GER politics thread

[Skybird]

Intel invest 17 billion in Germany and builds a chip factory at Magdeburg.

Thats something, after Tesla having built a megafactory near Berlin with a huge battery construction.


We need to bring more such key industries back to Western countries. That includes securing supply chaisn for needed ressaources. Russia an dchina unfortunatekly have too much control on many needed ressources and agents. Our longterm stratgey must include to find replacements that allow us greater autarky. That also should mean: researchign and developing new production methods and components where imp0orting such vital key ressources are not needed anymore, or in much reduced quantities only.



We must learn and understand that neither Russia nor China are or can be again ordinary partners, in trade or beyond. They are rivals, and enemies. And they want our fall. With Islam in general, that gives us an hostile alliance of three now that tries to bring us down, even if they are not the closest of friends amongst themselves.

[Skybird]

Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to equip the Bundeswehr for its core mission with 100 billion euros. The defense report shows that the money is sorely needed. Nevertheless, Germany will remain a very vulnerable country over the next five to ten years. This has to do above all with the "Putin basic mistake" made by Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel.

"Bundeswehr" it is when mountain infantry waits for skis. Or combat swimmers don't have a swimming pool. Or infantrymen hope for combat helmets, making it clear that it was really an achievement to deliver 5000 helmets to Ukraine - after all, the German army itself has none.

One can indeed get the idea of buying a new helicopter when the old one has been already flying for over 50 years, or more precisely, less than every second in the fleet that most of the time is grounded. In any case, you can thank Willy Brandt for buying them. For those who are younger than 50:

Willy Brandt was once German chancellor. The SPD man, who in his old age became an icon of the peace movement, made sure, before this could happen, that Germany spent three and a half percent of its budget on national defense.

Today, Brandt's successor, Olaf Scholz, can already celebrate himself for a "turn of the times" when he promises to spend a good half of it in the future. Times were different back then. The Cold War was raging, and Willy Brandt knew where the enemy stood and how powerful he was. For Brandt was a convinced anti-communist.

The anti-communists in the SPD - even Brandt's successor Helmut Schmidt still invested more than three percent of the gross national product in the military - were followed by those who "understood" and appeased Russia. First in the SPD, then also in the CDU/CSU.

This was the basic mistake of the two German chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel: They believed in the goodness of the Russian leader Putin. And considered the defense of Germany more or less superfluous. Which is why today the defense report presented by Social Democrat Eva Högl is either a case for satire or, because of Vladimir Putin, a veritable horror story.

Not even everything was ready for German soldiers on combat missions. In Mali, they lacked the right vests and had to be sent on. Nor were the right backpacks always available, a fatal matter when you have to parachute into unpleasant parts of the world as a "fighter".

The additional 100 billion for the Bundeswehr announced by the chancellor is called a "huge opportunity" by the defense commissioner, party colleague Högl. However, it will be many years before the Bundeswehr can be repaired.

Equipment is a long-term business. In other words, over the next five to (more likely) ten years, Germany will remain a very vulnerable country, 100 billion or not.

After Germany's highest-ranking army soldier, Lieutenant General Alfons Mais, admitted that the Bundeswehr was "bare," Högl now says placatingly that the troops are "ready for action." But is "ready for action" also "ready for defense"?


In view of the obvious equipment deficiencies of the Bundeswehr, military historian Jürg Neitzel asks what has actually happened to the billions that the Bundeswehr has been allowed to spend since Putin's Crimean campaign. After all, this amounts to up to 18 billion euros annually.

One learns that defense does not depend on money alone. A lot can go wrong when buying tanks and aircraft, even more so than when trying to get a major airport up and running in Berlin. "The whole system of procurement is too ponderous," Högl says. That sounds as bad as it is meant to be.

So if there is now this paradigm shift forced by Putin via war of aggression and security becomes the first of all values again, then Olaf Scholz's most important department head in the coming years will be the federal defense minister.

Before the chancellor made her the head of the armed forces, she had never set foot in a barracks. And had already planned her political retirement anyway. Now there is a new job description for her:

She is demanded to be a passionate top manager who can train the entire Bundeswehr to get rid of the sluggishness it has accumulated during the treacherous peacetime. As a mental coach, she will find the right language to use against unscrupulous threats to democracy in this country.

The search is also on for someone to save the now suddenly very large budget from being plundered by industry, its lobby and/or compliant members of the Bundestag who still owe a favor to the arms manufacturers in their constituencies.

For it must be stated: If it is true that the Bundeswehr is only conditionally ready for defense, what has it done with the 50 billion it currently has at its disposal? Which is, after all, the world's seventh-largest defense budget - remarkable for a country that has seen itself as a "peace nation."

But perhaps that is the biggest problem: The "peace nation" has just ended. And yesterday's supposedly important issues have become today's luxury problems. It only seems strange at the moment that the Bundeswehr has spent its energy trying to genderize the "one-man package" into a "one-person package.

In any case, Germany needs a new "mindset," which is likely to be more strenuous than raising a lot of money for the Bundeswehr. In an interview with Der Spiegel, the Israeli world thinker Noah Yuval Harari put it this way:

"You cannot force someone to make peace, but that someone can force us to make war."

What that means must also first be understood. Not only in the Bundeswehr.

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


"Here You see our new best-equipped Bundeswehr. Stealth bombers, stealth grenade launchers,
stealth tanks, stealth soldieresses(f) and stealth soldiers(m)"

[Skybird]

If it is true that Germany has the 7th biggest defence budget in the world, bigger than that of France with its expensive hobby of maintaining nuclear weapons, then one must wonder where all that money is disappearing. Here is some search for answers:

https://beta.dw.com/en/german-milita...ncy/a-61136184


The article does not say it clearly, but I call this kind of administrative incompetence: corruption as well.

[Catfish]

Putin's useful idiots.
"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a repudiation of a whole generation of German politicians from across the spectrum."

https://www.politico.eu/article/puti...nord-stream-2/


It is of course easy with the hindsight we have now, also the author's own nation is not exactly a saint either. But unfortunately there is a lot of truth here.

[Skybird]

^Ah, thnaks, thats the piece I just referred to in the Ukraine thread, but I forgot to post the link.

[Skybird]

Der Tagesspiegel:


The war in Europe has left young people in Germany in a state of shock. This is the finding of the current trend study "Youth in Germany - Summer 2022," which will be published on May 3, 2022.

Results on the topic of "Youth and War in Europe" have already been published in advance to mark the current occasion.

Around 68 percent of the 14- to 29-year-olds surveyed expressed their concern about a war in Europe. "A war that calls prosperity and future prospects into question was previously unimaginable for many young people in Germany.

They are visibly disturbed because they don't know an answer to it," says Simon Schnetzer, who heads the regular surveys of the youth study together with youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann. "The majority of young people are unsettled and don't want war," Schnetzer says.

Until five months ago, climate change was the top concern, he said, but now worries about war in Europe have clearly moved to the top of the list. "The fear threshold among the 14- to 29-year-olds surveyed is dramatically high," Schnetzer said.

Interviews with young people would show that the vast majority of them did not expect the situation in Ukraine to escalate in any way. According to Schnetzer, young people are very worried and cannot comprehend what war is even being waged for in 2022. "What frustrates them is the feeling of powerlessness against this war."
A war that calls prosperity and future prospects into question was previously unimaginable for many young people in Germany.

According to the survey, 42 percent of young people expect that living in fear of war could become a permanent condition, and 28 percent assume that the war will spread to Germany. That it comes to an active participation of young Germans as soldiers and female soldiers, expect 23 per cent. An equally high percentage expects the use of nuclear weapons to have dramatic effects in Germany as well.

13 percent of those surveyed even assume that they may have to flee their place of residence. "The young generation is fully aware of the dramatic nature of the situation," Schnetzer said. Young people are stunned, he said. "Because in their eyes there should be no more war and the long-awaited recovery from the pandemic is once again a distant prospect," says the youth researcher.

The reintroduction of military service after completion of school is rejected by large parts of the respondents. Only 18 percent support it, while 50 percent are against it. Increasing military and defense spending is supported by 43 percent of respondents, whereas 22 percent clearly oppose it.

The admission of Ukraine to the European Union and the supply of weapons to Ukraine are supported by about 40 percent each, but 25 percent of young people oppose it.

"There can be no talk of a willingness to fight in the young generation," said youth researcher Klaus Hurrelmann of the Hertie School Berlin. Rather, he said, those surveyed were keeping a "conspicuously low profile" and were not ready to take action at the current state of threats to peace in Europe.

"This is probably due to the fact that, as a young generation, they were not prepared in the least for a possible threat of war," is Hurrelmann's assessment.

Comprehensive sanctions against Russia are supported by only 57 percent of those surveyed. "It is possible that young people have rising energy prices and inflation in mind here and are therefore more reluctant to react," is the youth researchers' assessment.

The "Youth in Germany" trend study has been published as a study series every six months since fall 2020. A total of 1,021 young people aged 14 to 29 were included in the representative study. The current survey was conducted in the period from March 9 to March 21, 2022.

A survey by the Vodafone Foundation concludes that young Germans are worried about the future even independently of the war in Ukraine. In a survey by Infratest dimap, 86 percent of 14- to 24-year-olds agreed with the statement: "I am worried about the future.

Only eight percent believe that their children will one day be better off than they are, 58 percent see things getting worse, and 28 percent say "neither better nor worse".

The survey data was collected in September 2021, well before the war in Ukraine.

The pessimism is also evident with regard to concrete problems: The majority of the teenagers and young adults surveyed do not believe that Germany will "have a grip on climate change," have a "first-class education system" or "be more socially just" by 2050.

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

[Skybird]

Oooopsala - switching off the lights.


https://beta.dw.com/en/german-police...rid/a-61468227

[mapuc]

I could have posted it in our Ukraine thread. But it's more about Germany.

Here is what a former Retired Danish politician wrote. When I read it I thought Wonder what Skybird and Catfish as to say about his accusation

Right now Putin's war in Ukraine is being financed by Germany. If Germany won't sanction Putin, the rest of us will have to sanction Germany.
Denmark must now start converting to green energy.
We want to be free of Putin's oil and gas. Good!

Germany (and Hungary and Italy), on the other hand, continue to finance Putin's brutal attack on Ukraine. Children are killed, women are mass raped and cities are destroyed by Putin and his soldiers. The war is financed by Germany.

Agree that the new German Chancellor gave a good speech (I was very excited) and promised to pay what Germany promised three presidents Bush, Obama and Trump to NATO.
It's also good they are trying to phase out gas and oil and will conserve energy and explore alternative energy supplies.

But it seems Germany is blocking all sanctions on Russian oil and gas. The Americans are angry! No reason for the rest of Europe to just stand by and give up. If Germany won't sanction Putin, the rest of us will have to sanction Germany.

Because that's what Putin has been waiting for - divided West.
Remember next time you buy a German car or other German goods that you are financing Putin's war. Sanctions against Germany will not end the war. But sanctions on Germany and all others blocking sanctions (Hungary and Italy) will ensure they know we are tired of them sponsoring Putin's war on Ukraine.

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

Markus

[Catfish]

Hmm yes, one could say it would have been much more convenient for Germany, had Russia been able to occupy Ukraine the way it did with the Krim

While i think that Scholz should move his and Germany's a$$ when it comes to supply Ukraine with military hardware this seems a bit xenophobic, from Denmark towards Germany?

"Danish energy giant takes heat for long-term contract with Russia’s Gazprom"
https://www.courthousenews.com/danis...ssias-gazprom/

Germany is bigger than Denmark and needs more energy, simple as that.

A lot of other European countries are also dependent on Russian gas, some up to over 90%. Everyone is working on cutting it as fast as possible, as Germany is, but literally no country in Europe dependent on it right now could get rid of it immediately. Germany hopes to cut it in july, don't know if this is possible though. You do not build two LNG terminals in a day.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...as-2022-02-27/

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/20...n-russian-oil/

[Catfish]

steady but slowww

[Skybird]

Gas is needed not only for electricity production, but also to heat industrial ovens (glass, aluminium, steel), so a rat tail of industrial problems would arise if gas from now to then would not be there anymore. Also, gas is needed not only as an energy-carrier, but a ressource that is being turned into chemicals - fertilizers for example. No gas, no mass agricultre.



Now look at the prices in the agricultural sector...



If there is one stumble in these production chains, these easily start cascade effects later down in the production and supply lines. Industries go offline or redcues their prouction, workers work at reduced times and earn less, with costs gpwing up. The German state pays compensations, but at the cost of additonal debts an dinflating the money volume even more. A vicous circle starts. You see German aluminium, steel and fertilzer production already have shrunk, and this causes price shifts, and social rifts when workers do not get full payment. This in an environment with inflation, recession, and likely stagflation. Also, many of these production ovens in the industry cannot be just switched on and off - if they cool out, they are destroyed.



So, it is not as simple as it seems. Its not only about warm living rooms in private homes. If these were the only issues, hell, we would be lucky!



I mention all this to illustrate that I am aware of these complications and implicit factors. It must also be said that the state budget in Russia is practically unlinked to the maintenance of costs of the military. The state is a tyranny that can opt for anything anytime - and does - to run and supply the military and war no matter how the state finances are. The phrase "buying their gas directly finances their war " again is too simplified, but its a catchy slogan.


Still, I think nobody forced the germans to go the easy way in the past. Their stupid designs of green energy policies do not work out well, they are hopelessly naive, childish, and the invitation by Russia to maintain, cover, fill the deficits left by these polciies "from the side" with cheap Russian gas, was thankfully accepted, so that the Green illusions had not to be revealed to the public earlier. What we now have in constellation of factors is the most royal mess you can imagine. It is selfmade, it is unneeded, and could have been prevented - and nobody wanted to take safety measurements while there was time, nobody wanted to prevent it. So I say: let the Germans suffer. Pain is a good teacher at times.



I also say: dear stupid Germans, you were the stupidiest brainf###### in the past 20 years, and wanted what you got ourselves into, and so lets take what is coming at you and stop complaining because YOU DESERVE IT.



The blame for having seen morei n Putin then he was I have to accept for myself, too, not to the degree to wihich most others fell for him, but I made huge mistakes in assessing his drives, too. But the other problems - these are what I have warned of since twenty years, and warned of since I was at university over 30 years ago. With that guilt I leave my dear german supermoralistic fellow countrymen alone. Without our green-ideological hybris, Germany would not be in such a vulnerable position today, and without such a weak export-dependign economy, Germany would not be in such a vulnerable position again, too.



My stand regarding the current coalition and especially Scholz and his damn Russophile SPD is well-illustrated by my postingsd, I must not repeat it. To hell with this human drivel. I dispised them already when I still was at school.



Scholz has said he wants to pay one billion for weapons the Ukraine can poick form a lost. What our media usually do jt say is that that list has been cleaned of wepaons types the intellectually all-knowing chancellor's office have decided to be too unsuitable for the Ukraine, and amongst that are many wepaons that the ukrianbe depserately asks for, and that the Superchancellor Olaf "head-in-the-bubble" Scholz at no costs wants to see being delivered - by nobody, if only he could prevent it (fortunately he cant). Also, the way Scholz ha sopted fort, not only is it only a fig leaves, an alibi, it also costs time, time that the ukriane does not have.



With friends like the Germans, you almost need no more enemies. Underhanded to the max.



I posted a thread some day ago, on the German-Russian relations after the treaty of Rapallo. If you have not red it, find and read it now. It explains a lot. Germany since always is far more oriented towards russia then towards the Western world. it has always been like this since - well, I dont know since when, since very long time at least. It started centuries ago already, long before Rapallo. Russia is an objkect of German transfiguration on a level that foreigners possibly find hard to imagine possible.



If someone gets the impression that I have a huge rage against Germany and the Germans, then he is right, and this rage and disgust are not new, but grow steadily from year to year. I live as a stranger in this country that has been made strange to me. And I have nothing to do with the attitude of the broad mass of the population and I want nothing to do with it. There is much that is beautiful and artistic in the many centuries of cultural history of this country, even much genius and brilliance of the highest radiance. That in Germany of the last hundred years with criminal and then ideological and pedagogical means this beauty has been deliberately destroyed and the good, true and beautiful deliberately dragged through the mud, corrupted, trivialized, and replaced with the contemporary mud of political sentiment and ideological re-education to infantilism and egalitarianism, that is a crime so great that I can and will never forgive the Germans. I live here, was born here and have a German identity card, but I don't belong here and to them. To hell with these stupid Germans!



We live now at a sharp turn of the times. The old world we live din untiul just some years ago, is gone and over, and Gerany will now loose, not win, welath and comfort, living standards will decline, uncertainty grow, and it sjust a quesiton of time, of factors of financial laws until the accelerating collapse of the money system will help to let poverty and need grow dramatically and fast. We had the chanc ein the poast to do better and to build reserves, and we let politicians not doign that, even further eroding reserves, and turning them into deficits. All this was and is easy to predict, since thelaws of economics are comparably unchangable like the laws of nature. And I said so many years ago already, in many postings over the past years. We now foudn ourselves in a perfect storm, some say the war and corona were two black swan events, I am not so certain on that,m but it is a perfect storm for sure, and we no can no longer deny that the world is changing for the wqorse and more dangeorus. The good and fat times are over, at least over here in germany, and also Europe. Corona and the war did not cause these destructive processes, but they serve as a catalyst that speeds up the pace of their unfolding by many factors, apparently.


This is the era of dying certainties.

[Catfish]

Well we also have some other politicians who make more sense right now, from (astonishing) Mr Hofreiter to Mrs Baerbock. Just of all two green politicians who made a u-turn after Putin invaded Ukraine. Also Mr. Habeck.
And we have Agnes Strack-and-so-on.. chairwoman of the defense committee

https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/video...affen-100.html

[Skybird]

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes:


"Let us hope that it is not true; but if it is, let us pray that it does not become common knowledge," the wife of the Anglican bishop of Worcester is said to have exclaimed in the face of Darwin's theory that humans and apes have common ancestors. A similar reflex can be observed in German politics at the moment, ever since Chancellor Olaf Scholz propagated the "turn of the times" when he drew a picture of a fundamental upheaval in European history on February 27: the world had become a different place overnight as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the European security order had been shattered; our freedom, our democracy and our prosperity were in existential danger; Russia's President Vladimir Putin was on his way to establishing a Russian empire.

The horror of Putin's war of aggression led to a moment of clarity. The resolutions Scholz announced in his historic speech met with broad consensus in the Bundestag. They include arms deliveries to Ukraine, far-reaching sanctions against Russia, a strengthening of NATO's eastern flank, a "special fund for the Bundeswehr" secured in the Basic Law, more than two percent of gross domestic product for defense, and an immediate reduction in energy dependence on Russia. Did German politicians understand that the turnaround announced by Scholz was more than just a shock moment that would eventually pass?

In view of the fundamental upheavals in the international order, the measures announced by the government so far can at best be a start. But seven weeks later, it seems as if the federal government has become afraid of its own clairvoyance. The momentum of the turn-of-the-century speech has almost passed again. It has just become apparent how difficult it is for the actors to think about politics on the basis of a reality that is not that of their own socialization. The caesura announced by Scholz for German foreign policy has so far been hesitant. It even seems as if the traffic light coalition is primarily concerned with imposing as little caesura as possible on itself and its electorate.
In the mills of the coalition

In Kiev, there is a justified impression that Germany has not followed up sufficiently on its big announcement that it would break the taboo on supplying Ukraine with weapons: Germany is delivering too hesitantly, too little, too late. The "special assets of the Bundeswehr" are in danger of being pulverized in the mills of the coalition and the intrigues of the opposition. Moreover, it is becoming clear that there will be no increase in the regular defense budget (which will remain unchanged at 50.1 billion euros until 2026), but that the 100-billion-euro fund will be used successively over the next few years to ensure that Germany meets NATO's two-percent target. [Skybird: Didn't I say within one or two days that I believe the German chnages when i see them and that the special fundings will be wasted like described here...? Heck, its GERMANY we are talking about, the SPD - the unshakable Russia-friends par ecellence...]

The question of how to proceed when the additional money is used up in a few years is left to the successor government. Germany is also acting with the handbrake on economic sanctions. The German government does not want to do without Russian energy imports in the short term. According to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Robert Habeck, the Federal Republic would otherwise be threatened with mass unemployment and poverty. People would then "no longer be able to heat their homes," Habeck said.

German foreign policy is not moving decisively on either arms deliveries or broader sanctions. It is following the European convoy, and often only when there is no other way. Now would be the right moment to communicate clearly what it actually means to defend a free and open, just and peaceful Europe.

It is in Germany's own security interests to hinder and weaken the Russian war machine in Ukraine. The lukewarm response of Europeans and Americans to the 2014 annexation of Crimea has invited Putin to further land grabs. The whole thing was further promoted by the willingness to return promptly to business as usual with Russia, when Nord Stream 2 was already launched in 2015 by the Russian corporation Gazprom and five European corporations.

Together with its partners, the German government should now do everything in its power to ensure that Putin does not emerge as the winner from this war. Because if, as a result of the Russian invasion, the realization takes hold that those who brutely enforce territorial claims with military force will be rewarded, this will have far-reaching consequences for stability in Europe.



The last few weeks have shown that the Europeans, together with the Americans, can indeed significantly influence the course of the war if they support Ukraine. Further sanctions must be imposed as quickly and disruptively as possible. If the German government continues to reject a comprehensive energy embargo, it could at least support intermediate steps, such as a European oil embargo or punitive tariffs. Germany should not only provide money to upgrade Ukraine, but finally support and organize the delivery of heavy weapons.

It is fatal for the deterrent effect of the West that our partners in the EU and NATO are getting the impression that Germany is more of an obstacle than a pacesetter. Not only in the Kremlin, but also in Beijing and Taipei, people are watching closely how resolutely the EU and the U.S. react to Putin's aggression. For Germany's export-dependent economy, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have devastating consequences.

Now would be a good time to take a closer look at relations with China. One of the great lessons of Germany's failed policy toward Russia is that "change through trade" does not have the desired effects, at least in autocratic systems. The much-vaunted energy partnership has not brought Russia closer to the West, but has made Berlin vulnerable and susceptible to blackmail. Lessons should be learned from this experience that not only energy flows but also economic networks and cross-border financial and data traffic can be used as weapons. Especially when the relationships are not reciprocal.

The extensive macroeconomic interdependencies with China also harbor security risks that have not been recognized in Germany for a long time, as has been shown, for example, in the expansion of Germany's 5G mobile networks. The German government should look very closely at strategic dependencies on Beijing that have arisen and develop a comprehensive diversification strategy. In terms of China's economic presence in Germany and Europe, it is important to strike the right balance between security, openness and economic resilience. In doing so, the German government should be aware of how close the authoritarian partnership between Russia and China has become.

With regard to the European security order, a return to the status quo ante is impossible. Putin no longer accepted the order based on the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris even before the attack on Ukraine. The Kremlin sees this order as a construct of the West that was imposed on Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead, as a veto power, it wants to be able to set rules that restrict the sovereignty of its neighbors. As long as Putin is in the Kremlin, security in Europe cannot be organized jointly with Russia. Rather, it is a matter of effective security from Russia.

This will be exceedingly painful for Germany and Europe. The relationship with Russia will be characterized by permanent crisis management. In addition, there is a nuclear threat that was thought to have been overcome, but without the institutional and regulatory framework to contain it.

With Joe Biden, an American president is still in office who is heavily involved militarily in Europe. But this is not likely to last, even if Donald Trump does not return to the White House in 2024. In the long run, China is the bigger challenge for the U.S., and the Europeans must move quickly to shoulder the brunt of deterring and containing Russia.

Germany has a special responsibility in strengthening national and alliance defense. It must play a leading role in further strengthening the credibility of NATO and alliance cohesion and become the backbone of conventional alliance defense in Europe.

The international upheavals cannot be stopped or reversed. That is why Berlin must now do everything in its power to adapt German foreign, security and economic policy to the realities of the new era as quickly as possible.
----------------------------
Jana Puglierin is a political scientist and heads the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.


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

[Catfish]

DW is becoming better

[Catfish]