The German government's attitude to the United States' planned missile defence can be put very succinctly. Stripped of all diplomatic ornament, it is as follows: basically, we are against it, we do not share the basic assumptions and risk analysis.
But if this thing called NMD or BMD or TMD actually happens, we want to benefit from it, too, above all technologically and thus financially and economically.
Germany has been agonising over the issue of missile defence since Bill Clinton's government put it on the agenda. The agonies begin with why and what for.
First, German security policy questions the threats identified by the US from "rogue states" or the less diabolically labelled "states of concern" - North Korea, Iran and Iraq - which the US expects over the next few years to develop long-range potential that could threaten both the US and Europe.
An internal Chancellery report produced about a year ago had this to say: "Long-range potentials are identifiable in North Korea and Iran but they are, in our view, exaggerated in terms of the timeframe. Political and economic instruments should also be used more consistently against these states."
Behind the second sentence is a fundamentally different approach to dealing with states such as Iran. The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, favours cautious co-operation to encourage the democratic process. And nobody in German politics speaks of Iran as a criminal state.
With Libya's Col Gadafy, too, it is the principle of "change through moving closer" that is followed rather than condemnation and isolation. The differing German and American assessments are concealed as far as possible through diplomatic translations. "Rogue states" is elegantly but imprecisely translated in official documents as Risikostaaten, or risk states.
Second, the German government regards missile defence as a clear breach of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The otherwise cool, diplomatically worded Chancellery paper describes NMD without an adjustment to the ABM Treaty in agreement with Russia as "a disaster" for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.
In this context, the talks and self-professed closeness between President Putin of Russia and the US President, Mr Bush, are being followed with interest. Furthermore, the possibility of a new, nuclear disarmament beyond that of the ABM Treaty, which was formed in the spirit of the Cold War, is seen in the scientific discussion of missile defence. To this extent, Mr Bush's arguments in this direction fall on fertile ground.
There remains China, which the German government judges to be "fiercely" opposed both to NMD and TMD scenarios. An arrangement between the US and China is, unlike that with Russia, seen as "difficult".
Many within Germany's Social Democrat-Green coalition regard the US missile defence project as a dream of invulnerability following terror attacks.
However, in an article in Die Zeit, Mr Gernot Erler, SPD spokesman on foreign and security policy, points out that none of the five states in question - Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Libya - has fired a single missile at the US. Nor could they reach US territory in the foreseeable future with the systems they have developed.
The Iranian Shahab 4 and the North Korean Taepodong each have a range of 2,000 km, and Iraq has a medium-range missile with a planned range of 3,000 km.
It would only be conceivable between 2010 and 2020 that these states could improve the range of their delivery systems to bring the US within range.
"There are many technical doubts on the feasibility of a dependable missile defence shield and imaginative speculation over the humble means with which it could be outwitted," Mr Erler writes.
But even then, nothing would prevent terrorist attacks as in Oklahoma or at the US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi, "which already make victims of citizens of the unconquerable America".
Mr Erler's verdict: "All this talk of potential invulnerability is an enormous load of rubbish."
Despite all these reservations, however, it is clear that Germany has long given up trying to prevent a missile defence programme. Four months ago, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, moved the debate in a new direction.
In a television interview he stressed Germany's "eminent economic interest" in a missile defence programme and thus abandoned all security policy arguments. He is concerned that Germany should not miss out on the technology being developed and perhaps produced within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. He explicitly used the phrase "sharing the technology".
Behind this is Mr Schroder's fear that Germany could lose out on international research and development deals. His U-turn has, however, been greeted with disapproval and outrage in large parts of his party.
Mr Schroder is a leader who governs without regard to the basic views of his party and crushes criticism before it escalates, but he could face resistance from the Social Democrat rank-and-file over this issue.
The Social Democrats hold their next party conference in Nuremberg in November. All the signs are that criticism of Mr Schroder over the missile defence issue could be explosive. Leftwingers are already preparing motions for debate. And naturally, Mr Schroder's pacifist partners in the Greens have never been enthusiastic about MD and are unlikely to become so.
It is also clear, however, that the successful fourth test in the US has robbed Germany and other MD-critical observers in Europe of a delaying argument. For a long time they could still argue that there was no proof that missile defence would work, while silently hoping it would die a quiet death like President Reagan's Star Wars fantasy of SDI.
Mr Bush leaves no doubt about his government's determination. And after two successful and two failed tests, the feasibility of the project lies further in the realm of the possible than perhaps the German government secretly hoped.
Christoph Schwennicke is Defence Correspondent with Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper
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