Germany’s boring election masks troubles ahead

But there is no other issue where elite thinking in Berlin is so far removed from German public opinion. Three-in-five Germans now want their 4,000 troops to come home from Afghanistan. Few Germans believe that the Afghanistan operation is a war of necessity to deny Islamic terrorists a safe haven. And scepticism is growing about the mission among political insiders and prominent journalists, a worrisome development for Germany’s allies in the Afghan War.

Merkel’s first test will come later this year, when the new Bundestag must vote to continue the German troop commitment in Afghanistan for another year.

In the past, party discipline ensured such support because Social Democratic members of the outgoing coalition government never broke party ranks in serious numbers. This year, out-of-power left-wing Social Democrats will feel no such constraint. In fact, they may see a no vote in the Bundestag as a way to recapture some of their voters who defected to the Left Party in the recent election. That group had its best showing ever campaigning, in part, on a “get out of Afghanistan” platform.

Continuation of the German mission in Afghanistan is not in doubt, at least this year. But, in the long run, Merkel can hardly continue policies opposed by three-fifths of her electorate.

Iran could prove a second post-German election headache for Europe, the United States and the rest of the world. There is no widespread sense of urgency in Germany about containing the Iranian nuclear program and no perception that it poses an existential threat to German security.

German officials say they will ratchet up economic sanctions on Tehran if necessary. But Germany has long been one of Iran’s biggest suppliers of manufactured goods. So, the German business community and the economics ministry in the new Berlin government may not willingly go along with export controls.

At a time when the European Union, buoyed by the “yes” vote in Dublin, is poised finally to approve the Lisbon treaty and have its own joint foreign policy, Berlin seems to be distancing itself from Brussels. Fealty to the European Union was notably absent from most campaign rhetoric. German politicians and voters now seem to tolerate Europe more than they embrace it. And Germans want to be Europe’s bookkeeper, not its paymaster.

Yet the biggest challenge posed by the German elections for it allies may be the political self-preoccupation that is likely to consume German elites and much of public opinion in the months ahead.

In choosing a Christian Democrat coalition government with the Free Democrats, German voters have opted for continuity and stability with a nod toward more market-friendly economic reform. For many of Germany’s friends the outcome could not have been better. But embedded in these German results are potential problems for all those who hope to work with the new German government.