The Embassy at the Gate
by Clay Risen

The United States may be the world's only superpower, but the talk in Germany last week was all about how the Americans backed down.

Unreported States-side but big news in Europe is Monday's State Department directive, issued by Secretary of State Colin Powell, to begin construction on the new American Embassy in Berlin. The Embassy, to be located at the western end of the city's famous Unter den Linden Strasse (and only a few blocks down from the monolithic Soviet-era Russian Embassy) will reoccupy the Embassy's historic location, a site first occupied by the Americans in 1930.

Superficially, the location of an embassy seems a minor issue in the broad scheme of U.S.-European relations, but in a country fixated on historical symbolism, the embassy debate brought to the fore a long implicit question in the post-Cold War era: will the Americans be allowed to continue to have a strong influence on the shape of Germany's future, or will Germany finally begin to set its own diplomatic course?

The building's design was made official in 1996, but construction has been delayed for over two years because of a 1998 State Department directive. The order was issued in the wake of the twin African Embassy bombings, and it requires all new facilities to be surrounded by a 100-foot setback between the building and the nearest street, as well as numerous other security emplacements.

In Berlin, designers also added as a requirement the closing off of two adjacent streets to traffic — a la Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. The embassy was to be, effectively, an American fort in the heart of a European capital.

Needless to say, this did not please the Germans. The embassy's location, set on historic Pariser Platz, is kitty-corner to the Brandenbug Gate and abutted on the left by the future site of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial. To its right is the restored Hotel Adlon, Berlin's most famous hotel.

And the Germans' concerns were not simply historical. Fulfilling the United States' requirements would mean shutting off sections of the 11-miilion Mark (about $5 million) Ebertstrasse, the newly refurbished street that connects the nexus of Berlin's business community at Potsdamer Platz with the Reichstag, running alongside the Tiergarten. In no uncertain terms, Ebertstrasse is one of the backbones of New Berlin.

In response to the directive, the Berlin Senate effectively held up approval of the site, even though it was never in question whether the embassy would actually be built there. While they might not say so explicitly, everyone with any sense of realism is betting on Berlin to be the future heart of a unified Europe, and there was little chance that the Americans would pass up the opportunity to be at the center of the center. Likewise, the Germans are trying to turn the area around Pariser Platz into a sort of Embassy Village, with the French and Russians already in place. For the Americans to be left out of the party would be a serious blow to their plans.

In the end, the United States agreed to placing a security emplacement on the Brandenburg Gate. Exactly what that will entail has not yet been fleshed out, though it will presumably include sensors and alarms. A compromise, to be sure, but one that effectively delivers everything the Germans wanted.

So does this herald a sea-change in German-American relations? Will Germany finally begin to move out from the shadow of its Cold-War protector, using the embassy tiff to assert themselves on the global stage? Or does it just indicate the unwillingness of the new administration to continue a row with a country whose support it desperately needs to sell its missile-defense plan to the rest of Europe? The short answer is both; what remains to be seen is when, in the future, the two countries split opinions — and they will, over Middle East policy, aid to Russia or NATO — whether the United States will be so eager to oblige.

E-mail Clay Risen at risenc@yahoo.com.