Washington - Berlin - Has the Transatlantic Relationship Changed?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  George W. Bush visited Germany for the last time as U.S. president in June. His successor takes office next January. Bush will not come to Berlin for the opening of the new U.S. embassy. His father is coming instead.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  There is much talk of friendship and cooperation between the two countries, but at the political level the relationship has suffered since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. German chancellor Angela Merkel recently wrote that the success of transatlantic cooperation will depend on the principle of political give-and-take.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  What kind of common ground will Germany and the next U.S. administration find? The world is waiting to see whether the next president is Barack Obama or John McCain and what his foreign policy will look like.

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Our guests are:

Gary Smith – He is the executive director of the American Academy in Berlin. He studied philosophy and German and wrote his PhD dissertation on Walter Benjamin. After teaching at universities in the United States and Germany, he became the founding director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, before moving to the American Academy in 1997.

Malte Lehming - He is the responsible editor of the opinion page of the Tagesspiegel. He has been the Washington Bureau Chief for the newspaper from January 2001 to July 2005. He joined "Der Tagesspiegel” in 1991 as a foreign editor, covering security issues, transatlantic relations and the Middle East. From 1988 to 1991 he served as Personal Assistant and speechwriter to former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, publisher and editor of the Hamburg weekly newspaper "Die Zeit”. In 1988 Lehming received an MA in philosophy, German Literature and European History.

Rüdiger Lentz - As the representative of Germany's only international broadcaster in the US he manages all journalistic, public diplomacy, marketing and regulatory affairs. Prior to his job in Washington he was Bureau Chief in Brussels for six years, responsible for DW's radio and TV-coverage of the creation of the Euro and the enlargement of NATO and the EU. Before the launch of Deutsche Welle TV he was the edi-tor in Chief of RIAS-TV in Berlin, a joint US-German Radio and TV Station, which he joined in 1988. His career as a journalist started in 1976, when he joined "Der Spiegel", Germany's weekly news magazine, as a correspondent for military and security affairs.