WHEN candidate Barack Obama spoke in July 2008 in Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate, he told a rapturous German audience that peace and progress “require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.” It was supposed to be the opposite of George W. Bush’s cowboy diplomacy, which alienated the Federal Republic of Germany and much of Europe. Yet six years later, relations between Washington and Berlin are more mistrustful than ever.

The main problem is that President Obama has been listening all too well to Germans—spying on them from more than 150 National Security Agency sites in Germany, according to secret NSA documents that former contractor Edward Snowden leaked to the weekly Der Spiegel.

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