Following the first guest post by Mayia on the question of gender equality and genuine democracy, I am pleased to introduce to you Annika M. Hinze, a fellow colleague at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After a recent trip home to Germany, Annika has generously agreed to reflect on the subject of mutual interest - the transatlantic relationship.
The question first caught my attention when I read Henry Kissinger’s Does America Need a Foreign Policy? A short excerpt (pg. 35) will suffice to illustrate the broader point:
Even more worrisome is the loss of human contact between the two sides of the Atlantic, which is occurring despite unprecedented travel. More Americans and Europeans are visiting the other continent than ever before. But they move about in the cocoon of their preconceptions or professional relationships, without acquiring a knowledge of the history and intangible values of the other side of the Atlantic.
A lot has changed since Kissinger’s book was published in 2001. What follows is a personal account by a European intimately familiar with America. As last time, I invite all readers to engage with the text (and the author), by sharing your reflections in the comments.
The official byline is below, followed by the guest post itself.
Annika M. Hinze is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation deals with the identity formation of women of Turkish immigrant background in Berlin, Germany, and their interaction dynamics with local politicians and Turkish community representatives. She enjoys drinking beer, cheering on the German national soccer team, eating American hot wings and living in Chicago.
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I was only 6 years old when I set foot on American soil for the very first time. Ever since, I have always enjoyed traveling.
This is not surprising given the context in which I grew up. We are all products of our era: I was born and raised in Berlin – West Berlin, an island in the midst of communist East Germany. You may not know this, but we actually did not have German passports. Our passports were “provisional passports” of the Federal Republic of Germany, as we were not officially living on German soil. West Berlin was under allied control – divided up into a French, a British, and an American sector.
I was born at the end of the cold war – in the last months of the 1970s, after the beginning of Ostpolitik, and before Reagan’s Star Wars program, before Glasnost and Perestroika and Solidarność .
My parents grew up in West Berlin. They loved America. I mean that. It’s not like they were never critical, obviously. (I remember how my mom was close to tears when Dukakis lost the election to George H.W. Bush by a landslide in 1988. “No, not another Republican!” she would say, wary of everything Reagan had stood for.)
My parents were scared to death by the way that Reagan revived the Cold War by significantly (and irresponsibly) enlarging the military-industrial complex in the face of Russian willingness to significantly reduce their nuclear weapons arsenal. (Remember Richard Perle, the Prince of Darkness?)
I remember how my father first tried to explain the principle of nuclear deterrence to me in a beach bungalow somewhere in San Diego in the summer of 1987. I was only 7 years old, but I remember the fear – his and mine – amid the irreducible fact that if the Cold War ever became hot, it would become hot right where we lived - in Berlin.
We would be the first to die.
Friendship
My parents still loved America. They loved Kennedy’s America. They loved the Americans that were in Berlin after World War II and all the culture they brought along: movies, music, dancing, lifestyle. They loved that because it gave them something to identify with, as there was nothing left in Germany to identify with when my parents were young.
All there was was what left of the Nazi ideology in the heads of their parents’ generation – something they wanted nothing to do with, but something they were identified with by the rest of the world.
My parents were grateful to the Americans for putting up with the Germans after everything they had done. They were grateful for the protection they offered us during the Cold War. And they loved them for not giving up on Berlin.
It was never talked about that the Americans did a lot of that in their own national interest, and not because they felt charitable towards the Germans, or how different things went between the soldiers and the host populations in countries like South Korea.
A time of friendship: Kennedy, former Berlin mayor Willi Brandt, and former German chancellor Konrad Adenauer in front of the walled-off Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in the summer of 1963.
The warm feelings and admiration my parents had for America strongly influenced my world views as a child and a teenager. I was strongly encouraged by my dad to spend a year in the U.S. in high school as an exchange student (which was quite the experience since I stayed with a born-again Christian family in a tiny town in Western Pennsylvania).
When I, years later, decided to get my PhD in Chicago, my mom cried and blamed my father.
“You’re making your father’s wildest dream come true!” she said, angry tears streaming down her face.
It was all his fault. I was now doing what he had always wanted to do, but could not. And he could live vicariously through me.
Only the America I arrived to on a hot August afternoon with two suitcases and much hunger for adventure was a different one than the America my dad had been wanting to visit in the 1960s, the America he had eventually seen in the 1970s, and the America we had visited as a family throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Change
September 11, 2001, the day that changed everything, is to this day the most influential world-political event of my lifetime. Maybe more important, in a way, than the end of the Cold War, as bad events sometimes have a stronger impact on us. We get used quickly to the good things, but we have a harder time with the bad things, and it was mostly bad things that followed 9-11.
At first we were all in shock and awe, not just for the Americans, but for us as well. We were Westerners and consumers, and we felt close to America.
I remember the sea of flowers on the street in front of the American embassy in Berlin, and the Amerika Haus - an American cultural center downtown. I remember the American flags in the windows, and thousands of Berliners singing “Amazing Grace” in front of the Brandenburg Gate in memory of the victims, just two or three days after 9-11. I was one of them. [the world's reaction to 9/11 in a photo essay -ed.]
I remember how George Bush chocked up on television, and I remember the shocking pictures of what was left of the twin towers.
“Today, we are all Americans,” a German newspaper’s headlines read. We really were.
Today We Are All Americans: Germans lay down flowers in front of the American Embassy in Berlin right after September 11, 2001
I think all of us understood that something had to be done. Most people I knew disagreed with the strikes on Afghanistan, because Al Qaeda could not be linked to a country, and we were doubtful about whether attacking Afghanistan’s Taliban as “collaborators” would achieve anything but render millions of poor people homeless.
Despite the disagreement, however, we understood that something had to happen. America had to react – the world knew that and kept quiet. We let Afghanistan happen.
When Iraq was put on the table, however, we were outraged. In Germany, we were so outraged that in 2002 we re-elected our chancellor based on one issue only: We would not join the Coalition of the Willing and help attack Iraq.
It strikes me that some Americans still seem to believe that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9-11. He was a criminal and a murderer and a dictator, that’s for sure. But, the Iraq War started because of 9-11, and Saddam Hussein had not a single proven connection with Osama Bin Laden. Iraq was not in possession of any weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion. The whole war was based on lies. This is a fact.
I think a lot of Germans lost faith in America during that time.
A dark chapter
What ensued was a dark chapter in the transatlantic relationship. Liters of French wine were poured down sewers and sinks throughout the United States. French fries were renamed. The Europeans not only protested the lingering invasion of Iraq – they danced against it, partied against it, laughed and cried against it.
It became an image, a personality trait to be against the war in Europe, as much as it became a statement of patriotism in the United States to be for it.
Instead of being based on discussion, negotiation, and diplomacy, the transatlantic relationship became thesis and antithesis, black and white, right and wrong. As we all know, however, things in this world are never that easy.
I have condemned the invasion of Iraq myself many times. It was a huge mistake, based on lies by an administration that was hungry for money, oil, and war. I have seen the hollowness of the term patriotism exposed in the United States in a shocking and disgusting way regarding the War in Iraq.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government,” Edward Abbey, an American writer once said. With regards to the war in Iraq, it seemed that everything said against the war or against the administration was considered unpatriotic. Any kind of criticism was dismissed by the patriotism argument.
Robert A. Dahl, one of the most prominent American social scientists would call the actions of the Bush administration in the years and months leading up to the war in Iraq an example of manipulative persuasion (i.e. when an agreement of the people is obtained through manipulation, lies, and misleading information). In the end, this false information, and the actions that it resulted in could only be questioned at the expense of one’s own patriotism.
American Patriotism: Freedom Fries, not French Fries
Does this make it better what happened on the other side of the Atlantic? Hardly. The single-issue-based re-election of the German Chancellor Schroeder illustrates the polarization around the Iraq-debate.
While condemning U.S. aggression in handling Iraq, Germans had no problem with a close alliance with Russia. Did we not care about what the Russians were doing in Chechnya if we were, at the same time, so passionate about Iraq?
We waved our flags and danced our dances of peace. We were so outraged by war – “never again” we wrote on our transparencies, demonstrating that we knew –from our own history- what useless violence could do. We had experienced it. And we had learned from it.
But, it somehow seemed that while being critical of what was going on in the West, we were blind towards the goings-on in the East: Russian oil, Russian gas, Russian business. Who cares? Look at the terrible things the Americans are doing in Iraq.
We defended France’s agricultural policy privilege against our neighbors in Poland? Why? Would it not benefit Germany as well if an EU member state, which depended (in 2003) by roughly 80% on agriculture, was able to properly compete within the EU? Well, that did not really matter.
It mattered to keep France on board as the German ally within the EU, and it mattered to keep Russia on board – a valuable reserve of natural resources and shady business contracts. If Bush was going to Iraq for oil, Schroeder was sleigh-riding to Moscow for the same reasons.
Man-crush: Schroeder and Putin get close
It seems like with the coming of the public debate around the Iraq invasion, all arguments on both sides of the Atlantic turned into silly absolutes. Rumsfeld’s provocative “old Europe”-lingo was matched by a comment made by the former German Minister of Justice Herta Daeubler-Gmelin in the Schroeder cabinet, who, during a campaign rally in 2002, compared Bush’s tactics in domestic policy to those of Hitler.
Daeubler-Gmelin opted out of her spot in the new administration, which was elected in 2002. Rumsfeld, in turn, who made far greater mistakes during his tenure than insulting the French and the Germans, stayed with the Bush administration until 2006.
Lingering tensions
Although the immediate animosity over Iraq has dissipated over time, there are residues of it floating around in Germany.
They are mostly sublime, and they don’t make headlines anymore, except for when the Americans seem to be interested in starting another war, or ignoring a food crisis, or causing climate change, or electing a new president, or when their economy takes a downward-spin.
I had been living in Chicago for only a few months at the time of the 2004 presidential elections, but I had a number of American friends all over the country. When John Kerry lost the elections and it became clear that George W. Bush was going to serve as President of the United States for another term, it was not only the Germans that were devastated.
I saw Americans shed angry tears as well - very few people in Germany seem to understand or acknowledge that.
If you live in a country for a while, if you expose yourself to it entirely, you will become more sympathetic to it – regardless of your political convictions. I have become neither more nor less liberal or conservative while living in the United States. What has changed is the fact that I now better understand the categories in which Americans think. The frames through which they look at politics, and that politics is never black-and-white, neither in the U.S., nor in Europe.
My sympathy does not work well with the lingering angry sentiment against the United States on the other side of the Atlantic. I have been away from Germany for 4 years now, and while nothing changes in the first year, by year three a lot has changed.
For the first time I heard people tell me that I had become “Americanized”, or that my loyalties had shifted. Most assumed that I “never wanted to come back”, that I “liked it better over there”.
I have never suggested any of the above. I don’t boast my English in Germany, or openly and ruthlessly support American politics. I don’t wear T-shirts with American flags on them; I don’t chew gum, and I don’t drink Coke.
Actually, I prefer to drink a cold German beer and complain about the neoconservatives in Washington. Yet some people tell me that I “look like an American”.
What does an American look like, I wonder? White, black, brown, yellow?
Others pity me. They look at me wide-eyed and say “How can you live there? How can you stand it?” This is shocking to me. I hear myself talk about how well-informed Germans are about politics, how they are so much less ignorant about what is going on in the world than Americans and hence have a lot less stereotypes about people from other countries.
In light of this conviction, I have been disturbed by the fact that my husband, who is Canadian and proud of it, has been repeatedly called an American by German acquaintances.
I mean, come on. Should you not know that Vancouver and Calgary are Canadian cities?
Recently, I have found a lot of Germans to be a little too high and mighty for my taste when it comes to American politics. During the summer of 2007, I visited Berlin for my best friend’s wedding, and brought along my American roommate from Chicago, a well-educated, fun, friendly, intelligent, tolerant person.
I was so ashamed at the way that she got blamed for George Bush’s policies by a German one night when we were out. Another friend of mine suggested that Americans were “stupid” right to her face. My roommate has never voted Republican in her life, and most Americans I know are very intelligent people.
Der Spiegel magazine covers: 1. USA: The Lords of the World (1997) / Blood for Oil: What Iraq is Really About? (2003) / The Imagined World Power: Is America Overextending Itself? (2003) / Operation Rambo: The Secret Special Troops of the USA (2003)
Does it make us Germans better people that we have been reformed by being confronted with our Nazi-past? That we say, point blank, that we don’t like war and armies and imperialism? I mean, these are good opinions to have, but it seems that we just take them a bit out of context.
I like being a pacifist, but I am also a realist. I understand that sometimes we need armies to defend those who cannot defend themselves, or to defend ourselves against others. We have been relying on the United States, the country we so passionately bash, to “fix” things for us – even in Yugoslavia, our own backyard.
We need to keep in mind that if we want to have opinions on a world stage, we need to let actions follow as well, such as vowing protection to our NATO allies and defending other EU members against threats from other countries.
Just as importantly, we should not be blind on our Eastern eye. We should criticize the United States for making mistakes, but if we do so, we need to apply the same standard to our other “allies”, such as Russia.
Things have gotten a lot better on that front since Schroeder was voted out of office in 2005. They are not perfect, though. Partly because, as Der Spiegel stated in August 2008, around 40% of German households are dependent on Russian gas. It seems that not only the U.S. needs to look into alternative energy sources.
Robert F. Kennedy once said that “Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly.” Throughout the Pax Americana, the United States has done both, achieved greatly and failed greatly. Since the end of the Cold War, since Germany has become an independent, free, sovereign and powerful country at the center of Europe, us Germans have just watched and whined.
We should not and must not withhold criticism at what the U.S. does around the world. Quite the opposite – we should make our voice heard and share our opinions. But we can share them like a friend instead of slamming our doors shut like an upset child. And we must become actively involved – and maybe sometimes even lend a hand.
Photo credits:
- Kennedy, Brandt, Adenauer photo was recently released by the Kennedy Museum; author: Will McBridge; the picture is presumed to be owned by the U.S. government and hence falls in public domain category
- Freedom Fries photo by André Mouraux (aka spigoo); licensed under cc-by
- Schroeder and Putin photo located at Robert Amsterdam’s blog; used here under “fair use”
- Der Spiegel magazine front covers (c) located at Medienkritik blog; used here under “fair use”
When it comes to the role German-US relations, this article is a typical West German (or at least West Berlin) perspective.
There have been not much East German - US relations before 1990, and everything happening today should also be regarded as the result of a unification of Germany where just one part had a “special” relation towards the US. It’s like asking why many West Germans do not have contacts in the former Soviet bloc (and also asking, why many old contacts in this direction have ceased quite similar to the ones West Germans had to the US).
And there is another dimension: The European one. Thanks to the 1989-91 events, Europe is “bigger” than it used to be, and people are having many more contacts within Europe - no need to to go to the US or have special relations to the US.
Any discussion about US-German relations that does not take this into account is incomplete.
Julien,
You are right - I definitely wrote this from a biased perspective, which is why I was sort of trying to contextualize things a bit in the first few paragraphs.
I am not directly talking about “old contacts” by former East Germans to the former Soviet bloc in my post (though one could speculate about that as well based on the Gazprom dealings that have been going on - there was a very interesting article in Der Spiegel during the last week of August about that). I am more talking about new contacts, new decisions, and new involvements.
I don’t think I am disregarding the European dimension (see my comments about France and Poland). And I think you are very wrong when you say that there is no need to have any relationships with the United States because of the European Union. Sure, you don’t have to visit the U.S. or study there. But whether you like American politics or not, they will be of concern to us Europeans, and just ignoring the American dimension of world politics will not really achieve anything. I am not advocating a “special relationship” with America - Tony Blair is a wonderful example of what that can lead to - becoming America’s lab-dog is obviously not a solution. But, yes, talking to America is still important - whether we like it or not.
I enjoyed reading this article. It’s great to hear this personal view, which is still balanced, giving me the relevant context.
I feel Annika talks about feeling “in-between” black & white standpoints, her own development in better understanding the american side, getting alienated & frustrated by some knobhead germans.. what does this have to do with the EU being “enough”, making America redundant? I take her discussion as well-rounded as it is.
Another view: My father flew from the eastern part of germany to Westberlin (ca.’64). My closest relatives always lived in the “DDR” (while I grew up in West Berlin).
But although he grew up in that communist state, my father and his friends were as fascinated by the “american way” as Annika describes of her parents. The jeans, chewing gum, Elvis.. He learned russian in school, but apart from that I heard not much mention of russian lifestyle influences, neither from my aunts/uncles.
I join Annika in her appeal to the Germans to stop being condescending and check ourselves when sharing our opinion in a tolerant, level-headed way.
Thank you for the heartfelt and complimentary mention. Ha yes, I think this was my favorite comment: “I like New York because it’s not like America.” In all honesty, I was not shocked or offended by the anti-American generalizations, since I was already aware of the disapproval in the air. Still, attributing the flaws of a nation’s leadership to all of its constituents has led to plenty of unneccesary bar brawls, big and small, so I am glad you were there as my diplomat on that particular week.
Furthermore, I suspect you will have to continue to make excuses for me/us. Even if we get great new leadership here for 2009, that’s not going to change my vulgar American habits such as drinking before I say cheers, not knowing when to kiss once or twice, and claiming that everything is so delicious.
Vielen Dank, Annika!
You made me wish you were in charge of Auswärtiges Amt!
Although I’ve never been to Germany, in the 20th century your country had a high impact on many countries, including mine, Ukraine.
Among my relatives, some perished in WW II, some survived under the German occupation, some worked in Krupp factories as Ostarbeiters, and some served in the GDR as Soviet Army officers in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.
I remember myself since age 3, since 1983. Before the arrival of perestroika, I grew up watching Soviet war epics and wearing clothes shipped from the GDR. By the time the Berlin Wall fell, I had grown accustomed to Modern Talking records.
What followed was a kind of “goodbye Lenin” experience in the euphoric era of falling in love with the West, amid Ukraine’s independence, breadlines and hyperinflation. Unfortunately, thanks to our communist legacy, kleptocratic elites, and geographic proximity to Russia, we haven’t achieved what most Eastern Bloc countries have achieved.
Nevertheless, our country’s dialogue with NATO and the EU remains a top priority for pro-Western and reform-minded Ukrainians like me.
You have my full support regarding the need to steer clear of stereotypes and country-profiling. You also struck a high note with me when you called for dismantling the double standard in Ostpolitik, which means getting rid of Moscowcentrism.
Finally, kudos for addressing the arguments that arise between allies Germany and the U.S. The two may not see eye to eye on everything, but when it comes to NATO, it’s “one for all, all for one.”
Hi Annika,
sorry if I created missunderstanding: When I said that there is “no need” for German-US relations because there is a larger Europe today, I meant that - technically spoken - there are higher opportunity costs for the choice of keeping up personal relations with far away US-Americans compared to the many more Europeans you meet today on our continent.
What I wanted to say is that while in former times America was one of a quite limited number of countries that shared a mindset with Germans, today the “choice” is much bigger than before. So German citizens, when looking for friends abroad, even those who speak English, will have many more choices and contacts on their own continent and might forget to look to the other side of the Atlantic. This is rather natural, not programmatic in a sense that they don’t do it because they like Americans less than they did in the past or because they think Europeans are “better”. They just meet comparatively more of the latter.
And also sorry for “blaming” you for your “West Berlin perspective”, I just meet quite different stories when talking to people from East and West and realise that there is quite some difference in their stories - something the international readers of this blog might not be aware of.
This is a very interesting conversation to which I’d like to add my two cents. First of all, never having blogged at all, I was under the impression that a blog reflects personal stories and opinions. I would consider it presumptuous for any West German (like me) to present an East German perspective.
Secondly, I have a few more years than Annika of standing with one foot in the middle of the Atlantic. I can tell you that when I emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1960’s Germans overall tended to be envious of anyone who had the opportunity to come to the U.S. What Annika reports about her parents’ enthusiasm was shared by many young Germans, although not necessarily by their parent generation. For example, my parents were not particularly thrilled about Americans because some of them are black which for my secular, officially Protestant parents was even worse than being Catholic and that was pretty unacceptable. For example, my sister was told she could not go to any of the three universities of her choice, because all three of them were located in the former American zone - and black soldiers were stationed there.
Germans tended not to admit racial prejudices openly, but cultural prejudices definitely were. A couple of years before I emigrated I spent a year in a college in Massachusetts despite the warnings of my well-intentioned English professor in Marburg that an American accent would disqualify me from employment as an English teacher in a Gymnasium. The point became moot when I emigrated. The only acceptable accent was the Queen’s English. The condescension the German establishment expressed in that attitude is alive and well today. Germans assume that their culture is superior to that of the Americans while the average American assumes that the U.S. government is the force of good in the world - which it sometimes is and often is not. After only a short acquaintance, strangers you meet on German trains or elsewhere feel free to make comments about how you must be culturally deprived living in the U.S. In response I make sure that my visitors from Germany get to go to a performance of the CSO, or attend the free concerts in Millenium Park. They end up being really impressed!
To end my ramblings quickly, perhaps it is human nature to criticize what you don’t know or understand - whether you’re American or German. Let’s keep talking across the Atlantic so we can understand each other better.
At the risk of distracting from Annika’s main point in this post on the German-American relations, I want to offer a clarification or two.
Seven years later, we know that this did not happen. Undeniably there have been thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), but the number is nowhere near “millions.” The best estimates at the UN that I could find indicate at the very least 80,000 and at most 300,000 Afghanis.
Importantly, however, is that these were not necessarily displaced due to actions by ISAF or U.S. military, but because of Taliban groups attacking villagers who choose to work with the Afghanistan’s government.
I strongly disagree. First, this is against the historical record as it ignores the overwhelming support that America was given in the months after the attack. The world did not keep quiet. Countries across the globe voiced their full unreserved support when America challenged Taliban to hand over Usama bin Laden or face invasion. The U.S. waited months before it placed any military boots on the ground, it followed international law and consulted with its allies on the best response (which it failed to do in Iraq). Only after it did so, did the U.S. invade Afghanistan.
“We let Afghanistan happen” just sounds as if it were a preventable thing, that the Germans/EU could have done more, when in fact the EU to my knowledge did not object to the Afghanistan invasion at all. Incidentally, I posed this same question to Julien at
herhis blog. What wouldshehe have done ifshehe were Germany’s Chancellor? Julien’s reply was that it is “hard to answer.”I agree. There are no easy solutions when faced with a prospect of invading another country after your own country was just attacked by a terrorist group hiding behind the sovereignty shield of another state, but we must remember that Afghanistan was qualitatively different from Iraq. Whatever the flaws committed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it should not color our perception of Afghanistan.
First: Sorry for disappointing you after all these weeks, Vitaliy, but I am a man…
And concerning the Afghan war: My interpretation would be that many Europeans and many Germans at the time were not overly happy with their governments going to war. But these governments were “trapped” in their joint statement of unconditional support right after the 9/11 attacks.
But if I recall rightly, the initial offer the German government made at the time was also quite “weak” in military terms:
a) blankets
b) medical staff
c) chemical/biological weapons detection supplies
That is not a sign of war optimism…
Pardon the error. No disappointment at all. Strangely, something similar happened to me (see this).
Blankets and medical personnel may be “weak” in military terms and may not be a “sign of war optimism,” but the world - and Europe specifically - did not keep quite and let Afghanistan happen.
I’m not sure if governments in Europe 1) felt “trapped,” 2) even if they felt trapped, if they really disagreed with America’s course of actions in Afghanistan they could also not participate in it (Iraq is a case in point). Lastly, I sure hope that when European governments make any statements, collectively or individually, they do so knowing where they stand on the issue.
Here is an article from Washington Post (October 19th, 2001) posted from Ghent, Belgium, which seems to support my assertion that Afghanistan enjoyed European and international support on Afghanistan, even if some states were hesitant about directly bearing the military costs of an invasion:
[...] to Annika’s guest post on the German-American relationship, Julien Frisch writes: What I wanted to say is that while in former times America was one of a quite limited number of [...]
Ok, ok, I was out of town a bunch of times and did not really keep track of this.
Vitaliy, you are certainly right when you say that the attacks on Afghanistan did not render “millions” homeless. I don’t think I actually meant to say that - I meant to say “thousands”. Sorry about the error.
On the other hand, I agree with Julien when he says that Europeans felt trapped. I guess we will never know how a government “feels” as governments hide behind beautiful figures of speech, political propaganda and frames they hope to appeal to the voters with. And to your credit, Vitaliy, even if German support in Afghanistan was “weak”, it is usually week anywhere - so this may not actually mean anything. BUT, I know a lot of people felt trapped. America had to do something about this - this we all agreed on. But Afghanistan’s Taliban? Yes, they were oppressive and possibly aiding Osama Bin Laden. But I think a great many people thought that there was no need to wage a full-fledged war against Afghanistan. The United States has the most sophisticated intelligence service in the world. They could not have just staged a little secret op and found Osama instead of bombing the whole country to shambles? I felt trapped. I felt supportive and sympathetic towards the U.S. I think that probably the people of Afghanistan were a bit better off for a while after the war (though now the country is massively destabilizing). But I did not really think that the Afghanistan intervention accomplished anything towards the end of fighting Osama Bin Laden. Which was what served as its justification.
On a different note, I think that Elisabeth made some interesting points…
Thank you for your very interesting article! There is a lot I would like to comment on and also bring up some questions about future relations under a new American government.
I am a German exchange student at UIC and just recently came to the U.S. Because of the discussion around the Eastern and Western German points of view, I want to mention that I was born in the GDR, raised in the FRG and then “came back” to study in the Eastern part of Germany. My familiy left the GDR before the wall came down, because they did not agree with the political system. I share the same experience you described of having parents who really like America. Their reasons, however, were different. For them, the U.S. was a symbol of freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of travelling (everywhere). Freedoms my parents did not enjoy in the GDR.
This freedom, however, is very questionable to me today. One of the reasons to come to the U.S. was to fight my own prejudices and to see “how the country really is like.” (Of course, I can only speak about impressions I got in Chicago during three months so far.) Besides a very nice welcome and having met friendly, open and open-minded Americans, there is one thing that really shocks me about life in Chicago: The city is so segregated and many African Americans and Latinos, in particular, are very discriminated against. This is quite contradictory to the image of an “immigrant country”, the American Dream, to freedom!
Coming back to the German-American relations, I just attended a great discussion about “German-US Relations After the Election” organized by the DAAD.
According to the speakers, Germans were even more enthusiastic about the outcome of the election than Americans. I was told to be americanized, because I was so enthusiastic about it… However, I strongly believe that Obama will also bring “change” to the German-American relations. As you have described, Germans were upset about the war in Iraq and many strongly disfavored U.S. politics under Bush. The sympathy is already coming back with the election of Obama, I think. Hopefully, his foreign policy will be more multilateral and in alliance with Germany and other European states. Even though both countries sometimes act according to their own national interest (you have explained Germany´s behavior towards Russia and it´s “blind Eastern eye”), they will have to cooperate in this globalized world and also if they want to improve German-American relations.
I would like to mention an interesting, and important, view brought up by one of the speakers: With the financial crisis, countries such as China, India or Brazil are getting more and more important and the U.S. interest is directed more towards these states, as well. So, if the importance of Germany and Europe declines, it will be interesting to see where we actually meet in the future.
I am excited about being in the U.S. during this time of change and I am really looking forward to “Obama´s America” and a redefinition of the German-American relationship!