[The following originally appeared on GlennFrazier.com earlier this week.]
The International Herald Tribune has a good wrap-up of the German elections. Among other things, it notes:
The victorious mood was dampened by fresh criticism from Washington, which has been unhappy over Schroeder's strong opposition to a possible U.S. war on Iraq.
The U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, reiterated the American position that Schroeder's campaign "has had the effect of poisoning the relationship" between the United States and Germany.
Schroeder's refusal to support a war in Iraq helped him come back to win after he had trailed for months in a stagnant economy hobbled by high unemployment.
Seeking to start putting things right with Washington, the chancellor announced that the justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, was leaving his government. She had been reported to have likened Bush's efforts to distract the public from domestic problems to those of Hitler.
But Schroeder showed little deviation from his Iraq position in the campaign.
"We have nothing to change from what we said before the election and we will not change anything," Schroeder said at a press briefing.
It goes on to say:
In foreign policy, the top priority was relations with Washington. Rumsfeld, speaking during a visit to Poland, became the second senior Bush administration official to speak of a "poisoned" diplomatic environment after Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, used the term to condemn Daeubler-Gmelin's comments.
"I have no comment on the German election outcome, but I would have to say that the way it was conducted was notably unhelpful," Rumsfeld said.
While both Schroeder and Fischer both appeared with wide grins and clear good humor on Monday, both were visibly wearied by the repeated questions about U.S.-German ties. Schroeder cut off one question on U.S. Iraqi policy during his press briefing and refused to give an answer.
"It also must be possible as part of a friendship to have factually different views," Schroeder said. "These differing views, I think, will remain."
Every third job in Germany relies on exports, and business leaders urged Schroeder to waste no time in repairing ties to the United States. "Maybe Schroeder and Fischer should just get right into the airplane," and fly to Washington, said Gerhard Handke of the Association of German Wholesalers.
I'm willing to bet that German analysts, politicians and diplomats are a bit flummoxed over the American reaction. Americans tend to have unique ideas regarding how allied nations behave toward one another. In most of the world, two nations that are "friendly" are not assumed to necessarily act as two individual human friends would. Allies are meant to understand that each side has its own national interests and that the alliance really only exists in those areas in which the two nations' interests coincide.
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