the sound & the fury

The German social model needs a dynamic economy. Daniel Mittler’s skewed analysis of German realities blocks understanding of this, says the chief editor of “Die Zeit”.

Italy’s presidency of Europe, and the continent’s summer holiday season, are alike starting in rancour. The diplomatic storm caused by Silvio Berlusconi and Stefano Stefani will pass, says our German columnist; but their routine anti-German prejudice is also emblematic of the condition of Europe. To move beyond it will need time, imagination, and tolerant curiosity on all sides.

The crisis of Europe’s largest economy - high unemployment, over-regulation and a bloated welfare system - has been compounded by political miscalculation. The Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, will win short-term victory over his internal party critics, but his latest reforms fail to promise what Germany needs: not mere adjustment, but systemic overhaul.

The invasion of Iraq is an assault on reason, morality, and international law itself. It provokes Michael Naumann to agonised memory and grim foreboding: the triumph of pre-emptive war offers to the world a principle of violence unleavened by justice.

As the Iraq war he opposed opens, Gerhard Schröder, son of an unknown soldier, confronts two thorn-spiked mountains: tackling economic sclerosis against his own party’s wishes, and rebuilding transatlantic bridges. His former cabinet colleague Michael Naumann cuts through nostalgia to ask: is this Germany dying?

The US advance toward war has myriad justifications, but is best understood in the framework of a new world order: perpetual war for perpetual peace, says Michael Naumann. Multilateralism is dying, but what will take its place? At the least, existing nuclear powers like North Korea look set to buttress their defences...

The coming US war in Iraq will create a graveyard of hope. In its promise of war without end, and blindness towards its catastrophic political consequences, America is ignoring lessons of history that Europe has bitterly learned.

In the first of a regular column, the chief editor and publisher of Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper mordantly reflects on the ripples in Germany created by Donald Rumsfeld’s verbal hand grenade. Amidst US amnesia, British perfidy, and Polish betrayal, what will Chancellor Gerhard Schröder do next?