refers to “partially surreal” notions
and “plot theories” to characterize the country’s mind-set.
Süddeutsche Zeitung pointed toward a fundamentally deep German problem
with America. It wrote, “The star pupil of the postwar years has turned
into a know-it-all projecting the worst evil onto their former idol and
teacher.”
The language of Peer Steinbrück, the Social Democratic candidate, goes
in that direction: “The government is bowing down before the Americans
one more time.” And: “Enormous damage to the German people has occurred.
That’s monstrous.”
In addition, Sigmar Gabriel, the Social Democratic Party chairman,
accused the Americans and British of “massive economic espionage” and
said they and their “helpers” should be investigated by the German
authorities.
Merkel’s line of defense is not (à la Schäuble or Schily) to scold those
who are casting the country as victimized. Strikingly, she has leaned
in the direction of alarm, twice paraphrasing Schröder to needle the
Americans with the refrain that Germany did not believe in the law of
the strongest but in the strength of the law.
It was as if the United States had intruded on Merkel’s version of
Germany’s perfect world, described by a columnist in the newspaper Bild
as selling cars everywhere while the Americans do the dirty work. In
reality, close contact between American and German intelligence
services, involving shared surveillance programs and equipment, has
deepened since the start of the Schröder chancellery in 1998.
John Kornblum, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, offered this frame
of reference: “Factual and unemotional are rarely used words used the
characterize discussions within Germany society. Germany has yet to
rebuild a foundation of self-confidence which makes it possible to view
challenges as tasks rather than emotional crises.”
“The next emotional outburst against America is probably just around the corner,” he said.
