Icing on the top, nothing underneath
From: "Giessener Anzeiger Online"
Thursday, February 11, 1999[This has only a brief mention of Scientology.]
Commentary by Rolf Obertreis on
Schoeder's Visit to WashingtonThe two men who came together to eat lunch today have hardly any problems with each other. That does not have to do with Bill Clinton and Gerhard Schroeder being of the same left reformist mind, as it is described in the theory of the "Third Way." ["Dritten Weg"]. And that does not have to do with the US view that it has found a mixture of a junior partner and mediator in Germany as firm ground for a bridge to eastern Europe. The reason lies more in Clinton managing an administration which is pro-European through and through and extremely friendly to Germany (despite Scientology). This could be the last administration of this sort that Washington has.
Schroeder's Chancellor Minister Bodo Hombach had just demonstrated the basis for the US trust. With a mixture of the right signals - moral responsibility, self-awareness and a desire to wrap up material claims - the new German administration has made it possible to defuse the powderkeg of forced labor reparation and restitution in regards to the former East German "Stasi" secret police.
The atmosphere was good, so good that the US administration was not particularly offended even by the German-Canadian wish to avert the option of a first nuclear strike in the context of the new Nato strategy. At this time the Green Party is also getting the best press it has ever gotten in America. So is everything going smoothly?
Clinton's administration is floating like an iceberg in a sea which creates its own current. One need only compare what has been learned by state representatives in the US and parliamentary representatives in Germany. Of the first-termers in the US Congress, almost 90 percent have no passport. They have never been out of the country - this shows up in their interests. For the majority of them, "multi-lateralism" is an obscene word; the stabilization of the UN is a red cape. Any state politics which proceeds supranationally runs into a complete lack of understanding.
The best that one can say about the personal politics outside the White House is that Europe does not present a problem. Apparently this is also what Clinton thinks. In his speech on the state of the nation three weeks ago, west Europe/Germany/France/Great Britain did not come up. He mentioned Japan twice. This led to a great uproar in Tokyo about being ignored.