Just a quickie before Arabic class but not to worry, I’m using this time off to write a long multi-part article.

Germany’s ‘Lame Duck’ Goes to Washington

In Washington, Gerhard Schroeder will seek to persuade George W. Bush to give his blessing for Germany to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Relations are better these days, but the president is unlikely to give Schroeder any going away presents.

For George W. Bush and Gerhard Schroeder, saying goodbye has probably never been so easy.
When German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder visits United States President George W. Bush on Monday, he’ll likely be greeted back home with the same kinds of headlines Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer got when he went to Washington two weeks ago. The media described it as his “farewell tour.” The leftist Die Tageszeitung labeled him “Dead Man Walking.”

Schroeder’s trip, too, is being overshadowed by the snap election he has called for this autumn. All the latest polls suggest that the current government, led by Schroeder’s Social Democrats and Fischer’s Green Party, will be voted out of office. “Politically, Schroeder is not a lame duck,” said Stephen Szabo, professor for European Studies at Johns Hopkins University, “he is a dead duck.”

And in a wonderfully succint description of the situation:

It is not without irony that the current EU crisis is being taken seriously in Washington. “Just at the time that Washington wanted to massively expand its dialogue with Europe, it suddenly has a panic attack and has to spend the rest of the summer at the psychiatrist’s office,” Bruce Jackson, an influential neo-conservative with close ties to Bush, said during a visit to Berlin last week.

Whether the US wants a politically integrated or militarily strong EU or not is a different story, but the US does indeed need Europe to act together in unity during the war on terror and a little regime change in France and Germany won’t hurt either.

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