Schröder’s Farewell Visit

The visit of Gerhard Schröder to Washington tomorrow has barely registered with the US press. This is in stark contrast to the visit by President Bush to Mainz in February, which got front page coverage in the US and European press. I guess this lack of interest befits a lame-duck leader who has always been despised by the Bush administration and the neoconservative establishment in Washington. Still, Jim Hoagland has an excellent piece in today’s Washington Post on the Schröder – Bush meeting:

Schroeder’s trip this week was planned months ago as a three-day sweep across the United States to demonstrate that tensions over Iraq were dissipating. Now the chancellor comes to meet with Bush, give one speech and then leave, hoping for neither snub nor embrace at the White House.

Administration insiders say that Bush has yet to forgive Schroeder fully for promising the president not to use Iraq as a campaign issue in his successful 2002 reelection bid and then using little else.

The trickiest issue the two leaders will discuss is a German-backed proposal to create six new permanent members on the U.N. Security Council. Bush will stress that U.S. opposition to the plan is not aimed at Germany — and certainly not at Schroeder — but is a matter of principle. If the chancellor accepts that, the president should then offer to sell him a bridge in Brooklyn.

It will be interesting to watch how this meeting is covered.  While Schröder is certainly suffering from his political setbacks, the President is hardly in a position to assume a triumphalist tone in the meetings.  In retrospect, Schröder’s decision to stay out the Iraq debacle – whatever the motivations may have been – certainly appears to have been a shrewd move.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has nothing about the Chancellor’s visit, but takes up the meme of Germany as the "Sick Man of Europe" in a piece by Mark Landler:

With so much up in the air, Germany has gone from being Europe’s sturdy anchor to its biggest wild card.

"Germany’s political strength has always stemmed from its economic strength," said Josef Joffe, co-editor of the weekly paper Die Zeit. "But now, Germany is the sick man of Europe."

Or as Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels (and a German), puts it, "Europeans look on Germany as a mollusk without a spine, not a Prussian soldier marching in goose step."

Europe can’t afford for its most populous and economically important country to be a squishy sea creature any more than for it to be a hegemonic warrior. So as Europe debates what future it wants for itself in the wake of its discredited constitution and the budget standoff, a parallel contest is under way for the future of Germany. In a way, the two are the same.