When US President George W. Bush makes his triumphant post-inauguration trip to Europe early next year, the German capital will not be on his itinerary. London will, of course. So too, almost certainly, will Brussels as the headquarters of NATO.
But the country that used to be the continental linchpin of the transatlantic alliance is off the agenda, according to German officials.
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For a tour that Washington will bill as proof of the president's wish to re-engage with Europe in his second term, Germany's omission is eloquent testimony to the effort's fragility.
It is all the more surprising since German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is studiously not behaving like the French president who enjoys defying Washington while breezily claiming he wants to be friends.
Although French President Jacques Chirac muted his line at last Thursday's press conference in London, his sneering at Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair earlier in the week was pointed. Blair was naive to expect to be an honest broker, and the US president was not a man who systematically returned favors.
The German chancellor takes a softer line. He is eager to get back into Bush's good books. There is no talk from him of a multipolar world in which "democratization must not be confused with Westernization," as Chirac puts it. On the contrary, Schroder would love to kiss and make up.
"It's time to look forward. The relationship can be built successfully," he said after phoning to congratulate Bush.
Of course, the chancellor would have preferred a Senator John Kerry victory, and disappointment is palpable in every conversation with government loyalists here.
"Bush has won, and we'll have to make the best of it," as one senior official said through gritted teeth.
More diplomatically, Karsten Voigt, the chancellor's main adviser on relations with the US, describes Berlin's mood as one of "intentional optimism."
The foreign ministry where Voigt has his office was once the Central Bank under Hitler and, during the Cold War division, the headquarters of East Germany's ruling Communist party. In re-unified Berlin, the building's one symbol of continuity is the challenging "Paternoster," a constantly moving belt of open-fronted wooden lifts.
They pose a tough test of timing. Step in too early, and you bang your head. Leave it too late, and you drop into a void. It's an apt metaphor for Berlin's problem in judging how to restore friendship with Washington.
Some observers claim that a Kerry victory would have been more awkward since he would have asked Berlin to reconsider its refusal to send troops to Iraq. German officials reject this. Their line was well understood, and Kerry would not have wanted to spoil his overtures to Berlin with unrealistic demands, officials argue.
Besides declining to fight alongside the Americans and British, Germany refuses to join in training Iraqi forces inside Iraq. It even insists that German officers at NATO headquarters leave the room when Iraq operations are on the agenda.
In spite of these gestures of resistance, Voigt rattles off a list of areas where Germany is a reliable ally -- from being the second-largest troop provider in Afghanistan to its strong support for Washington's reform initiatives in the Middle East. He even claims a German affinity with the emergence of a strongly Christian majority in America.
"The number of babies born out of wedlock is lower here than in the United States. We have more theologians in the Bundestag than there are in the US Congress," he boasts -- before conceding that "the combination of religiosity and patriotism is very different here."
Independent observers detect two weaknesses in Berlin's stance. One is its refusal to make the first move in breaking the ice with Washington. It is waiting for the US, and this could be a long time.
"Germany could have formed a common European initiative to relaunch the transatlantic relationship. Blair can't, and Chirac won't. But it's not going to. They're still in a reactive mood," says Christoph Bertram, the director of the Institute for International and Security Affairs.
The other flaw is Germany's unwillingness to build on the fact that its warnings about an unjustified attack on Iraq and the danger of provoking more terrorism have proved correct. It is as if there is an unbearable burden of being right. Instead of warning the Americans that the use of excessive force in cities such as Fallujah is alienating Iraqis, Germany remains silent.
"We don't have troops on the ground so we should not give security advice," Voigt said.
France, by contrast, is willing to develop its different analysis of Iraq and break from the Washington consensus on what should happen now. In an interview with British correspondents last week, Chirac explicitly challenged the Anglo-American stress on the upcoming Iraqi poll.
"The elections are all very well. But as things are, they may lead only to more divisions and more hatred," he said.
France's line is that a much wider process of political reconciliation is needed, first to create a new Iraqi government and then to give it legitimacy by laying out a timetable for a withdrawal of foreign troops. This, in Paris's view, is preferable to Washington's plans to keep forces in Iraq indefinitely.
The German government shares part of this analysis. Yet in Washington's eyes, it is linked to France's defiance even while Schroder actually wants to repair the American rift. The opposition Christian Democrats accuse the government of confusion. Wolfgang Schauble, the shadow foreign minister, criticizes Germany's effort to get a seat on the UN Security Council and claims to see dangerous signs of a German retreat from a common European foreign policy.
"The chancellor says Germany is a normal country and he is pressing a German policy. He tries to create the impression of a re-nationalization of German policy," he said.
Others argue that Germany has stopped listening to Europe's smaller countries, particularly in eastern Europe, in the way that former chancellor Helmut Kohl used to do. This too creates an impression of a Germany less interested in others.
But Schauble's party may not have a chance to put its ideas into action. Against expectations, Schroder's Social Democrats are doing well again and could snatch a third victory with their Green allies in 2006. That means that their cautious, pragmatic, Germany-first policy would continue.
The old Franco-German alliance, once the heart of the European project, is weaker than it was, in spite of partial agreement on Iraq. Germany's once-warm links with the US have cooled. Germany's role as eastern Europe's bridge to Brussels is over. In the bleak words of one leading analyst in Berlin, German policy is marked by "assertive passivity."
"They want to be assertive but they don't have any ideas or initiative," he said.
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