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Over the past few months, a public opinion firestorm has ravaged the German government as the weight of a tragic event in Afghanistan continues to press down hard on the collective conscience of the nation. The impetus for the current uproar was the bombing of two trucks in Kunduz, Afghanistan on September 4, which was ordered by German forces and resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians (estimates range from 17 to 142). Yet, what seemed to be an ugly but collateral blip on the nation’s broad foreign policy radar has turned into a veritable crisis of the first order for the lawmakers in Berlin, with the future of Germany military engagement in Afghanistan at stake. The debate could not come at a more embarrassing moment for the government.

When Germany initially committed itself to sending troops to Afghanistan, it did so wanting to be the “good guy” in the war effort—the country that would “stabilize” Afghanistan with its contingent of soldier-humanitarians while the Americans did the majority of the fighting. But now, with its soldiers both in harm’s way and inadvertently doing harm, the presence of German troops on Afghan soil has become infinitely more difficult to justify to a skeptical public at home, a majority of who now want a complete withdrawal. Moreover, there’s a growing perception within Germany that the government no longer even pulls its own strings, having recently re-committed its 4,400 troops in Afghanistan to another year of duty, while lacking a significant voice either in Washington or at NATO headquarters.

Still, the new strategy proposed by President Obama is promising for those in Germany who have a political stake in the intervention. The more hawkish voices within the German government have held that domestic security and freedom are being defended in the Hindu Kush. But this argument has gained little traction lately, especially among a populace that is now so ill-at-ease about Germany’s role in Afghanistan—a role that appears to be moving toward full-fledged participation in a war not of its own making.

Thus, it is welcome that the new American strategy is placing greater focus on the Afghan people and society. Likewise, the military components embodied in the upcoming Afghan “surge” seem to be more rational and targeted than under Bush, while the civil programs are stronger and likely to be less scatter-shot than in the past. But even with some good news coming out of Washington these days, Berlin still needs a clear humanitarian and civil society mission to bolster the legitimacy of its involvement in the conflict. Unfortunately, new signals from both the American and German governments are blurring the lines.

First, there’s the insistence on the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, as again reiterated by General Stanley McChrystal in the halls of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 2009. But of what use is such a goal, whether as part of the broader Operation Enduring Freedom or as related to policies against Al Qaeda? This goal is profoundly unpopular in Germany, both due to the lack of a clear rationale and the echoes of President Bush’s bellicose ideology. Read the rest of this entry »

For most of the world, the fall of the Berlin Wall seemed an amazing, unexpected new beginning. It was that, of course. But it was also an ending—the end of an unprecedented period of awakening and hope in East Germany.

At the time, I was living in West Berlin and working with members of a dissident East German environmental group. They were welcoming, curious, funny, and unabashedly nonconformist. Because they questioned official taboos and published “secret” information like the extent of pollution in East Germany, their telephones and homes were bugged, they couldn’t travel to the West, they were tailed and harassed and kept out of universities or fired from their jobs. Occasionally they went to jail. I admired the quiet courage that allowed them to place their security on the line for their beliefs—to risk the safe, if stifling, cocoon of socialism for a self-determined life.

Yet brave as they were, East Germany’s dissidents were a lonely handful with little influence. They couldn’t mobilize a whole country, like Poland’s Solidarity (a Polish trade union). East Germany’s government was rigidly ideological, and its people were traditionally obedient to authority. Plus, East Germany bordered on West Germany, which regularly siphoned off dissidents: East Germany could always banish uncomfortable critics to the West, which was more than happy to take them in. A few among the dissatisfied and frustrated were even permitted to emigrate. The small number of dissidents who preferred to stay and encourage change from within seemed like hopeless dreamers.

By the spring of 1989, Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev’s influence was being felt across Eastern Europe. In Poland, Solidarity took part in a round table with the government. Hungarians commemorated the anti-communist uprising of 1956. East Germans, too, were getting restless, but the ossified regime refused to budge. Local elections were rigged. Demonstrations in Leipzig, in the south, were broken up violently by the secret police. The government praised China’s handling of Tiananmen Square, suggesting it might do the same. Change seemed further away than ever; leaving the country, hard as it was for average East Germans, seemed the only option. In summer, East Germans looking for a way out began streaming toward Hungary. There and in Poland, freedom was in the air. An East German dissident friend and I watched a demonstration in Warsaw that was escorted by one small police car. He couldn’t imagine that happening in East Germany. Like many of his compatriots, he didn’t believe East Germans would ever rise up in protest.

The Hungarians opened their border with Austria in September, and East German refugees inundated West Germany. But the East German government just clamped down harder.

And then came October. East Germany prepared to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its founding on October 7, with Gorbachev expected as a guest. The regime went all out: a military parade, flags everywhere, a carnival atmosphere—a celebration of communism.

But that night it all changed. Spontaneous demonstrations broke out in the center of town and surged outward, catalyzed by Gorbachev’s presence. I had come over to East Berlin to observe events and was sitting in a café with the same friend I’d been with in Warsaw. We watched in disbelief, tears in our eyes, as protesters passed us yelling “Join us!” and “We’re staying here!” It was a defiant cry: rather than going to the West, they would stay and change things. Suddenly that didn’t seem so hopeless. We heard reports of demonstrations in other cities as well. East Germans had risen up after all.

That night, we soon found out, many protesters were detained and beaten. But two days later, a demonstration by 70,000 people in Leipzig became the turning point. The government could have used force. Truckloads of police lined the side streets, and rumor had it that hospitals had been prepared for casualties. People were frightened. But they went out anyway in nonviolent protest, and the regime backed down. Instead of fighting that evening, the police and soldiers found themselves arguing politics with knots of demonstrators. Words had trumped guns.

After that, everything was different; now the East German air felt free, too, and a surge of hope gripped the country. No one spoke of leaving anymore. Everyone wanted to be part of the changes that were so obviously beginning. A public conversation emerged for the first time in decades. People found their voices, and everywhere they talked and talked. Taboos vanished. Discussions and events were too numerous to follow. Political groups sprang up like mushrooms, and government newspapers began hesitantly reporting on them. Non-government newspapers and magazines appeared. East Germans engaged in impassioned debates with government officials. They insisted that police officers who had beaten demonstrators be punished. They demanded the right to leave their country, and soon everyone knew it was just a matter of time before that would happen, too. The prime minister, Eric Honecker, and various Politburo members resigned.

And on November 4, the first-ever officially sanctioned demonstration, for freedom of speech, attracted nearly a million people to downtown East Berlin. Amid a sea of creative, funny, passionate signs and banners, East German artists, writers, and politicians spoke of their hope for a new beginning. No one talked about unifying with the West; perhaps naively, even many dissidents advocated building something new and indigenously East German, just as the Poles and Hungarians were doing in their countries. Hope, energy, enthusiasm, passion, the sense that anything was possible—that was October 1989, and a bit of November, in East Germany.

And then, around midnight on November 9, returning home from East Berlin after a day of translating for a foreign journalist, I found a line of East Germans waiting to cross to the West. The Wall had opened, more suddenly than anyone expected. The next day, hundreds of thousands of East Germans went shopping and sightseeing in West Germany and discovered that what they really wanted was to be able to afford normal things and live like normal people. For a time, euphoria was the predominant mood, but it didn’t take long before it waned. West Germans got annoyed at the influx from the East, and East Germans’ recently acquired confidence gave way to uncertainty. Anxiety and tension replaced relief and joy. No one knew what to expect. The assertive East German cry “We are the people!” changed to “We are one people!”; the dissidents’ hope of creating something new was overtaken by a more widespread wish for the security of tried and true West German prosperity. Unification a year later was the ultimate result. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the fact remains: when the wall came down, it spelled the end of a very special chapter in East German history, in which East Germans felt in control of their own destiny. October was over. A new period, dominated by West Germany, had begun.

Belinda Cooper, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and co-founder of its Citizenship and Security Program, is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. Cooper, the editor of War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, teaches and lectures on human rights, international law, and the “war on terror.”

After announcing the existence of a previously undisclosed nuclear facility last week, Iran successfully test-fired surface-to-surface Shahab-3 long-range missiles. Iran declared the nuclear plant to the International Atomic Energy Agency last Monday after reportedly learning that U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the plant for some time. President Obama intended to reveal its existence at the opening of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh as diplomatic leverage in upcoming negotiations. The plant is located about 100 miles south of Tehran in the mountains near the holy city of Qom; Iran maintains the plant is for low-enriched uranium suitable only for domestic energy production and not highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, and Iran conceded to allowing the IAEA to inspect the plant. But on Sunday and Monday, one week after Iran’s nuclear declaration and two weeks after President Obama refashioned President Bush’s missile defense shield, Iran began a series of successful missile launches of its short-, medium-, and long-range missiles, which could reach a maximum distance of 2,000 kilometers. This is far enough to strike Israel or U.S. military bases in the Gulf.  Iran is scheduled to meet Thursday in Geneva with the P5+1—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany—for preliminary negotiations on a range of issues including proliferation, though Iran insists its domestic nuclear program is not negotiable.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that the Iranians must “present convincing evidence as to the purpose of their nuclear program. We don’t believe that they can present convincing evidence, that it’s only for peaceful purposes, but we are going to put them to the test.”  The United States is preparing to impose additional sanctions on Iran through the U.N. Security Council should negotiations fail, though the U.S. is also quietly assembling a coalition outside the Security Council should China or Russia veto a sanctions package. Russia and China maintain economic interests in Iran and many European nations believe existing sanctions against Iran have proven ineffective in persuading the Iranian government, only negatively affecting the people of Iran.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic party won a 33.8% plurality and maintained majority control in parliamentary elections in Germany on Sunday. Center-left Social Democrats posted their worst ever showing and the pro-business Free Democrats earned their best ever showing since World War II. Merkel will proceed to form a new coalition with the Free Democrats, which she believes will be a less strained coalition than in the past four years with liberal parties. The new coalition will focus on reducing unemployment and stimulating the economy with a two-stage $22 billion tax cut, even as public debt continues to increase.  The two parties may find some friction in upcoming talks as the Free Democrats campaigned for far more conservative policies, seeking deeper tax cuts, restricting Merkel’s healthcare reform efforts, and nuances of Germany’s foreign policy. “We’ll have to argue over several issues,” Merkel said Sunday evening, but stressed to Germans that the government would not dismantle the welfare state. Because all major parties endorse the 4,200 German presence in Afghanistan, excepting the far left, the election is unlikely to change that commitment in either direction.

The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan failed to agree at the United Nations last week on resuming general negotiations and Indian FM SM Krishna rejected a Pakistani proposal to conduct informal discussions even absent formal negotiations.  After fighting three wars with each other over the disputed border land of Kashmir since 1947, the two nuclear-armed nations began a peace process in 2004 but discussions have been strained by rival interests in Afghanistan and, especially, since November 2008 when India blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for killing 174 in the Indian financial capital, Mumbai.  India requests that Pakistan apprehend and prosecute those responsible.  Pakistani FM Qureshi announced the arrest of seven people connected to the attacks, with prosecution scheduled to begin October 3.  Indian FM Krishna acknowledged, “Pakistan has taken some steps within its own legal system against those directly responsible for the attack on Mumbai, and the process thus instituted must gather further momentum.”  Meanwhile, India announced that it has built highly destructive nuclear weapons, enabling what Indian officials consider a “proper strategic deterrent” in its international relations.  Senior Indian officials say their weapon yields 200 kilotons; a nuclear weapon with a yield of 50 kilotons is considered “high yield.”  The test is likely to further strain relations with Pakistan and perhaps jeopardize the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement enacted last October under President Bush.  President Obama proposed at the U.N. General Assembly that nations, such as India, joint the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear nations, a proposal India quickly rejected.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Turkey will formally sign an agreement to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia on October 10, furthering a roadmap agreed upon in April toward normalizing relations. Though Turkey still disputes Armenia’s claim that mass Turkish killings of Armenians during World War I constitutes genocide, it seeks “zero problems with neighbors,” to quote the motto of Turkish academic and Minster of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkey, a member of NATO and prospective member of the European Union, has engaged as a mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, most notably the Israeli-Palestinian peace process during the 2008 Gaza War, and is also seeking to improve relations with its Kurdish citizens. The Kurds, after rebelling twenty-five years ago, prompted Turkey to ban the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which the United States lists as a terrorist organization. Turkey’s reconciliation with the Kurds could dramatically improve its relation with Iraq, where a large number of Kurds settle in the autonomous northern region, projecting Turkey further into Middle Eastern affairs.

Argentina’s government has demanded the resignation of the Honduran ambassador to Buenos Aires. The request came from Honduras’ ousted president, Manuel Zelaya,
who cited the ambassador’s public support for the coup that removed the
democratically elected leader in June. The Argentine foreign ministry said in a statement that it “ordered the cessation of functions” of Ambassador Carmen Eleonora Ortez Williams because of her support for Honduras’ interim regime, led by Roberto Micheletti. The de facto government, which has been internationally condemned and isolated since taking power on June 28, is not recognized by Buenos Aires, which supports the Organization of American States’ calls for Zelaya’s reinstatement. Zelaya, who met Thursday with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, praised the OAS for its support and called on the international community, particularly the United States, to take more “drastic actions” against Micheletti’s government.

In celebration of Pakistan’s Independence Day, Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has lifted a ban on political activities in the nation’s tribal regions. The seven federally administered tribal areas (FATA) along Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan will now be allowed to publicly organize political parties and campaigns, actions that had been banned in 1996. Announcing the change during a public address, Zardari vowed to “defeat the militant mindset” which has plagued the tribal areas since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The region has been home to spillover violence from clashes between local tribes and Taliban or Al Qaeda militias. Under the ban, adults in the the region were allowed to vote for a representative in the Pakistani assembly but were not allowed to organize political parties of their own. As a result, Islamist candidates would privately campaign through their mosques, increasing Islamist presence in the national assembly. Zardari, an important ally of President Barack Obama, received a boost last week when the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was allegedly killed by a U.S. missile attack on South Waziristan, one of the tribal regions where the Taliban have been especially active. Taliban officials have vehemently denied reports of their leader’s death.

Leaders from the four major nations of the trans-Sahel region—Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, and Nigeria—concluded a two-day summit in Algiers on Thursday where they addressed joint efforts to combat cross-border terrorism. Concerns that radical militant groups have regained strength in the region reappeared most recently in last week’s suicide bombing at the French Embassy in Mauritania, believed to be organized by a group that trains in Mali and Algeria. In July, several al-Qaeda attacks in Algeria, directed particularly at foreigners, signaled the groups surge in regional influence, which some expect to increase as typical strongholds like Afghanistan and Pakistan become overrun with U.S. armed forces. The four-nation meeting set a general framework for cooperation in combating terrorism, though specific military commitments were not announced. Some military strategists say that even with cooperation, it may be difficult to contain the regional threat. “How are four armies with marginal capabilities and different languages going to communicate in the middle of the Sahara?,” asks Clint Watts, a former counter terrorism expert at West Point. “Hunting down international terrorist networks is not their thing.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not run with a Shiite coalition in January national elections, according to aides close to the leader. Maliki, a Shiite, has revealed his intentions of running on a multi-ethnic ticket comprised of both Sunni and Shiite candidates. The leader will leave the United Iraqi Alliance, a predominantly-Shiite coalition which holds a vast majority in the Iraqi parliament, in the hopes of forming a “truly national alliance.” Maliki has aimed to bridge sectarian divides within his nation that intensified after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. News of Maliki’s decision came amid growing tensions between his Dawa party and the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) which dominates the United Iraqi Alliance. SIICE leaders have criticized Maliki and his fellow Dawa leaders for their “pride and vanity,” and have accused Maliki of becoming a pawn of Sunni Baathists.

Read more about Nouri al-Maliki in the spring ‘09 issue of the World Policy Journal in Ned Parker’s article, Machiavelli in Mesopotamia: Nouri al-Maliki Builds the Body Politic.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s seaside residence in Sochi on Friday to discuss economic relations between the two nations. Amid reports on Thursday that Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is finally showing growth (thus ending its recession far earlier than it expected), Merkel said she was still eager to work out bilateral agreements with Russia that are essential for continued recovery. Russia’s Sberbank has committed to buying a large share of struggling German automaker Opel, which has become a major liability for the German government during the financial crisis. Russian newspapers also reported on Friday that Sistema, a Russian holding company, will purchase a stake in Germany’s Infineon Technology. Investment bankers at Russia’s Renassaince Capital called this move, which was set to be discussed by the two leaders today, strictly political–a sign of how eager the two governments are to cooperate. Observers say Medvedev also has much to gain from the meeting, particularly in securing Merkel’s support for the Nord Stream oil pipeline, which is set to be finished by 2012 and will channel oil directly from Russia to Germany’s Baltic Sea coast.

At the train station near where I stay in Berlin, there’s a snack vending machine, one that I can only imagine here in Germany. In among the colorfully-packaged chocolates and chips waiting in neat lines, there’s a row of thin, yellow booklets, each one different, that you can buy for one euro. Press the button, and out comes literature—stories and poems, mainly by little-known authors, published by SuKultur, a small Berlin publishing house. Some of them are quite good. That’s commuting in Berlin: You can buy a snack, or literature.

Reading material was pretty important on the train this past week, because the S-Bahn (Berlin’s overground city train, a part of the German national railway system that also receives subsidies from the city government) was unusually crowded and uncomfortable—a result of an inspection that found many of the cars’ wheels in urgent need of repair and immediately took hundreds of them out of commission. They had been neglected, it seems, due to cost-cutting measures: a reduction in personnel and equipment aimed primarily at increasing the railway’s profitability. This time it wasn’t Berlin’s fault, but the city is chronically short of money and is also saving where it can.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, West Berlin was a paradox—a heavily subsidized showcase for capitalism—and it’s never quite seemed to get the hang of frugality since the subsidies ended. As the S-Bahn’s top managers were being fired, the papers were reporting that Berlin was about to increase its outlays for culture by 16 million euros (certainly a lovely commentary on priorities).

I can’t speak for Frankfurt, where the stock market is, or for the industrial centers of western Germany, where plants are closing or going to government-subsidized, part-time work, but in the capital of Berlin, which has little industry to speak of and has been claiming bankruptcy for years, no one’s really talking about the economy. (A friend who has recently traveled in western Germany assures me that the situation is no different in cities like Hamburg and Munich.)

There are various theories about this, but to me, it’s not too hard to explain. As we’ve all heard by now, Germany actually has a social safety net. Despite reductions in recent years, it’s still the case that no German has to go without health insurance after losing a job, people’s pensions are not privatized, and since Germans tend to rent rather than own—a result of tenant-friendly laws and good public housing—there isn’t much danger of losing your home. People are not suffering personally any more than usual, unlike Americans. The social welfare system works, so far. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been watching the news from Iran and thinking about East Germany, where in 1953, workers rose up in a popular rebellion that was rapidly and violently suppressed. Afterward, the head of the East German authors’ guild reprimanded the East German people for losing the government’s confidence. In response, poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht famously wrote, “Would it not be easier…for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”

It’s amazing how well Brecht’s words could be applied to Iran’s leaders today.

The 1953 uprising failed, but in 1989 (twenty years ago this year) East Germans—along with people all over Eastern Europe—successfully took to the streets and brought down their leaders and a whole system. While living in West Berlin and working with East German dissidents in the two years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was able to share some of the excitement of those days, so at least some of what’s happening in Iran feels familiar.

Of course, Iran isn’t Eastern Europe and comparisons are facile. But dictatorial regimes share many features—not least of which is discomfort, even shock, when their citizens begin to show signs of independent thought. Condescending paternalism is a common trait of leaders who believe they know what’s best for their unruly children.

Part of that shock comes from finding their own words used against them. The Iranian regime, like East Germany’s government, supports its claim to power with the language of popular revolution (more credible in Iran than in Germany, where the popular revolution never actually happened, but was nevertheless part of the Soviet-imported mythology). People have grown up hearing the slogans of revolution, have watched them be perverted, sometimes even cynically have used them to get what they want, and are now learning to turn the catch-phrases around to their own purposes.

In East Germany, demonstrators took up the chant “We are the people!” echoing and inverting the government’s constant invocation of the will of “the people.” In the same way, Iranian demonstrators have co-opted revolutionary slogans and behavior, like nighttime chanting from the rooftops and the color green.

It’s hard for a regime to claim that protesters using its own symbols and slogans are counter-revolutionaries or traitors. And it also reflects the fact that, at least at first, most demonstrators are not trying to change the system, but to force it to adhere to its own promises. It was not until the Wall fell that the tenor of the demands of East Germany’s protesters changed, from reforming the East German system to reunification with the West (at which point, the slogan changed to “We are one people!”).

For now, most Iranians aren’t demanding a fundamental change of system, but the right to have their ballots counted. But the language and symbols come later. First, people have to come together. Read the rest of this entry »

[This article was cross-posted on the Huffington Post.]

Nineteen years ago, nearly three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German dissidents called for a peaceful demonstration against the continued existence of the Stasi, the feared East German secret police. On January 15, 1990, I found myself in front of Stasi headquarters in East Berlin translating the demonstrators’ slogans for an American photographer. Suddenly, without warning, the looming metal gates of the forbidding edifice swung open and stunned protesters poured into the building. Some opened bottles of imported orange juice in the Stasi kitchens, while others spray-painted the walls and vented their anger on furniture and equipment.

This unplanned and now legendary “storming of the Stasi” came to mark the symbolic end of an institution whose fate had already been sealed politically. In the ensuing months, East Germans would dismantle the secret police apparatus once and for all, laying bare the full scope of repression exercised by an intelligence service subject to no external control. As a new administration takes over now in the United States, we might take to heart the lessons learned, in this process of dealing with the Stasi’s legacy, about the crucial role of openness and oversight in democratic societies.

East German activists soon discovered that the Stasi had kept literally miles of reports on ordinary people. I was one of them. As an American living in West Berlin, I had befriended dissident environmentalists in the eastern half of the city and helped them publicize the sorry state of their country’s air and water—an activity prohibited under the communist dictatorship. This made me an object of interest. Read the rest of this entry »

Since Barack Obama’s victory on November 4, I’ve been musing about the parallels between this amazing moment and another world-altering event I was privileged to witness in November almost two decades ago—the demise of the Berlin Wall. Then, too, a barrier that had seemed insurmountable fell. Then, too, the desire for unity helped propel momentous change. For Germans, though, ambushed by their own differences, unity has proved elusive. Their experience may be a cautionary tale for Americans working to bridge our own particular divides.

I lived in West Berlin in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, and had been making regular forays across the Wall to East Berlin, helping dissidents and getting to know their society. After sharing in their struggles, in a small way, for two years, I watched East and West Germans party together and experienced the joy and disbelief, the exhilaration and sense of limitless possibility that accompanied the unexpected end to decades of German separation.  

Last month, I watched a similar outpouring of emotion as Barack Obama was elected our first black president. Once again, I saw people dancing together in the streets, yearning to transcend longstanding divisions. It was, once again, a moment full of hope. But I was also reminded that change does not happen overnight, and that overcoming legacies of distance and distrust—as Germany’s experience shows—is an ongoing and difficult process. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia’s invasion of Georgia should compel the United States and Europe to alter their policies of using economic engagement to promote democracy.

After the Cold War, the United States and Europe sought to integrate Russia, China, and their satellites into the Western market economy. Policymakers believed this would encourage democracy, human rights and a peaceful demeanor toward their neighbors.

Policymakers believed robust foreign commerce and free markets—privatization, private property, and business law—would expose these societies to Western culture and instigate expectations for personal freedoms and free elections. Market economies function best when individual initiative and property rights are protected by elected governments. Democratic capitalism has decidedly outperformed autocratic communist and fascist regimes. And prosperous nations, invested in global commerce, are less inclined toward aggression.

Russia instigated wide-ranging privatization and other market reforms, opened to foreign investment, and had a rocky experiment with democracy. From 1990 to 1995, gross domestic product (GDP) dropped 50 percent, thanks to falling prices for oil and metal exports, inadequate commercial law, cronyism, and corruption. Output stabilized for a few years, but then sank further after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Boris Yeltsin, largely discredited, turned over the presidency to Vladimir Putin in 1999.

Mr. Putin may be a capitalist, but he is no democrat. He maintained essential elements of a market economy but compromised elections, asserted control over regional governments and the judiciary, squelched personal freedoms, and sought to reestablish Russian influence, whenever possible, in former Soviet republics. Read the rest of this entry »

BERLIN, GERMANY—Barack Obama has come and gone, but excitement remains, along with sober analysis. Obama was again on the front of every newspaper the day after his appearance, and most of the coverage and photos were flattering. (In a recent New York Times op-ed, Susan Neiman refers to Spiegel Magazine’s sardonic cover, but Spiegel is always sardonic and condescending, about everyone; it’s hardly representative.)

The day of the speech, people were already making their way to the Siegessäule hours before Obama was scheduled to take the stage. The crowd was international and ethnically mixed, and largely young. The mood was not so much passionate as curious. One longtime American resident of Berlin called it an anti-Bush demonstration of a sort (though with many people waving American flags)

I asked an Eritrean friend I met on the way, who’s lived in Berlin for years and is now a German citizen, what people were saying about Obama. He told me everyone likes him, but they don’t believe Americans will actually elect him. That is, indeed, a concern; many people have asked me whether I really think he has a chance.

Obama’s speech touched on many of the points Germans, especially younger people, are most interested in, but he also alluded to some issues they are not excited about. Back where I was standing, there was little applause for his call for more German troops in Afghanistan or his praise for NATO. To me, his rhetoric about the Cold War and the airlift came across as clichéd and somewhat condescending, but not everyone saw it that way; the airlift still means something to Berliners, particularly older ones. He received a great deal of applause when he spoke of Darfur, several times, and Zimbabwe; of ending the Iraq war and eliminating nuclear weapons; of climate and the environment; and of breaking down barriers between races and religions.

Still, Obama’s rhetoric is American, for example in its tendency towards what one commentator called “light and darkness metaphors,” and sounds strange to German ears. One young woman I spoke to afterwards found the speech superficial (“bullshit” was one of her adjectives). And others have made the same arguments as Roger Cohen in the New York Times—that it was abstract and feel-good.

The staging of an American campaign is equally alien. In a poll by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on the day of his appearance, a majority of respondents nationally felt either that too much fuss was being made, that Obama was using Berlin for his campaign, or that European expectations of him were too high. Most people seemed quite aware that the speech was, in fact, aimed more at the U.S. then at Germany. But many commentators, as well as listeners, found substance in the speech nevertheless. Obama’s admission that the U.S. has made mistakes, for example, and his acknowledgment that many Europeans see the U.S. as a cause of the world’s problems, meant a great deal.
Read the rest of this entry »