In what is widely seen as a dramatic display of anger and frustration at the recent actions of a close ally, Germany told the CIA station chief in Berlin to leave the country yesterday (10 July). The latest scandal, in which German authorities discovered two suspected US spies, has chilled relations with the US to levels not seen since Merkel’s predecessor repeatedly expressed strong opposition to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Spying on allies … is a waste of energy,” the German chancellor Angela Merkel stated in response to the unfolding spying scandal that has also recently included allegations that Merkel herself, who grew up in East Germany with its own Stasi agents spying on the every-day lives of its citizens, was among thousands of Germans whose mobile phones have been bugged by CIA. The German chancellor also stressed in Berlin that “We have so many problems [and this is why] we should focus on the important things. … In the Cold War maybe there was general mistrust [but] today we are living in the 21st century … [with] completely new threats.”
While German government also denounced US “stupidity” and some Americans argued that spying on their friends had backfired, both sides have also agreed on the need to go on working together. Washington’s embassy where the CIA station chief and the alleged spying equipment are based and Merkel’s office sit a few hundred meters apart, lying east and west of what once was the Berlin Wall. Many Germans arguably still give great credit to their US ally for the fall of the Berlin Wall which further fuels their sense of betrayal. Meanwhile, experts have also warned that talks on a free trade deal between the European Union and United States, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), may be negatively affected. For example, Berlin may push harder on some aspects of the TTIP deal in areas such as data protection, but still it is unlikely that Merkel would somehow seek to undermine the TTIP.
