World press: Merkel's shuttle diplomacy Angela Merkel's first week as Germany's chancellor saw her busy hob-nobbing with Europe's leaders. Dominic Coldwell reviews what the German press says on the matter News of Angela Merkel's election as Germany's first female Chancellor dominated commentary in German papers this week, as editorials tried to size up the challenges and opportunities that a conservative-led 'grand coalition' between the country's two biggest parties would face over the next four years. Although Merkel received a surprisingly large share of 'no'-votes from within the ranks of her coalition, papers across the political spectrum agree there is little reason to fear protracted instability. Shrugging shoulders, the left-wing daily Taz dubbed the relatively high proportion of no-votes "entirely unspectacular," rhetorically asking "So what? If a governing majority is sufficiently stable, there is no reason to force each and every deputy into line by wielding sticks and carrots." On the contrary, the overwhelming numerical lead that the new coalition between Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) enjoys in parliament suggests that she will be able to take some pressure off parliamentarians whom her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder was forced to "humiliate" time and again when he enforced party discipline for controversial reform packages owing to his government's razor-thin parliamentary lead. The high proportion of no-votes last week, therefore, is not so much "an indication of the rising self-confidence of deputies" as of "their dwindling significance." The conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) agrees that there is little need to fear political de- stabilisation, arguing that the true test of Merkel's leadership came in the days immediately after the general elections of 18 September, which left neither the CDU nor the SPD under Schroeder with a sufficient majority, respectively, to form a government with their preferred coalition partners. Merkel's ability to secure an overwhelming 98.6 per cent of votes in internal party polls the morning after a sobering election night, ultimately, helped to cement her claim to lead the country. According to the FAZ, "this tendency to accept circumstances while still seeking within them a means to impose her will, surely, is one of the legacies that the future chancellor retains from having grown up in East Germany." It is a trait that will stand her in good stead once she gets down to ironing out ideological differences with her coalition partner in legislation, the FAZ believes. The prestigious left-wing weekly Der Spiegel went even further, predicting an imperceptibly heavy- handed style of decision-making over the next four years. According to this analysis, a Machiavellian Merkel "tolerates the impression that a vacuum has opened up right next to her. But then, she remains strong enough to chase away anyone who wishes to fill it." During the electoral race and subsequent coalition talks, she refrained from steamrolling her own political agenda. "She did not want to become a moving target. She was flexible to the point of self-denial. She just had one irreducible objective in these weeks: the Chancellery." Her hard- nosed determination was born of political necessity. Lacking a firm regional power-base in one of Germany's 16 federal states, "Angela Merkel had to win the Chancellery in order to avoid losing everything. Her own party would have gladly demoted her to the bottom ranks." According to Der Spiegel, this carries dire implications for the future. "She cannot run away, if for no other reason than that she would not know where to turn. The Chancellery is her sole refuge from the predations of her competitors. This, too, makes her appear callous, externally insensitive." Comparisons with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher surface all too easily. As the FAZ took pains to emphasise, "Mrs Merkel will not only become Germany's first female head of government, but also the first woman since Margaret Thatcher to lead a large industrialised nation." Her promise of closer relations with Britain on a short trip to London last week indicated Berlin's likely reversion to a more Atlanticist orientation in German foreign policy. In a recent interview with the conservative weekly Focus, Merkel made a point of saying that Germany would improve relations with smaller East European countries and mend ties with the United States. Mrs Merkel has been a fierce critic of Schroeder's endorsement of a Paris- Berlin-Moscow axis as a counterweight to Washington in the run-up to the Iraq War of 2003. Ironically, her new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) was the chief architect of Schroeder's rapprochement with Russian President Vladmir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac. It is for this reason that Der Spiegel believes that "notwithstanding all protestations of entente, the writing is on the wall that the coalition partners will come to blows" over foreign policy. Then again, differences between both sides should not be exaggerated either. It was Schroeder who cleared the path for the first-ever long-term deployment of German soldiers outside of NATO territory in Afghanistan in response to Washington's entreaties. And one of his last acts in office was to sanction a controversial Israeli request for two Dolphin submarines -- with Berlin shouldering a third of their construction costs. The Dolphins can be fitted with nuclear warheads and potentially strike Iran. Der Spiegel has dubbed their delivery Schroeder's "farewell present" to Tel Aviv.
