GERMANY REDISCOVERS THE US AS A PARTNER

An interesting development recorded in the excerpt from the German press below. Angela probably has her heart in the right place. She grew up in the Communist East so would have few illusions about socialism. She does however head a nation that is the home of socialism -- from Bismarck, through Marx to Hitler -- so her options are limited

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has reoriented Germany away from Russia and toward the United States. Expanded economic ties are just one area of renewed cooperation...

The gift brought by a guest says a lot about his or her intentions. The love-sick romantic shows up with a dozen red roses. A box of Cohiba cigars is the classic gift between men in the West. Purebred horses and trained falcons, on the other hand, are the gift of choice among men in the Arab world. When German chancellors travel, their hosts usually receive the best Meissen porcelain, Junghans clocks or cases of Riesling wine.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel will present an especially generous gift during her trip to the United States this week. At a Monday ceremony in the Great Hall of the US Library of Congress, she will hand over to the Americans something Germans would normally be barred from even taking out of the country: a piece of Germany's national cultural heritage. The item in question is a world map drafted by Freiburg native Martin Waldseemller in 1507. It is a map which shows a rough outline of the new continent, and for the first time uses a name that the immigrants in the New World would eventually adopt for their own: America.

The actual transfer of the map from Merkel to Steny Hoyer, the Democratic Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, is more of a symbolic act; the historic chart has been in the United States since 2001. But when it was first sent to the United States six years ago, then Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did little more than shepherd the gift through the bureaucratic intricacies of getting an exit permit. Now, the current chancellor prefers to celebrate the act with fanfare, staging it as a gesture designed to underscore Germany's close friendship with America.

For Merkel, though, the closeness with the US is much more than mere symbolism. She sees America as "a force that has brought freedom to the peoples of the world." She now plans to make the most of that freedom by further strengthening the two countries' economic ties. In the storm of globalization, the United States and Europe plan to expand their cooperation to benefit both countries.

It is virtually unprecedented in German history for a chancellor to be so unreservedly aligned with the US. Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, saw America as a guarantor of freedom, but also perceived it as an occupation force. Helmut Schmidt and Willy Brandt, both Social Democratic (SPD) chancellors, were pro-American but innately skeptical. Merkel, on the contrary, wants to expand Germany's close ties with the United States and is on the verge of making a pact with America the cornerstone of her foreign policy. Indeed, the resoluteness with which she has pursued this goal stands in conspicuous contrast with her government's lack of political progress back home in Germany.

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