President Obama and the Franco-German struggle

US President Barack Obama visited France on June 6 to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. The visit comes on the heels of a brief visit to Dresden, Germany, where Obama met with injured US military personnel at the military hospital in Landstuhl and toured the Buchenwald concentration camp museum. Obama's visit to Germany can best be described as curt; he avoided the capital and stuck to an itinerary largely designed without any input from the German government.

A news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel also yielded nothing of substance, with both leaders pledging to "work hard" to find a solution for the problems of the Middle East and the economic crisis.While it may seem that the low point in the Obama-Merkel relationship is caused by petty domestic politics and German pre-electoral campaigning, the actual cause is a wider geopolitical trend: Germany is resurgent and independent - far from the compliant Germany the United States grew accustomed to over the course of nearly 65 years.

The US strategy in Europe has been to prevent the rise of a single political entity that could challenge US interests in the region. Today's internally unified and economically ascendant Germany is just such an entity, although the United States' understanding of that fact may not be apparent.