BERLIN—It is German Question Time once more in Europe. Only Germany, the continent’s most powerful economy, and still miraculously going strong, can lead the way to a recovery. That much is admitted from Lisbon to Tallinn, and even in Berlin.

The problem is that the Germans, less than two weeks before an historic EU summit weighs far-reaching treaty reforms to calm the markets and—perhaps—save the eurozone, are still debating the wrong questions. How much “leverage” is enough? Would “elite bonds” help? Might a “stability union” do the trick? This past Monday night, however, a Pole came to Berlin and spelled out the Question for the Germans. Or rather, he chiseled it in stone, in the starkest possible terms. In doing so, he demonstrated a remarkable grasp of his Western neighbor’s psychology.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski began his speech with an astute reference to the tired cliché that Europe has become boring because it is no longer about matters of war and peace. Wrong, he said — the Balkan Wars began in 1991 with the disintegration of the dinar, the Yugoslav currency. Those wars, lest anyone forget, lasted 14 years and claimed up to 130,000 lives. They caused Germany to offer shelter to 300,000 refugees, and to go to war for the first time in its post-World War II history. It was a reminder guaranteed to get his audience’s rapt attention, and keep it.

Sikorski bowed to his German friends, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, by supporting their calls for automatic sanctions, an elected European president, and more European integration. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution, he noted, had done something very similar when they decided to make their historic move from a confederation to a real federation.  (It’s not every day German leaders get compared to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.) Even more shrewdly, the Minister reminded his listeners that a key element of the deal had been Alexander Hamilton’s brokering of a joint debt guarantee and revenue stream for the 13 founding states—an elegant way of pointing out that eurobonds, and a stronger European Central Bank (both still officially anathema to Berlin), are the logical conclusion to calls for a stronger EU.

Sikorski also thanked the Germans for their “solidarity” with Poland after 1989 — but not without adding that “I hope you appreciate it’s been a good investment.” In 2010, German exports exceeded 1990 levels ninefold. (Achtung, subliminal message: being nice is even nicer when it pays very nicely.) Was there a hint of acid in his subsequent remark that Germany’s trade with Poland is bigger than with the Russian federation, “although you would not always know it from German political discourse?” Perish the thought.

But by then it was time to dispense with diplomatic politesse. Sikorski had already pointed out that Germany has profited more than any other countries from exports to the ten new Eastern European members after 2004: its annual export volume rose from 15 to 95 billion euros in 2010. In the last third of his speech, he bluntly enumerated six reasons why Germany owes its fellow EU members solidarity:

• Germany is the biggest beneficiary of the eurozone
• Germany is not an innocent victim of others’ profligacy, having broken the Growth and Stability Pact and let its banks “recklessly” buy risky bonds
• Germany has profited from lower borrowing costs
• Germany stands to suffer most from a breakup of the eurozone
• The danger of collapse is “much bigger” than the danger of inflation
• Germany’s size and history give it a special responsibility to preserve peace and democracy on the continent (Here Sikorski quoted Jürgen Habermas, German secular intellectuals’ answer to the Pope: the last time a German revolution failed, in 1848, it took a hundred years to regain a similar level of democracy.)

At this point, the silence in the auditorium (packed with about 300 diplomats, policymakers, think-tankers, and other citizens—and including two former German presidents) was deafening. We were sitting only a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s graceful symbol of reunification—the Eastern side of the Gate, which only 20 years ago had been disfigured by the Wall, lethal coils of barbed wire, and goose-stepping Volkspolizisten. Recent history has been very generous to Germany; some may have thought: redemptive. Not a nice thought that things might go into reverse again.

To finish, Poland’s foreign minister reminded the Germans that their country is not an island: “The biggest threat to the security and prosperity of Poland” … is not terrorism, not the Taliban, not German tanks, nor Russian missiles… but “the collapse of the eurozone.”

“I demand of Germany that,” Sikorski continued, “for your sake and for ours, you help it survive and prosper. You know full well that nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity. You have become Europe’s indispensable nation. You may not fail to lead.”

The applause at the end of Sikorski’s speech was genuinely warm, if permeated by a sense of shock. In Germany, home truths are usually muttered—rather than pronounced firmly and clearly, with attention paid to enunciation and phrasing.  Perhaps fittingly, it was former president Horst Köhler—himself born in Poland—who stood up and thanked Sikorski: “For you as Polish foreign minister to give this speech here today—I think it’s wonderful.”

Constanze Stelzenmüller is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin

Image by Dirk Enters, DGAP.

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CHISINAU/KIEV/TBILISI—Western politicians and policymakers were already looking overwhelmed before the nuclear catastrophe in Japan and the upheavals across the Middle East hit them. Why on earth should they bother with Eastern Europe now, that forlorn and troubled backwater arcing from Belarus to the Caucasus?

The forces pulling and tugging at the West today are indeed formidable. Massive natural disasters and the economic crisis compound the burden on national governments that were already struggling to steer divided and fearful polities. Transatlantic divisions over the use of force to deal with the brutal repression of the democratic uprising in Libya by the thugs of President Muammar Gaddafi are throwing a harsh spotlight not just on the West’s military weakness and lack of political unity, but on its lack of credibility as a protector of freedom and human rights in the Muslim world.

Some are already arguing that the United States and Europe should refocus their strategic energies and dwindling resources on the Middle East. They add that the review of the EU’s European Neighborhood Policy that is currently underway (publication is expected for late April) should redirect funding and political impetus away from Eastern Europe, and toward the southern shores of the Mediterranean—in keeping with a recent “non-paper” initiated by France and a handful of other EU members that pointed out insinuatingly that for every €1.80 spent by the EU in Tunisia, the EU spends €25 in Moldova.

This impulse is understandable, but it is short-sighted and wrong. The West’s choice is not between South and East; it is between supporting the quest for freedom and a decent life elsewhere, or pulling up the drawbridge to keep our riches, material and immaterial, to ourselves. If we opt for the latter—and there are many signs that American as well as European politicians and publics are sorely tempted to turn their backs to the world—we undermine all the values we cherish most. In reality, we preserve them best by supporting them elsewhere. The answer is to do more, not less, both in the South and in the East.

Meanwhile, concerns about Eastern Europe are very real. Belarus has its own Gaddafi, strongman Alexander Lukashenko, whose storm troops ruthlessly suppressed peaceful mass protests against a blatantly manipulated general election just before Christmas; several dozen activists still languish in prison. At the other end of the arc, the authoritarian ruler Ilham Aliyev and his family have held oil-rich Azerbaijan in a stranglehold for two decades.

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, citizens may still walk the streets, express political opinions, or vote for a candidate disliked by their president without fearing for their lives. But theirs is an edgy and tenuous stability. The region’s fragile economies have been hard hit by the financial crisis. Corruption is rampant, political reform processes are stagnant or backsliding.

In a recent speaking tour through the capitals of Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, I encountered a resilient and creative civil society, as well as many quietly impressive civil servants. Yet these courageous modernizers live on the defensive. They are sustained neither by the region’s weak, divided, and increasingly authoritarian leaders, nor by the West, to which most of them aspire to belong. The result is a creeping strategic and moral vacuum, which leaves Europe’s eastern periphery an easy prey to Russian power plays and zero-sum games: in Transnistria, in the occupied regions of Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh, on the Crimean peninsula, and elsewhere.

The United States and the European Union have not been inactive in the region, of course. In fact, there has been a serious push by both Washington and Berlin recently, accompanied by many visits by senior officials, to reinforce ties to Eastern Europe, and to nudge reform along. The EU has made it easier for Georgians, Ukrainians, and Moldovans to get visas for travel to Europe, and it is liberalizing trade with several countries in the region.

Still, Americans and Europeans alike would do well to listen more to critics in the region, both from within and outside governments. The EU possesses a large set of instruments—but it has yet to learn to calibrate them. Local actors say the EU’s demands for regulatory adaptation are often intransigent, overbroad, and unclear, adding to the burdens of an economy in transformation. At the same time, they note bitterly, not enough conditionality is applied to democratic and political reforms. Finally, Brussels is largely—and inexplicably—absent on issues like security sector reform and conflict resolution.

This is where Washington should come in, in tandem with Brussels. Shuttle diplomacy and speeches are better than no shuttle diplomacy and speeches; but it must now put its shoulder to the wheel, and work toward resolution of the frozen conflicts. The United States can use its diplomatic heft, its experience, and its recently improved relations with Russia (the “reset”) to make it clear that the West sees Russian efforts to regain a “zone of privileged interest” in the region for what they are—and is prepared to counter any attempts to roll back or undermine democratic transformations.

There is no time to lose. In 2012, Americans and Russians will elect their presidents; the Germans elect a chancellor. Parliamentary elections will be held in Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. More distractions—and more opportunities for those willing and able to take advantage of them.

Constanze Stelzenmüller is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

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BERLIN — “Europe whole and free” owes a great debt to the decision by a courageous Hungarian government to open its frontiers to Austria in the summer of 1989, allowing thousands of East German refugees to escape. Twenty-one years later, and just as it takes over the rotating European presidency, Hungary is a frontrunner once more. The difference is that this time it appears determined to reverse its course. And the risk is that it might take Europe with it.

Normally, the six-month EU presidency is a staid and low-key affair, all the more since the creation of a full-time European President and a foreign-policy czar by the Lisbon Treaty just over a year ago. Few Europeans even noticed that Belgium, Hungary’s predecessor, didn’t have a government for the duration of its tenure. But that is clearly too tame for the pugnacious government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Budapest chose to open the year with a display of political fireworks, featuring two showstopping zingers: a set of new laws restraining the media, and a “crisis tax” on investors.

Uproar ensued. In Hungary, students protested and newspapers appeared with blank front pages. A barrage of criticism came from the rest of Europe:  from EU commissioner Neelie Kroes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the OSCE’s top media official, and the French government, to a cross-section of the European Parliament and a dozen European CEOs. When senior representatives of Orbán’s Fidesz party shuffled their feet and made conciliatory noises, the prime minister himself stepped in to clarify: “not…in our wildest dreams” would he allow any changes to the law.

In an attempt at transparency (and damage control), the Hungarian government has now published translations of the media laws in English, as well as lengthy refutations of the criticism against them. It’s an unconvincing effort. The new media rules (totaling more than 200 pages) require all outlets, public and private, to register with a powerful new regulatory authority whose five-person board is to be composed entirely of Fidesz nominees. That authority is empowered to probe whether media reporting is “objective and balanced,” and to impose punishing fines or even closures on offenders; it may also require reporters to disclose their sources in the interest of “national security and public order.” In short, the new rules are unduly intrusive, vague, and over-broad. (As for the “crisis tax,” Budapest argues that it covers all companies, foreign and national. The multinationals counter that, because of the high threshold involved, it will be applied almost exclusively to them.)

Calls by some critics to impose legal sanctions on Hungary—or to exclude it from the EU—are unhelpfully melodramatic. The Lisbon Treaty does provide for such sanctions in its Article 7; this was a lesson from an abortive attempt, in 2000, to isolate the conservative Austrian government for entering into a coalition with the party of right-wing extremist Jörg Haider. But Article 7 is the EU’s equivalent of a nuclear option, reserved for “a serious breach” of EU rules, and requiring at least a qualified majority in the 27-member European Council. Instead, Kroes has sensibly opted for opening a so-called “infringement action,” a standard EU procedure, to bring the Hungarian laws into alignment with the EU’s legal system through constructive criticism. This could be a face-saving escape route for Orbán. If he chooses it, that is.

Still, there can be no doubt that Hungary poses a very serious challenge for the European Union. Yet, for now, that challenge is political rather than legal. The new laws are only the latest in a series of profoundly illiberal power grabs—from the constitutional court to pension funds, cultural institutions, and the fiscal and monetary authorities—by the Fidesz government, emboldened by a two-thirds majority win in the April 2009 election.

Orbán, for his part, has never made a secret of his contempt for parliamentary democracy: “The republic,” he said in 2006, “is merely a cloak for the nation.” He could not be farther from the truth. Balance of powers, the accountability of government to the governed, and the protection of civil rights and liberties, including the freedom of the press: these are the core principles of the European res publica. To disdain them is to disdain all that Europe stands for.

True, Europe has been watching silently for months while the Orbán government consolidated its gains. And, yes, press freedoms are treated cavalierly (to say the least) in a number of other European countries, such as Italy or Romania. Germany itself is no stranger to state-sanctioned cronyism: the Chancellor, no less, recently appointed a former speaker to head a state broadcasting institution. Most worryingly, the economic crisis has created a fearful, inward-looking public mood all across Europe, which sets growth and stability above freedom and liberal values, making anxious citizens an easy prey for ruthless demagogues and populists.

None of this can be an excuse to condone what is happening in Hungary or elsewhere in Europe. On the contrary, Europe must defend its principles—in the political arena. It is time to say that Europe is not just about the euro.

Constanze Stelzenmüller is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Deauville, the beach resort in Normandy where Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, and Dmitri Medvedev met earlier this week, has seen better days. So—perhaps not coincidentally—have France, Germany, and Russia. Indeed, Deauville’s glory as the acme of summer holiday elegance for Europe’s elites lasted for much of the 19th century, when Prussia, France, and Russia (together with Austria and Britain) ruled the continent in a balance of power known as the Concert of Europe. That age finally went up in fire and smoke in the dog days of August 1914. Are Paris, Berlin, and Moscow trying to bring it back in 2010?

French officials were very careful before this week’s summit to dispel any such ideas. The meeting, journalists were told, was “a brainstorming…to better understand the expectations and ambitions of each partner”; no decisions were expected to come out of it. Meanwhile, the conservative Polish weekly Gazeta Polska ran this headline: “Troika Carves Up Europe.” So, what did happen in Deauville? A meeting of minds? Or a carving of countries?

To start, the summit (which lasted from a Monday night dinner through a two-hour conversation on Tuesday morning) meant something quite different for each of the three leaders.

For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the host, the meeting in Normandy will have been a more than welcome respite from nationwide strikes and angry criticism at home. It was also a preparation for his country’s taking over the G20 chair in November. That month also sees a NATO summit in Lisbon, where the alliance is expected to approve a new strategic concept. France, like Germany and some other member states, wants NATO to establish a more cooperative relationship with Russia as well. Last, but not least, the French disapprove of German-Russian chumminess. Being inside the tent with Berlin and Moscow is preferable to peering anxiously through the flap from outside.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her part, is also embroiled in an unpleasant debate about the integration of migrants, and yoked to a disappointing coalition partner. She is keenly aware that her country’s overtures to Moscow in recent years are regarded with distrust in other parts of Europe. In fact, the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 was an unpleasant shock to Berlin. The relationship was downgraded after that, from a “strategic” to a “modernization” partnership; Merkel has since mostly avoided bilateral initiatives and made a point of criticizing Russia’s human rights record. And, like the French, the Germans have left no doubt that Medvedev’s proposal of a new Euroatlantic security treaty is a non-starter, as it would give Moscow a veto in all matters of European security. Yet Berlin continues to feel strongly that Europe’s strategic interest lies in anchoring Russia to the West in a cooperative relationship. Hence its June proposal that the European Union should establish an EU-Russia Council—and consider a joint resolution of the frozen conflict in Moldova’s breakaway eastern province of Transnistria, where more than 1,100 Russian “peacekeeping” troops are stationed.

Russia, too, has clearly been reconsidering its position under the double influence of the global economic crisis and the 2008 war with Georgia—from which it emerged as the military victor but the political loser. It has engaged with the Obama administration’s “reset” policy, signed a U.S.-Russian agreement on strategic nuclear arms reductions, supported sanctions against Iran, cooperated over Afghanistan, and mended fences with Poland. This week, troops withdrew from Perevi, one of the villages in Georgia still occupied by Russian forces. For Medvedev, well-meaning but weak, Europe is where his friends are.

Medvedev provided the only real news item to come out of the summit: he announced that he would attend the NATO meeting in Lisbon. That said, it’s worth noting the substantial list of things that did not happen: there is still no movement on a new European partnership and cooperation agreement, or on visa-free travel for Russians, or on Transnistria. And, while Russia’s president indicated that he was willing to talk about missile defense at NATO, he gave no sign that Moscow might actually accept the U.S. plans.

In sum: a very modest success, accompanied by a sensible focus on trust-building, rather than a renewal of bilateralism or a rubberstamping of grandiose and unrealistic plans for a new European security architecture.

But progress it is not. Yes, the Chancellor made a point of emphasizing that European leaders will continue to meet in “different formats.” The fact remains that these formats are holdovers from an earlier age—an age that Russian elites still hanker after and would like to bring back. Berlin and Paris would be well-advised not to create the impression that they do, too.

Granted, the institutional arrangements of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty explicitly leave room for leadership from groups of countries. But in a Europe of 27, this cannot mean forging ahead and presenting others with a fait accompli. Wise and patient consensus-building is what is required. It can also not mean behaving as though the institutions of EU foreign and security policymaking do not exist—specifically, the EU’s foreign policy representative, Catherine Ashton. The shaping of Europe’s Russia policy ultimately ought to reside with her.

And surely more could be done to reassure Washington (where the summit revived unpleasant memories of a 2003 “troika” meeting at the height of the Iraq war that featured talk of Europe as a “counterweight” to the United States) about the transatlantic transparency of these meetings?

Most importantly, it must be clear that all this is about bringing Russia closer to the West—not about carving Europe out of the Atlantic community, and into a Concert of Eurasia.

Constanze Stelzenmüller is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin

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BERLIN — One year after taking office, President Obama’s polls have plummeted, unemployment is at 10 percent, the loss of Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat endangers the administration’s health care reforms, and Iran has rejected a deal that would allow it to enrich uranium abroad. All of that is bad news. But this is not the catastrophic bursting of an Obama Bubble. It’s the end of a hyperinflation of expectations. And about time, too.

“The nation I’m most interested in building is our own,” Obama said in his speech on Afghanistan last December. But his main focus was on domestic policy from the outset, as Americans had wanted. The economy, energy independence, banking, infrastructure, housing, jobs, education, health care, and tackling the effects of climate change, the status of immigrants, and social inequalities: Obama deserves credit for his courage in offering a complete and coherent diagnosis of the problems besetting the country. Nonetheless, even from Over Here in Europe, it is difficult not to conclude that the President and his team underrated the challenges of getting to yes on health care reform and other domestic policy issues: a fractious left wing of the Democratic Party, a wounded Republican Party, a deeply polarized and anxious electorate.  

But when Obama took office, the world was on the brink of economic collapse, and could have taken America down with it. Obama’s team (together with the Fed, and building on what the Bush administration had done) led the salvage work: rescuing banks, a $787 billion stimulus package, coordinating the reactions of the G-20, pushing for re-regulation of the international financial markets. A disaster was averted, and the recession was staved off — not just in America.

Against this grimly urgent economic backdrop, Obama’s foreign policy achievements in his first year are actually remarkable. Shaking a bobby’s hand outside 10 Downing Street, bowing to the Japanese emperor, assuring the Muslim world of America’s respect: these were gracious gestures which did a great deal to reestablish his country’s soft power in the world. His speeches re-set standards for public discourse about international affairs to a level of civility and seriousness not seen in a long time.

Obama’s policy of the outstretched hand stands for a doctrine that prefers cooperation over coercion in an increasingly multi-polar world  – not out of naïve idealism, but because it husbands resources and asks others to do their share in responding to the world’s challenges. It is also an astute opening move in a carefully-considered strategy. It morally disarms anti-Americanism. It undermines conspiracy theories cooked up by authoritarian elites afraid of their own citizens. It puts unresponsive leaders on the defensive. And, yes, it provides legitimacy for moving beyond cooperation when that offer is rejected. As the President said in Oslo: “Yes, there will be engagement, there will be diplomacy, but there will be consequences when these things fail.” It looks as though Iran might become the first test of the doctrine. Afghanistan, at any rate, proves that this President is not afraid to use hard power when he has to.

Of course, Obama has made mistakes. Some of the issues he has tried to tackle may simply prove intractable even for an American president. But what matters is that he got some key things just right. Even with flaws revealed, he remains one of the most gifted politicians of our age. There are too few leaders of his stature €“ in America or in Europe, for that matter €“ to indulge in the luxury of dismissing him now when so much of his work is still undone.

Constanze Stelzenmäller is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin

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Chancellor Angela Merkel famously displays upon her desk a framed picture of an 18th century princess from the German East who journeyed far from home to subdue a court teeming with dangerous rivals, and from there to rule an alien empire: Catherine the Great. Being an Empress in that dark era held undeniable advantages. One did not have to seek regular approval from one’s unwashed subjects, and one could, well, dispose of opponents in ways that are generally frowned upon in a parliamentary democracy. Angela Merkel, by contrast, has outdone her model by winning her country’s highest ruling office not once but twice in general elections, most recently this Sunday. Her opponents appeared to conveniently self-destruct under her benign and distant gaze; and she now even has a new political consort in the form of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), led by Guido Westerwelle. If this were a Shakespearean history play, its title would be”Angela the First, Part II.” Its topic, as in all royal dramas: Power, its Triumphs and its Pitfalls.

To gauge the epic possibilities of Part II, a synopsis of Part I is in order. Angela Merkel, an East German Protestant divorcée and leader of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDUs), became Germany’s first female Chancellor in 2005-after a campaign that she nearly lost because she spoke truth to the electorate about the need for drastic economic and social welfare reforms. Her honesty melted away a sizable lead in the polls; in the end, she scraped into victory over the Social Democrat (SPD) incumbent by exactly one percentage point. The inevitable consequence was a political marriage of convenience: a grand coalition with her erstwhile opponents of the SPD. It was plodding and unattractive, but, in fairness, it appeared to work. As grand coalitions tend to, however, it led to lowest common denominator policies and nourished the opposition. On election night this year, it became clear that the CDU’s embrace had also nearly drained the lifeblood out of the SPD. From the outset, Merkel had cannily moved her party into the center of the political stage, thereby squeezing the Social Democrats against the Left Party. But the SPD’s 11.2 percent drop to 23 percent of the vote, its worst result ever and the steepest drop between two elections ever, was a disaster beyond any pundit’s imagination.

September 27, 2009 will indeed go down in history as a night of negative records, with double-digit wins for all three opposition parties (the Liberals, the Greens, and the Left), the worst-ever results for the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU, as well as Germany’s lowest-ever voter turnout (70.8 percent, down 6.9 percentfrom 2008). It will also be remembered as the night in which Germans understood that the political landscape they had grown up with had changed irrevocably. Yet, what matters to Angela Merkel is that she has triumphed and can rule again, all this with the pro-business Liberals, the political partner of her hopes-even if, at 33.8 percent for the Christian Democrats and 14.6 percent for the Liberals, her mandate is slimmer than she might have wished. But she is helped-for now, at least-by the fact that her center-right coalition currently holds a slight majority in the Bundestag, the second chamber of the federal legislature, which has extensive co-decisionmaking powers and can cause massive gridlock when majorities in both chambers are not aligned. Wish fulfillment is, of course, the classic stuff of drama; and, sometimes, of tragedy.

Merkel’s second victory thus raises a fascinating question: Will she revert to her former liberal persuasions, and pursue genuine economic and social reforms? Might she even make German foreign policy more forceful and responsible? After all, this is a woman who in 1999 committed political patricide against her mentor, the conservative titan Helmut Kohl: a feat of daring which shocked all the other”grandsons” of the CDU into awed submission, and which laid open the route to power for her-first to the party leadership and, in 2005, the chancellorship. At a party convention in Leipzig in 2003, she held a flaming reform speech, and ran her first election campaign on the same uncompromising terms. As for foreign policy, in her first weeks as chancellor, she carefully reassured the European Union, East Europeans of Germany, and NATO, of her support and loyalty. Later, she had no reservations about telling off the Russian leadership (or the Americans, for that matter), or meeting with Russian nongovernmental organizations and the Dalai Lama. Angela Merkel, some observers hope, is a she-wolf who was forced, reluctantly, to pull on a sheepskin of political expediency when faced with the Social Democrats as partners in government for the next four years-and now can’t wait to throw it off.

The doubters of this theory point to the fact that Merkel opportunistically-some would say ruthlessly-dropped old allies before the 2005 election when it became clear that her reformist zeal might cost her the chancellorship. They note that in the last four years Merkel rarely fought back against her SPD partners, and ended up accepting proposals (like the minimum wage) that had to be anathema to her principles. She seems happiest, they add, when able to act as the moderator between conflicting positions-and least comfortable when she has to act decisively in the face of party or popular reluctance. For evidence, look no farther than the September incident where German troops bombed two fuel trucks highjacked by the Taliban in Kunduz, killing dozens of civilians. It led to a Bundestag debate-and Angela Merkel’s first government policy statement on Afghanistan in four years. Many, including those in positions of military leadership, wished that she had defended the mission this forcefully much earlier on in her tenure. Other evidence might be found in the fact that Merkel dithered through the first months of the economic crisis, sacrificed climate change goals to protectionist economic measures, left the shaping of energy policy (and with it, Russia policy) mostly to the”Big Four” energy companies. Even more oddly, after fostering an almost maternal bond with former U.S. President George W. Bush, she took what seemed like months to establish a good working relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama.

Merkel, who does few things without careful deliberation, laid out a broad trail of signs in her television appearances on election night. Wearing a bright red jacket, she emphasized her close relationship with the trade unions, and praised the achievements of the social welfare state. (She made it clear later that there would be no shifts on the health fund as well as the minimum wage, both opposed by the FDP). Guido Westerwelle, visibly elated by victory, nonetheless watched her carefully-and said nothing. Merkel, added-just in case anyone had missed the point-that she wished to be the chancellor of all Germans, with the CDU as the”great popular party of the middle.”

Enthralled viewers asked themselves whether this was an announcement that the chancellor intended to govern as a Social Democrat in her second term (noting that red is the color of the SPD), or a statement of reassurance to voters, akin to the dentist’s”this will just take a minute and it won’t hurt at all.” It is probably too soon to tell; then again, the economy may force the government to choose sooner than it wants. Germany has had its share of green shoots recently, including drops in the unemployment rate. But some of that has been due to protectionist measures like the”cash-for-clunkers” scheme, short-term work contracts (Kurzarbeit), or the Opel deal. The first has already run out, the second will run out soon, and it remains quite unclear whether salvaging Opel will work. Add massive overcapacities in the auto industry and sharp drops in manufacturing orders, and it becomes obvious that Germany’s new government might well find itself faced with an economic crisis again-and with it, the necessity for difficult choices. Its options, however, are limited: Germany’s currency is European; there is a constitutional ceiling for the national debt; and as for the last remedy, raising taxes, both the Christian Democrats and the Liberals promised in the election campaign to do the opposite. Moreover, the window of opportunity for painful choices is narrow. Next May, the populous mining and industrial state of North-Rhine-Westphalia will hold elections. If the incumbent governor, Christian Democrat Järgen Rättgers loses, Merkel and Westerwelle will no longer have the majority in the second chamber of the federal legislature-meaning that whatever they do before May, they must do with a velvet hand.

“Angela I., Part II” will see a ruler who dislikes making hard choices having to do just that-if not on the economy, a multitude of other issues await, Afghanistan not the least among them. The curtain has just risen.

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The numbers below are still approximate, because the final count may not be published until Monday. Nevertheless, the following is already clear:

• The liberal Free Democrats (FDP) are the triumphant winners of the election €“ at 14.6-14.7 %, their best result since 1949 (but not as good as they’d hoped when they were polling up to 16%). In 2005, they’d achieved only 9.8%. Guido Westerwelle, leader of the Liberal party, looks set to become Germany’s first liberal foreign minister since Hans-Dietrich Genscher (foreign minister from 1974 to 1992). The Liberal group in the Federal legislature will be double the size of the group of the CSU, the Christian Democrats’ Bavarian sister party. They should be able to claim at least three ministries in all
• The center-left Social Democrats suffer a dramatic upset €“ at 23.3%, worse even than the polls had predicted. This is their worst outcome since 1949; the second-worst being 28.8% in 1953 €“ no party has suffered such a drastic loss from one election to the next in the history of the Federal Republic. Of the 6 million votes they lost, 50% went to CDU, Left Party and Greens; the other 50% did not vote at all. What this means is that the SPD’s declared strategy of mobilizing the undecideds was a complete failure €“ despite an energetic and relaxed performance by top candidate Frank Walter Steinmeier in the one televised debate between him and Merkel. Steinmeier has acknowledged his defeat and announced that he will become leader of the opposition
• The center-right CDU scrapes through, but barely: Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor. At 33.6%, however, the Conservatives have lost a point compared to 2005; the only time they did worse was in 1949, at 31%. All this despite Angela Merkel’s undiminished personal popularity ratings €“ possibly a consequence of her moving the CDU to the middle of the political landscape, and therewith forgoing a more sharply-etched conservative agenda
• The CSU got its second worst election result since 1949 with 41% (down from absolute majorities in Bavaria until only a few years ago)
• In historical terms, this means that the Volksparteien, or popular parties, continue on their downward trend:
• The other winners of the election are the Greens and the Left Party, both for the first time with double-digit results at 10.2-10.5% (from 8.1% in 2005) for the Greens and 12.2-12.9% (from 8.7% in 2005) for the Left Party.
• The Left Party, from a beginning as a motley grouping of East German post-Communists, disgruntled Social Democrats and paleolithic West German ultra-leftists, and a political impact focused mainly on the states of the former East Germany, establishes itself as a political force to be reckoned with in German national politics €“ not yet as a coalition partner, but certainly as a potential spoiler
• The current grand coalition of CDU and SPD is at an end, as the CDU and the FDP have a safe, but weak governing majority of 48.2% without overhang mandates (for a definition, see Saturday’s blog). This means that threats from the left of the political aisle to challenge the legitimacy of the government based on a German supreme court calling for an overhaul of the German voting system are without foundation. It may take until the late evening until the exact number of overhang mandates is clear, but pundits are predicting there will be at least 16
• The SPD could not have formed a governing majority with the Greens and the Left Party even if it had not categorically excluded a national coalition with the Left Party
• Distribution of the 609 seats in the Bundestag (again, without the overhang mandates):
  • CDU: 231
  • SPD: 147
  • FDP: 92
  • Left: 77
  • Greens: 62
  • Majority needed to form a government: 305
  • CDU+FDP: 323
• Voter participation rates also scored a negative record at 72.5% €“ 5% less than in 2005. The main reason, analysts are saying, is the 2 million SPD voters stayed at home
• No right-wing parties managed to pass the 5% threshold for entry into the federal legislature (there were about two dozen “other” parties, who polled at about 6% in total)
• And, in the biggest surprise of all: the surveys turned out to be more or less accurate!

What does all this mean for the future of Germany’s policies, and its political landscape? Three things: a generational shift in the political leadership; fragmentation; and a re-polarization of politics. Watch this space €¦

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It’s 5 pm in Germany, one hour before the polling stations close, and the first projections are published. Throughout the country, it’s been a day of radiant sun and blue skies €“ the kind of day that Germans prefer to spend hiking in the mountains, or grilling at a lake, rather than waiting in lines outside of polling booths? A 6 percent drop in voter participation would seem to indicate that Germans may indeed just have opted out of voting in this election. Then again, there are reports that an exceptional number of Germans have voted ahead of time by making use of a provision that allows them to send their ballot in the mail. It may take until well into Monday or even Tuesday until all the ballots are counted. Numbers to watch for:

In 2005, the center-right CDU got 35.2%, the center-left SPD 34.2 %, the liberal FDP 9.8 %, the Greens 8.1%, the Left Party 8.7%, and “others” (about two dozen small parties, most or none of whom will make it past the 5% threshold provision to get into the legislature) at 5 %.

• CDU: The Christian Democrats’ lead has narrowed from around 36 to 33 percent; if it does worse than its 35.2 % in 2005, this will weaken Merkel’s position not just in coalition negotiations, but in her own party; to govern with its preferred coalition partner, the business-friendly FDP, the two parties need at least 46-47% percent
• FDP: the FDP too had first nearly doubled its 2005 result to up to 16% in the polls, and now finds itself back near 14%
• SPD: the Social Democrats have been trending at 25% in the polls €“ if they don’t manage to catch up dramatically in the race to the finish, that would be their worst result since 1949, and the end of the current leadership’s political career
• Left Party: the Left Party, created in 1990, has moved since them from 2.4% to 4.0% in 2002 and 8.7 % in 2005 €“ can it break through the 10% ceiling? If so, the debate about SPD-Left coalitions on the national level will intensify
• Greens: will the Greens drop back into political insignificance below the 10% threshold?
• Large vs. small parties: will the three small opposition parties €“ Liberals, Greens and Left €“ take votes from the two “popular parties” CDU and SPD, who have seen their joint polls drop from nearly 90 decades ago to their worst joint showing ever in 2005, at 69.2
• Voter participation: the 2005 participation rate was the worst ever, at 77.7% – will this year’s result be even worse

Next: election analysis; potential models and their implication for the course of German politics

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 Gosh, the German election this Sunday has become exciting after all. Three reasons: the race has become too close to call; it has become clear that the next Chancellor will have overwhelming problems to deal with; and Germany may be on the verge of a seismic shift in its political landscape. This blog will look at the first of those reasons: the survey numbers, and the potential coalition models resulting from it.

Surveys: Less than twenty-four hours before the election, surveys show the race is too close to call. The most recent one, from Forsa, has the center-right CDU at 33%, the center-left SPD at 25%, the liberal FDP at 14%, the Left Party at 12%, the Greens at 10%, and “others” (about two dozen small parties” at 6%; two days earlier, Allensbach had the CDU at 35%, the SPD at 24%, the FDP at 13.5%, the Left Party at 1.5%, the Greens at 11%, and “others” (about two dozen fringe parties) at 5%.

Coalition models: That means Chancellor Angela Merkel seems likely to retain her job €“ but she may well wish she hadn’t. For the political composition of her government is completely uncertain. Given the 5-6% vote for fringe parties, she will need 46-47% of the vote to form a government. Numerically, that would allow a number of 2- and 3-way coalitions: CDU-FDP (“black-yellow”), CDU-SPD (“black-red” or grand coalition), CDU-FDP-Greens (“Jamaica”), SPD-FDP-Greens (“traffic light”), and SPD-Left Party-Greens (Red-dark red-green).

Some of these have been excluded categorically: The Green leadership has nixed a three-way coalition with the Liberals (although some of them would love to be in a solo relationship with the CDU, like in the city-state of Hamburg). The SPD has pledged not to ally itself with the Left Party (this despite the fact that it has already done so in Berlin and is preparing to do so in two other states); but it would happily engage in a “traffic light” coalition. The Liberals, meanwhile, have been repeating like a mantra that the only partner they are willing to work with is the CDU. As their poll ratings dropped from a healthy 16 to 13-14%, that pledge acquired a note of desperation (not to mention some disturbing undertones): at a rally last week, a hoarse Guido Westerwelle, the Liberals’ chief candidate, said he was prepared to swear his oath of sole allegiance to the CDU “in blood on a freshly painted wall”, while his party chief Dirk Niebel, a beefy former paratrooper, said he was willing to “etch it into his skin”. Dear, dear.

What that means (apart from the fact that some of the campaigners could use some chamomile tea, a hot water bottle and time out) is that €“ unless the actual vote tempts one or more of the parties to break their pledges €“, there are two main options: the CDU-FDP model preferred by Merkel (just 47% in the Forsa survey), or a re-run of the unloved grand coalition (58%).  Beware: it doesn’t end there.

The electoral system and “overhang mandates”:  Thank God we’ve got the Economist to explain our voting system to us. In Germany’s complicated system of “personalized proportional representation”, the magazine’s September 26 edition  writes:

 “people in each state have two votes. With the first they choose representatives in some 299 geographical districts €¦. But it is the second vote – for a party, not a person – that is more important. It allocates the rest of the seats to candidates drawn from party lists, topping up the totals to make them match the parties’ shares of second votes. ( €¦) Under this system the Bundestag is meant both to link voters to a local representative and to reflect their overall political preferences. The reality is messier.”  

That, alas, is putting it mildly €“ because this is where the Ãœberhangmandate come in. In a panel discussion organized jointly last Thursday in Berlin by the American Council on Germany and the German Marshall Fund, the New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg made the delightful suggestion that this might be translated as “letting it all hang out”. We wish €“ but German elections are not about having fun. After all, this isn’t the 2006 World Cup. For explanations, we turn to the Economist again:

“If a party wins more districts in a state than the number of seats it ought to get according to its share of second votes, it keeps these “overhang seats”. ( €¦) The constitutional court has demanded changes to this part of the electoral law by 2011. But this weekend, the CDU could win as many as 20 overhang seats, which might be enough to tip the balance away from a renewed grand coalition and towards a CDU-FDP coalition.”

(Actually, the Economist is being characteristically understated. The mathematics and potential scenarios for the overhang seat phenomenon are even more complicated. Election masochists are referred to Wikipedia or €“ for ultra-masochists who like their explanations in German €“ the website of the federal agency for political information, the Bundeszentrale fär Politische Bildung. It does have a nice little animated video to make it all more palatable.)

It will come as no surprise that Angela Merkel feels these would not be “second-class seats”, while Social Democrats and Greens have been uttering full-throated warnings about “unconstitutional majorities”.

Confused? The Germans certainly are. What with close polls and the possibility of overhang seats, it appears unlikely that Sunday’s vote will even produce a result by midnight.

In fact, Germany might see a re-run of 2005, when the results were so ambiguous that coalition negotiations stretched well into November. That would mean that the current government would have to stay on as a caretaker to take care of pressing issues, such as the evolving Opel crisis, the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (October 2^nd), and the climate summit in Copenhagen (mid-December).

Then again, the polls could be wrong. In 2005, surveys almost unanimously predicted a solid black-yellow majority. Instead, the two popular parties, or Volksparteien, the CDU and SPD, ended up at 35.2 and 34.2 €“ merely one percentage point apart, and with their worst joint showing since 1949. This time around, a fifth of those polled have said they’re still undecided.

So, come election night, we may all be reaching for the chamomile tea and the hot-water bottle.

Next: what the potential coalition models mean for the future of German politics.

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It was  a Man Bites Dog moment: One of the tropes of the German debate on Afghanistan has been the notion that the”moment of truth” for our so-called”stabilization mission” in northern Afghanistan would come in the form of a massive Taliban attack on Bundeswehr troops. That moment has come in  the one  form imagined by no-one: a massive German preemptive attack on the Taliban.  A September Surprise, indeed.

The following Oped on the subject  appeared in the Financial Times on September 9, 2009.

Germany shoots first and thinks again

By Constanze Stelzenmäller

Published: September 9 2009

The night a German army colonel by the name of Georg Klein called in a massive Nato airstrike on two fuel trucks hijacked by Taliban fighters in northern Afghanistan was a watershed moment. Although the exact number of casualties is still unknown €“ estimates suggest more than 50 died €“ it seems likely that it will prove to have been, as one American newspaper put it, “the most deadly operation involving German forces since World War II”. But will we also remember it as the night Germany grew up and started to call a war a war?

Given the international brouhaha that ensued, it is worth pausing to note that it remains far from clear whether last Friday’s incident in Kunduz will go down in history as tactical ineptitude or tragedy. The danger was real: fuel trucks are popular low-tech mobile bombs throughout the region. Was it imminent? The trucks were stuck in a river, at night; but news reports say that the Taliban hijackers had already corralled villagers to help pull them out. Quite possibly, Col Klein chose what appeared as the lesser of two evils on the basis of imperfect information: the classic dilemma of military leadership.

Then again, why did the Germans take so long afterwards to investigate, talk to locals and acknowledge civilian deaths? Why did they not choose a lower-impact option, such as repeated overflights followed by a sortie of ground troops? Was this a decision not to risk the lives of German soldiers, or was it an implicit recognition that the contingent lacked the capabilities to go out and win decisively? Was the Germans’ will or strength sapped by the intensity of combat in the preceding weeks and months?

Hard questions, indeed. One thing only seems certain: definite answers will not be forthcoming before the German elections on September 27.

All the more surprising, then, that a roster of international experts €“ from General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander of the Nato forces in Afghanistan, to Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief €“ felt called upon to pass judgment swiftly, severely and publicly on the lonely decision made by Col Klein. Of course, the cause of clarity was not served either by the hapless German defence minister, Franz Josef Jung, who had to apologise for the civilian deaths he had previously flatly denied.

Yet while it may not be possible for a while to accurately evaluate the events in Kunduz, reactions to the bombing throw a stark light on German attitudes to the use of force as much as on the state of the western alliance. The German position is not without irony. In 2002, references to pre-emption in the most recent iteration of the US National Security Strategy were excoriated in Germany as undermining deterrence. Yet Col Klein’s decision to attack before the Taliban could do so was a classic act of pre-emption. Afghan leaders, meanwhile, grumble that the Germans’ current difficulties stem from an unwillingness to show strength early €“ in other words, a failure of deterrence.

Moreover, in bombing the trucks (and, according to Nato, killing civilians), the Germans did exactly what they kept lecturing the Americans to stop doing, while the Americans are now lecturing us for doing what they used to do, but are no longer doing, at least in part because of our lecturing. This (once you figure it out) would seem to undermine one of Germany’s cherished ideas about itself: that, whatever the state of its military, it is at all times morally a superpower.

The Kunduz incident buried two other German myths: the conviction that bad things do not happen to us because we are the good guys; and the idea that we are conducting a stabilisation operation. The first was finished off by the Taliban’s northern spring offensive; the second by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who referred to the engagement as a “combat mission” in the Bundestag on Tuesday.

The Bundestag debate provided an instructive snapshot of German attitudes to the Afghan mission. Ms Merkel, for the Christian Democrats, reiterated Germany’s commitment, regretted the civilian deaths and chastised the critics: unequivocal and uninspiring. Her challenger, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic party, labelled calls for a pullout irresponsible €“ an admirably clear message of rejection to all those in his party clamouring to make common cause with the Left party.

Yet it was Järgen Trittin, the Greens’ top foreign policy expert, who ruthlessly made the points that both Ms Merkel and Mr Steinmeier avoided. Gen McChrystal, he said, had investigated as the German military dithered; and the Berlin government had been muddling through, avoiding debate at all costs.

It is too early to gauge whether Germany’s moment of truth in Kunduz will finally give the Left party the traction that has so far eluded it on the national level and fuel a debate over withdrawal. The Left party is so divided that it has not even been able to draw up an election manifesto. But polls show a majority of the German public to be deeply sceptical of involvement in Afghanistan, as are significant groups in all the parties. The Left party’s spoiler potential, at least, should not be underrated. The current mandate for the Bundeswehr’s 4,500-troop Afghan commitment is up for renewal in December.

All this comes at a difficult moment for the alliance and for Afghanistan. Amid allegations of massive fraud in August’s Afghan election, the Obama administration is faced with grim assessments by its generals, a stretched army, a reluctant public and even more reluctant allies. One lesson of the Kunduz incident is that an alliance, besides troops and hardware, also depends on intangible assets: resilience, mutual trust and loyalty.

The writer is a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Berlin

The Kunduz Incident also put an end to the unwritten consensus among the German parties that the Afghan mission was to be kept out of the election campaign. There is now a fullblown pullout debate – but with some very odd role reversals. The Social Democrats’ candidate Frank Walter Steinmeier responsibly refused to  discuss  dates for an exit during the Bundestag debate following the incident,   but has since called for a pullout timeline. Meanwhile, the Left Party, for whom this issue ought to have been a much-needed shot in the arm,  is  strenuously making  statesmanlike noises – several senior figures have been telling the media that a pullout”won’t happen overnight”. Coalition partners, anyone?

To be continued.

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