The Hindu : Back at the helm

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 26, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Back at the helm

A NATURAL CALAMITY and the prospect of a man-made disaster have combined to secure a second term for the "red-green" coalition of Gerhard Schroeder in Germany. Written off even two months ago by most political pundits, when polls showed him trailing his conservative rival heading the Christian Democratic coalition, he bounced back into the reckoning when devastating floods, said to be a record for a hundred years for Europe, tested his leadership qualities to organise relief and rehabilitation. Hardly weeks after that trial, the Bush administration in the U.S. gave Mr. Schroeder an even more dramatic opportunity. It is not certain that his strident, even shrill opposition to Washington's plans for a regime change in Iraq through military means would have weaned right-wing sympathisers of Edmund Stoiber, a political clone of Margaret Thatcher and George Bush, Sr. and Jr. But the strategy must have paid off by forcing the return of centrist and leftist supporters and sympathisers who had been disenchanted with Mr. Schroeder's first term in office. His rhetoric against war, coming soon after his visibly prompt response in providing succour to the flood victims, most of them in the poorer, former communist eastern half of Germany, must have proved irresistible. It did not tilt the balance but helped restore parity between the two main contenders, as the voting percentage shows.

As Mr. Schroeder leads his Social Democrat-Green party coalition back into office for a second term, he will be aware that relations within Europe and between Europe and the U.S. will never be the same again. It is perhaps for the first time since the end of World War II that a German Government leader has taken such a public anti-American stance. The bitterness generated by the campaigning is already casting a shadow as the U.S. drums up support for its planned actions against Saddam Hussein. The Chancellor has tried to do some damage control by dropping a Minister whose patently inapt remarks have dragged German-American relations to the lowest ebb since the Hitler war. But he has also reiterated that he will continue to oppose a war against Iraq. Clearly keeping in mind the ingrained antipathy among the Germans towards military action, he had told Parliament a week ago, "Under my leadership, Germany will not participate in military action". Going along with the American "adventure" would amount to "insubordination". The elections had definitely heightened the need to strike an independent, defiant line. This was a far cry from the immediate post-September 11 scene when Germany readily joined the war against the Taliban and stood shoulder to shoulder with the U.S., demonstrating a willingness to take on military responsibilities for peace on the international stage.

If the voting percentage in Sunday's elections is a guide, this is a vote against war and more specifically against some of the retrograde policies of the Bush administration. For, with both main rivals deadlocked at 38 per cent each, the only party to gain considerable increase in support was the Green party of the Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. The Green agenda of peace and environmental safety must have proved popular in a country where there is growing public exasperation with the U.S. over its opposition to the global warming treaty and the International Criminal Court. What must be surprising is that Mr. Schroeder should have grabbed the plank of anti-Americanism, considering that the German-American compact had remained unshaken for half a century. India will hail the fact that Germany has finally raised its voice for peace.

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