Even before this furor, Germany was incensed by what it has perceived as a dismissive U.S. attitude. A senior official close to Merkel recently took me through the “very painful” saga of the Obama administration’s response to Syrian use of chemical weapons. It began with Susan Rice, the national security adviser, telling the Chancellery on Aug. 24 that the United States had the intelligence proving President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, that it would have to intervene and that it would be a matter of days. German pleas to wait for a United Nations report and to remember Iraq fell on deaf ears. Six days later, on Friday Aug. 30, Germany heard from France that the military strike on Syria was on and would happen that weekend — only for Obama to change tack the next day and say he would go to Congress.

Things got worse at the G-20 St. Petersburg summit meeting the next week. Again, Germany found the United States curtly dismissive. It wanted Germany’s signature at once on the joint statement on Syria; Germany wanted to wait a day until a joint European Union statement was ready and so declined. “The sense from Rice was that we are not interested in your view and not interested in the E.U. view,” the official said. “We left Petersburg very offended. This is not what you want your best partner to look like.”

Germany found the atmosphere at the summit terrible. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, insisted the Syrian opposition was behind the use of chemical weapons. He compared this to the Nazis burning of the Reichstag in 1933 in order to blame and crush their opponents (the fire’s origin is disputed). Putin, to the Germans, appeared much more powerful than Obama. His strengthened international standing after America’s Syrian back-and-forth worries a Germany focused on bringing East European nations like Ukraine and Moldova into association accords with the E.U. This European rapprochement is strongly resisted by Putin, who wants a Eurasian Union that bears an eerie likeness to the old Soviet Union.

Geopolitics on this continent is not dead. A re-pivot to Europe is in order, as is an internal U.S. security-freedom rebalancing. Handyüberwachung on Europe’s most powerful leader is the last thing America needs.