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It’s simple to understand:

Pre 1989 Germany’s back was to the wall. There was no playing around with national security because the threat was real, direct, large, imminent, and perceived by the people. Even the left leaning SPD would not dare play games with security issues, and the “necessary” decisions for self preservation were made. Schmidt took a black eye because of the Pershing. But think about that for a second, an SPD politician took the stage and argued FOR nuclear missiles to be stationed in Germany.

Post 1989: The threat is real, but more abstract, further away, not quite as large but more unpredictable and irrational, and the Volk has no threat perception. The problems are distant, the average person can’t really understand the threat posed by Islamists, and likewise the political landscape as well as demographics in Germany has shifted even further left after the Wende. The Germany post unification is one where games are played, where security issues are of low importance (Except when needed as in the Balkans)....... Today security issues are on the table to be played with.

Germany post 1989 is not only not carrying it’s own weight, but playing political games with issues of international security, as witnessed with missile defense, Iraq, Iran, Bad Ailbling, logistical flights from US governmental planes (non-DoD)............. Think about this, the Greens were talking about denying over flight rights for the DoD in 2003...... Germany today is a place where imaginary threats of Global Warming, and imaginary solutions like Kyoto, dominate the political stage. Every antenna is a secret NSA eavesdropping facility according to the layperson, even TACAN navigation, and older VHF communication antenna is spying on the Germans. Any noise is too loud, a piece of chaff (plastic and aluminum strips) left on an airbase sends off alarm bells, an M-8 chemical alarm system causes a major media incident (Think about that one! A smoke Detector was a story in Der Spiegel for an entire week), every ammunition bunker suddenly becomes a secret US chemical weapons storage facility years past...... it’s comical. Game playing, what am I talking about? When Germany is heavily involved politically in instigating a war she will benefit from, but then years later politicians play with the issue of Depleted Uranium which our A-10s fired in the Balkans. Bottom line, the German no longer feels he needs the Ami, and national security is a low priority, there is a deep rooted animosity towards the US, and the German wants to do as little as possible on the world stage.

So from our perspective, while you are an ally, we can’t depend or trust you and even have to mitigate risk because of that. Why do you think the US reshuffled everything through Europe the way we did? Because it’s cheaper to build new installations, because it’s easier on command and control or logistics to be spread out all over the place? No, we reshuffled our forces and even other governmental agencies in Europe (particularly out of Germany) so that we are less susceptible to damage when some Schroeder/Fischer decides to play games. When the wall fell we had roughly 280,000 troops in Germany, and after the drawdown we had massive infrastructure (even excess capacity), so it was easy and cheap to consolidate everything in Germany. Germany for the US was like an aircraft carrier in the middle of Europe from not only where the USAF and Army operated from, but all governmental agencies to include FDA, FAA, CIA, NSA, FBI, Department of State………. Intelligence collected in other places was processed there; field offices for the FAA and FDA were based in Germany that did their business all over Europe……. Germany was the hub for US governmental, intelligence, and defense organizations from which we would reach into North Africa, the Caucasus, and Middle East. It is actually quite unfortunate, because what happened under the Schroeder/Fischer years amounted to a breach in trust and confidence. It went beyond not doing anything and just mooching; it went into the realm of sabotaging the US and Coalition effort within NATO, the UN, and Europe. Threats were made to EU states volunteering help, nations were paid off not to assist us, an additional resolution within the UN was blocked, any NATO involvement was blocked…….. If you’re not going to do anything, it you’re not the one paying, shut up and stay in the background (That’s not meant personal, I’m talking abstract). Germany wasn’t in Desert Shield/Storm, she hadn’t been part of the containment over 11 years (And no, you didn’t pay for that either)…….. It was our pilots getting shot at on a weekly basis. It was us that had to mobilize forces and build up in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait two times, it was our Special Forces dying in North Iraq and working with the Kurds, and it would be us fighting this war too, just like the last one. But Schroeder seized the opportunity in 2002 to turn this into a German “Wahlkampf” theme and took the issue Iraq into every living room. You see a problem here? This would have NEVER happened pre 1989.

What exactly was “Der Deutsche Weg” Schroeder talked about? It was EXACTLY that which you deny. Defining strength through inaction and standing up to the US, never mind the despot in Libya, Saddam, or Iran, no strength is when a German chancellor defines strength as saying “Nein” to the US and playing games as he did, and yes, it did have positive feedback from the Volk, and that tells me a lot.