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BERLIN: Rousing anti-war rhetoric is helping Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder ahead of elections in 10 days, but win or lose, Germany will get back behind international efforts to raise pressure on Iraq after the vote.
Schroeder’s vocal opposition to a US attack on Iraq has cast at least a temporary shadow over relations with Washington. But once election pressure is off, Germany is expected to join those twisting Baghdad’s arm over weapons inspectors, even if it remains uneasy over war to unseat President Saddam Hussein.
If conservative challenger Edmund Stoiber were to triumph, Germany would be even more likely to fall into line, at least with Europe. Stoiber has already expressed support for a French drive for a tough new United Nations resolution to force Iraq to readmit inspectors.
Amid strong fears of military action in a country still haunted by memories of World War-II destruction, Stoiber has also opposed any unilateral US attack on Iraq, but has accused Schroeder of isolating Berlin by failing to discuss his position more closely with Washington and Germany’s European partners.
“The motivation behind Schroeder’s clear position against military intervention is obviously the election campaign and it is doing him some good,” said Henning Riecke, European security policy expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).
“The Americans know that it is because of the election — they themselves are always in the middle of a campaign,” he said. “I don’t think there will be long-term damage to relations as long as the Germans eventually cooperate to find a solution.”
In what could be the quid pro quo for staying out of a war on Iraq, Germany confirmed this week it was considering taking over the leadership of the international peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan from early next year, along with the Netherlands.
RHETORIC WINS RESONANCE: Lagging well behind the conservative opposition in polls until devastating floods last month distracted from gloomy economic data, Schroeder’s refusal to involve German troops in any war with Iraq has helped throw the election race wide open.
Schroeder has ratcheted up the rhetoric daily, saying that Germany would not “click its heels” to follow Washington and that unquestioning support was “not friendship but subjugation”.
He has even said German tanks specially designed to detect biological and chemical weapons could be withdrawn from Kuwait in the event of a US attack on Iraq and has declined to say if US forces stationed in Germany could use its airspace.
But Frank Decker, politics professor at Bonn University, said Schroeder’s stance was unsustainable and predicted eventual support for French President Jacques Chirac’s call for two new UN resolutions, one on returning inspectors to Iraq and a second on possible military action if Baghdad refuses.
“He cannot maintain this position. Europe will fall back on the position that Chirac represents,” he said.
While most officials in Schroeder’s Social Democrats have toed the party line on Iraq, one even going as far as to compare US President George Bush to the Roman Emperor Augustus who subdued Germany, others have been more circumspect.
Several senior SPD foreign policy experts have drawn a distinction between German opposition to military action with the explicit aim of unseating Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and support for increasing pressure on Baghdad over arms inspectors.
GROWING GLOBAL ROLE: With the conservatives pouncing on any weakening of Schroeder’s resolve on Iraq, the chancellor has been loath to discuss the subtleties of a possible new UN mandate. But all that should change after the September 22 vote.
Germany is expected to be elected at the end of this month into one of the rotating seats on the UN Security Council that it would then occupy for two years from January.
“Germany will soon be a member of the Security Council and it must vote for the Chirac proposal,” said the DGAP’s Riecke.
“The German position cannot change 100 per cent, but there are certain interim steps or grey solutions.”
Schroeder has taken pride in increasing Germany’s role on the international stage in the last four years, persuading a sceptical public and parliament in 1999 to accept the German military’s first combat role since 1945 in the Kosovo war.
He staked his political future last year on German involvement in the US-led war on the Taliban in Afghanistan, making the issue the subject of a confidence vote in parliament. He now boasts that Germany has the second largest number of troops serving in peacekeeping missions — some 10,000.
Steven Sokol, deputy director of the Berlin wing of the Aspen Institute, a US think-tank, agreed Schroeder was likely to soften his stance after the election, but said he was storing up problems for himself by rigidly opposing German involvement.
That is precisely what looks to be on the cards if Germany takes over command of the 4,650-strong force in Kabul and increases its contribution from its current 1,250 peacekeepers to free up Britain and Turkey for possible action in Iraq.—Reuters
