Due to a writing project that has kept me driving forward with the eyes-locked, white-line feverish resolve of Walter White racing to his latest date with destiny, I was unaware of how badly the United States has fucked the dog with one of our greatest and most valuable allies, Germany.
"Fucked the dog" is the phrase commonly used in international relations to denote a major foul-up, something I learned during my years in the diplomatic corps.
In his latest commentary, "Germany and the United States: Unprecedented Breach," the historian and geopolitical observer Immanuel Wallerstein takes ominous note of this remarkable heave-ho.
On July 10, the German government demanded the immediate departure of the head of the CIA mission in Berlin. Such demands are not unusual, even between ostensible allies. What is unusual is that it should be publicly announced, and with much fanfare. What accounts for what some are already calling an "unprecedented breach" in the very close relations after 1945 between the United States and the German Federal Republic?
What set Germany off was not a firefight involving Jack Bauer that left a half-dozen stunt men strewn across the cobblestones until the director yelled, "Cut," but further revelations of US spying of Germany which exacerbated tensions and frustrations festering from earlier bombshells about the NSA monitoring the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. President Obama apologized to Merkel, but the US persisted in treating a trusted ally wrong.
By now, every major or minor paper in Germany, the United States, France, Great Britain and elsewhere is featuring the story, analyzing the causes, and preaching the solution. Above all, most articles are searching for whom to blame. The principal suspects are the National Security Agency (NSA) and President Obama. But is it simply the unwise decisions of the NSA or of Obama? In other words, could it have been different? Well, surely in detail. The U.S. government has been stupid and very clumsy. However, the problem is structural and not the passing mistakes and stupidity of those in power in the United States.
The basic problem is that the United States is, and has been for some time, in geopolitical decline. It doesn't like this. It doesn't really accept this. It surely doesn't know how to handle it, that is, minimize the losses to the United States. So it keeps trying to restore what is unrestorable - U.S. "leadership" (read: hegemony) in the world-system. This makes the United States a very dangerous actor. No small number of political agents in the United States are calling for some sort of decisive "action" - whatever that could possibly mean. And U.S. elections may depend in large part on how U.S. political actors play this game.
In its technological and military arrogance and staunch sense of "exceptionalism," the US is refusing to acknowledge post-empire realities. It's as if Dick Cheney maintains a Vulcan death grip on the power establishment, and indeed maybe he does.
Main link: "Germany and the United States: Unprecedented Breach," by Immanuel Wallerstein