Beck told delegates during a special meeting in Berlin that such defense ambitions for the EU would not rupture the trans-Atlantic relationship because, without the United States, "we cannot solve global problems." However, instead of "following" or "adhering" to the United States, he said, the Europeans should establish a partnership "based on quality. This is the particular challenge for Europe."

An EU move toward establishing its own force, Dunay said, could lead to more efficient defense spending at a juncture when countries are reluctant to increase military budgets while being asked by the United Nations in particular to join peacekeeping missions.

After January 1, 2000, all products sold in the EU needed to specify and label in metric measurements only. Prior to implementation, the European Commission recommended a 10-year deferral of the metric-only directive, allowing companies to use dual labeling through 2009. The delay provides time for U.S. companies to prepare for a metric-only European market beginning January 1, 2010. After the EU Directive takes effect, member and associated countries will no longer permit dual indications of measurement. U.S. exporters can no longer label or print inches, pounds, or any other non-metric measurement on shipments. This affects labels, packaging, advertising, catalogs, technical manuals, and instructions.

An extraordinary row, involving major European and US industries, is blowing up over the European Commission's determination to make it illegal, in three years' time, for any products made in or imported into the EU to carry any reference to non-metric measures. Not only will this cost industries on both sides of the Atlantic billions of dollars and euros, but it is in direct breach of US federal law. The Commission is so set on stamping out the hated non-metric system that, as of January 1, 2010, it is imposing a total ban on what it calls "supplementary indications" – ie any mention of inches, pounds or other non-metric units in advertising, labelling, catalogues, manuals and the like.

Metrication in the UK is not the result of British membership of the EU. In 1965, eight years before joining the EEC, the Wilson Government decided to initiate the UK's metrication programme, in response to global moves in this direction – Ireland and all Commonwealth countries had already adopted the metric system.

The White Paper devotes considerable space to describing the comparative advantages of both NATO (with its integrated military structure) and the European Union (with its broad array of foreign and security instruments) and quite frankly states that the current state of cooperation between both organizations is unsatisfactory. Certainly, a distinct feature of the present White Paper is its clear and unequivocal commitment to NATO as "the cornerstone of German security and defence policy." This is probably the clearest departure of German security policy under the previous government of Chancellor Schroeder who was willing to confront Washington and put more emphasis on the development of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP). (...)
Yet, the principal test will be whether the German government will put these ideas into practice. Not surprisingly, a major obstacle to the implementation of the stated goals will be their financial implications. A broad security strategy also necessitates greater financial resources, and at least some of the propositions in the White Paper imply higher expenditures.

Germany will publish a defense and security policy review on Wednesday [October 25, 2006] that says the country is poised to play a major role in Europe without distancing itself from the NATO alliance. The review -- the first in 12 years -- is a sign that Germany has grown more confident and assertive about its place on the international stage, after decades spent living down the aggression and atrocities of the Nazi years and then knitting itself back into a single nation. (...)

What has come of it? Has anyone asked her about this? Does she ask herself? It is hard to understand how the secretary of state allows herself to be so humiliated. It is even harder to understand how the superpower she represents allows itself to act in such a hollow and useless way. The mystery of America remains unsolved: How is it that the United States is doing nothing to advance a solution to the most dangerous and lengthiest conflict in our world?

Germany's richly deserved 60-year holiday from leadership abroad is ending sooner than many here would like. Since World War II, Germans have become comfortable with standing in the shadows of power while the Americans, the French and others shoulder the costly burden of claiming to run the world.

But with power vacuums developing on the country's eastern and western borderlands and the United States bogged down in Iraq, Berlin understands that it is condemned to lead. A visitor finds the capital beset with angst -- but also bubbling with ideas -- about the approaching German moment in international affairs.

Berlin's new diplomatic activism complements the recent groundbreaking German military deployments abroad that have been the subject of previous columns, and the efforts by Wolfgang Schaeuble, Merkel's highly able interior minister, to counter militant Islam's challenges to European concepts of freedom of speech and equality of the sexes, the subject of a future column here.

Look, people didn't agree with my decision on Iraq. And I understand that. For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us it was a change of thinking.