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By Michael Steurmer

Translated By Hartmut Lau

September 9, 2005

Original Article (German)

Deadly Katrina's Gathers Strength

In America everything is much bigger - and that applies to power and impotence. A tidal wave, 20 feet high [6m], crashed over New Orleans and a wide stretch of the adjacent coast. An expanse as large as the British Isles was struck. The United Nations estimate that the effects of hurricane Katrina will be greater than those of last year’s horrific tsunami. The dikes can be rebuilt - of course to a greater height - but reconstruction will take years.

The impact on America’s economic performance will be limited. But what does the disaster, partly a result of mankind’s actions and partly a stroke of fate, mean to America’s self-image, and - inextricably tied thereunto - the superpower’s reputation and ability to play a worldwide leadership role?

That the presidency has been tarnished, first in the Persian Gulf region and now along the Gulf of Mexico, is palpably obvious. Bush wishes that politics be kept out of it - as if that were possible. The reality is that the president’s style and substance are subject to a remorseless test. But that also applies to the coordination among and the performance of government at all levels - from the White House to the state and the local authorities and of course the Department of Homeland Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Logo of the Denuded FEMA

That agency lost its independent status, had its funding substantially reduced and was placed under the direction of non-expert qualified only by his friendship with the president. Forty percent of the Louisiana National Guard’s soldiers and heavy equipment were in Iraq. The "blame game" of recriminations based on all these failures demonstrates the tensions that currently dominate the scene. The American aversion to European style "big government" is being relentlessly corrected by this disaster. The political authorities have all failed, individually at their own level and all together in their combined efforts. For four agonizing days there was, notwithstanding heroic police efforts, no command center. Even the offers of help from around the globe went begging for a precise answer.

The president can only regain the wherewithal to exert leadership if he dramatically improves preventive measures - including his environmental policies - clarifies the roles of government agencies and their missions, raises taxes at the higher end of the income scale and finds within himself the warmth that Clinton so masterfully displayed - "I feel your pain."

Must George Bush Emote Like Bill Clinton? Can He?

Every day without such a vision erodes a presidency that must deliver more than the technical perfection it failed to deliver in this crisis. Since its founding, American has seen itself as the Biblical shining city on the hill, God’s own country. Success is visible proof of God’s blessing, failure is a test given by God. To have been weighed and found wanting - that’s one of the dangers faced by a presidency that relies heavily on religiosity.

The effects on domestic politics, which will be great, are not yet predictable.

The Ill-Fated Kursk. 118 Were Killed

But was it not Washington that that so acidly criticized the United Nations for its slow response after the tsunami? Now the same question is being asked everywhere, often with inappropriate malice - how can America expect to save the world when it cannot even save itself?

The undisputed, lone superpower appears to have failed in the face of nature and its own domestic problems. There will thus be an inevitable turn to domestic issues in which the Democrat’s new isolationism and the Republican’s old unilateralism will combine to force Europeans, Middle Easterners and Far Easterners to ask themselves who will replace America in it’s role of leader and protector and how will that role be played? The answer will be one of horrible irony and will most often come too late. After all, it is one thing to criticize - and we Germans make a habit of it - America’s demand for worldwide order in support of free trade; open sea lanes and access to oil; its struggle against apocalyptic terror and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation; and its voting procedures and its questionable alliances of all kinds. But it is an entirely different thing to take on these functions with one’s own resources while America is busy with domestic issues.

One fine day, the curtain will rise on new crises and there will be no heroes available. And then Europeans will learn that the only thing worse than America’s power is America’s weakness. The world will long remember this hurricane and its destructive consequences.