The previous German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, created quite a strain in German-US relations when he branded the invasion of Iraq a “military adventure” and joined France in ardently opposing it. Now his successor, Angela Merkel, whose ascendancy was welcomed by the Bush administration as an antidote to the more socialist Schröder, has told interviewers that she intends to speak her mind about Guantánamo to President Bush and say the prison must be closed.

This may sound like a prescription for prolonging the American-German chill. It really shouldn’t be. The disagreements between Washington and Berlin will not go away. If anything, the list has been lengthened in recent months by revelations of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe and the imprisonment by the US of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri. But just as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has helped undo some of the damage of the administration’s first-term “bring ‘em on” bravado, so, too, has Merkel earned an early round of plaudits for her capable, principled approach to foreign policy.

The Bush administration’s “with us or against us” approach has left it quite isolated in Europe. Those who have been “with” US have paid a political price, while those “against” have burned their bridges to Washington.