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BERLIN — Anybody out there still think Germany is running Europe — or for that matter can or will dominate it in time?
The question fits the moment after the German refusal to vote in favor of allied military intervention in Libya, the government’s pullout from nuclear energy largely for reasons of emotion and domestic political calculation, and its willingness last week to put off possibly decisive steps to end Greece’s debt misery.
Over a period of just about three months, that is a lot of unpredictability and policy pirouettes for allies who might have thought German leadership, on the upside, would be rational, competent and closely bound to the West.
“In European capitals, people are openly surprised about how suddenly Germany has lost influence,” wrote Thomas Hanke, who first pointed to the issue in Handelsblatt, the largest German financial newspaper.
In mid-2011, the question has become whether Germany is able to show an ability to lead, not to mention willingness to bear the responsibility and pain of facing up to the problems that challenge Europe’s relevance.
Those who fear Germany’s ascension to a status of Europe’s self-righteous, self-involved senior partner have put emphasis over the last few years on their concern about its capacity for “diplomatic restraint” and “seeing things from the point of view of others.”
Indeed, Jürgen Habermas, perhaps the country’s pre-eminent intellectual figure, in a collection of several authors’ essays published last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations with the title “What Does Germany Think About Europe?”, came back to those phrases. He wrote of a “bid for leadership by a ‘European Germany in a German Europe”’ and said “no other German chancellor has ever pursued national interests as blatantly” as Angela Merkel.
But the central concern, as it appears now, is shifting. It involves less an overwhelming Germany than one whose capacities and will are doubted. It calls into question the competence and resolve of Mrs. Merkel — reinforced by expressions of disregard and loss of patience from her strongest allies at home in business, the news media and the Christian Democratic party.
Here’s what Europe and some of Mrs. Merkel’s own friends see:
?A country that reacted with terror to the Fukushima nuclear accident. The result was that Mrs. Merkel reversed a policy commitment and led Germany out of atomic power. The decision flattered those in Germany craving the high moral ground and set up the possibility of an electoral alliance between Mrs. Merkel and the environmental Greens party. Friends, notably in France, described the decision as likely to increase Germany’s (and Europe’s) dependency on Russian energy supply. Core conservative supporters of the chancellor were flabbergasted and/or enraged.
? A country that felt more comfortable in abstaining with Russia and China than voting in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing NATO intervention in Libya. Now, the government does not want to send its own peacekeeping troops there to police a post-revolt transition. And it is officially planning a Year of Russia in Germany for 2012, regardless of the rigged Russian presidential election scheduled for March.
? A country that has endorsed a plan for another bailout of Greece containing little prospect for bringing a definitive end to the Greek problem. In the process, German and French banks are largely being spared the cost of restructuring Greek debt. A proposal from Finance Minister Wolfgang Sch?uble, involving the creation of a common European budget policy and shifting a good part of the weight of the Greek rescue costs from taxpayers to the banks, was pushed aside by Mrs. Merkel.
These are the seeming domestic results: polls showing that while favor for her remains high among the general population, it is disappearing in important and influential areas.
The chancellor’s backing of the euro has been so weak or unconvincing that support for it among Germans fell to a minority within the country last month — hardly an endorsement for the European commitment of an E.U. leader who can’t generate a majority in her own constituency for the Union’s greatest concern.
At the same time, a canvass of German “leaders” in business and politics by the Allensbach Institute showed that only 18 percent considered Mrs. Merkel’s statements credible and that 58 percent regarded her as a weak chancellor.
Der Spiegel magazine, which often has an unkind word for almost anyone in politics, outdid itself a week ago. The government, it wrote, “has just about ruined what there was of respect in this world for Germany.”
And from deep among the Christian Democratic Union’s greatest loyalists, the Family Business Foundation wrote an open letter stating its loss of confidence in the government and saying it was no longer sure of what the party represented.
In this German climate, new responsibilities for the country can take on special trepidation. They show that Germany’s coming out of its traditional safe house is still a tortured business.
Starting last week, Germany, currently a nonpermanent member of the U.N. Security Council, began holding the council’s rotating presidency for a month. The occasion might be seen as a situation where Berlin, with a bit of firmness on matters of principle, could recoup some of its seemingly lost prestige.
But the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, another consistent friend of the chancellor, has noted that Security Council membership can be a burden — just think, it suggested, Germany would never have had to show its hand on Libya if it didn’t have a temporary council seat.
Now, the newspaper said, there was another “uncomfortable” situation staring Germany in the face: while refusing to vote yes, it is dithering on whether to abstain or state a clear no if a motion is presented calling for full membership for a Palestinian state in the United Nations.
Is this a confident Germany, sure of itself and where it comes from, and a leader representative of Europe’s desire to persevere as a model and still relevant world player?
What an enormous irony if Germany, with a new kind of accountability and respect within reach, would botch a leadership role through opportunism, petty politics, and a shaky hand — guided sometimes these days by considerations it cannot comfortably explain.
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