IN FOREIGN RELATIONS, who are the winners and who are the losers from Gulf War II? We Americans have been focussing on America, Iraq, and France, and I've seen a little attention given to Britain and Poland. Instapundit picked up on a perceptive article by Michael Mertes that explains how German is actually the biggest loser next to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Germany was a traditional bulwark of NATO, and positioned neatly between France and the United States. Now it has swung towards France, not an unselfish ally, and forfeited its hopes of political leadership in Europe both by bolstering France and by offending Britain and many other countries. It hurt NATO by resisting NATO's attempts to help Turkey, a double whammy which strained relations with Turkey (source of so many German residents) and reduced the value of NATO, one of the organizations in which Germany has had the most heft. Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe have not liked seeing Germany and Russia joined in support of an aggressive dictator. And nobody will be impressed by Germany's might, since it failed completely to stop US action, and, in fact, showed its own irrelevance on the world stage by even losing the post of top weasel to France.

Poor Germany. But maybe a weak Germany is not such a bad thing, as we've said for fifty years.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.05.25a.htm ]

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