Whose side are you on, Germany?

It’s not just pacifism that seems to be a part of the German DNA, but also confusion about the country’s true friends and adversaries. Despite occasional disagreements, America has long been Germany’s most important ally. The two countries share important values, namely, a commitment to human rights, individual freedoms, and maintenance of a liberal international order. As angry as most Germans may be over the tapping of their chancellor’s phone, it’s hard to see how it justifies stalling the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a major free-trade agreement which some high-ranking German politicians have threatened to shelve in order to punish Washington.

Moreover, by granting Snowden asylum, Germany would be playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin. Whatever his initial motivations might have been in exposing American intelligence practices, Snowden has essentially become an instrument in the Russian President’s plan to weaken the transatlantic relationship and divide the West. Ströbele would never have been able to score his meeting without Putin’s permission; indeed, there is nothing more that Putin could want than for Germany to welcome Snowden with open arms, thus allowing the former NSA contractor to denounce the imperialist Americans from the capital of an allied nation.

Labeling Snowden a “whistleblower,” as most Germans consider him to be, obscures the fact that he evaded all legal avenues for releasing the information he deemed it so necessary for the public to know, instead choosing to reveal publically the highly sensitive, not to mention legal, methods by which the United States gathers intelligence. This has led to the embarrassment of his country and moralizing lectures from Europeans who ought to know better, all to the unending delight of the West’s true adversaries like Russia and China. “We would have seen him and we would have looked at that information,” Democratic Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein, who has herself labeled Snowden’s actions “treason”. “That didn’t happen, and now he’s done this enormous disservice to our country.” For Germany to grant Snowden asylum today would be a perverse echo of communist East Germany’s welcoming American defectors during the Cold War.