U.S. and Germany Sing the Relationship Blues

Now there’s no welcome look in your eyes when I reach for you
And girl, you’re starting to criticize little things I do
Oh, it makes me just feel like crying
‘Cause baby, something beautiful’s dying

You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling
Whoa, that lovin’ feeling
You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling
Now it’s gone, gone, gone, whoa

–from the Righteous Brothers’ 1965 number-one hit single,
"You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’"

According to experts, we often see warning signs when a personal relationship is in trouble. These include communications breakdowns, negative emotions like jealousy and resentment, more power struggles, and an increase in the time spent apart.

After reading through the New York Times report that follows, "Rift With Germany Is Next on Diplomatic Agenda," I found it hard not to think that the same also holds true for geopolitical relationships. If so, then we may be witnessing the set-up for a dramatic reshuffle of global alliances.

DRESDEN, Germany — After mending fences with the Muslim world in Cairo on Thursday, President Obama might want to keep his diplomatic tools handy for his stopover here, to repair his increasingly strained relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A rift has quietly opened up between Germany and the United States, marked by official statements of harmony and private grumbling. It is not an outright crisis in relations, but there are underlying tensions and disagreements on matters ranging from the global economic crisis to the future of inmates held at Guantánamo Bay.

On a more basic level, there is a sense that the Obama administration is ignoring the needs and counsel of longtime allies. Divided Germany was once at the center not only of the cold war, but of American foreign policy as well, which is no longer the case. Yet the United States can ill afford to alienate Europe’s largest economy and its most important intermediary in the strained relationship with Russia. “They’re not angry, they’re not anti-Obama or anti-American,” said John C. Kornblum, a former United States ambassador to Germany and now a business adviser in Berlin. “But they’re confused by the wave of criticism which has been sent at them by the administration and people close to the administration.

“It’s not that they don’t like him,” he said. “They just feel like things aren’t working, like the levers of government are not being engaged to make issues run smoothly.”

Mr. Obama arrived in Dresden, in the former East Germany, on Thursday night for a visit that will also take him to Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp, and the American military hospital in Landstuhl. The German news media have questioned why Mr. Obama was not going to Berlin, suggesting the omission might have been intended as a snub to Mrs. Merkel. Her advisers say it is no such thing and instead praise Mr. Obama’s interest in the former East Germany, where Mrs. Merkel grew up.

While Mr. Obama enjoys tremendous personal popularity among the German people, relations with Mrs. Merkel have been bumpy from the beginning. In Germany much symbolic weight is attached to Mrs. Merkel’s decision not to travel to Washington to meet with Mr. Obama in March, but to talk by video conference instead…

Relations were already frosty as the economic crisis deepened and the German government and Obama administration took sharply differing views on how far to push stimulus spending. Mrs. Merkel believed that the Americans were underestimating the threat of inflation. But American policy makers said she did not understand the depth and the significance of the crisis.

In the early stages of the Obama presidency, officials in the Merkel government were dismayed by the scarcity of staff in midlevel positions at the Treasury Department. And Germans remain surprised that an ambassador to their country has not been named more than four months after Mr. Obama’s inauguration. There is a sense that, with his focus split between domestic concerns and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the new president is taking his staunchest European allies for granted…