The German Role

Germany’s not-so-invisible hand

To a lot of Lebanese, Germany is becoming more than a favorite soccer team and a flag they raise once every four years. It is becoming a player in their other favorite game: Lebanese politics.

Germany is showing an active interest in our affairs and its fingerprints are becoming increasingly clear. It started its Lebanese venture as a broker between Hezbollah and Israel, but after February 14th, it seems to have taken a strong interest in our “Cedar Revolution”. Der Spiegle, a German magazine, is particularly active. Today, according to LBCI, it wrote an article about strong evidences in the Hariri case that could eventually implicate Syria. This comes just a few days after an interview with Bashar al Assad, the Syrian President, where he announced that he is willing to cooperate with the UN investigation team, led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

Detlev Mehlis himself is becoming a divisive figure. The majority see him as a hero, but some are more skeptical. Most see his calm smile as a sign of firm confidence, but others are dreading it as schadenfreude (incidentally, a word of German origin).

So the question is: What does Germany want?
The Germany-Lebanon bilateral relationship website hasn’t been updated since March, so it seems they don’t want to tell us. Their foreign policy objective in the Middle East is summed up by “peace and freedom”, no kidding.
The lack of official German policy for Lebanon is giving ample room for doubters in Lebanon to speak of “special interests”, and for those with fertile imaginations to include German-Jewish history in their conspiratorial “analysis”.

A simpler answer is this: Germany wants a permanent seat in the security council. This is why it wants to have more influence in the world’s hotspots. One of those hotspots is Lebanon.