The private America is an idealized America, a land of dreams and strong emotions. Angela Merkel got to know the country in her youth – as a focal point for her yearnings, a place of freedom and self-realization. As an adolescent she was convinced that she would not be able to go there until after her sixtieth birthday. But as it turned out, Angela Merkel did go to her dream destination when she was only thirty-six. In 1990, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she and her partner Joachim Sauer boarded a plane for Los Angeles.
Joachim Sauer was in a position of great privilege at the time: the GDR Academy of Sciences had promoted him to the ranks of those who were allowed to travel. “I've been waiting a long time for this,” said Sauer, in what is probably the only interview that has appeared in writing in his lifetime, published in the journal of the Humboldt Foundation. On the day the Wall came down he was in Karlsruhe, where he had been given a research grant. It was there he met some American scientists and was invited to work in San Diego for two years as deputy technical director of the software technology firm, BIOSYM. At the beginning of 1990 he took up his post in California, and that summer he was going to show Angela Merkel the Pacific Ocean.
Merkel described the trip almost two decades later, on 3rd November 2009, when she bore witness to her belief in America in the most distinguished surroundings imaginable. Only one other German chancellor had spoken to the assembled US Congress: Konrad Adenauer, in 1957 – when Angela Kasner was three years old and still learning to walk. As a child, she created her own America out of films and books, material that was sometimes smuggled into the Templin parsonage by West German relatives. That was where she developed her idealized view of the United States, which she described to Congress with unusual emotion many years later.
“What was I so enthusiastic about? The American Dream – the opportunity for everyone to succeed, to get somewhere by their own efforts,” she said, her voice breaking. “And like many teenagers, I was also a fan of a certain brand of jeans that couldn't be bought in the GDR, but I had an aunt in the West who used to send them to me. I loved the vast American landscapes, where the air is full of the spirit of freedom and independence. In 1990 my husband and I flew to America for the very first time, to California. We will never forget that first view of the Pacific Ocean. It was nothing short of magnificent.”
“Magnificent” – such was the image that appeared to Merkel and Sauer on a summer's day at the end of their long transatlantic flight. In Los Angeles they boarded another plane for San Diego. On the flight south a view of the Pacific opened up on the right-hand side of the aircraft. Merkel was fascinated to think that on the other side lay Asia. That same evening they went to the beach.
Today, Angela Merkel would still like to go on holiday to California, but the time-zone difference and the distance from Berlin make it impossible. Nine hours between her office and holiday destination – out of the question for a head of government who has to be contactable at all times.
However, traces of her nostalgic feeling for the United States come up again and again in the Chancellor's everyday life, and she allows an extraordinary number of American visitors to go straight up to the seventh floor of the Chancellery. Merkel's colleagues know which of these must be given a slot in her diary: from New York there is naturally Henry Kissinger, the foreign-policy oracle. He never stays longer than an hour, and thirty minutes are usually enough. And she always likes to see Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and Bob Kimmitt. The discreet Kimmitt was the United States Ambassador in Bonn when Merkel was first a Minister. The diplomat had asked to meet her because he was fascinated by the story of this woman from the former East Germany. Not many ambassadors came to the Ministry for Women and Youth, and that impressed Merkel enormously. She is still in private contact with Kimmitt.
She was also impressed by the two former US Secretaries of State, Clinton and Rice. It is not usual for the German head of government to receive foreign ministers, but Clinton and Rice were exceptions. Merkel values strong women who have made their way in the tough political world of Washington. She has always felt close to Hillary Clinton – although she has never said as much in public, she would have liked to see her win the presidency in 2008. Condoleezza Rice's previous career was also of interest to her. Before entering politics, Rice was a lecturer in politics at Stanford, specializing in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1995 she co-wrote Germany Unified and Europe Transformed, which is still a work of reference on that subject. Like Merkel she speaks Russian, and that is an additional bond between them.
Merkel is fascinated by the style of American politics, which often throws caution and tactical manoeuvring to the wind, and rewards those who relish vigorous argument and confrontation. America is a conservative country, in no way comparable to Germany and Europe in terms of social policy. Merkel knows that the political centre ground in the USA lies much farther to the right than it does in Germany. And while she doesn't draw parallels, she admires the clarity of argument and keen combativeness of the American system. She is fascinated by how the sheer radicalism of a presidential candidate, or a major political movement like the Tea Party, can call the basic consensus of society into question, and how fundamental concepts like the very notion and purpose of social security can be thrust aside. Does the state really have to be responsible for pensions? Is medical care the government's business? How much personal responsibility can be expected of a citizen? How much of a sense of community does a state need? How much injustice will it tolerate?
Merkel loves comparing systems, and travels the world with these criteria in mind: how do they do this or that compared with the way we do it? What can we learn? Where are we better? America repays such curiosity and asks the Germans, in particular, some challenging questions: at first sight the country is so like Germany, so European, imprinted with the history and culture of the Old World. But Europeans regularly despair of the USA because Americans can be so ruthless, so radical.
Merkel herself has been on that typically European journey of discovery, which had begun in her youth, when she knew the United States only from Western television. During her studies at the Academy of Sciences she would follow the mind games played by the superpowers over the question of armaments. Yet at one point her belief in America was called seriously into question – when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began their conference on disarmament in Iceland. The cause was Reagan, who in October 1986 initially turned down Gorbachev's offer of a drastic reduction in strategic nuclear weapons. He was unwilling to do what Gorbachev wanted and give up his planned anti-ballistic missile shield in outer space (known in the West as the Strategic Defence Initiative or “Star Wars”). Discussions in the white wooden house in Iceland ended inconclusively, without even a statement. Reagan appeared to be a hardliner, ready for conflict. Had he gambled away his great chance of reconciliation? Was this the beginning of a new and terrifying phase of the Cold War?
The Party interpreters in East Berlin were quick to give their own analysis of the summit. Gorbachev's course had always been too soft for the Socialist Unity Party, so the version that landed on Merkel's desk in the Academy of Sciences was that they had to expect the worst – perhaps even war. Angela Merkel's faith in the USA and Reagan's wisdom began to waver – but this weakness lasted only a few hours. At home that evening, Joachim Sauer managed to restore her faith in the West.
Her professional rapprochement with the USA began in September 1991, when Chancellor Helmut Kohl set off with an impressive retinue for a wonderful six days in the USA – there are few official foreign trips these days that would last a week. Kohl flew first to California, then on to Washington. As Minister for Women and Youth, Merkel was part of the delegation. Kohl wanted to introduce her as one of his reunification discoveries, his political foster-child. He also wanted to do her a favour by showing her America – Kohl could be overzealous at times. Others on the trip remember Merkel trying to escape this constant coddling and the attentions of Kohl's wife
Hannelore and his personal private secretary, Juliane Weber, who were always pushing her into the front row, which was where protocol demanded that she should stand. The Kohl entourage apparently even made sure that the young minister's wardrobe was suitable for the occasion.
On a visit to a national park, Kohl was quite offended when he went to show Merkel the natural wonders of America, but “his girl”, as he called her, replied coolly that she had already been here with her partner and knew all about it. But at least the trip gave Merkel an opportunity to meet Ronald Reagan, who by then was already suffering from Alzheimer's. In her GDR days she had revered him for his clarity of mind and unshakeable will. The meeting took place at Reagan's ranch in Santa Barbara, and Nancy Reagan was also there.
These days Merkel rarely talks about the hero of her youth. Reagan's image in the West differs from the perception that people have of him in the former Warsaw Pact countries, who admired the President's sharp mind and plain speaking, and Merkel herself would probably give more credit to the penultimate US President during the Cold War. But, as so often, she avoids describing herself as the heir to any particular political role model.
Unlike Kohl's image of the United States, Merkel's is not so obviously coloured by gratitude. At the centre of Kohl's America are its role in the liberation from Nazi barbarity and Washington's unwavering support for German reunification. Kohl was forever expressing his gratitude. When Merkel speaks of gratitude, it sounds more as if she is paying lip service to the conventions of transatlantic rhetoric. She prefers to speak of friendship. It tends to disturb her that every time she travels to Washington, anxious questions are asked about whether her relationship with the President is a good one – whether Germans, or Europeans in general, still have something to offer, or whether America hasn't long turned its back on its former allies. Such questions betray a lack of self-confidence, an inability for independent action. In Merkel's view, friendship means equal rights, a level playing field.
Such self-confidence doesn't come naturally to Merkel, however. It has been achieved through sheer hard work. Her political image of America centres around a single event: the Cold War, with its competing systems and the struggle of slavery against freedom. To her, America is the incarnation of freedom and, ultimately, she owes her own freedom to the steadfastness of the United States. Initially, Merkel's America was above all else the repository of Western values as laid down in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. “What brings us Europeans and Americans together, and holds us together, is our common values,” she said on Capitol Hill. “It is the image of the inalienable dignity of mankind that we hold jointly, a joint understanding of freedom in responsibility.”
Freedom in responsibility: this is the Chancellor's private code for a relationship between equals: you are my partner, but I am also your partner – so if you behave like a partner, we will do the same. Or, to put it even more forcefully: transatlantic relations lie at the heart of German foreign policy. They are not negotiable, whether the President is George W. Bush or Barack Obama. No President can be so bad that the relationship with his country has to be sacrificed on his account. For Merkel, relations with the USA, as well as with the European Union and Israel, are the cornerstones of German foreign policy. She sometimes speaks of reasons of state, particularly in the case of Israel. But she always means the same thing: German policy must never oppose the European Union, Israel or the United States.
For this reason, just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Angela Merkel the party politician encountered what was her most serious foreign crisis to date when, unlike the parliamentary majority in Germany led by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and contrary to public opinion, she refused to brand the then US President, George W. Bush, as Satan's representative on earth. Seldom had the country seen more debate about foreign policy than during the period from the summer of 2002 to the beginning of the Iraq War on 20th March 2003.
Nine months after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, it became apparent that the Bush administration might have more in mind than simply driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan as a display of American power: in other words, revenge for those who died on 9/11. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder got wind of public opinion early on in the run-up to the general election of 2002, and decided to put foreign policy at the heart of his campaign. On 5th August he began his bid for re-election in the streets of Hannover, with a speech on the Opernplatz. It was this shift towards foreign policy – after a long period during which the emphasis had been on social and educational policy and other domestic reforms – that electrified the public. Schröder spoke about the new dangers that the world was facing, about terror, and then added: “I say that we are ready to show solidarity, but under my leadership this country will never take part in adventures.”
This was a swipe at George W. Bush and rumours of a possible invasion of Iraq. The public reaction was one of strong approval. Schröder noted this with satisfaction – he had found the right topic to please his audience. “Playing at war or military intervention – I can only warn against that,” said the Chancellor in another variation on the theme, encouraged by the applause. “It is not the sort of thing we do.”
The CDU and CSU, led by their candidate Edmund Stoiber, were caught on the back foot by these remarks. Even today, those close to Merkel say that from a competitive point of view Schröder was extremely shrewd in his understanding of the mood of the nation. Stoiber's inability to engage in a debate on the subject, as well as his mishandling of the emergency caused by the flooding of the River Oder, cost him the Chancellorship. But as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Angela Merkel found her most strongly held convictions – never to act against America, never to act against Europe – under attack. For that was exactly what Schröder caused by describing Iraq as an adventure: a divided Europe. Suddenly there were hawks and doves among the European powers: the group of five and the group of ten. There were states who distanced themselves openly from the USA and a faction which favoured putting military pressure on Saddam Hussein or, at least from a tactical point of view, wanted to avoid falling out with the United States.
Merkel clearly belonged to the more cautious faction. She was anxious to prevent a clash with the United States and to preserve European unity. She said later in interviews that, with the help of a united European front, she would have hoped to persuade Bush not to invade in the spring of 2003, or at least to postpone the invasion for six months. That might have given the US the time to overthrow Saddam without resorting to military intervention. Another consideration was central to Merkel's argument: she never understood why the United States wanted to prove, and on such a dubious basis, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. She thought that Secretary of State Colin Powell's appearance before the UN Security Council was unworthy of the man. In what was a most peculiar performance, Powell alleged that Saddam Hussein had a mobile chemicalweapons laboratory.
In Merkel's view, the matter was quite clear: the United Nations had passed almost two dozen resolutions against Iraq. But Saddam Hussein had refused to comply with the demands of the international community, which was therefore justified in asserting its authority, up to and including the threat of force. “I really suffered during the months before the Iraq war, because I know how dictators think and what makes an impression on them,” she said in an interview for a book by the journalist Hugo Müller-Vogg. “It was difficult just to stand by and see so many people making fools of themselves. Seventeen UN resolutions had failed to have any effect. And when the latest one was passed we were unable to agree on a time limit. And then the Chancellor of Germany stands in a marketplace and says: ‘Never mind what the UN does, we're not going along with it.’ That really took the biscuit!”
It was in those weeks in the autumn of 2002 and the spring of 2003 that Angela Merkel's attitude to foreign policy was forged. After her party lost the general election she took over as chairman of its
parliamentary group from Friedrich Merz, thereby making an early declaration of her candidature for the Chancellorship at the next election. She also needed the support of the conservative wing of her Party, which up till then had gone to Merz and Roland Koch, Prime Minister of the region of Hesse. And she needed to enhance her foreign-policy profile. In the party, she was surrounded by a number of experts who were keen to share their personal opinions on international affairs with the prime ministers of the different regions. Friedrich Pflüger, the parliamentary-party spokesman on foreign policy, supported the thesis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In March, he was to accompany Merkel on a visit to Washington, which increased in significance thanks to a newspaper article.
The weeks before the trip were marked by nervousness. The Security Council was working non-stop on the question of Iraq, troops were being assembled, the threat of war was increasing, the tone became more and more strident. Shortly after Christmas the then Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, said in an interview with Der Spiegel that he could envisage Germany agreeing to intervention in Iraq if the UN Security Council gave its approval for war. Fischer thus positioned himself clearly against the line taken by Chancellor Schröder. There was fierce infighting in the governing coalition. Schröder was clearly not going to allow his Foreign Minister's insubordination to go unheeded: the Chancellor had to have the last word. He gave his reply on 21st January – this time in the marketplace in Goslar during the election campaign in Lower Saxony. No, said Schröder, Germany would not back intervention, even if the United Nations voted in favour of it.
Schröder's remarks sent shock waves through the alliance. So where did Germany stand? The US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, who had a gift for cynicism, made disparaging comments about the old and the new Europe. Fischer flung the fury of old Europe back in his face, whispering in his ear at the Munich Security Conference in February: “Mr Secretary, we are not convinced.”
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