Josh Chafetz over at OxBlog kindly asked me what I thought of the trouble brewing between Joschka Fischer and Gerhard Schroeder, as described in the Times (UK) article here. Josh notes that Schroeder seems to have out-doved Fischer on Iraq. What gives?

The Times rather dramatically speaks of the impending "collapse" of the coalition, but I think they're laying it on too thick. Apparently there's a coalition meeting tonight between SPD and the Greens, perhaps the topic of the relationship between Schroeder and Fischer is on the table, and apparently the SPD has been making steps to cooperate with the CDU/CSU, as this Tagesschau article notes. But I can't imagine that the apparent dispute between Schroeder and Fischer will cause a formal rupture in the coalition. I could be wrong, but the account just doesn't make sense to me, for a few reasons.

First of all, the SPD is already nailed to the wall by its low standing in the public, evidenced by abysmal opinion poll ratings and recent electoral defeats in regional elections. (The Sunday Herald has a good article discussing these developments here.) If the SPD were to split with the Greens, they'd have to bank on either a "grand coalition" with the CDU or a change of heart on the part of the voters. The smart thing for the CDU/CSU to do, it seems to me, is to let Schroeder flounder, not join with the SPD. Plus, the SPD/Greens and the CDU are on opposite sides in the Iraq issue, as you can see in a Tagesspiegel article here: the parliamentary leader of the CDU is on record saying that Schroeder has placed the German government in a "catastrophic situation without precedent." These are the Tagesspiegel's words, but it's still a pretty strong condemnation.

Secondly, all accounts I've read minimize the difference between Schroeder and Fischer on the substance of Iraq policy. Both seem to be firmly against war and firmly against the Bush administration's plans. Robert Leicht asked in Die Zeit recently whether the German government even has an Iraq policy, or just a "no" for the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and I think that that question goes for both Schroeder and Fischer. Fischer visits the pope, Fischer assures the party faithful, and so on.

Finally, while there do indeed seem to be some differences between Fischer and Schroeder, they haven't acknowledged these differences in public. In an editorial that raises the question of whether or not Fischer is going to step down from his post, the Berliner Morgenpost leans in the direction of saying that he won't. The editorial ends with descriptions of Fischer's "crystal clear" denials of any serious conflict between Schroeder and himself. In addition, the Morgenpost rightly questions the source of at least some of the accounts of angry confrontations between the two: the stories come from either Die Bildzeitung, a high circulation tabloid in the best European tradition (well endowed, topless Frauen and all), or from Der Spiegel, which cites the Bildzeitung for an account of the juiciest incident.

So, add all that up and I'm not quite sure what you get, but it doesn't seem like there's a substantive split between Fischer and Schroeder, although Fischer surely has some reason to complain about Schroeder's tactical moves recently, as the Times article points out.

The Paul Berman TNR article on Fischer that Josh cites, by the way, is brilliant--and all of a sudden, there went a big chunk of my afternoon! But I don't think that the coalition problems are an indication that Fischer is continuing the transformation that Berman describes, left to green to pro-NATO involvement in Yugoslavia, to the apparently logical next step, which we might describe as the move toward Christopher Hitchens. . .I imagine that Josh and David will be disappointed here! Truth be told, I don't think that the German government is doing all that well with respect to Iraq, either, although I'm glad that someone is at least attempting to float an alternate plan. We'll see if the folks in Berlin and Paris are really serious about this, though. The jury is definitely still out.