Deutschland - a "force for good" - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[Reikianer]

Interessanter Kommentar aus dem Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,2763,799194,00.h…

Enlist in Schröder`s army

Germany has shaken off its guilt and accepted its destiny: to be a force for good outside its own frontiers

Hywel Williams
Thursday September 26, 2002
The Guardian

How should we deal with Germany? The German question is and always will be the story of Europe itself, for the continent`s largest single nation is also its heart and its destiny. Finding an answer has been the diplomatic preoccupation and the political fear driving other Europeans ever since the Hohenstaufen dynasty broke out of Swabia and established an imperial style in the 12th century. Europe`s history is just one long knock-on Teutonic effect.
It was outsiders - whether impressed or terrified - who framed the German question`s terms. But Germans themselves, from Goethe to Grass, have formulated their own interrogation. There`s an anxiety that haunts the national soul and asks: what does it mean to be a good German? The country has always luxuriated in exploration of national identity - a game which the newly introspective English now play as well.

At least the general election has thrown up one answer. Goodness here means turning Berlin into a rock on the Bushite path to Baghdad. Gerhard Schröder`s victory re-states the German question as a common and positive European one. His opposition to the American imperial adventurism has brought into focus a strong German identity - one which serves peace not war.

To the German problem of the 20th century`s first half, the century`s second half threw up another difficulty. The militarism yielded to the disabling guilt of the defeated. De-militarised and then Nato-fied, Germany`s western half went for the gold of an economic miracle - and a quiet democratic dullness. Pacifism became a dominant strand - and this itself built on an old German tradition of quietism in politics. Obedience was owed to the powers that be - meanwhile it was best to lead a quiet life. Order was all. It`s the argument used by Luther when he urged the German princes to put down the peasant`s revolt as ruthlessly as possible.

Even to Germans themselves the idea that Germany could be a force for good outside her own frontiers seemed suspect. This was a country that - hanging its head in shame - punched way below its weight. Its stance was that of a self-confessed Frankenstein`s monster, which had to ask for its own chains lest it lash out. This view of Germany`s need for self-imposed tutelage was very much that of Helmut Kohl and it worked as one element of that Franco-German motor which was the EU`s rationale.

Reunification changed everything. On the right the critique now is of Germany`s economic strains - its problems with pensions and restrictive labour laws. But, culturally speaking, Germany has reawakened with a healthy political structure. And it has reclaimed the German liberal tradition in a way that is assertive and purposeful rather than quietist. Germany is now the real challenger to the Blair picture of Europeans as America`s dependent cousins.

The Mitterand-Kohl partnership was a powerful driving force - and one that saw Britain on the European margins. It was an alliance of two flawed giants who had lived with war. But the Chirac-Schröder relationship has nothing of the same warmth or intensity of purpose. Schröder is strikingly free of war guilt, while Chirac`s readiness to play the American game shows his readiness to embrace the dominant force of the moment.

Mr Blair will have his war. But those who are sickened by his shallow ease with mass destruction should enrol in Schröder`s army. And, in doing, so we can hark back as well as look forward.

"How dreadful the state of Paris is! Surely that Sodom and Gomorrah as Papa called it deserves to be crushed": Queen Victoria`s letter to her daughter Vicky, crown princess of Prussia, may not have been in the best of taste as Paris lay crushed by the Prussian army in 1870-1. But it is a reminder of how - until the 20th-century deflection of the current - it was a sense of German affinities that ruled English hearts and minds. France was the country with a tradition of military takeover and political instability, while Prussia was an English-Victorian mirror: Protestant, cultured, industrious. Liberals in particular admired the Bismarckian settlement for its example of an activist state at work with its welfare reforms. It was an admiration that survived the 1871 unification - and the arrival in united Germany of the Catholic south.

Mr Blair will use all his black arts of persuasion to bring Schröder on board. But Schröder has all the look about him of a landesvater - a politician whose fatherland has found a leader. That slim majority was gained by a kind of magic as he worked the issue of the German flood. And he has became the spokesman for a common European order, one which is now threatened by the Blair-Bush axis. The German question of old has now been replaced by the American question - one unstable empire has displaced another. Mr Blair finds his leader across the ocean; the rest of us will look beyond the Rhine.

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[siebbel]

Unglaublich aber wahr,

ähnliches steht in Zeitungen aus den Niederlanden, konservativ wie nicht-konservativ.
Man erkennt, anders als die aus Washington kolpotiert wird, das neue Selbstbewusstsein der Deutschen an. Man weiß, dass ein rationales Gegengewicht zu Bushs Militarismus gebraucht wird. Deutschland ist da führend.
Und das ist gut so!

[bazzboxx]

Na, jetzt ist der Thread schon 40 Minuten alt und immer noch keine Gegenstimmen von den Leuten, welche die internationale Presse immer als nicht Meinungsrelevant abwerten wollen? Ich wundere mich. Können die alle kein Ausländisch

[Reikianer]

Bin sicher kein Schröderfan, aber wenn ich mir vorstelle, dass Stoiber als erste Amtshandlung den Amis wieder in den Hintern ge.... wäre - denke auch, dass sich Deutschlands Ansehen in der Welt verbessert hat, könnte vielleicht dem Export gut tun. Die USA jedenfalls werden den deutschen Export nicht mehr lange stützen können, die Immobilienpreise fallen schon, die Kreditaufnahme ist trotzdem noch auf Rekordniveau, etc. Man kann nur hoffen, dass die Amis nicht totalen Mist bauen, wenn sie merken, dass sie ihre beste Zeit definitiv gehabt haben.