Real social democrats

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Imagine the developed world well before the 1970's: blue collar workers' children would become blue collar workers, children of academics would become white collar employees. There was little social mobility. The result was that there were great many highly intelligent workers and craftsmen.

This was the pool from which workers' parties could draw their politicians, their organisers. The result was that we had several generations of very intelligent politicians in workers' parties who actually had a strong socio-economic links to workers.

Such worker parties were effective at improving social mobility and schooling, and thus a later generation of blue collar workers' children were able to realise their potential at school and become academics.

What about the worker parties? Just as their politicians, they had ever less socio-economic links to workers. Some devolved into grifting and self-service organisations that abused power to hand out well-paying jobs to their most loyal politicians. Networking became ever more important, and leading politicians were able to build & maintain networks by handing out such well-paying jobs in administrations, government-owned companies, social insurances, in stock company advisory boards and last but not least - the EU.

What about their policies? They became ever less workers-centric, but keep in mind what kind of people joins a workers party rather than a conservative party in the first place: People with at least  a bit idealism. People who sympathise with the underdogs. People who sympathise with minorities.

Thus the (former) workers' parties fell into the trap of representing underdogs, minorities a lot. They allowed to be attached to minority opinions, unpopular opinions. They were caught preferring the well-being of foreigners over the well-being of workers.

And thus we have no real social democrats in Germany any more, no party that convinces the vast majority of workers that it's working hard in their interest.

What we have are parties focused on scapegoats, stirring aversions and being 100% 24/7 365 days a year utterly, completely worthless and doing nothing of any value that would actually make life of a worker's family any better. They do lick Putin's boots, though. In fact, our biggest such party is actively working for the benefit of the rich and high income earners. The workers don't notice, though. They don't have any high intelligence co-workers any more who would point that out, high IQ has been selected away from blue collar jobs.

There's sociological research that shows that a neighbourhood collapses socioeconomically (and culturally) when the share of people who 'made it' drops below 4%. There are not enough role models left, the neighbourhood turns into a poverty ghetto. A third to a half of Germany is emulating that. 

That's not about the foreigners intruding the society, it's about internal threads that were torn.

Germany BADLY needs a new, a REAL social-democratic party!

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
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That 'peace' manifesto

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"“Dog whistle politics” is the practice of sending out coded political messages or subtle signals, which are designed to be understood only by a narrow target audience."

(Political dictionary)

"Plausible deniability is the ability to deny any involvement in illegal or unethical activities, because there is no clear evidence to prove involvement."

(Political dictionary) 

A couple German celebrities and failed politicians (former left/far left party leaders) have recently promoted a manifesto for peace in Ukraine. I do vehemently disagree with the proposal that compromises should be made with the aggressor Russia (presumably by Ukraine), but that's a matter of opinion. Some people value peace more than freedom, and I do sympathise with the "Lieber rot als tot" (Rather red than dead) attitude of the 80's peace movement, for example.

Another key demand of the manifesto is to stop the "escalation" of arms deliveries. It's rather confusing how supposed peace activists could oppose the remaining arms deliveries escalation stage of delivering combat aircraft that would be used to stop cruise missiles from hitting civilian buildings and installations, including playgrounds.

- - - - -

The manifesto was not received by the news media in a literal sense. In my impression they did largely report that it was against arms deliveries, if they reported contents at all.

That's why I brought up the two quotes first: The manifesto is in my opinion somewhat dirty rhetoric.

The authors wrote a manifesto that says very little, but implies very much. It's not meant to be read as it's written (dog whistle), and the difference between the wording and the message is supposed to provide plausible deniability against charges that it's favouring the aggressor Russia.

It's fair to say that the manifesto and the political demonstration of reportedly 13,000 people were meant to create political pressure against arms deliveries in general, not just against "escalations" of arms deliveries.

That sounds radical and pro-aggression today, but it was actually ordinary German law and practice until we delivered weapons to the Kurds for the fight against daesh a couple years ago. 

 

BTW, I don't think that the authors of the manifesto were bribed by Russia to do it. I think they're deluding themselves into thinking that what they want is feasible and smart.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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The Kremlin's puppets

.
Putin's regime is still playing the American far right like a fiddle.

They have buttons on their table, and they know exactly what happens when they press the button "American right wing shall hate other Americans and their president some more".

So POTUS wanted the two Americans who are being held with dubious criminal convictions in Russia, and his diplomats negotiated. The Russian regime did the obvious thing; it maximised how much damage it can do, for the U.S. has nobody in custody whom they really want freed.

 

They gave POTUS a young, black, female and Cannabis-using and lesbian citizen back and categorically rejected the notion of releasing the other guy, a former Marine.

Naturally, the far right sprang into action and began hating, as if POTUS had betrayed the good guy to get some woke (the word they use on everything they hate these days, but cannot defined properly) person back instead.

There was hate on the freed captive, hate on the president, ... utterly predictable.

But why was there such hate? Wouldn't a patriotic party be glad that a fellow citizen was freed? Wouldn't it be glad that the president had a success?

What does it take to hate and be outraged instead? Maybe it takes hating about half of the own country, and putting party partisanship before country?

The remarkable thing about this exchange is that it happened despite the reactions being so completely predictable. POTUS obviously decided that freeing a fellow citizen would be worth the backlash to freeing a fellow citizen. He's put country before party politics. This was clearly no issue suitable to mobilise followers for the next elections (which are now very distant), so this degree of selflessness is plausible.

By the way, that "marine"? Discharged for bad conduct. A thief. The reflexive militarism that was exposed by the reactions was interesting. "marine" = "good guy" was implied, because militarism. He's neither. The marines don't think he's one of them, they didn't want him to be one of them. A thief.

He's still a citizen who should be repatriated, but that was not on the table. And the reason for that is probably the far right wing. Their predictable response to him not getting freed is what made it so unattractive to the Kremlin to let him go.

BTW, the lying moron had two years time to get Whelan for Bout only if that was ever a possible deal. He didn't. Well, coherent thoughts are not a requirement to become a hyperpartisan hater who hates half of the own people.

The Russian regime needs to play slightly different tunes to control the German far right (or the German far left), but it knows how to do that as well. These days show who's truly the vaterlandslose Gesellen.

It's important and valuable to expose who gets played how easily and clearly. Keep in mind who's a puppet of the Kremlin, dancing by the Kremlin's tune, when you get to vote again!

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

BTW, if you think Bud is going to be a big arms dealer again, maybe importing weapons fro Putin: Bollocks. His business model was to bribe high-ranking officers to sell him what's in Russia's arms warehouses and he had a fleet of old cargo aircraft to deliver those weapons. If anything, Putin is angry at him because this guy is a big part of the reason why the Russian army lacks equipment for mobilization and a small part of the reason why it's so corrupt and lying so much.

.

The mirror Putin law

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Putin's pretence that the war of aggression / war of intended conquest against Ukraine is no war was ridiculed much, but it's a very serious thing. Some Russians go to jail for years because they publicly called it a war.

We should not forget that the attempt to suppress domestic dissent against warfare by denying war is war is not specific to this instance. The Korean War was called (counter to customs and the intent of the U.S. constitution) not a declared war and called a "police action" by the U.S..

Many politicians in the West have ever since played games with soldiers' and civilians' lives at no expense to themselves, and without proper political backlash by pretending that war isn't war.

I propose we get a "mirror Putin" law that criminalises for politicians to not call a war a war, and give anyone the right to go to court to prosecute (and deny the Generalbundesanwalt in Germany the right to take over the case, so it cannot kill off the prosecution). Sure, hundreds of politicians would still enjoy parliamentary immunity, but politically obedient state attorneys could not protect them and the cases would linger without statute of limitations counting down. Lying warmongers would fear to be delivered to justice, even if they stay in parliament (a changed majority after an election might lead to a nullification of their immunity). It would be a Sword of Damocles that might protect us from lies that make it easier for warmongers to launch and keep going stupid small wars.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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This is going to cause me trouble

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Foreign policy in Western Europe and later the whole EU was coined by cooperation and building of support for joint policies after 1951. This stood in stark contrast to the events of the Second World War and much of the 1930's as well as the First World War. The ultimately unsuccessful efforts to come to peaceful cooperation from the late 1920's had been picked up and brought to success.

We entered an age in which -at least within Western Europe and within our societies- confrontation had a bad reputation while cooperation, consensus-seeking and talking to adversaries had a good reputation to the point of being considered the only acceptable behaviour.

This macro level behaviour reminds me of the stereotypical advice that women give regarding conflicts; talk, talk, talk. Never in my life have I heard a woman advise to confront a source of trouble. This seems borne from evolution to me; the women of the world would have spent most of the past 900,000 years or so with broken jaws and worse if they had immediately confronted aggressive men rather than tried to keep the conflict at the level of talking (and shouting). It sure seems to have been a successful evolutionary strategy, but I suspect this success was misleading.

It's usually not the talking that reduces or solves the problem with some aggressor; it's that one man or multiple men step in to defend the woman. So the evolutionarily successful strategy wasn't really to limit yourself to talking; it was for women to buy time till men address (often solve) their problem with an aggressive man. This appears to have been lost somehow, and the belief in the power of the spoken (or written) word took over within Western societies.* 

Today's women appear to suffer from the twin delusions that their hardcoded approach is universally superior and that they typically solve conflicts with aggressive parties themselves. I have never seen the latter happen in my life. All that I ever saw was that aggressive people shied away from further escalation when men stood up and faced them, deterring further aggressive moves.

Sadly, this twin delusion has infected the political 'class'. Germany has many politicians who are highly proficient in hiding failures and shortcomings until given intense scrutiny, and highly proficient in building networks of political support within their own party. Nowhere to see is a talent or suitable character for standing up and facing an aggressor to force him to cease with his aggressions.

Instead, they fall back to the only thing they know, the only thing the women ideology recommends; talk, talk, talk. Well, this and spending public money, especially when others chose to do more than talking.

Sorry for the blunt and unsophisticated messaging, but this repertoire is terribly incomplete. Cooperation, consensus, network-building all have their place, time and subject where they are the best path of action, but the challenge posed by aggressors isn't among them. Maybe they could eventually succeed, but this would be way too slow, and lead to too much suffering and damage. What's needed is a good-old-fashioned, stone age-hardcoded behaviour of a group of men standing up and facing the aggressor selflessly.

I do not believe that the public (media, politicians, pundits) are ready to accept this publicly. Their careers depend on not acknowledging it, for none of them are competent enough for their jobs and this could become completely obvious. Our society (societies) allowed a delusional ideology to take over, and it led us to a path of giving extraordinary power to systematically flawed personalities.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: This clearly excludes their dealing with foreigners on distant continents.

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Political paralysis in Europe

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Political indecisiveness and paralysis is probably the biggest problem in Europe.

It's not a design fault of the EU's imperfect institutions and rules. The very same inability to act or at least react decisively can be seen on the national level in many European countries.

It's not all about resources, either. Sure, mature governments with slow-growing economies and many established vested interests face great difficulties when they need to reallocate resources, for all of the available resources are allocated and very few are being gained even during economic growth years. That still doesn't explain the paralysis on the many topics where very few resources would be needed for decisive and successful action. So it's not about resources, either.

There are some exceptions to the dominance of paralysis, but none seem very promising and applicable in most of Europe at the same time:

• The Scandinavians and Dutch are rather progressive and willing to experiment, with occasional periods of arresting the development when conservatives take over for a while
• Some erratic politicians make many proposals for action, but aren't really patient enough to first lay the groundwork for their success (recent French presidents)
• Some extremist politicians call for decisive action, though usually with simplistic and unimpressive ideas

The German conservatives (now down to about a quarter of the vote in polls, but still likely to remain in power in next year's elections) are actual conservatives. German conservative politicians want to do hardly anything but passing a budget. They pass almost no reforms to speak of*, and the very few exceptions are almost invariably disasters**, which only feeds their disgust for change*. German conservatives dislike change and reform so much, they refuse to acknowledge the existence of problems to avoid accepting a need for action as long as possible. They pretend that no reform would work and staying the course is 'without alternatives' later on when the problem cannot be denied any more.

Other countries who have extremists disguised as conservatives can envy us for our conservatives. German conservatives are a fine alternative to reform-minded parties, usable as an occasional brake when the bus gets too quick. The German problem is that we've had our conservatives in power for about four decades, only shortly interrupted by neoliberals who disguised as social democrats. They broke more than they fixed IMO.

The German paralysis - the inability to muster decisive, successful action against a problem or in an opportunity - is thus a political one. Our voters kept voting for paralysis, it's our own fault. Well, it was always a minority, but a large one - and German political culture says that the biggest party in a governing coalition gets the head of government job and thus becomes dominant. That's how around 25% of our active voters (=less than 20% of our adults) can ensure paralysis even though there are hardly any self-blockade mechanisms in our constitution.

I strongly suspect that the reasons behind the obvious paralysis vary between countries. Some challenges are similar (such as youth unemployment in the Med area), while others are very country-specific. Still, decisive and successful action is hardly anywhere to be seen.

The Russian government can launch decisive action (though it's not motivated to do so on the most severe problems facing Russia), but it falls short in regard to successes.

The Chinese government can launch decisive action and met with many successes, though it needs enormous resources and a tyranny's arsenal to achieve this much.

Many people blame the weirdest things for our societies' prevailing problems, and I consider those bogeymen to be distractions. Our real problem is the paralysis, and handing power to extremists who delve in fantasyland and don't universally respect our constitutional freedoms is not a solution.

We should generally be much more diligent in our voting decisions. People only deserve political power above ordinary level (voting rights) if they respect the constitution and all the rights and protections it provides for everyone (yes, everyone - almost all rights in there apply to humans, not just citizens). Another condition should be that the candidate (or party) can be trusted to act decisively and successfully against problems or in opportunities. Conservatism is only fine in exceptional situations when there had been too much reform turmoil and some other party needs to clean up some failed experiments which the original experimenters won't clean up themselves.

Was this about defence and freedom? Yes it was, absolutely. Paralysis keeps us from proper military reforms, it keeps us from achieving more prosperity and resilience. The extremists who provide a fake alternative to failing parties are a threat to our freedom.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: Belgium and the UK are special cases and their kind of paralysis by temporary lack of parliament majorities on questions about the nature of the nation state isn't what I'm writing about.

*: CSU not excluded.

**: CSU included with emphasis. 

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(Current) Bundeswehr policy

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The German secretary of defence is falling the career stairs upward after a string of failures with no real successes to show in years of being in command of the German military. This is an unpublished blog post (written long ago) about this secretary of defence's policies and expected effects. I wasn't sure enough to publish it, but I suppose it's accurate enough in hindsight. SecDef also failed to repair the horrible procurement system, an attempt that I didn't expect to happen. To be fair; the procurement system is in small part broken because the parliamentary committee is part of the problem. 

- - - - -

It's becoming more clear that the new German minister of defence (background in family and social policies, little clue about military affairs) will focus on personnel affairs of the Bundeswehr. Some political risk aversion is likely; this politician still plans for a bigger political career and major blunders in this office don't fit into such plans. This makes new stupid small wars less likely. They're probably well outside the comfort zone and too far outside of popular opinion.

The personnel affairs focus will likely pay attention to attractiveness of the service, more integration of women, compatibility of family and deployments and the like.

The sum of this may be an improvement, but it's bound to worsen a problem which I intended to write about for a long time. The problem here is the choice of words, though.

________

But first the recent developments from the press:
The media folks don't like the current ruling coalition, and they pay much attention to the minister of defence because she's such an obvious mismatch. The reports first looked a lot into her potential area of activity; the attractiveness of service. The obvious choice for research by journalists is to look at the complaints which soldiers filed last year. That's apparently where the journalists who are usually well-insulated from all things military began paying attention to a common complaint; that female soldiers can pass tests and get promotions without delivering the required performance (and thus competing unfairly with male soldiers for acceptance as professional soldiers after the initial volunteer service). The journalists began highlighting these complaints. This serves both the journalists' hostility to this coalition and the particular choice of minister of defence (since it's almost unreasonable to expect that the minister is going to correct the issue) and it is about the minister's focus on attractiveness of service.

________

Now about the (not entirely new) problem:
Some Western military forces had serious recruitment challenges during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but oddly not necessarily with their infantry recruitment. There is apparently a small share of the male population which has an innate desire to go to war (exactly once). It's some strange male instinct (or cultural thing?) apparently, and its major drawback for recruitment is that these men typically don't re-enlist after one tour in a war zone; they've "had their war" already, and we all know this kind of job sucks 90% of the time anyway so few of them stay.*

 

A less extreme phenomenon among the same lines is that likely thousands of men seek military service every year (in Germany alone) because it's manly or something - without expecting to see combat.

Furthermore, a majority of enlisted and NCO personnel is according to decades of Bundeswehr experiences more satisfied with their job if it's a challenging, if not tough, one. Easy, simple service is too boring (and everyone who served knows the particular problem of idling).

A nicer, more gentle service may attract more recruits in the mid and long term, but it may easily make re-enlistment less likely, lead to more complaints about idling and may also make recruitment of suitable personnel for the combat units much more difficult.

The Bundeswehr recruitment videos of the past couple years were originally meant to be the centre of a critical blog post. I never wrote it for a simple reason: I couldn't stand watching all those videos in entirety. I sure cannot stand embedding or linking to a single one either.

The message of some of these recruitment videos was approximately 'Join us and don't worry - the Bundeswehr isn't so very military. You can do civilian-like jobs, merely with different work clothes.'

By now it should be obvious what's the big problem with the choice of words here: The official line has gone so far away from a "tough" line that criticizing it makes it difficult to keep appropriate distance to some dumb right winger bullocks. Dumb people talk a lot of shit, and they occupy a lot of keywords which would otherwise be a good choice to describe the problem.

My concern is efficiency and satisfactory effectiveness of the Bundeswehr and our defence policy in general. It doesn't help to make the big stick not only smaller, but also softer and more gentle to handle with a coating for great haptic quality if in the end it's too limp for its intended role of scaring or beating the s### out of (potential) aggressors. That's what defence is about, after all; to deter and if that fails to save with violence.

The more efficient the tool is, the smaller and cheaper it can be.

I have "doubts" whether the soft and nice approach is a good idea for the army. I don't mind it for the air force or navy, but the army will run into trouble if the recruitment focus is on non-combat types and if the training is oriented at not burdening the personnel much instead of challenging them to become hardened experts of their profession. I also don't think that the much wished-for ideal of being able to plan your career (and its locations) for years in advance makes much sense in the greater picture.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I'm not going to provide evidence for this, as this is neither a paid nor scientific text and I'm not inclined to look up gazillions of articles to find the sources again. In case you wonder where it came from; Canadians published this issue based on their recruitment and retention experience during their Afghanistan involvement.

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Link dump June 2019

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So this is a thing in South Asia.

 - - - - -

www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw-chemical-weapons-chlorine-gas-video-conspiracy-theory-russia-a8927116.html

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"China's facial recognition at work"
9gag.com/gag/a83Xr31

- - - - -

theintercept.com/2019/05/28/bernie-sanders-asked-bill-kristol-to-apologize-for-pushing-the-iraq-war-guess-what-happened-next/

- - - - -

www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/22/uk-suffers-crushing-defeat-un-vote-chagos-islands

- - - - -

- - - - -

This reminded me of him:

- - - - -

Another one from Jeffries:

(She's one of those people who famously seem to cheat time, like Kate Beckinsale, Patrick Stewart, Monica Bellucci, Paul Rudd, Suzanna Hoffs, Avril Lavigne, Jim Parsons, Allyson Hannigan, Christie Brinkley, Lori Loughlin, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.)
 

- - - - -

theintercept.com/2019/05/17/us-media-journalists-iran-coverage/

There's an easy solution to end the warmongering against Iran and stabilise the Persian Gulf region's northern side for good: Iran needs to enter an alliance with a nuclear power. It could enter an alliance with Russia, with China, with India or major EU powers.

The media makes it look as if Europe couldn't decisively interfere against the warmongering. That's wrong. Europe's power and influence is limited by its own will more than by anything else. 

Admittedly, the cooperation-focused policies in Europe have created a political class ill-suited to deal with sociopaths effectively.

- - - - -

Hat tip to "An economic sense", an underrated economics blog.
He clearly should have made it into this list, but then again, the very well-known Mankiw didn't either.

My background as economist sometimes lets me write about economics and military affairs issues myself once in a while:

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2015/11/preferences.html

/2014/11/labour-unions.html

/2013/11/sunk-costs-principal-agent-problem-how.html

/2013/11/german-grand-strategy-and-economics.html

/2013/10/opportunity-costs-and-decision-making.html

/2013/09/musings-about-hard-shells-and-soft.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2013/07/national-vitality-growth-military-power.html

/2013/07/economics-wonkish-we-systematically.html

/2012/01/euro-crisis-and-defence.html

/2009/01/update-on-stimulus-packages-military.html

/2009/02/defense-stimulus-topic-and-this-blog.html

/2008/10/public-debt-military-expenditures.html

This might be considered really wrong, but I still think the basic issue is a real one because I have this childish-naive notion that things better be sustainable:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/10/excursion-economic-crisis-in-usa.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/extent-of-economical-problem-because.html

 "I'm curious how well this economic opinion will stand the test of time."
So far I'm not too enthusiastic.

Looking back, I must say I did not fully resist the fashionable public debt craze of 2009-2012. I did largely resist the then fashionable calls for austerity (except for the Greek military budget IIRC, but that's a special case as much of the spending goes to imports), though. Another saving grace is that I called for at least some counter-cyclical spending (hastened military procurement and IIRC also infrastructure projects to have some expansionary effect without much influence on long-term public debt).

As a conclusion, I must say my previous (anti-Keynesian) professor for public finance lectures probably still had me influenced with the crowding-out thing that turned out to not matter under the specific circumstances (zero lower bound issue) of 2008-2013. 

I like to cultivate an outside-the-box, non-mainstream attitude and way of thinking, but some of my macroeconomics postings from 2008-mid 2013 weren't nearly as timeless as I hoped my blog posts would prove to be. I still don't think I was wrong, but history didn't exactly prove me correct on the trade balance and public debt alarmism issues, either.

- - - - -

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/30/after-neoliberalism

What must be said; nothing in there is contrary to economic science. To the contrary, it's exactly what economic research suggests will or does work well. Neoliberalism on the other hand is only partially reconcilable with economic theory and empirical observations. Neoliberalism is based on first order effects in the better cases and utter nonsense in some other cases (the latter category is largely confined to the anglophone world). Stiglitz is no proponent of some radical left wing ideology; he's proposing to make use of what we know about real world economics as opposed to fantasyland economics.
Neoliberalism isn't the origin of all economic evils in the West, though. A couple metrics began a trend for the worse in the 1973-1980 period already. Neoliberalism was probably less harmful with its pursuit of its agenda than by not doing anything about those bad trends.

- - - - -

www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/new-congressional-study-finds-little-economic-benefit-2017-tax-cuts

Don't fall the anarchists' voodoo economics,

which end up eroding the strength of the nation.

- - - - -

My pageviews from an arbitrary recent 7-day period (monthly is about 25k):

I have no explanation for why the German share kept dwindling over time. The Russian share is even more confusing - it wasn't nearly this large before and I haven't written anything of special interest to Russians since the Shilka article in February.

- - - - -

tankarchives.blogspot.com/2019/05/t-34-85-review.html

"The present T-34 ammunition capacity is 55 rounds: 5 APCR, 20 armour piercing, 30 HE. This is not enough and only lasts for 1.5-2 hours of battle."

This is a common theme from combat reports and memoirs about tank warfare (which is mostly combat against opposition other than tanks). 30 rds HE and thousands of machinegun rounds lasted for less than 2 hrs in this report. We should expect that 10+ of today's 120 mm HE rounds would be expended in an hour of combat. Resupply of munitions should be considered a most important aspect of tactical combat and operational-level efforts unless it's about pursuit (pursuit is much more about fuel supply and POW handling than about munitions supply).

I'm not informed about the inventories of dedicated 120 mm HE tank rounds such as DM11*, but I have a hunch they would be expended real quick, and then most Western tankers would use the less efficient HEAT supposed multi-purpose rounds against "soft" targets, expending them really quick to get the desired effects. Western MBTs might be downgraded to coaxial 7.62NATO machinegun fires against all soft targets well before the campaign ends.

This old topic did hit a similar spot.

- - - - -

Sometimes, armed bureaucracy public relations people should better just admit they're clueless, useless and stupid. It would be less disastrous than them trying to do their job.

- - - - -

tankarchives.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-myth-of-disposable-t-34.html

I have argued against this myth myself as well. Claims that the durability of a T-34's was a few days does not square with the quantities produced and the inventories in service (thousands) over a span of years.

About 80,000 T-34s were  produced during WW2, and the average inventory was somewhere around 3,000 to 4,000 That would lead to them lasting for 1/20th to about 1/30th of the war duration (June 1941 to August 1945 for the USSR) in a first approximation estimate. This leads to a likely average T-34 life of more than two months during WW2 (much of it in storage, transit or training, though). It certainly wasn't a few days, for then they couldn't have trained the tank crews.

My suspicion is that the myth rests on the rumour that T-34s produced in Leningrad during the siege had very short lifespans (some of them were supposedly manned by workers, not tank-trained soldiers). An average durability of few days at the front may have been correct there in 1942. Most T-34s in use were likely used for months, though.

 

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Vote shares among first-time voters
in the election for the European Parliament in Germany

The radical right wingers largely failed in the recent election in Germany; they got more votes than previously (back when their party wasn't overtly xenophobic and nationalistic yet), but less than polls indicated for them if there had been federal elections instead. They got a mere 11% and frankly, I don't see them ever getting past 18% (but then again I didn't expect the FDP strawfire a couple years ago or the recent greens boom past 20% either). There are only so many right wingnuts and protest voters in this country.

The young voters clearly don't see their future in the radical right, and now don't seem to like the formerly huge and dominating conservative and social-democratic parties either.

- - - - -

[German video]

I may have been too nice to the CDU last time when I diagnosed them to not be radical right wingers on the same slippery slope towards overt authoritarianism. Their chairwoman and designated future chancellor reacted to electoral defeat and Rezo's video with a public statement that can only be interpreted as the wish for censorship against such disagreeable non-traditional media. The previous CDU call for censorship was von der Leyen's anti-constitutional call for internet censorship (with  pedophiles as excuse for the entrance into censorship).
The CDU may not seem so undemocratic as some radical right wing parties because so far it did not feel threatened in its power. Anyway, that chairwoman just disqualified herself from all high offices in my opinion.

I don't think she or the other CDU politicians who got in trouble this week really want censorship. It's less simple, but even more dangerous than that. They think of themselves as the 'good guys', and 'good guys' don't commit atrocities. So by definition they cannot want censorship, as censorship is bad. They just want some etiquette (I wonder why they didn't find this word themselves) that shuts up critics or at least moderates them to the level of harmlessness (taming) that the CDU is used to from newspapers and TV shows.
See? That's not 'censorship'. Just as Americans were the good guys and of course did not torture. They waterboarded, but since Americans are the good guys this meant that waterboarding must not be torture (when Americans do it). It's a slippery slope that unhinges the taboo of being evil. That's even more dangerous than overt agitation in favour of censorship.

"ich wusste nicht dass 70 Jahre Grundgesetz ne Abschiedsfeier war"

("I didn't know that 70 years German constitution was a farewell party)

A youtube comment

- - - - -

The inability of the CDU to cope with the Youtuber criticism should not surprise**. The other parties would probably not be much better at it.

- - - - -

[for German speakers] Und nun noch mal in inhaltlich anderer Langform:

Wenn man sich dieses Wahlergebnis und diesen Link hier

https://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a215a302 

(= leider nur ein Beweis von Anekdotenqualität)

ansieht, dann stellt sich hier in der Tat die Frage, ob das jetzt ein tipping point war, also ein Ereignis, bei dem ein scheinbar stabiles System an seiner Unzulänglichkeit kollabiert.

Könnte es wirklich sein, dass die Generation U30 oder gar Generation U40 aufsteht und gegen den Status Quo vorgeht? Es ist kaum ein Geheimnis, dass die Politik sich kaum um Langfristthemen und Jugendinteressen kümmert. Ebenso ist es kein Geheimnis, dass nach ca. 70 bzw. 30 Jahren Bundesrepublik in Politik und Verwaltung alles festgesetzt und kaum noch zu entschiedener Reform fähig zu sein scheint.

Falls das wirklich ein tipping point ist - und bei sowas verschätzt man sich sehr, sehr leicht -, dann wäre eine mögliche Konsequenz, dass wir von einer (abnehmend) programmatisch links-rechts orientierten Politik zu einer jung-alt Orientierung übergehen könnten.
Die alte links-rechts Orientierung der Politik funktioniert ohnehin nicht mehr, seit die SPD in den 90ern nach Lafontaines Wahlniederlage auf Bundesebene neoliberal wurde.

Eine jung-alt Orientierung würde allerdings auch eine urban-rural Spaltung bedeuten. Die bemerkt man in Ostdeutschland (wo Großstädte die einzigen Inseln des Wohlstandes und vorteilhafter Entwicklungen zu sein scheinen) jetzt schon in extremer Form.
Wir würden vielleicht in einer krassen Weise die Entwicklung zur Polarisierung nachholen, die die Amis vollzogen haben. Jetzt muss man wohl hoffen, dass es Russen und Springer Verlag nicht gelingt, hier sowas wie Fox News, rechtsradikales talk radio und Breitbart zu etablieren. Dann stünden uns nämlich einige Jahrzehnte der gesellschaftlichen Selbstvergiftung und dysfunktionaler Politik bevor.

- - - - -

[for Germans] www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Bundesdatenschuetzer-Kritik-an-Darknet-Gesetz-will-Sicherheitsgesetz-Pause-4425762.html

- - - - -

[for Germans] https://bildblog.de/110891/cdu-und-faz-widersprechen-rezo-mit-falschen-fakten/

[for Germans] https://twitter.com/ralfheimann/status/1131565727780098048

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: The initial order for DM11 was 5,000, which would barely be enough for a single sensible munitions mix combat load per in-use Leopard 2 of the German army. I don't think there was a 2nd order yet.
**: The link shows the average age of party members (not voters) at the end of 2017. 

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German politics (2018)

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German politics appear to keep shifting, albeit slowly. The old extreme form of stability of the Kohl era is gone, nowadays parties can lose giant chunks of their base in a few years, or multiply their votes for no apparent reason.

Here's my summary of the current situation:

CDU 

Still the biggest party, and apparently the only one that still maintains the "Volkspartei" reputation; trying to represent (almost) everyone, in principle electable for all population groups (though the "C" as "Christlich"/"Christian" is a bit of a deterrent to non-Christian people of faith). They are still allied with the CSU and thus present only in the 15 states where there's no CSU.

The CDU is facing three fundamental issues:

1) An entire generation of politicians who want to get rid of the career glass ceiling that's the Merkel establishment.

2) Voters who slowly notice that the CDU didn't solve a single problem since the early 90's.*

3) The CDU is not seeking to trigger, magnify and exploit fears among the electorate due to the "Volkspartei" approach, or at least not much. Their half-assed exploitations of the organised crime, terrorist, salafist, Reichsbürger (anarchists), Identitäre (neonazis) and paedophiles bogeymen is peanuts compared to the staple of fearmongering, scaremongering and hatemongering that conservatives exploit in many other Western countries. This leaves opportunities to other right wing parties.
In regard to military affairs it's noteworthy that soem CDU politicians haven't really gone past the end of the conscription. That topic was brought up again, but I don't think it will go anywhere. Keep in mind it was brought up during the low news summertime.

CSU 

Bavarians, the Texans of Germany. The CSU is present in but one of 16 states, and though quite competent at governing it (some corruption in the CSU is completely understandable given that they governed Bavaria for 60 years without any other government ever cleaning up).

They share issue #1 with the internal opponents of Merkel, do not share issue #2 with the CDU (I don't like many of their policies, but they do occasionally solve or even prevent problems) and they understood issue #3. The CSU has a history of loudmouth and aggressive behaviour anyway, so exploitation of fearfulness is second nature to them.

SPD

These supposed social democrats are rather Blairites and as far as I can tell nobody seems to consider them to be champions of the poor and lower middle class any more. The entire party's existence appears to be due to inertia, and it's withering away rapidly. The left wing of the party deserted in disgust of Schröder's policies long ago (mostly to LINKE and greens, I think), and the remnants have hardly anything to offer to anyone. Regardless of who you are; you can find a party that represents you better than the SPD. I suppose that almost all of the remaining SPD voters vote for the SPD out of habit or because they know some particularly convincing SPD politician.

greens

The greens have a reputation as a party of academics rather than as an environmental protection party nowadays.

They keep shooting themselves in the foot by means of their reflexive siding with minorities and thus with what's in English widely called "social justice warriors". There's hardly ever any underdog or minority that the German greens do not side with, which doesn't exactly sound like smart politics. They could probably be a 30...40% party nation-wide if they hadn't this "pro-minority" reflex. They're still doing quite fine, as they don't have many no-go issues for voters save for the reflexive siding with minorities. In fact, they are en route to become the biggest party in some particularly wealthy areas and appear to become the second-largest party in some more states. Their minority focus may actually fade as and if they grow into a "Volkspartei".

FDP

They are liberals in the literal sense (not "liberals" = social democrats, as in the U.S.), and this party of liberals is extremely close to "business", not at all close to "employees" or even "unemployed people". They could have joined the governing coalition, but bailed out of the coalition talks for still not really publicly understood reasons. The FDP is notable for its extreme volatility. Anything ranging from not passing the 5% threshold and thus not entering the Bundestag up to 20% of the Bundestag seats appears possible with the FDP.

Politically they do little but providing stalwart defenders of civil rights and rule of law for the ministers of justice offices and helping the wealthy and rich.
Corruption may be at work in the background; the party has some extreme finance issues and some of their pro-business policies such as the infamous VAT tax break for hotels were fishy.

Pirate party

They're dead. They didn't get their internal party workings right and eventually failed for good in elections.

LINKE

The one relevant left wing party. They're in governing coalitions in some Eastern states, but at the federal level they haven't been in power ever and thus bathe comfortably in ideological purity, which makes them quite insufferable to most people regardless of how well they point out actual problems of workers, retirees and unemployed people. The orthodoxy wing appears to be winning against internal efforts to steer towards 'realpolitik'. I suppose they won't become part of a governing coalition at the federal level unless they would be needed to keep neonazis from power (which won't happen). Last but not least, their majority loves to side with minorities.

AfD

Founded as a party with a weird predominance of economics professors that rebelled against the common European currency and CDU inactivity, they suffered two waves of hostile takeovers first by the far right and then by the even farther right. Nowadays they're still maintaining a minimal deniability regarding their neonazi party nature, but that may break away any time. Ever since the takeovers they went all-in on fearmongering and exploitation of fears, but most of them are stupid enough to be true believers. Those are no cynical politicians who exploit fears of dumb people to gain power and then redistribute income from the middle class to the rich.

They have the stable roughly 4-6% neonazis-in-Germany base plus a fluctuating and not really predictable base of protest voters. Anything ranging from 4-20% of the vote seems possible for them, and 6-16% is probably what one should expect in the next elections.

The AfD could easily collapse from infighting or if some other party succeeds at attracting the protest voters (the Realpolitik wing of the far left tries such a thing). Fearmongering is always possible, so actually solving any issues that the AfD fearmongers about is rather not going to make it go away. Nor should any sensible person expect a fearmongering-based party to actually solve any problems; to solve actual problems would debase the party (which discourages the not-so-true believers), and all-too often the fearmongering isn't about real problems anyway.

Polls about how many votes the parties would get if there were federal elections next Sunday:

https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
The next federal elections will be no later than 2021, but the elections in the states could in the meantime change the 2nd chamber of the parliament (the Bundesrat), which has powers in regard to legislation that burdens the states.

There's no sensible coalition in sight that would address real issues with real, competent reforms. I suppose that Germany is going to enter the 2020's on autopilot.

related:
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2017/01/current-politics-in-germany.html
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2013/09/money-in-german-elections.html
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2008/06/german-party-landscape.html

S O,

a Sozialliberaler

*: This is but a slight exaggeration.

A top CDU politician, Schäuble, recently said in an interview: "Wenn die jungen Leute sich nicht wehren gegen uns Alte, dann geht es schief. Wir Alte können bei jedem Problem gut erklären, warum eine Lösung im Prinzip nicht möglich ist." (Something goes wrong if the young people don't push back against us old ones. We old [politicians] can explain for every problem why a solution isn't possible in principle.")
THIS is the problem with the CDU conservatives in power in Germany: They don't think that problems can be solved, thus they don't try to solve any problems. Why don't they think that problems can be solved? Well, many problems could be solved by accepting some other, smaller problem to pop up. That would be an improvement (just as buying food solves the hunger problem, but costs money), and it's also a change. Those people are real conservatives; they abhor change. Thus they cannot solve problems whenever this requires change.

Again; German CDU conservatives are real conservatives; they don't want change. Just stay the course. They're not like American conservatives who want radical change towards some unworkable 1920's gilded age-like fantasyland.

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Cooperation & solidarity vs. politics of aversions

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Back in the 80's there was much talk about the competition between capitalism/democracy and planning economy/single party dictatorship. During the 90's many people believed the thesis that Western liberalism had won for good.

I suppose this idea of Western liberalism is largely misunderstood. Its divisions are so extremely divergent since the 80's and have so very hostile partisanship divide between their followers that by now we could proclaim a new system competition within the Western world, in addition to the harassment by the relatively unimaginative authoritarian oligarchy with great power mindset in Russia.

The divide in the West isn't really about progressives and conservatives; few people truly deserve either label all-round anyway. The divide is different.

Germany's current society was built on a foundation of "us". "We" act together to solve our problems and challenges. Cooperation/togetherness and solidarity are the basic building blocks for this. Not everyone adheres to this foundation, but I suppose about 60-80% of Germans do.

The competing concept was revived in the 80's by Reaganism/Thatcherism, and became ever more extreme and rabid, but also ever more dishonest in the U.S. during the 90's and especially the Obama years:

It's a world view of "me, me, me!", in which one doesn't want a dime of one's taxes spent on helping 'brown people'. The central motivation in such politics is not to solve problems together, but to marginalize if not outright subjugate and hurt 'others' - brown people mostly, but also political enemies.

One group after another was declared to be 'takers', 'enemies', 'them', 'foreign'. Over time, this affected African-Americans, Hispanics (the supportive Cubans mostly excluded), Asians, Europeans, 'Leftists', more or less all government agencies, lesbians, gays, transgender, unemployed people, single mothers, women who had an abortion, medical personnel and consultants associated with abortions, journalists (up to the few actual news people on Fox News), Jews (though they are usually not targeted by those in high positions), Puerto Ricans and even Hawaiians.

The opposing political forces became more adversarial and hateful as well as the political culture deteriorated badly since the mid-90's with politicians obviously putting party before country most of the time.

This adversarial concept for politics solved few problems (though it did sometimes cut back errors made by the political opponent). Today, the U.S. has an unsustainable fiscal situation, unsustainably low savings rate, unsustainably low investment rate including public infrastructure investments, excessive spending on healthcare and 'security'/'defense', cannot solve pressing problems such as obesity rates/environmental issues/drugs/gun crimes/minority poverty rates and is rapidly losing most long-time friends in the world.

Still, there are plenty people who think that Germany needs exactly that kind of thinking.

It's obvious to me that switching to such an altogether different perspective on how to run a society would cause great transition harm to Germany even if the perspective as such was leading to superior policies.

For this reason there's a system competition between the U.S., Hungary, Poland and to a lesser extent the UK* (as well as minority political parties) on the one side and the cooperation- and solidarity-minded Germany, Netherlands and Scandinavian countries (as well as no doubt a couple other countries) on the other side.

Sure, the more mainstream interpretation views Hungary, Poland, Trumpism and Russia in one block that's threatening the Western liberal system. But I think this misses the point; Putin is merely amplifying the strength of antisocial ideas. The real competition if not conflict was there by the 80's already, then covered-up by the dominant Cold War that made Westerners close the ranks.

I fully expect comments calling me 'interesting in military affairs, naive in politics' and similar. There's nothing in here that would convert followers of the politics of aversion into cooperation- and solidarity-minded people, after all. This was just a diagnosis of how I see the fundamental problem of our time.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: Years ago I wrote about current challenges to Germany. I did not think of this one yet. It's become much more obvious now. Three years ago the popular majorites of Germany and the United States still felt like real allies. That was before adversarial politics triumphed in the U.S. in 2016 and Germany had an political party that directed aversion against minorities (and the established order) and still mattered.

*: They're having particularly interesting politics now, with the left wing of the supposedly left party having become powerful and opposing a poorly-led right wing.

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German nuclear participation

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There's occasionally a minor debate about whether the Americans should withdraw their about 20 nuclear bombs from Germany. This is more than a debate about the storage location for a handful of nukes; it's a debate about German nuclear participation.

So what's "nuclear participation"?

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty limits which ratifying countries may be nuclear powers and it does also prohibit transfer of control over nukes to non-nuclear powers.

The Cold War arrangement in NATO was that the Americans would hand over nuclear warheads (for example for ballistic Honest John, Lance, Sergeant & Pershing missiles as well as free-fall nuclear bombs) to allied non-nuclear powers such as the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). This made a lot of sense because in the event of WW3 the NNPT wouldn't matter any more and the Central European front(ier) was divided by nationality of forces. There would have been impractical friction and lags if an American rocket battery or strike fighter wing would have been designated to support a German army corps with battlefield nukes.

Bundeswehr Honest John SRBM with launcher vehicle

What was the (West)German motivation?

The basic law (constitution) of West Germany pretended that the West German government represented all of Germany and East Germany was no state, but a mere Soviet-occupied zone. The FRG government thus strived to represent the interests of East Germans as well. American and British plans to blow up all of East Germany with nukes were not in the best interest of East Germans.

Nor was it in the best interest of West Germans that French, British and Americans planned to blow West Germany up with battlefield nukes in defensive land battles.

To participate in the nuclear warhead delivery chain of events meant to be able to abort it. To provide alternatives to nuclear strikes (such as a strong army and the otherwise rather inexplicable Tornado IDS interdiction role) did help to avoid some nuclear strikes on German soil in the event of WW3.

(From this point of view it might irritate that the Bundeswehr wasn't located in Northern Germany only, opposing East Germany and the Soviet armies there. There are explanations for the actual locations; 

(1) a conscript army is much more sustainable if the conscripts serve all over the country. Southern Germany would have been pissed if all its conscripts had to serve 100-900 km far from their homes while Northern Germans would serve never farther than 500 km from their homes.

(2) the federal nature of the FRG meant that the Southern German politicians had much influence on this affair, and military bases were considered a good way to help the economy especially in rural areas

(3) the Bundeswehr provided the backbone to all allied forces in West Germany through its territorial (mobilised) army logistical and security forces

(4) the locations of the British and American forces were path dependent on the original occupation zones; Bundeswehr forces were squeezed in between

(5) the early Heer (pre-mid-60's)was quite fragile with training and spare parts issues in particular. It would have been unacceptable to have the entire northern half of the FRG guarded by the Heer alone

(6) the Belgians and Dutch preferred to have their forces not far away in Southern Germany, but in Northern or in the Central FRG.)

It wasn't the only point of view anyway; the early West German minister of defence (insert expression of disgust here) Strauß was all-in on throwing around nukes. He apparently focused on deterrence, not on mitigating how very much devastating WW3 would be to us. This was one of his few reasonable stances, actually.

- - - - -

The original motivation for the German nuclear participation is gone. If WW3 or WW4 still happens in Europe, it would likely begin and have its most extreme effects in Eastern Europe. Germany might still be affected (airbases, airports, Oder river bridges, ports), but not by NATO's nukes. As of now it's fairly unlikely that NATO would nuke locations in Eastern European NATO members even if they were overrun by Russian forces.

I strongly suppose nobody is seriously contemplating to seize the handful of American nukes (B61 bombs) stored in Germany. 

So what's the continued nuclear participation of Germany good for?

I suppose there's no "pro" side here, save for nebulous "transatlantic" ideology.

related:

/2009/07/nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty.html

/2017/07/treaty-on-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

clarification: All NATO members except France are part of the Nuclear Planning Group - a participation does not require us to afford delivery systems. Luxembourg sure has none and it's a member of the group.

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Election platforms on the federal election in Germany

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I compiled summaries of the election platforms of the relevant German parties for the federal elections 2017. The whole work was done in German language and can be accessed on the German language twin blog:

http://verteidigung-und-freiheit.blogspot.de/2017/07/auswertung-der-bundestagswahlprogramme.html

 S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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(deutsch) Tagesthemen Kommentar zum Verfassungsschutzbericht

(edit: The video was removed by the TV Network.)

Political action for direct democracy in Germany

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In case any of the few Germans among my audience (we're down to less than 15%) are interested: Here are links to the pro-direct democracy initiative Mehr Demokratie e.V., including its current petition:

https://www.mehr-demokratie.de/buka2017_aktionswoche.html

https://www.mehr-demokratie.de/

The British f***ed up with their Brexit vote (direct democracy) adventure, giving proponents of direct democracy a hard time. Well, actually the irrationality of people does so, for the Americans f***ed up with Trump through their representative democracy. It's thus obvious even by anecdotal evidence that representative democracy doesn't protect against f*** ups. I suppose that many people won't see that and will instead fall for the logical fallacy of demanding perfection from a reform proposal instead of demanding a net improvement only.

Mehr Demokratie e.V. has developed a bill with legal assistance that's actually very moderate. Essentially 100,000 signatures would force the parliament to consider a bill and if said bill is rejected (I suppose that would always happen, since even a certain amount of modification would be a rejection) a million signatures would suffice to force a plebiscite with lawmaking power.

I wish for a lot more, but this would be a decent improvement.

related:

/2010/07/bavaria-creates-anecdotical-evidence.html

/2010/03/lets-improve-our-democracy-work-in.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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New poll in Germany

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There's an interesting poll (by forsa, commissioned by the journal Stern) about defence issues in Germany:

"Sollte Deutschland seine Verteidigungsausgaben in den kommenden Jahren erhöhen?"

(Should Germany increase its defence spending in the next years?)

yes 42%

no 55%

Only supporters of the far right AfD and the liberal (pro-employer and usually pro-tax decreases) party FDP are in favour of increased defence spending.

"Sollte sich Deutschland militärisch noch stärker am Kampf gegen die Terrormiliz "Islamischer Staat" beteiligen?"

(Should Germany participate even stronger in the fight against the terror militia "Islamic State" militarily?)

yes 38%

no 56%

"Sind Sie dafür, dass die EU-Staaten eine europäische Verteidigungsunion aufbauen und ihre Streitkräfte zusammenschließen?"

(Are you in favour that the EU states create a European defence union and join their armed services?)

yes 50%

no 43%

I disagree with the majority on latter one, but that's for reasons of above-average knowledge on the subject. I suppose the vast majority of responders merely thought about the issue on the political level, where we learned that cooperation is a hugely successful approach most of the time. Sometimes it's not the best choice, though (same problem as with the common currency).

/2011/08/on-multinational-formations.html

/2013/09/the-peter-principle-and-multinational.html

- - - - -

I have seen an international poll about the willingness of men to fight for their country, with Germany ranking really low. I don't care about such polls because I think the reason for such a result is the feeling that we're not threatened. All the irrational aspects of readiness to fight only come into play once you feel that you or your community are under threat. Without this, only factors like grandstanding, versions of masculinity cult or a high esteem of the armed services will lead to a high rating in such a poll.

Regardless of what certain nutjobs all over the world claim, Germany is not in any real trouble, particularly not by external threats (including immigration).

Our pressing challenges aren't foreign ones, but domestic ones. We should correct the course on several harmful trends and restart our efforts to improve our system of government substantially.

Foreign "threats" are little more than bogeymen that scare the simple-minded ones, with a fig leaf of basis in reality. The polls above show that Germans aren't easily scared by bogeymen, unlike many other countries and the German far right.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Current politics in Germany

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The social-democratic party of Germany (SPD) will soon have a new chairman and candidate for chancellorship. Parties are required by the German constitution (basic law) to follow principles of democracy (Art.21(1)). This requires them to elect a chairman if there is such a party office, but in SPD, CDU, CSU, FDP and maybe even Die Linke and the greens this is a mere theory. Party offices get distributed by "top" politicians, and the low-ranking party members are supposed to elect the chosen one in an uncontested election. The question is merely how many do so. 80% is considered to be a signal of distrust by the party base, and anything up to about 90% gets widely interpreted as a signal that the politician did anger the party base in some way.

That's not exactly a description of democratic inner workings of parties, and may very well be a reason for why they are hardly able to adapt and reform; the small clique of "top" politicians have all the power, and any real party reform would have to  begin with removing them. They don't remove themselves, though - biology does. They only rotate offices between themselves. The SPD chairman of the past years is now supposed to become minister of foreign affairs, without having any noteworthy competence in this field. But that's no obstacle - after all, he had no particular competence to show for his current government office (minister of economic affairs) either. Everyone seems to assume that he wants the other office because politicians usually get popular and liked in it.

OK, that was the civil liberties and democracy ("freedom" ) part. Now let's look at the "defence" part of the story:

The pre-determined next chairman is Martin Schulz, a career politician known for his chairmanship at the EU parliament. He's part of the party's right wing, and this means a lot, since the party has shed its left wing (it deserted to the party Die Linke) a decade ago as a consequence of the non-social democratic policies under the SPD's right wing chairman Schröder. He's right wing in a party that consists of what used to be its right wing, and they're in a governing coalition with a slightly more right wing conservative party, the CDU. So the SPD is practically guaranteed to not turn to the left any time soon, but rather to become even more similar to the CDU. I strongly suspect that this is idiotic politics, for it practically guarantees an election defeat. Nobody needs a SPD that's hardly distinguishable from the CDU.

Moreover, Schulz is a European unification ideologist. Such people - let's call them "EUIs" - are extremists in their preference for international cooperation with all but a handful bad guy states.* Many EUI politicians also seem to be hawks regarding the bad guy states, eager to get the EU and/or NATO to bomb some other country together. Emphasis on "together" - that's more important to the EUIs than the bombs themselves. Their ideology is bipolar - cooperate and nothing but cooperation among friends and people you want to be friends with, including cooperation in extreme confrontation against people they feel no sympathy for.

So in the - incredibly unlikely if not impossible - case that the SPD wins the next election and leads a governing coalition with Schulz as chancellor we could expect to see almost no noteworthy reforms in domestic policies, but a lot of the EUI agenda in action. It's a bit difficult to predict an interaction of EUIs with Drumpf, though. On the one hand EUIs are "Transatlantiker" (preferring European-American harmony and cooperation), but on the other hand they're so only if it's not at the expense of the EU, and Drumpf is known to dislike the EU (and presumably all international win-win cooperation).

Meanwhile, the official German conservatives (CDU and CSU, politically ~ New England "liberals" and Texan "liberals") will have to decide how to fend off the attacks by the anti-internationalistic AfD, which is somewhat anti-EU (at least anti-Euro currency) and somewhat xenophobic, with an obvious infiltration by those closet neonazis who never quite joined the obvious neonazi parties. This may change the EU-related and immigration-related policies of the official conservative parties.

So what's in all of this regarding common "security" policy or common "defence" policy of the EU?

In any case the only EU nuclear power left is France, and they'll have their own presidential election. It's unlikely that much of anything in regard to the EU happens in France until that election, and if Le Pen wins the presidency there might even be an unofficial 'Franxit' - with the French government likely being unable to leave the EU, but wholly able to bring it to a full stop.

Let's assume that the French conservatives win the election instead, and so do the German ones. I suppose in that case everything is possible in regard to further European unification efforts, but most likely those policies will happen early on that were so far blocked mostly or only by the UK.

I don't think there will be real EU army prior to 2030, though. Maybe some symbolic 'EU rapid reaction corps' nonsense, but hardly anything real.

One thing might be feasible due to Drumpf, though; we Europeans might kick the Americans out of SHAPE and reinvent it as a wholly European headquarters, with Americans, Canadians and maybe even British officers as mere liaison officers. That might be politically feasible, fairly simple organisationally and almost for free. I doubt it would happen without Drumpf withdrawing or announcing to withdraw all American forces from Europe, though.

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: I dislike their almost perfect inability to admit design faults, overreach and other imperfections of the EU or other European unification projects. The marginal inability to correct mistakes is the single biggest problem in the EU and the Euro currency. Well, to be fair, the Euro currency in itself is a design fault and a result of EUI dreaming that perfectly disregarded the economic theory of the optimum currency area as well as all economic history lessons about the devastating fixed exchange rate regimes.

.