The fallout from Project Ukraine is familiar to the average German. It’s now reaching the country’s political class where the disgraced ruling coalition heads for the exits after wrecking the country with their blind support for “trans-atlanticism” at the expense of most Germans.
Don’t shed a tear for them as they’ll likely be rewarded handsomely for a job well done.
They got the ball rolling with the energy/economic crisis, which now looks likely to usher in forces seeking to further empower the financial sector in Germany at the expense of the working class.
One Government, Two Economies
The so-called traffic light coalition of the Social Democrats (red), Free Democratic Party (yellow, and the Greens was always an odd grouping.
United by their tickets on the Biden Administration-driven Project Ukraine bus, party pretenses like fiscal conservatism and minimal protections for the working class were tossed out the window on the road to Moscow. But the bus is now in a ditch, the Americans are halfway down the road and the Germans are stuck.
As it became impossible to ignore the folly of the grand plan to use Ukraine to collapse Russia, the coalition began to unravel and fight among themselves after the German constitutional court slapped down an attempt to get around the country’s so-called debt brake in order to throw more money down the Ukraine pit.
The government has been struggling for months to finalize a budget, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz finally threw in the towel when he fired Finance Minister Chrisitan Lindner over his renewed commitment to fiscal prudence after two years of lavishing gifts on Ukraine.
Lindner’s FDP has taken on so much water that it’s currently sits below the five percent threshold to be included in the next Bundestag.
The Greens, which are the most slavishly Atlanticist of the bunch, will likely pay the lowest electoral price. They might not have gotten their hands on all of Russia’s strategic minerals for the clean energy future, but Germany is on its way to becoming an agrarian society that uses less fossil fuels.
Scholz, who has seen his party embarrassed in the recent European elections and a few German state votes, is hoping to hold a no-confidence vote on January 15 and then new elections in March with the hope that he could get a provisional budget through with some popular items that could attract voters back to his party. The outcry from the opposition and wider public over waiting until late Spring 2025 for a new government to be installed is now forcing Scholz to consider moving up his dates.
A final brief obituary note on the worst post-WWII German government: It’s commonly assumed that the country’s vassalage explains its recent ineptness. While there’s certainly some truth to that, Berlin’s decision to go all in on the harebrained resource-grab plan makes a little more sense when looking under the hood.
Germany’s economy had been sputtering for some time. There’s only so long you can rely on wage suppression and low investment. Grabbing Russian (and Ukrainian) resources could have had an immense payoff even if the Americans took the lion’s share, and there are two key points about the risk-reward calculation of the German elite:
First, despite the crisis for the industrial economy of the past few years, the wealthiest Germans, the asset-owning class, is doing quite well. Unsurprisingly wealthier Germans were always the biggest backers of Project Ukraine because they did not face the consequences and this is reflected in the country’s politics and media.
Second, crisis creates opportunity. As Michael Hudson summarized back in 2022:
The economy is to be Thatcherized – all by riding the crest of the American anti-Russian sanctions and claiming that this creates a crisis requiring dismantling of public infrastructure and its privatization and financialization.
He was right, and that trend looks set to accelerate.
The Trump ‘Crisis’
Let’s first step back and take in the wreckage.
I’ve been pounding this drum for a while here at NC, but going hand in hand with war against Russia is a war at home on the German working class.
The German social partnership model — which rests on the lie that the interests of capital and labor can peacefully coexist — is getting the final nail in the coffin after years of feckless leadership whose main goal was putting a happy face on wage and benefit cuts. (This is probably long overdue and possibly one positive outcome of the events of the last few years.)
Meanwhile, the energy outlook remains dire.
The industrial economy is dying.
A mixture of public housing being sold off to investors, less building, millions of immigrants, and rent freeze loopholes has the country in a severe housing crisis.
Real wages are well below what they were in 2020 despite ticking upwards recently.
German companies are increasingly outsourcing industrial production as a fix to Berlin’s self-imposed decline in competitiveness
Subservience to the US has been cemented in Berlin, as well as Brussels.
Germany and the EU are supposedly facing a myriad of crises. A closer look reveals them all to be self-inflicted or imaginary, however. Ukraine/Russia, economic/competitiveness (which is aided by austerity), and now comes Trump, which I fail to see as anything new for Berlin. Here was the German leadership class a few weeks ago throwing a party for Biden despite his role in bringing the country to its knees:
US President Joe Biden has been awarded Germany’s highest honor, the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit at a ceremony in Berlin, on his farewell trip to Europe. pic.twitter.com/pNZOyos0e7
— DW Politics (@dw_politics) October 18, 2024
And they’re now up in arms about Trump potentially shoving the knife in a little deeper?
Aside from upstarts like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on the right and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) on the left, these “crises” do not lead to a call to rethink policy towards Russia or China, with which the EU is pursuing a trade war while being wholly unprepared as many products they rely on from China like certain drugs, chemicals and materials have no substitutes.
Nor do they bring questioning of the sanctity of the transatlantic relationship despite the “de-risking” strategy with China and Russia making Europe more reliant on Washington:
Europe now relies on the US for security, the US for (fossil) energy and the US for demand …
to rephrase an old trope about Germany https://t.co/0lxEdquQCn pic.twitter.com/m2aaIiYQn5
— Brad Setser (@Brad_Setser) October 18, 2024
In other words Germany has effectively boxed itself in so that must be prepared to do whatever it takes to avoid those tariffs Trump is proposing on German exports. How about all the endless talk about Europe (primarily Germany) shouldering more of the heavy load of the “rules-based international order”?
Lo and behold, we have the plutocrat-funded think tanks ready with a solution to this crisis of Trump:
Henning Hoff [from the German Council on Foreign Relations] believes that it is now important for the German government to “make up for its failures.” “A much stronger signal is needed to show that the Europeans, especially the Germans, are truly prepared to shoulder a greater burden of their defense. If we continue to fumble along and argue — we have the dedicated funds (for the Bundeswehr), so the defense budget need only increase minimally — then we won’t be able to impress anyone in Washington, not now and certainly not under Trump.”
What does that mean in practice? Unfortunately for Germany and the EU, that will almost certainly include pressure from the US to prop up whatever is left of Ukraine and probably making sure its bondholders are made whole.
While all the reports coming out about Trump’s plans should be taken with a grain of salt due to those wily neocons and their allies in the media potentially trying to box him in, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump’s plan to “freeze” the war includes European and British troops enforcing a buffer zone between the two sides.
“We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it,” one Trump staffer reportedly said.
Either way, the EU is also to continue to serve as a waiting house for NATO so it must find spare change to bring Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, and who knows, Kazakhstan(?) on board as well. How to pay for all the color revolution efforts, bribes, military hardware, state aid, and everything else required by the EU’s now-openly subservient role to US imperial ambitions? The think tanks and hacks like French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, and economist for hire and sometimes unelected prime minister Mario Draghi say it’s common EU debt. (In theory, there could be benefits to common debt, especially for countries like Italy which face higher borrowing costs, but going down that road to pay for the US empire ain’t it.)
Berlin has long been opposed, but now here comes the big bad orange man saying what many of the European elite have been saying — yet failing to act on. Europe must get serious about defense or at least pony up to keep the Americans on board.
Who’s riding in to save the day for Germany? None other than [checks notes] former BlackRock board member Friedrich Merz.
That’s the same BlackRock all tied up into Project Ukraine. It took $17 billion in losses on Russia exposure after the war began and has been at Zelensky’s side ever since.
Step on up Herr Merz!
Merz is the odds-on favorite to lead the country as his increasingly rightwing Christian Democratic Union has a comfortable lead in the polls.
Aside from being a diehard neoliberal, Merz is also a trusted Atlanticist.
Merz tries to appear tougher on Russia than the Scholz coalition. He’s now talking up how he will give Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
That appears increasingly unlikely and wouldn’t make a difference anyways aside from potentially bringing Germany into the line of fire. It does signal he has no intention to pursue a thaw in the New Cold War or autonomy from the US, however.
Merz is a supporter of the planned stationing of US medium range missiles in Germany, which will provide another impediment to repairing ties with Russia.
Here’s Merz is in a conversation at Atlantic-Brucke, which succinctly sums up how a Merz government would value the transatlantic relationship and deal with Trump’s likely demands:
We are in the midst of a cultural fight about the future of our liberal order. He concludes that it is really uncertain whether we will win. But there is something that makes me optimistic: when I travel to the United States, my experience is that in these complicated times, more Americans than ever before are willing to defend what we achieved over the last seven decades. Let’s preserve our freedom and our liberty…
When Jean-Claude Juncker travelled to Washington, D.C. in July of 2018 and had a debate with President Trump in the Oval Office, he gave a very clear statement about trade. He could only convince the President not to implement more tariffs on European goods because he had a letter signed by 28 European heads of state backing his point. Europe has to be clearer and we have to be united. That brings me to another point: The Germans have to take on more leadership within the European Union.
What could that look like for Germans?
Merz wants to cut social spending, yet reform the debt brake to allow for more spending at the same time. That should tell us all we need to know.
As for common EU debt, Merz has been very careful with his words. In September, Draghi unveiled his much-discussed report calling for massive amounts of spending in order for things like AI investment, other “disruptive” tech, and of course, to paper over the bloc’s ongoing energy crisis. Here was Merz on that report:
“I want to say this very clearly, now and in the future, I will do everything I can to prevent this European Union from spiraling into debt.”
Maybe I’m parsing his words too carefully, but it’d be easy to make the argument, as Draghi does, that the investments would help pay for themselves. And as the German economy continues to tank, it could be easier to argue that a Draghi-style plan is the answer.
While Merz and the CDU look like the safe bet to lead the next German government, the biggest question is who will be their coalition partner(s). If the transatlantic asset-owning class faces any potential hurdles, it’s to be found in the AfD and BSW, but will Merz be able to keep them out of any coalition?
As of now, polling indicates there would be only five parties in the Bundestag, and the CDU would be forced to side with its fellow Atlanticists, the SPD and the hated Greens, or forget the firewall against the AfD.
The least likely is that Sahra Wagenknecht’s party would be included in any coalition due to her party’s opposition to the ongoing economic war against Russia and strong focus on working class issues.
While the AfD and CDU increasingly see eye to eye on the issues like immigration that get the former labeled the second coming of the Nazis by media in and out of Germany, the problem is that the AfD is opposed to Atlanticism. It should be noted however that the AfD firewall in the European Parliament recently broke down. Here’s Politico:
The latest example of the EPP’s flirtation with the far right, according to my colleagues Gregorio Sorgi and Max Griera, came at a vote on the EU’s 2025 budget Wednesday. The EPP, including Weber himself, tore up a deal it had made with its traditional centrist allies and backed extreme-right amendments, proposed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), calling for EU money to be spent on border infrastructure and so-called return hubs for deporting migrants. The AfD celebrated “demolishing” Parliament’s anti-far-right firewall.
***
At first glance Biden’s visit to Germany a few weeks ago to be bestowed with honors seemed to be another in a long line of gleeful celebrations of failure from our rules-based order.
Take another glance and one can come to a different conclusion. Despite the economic wreckage across Germany and a body count in the millions across Ukraine and Middle East, these leaders from the Western ancien regime were truly there to toast their successes.
All the blueprints provided by the plutocrat-funded think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic are coming to pass. A more financialized Germany will shoulder a heavier load of the empire. Short term thinking? Sure, but for now the country is successfully walled off from the East and prepped to be set upon by the vultures in the West.
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IMO, it would be infinitely more likely a coalition between CDU-Greens or CDU-SPD or the three of them than a coalition between CDU-AfD. Just look how the elites talk about far right, Trump, Orban etc. Always fully Atlanticist coalitions, that is the PMC rule. Merz has served as counsellor or board member at BlackRock and at MayerBrown in mergers ans acquisitions. Chair at that atlanticist think tank mentioned in the article (Atlantic Brucke). He must be the quintessential PMC-type German politician no wonder he despises his fellow citizens and almost certainly has a neoliberal, neoconservative, atlanticist dream at odds with German realities. So, expect the worst from him.
I would not be so sure.
In Austria, the ÖVP was once staunchly refusing to govern in a coalition with the FPÖ — decried as extreme right, putinist, with demonstrable links to the nazi past, led by populist politicians — until it did. I therefore do not judge an alliance between the AfD and the CDU-CSU to have such low odds.
Thank you vao. Don’t you think Germany is too big or influential for those niceties? Not sure if Austria serves as a model here. I do not see Merz as likely to go with AfD though it might be the wise way to destroy AfD ‘s future. Yet, it might look bad on EU affairs. On this you are better informed of course.
My guess is that the the CDU-CSU will first try to go with the SPD. After all,
1) these two parties know each other, since they have been in coalitions several times in the past (both at the level of Bund and Land);
2) the SPD is weakened but wants to keep governing, and thus the CDU-CSU has very good chances to be a dominating senior partner;
3) while nobody wants to ally with AfD and even less with BSW, the Greens are felt to be (a) a pain in the neck and (b) a discredited partner.
Contra this, the SPD might not want to renew the not so good experience of the coalition with the CDU-CSU under Merkel.
Your suggestion of an alliance where the CDU-CSU would embrace and choke the AfD is seductive, and it is probably in the minds of some of the CDU-CSU leaders. The issue I see is that none of these seem to me to have the calibre to succeed in such an endeavour. Let us face it: the current crop of German (and, in general, European) politicians is very mediocre, even at pure party politics.
And yes, Austria is quite peculiar. But alliances of traditional conservatives with formerly unsavoury right-wing parties have taken place all over Europe (Italy, Netherlands, Sweden), including in a German-speaking country (Austria). There is no reason to assume Germany will constitute an exception.
No expertise in German politics here, but as an example of ’embracing and choking’ of the AfD by CDU-CSU one can look to Mitterrand in early 1980s France. The Communist party there never really recovered. Complex reasons, for sure, but Mitterrand, in that period, was as crafty a politico as one could find anywhere.
He represented an entirely different political generation. Nothing to do with what you find nowadays.
Mitterand changed the voting system back and forth to suit his desired outcomes. Cannot do that in Germany plus German parties Fragment but are geographically coherent
Eugyppius is a very keen observer of what’s afoot in Deutschland, and just posted a very good article along the same lines as this one, but I think has a clearer accounting of how the collapse of the traffic light coalition, the intermediate governance by CDU and Merz, the results of the snap elections, (what shakes out from that), who gains/who doesn’t, and about what sort of new coalition can be formed to make up a new govt. The Eugyppius contention is that Germany and its political dysfunction is so perversely Fubar that there’s no real alternative to some sort of reemergence of SPD++. None will tolerate an AfD role, and the remaining options among parties that survive the 5% cut off for Bundestag seats are not moving Germany forward; more of the same, but perhaps a tad more stupid and in thrall to the hegemon.
https://open.substack.com/pub/eugyppius/p/how-the-german-government-collapsed?r=184ox5&utm_medium=ios
SPD has been in government for 15 past 20 years. Scholz was Merkel‘s deputy. Currently Germany has an unelected Defence Minister and an unelected Finance Minister
Thanks.
Quickly some links:
German economist Heiner Flassbeck whose expertise as an economist I can´t judge is, I believe, in favour of Trump´s alleged tariffs plan which Richard Wolff on the other hand on ConsortiumNews wholeheartedly condemned and doesn´t believe in anyway because it would ruin US companies.
For that Richard Wolff:
TC: 11:40 – 34:15
https://consortiumnews.com/2024/11/06/watch-cn-live-us-election-whats-next/
Flassbeck here:
https://overton-magazin.de/hintergrund/wirtschaft/lindner-und-merz-gehen-bei-trump-in-lehre/
Engl. version:
“Lindner and Merz learn from Trump”
https://archive.is/taw0E
Flassbeck before the election in a German interview didn´t really buy into the de-industrialisation drama that much. He however is extremely critical of the entirety of German bureaucrats running the Ministry for Commerce and Finance who he sees as incompetent.
German only
audio-Interview with Heiner Flassbeck
https://overton-magazin.de/dialog/im-gespraech/heiner-flassbeck-friedrich-merz-bestand-schon-vor-25-jahren-nur-aus-sprechblasen/
Flassbeck however DOES warn of a historic recession.
e.g. here:
German
https://www.telepolis.de/features/Hallo-aufwachen-Es-ist-Rezession-9818341.html
Engl.
“Hello, wake up! It’s recession!”
I have been observing the German economy for almost 50 years. It has never been this bad: recession, deindustrialization and job cuts. What can we do? A column.
https://archive.is/SIy0I
I am not suggesting this is academic-level content but for starters.
The German edition of JACOBIN had a piece about the demise of German car-manufacturers which however didn´t fully keep the promise of it´s title (as I found as layman). What it did contain were hyperlinks for a few major studies on the future of German car-manufacturing scattered across that text.
“The German car industry can no longer be saved”
VW is facing massive job cuts. Instead of closing factories, VW and others need to be made future-proof, is the demand from the left. But it has long been clear that others can make electric cars better.
https://www.jacobin.de/artikel/autoindustrie-elektro-auto-e-mobilitaet-vw-werkschliessung
Engl. version: (if it won´t work you have to put it into google-translate yourself, archive.is doesn´t preserve the translated version.)
https://www-jacobin-de.translate.goog/artikel/autoindustrie-elektro-auto-e-mobilitaet-vw-werkschliessung?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true
Written by a Timo Daum, non-fiction author and guest of the research group “Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation” at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB).
p.s. gazing at those 6,7% for BSW in above poll makes me think of possibly intentionally faulty polls in the US.
Thank you.
On past form, Flassbeck is good. He’s traditional SPD, not neoliberal.
Unfortunately the article is spot on. What could throw a spanner into the works of the Atlantacists is the growing disquiet of the German masses as well as the continuing advance of Russia in Ukraine. You need the mass media to rule but the mass media are on an incredible downward spin here in Germany. They told Germans that the Covid vaccines were adverse effects free, that Russia would lose the war, that Nordstream was blown up by Russia (that was so improbable that even the most gullible started to doubt and now it´s Ukraine) and finally that Harris was guaranteed to win. The worst part is that our ruling classes got high on their own supply. All trust is breaking down and it will be interesting to see how they can go on.
My guess is that next German government will turn very unpopular. As fast as Starmer’s in the UK or faster. If this has noticeable political consequences, such as a far-right turn in both the UK and Germany is yet to be seen. The reality is that, so far, the Left has turned insignificant.
> the Left has turned insignificant.
Ain’t that the truth.
Not quite. The ‘left’ has turned ‘right’ – the ‘insignificance’ is just about to begin. BSW is the exception.
Germany is ungovernable. CDU is discredited in the OST and Kretschmer tries to keep the flame in Dresden whilst Voigt snuffs it out in Erfurt.
The trouble is career politicians whose education was paid for by the party, and who live on the List. Only 33% German MPs are directly elected – 6 Greens plus 119 List – by way of example. No Greens get elected in OST and only in certain cities in the West.
Merz is weak and Merkel destroyed him much as she destroyed Roland Koch and Christian Wulff who were the rising male stars in the party – she pushed women instead and tilted towards SPD and Green which was her true orientation.
Merz is not even yesterday’s man.
Truth is Germany will be weak politically and decay economically until it is more like Poland and the OST will start to act as a coherent Bloc unbalancing the Federal system at Bundesrat level. I see Germany no longer within its 1990 borders but fragmented with perhaps Bavaria joining Austria and Sachsen incorporating Thuringia – or maybe sharing it with Hessen and Bayern.
Fully agree with what you say and the natives will get restless. When you said ‘All trust is breaking down and it will be interesting to see how they can go on.’ isn’t that what happened in the US Presidential elections? Who had trust in the Biden regime anymore by election day?
Read a joke today – Zelensky was complaining to Germany how the Russians were destroying their energy infrastructure whereupon Germany replied that that is what their Greens were doing to their own energy infrastructure.
It’s funny because it’s true.
Also agree with Rev Kev and ignacio. We’re only five days into the shocker of Trump 2. Metaphors can run away with you, but I think mainstream German pols are desperately trying to rework their old positions to stem the disintegration of an policy/electoral ice field that is in the process of thawing. Conor and AG have already done excellent work here, but I wish we could get a better sense of how Die Linke, BSW, and left formations in the SPD are gauging their options over the next couple of months.
Except it wasn’t the Greens that bombed NordStream.
It wasn’t even the Greens that decided to phase out German nuclear power, that was Merkel.
The Greens seemed to have been on board with the Nord Stream bombing, however. They said NOTHING (that I know of).
They’ve become the war party the moment they have tasted blood in the Balkans. How can a war party complain about bombing of stuff? ;)
Thank you, Tom.
I worked for Germany’s biggest bank from 2016 – 21 and currently work for a Dutch bank with operations all over Germany, since 2022, and agree with and observe your comments. My colleagues see their own situations and that of clients and are alarmed.
Dear Colonel Smithers. I wonder how can you stay healthy in that environment. My wife, (risk assessment in Mutual fund management) got absolutely fed up in theirs. Imagine with all those bullshit mergers after the big financial crisis. She is now retired but yesterday met a few of her former colleagues (+20years sharing workplace). One of them said that he still feels leftist. Yet, minutes after saying that, he said that “why on earth should all the Spanish pay for the catastrophe in Valencia”. I didn’t know that everyone facing up to their responsibilities was the new leftist mantra.
Thank you, Ignacio.
I’m fed up and want out of the City and thinking of going to Mauritius as my parents wish to return for good. The pair are 80 this month.
The oceanic winds there cannot do any harm. On the contrary. Good luck for all.
Thank you, Ignacio.
I have noticed a shift this year. Some children of immigrants, like me, or their children are making plans to leave.
It’s not just the UK’s economic prospects, but, where I live in Buckinghamshire, and York, where a friend’s children study, there have been racist attacks. It’s dawning on us that, may be, we don’t really belong despite having been here all our lives / decades.
Sorry to add a caution. Mauritius is a wonderful island, but is especially vulnerable to continued climate change and is not investing in infrastructure nearly enough to be properly self-protective.
Thank you. I don’t disagree.
The island hosts as many tourists as there are residents without the infrastructure.
Thanks for the post, Conor.
Merz is now pushing for the vote of (no) confidence already next week instead of in January (variety of news sources), which would frankly make more sense than waiting 2 months.
My money would be on CDU – Greens – they are perfectly aligned on pumping money and weapons into Ukraine.
Anecdotal evidence: dinner with German friends on Friday was a lot about immigration and how the only parts of the economy doing well is armaments and the refugee industry” (housing etc).
Where I am near Nurnberg my impression is that the big German growth industry is the refugee industry which really has been fueled by US wars in the global south. We had Iraq, then Afghanistan, then Syria then Sub Saharan Africa and Ukraine all generating millions of refugees to Germany. And now we are seeing masses of Palestinians. Our hospital is very busy, doctors and dentists and psychologists are really busy, support staff is short. The landlords and construction companies are doing really well renovating houses for the Asylanten. The lawyers are doing well. Our local Bosch factory is on life support after massive layoffs but a lot of people are doing well. Germany has a limit on debt and it will need to be lifted. As usual the workers and native Germans will be crushed but the major parties are doing all in their power to marginalize the AFD which does not have a very redistributive economic policy anyway. Made in Germany is going away.
Erlangen ?
I was yesterday in a carriage where it seemed every woman spoke Russian and was Ukrainian……earlier I had been on a tram with Ukrainian schoolchildren – all female. Germany has a 54% female:male ratio currently but the Berlin regime thinks it is going to get a Draft Database by having 18-year old males Self-Reporting (yet most politicos in Berlin are “Zivildienstlers”) – how do they expect to have ANY men to go to university or into trades !!!!!
The bulk of the birth cohort is Muslim male or African male……….as in London where 67% births are to women not born in UK………it is a demographic change to which politicians seem oblivious. It is pointless speaking German – Russian is more useful or Turkish – at least they have defined communities whereas Germany lacks and Leitkultur nowadays……….
I saw last Friday/Sat there was a warning of a slow moving heavy load in Ludwigshafen at BASF Gates 11,12,13 and in direction of Worms where there is a major inland port on the Rhine. I presume this load was the dismantled chemical plants bought by IPP of New Jersey being transported for barge shipment to Rotterdam and then to be sold on to a country with lower energy prices.
BASF lost €1.6 billion last year in Ludwigshafen and was the largest user of gas in Germany – as a feedstock
Sounds like schadenfreude season for all those that Germans consider(ed) untermenschen.
Following Scholz’s schedule allows more time for change of the electorate’s opinion. Discontent rarely benefits the status quo. In other words, the formerly ascendant are more likely to lose ground than gain it. I’m long on popcorn.
For me, the main problem with Germany is that their mainstream media and, in general, all mainstream media throughout Europe is controlled by Atlanticists to one degree or another and I see no way this will change. The average citizen in Germany and most of Europe want to follow the authorities–as is the case of most countries. We all want to be part of something and to go along to get along–this is human nature. Thus the importance of a ruling class that practices virtue. There is no sign of that in Europe since official Washington has the whip hand with its ability to intimidate and bribe officials–that’s the only way Washington can impose policies on countries like Germany. In my view we have the reversal of the iron-curtain. The Empire is walling itself off–we’ll see if Trump continues with this plan or starts to sabotage it.
“…but Germany is on its way to becoming an agrarian society that uses less fossil fuels.”
The Morgenthau Plan didn’t get much traction after the war, but now the screw is turning and the German’s appear to be imposing it upon themselves. This will be of little concern to BlackRock and their bloated asset managing brethren, who have developed the practice of rubbing two phennig together to make a euro into a fine art. But it’s scary to think how the German people will respond to being economically disenfranchised.
On the other side of Europe, the Ukrainians are currently being reduced to the agrarian mode as well. Why do I not see the Aidar Battalion peacefully retraining as tractor drivers? And the Poles become the strongman of Europe? Next we’ll have the Swedes on the warpath. Where’s Francis Fukuyama when you need him?
I think you will find the Morgenthau Plan was expressed in JCS1779 and enacted. It became problematic when Stalin appealed to the Germans to strive for a United Germany free of Western Revanchism. Harry Dexter White, Morgenthau’s deputy at Treasury was a Soviet agent and The Plan played straight into Stalin’s hands just as it had into Goebbels’ propaganda to stiffen German resistance.
JCS1067 replaced The Plan after Hoover pointed out De-Industrialisation would require 30 million Germans to starve to death.
Morgenthau was Jewish – moreover it was his father that exposed – when US Ambassador in Turkey – the Armenian genocide in 1915……………so it is a strange juxtaposition in a confused plan.
I do agree however that Germany is crazed. If you are Truly Green and want to reduce CO2 etc – you would restrict immigration. Every body coming from Developing World will of necessity emit more CO2 as a resident in the West compared to back home. Importing millions (UK around 10 million extra 2000-2024) – explodes the demands on food, water, electricity, medical facilities, transport etc
So if Green policies were consistent they would have closed borders.
I brought this up before, but it’s astonishing that Germany will be led by Fred Merz, not just in name, but in spirit. What’ll Ethel think?
good to see Fred still making a comedic impact.
Germans getting a bit of the taste of what they did to Greece ‘eh ?
Thanks to Conor for this crystal clear and concise explanation of the state of politics in Germany. You don’t see this truly helpful reporting in too many places
Interesting perspective on the shifting dynamics between Germany, Trump, and the transatlantic relationship. It’s clear that geopolitical tensions are affecting traditional alliances in unexpected ways. On a lighter note, when faced with tough decisions, I often like to let randomness play a role. decide for me yes or no can be a fun way to break the deadlock. Has anyone here used decision-making tools like that in a similar context?
“We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it,”
There is no way that Russia is going to agree with that – they can do all the peace-keeping themselves, if that is what is required, and EU troops in the Ukraine will be almost the same as the Ukraine joining NATO. Delusion seems still to be the default in the US. Unless Trump and his minions can do much better than that, there will be no ‘stopping the war in 24 hours’
USA could sell the peace keepers if they were Chinese, Iranian and DPRK.
The funding would have to be from NATO.
The Russians would be happy to guarantee a no fly zone from the Elbe to the Dneipr.
The Brit EU peacekeeping plan seems like a Trojan horse.
Really ? In my lifetime the European Continent was at peace from 1945-1990. Once the USSR withdrew its forces from Central Europe and Germany in particularly, and US stayed and expanded – a Resurrected Germany seemed to plunge into war – in Yugoslavia and Ukraine and meddled in Balkans – it was Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (taxpayer funded CDU operation) that was very active in Kiev even before Victoria Nudelman.
Soviet Forces kept Europe stable. US policies de-stabilised the continent.
There is ZERO chance of “peacekeepers” in Ukraine – NATO had “peacekeepers” in Ukraine after 1991 and it was “NATO” targeting Donnas civilians in an “Operation Storm” 1991 facilitated by MPRI a US contractor to ethnically-cleanse Serbs from Croatia run by Tdudjman and his Ustashe-Lite group.
Russia will have its own friendly regime in what is Rump Ukraine and does not need US anywhere on European continent.
Well said.
My heart pours out for Western Europe. When I see Vlad invading Youngstown Ohio or Kearney Nebraska I’ll take notice.
Ohio and Nebraska are more worth invading than Western Europe.
The signs were there for Germany being green with envy about finanancialization schemes when the government was defending the fraudulent Wirecard company.
I guess they want more of that than industry.
What is shocking is the matter of course by which media in Germany go along this every single day.
Imagine a TV reporter on the Titanic´s top deck reporting how the ship is to collide with the iceberg in perfectly normal fashion:
“And this is Wolf Blitzer live from the RMS Titanic somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean. Back to Kate.”
This is going to end with the economic collapse of the West.
A Germany without its industry does not have the manufacturing capacity to make a large military, and certainly not without Russian natural resources. It will also mean financial ruin.
We are seeing the collapse of the EU and NATO together. In some ways, this is a lot like the late USSR. The Western elite desperately want to win and retain their power, but desire and the capability to do so don’t match.
Champagne ambitions on Bier money. Really enjoyed all my trips to Germany when younger and thought that if I had to settle down overseas, that Germany would be a good choice. To see a bunch of pathetic wannabes and idiots bring Germany into ruins for no benefit whatsoever is enraging. If it means having the AfD doing a lot of the heavy lifting in getting rid of them, so be it though I am hoping that Sahra Wagenknecht gets to have a big say in Germany’s reform. If the Greens have their way, then Germany will go back to being a pastoral society and they have a lot to answer for. If you had told me in the 80s that all the Greens that I was meeting would one day become a war party of maniacs I would never have believed you. And yet here we are.
Even back then there were two sorts of Greens: the ones that were doing their own thing without or against the state and the ones that let themselves be corrupted. I saw it in the squatters movement in Berlin. About half signed contracts, got fantastic bonuses whereas the other half refused the money and got evicted. The ones with the bonuses are now the green uppercrust and are basically running the city. The others are leading todays antiwar movement, support Wagenknecht or even the AFD. I am part of the second cohort. What gives me hope is that we were looking to the old communists who resisted Hitler for inspiration. We managed quite a change! Now we are the old ones and there are young people who are looking at us for inspiration. Young people always question the Status Quo and they certainly don´t find any role models among todays Greens.
This was good. The advantage of reading it a day late is I get all the comments. There’s little argument over Connor’s presentation of the situation and a lot of speculation over coalition.
Germany, Europe, the EU and UK are all on a hard right swing. I think the CDU+CSU – AfD coalition could happen. You can coopt the AfD with coalition bribes, then domesticate it and then, like the Greens, in the next election it will be weaker. Idk.
That is not how i understand what happened. Lindner didn’t want to achieve financial prudence. His goal were tax reductions for the rich coupled with cuts for cities and municipalities and in social security, and cuts to the climate / green / ecological spending, possibly coupled with subsidies for the cat industry (though i’m not really sure on the later, his statements i remember seemed to bit a bit unclear about that).
That’s not financial prudence, but redistribution to the really wealthy – which wouldn’t help germany at all (but certainly would help the FDP).
Finacial prudence is a combination of words often used by the FDP, but for them it doesn’t mean the same as for other people.
I think your analysis is mostly right, but i’m opposed to any explanations of the german misery which start with external factors.
We are able to screw up without outside help. The dependency on exports was our own doing. The dependency on the automobile industry was our own doing. The inability to build up industry around new technologies was our doing.
Our near-total inability to change is our doing. And our doom.
Ukraine help, however costly, is not our greatest problem.
Right. And low education.
I’m not so optimistical. The social partnership model is a relict of a long dead world, it’s architects are dead and can’t defend their brain child anymore, and so it will be kept alive with warm words at least from SDP and CDU/CSU. Why should a succesful deception be buried?
I think we start to realize that. A bit late, but… well, at last we do :-)
I hate that thought, but that doesn’t mean you are wrong.
Fun fact: our current, new, finance minister was Goldman Sachs co-chief of the germany austria region.
One might think that the sell-out only just started.
One might also think that Scholz sees no chance to survive the next election.