GER politics thread

[Catfish]

It is all right, am also sure Skybird did not mean this seriously

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I do not applaud any German politician or politician in general. I just posted a story about our Danish politician talking highly about your chancellor.

It was not my intention to make Skybird angry.

Markus

No harm done, Markus, dont worry. You find it sometimes difficult, maybe, to recognize irony as such? Because thats what I was: ironic.

[Catfish]

Vladimir, i dare you!

[Skybird]

From May 2018. Things have not become better since then. This underscores how dramatic the race will be to catch up with what the Germans have announced yesterday in parliament: exceeding the yealry dfeenc ebudget of 2%, and throwing a special budget at the Bundeswehr in 2022 worth 100 billion. The announcements made will take years before consequences from it will have started to make a perceivable difference in the real world.



Until then Germany is more or less - defenceless. I would not count with the Germans being a respectable combat force factor in NATO again before lets say 8-10 years. Its an intimidating amount of work ahead.



https://www.stripes.com/news/as-germ...ysmal-1.527253

[Jimbuna]

You'd better hope Vladolf doesn't see your post

[Catfish]

"Germany’s Deep Change Will Echo Far Beyond Ukraine"

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ger...?mod=read_next

[Skybird]

IF the deep change really takes place, so far it is only announcement. It gets reported today that the even-leftier wings in the Green and SPD party prepare to revolt against Scholz' 100 bn special budget for the Bundeswehr.

Why that matters? Ask Helmut Schmidt SPD). He got "gemeuchelt" by his own party because he was not left enough.

A quote by Paul Naumann (a liberal in German meaning of the term, in plain English: a libertarian) on my mind, red it yesterday somewhere, 120 years old:

"Of what use are our social systems if the cossacks are coming?"

[Skybird]

https://www.nzz.ch/international/auf...ung-ld.1672469




German pacifism: At times Switzerland had more tanks than Germany

Former Brigadier General Erich Vad has advised Chancellor Angela Merkel on military policy. He believes that the Bundeswehr's plight has many mothers and fathers. The generals, too, have gone along with the path to an army that is not ready for action without any audible grumbling.

Mr. Vad, the Bundeswehr is not considered operationally ready. A huge special fund of 100 billion euros is now supposed to fix it. How did this misery come about?

The causes go back a long way. The decisive factor was the end of the Warsaw Pact and thus the end of the bloc confrontation. From then on, national and alliance defense was considered anachronistic. As a result, heavy equipment was neglected. For example, the number of battle tanks was reduced to such an extent that Switzerland at times had more battle tanks than Germany.

Politicians wanted to pocket the peace dividend.

That's the way it is. The defense reforms since the end of the Cold War were not aimed at making the Bundeswehr better, but cheaper. This was at the expense of personnel and material. Many barracks have simply gone to waste. Structural problems have not been solved either.

Which ones?

Inefficiency and duplicate structures above all. And the Bundeswehr remained extremely staff- and top-heavy. Since 1990, we have reduced it from 500,000 soldiers to 180,000. The number of generals and staff officers, on the other hand, has risen slightly.

There was no lack of reform proposals from various commissions to make the army more efficient.

That's true, but hardly any of them were implemented. Soon, the focus on foreign missions was added. In addition, the Bundeswehr had to scrounge up personnel and material from hundreds of locations in order to be able to keep the foreign missions dictated by politicians running.

With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, however, that changed. National and alliance defense once again came into focus. Since then, defense budgets have also risen again. Nevertheless, even with just under 50 billion euros a year, it is apparently not possible to put an operational army on its feet. Why?

An Israeli general friend of mine once asked me: How do you Germans manage not to be operational with almost 50 billion euros? The Israelis have only half that and are ready to go day and night.

Russia, too, has hardly any more defense budget.

That's true, although in Russia the personnel and material costs are lower. In that respect, you can't compare it directly. But the country comparison of defense budgets shows that something is fundamentally wrong. The Bundeswehr doesn't just have a money problem. The problems go deeper. Former defense commissioner Bartels used to talk about "responsibility diffusion. He has a point.

What did he mean by that?

For example, that the Army Chief of Staff is only responsible for training, but not for the maintenance of equipment, logistics and procurement. In addition, we have slow material procurement and considerable personnel shortages. More than 20,000 positions are unfilled in the Bundeswehr. In addition, there is an excessive bureaucracy. There are even decrees on waste separation in the field. This density of rules does not exactly strengthen initiative. It encourages hedge thinking and inactivity.

Do you share the assessment of Army Inspector Alfons Mais that the Bundeswehr is in a bad way? That recently caused quite a stir.

Everyone knows that, and has known for years! The Army has at most one brigade that is operational and only limited ammunition stocks. We have an air force where the situation has improved somewhat in recent years, but where even now only a third of the aircraft are ever ready for takeoff. And we have a navy whose operational capability is below 30 percent. Germany has fewer ships in service than the Netherlands.

Why didn't the German generals sound the alarm earlier?

The army leadership has gone along with the years-long path toward a non-deployable army without any audible grumbling. Among the top generals, unfortunately, a high degree of willingness to adapt prevails. There is little willingness to confront the political leadership with criticism.

What responsibility does Angela Merkel bear for the developments of recent years? After all, she headed the government for sixteen years. You advised her for eight years.

When Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, the transformation of the Bundeswehr into a lean intervention army had long been decided and was in full swing. The focus was on Afghanistan. And she was very committed to it. She traveled to the Hindu Kush several times, even at personal risk. Her predecessor Schröder was never there. There was no talk of national defense in her first years.

But that changed with the annexation of Crimea.

That's right - and from there on I would also criticize the former chancellor. Despite rising defense budgets, it was obviously not a political priority for her to accelerate the upgrading of the German armed forces. We have therefore lost seven valuable years. The chancellor also made a mistake by staying too long in Afghanistan. The failure was foreseeable early on. The French already left in 2011. But Afghanistan tied up the Bundeswehr's resources enormously. It was important to Merkel that the mission went ahead. It did, but at the cost of the rest of the Bundeswehr languishing.

What role did Merkel's defense ministers play? They were all appointed by the CDU/CSU, which has always presented itself as the party of the Bundeswehr.

The last defense ministers who were in control were the Christian Democrat Volker Rühe and the Social Democrat Peter Struck. After that, the office of defense minister became more and more of a political burden for its holder. And with Ursula von der Leyen, we had a defense minister who was more concerned with daycare centers, smaller parlor sizes and the compatibility of family and career than with the operational readiness of the Bundeswehr.

Von der Leyen wanted to make the Bundeswehr an attractive employer. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yes, all well and good. But the Bundeswehr only becomes attractive if it can fulfill its mission. Otherwise, frustration is the result. Of course, there were also good political decisions under von der Leyen's leadership. They were just not backed up by personnel, material and funding, a kind of Potemkin village, easy to sell politically, but as far removed from reality as her call for a European security union or a European army today. But we also have to be fair to the defense ministers.

In what way?

They operate in a public sphere that treats the army with complete disinterest. The suspension of compulsory military service in 2011 made things even worse. Since then, the Bundeswehr has disappeared from the countryside and from people's minds. Barracks have been abandoned. There are many constituencies of members of parliament where it is no longer present. This has also led to a massive drop in political interest.

That is changing completely. Chancellor Scholz is spending billions on the Bundeswehr, and Finance Minister Lindner wants to expand it into one of the most powerful armies in Europe.

It's up to the chancellor now. The upcoming upgrading of the Bundeswehr cannot be left to the apparatus, otherwise the money will seep away in additional staff positions or committees and offices. Scholz must make this a top priority. There must be clear guidelines at the strategic level. It will take years to implement them. It won't be implemented next year.

What must the goal be?

We are currently providing a brigade for the NATO task force. That only works because we make it operational with material and personnel cobbled together from all locations. That has to stop. We need three fully equipped, combat-capable divisions. That's the equivalent of about nine brigades. The Navy needs new frigates and corvettes, the Air Force a successor to the Tornado, heavy transport helicopters and much more. One hundred billion euros is a finite sum. And at the latest since Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons, we need the F-35 as a combat aircraft for nuclear sharing.

Are you in favor of reintroducing conscription?

The Bundeswehr currently lacks 20,000 positions. That alone is not enough to justify compulsory military service, but a change in the security situation is. However, setting up district military replacement offices would cost a lot of energy. In addition, many instructors would be tied up. For the time being, the priority is to increase readiness. In the medium term, however, we will have to rethink conscription.

Because?

Since the suspension of conscription, the army and the population have grown even further apart. We can no longer afford that. Look, my youngest was the only one in his year to join the mountain troops after graduation, while the rest went to Australia to chill out. I don't begrudge everyone such experiences. But the German structural pacifism that is expressed in it no longer fits into the new age, because it leads to defenselessness. You can have as much material as you want: If you as a country do not want to be defensible, then you cannot guarantee an operational army in the long term.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Skybird]

We must stop importing gas oil, coal, ore from Russia NOW. Even if it hurts us, and it will, and seriously. Germany, Europe, aemrica - all of our countries need to stop doing any business with them at all. Sperbank is still freed from the SWIFT boycott! Oligarchs are still allowed to escape much if not most of the sanctions!



We are still directly paying the Russian war machine.



If doing what I demand costs us dearly - well, we then have deserved it. nobody forced us to be stupid two decades long.



How much I hate and dispise Merkel, this stupid unscrupulous thing. A chain of utmost desatrous decisions by her that have ruined it for Germany. Have maximsed Germany's dependecies and weaknesses and vulnerabilities to unprecedented levels. Hubris - or a deep rooting dispising of Germany? Does it even matter? The results are the same.



She has systematically maximized German vulnerabilities and dependencies. She has placed Germany (and Europe) increasingly at the mercy of Turkey and Russia, building on Schröder's preparatory work in this regard. She has shut down nuclear power without a replacement. She has maximized Russian imports of gas and ore. Directed the largest migration of peoples in modern history to Germany and Europe. Ignored the inherent opposiiton of the newcomers to our values and culture and laws, marginalized the victims of this influx of also violent criminals and women-haters. Massively pushed the devaluation of purchasing power. Let Germany take over more and more debt liabilities of other countries. Without any opposition and ultimately with their wishes, let the rise of the ECB run its course and accelerated it further and further, while she lied to the Germans about it, and thus helped to establish the regime of net debtors over net payers. She watched the decline of the Bundeswehr idly, and encouraged it with senseless symbolic policies (Afghanistan, Mali) and let these missions run to avoid the debate about their failure. The French got out of Afghanistan in 2011 or 2012, when they said: it won't work, and they also admitted popintlessness in Mali and got out - the Germans are still hanging on, expensively and pointlessly, because the debate about the failure of the mission in Germany is being shied away from and therefore it is being allowed to continue pointlessly: it costs a fortune. And she practiced a mercilessly opportunistic blind faith in the effectiveness of treaties and the rationality of religious despots and political tyrants, and both are now falling on our feet with a crash and and overwhelming force.

Cursed uneducated power-hungry bumpkin. Why is she so celebrated all over the world? She belongs on trial for her string of country betrayals and proven incompetences. No chancellor before her has such a long list of disastrous mistakes, as Merkel. She is also largely to blame for the situation that now prevails between Germany and Putin; she has done everything possible to extend Germany's weakness vis-à-vis Russia as far as possible. Just days after the invaison of the Crimea, Germany signed the contract for NordStream 2.

My goodness, I now have a bit more respect even for Baerbock after only 90 days than I could ever muster for Merkel in 16 years.

[mapuc]

We really don't have an EU-Politics thread so I use this GER politics instead-Since Germany is the one with the strongest economy in EU.

The Danish government has decided that the Danes shall have a referendum on June 1.

It is about one of Denmark's 4 reservations in this case the defense reservation

Already now there's lots of fake stories from both side-Those who wish to remove this reservation and those who don't.

One of the biggest story-which some say is fake while other say it isn't.

EU have a plan on creating an EU-army
It is in the EU a wish to create an army of 5000/50000 men.

Is this true or not-Is it a wish from EU to create such an army or not ?

Markus

[Skybird]

Its being talked about since years, but is a paper tiger so far. Parrallel military structures to NATO cost much more.

I often saud before that we should instead strengthen and focus on NATO and keep more and more of its duties over from the Americans. If we cannot do that, why would we assume we can better with a second military structure? It just makes no sense to me.

First we must gain strength and military relevance. Then we can start thinking and discussing about the colours of uniforms. The other way around would make it all just a stage play.

[Skybird]

Suddenly it goes quickly: Germany plans to buy up to 35 F-35 that will replace its fleet of 80+ aging Tornados. Both planes are certified to carry American nuclear bombs of which 20 should be stored in Germany (Büchel, Eiffel: it never was confirmed, but is an open secret). Arolund 15 Europfioghters will also be reequipped for specialised roles for the ELOKA role (wild weasle and such)

The F-35 was thougth about before, but France did not like the idea, and so the Germans fell back formt he idea...

Currently the plane costs 80-85 million per piece. Maintenance is done by American technics crews exclusively, so in a way new dependencies are being accepted here. I did not know this detial, and I don't like it. Sounds like the planes are not being bought, but leased only, and German pilots are only cab drivers for a foreign company. It also means that German poltical deciisons can in principle not made against the cooperation of Lockheed Martin, and Lockheed Martin obeys American law makers.

Yes, it means an increasing of dependency.

But there is no alternative, apparently. The planned joint program for a German-French-European fighterbomber is still many, many, many years away: way too long. And it is unclear whether the Americans would license them for carrying US nukes. They have endlessly delayed the certification of the German Eurofighter for the same purpose, so to force the Germans to buy Americna planes instead, although the German Eurofighters in principle can carry these bombs. The Ukriane war now has taught the "stubborn Germans" an lesson that American pressure so far failed to teach.

One thing is clear: a greater independence of Europe from the US will not be reached this way.

Several other European nations have ordered the F-35 as well.

I can live wiht the plane. The political implications I like much less, but I think we must be pragmatic due to our current obvious weaknesses.

Tante Käthe in the defence kitchen announced some days ago that less still to be developed super-individual platform and weapon project designs should be used to emergency-fast-equip the Bundeswehr, but more already existing ready-to-use solutions for the shelves should be bought instead.

Germany also gets P-8 submarine hunters from the US.


Since long it is rumoured that a replacement for the Leopard-2 should be done, too. The Russian Armata T-14 MBT realyl rang some alarm bells, reminds me a bit of the T-72 with its firepower showing up and equalizing the superiority of the fast, agile Leopard-1. The German-American cooperation on a joint MBT had broken up already before, but the Leopard-2 can be seen as a reply to the T-72. The Armata's design has some revolutionary features. Teething problems and the Ukraine war I think better should nobody fool about the Armata's qualities.

[Jimbuna]

I understand your reservations but the decisions taken in these troubled times are probably the most pragmatic.

[Skybird]

Yes, and I said so.



I hope more such deals follow - not endlessly developing some special individual typically German Europe-glorifying own design that costs time and three times more money, but buying already available stuff from the shelves. I hope so, though I may not like it in every individual such case.



"Pragmatism." But in the long perspective it probably comes at a cost by its own. May evenb lead to more longterm strategic decline of German and European industrial and hightech and defence tech competences.

[mapuc]

Even little Denmark has decided to increase its military funding...slowly so it is 2 % of the countries BNP in 2033. Right now Denmark use around 1.16 % of its BNP on the military.

And even Sweden who once used around 3-5 % of their BNP(60-89) on the military will increase it so it match these 2 %.

Markus