By William Safire

www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — At a meeting in the Axel Springer building in Hamburg on Aug. 27 with about 30 American friends of Germany, the defense minister who had been recently booted out of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's cabinet for financial irregularities was asked why Germany was so loudly opposed to President Bush's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein.

Rudolf Scharping reported that he had answered that very question in a Schröder cabinet meeting: it was all about the Jews. Bush was motivated to overthrow Saddam by his need to curry favor with what Scharping called "a powerful — perhaps overly powerful — Jewish lobby" in the coming U.S. elections. Jeb Bush needed their votes in Florida as George Pataki did in New York, and Congressional redistricting made Jewish votes central to control of Congress. Germany, the discredited minister said proudly to his discomfited audience, had rejected such pandering.

That bigoted political analysis is typical of the way Germany is undermining its Atlantic alliance. Today, Schröder — campaigning for re-election Sunday — seems eager to be more pro-Arab than the Arab League. Not even if the U.N.'s Kofi Annan himself grabbed a rifle and led the charge would his Germany send one soldier to depose Saddam.

The dismaying fact is that poll-driven German politicians are certain that such thumbing noses at the U.S. is the key to political victory. Schröder is using it to distract voters from 10 percent unemployment, 0.5 percent growth and a dispute about his hair color. His semi-conservative opponent, Edmund Stoiber, tut-tuts about anti-Americanism but is afraid to take a stand against the Hitler of the Persian Gulf.

No matter who wins, the German-American relationship loses. Our response cannot be to mutter "how sharper than a serpent's tooth" and demand a refund of the Marshall Plan. It should be to reassess the need for our troop presence in Europe, which a half-century ago was "to keep Russia out, Germany down and America in." With Russia in and Germany up, should America get out?

Of 120,000 U.S. military in Europe, over 70,000 are in Germany (including those in heavy tanks and other outmoded equipment confronting a Red Army that isn't there). An equal number of dependents are in Europe with them, spending U.S. dollars.

Why? Defense officials tell me in classic Pentagonese that we are already "reconfiguring our footprint" — that is, reviewing deployment of our troops globally to make us capable of applying mobile force anywhere rather than to sit in place to meet any specific threat. That's part of the "lily pad concept," on the analogy of frogs hopping around a number of forward bases, "and no slur intended to the French."

But is Germany any longer an American forward base? If the Russian bear growls, can't the German eagle shriek? On Oct. 1, our European Command will be extended south all the way to the Cape of Good Hope. Perhaps there are lily pads on which to station troops and position supplies closer to flash points where action may be needed.

And in the coming reconfiguration, what about our overseas armed forces' freedom of action? The Saudis have long threatened restriction of our use of bases there, which caused us to build a Qatar lily pad. Would Germany, turned militantly anti-military, also prove unreliable as a jumping-off point in a crisis?

I can understand why Germans, having chosen welfare over defense, bridle at superpower hegemony. I bridle at German book-publishing hegemony. Few Americans realize that two huge German Gesellschaften are gaining a stranglehold on U.S. books.

Bertelsmann owns Random House, which means Alfred Knopf, Anchor, Ballantine, Crown, Doubleday, Bantam, Dell, Dial, Fawcett, and the combined Book of the Month Club and Literary Guild. The von Holtzbrinck Group owns Farrar, Straus; Henry Holt (including half of Times Books); and St. Martin's Press. You can bet a German-owned publisher is going to get "Mein Kampf Over Inspection" by Saddam Hussein.

Do I resent this unilateral cultural imperialism by literary tycoons in the Fatherland? Every red-blooded American author does. But I also see it driven by a laudable profit motive, not by any need of Germany to pander to its Muslim lobby.

The rise of anti-Americanism in Germany is a minor problem for Americans, who can pull up stakes. It is a big problem for Germans.