German leadership has turned from ‘solidarity’ with the United States during the waning days of involvement in the reunification of the country to ‘separatism’ with United States foreign policy today, international relations expert Michael Mertes said yesterday during a lecture in the School of Management.

The lecture, which was introduced by Boston University Chancellor John Silber, addressed ‘German American Relations Before and After Sept. 11’ and focused largely on international questions of possible military conflict with Iraq and the tenuous relationship between Germany and the United States over the matter.

Mertes, the author of German Question European Answers, traced German-American relations from the hopeful days of the late 1980s, when he said gratitude for American involvement in the unification of Germany shed an optimistic light on future cooperation between the two nations, to their more tenuous current relationship.

‘The post-unification honeymoon between Germany and the U.S. is over,’ Mertes said. ‘The controversy over Iraq is a symptom of deeper problems.’

Commenting on the German public’s opposition to United States involvement in Iraq, Mertes cited a survey which showed that 75 percent of Germans feel that without United Nations support, the United States should not be involved militarily in Iraq, compared to a 21 percent who feel military action is warranted.

He also said western Germany is more in favor of United States positions than eastern Germany. Eighty-five percent of east Germans are against United States involvement in Iraq without United Nations support, he said.

However, he said German sentiment against United States involvement in Iraq does not signify anti-American feelings in the rest of Europe. Rather, it represents the problems that exist in the relationship between eastern and western Germany.

Silber echoed Mertes’ sentiment after the lecture.

‘I feel we have a very mature relationship with Germany that allows us to disagree without undermining the relationship,’ Silber said. ‘Our relationship with France is much more dubious, which I think is due largely to the fact that 10 percent of the population is Muslim and the United States is on a collision course with a Muslim nation.’

Mertes said new generations of world leaders, including U.S. president George W. Bush, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Frances’s Jacques Chirac and English Prime Minister Tony Blair have ushered in a new generation of international relations.

‘There has been a transition from the past to new carriers of responsibility,’ he said.

Mertes’ comments were followed by remarks by Charles Maier of Harvard’s Center for European Studies.

Maier said improving the strained relationship between Germany and the United States ‘is possible, but depends on the civilian powers and military might’ of Germany and whether it will commit those forces to international affairs.

While we ‘must run international systems with allowance for dissent,’ he said, ‘we are witnessing a period of German stagnation,’ both economically and militarily.

‘If [Germany] isn’t going to be an economic powerhouse, then it loses its international influence,’ he said.

He argued that the European Union has split the European continent into two factions, one consisting of England and Eastern European countries and the other containing ‘old Europe.’ He also noted that France and Germany ‘are playing the grumpy old Europeans outside the coalition against Iraq.’

German Chancellor Schroeder has said Germany does not endorse any United States military involvement in Iraq, with or without United Nations support, while France has yet to formally decide, according to Martes. He said that if Russia and France do end up siding with the United States, Maier said Germany could be alienated.

Maier also briefly addressed the conflict between Israel and Palestine, saying President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have a political incentive ‘to play the terrorist card.’ He said without periodic terrorist acts ‘the card looses its clout.’

Jesse Kalata, a CAS sophomore who attended the lecture said the lecture addressed an important issue ignored by the greater populace.

‘The press largely dismisses European-American relations,’ she said. ‘A lecture like this at this time shows people are thinking about them.’