http://www.nzz.ch/english/editorials/2001/03/02germany.html

It was at a discreetly late hour that German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced a reorientation of his country's security policy: nothing less than a cozying up to the American plan for a National Missile Defense (NMD).

The move was something of a coup in both domestic and foreign policy. One can only rub one's eyes and marvel at such a sudden about-face. Is it the expression of a maturation process signaling that Berlin, too, has finally grasped the thrust of long-term strategic developments? Or is it simply a matter of quickly jumping on a bandwagon which promises participation in interesting industrial and research projects?

If Schröder is to be believed, it is mainly the latter. Through this turn, Germany is to be enabled to take part in the technological surge which may result; it is no longer to remain "on the outside looking in," as the chancellor expressed it.

Bearing in mind for how long Berlin has insisted on a largely ideologically-induced rejection of the NMD, and how insistently it has intoned the positions of NMD opponents at home and abroad, the economic-technological argument seems almost like an emergency escape hatch.

If German science and industry can derive any benefit from the undertaking, Schröder will assuredly push for it. In this regard, the chancellor will doubtless be true to his word. But a wide credibility gap still remains. This latest pirouette has to be politically cushioned as well, and there Schröder will have a much more difficult time of it.

Isn't it odd that the turnabout has come just now, after American opinion leaders of all kinds have made it unmistakably clear to the Europeans that Washington has no thought of relinquishing the NMD project? And isn't the German position even more strongly compromised by the fact that even Moscow is now suddenly talking positively about missile defense - albeit more selectively and without ever becoming very concrete?

And there lies the crux of the matter: After lengthy vacillation, Berlin has finally accepted reality, but it looks very much as if the impetus for it has come from Moscow.

Leaders in Washington are sure to take note of this. So, after Schröder's sudden revelation, the question is why the Americans should hand any research or production contracts to German institutions or companies after being subjected to nothing but criticism for so long. The answer is obvious: They have no reason to do so - even on other than purely political grounds - and indeed will not.

But then what is left of the latest maneuver? Nothing except the suspicion that, by it, the foreign and security policy of Germany's red-green coalition may have lost even more credibility.