Germany on the Road to “Normalcy”: Policies and Politics of the Red-Green Federal Government (1998–2002)

Abstract

Gerhard Schröder started his campaign for reelection with a rally in his hometown of Hanover in Lower Saxony on 5 August 2002. He opened his speech with a phrase that was to become a major motif in the following weeks and months. Schröder declared that his government had set off “on our German way.”¹ Albeit he may have intended to reference the domestic agenda and the Modell Deutschland, which Helmut Schmidt had introduced some 25 years earlier, Schröder surely knew that this allusion would evoke memories of the notorious pre- and interwar debates about a German Sonderweg and German exceptionalism. Schröder furthermore failed on this and other occasions to define (or perhaps deliberately avoided addressing) what he really meant by “our German way.” Yet he did make clear that this formulation was not merely empty rhetoric. He justified his refusal to support the American policy toward Iraq by referring to national interests. Schröder criticized the American strategy and the threat to wage war on Iraq if it did not comply with international and American decisions. He refused to participate in any “adventure” and stated that the “checkbook diplomacy” of the Kohl era was over. Instead the new German security and foreign policy would be based on “self-conscious solidarity” and guided by the national interests of the German people (Schröder 2002a,d).