BERLIN -- I haven't been to Berlin since the opening of the Berlin Wall, so when I arrived at my hotel near the Brandenburg Gate, my first question was: Where's the wall?
My German friend explained that the only trace left is a cobblestone path that snakes across Berlin, drawing a line in the pavement where the wall once ran. It's easy to cross that line without even knowing it.
And therein lies the core of the crisis between America and Germany today -- triggered by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's use of anti-Bush and anti-Iraq-war rhetoric to win re-election, then fueled by a German minister comparing President Bush to Hitler and now capped by Mr. Bush's refusal to answer two letters from the German leader.
Would somebody please bring back the Berlin Wall? Since World War II, America and Germany have had many disputes, but always within limits, because both sides saw a dangerous foe on the other side of that wall -- the Communist totalitarians -- and realized we needed to fight together. There is still a dangerous foe out there -- religious totalitarians -- and we still need to fight together. But without the wall clearly defining our side and the enemy's, all sorts of lines are being crossed.
What is most shocking about the German election is not how the chancellor ran against America, it's how popular that theme was here. Two things are feeding this. One is the new anti-Americanism, a blend of jealousy and resentment of America's overwhelming economic and military power -- the "Axis of Envy," as Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, calls it.
The other is the new anti-Bushism -- resentment of the Bush team's often contemptuous, unilateralist, anti-green instincts -- which was crystallized by Dick Cheney's August speech suggesting that any U.N. inspections of Iraq were useless and America might have to act alone.
Bottom line: Many Europeans fear or detest America more than they fear Saddam Hussein. That's crazy, but it explains why Mr. Schroeder easily moved from raising legitimate questions about how to handle Iraq to taking Germany out of any war against Mr. Hussein under any conditions. This put Germany to the left of Saudi Arabia, which at least says it will support an Iraq war if it is approved by the United Nations. It was the kind of rhetoric that leaves Americans thinking Europeans won't use force under any conditions, and therefore are a danger to themselves and to us.
It is time for both sides to knock it off. We need each other. As Germany's thoughtful foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said to me, "We are facing a new totalitarianism -- the totalitarianism of al-Qaida and bin Laden," whose goal "is to destroy the open society everywhere."
The war against the religious totalitarians can't be fought with just armies or walls. It must be fought with police, intelligence sharing, development aid, peace diplomacy and military operations. Open societies must each play to their strengths -- America's hard power and Europe's soft power.
When Germany says it's willing to provide the peacekeeping force in Kabul, that is a huge help for us. When Germany funds the expansion of the European Union to lift from poverty 10 new democracies of Eastern Europe, that is a huge help to us. But at the same time, some things are true even if a Texas cowboy believes them. I'm still not sure what the right way is to handle Iraq, but I am sure that ruling out war there, under any conditions, against a murderous U.N. outlaw like Mr. Hussein is wrong. With a nod to JFK, my motto today is simple: "Ich bin ein New Yorker." We are all New Yorkers now.
Wherever you live, if you believe in the open society, if you cherish a world of freedom, you are now in World War III -- a war against totalitarians who strike at our businesses, discos, airports and theaters in an attempt to get us to shut ourselves in and our societies down.
Either we fight this war together, or we lose it together. To those who forgot what it takes to defend the open society, let them come to Berlin -- let them walk where the wall once stood and recall the collective effort that brought it down.
Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times. His column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in The Sun.