Beschreibung:
In recent years it has become a truism that after the Cold War Europe no longer plays the important role it used to play. The focus of US foreign policy seemed to shift away from Europe towards other regions like the Middle East or Asia. This process is even accelerated by the recent disagreement of European politicians with respect to the U.S. led military action against Iraq. The climax of this development was Chancellor Schröder's strict and explicit rejection of a German role in any form of military action against Iraq, be it sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution or not. German Federal Minister of Justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin was axed in the wake of the tensions and replaced by Brigitte Zypries after she compared Bush's war against terrorism with Hitler's strategy to concentrate on foreign policy in order to distract attention from domestic problems (thereby, as the Economist put it, giving a fine example of “the pot calling the kettle black.”).