"We do not need new rockets in Europe. The SPD does not want a new arms race between the US and Russia on European soil," he said. "We already have enough problems in the world as it is."
Although broad-brushed, the comment was well calculated, both in its historical reference and in its intended effect. The reference was to Nato’s decision in 1979 to deploy nuclear missiles in western Europe to match the Soviet arsenal.
The decision did persuade Moscow to sign the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty with the US in 1988, leading to the withdrawal of nuclear warheads in the European theatre. Yet it sparked an uproar in Germany at the time, where its rejection became a defining position of the left.
"These were the times when politicians of Beck’s generation were being socialised. The whole missile debate shaped the foreign policy outlook of the entire 1968 generation left of the centre," says Jan Techau, head of European studies at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr Beck’s comment was also aimed at a domestic audience. The goal was to allow the SPD to recapture precious points in the popularity ratings lost to Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in previous months.
The chancellor, having grabbed the traditionally leftwing themes of environmental protection with her European initiative to reduce carbon gas emissions, and progressive family policies – her cabinet agreed this week to boost the number of kindergartens in order to help women take up work – the only way for the SPD to raise its profile was to paint itself as the "party of peace", already an over-used label during Mr Schröder’s anti-Iraq war campaign.
The move struck a chord; a poll in Stern magazine last month showed that 48 per cent of Germans saw the US as more dangerous than Iran (31 per cent said Tehran was a bigger threat), and nearly three-quarters agreed with Mr Beck’s comments.
"We are very much aware of the domestic dimension of the discussion," said a US diplomat. As the SPD be-longs to the coalition, there is some concern in Washington about the debate spilling into Berlin’s official policies.
This concern rose when Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the SPD foreign minister, penned a virulent attack against the US missile defence system in an article last week in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Our highest priority is disarmament, not rearmament. We want no new arms race in Europe," he wrote.
The criticism went further than Ms Merkel’s cautious call for Washington to consult more openly with Russia and the EU and to bring its plan under the umbrella of Nato. Her defence minister, a Christian Democrat like her, has openly supported the US plan.
This cacophony raised questions in the US about what, exactly, was Berlin’s position, and it prompted the US embassy to hold separate seminars on the anti-missile shield with the coalition parties and to seek a meeting with the SPD chairman.
On the domestic front, analysts doubt Mr Beck’s Schröderian gamble will pay off. With the next general election scheduled for 2009, many think he has moved too soon. Neither has the offensive met a universally positive echo in the SPD. Gunter Weissgerber and Markus Meckel, two MPs and foreign policy experts, have accused the chairman of launching a simplistic and mistaken controversy.
Yet with public opinion, in-cluding many conservative voters, so firmly on Mr Beck’s side, Ms Merkel too has grounds for concern. If her at-tempt to seek a rapprochement with US President George W. Bush fails to show dividends by the next election, she may come to regret it.