New Line Gives Schroeder Wiggle Room

To hear his political foes tell it, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has just made a screeching U-turn in his Iraq policy, abandoning a pledge to stay out of a war at all costs.

But listen closely on Germany’s streets, and the surprising sound isn’t the scream of Schroeder’s brakes but the silence of a public that turned out in force last weekend to oppose any armed conflict in Iraq.

Just two days after that peace protest, Schroeder joined other European leaders on Monday in declaring that war could be a last resort against Baghdad. It was an apparent break from his campaign promise last fall not to participate in any military intervention in Iraq -- even one with United Nations backing. That hard-line position is largely believed to have made the difference in his reelection by one of the slimmest margins in German history.

Mindful of the prevailing antiwar mood, the German leader immediately moved to limit the damage. He described the joint declaration in Brussels as purely an “abstract statement” and denied any shift in government policy.

Still, his opponents pounced. “Chancellor tipped over?” asked the headline on the front of Wednesday’s Bild, a mass-circulation newspaper. Inside, Edmund Stoiber, who lost to Schroeder in last September’s election, called the chancellor’s move “a classic cave-in.”

But more surprising has been the lack of any public outcry, although polls show that a solid majority of Germans oppose a war with Iraq.

Analysts say that Schroeder, despite low poll ratings because of the nation’s slumping economy, remains a smooth politician with a knack for impressing ordinary Germans and selling them his point of view.

“Schroeder himself is trying to explain it away, telling people yes, in principle, we are not pacifists, but in the special case of Iraq, we don’t want to apply military force, and Germany will not participate in a possible war. So he is trying to neutralize” the fallout from his change of tack, said Juergen Falter, a political scientist at the University of Mainz.

“Who should be upset by this? The peace demonstrators, of course,” Falter said. “But they can go along with the reasoning.”

The public quiescence suggests that the German government may have a bit of wiggle room when the U.S. and Britain present the United Nations Security Council with a new resolution on Iraq. Though not a permanent member, Germany is currently chair of the council and could hold a crucial vote.

In acknowledging force as an option, Schroeder was trying to reduce some of Germany’s recent estrangement from the U.S. and also, to some extent, from other European countries over what to do about Baghdad, analysts said.

Despite the popular support it stirred, Schroeder’s insistence that Germany would not countenance war under any circumstance was attacked by much of the political class, which worried that he had handcuffed himself. Even France, also strongly opposed to a war, has not taken such an inflexible line.

“He was cornered,” Falter said. “He couldn’t move with the old position. Now he has some more space to negotiate, to influence other countries.”

By some accounts, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has been upset by Germany’s growing isolation and urged Schroeder to compromise at the European Union summit Monday.

“Europe can only be strong if it speaks with one voice.... Chancellor Schroeder had to make a U-turn in Brussels,” Angela Merkel, the leader of the opposition Christian Democrats, told the newspaper Die Welt. “I now appeal to Mr. Schroeder to follow this course on the U.N. Security Council too.” Merkel is heading to the U.S. next week to express her party’s support of the Bush administration’s stand on Iraq.

Even if Schroeder were to bow to American pressure and go along with a new resolution at the U.N., he will still be constrained by the antiwar sentiment here. Although he has had trouble translating public endorsement of his Iraq policy into support for his domestic agenda, it would be extremely risky for Schroeder to go back on his word entirely and allow Germany to participate directly in an armed conflict.

No one expects to see German troops on the front lines, U.N. authorization or no, analysts say. At most, German forces might provide logistical help, medical backup or units to combat biological or chemical warfare.

Anything beyond that would court the public outcry that Schroeder and his Social Democratic Party, or SPD, have been able to avoid so far. As one group of protesters last weekend shouted to fellow marchers: On the day war breaks out, “we meet again at SPD headquarters at 6 p.m. to make sure that they keep their word!”