Germany got a new minister of defence, said minister has no background in military, military policy, security policy, or even only good experience in foreign policy.
A few weeks into the term, said minister publicly claims that the budget is inadequate.
A budget that grew extraordinarily over the past couple years.
The real problems are different ones, but the minister has already 100% failed on the job by doing the usual thing. Minister and bureaucracy now share interests. The minister is pursuing the bureaucracy's self-interest. There's no hope that this minister (or any, really) will steer the bureaucracy off the course towards self-interest and onto the course towards public interest.
The German armed bureaucracy will NEVER have enough money, and will NEVER become swift enough to do its job properly unless it gets yanked off its course by a proper reformer. There's no reason to expect a conservative minister to do meaningful reform, of course.*
It's depressing.
S O
*: Conscription was deactivated under a CDU (conservative party) minister, but a very strong case can be made that he was no conservative, but a person with 80% show, 20% thirst for power and 0% substance.
Do demand more moeny (for your own ressort) is completly normal and no politican works for the good of the people and the public interest. Your idealistic ideas about how an organisation should be and how leaders should act are so far away from the reality.
ReplyDeleteNot long ago i was able to hear an politican with roots in the army and connections to the arms industry. And everything he talks about was to enrich the arms company in his vote district and that the german armed forces must buy their products, although this is not the best solution. I asked him about that and about buying alternatives from other companies. He laughed at men and said that i obviously have no idea about the army, the military or any military things. He toped it by claiming that people like me are quote: dangerous idiots. And that example is not an exception. The armed bureaucracy and espeically all defence politicans in germany are rotten to the core.
The welfare of the nation, military power, efficency and the public interest does not care them at all. As the overall system and nearly all of his represantatives are more or even much more like this, the ridicolous state of the todays german "military" is no wonder.
The most annoying thing for me is the character weakness of most of the high ranking officers. But they are selected especially for this character weakness by the higher echelons and civilian leadership to not endanger the position of higher ranking officers and to fulfill the will of the civilan leaders to improve their careers, income etc
I call this the Flaschensammler-Prinzip, (bottle collectors). They only gather such people and only allow them to thrive through the ranks because this is useful for their selfish agenda and targets. The narcism and egoism and the lack to take responsibility, to make failures and stand to them and to take risks is imo a result of the social-culture in todays germany.
So what we see here is not the cause of the problem, but a symptom of the much deeper problem of the todays german culture.