The Influence of Political Culture upon Cross-Cultural Misperceptions and Foreign Policy: The United States and Germany
in German Politics and Society
The disagreement between Germany and the United States over the
war in Iraq was massive. During the winter of 2002, many observers
spoke of a long-term rift between these longstanding allies and a
total loss of credibility on both sides. No one can doubt, regardless
of recent healing overtures,1 that the German-American partnership
has been altered and significantly weakened. It has suffered a blow
far more damaging than those that accompanied past conflicts over,
for example, Ostpolitik, the neutron bomb, the Soviet gas pipeline,
the flow of high technology products to the Soviet Union, the imposition
of trade sanctions in 1980 against the military government in
Poland, the stationing in the late 1970s of middle-range missiles on
German soil, and the modernization of short-range missiles in 1989.
