The US War against Iraq in 2003 was an important milestone and a turning point in the German-American relations. It came closely in the heels of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan. The US President, George W. Bush, wanted to use the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to remake the Middle East. He attempted to connect the Al-Qaeda attacks and the regime of the military dictator Saddam Hussain, He also claimed that Saddam Hussain was developing nuclear weapons that posed an imminent threat to the civilized world. Both of these claims were unfounded and the US did not have any convincing evidence to prove them. German-US relations became strained over these issues. Earlier the President Bush administration had repudiated the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. It had also broken a number of conventions on limiting Biological and nuclear weapons. These acts by the US were not liked in Germany.
The Foreign Policy tradition of Germany since 1949 rested on not participating in any aggressive wars. To most Germans, the War which president Bush suggested to wage, in 2001, against Iraq was an aggressive war. The German Gerhard Schroder faced an election in fall 2002. His poll ratings were not good. Both, principles and political necessities forced the German Chancellor to refuse to support the US war in Iraq. This refusal not only saved his Red-Green coalition but he also managed to win the federal elections held in Germany on September 22, 2002.
German refusal to support the US war in Iraq marked an unprecedented break in the relations between the two countries. The ties deteriorated further in the fall of 2002. Germany refused to accept any of the arguments the US put up for waging a war against Iraq. By February 2003, the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer was to tell the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, “You have to make your case. Sorry, you have not convinced me.’ Donald Rumsfeld responded by labelling Germany and France as “Old Europe” distinguishing them from the new Eastern European members of the NATO whom he called the “New Europe.”
The Iraq War 2003 marked a low point and a new chapter in the German-US relations. Germany asserted its independence from a transatlantic partnership that had pressurized its foreign policy since its coming into being. Pragmatic pursuit of German national interests rather than a multilateral foreign policy determined by Germany ties with the US and EU was the new course for the German foreign policy practitioners now. Realpolitik rather than moral imperatives were going to be the chief drivers of the German foreign policy after those years.
An international concern with peacekeeping and a foreign policy posture of a civilian power continued. German avoided militarization. It defended its opposition to the Iraq war on moral grounds; a position that was in keeping with its foreign policy aims since the end of the WW II. Both, German and the EU, proved to be correct in their estimates of the Iraq War of 2003 as a strategic, political and moral mistake by the US. Germany’s opposition to that war was in keeping with its diplomatic traditions of supporting only the Just wars. The episode was a point of a big transition in the relations between Germany and the US. Germany had successfully conveyed to the Americans that in the future diplomatic and international affairs they had to have strong moral and rational arguments to carry their points with the Germans. The era of unconditional German support to most of the foreign policy and military steps of the US in the international arena came to an end with that American war in the Middle East.
