Ulf Gartzke is a German-American political analyst and writer who contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard from 2006 to 2011, serving as a key correspondent on German politics, European security affairs, and transatlantic relations. His prolific coverage spanned topics including Chancellor Merkel's leadership, NATO strategy, Russian resurgence, and Cold War history. He brought deep expertise in German domestic policy and its intersection with broader European and international security issues.
Speaking to more than 10,000 supporters in Duesseldorf on Sunday night, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once again the source of some controversy across Germany when he called on his “compatriots” – many of whom hold German passports and were born there – to strongly resist…
If Bundestag elections were held on Sunday, Germany would most likely have a new left-wing SPD-Green coalition government headed – for the first-time ever – by an ecologist chancellor. Current opinion polls put the Greens at a stunning 24 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of the SPD who gain 23…
Just a few days ago, German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg presented five different reform proposals to restructure the country’s armed forces. Declining defense budgets coupled with increasing expeditionary demands on Bundeswehr forces around the world underline the case for…
On Wednesday, Hannelore Kraft became minister-president of North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, with a minority coalition government between her left-wing SPD party and the Greens. To get herself elected, the 49-year-old SPD politician – a trained economist who previously served…
Christian Wulff took the oath of office in Berlin today, capping a political cliffhanger for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who narrowly secured an absolute majority for her ruling center-right coalition’s presidential candidate after two inconclusive rounds of voting on Wednesday in the Federal…
A newly released policy report on Turkey by the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Academy in Washington caught my eye this week. The report was dubbed, “Getting to Zero: Turkey, Its Neighbors and the West,” and the brief’s analysis and policy recommendations unfortunately display a distinct…
President Horst Koehler sent political shockwaves through Germany by announcing his immediate resignation yesterday afternoon. Koehler -- who assumed the titular presidency in 2004 and was widely expected to serve out the remainder of his second term until 2014 -- stepped down barely a week after…
Despite on-going government efforts to encourage couples to have more children through a combination of financial incentives and guaranteed access to daycare spots, Germany’s rapid demographic decline continues unabated. Newly released data indicate that in 2009, the number of births dropped by 3.6…
Kristina Koehler, Germany’s new Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, has come under sharp attack from the political left for stating the obvious, namely that it is important to fight all forms of extremism. Last October, just a few weeks before the 32-year-old…
The road to power in Berlin starts in Kabul. This, in essence, appears to be the German left-wing SPD party's new political maxim just three months after they lost the Bundestag elections and were kicked out of Chancellor Merkel's Grand Coalition government. With the SPD in opposition for the first…
A recent referendum banning the construction of new minarets in Switzerland triggered outrage in the Muslim world. Government leaders from countries such as Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan strongly condemned the move, arguing that the measure was discriminatory in nature and violated the right of…
The new Airbus A400M--Europe's ambitious response to the rapidly-increasing demand for strategic airlift capabilities in support of military crisis-management operations around the world--received a major boost this morning when the four-engined turboprop aircraft made its first flight from an…
Just two weeks after taking office, the new German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg began a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday to meet with the country's top leadership -- including President Karzai -- in an effort to gauge the situation on the ground and to express Berlin's growing…
Germany's top military officer confirmed in Berlin on Thursday that an official NATO investigation has backed the Bundeswehr decision to call in the September 4 U.S. air strikes on two Taliban-hijacked tankers in northern Afghanistan's Kunduz region. After reviewing the still-classified report,…
In the end, the public and political outrage was simply too big to ignore. Tens of thousands of French citizens used emails, call-in radio shows, letters to the editor, and online petitions to express their profound anger and disappointment at President Nicolas Sarkozy's attempt to have his…
This Tuesday, Turkish state-owned TRT channel aired the second episode of "Ayrilik" ("Farewell"), a highly controversial prime-time TV series set against the backdrop of "Operation Cast Lead" in the Gaza strip that shows Israeli soldiers shooting a smiling young girl in the chest, killing babies,…
In case you haven't heard, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has come under tremendous criticism back home as news emerged over the weekend that his 23-year-old son Jean is set to become head of the public development agency running La Défense, one of Europe's biggest business districts located on…
Ten days before the Bundestag (federal) elections scheduled for September 27, the race pitting Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) against her foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), is suddenly tightening up. For a long time, the…
Friday's deadly air strike on two Taliban-hijacked tanker trucks, which was called in by German Bundeswehr forces and carried out by USAF fighter jets, has prompted a sudden barrage of domestic and international criticism vis-Ã -vis Berlin's handling of this particular incident and, by implication,…
Germany's Der Spiegel magazine reported over the weekend that the four Islamic terrorists charged with trying to blow up Frankfurt Airport on September 11, 2007 had informants inside Turkish intelligence that allowed them to obtain classified investigative material about their own group previously…
It's official. German conservative CSU economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has just overtaken Chancellor Angela Merkel to become the country's most popular politician. According to a recent poll, the 37-year-old shooting star - whose friends refer to him as "KT" - scores an impressive…
Several hundred Bundeswehr soldiers, backed by heavy "Marder" tanks and fighter jets, are currently helping about 1,200 Afghan National Army forces conduct major anti-terrorist operations near the Taliban stronghold of Chahar Dara, southwest of the city of Kunduz, where the bulk of Germany's…
The German Bundestag elections, set for September 27, are approaching fast, and the campaign is shifting into a higher gear. Faced with abysmal polling numbers hovering in the low 20s, the left-wing SPD party has been desperately trying to find the silver-bullet issue that can turn public opinion…
German chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the ruling regime in Tehran to allow a full recount of the disputed presidential elections of June 12. "Germany sides with those Iranians who want to exercise their right to freedom of expression and assembly", Merkel declared on Sunday; making it one of…
The Financial Times recently provided an interesting ranking of the 25 "most liveable" cities world-wide. At the top of the list in 2009 is Zurich, Switzerland, followed by Copenhagen and Tokyo. Compiled by Tyler Brûlé, editor-in-chief of global-affairs-lifestyle magazine Monocle, the ranking is…
Through its German subsidiary Opel, the troubles of now-bankrupt U.S. carmaker GM have also spilled over into Germany's domestic political arena, turning the question of how to best separate (some would say "liberate") Opel from its rather incompetent American masters into a major campaign theme…
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is on the campaign trail. He is running as the left-wing SPD party's candidate to replace incumbent center-right CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag elections set for September 27, 2009. For Steinmeier--a rather dull 53-year-old…
According to Guenther Nooke, a former CDU MP who now serves as the German foreign ministry's Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid, there is "a very high probability" that Berlin will boycott the Durban II UN Anti-Racism Conference which is set to open in Geneva on Monday. In an…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected demands by Cardinal Joachim Meissner, the Catholic Archbishop of Cologne, that she apologize for her sharp criticism of Pope Benedict XVI's handling of the Bishop Williamson scandal in early February. In essence, Cardinal Meissner argued that Merkel's…
A first group of 122 Iraqi refugees arrived in Germany on Thursday this week. The government in Berlin -- which will accept a total of 2,500 Iraqi refugees in the coming weeks and months -- will provide all of them with long-term residency papers, language courses, housing, and work permits. The…
Poland's recent aggressive political campaign to prevent the nomination of Erika Steinbach, a conservative CDU MP who heads the Association of German Expellees, to the board of the planned Berlin-based "Center Against Expulsions" has once again revealed that the legacy of WWII still affects modern…
In a highly symbolic gesture, Berlin has offered to grant German citizenship to the children fathered by Wehrmacht soldiers during the 1940-1944 occupation of France. Estimates indicate that about 200,000 babies were born as a result of such romantic Franco-German liaisons in WW II. After the war,…
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who fiercely clashed with the Bush administration over the 2003 Iraq War, has published an essay in the weekly Der Spiegel on "The Way Forward in Afghanistan". While Schroeder strongly rejects pacifist calls for Germany's unilateral withdrawal from the…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency, to back the planned Nord Stream gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea. According…
Germany has been in shock and outrage over an incredibly nasty incident, which took place in the city of Duisburg last Saturday. That day, about 10,000 agitated protesters organized by the radical Islamist Turkish group Milli Gorus, were marching through the city to protest Israel's military…
Several days ago, about 200 hundred prominent Turkish intellectuals launched a first-ever online petition apologizing for the "Great Catastrophe" in connection with the massacres of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey during 1915-1917. Titled "I apologize", the brief statement reads as follows:…
Earlier this week in Washington, I had the opportunity to listen to Maajid Nawaz, Co-Founder and Director of the London-based Quilliam Foundation, which describes itself as "the world's first counter-extremism think tank". Both Mr. Nawaz and Co-Founder Ed Husain are former activists of the radical…
For at least 10,000 of the more than two million Iraqi refugees currently stranded in neighboring countries such Syria and Jordan, last Thursday will probably be forever remembered as a special day of Thanksgiving. That day, the EU interior ministers meeting in Brussels agreed to admit up to 10,000…
In a recent Financial Times interview, Germany's former Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer slams Chancellor Angela Merkel for renouncing "any claim to leadership in shaping Europe's response to the financial and economic crises" and for "acting purely nationally". In contrast, Fischer praises…
Germany's demographic troubles are well known: Fewer and fewer women are having babies; and even if they do have kids, it often doesn't happen before they are already well into their 30s. The long-term economic, social, and political consequences of this unprecedented demographic meltdown in…
If you think it's just the mainstream American media that are strongly biased against Governor Sarah Palin you need to take a look at Palin's press coverage on the other side of the Atlantic. Journalists and commentators in Europe have now gone completely negative on John McCain's female running…
Last week, the Irish foreign minister presented the details of an opinion poll analyzing the reasons behind the island's "No" vote on the EU's Lisbon Treaty on June 12. Three months ago, the latest EU attempt to streamline the 27-nation bloc's institutional structures and decision-making procedures…
A recently-surfaced anti-Bundeswehr poster showing three German soldiers standing next to the flag-draped coffin of a comrade killed in a 2002 helicopter crash in Afghanistan has caused considerable political uproar in Germany. The cynical poster--first published about five years ago by the Berlin…
A full-page op-ed in Germany's prestigious conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung caught my eye last Wednesday. Titled "Preventive Nuclear War in Europe", the article (which is not available online) describes in great detail the Warsaw Pact's secret military planning for a first-strike…
Barack Obama may have left Berlin more than a week ago, but the political repercussions of his speech to about 200,000 people there can still be felt. First came John McCain's controversial Barack-Obama-Is-The-Biggest-Celebrity-In-The-World-But-Is-He-Ready-To Lead? ad. Then the Republican National…
Faruk Sen, the Turkish-born founding Director of the Center for Studies on Turkey in Essen / Germany, has come under sharp political criticism over recent comments comparing the situation of Turkish migrants living in Europe to the plight and discrimination previously suffered by European Jews.…
The current cover of Der Spiegel prepares the readers of Europe's biggest weekly news magazine for Barack Obama's first public appearance in Berlin this Thursday. The headline "Deutschland trifft den Superstar: Barack Obamas Auftritt in Berlin" (Germany meets the super star: Barack Obama's…
Faruk Sen, the Turkish-born founding director of the Center for Studies on Turkey in Essen, Germany, has been sharply criticized for his recent comments comparing the situation of Turkish migrants living in Europe to the plight and discrimination previously suffered by European Jews. Here is an…
Barack Obama's upcoming trip to Berlin, scheduled for July 24, has not only triggered considerable media hype in Germany but also revealed sharp divisions within the country's political class, namely about whether the Democratic presidential candidate should be allowed to speak in front of the…
Last week, German defense minister Franz-Josef Jung announced that Berlin plans to send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan this fall to support the NATO-led military effort there. This deployment will bring the number of Bundeswehr ISAF soldiers to 4,500, bolstering Germany's position as the…
This week the GAO decided to sustain Boeing's protest of the Pentagon's recent award of a $35 billion refueling tanker contract to a transatlantic consortium led by Northrop Grumman. This decision has caused much surprise and unease among European political observers and aerospace and defense…
Last Thursday, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) hosted its first blogger briefing, which featured both liberal and conservative online media outlets. CNAS is a relatively new kid in Washington's crowded and competitive think tank market. The two key CNAS people, CEO Dr. Kurt Campbell…
Germany's ruling conservative CDU/CSU parties are trying to push the EU to provide asylum for tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees--including many Christians and members of other religious minorities--who fled religious persecution in their homeland and are now stranded in neighboring countries such…
Earlier this week, Germany's ruling conservative CDU/CSU parliamentary group boldly called for the creation of a new "National Security Council." The German NSC would be tasked with coordinating the country's various ministries and agencies as they manage foreign and security policy challenges at…
Kurt Beck, the leader of Germany's left-wing SPD party, which is part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's "grand coalition" government, has been hit hard by new polling data suggesting that even a majority of his own party members think he's not the right guy for the top job in Berlin. The 59-year-old,…
German conservative interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has come out with a bold initiative to provide asylum for thousands of Iraqi Christians forced to leave their homeland in recent years because of religious persecution at the hands of Muslim extremist groups. According to the Schaeuble plan,…
I want to come back to a story that had quite a bit of media traction in Germany but went virtually unnoticed in the United States. About two weeks ago, I co-hosted a luncheon discussion for visiting Bavarian conservative CSU Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann at the German Marshall Fund here in…
A new global opinion survey conducted for the BBC World Service has revealed that Germany is viewed as the one country having the most "positive influence" on world affairs. On average, 56 percent of the more than 17,000 respondents in 34 countries around the globe had a positive view of Berlin's…
China's brutal crackdown on Buddhist protesters in its annexed Tibet province has sparked a heated discussion in Europe about whether or not to boycott (at least parts of) the upcoming Beijing Olympics, which are set to begin with a grandiose opening ceremony on August 8. So far, the 27 EU…
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Northern Germany's wealthy city-state of Hamburg may soon become home of the country's first-ever Black-Green coalition government involving the conservative CDU party and the environmentalist Greens. If successful at the regional level, such a previously almost unthinkable political configuration…
EUROPEANS, LIKE MUCH of the rest of the world for that matter, are following the U.S. presidential election campaign very closely. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and even Mike Huckabee have all pretty much become household names across Europe. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, and TV and…
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's recent four-day trip to Germany--during which he not only demanded that Berlin fund the launch of new Turkish-language schools and universities but also dared to call on the 2.5 million Turks living there to reject assimilation into German society--has…
A strongly-worded letter by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates requesting the deployment of German combat troops and helicopters to southern Afghanistan has caused a major political backlash in Berlin. Both the content and timing of Gates's blunt letter to his German counterpart Franz-Josef Jung,…
The leading candidate to be elected to Germany's Constitutional Court, Horst Dreier, has come under fierce criticism by left-wing media and the Green party for supporting the concept of "rescue torture" as a means of last resort to prevent imminent, large-scale terrorist attacks. In essence, this…
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Hans-Juergen Papier, president of Germany's Constitutional Court, has sharply criticized plans by conservative CDU interior minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to amend the country's Basic Law to allow for the downing of hijacked terrorist planes over German airspace as a measure of last resort. According…
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A new study commissioned by the German interior ministry about the increasingly radicalized religious and political beliefs of the country's more than three million Muslims has triggered a political earthquake and much soul-searching about how to confront the rising security threat posed by…
Earlier this week, Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation released the results of a new international public opinion survey assessing the current and future global leadership roles of nine key countries. Based on interviews with 9,000 people conducted in the United States, Russia, Brazil, China, India,…
Earlier this week, public opinion and mainly left-wing media circles in Europe breathed a big sigh of relief mixed with Schadenfreude after learning that the U.S. intelligence community now believes that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. "Relief" because 1) no one in Europe…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama at her official residence in Berlin has caused a strong political backlash, not only from Beijing but also, more surprisingly, from Merkel's left-wing SPD coalition partner as well as Germany's business community. The Chinese, for…
Germany's demographic time bomb is compounded by the fact that those children who are born increasingly grow up in impoverished families hampered by a lack of education, bad nutrition, and poor health. According to advance excerpts from the Kinderreport 2007, which will be officially released by…
Jan Bittner, senior foreign policy advisor to conservative CDU/CSU Bundestag Leader Volker Kauder, has written a compelling post at the Atlantic Community blog on the plight of the more than 2.2 million Iraqi Refugees who have fled to neighboring countries to escape sectarian violence and ethic…
Turkey's threat to launch a large-scale military invasion against PKK fighters in Northern Iraq is not only of great concern to policymakers in Washington, where President Bush will meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make a last-ditch plea for Turkish restraint next Monday. Germany,…
Across the board, German political and media circles breathed a big sigh of relief after the defeat of populist Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski by Donald Tusk, leader of the pro-EU and market-friendly Civic Platform party, in early parliamentary elections on Sunday. Until two weeks ago,…
TODAY THE GERMAN parliament is scheduled to vote on whether to extend the Bundeswehr's 3,000-strong ISAF military deployment in Afghanistan for another year. While there is no doubt that Chancellor Merkel's Grand Coalition has enough votes to get the measure passed, the much-anticipated Bundestag…
Just today, my friends at Atlantic Community--a new Berlin-based online think tank--published the last installment of an interesting three-part survey gauging how 14 think tank experts from ten different European countries assess the potential consequences of a quick U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq…
411w.jpg Merkel says goodbye to the Dalai Lama after meeting at the chancellery.
The recently foiled terror attack in Germany--involving several Turkish extremists and, very disturbingly, two German converts--has triggered another acrimonious political debate about how far the government can go to fight terrorism and protect the homeland. For example, does the (conservative)…
Russian President Vladimir Putin's surprise decision on Wednesday to replace his current prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, with a loyal and low-profile ally, Victor Zubkov, has fueled intense speculation in the German media. Commentators wonder what the former KGB spy is really up to when it comes…
410w.jpg Merkel inspects PLA troops outside the Great Hall of
On Tuesday this week, Chancellor Merkel's cabinet voted to extend for another year what has arguably been Germany's most controversial military operation since the end of WWII, namely the 2006 deployment of Bundeswehr naval forces off the Lebanese coast to interdict arms shipments to Hezbollah…
Rambo2.jpg From Der Spiegel: "Die Bushkrieger" 8/2002
Is Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama, the self-declared "new face" of American politics, nothing but a unilateralist, trigger happy, national security hard-liner--the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing? That's probably the reaction that German political observers (as well as…
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0,1020,820561,00.jpg Thomas Enders (left) and Louis Gallois. (DPA)
Merkel Photo.jpg Merkel holds a copy of the Turkish daily Hurriyet.
With Germany's G8 Summit and rotating EU presidency over, the controversial Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan has returned to the top of the political agenda in Berlin. On Tuesday this week, Germany's highest court rejected a suit filed by the populist, post-Communist Left party, which claimed that…
Earlier this week in Washington, I had the opportunity to sit down for an informal discussion with visiting German defense minister Franz-Josef Jung. While the mounting security risks for Germany's more than 3,500 soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan certainly ranked high on his political…
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With the G8 Summit in Germany just days away, the world's eight leading industrialized countries have so far failed to come to an agreement on what was supposed to be Chancellor Merkel's historic breakthrough on the international stage: forging, for the first time, a consensus that climate change…
Last Saturday, three members of the German armed forces and seven local Afghans were killed by a Taliban suicide bomber at a bazaar in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. The attack, which also severely wounded several other German soldiers and scores of Afghan civilians, brought the number of…
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The big political news coming out of Europe this week was the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in France. In Washington, the imminent arrival of Sarkozy--already hailed as the "most pro-American president in recent French history" (admittedly, the competition for this accolade is not that stiff)--is…
German chancellor Angela Merkel--who currently holds both the rotating EU and G-8 presidencies--arrived in Washington last Sunday for the bi-annual EU-US Summit, which focused primarily on deepening transatlantic economic cooperation and fostering joint action on climate change. During their final…
BOTH FRANCE AND the United States will hold presidential elections in the next 24 months: France in April-May 2007 and the United States in November 2008. Earlier this month, the members of France's Socialist party overwhelmingly voted to nominate the telegenic female MP Ségolène Royal as their…
TODAY, Europeans are sighing in relief. Americans, they believe, have finally come to their senses and are beginning to put the Democrats back in charge. Back in 2000--and even more so in 2004--Europeans were shocked and disappointed that America had elected George W. Bush. Two years ago, in the…
IT'S OFFICIAL NOW. The German government plans to send naval forces in support of the proposed 15,000-strong enhanced UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon to help maintain the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. This compromise decision--which clearly excludes the deployment of German…
According to top White House strategist Karl Rove, Americans can be divided into two groups--those with a pre-9/11 view of the world and those with a post-9/11 perspective. The same basic distinction also applies in Germany, where the country's highest court last week declared as "unconstitutional"…