To anyone familiar with the matter, l this was long overdue, now the government just has a reason to greenlight >€1200 per citizen for badly needed investments, this wouldn’t have been a popular move before. Obviously the calculus changed. The Bundeswehr is not even close to what I’d consider the minimal requirements as it stands right now, but I still don’t like that we increase our annual spending on the military now. We need the money elsewhere, NATO should have enough guns already, this is just going down the industry-drain instead of funding much needed help in the care- and education sectors. We need elementary school teachers, psychologists, and systemic change for the people who care for the old, sick and weak. Instead we’re playing war games. That’s just not right
I think you're too harsh? The war games were not started by Germany, they are just reacting. It is only prudent to shore up your defenses when a country in your region starts a war, especially if that aggressor occupied part of your country until moderately recently.
>>It is only prudent to shore up your defenses when a country in your region starts a war
I'd actually say it is much more prudent to shore up your defenses BEFORE you need it, not after. Playing catch up is hard to do when the tanks start rolling in.
> We need the money elsewhere, NATO should have enough guns already, this is just going down the industry-drain instead of funding much needed help in the care- and education sectors. We need elementary school teachers, psychologists, and systemic change for the people who care for the old, sick and weak.
At long last, it would appear that German politicians understand what you still fail to grasp: You can ignore your defense budget, refuse to pull your (contractually defined) weight in a defense pact, and invest your ill-gotten savings elsewhere – but ultimately these investments will have been all for naught if you are unable to defend their returns when push comes to shove.
I think it shows quite a disconnect on your behalf to call it ‘war games’, it’s real people out there dying as you write this comment. A country sticking its head in the ground ignoring this to focus on internal matters is not a solid long term strategy.
Also NATO is not some kind of puppet Germany can use however it sees fit. It’s a group, where each member has its own interests and views and one day they might diverge from Germany’s.
While all the things you mentioned are very much needed, so is the power that ensures their security.
> it’s real people out there dying as you write this comment. A country sticking its head in the ground ignoring this to focus on internal matters is not a solid long term strategy.
ppl die every day, it's the quantity and reasons that should inform a strategy. (saying this as about 60 ppl died in a mining accident the other day)
I get your point but “elementary school teachers, psychologists, and systemic change for the people who care for the old, sick and weak” won’t mean much when Russia takes Poland and has troops at the Eastern border of Germany.
And let's not forget the additional money spent over the last two years on pandemic-related measures, that will already burden the tax payer for years.
Germany has money for all of that, it doesn't have to neglect healthcare to afford a working military.
Merkel has starved the Bundeswehr of resources relying on assumptions that have revealed themselves to be false. Historical alliances can be unreliable (Trump) and historical rivalries can be reignited (Russia). I fully support this move by Scholz.
While we do have money, I don’t agree with this move.
In the end, the german tax payer will need to pay more for gas, since we are importing very expensive fracking gas from the US now, instead of getting cheap gas via nordstream 2.
Germany has so many social issues, we honestly should spend more money to get people off the street and have affordable housing. Not spending another 100bn on weapons and destructive activities.
Right now NATO is the United States. Tucker Carlson has a point when he claims that this conflict doesn't concern the US, it really doesn't. It concerns Europe. And with 450m people and that GDP, the EU shouldn't be a third wheel in this conflict, and it is the EU, not Biden, who should have detered Russia. It is time that Europe takes its defense seriously, starting with Germany.
International treaties are only worth the will of the signing parties to enforce them. Just like the Budapest Memorandum. And NATO is just another treaty.
The problem is political, it is not shortage of planes, tanks and missiles. Europe has more and better military hardware than Russia in every category except SAMs.
The challange is EU governments and armies don't act in unison.
I disagree. Education and other funding is irrelevant if they are teaching Russian at your local school.
My personal take on this is the Western world must show force in order to avoid further conflicts. I believe NATO has a leadership and strategy crisis at the moment, British secretary of defense talking about "kicking the backside" underlines this. A sane strategist talks like this? Definitely no Kissingers today.
Other than that, EU needs to have a strong army that's independent of USA.
Why? Putin already demanded NATO to return to pre-1997 membership, that means excluding Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland etc.
Russia will want to extend its influence over the ex-COMECON countries, Poland, Hungary, Romania, etc.
Russia was always a superpower ever since its existence, it had only a small dip the past 20 years because of the bad economy.
I know this might read like a pro-Russian view, but it's not, it's just the reality.
Regarding Ukraine, it is not a surprise to those who read History books, Kyev is where present-day Russia was originated along with its language and culture. In Russian eyes, it cannot be another country.
The bear must not be cornered. My view is that we should return to the status quo of the Yalta agreement, otherwise we'll head straight into WW3.
Totally agree. If we have enough elementary school teachers and psychologists, they can transform Putin and Xi into nice people and we will have a peaceful world forever. /s
it can be argued that more education would reduce the number of ppl that go along with "suboptimal" leadership and hence would make the world a better place, no?
Yeah of course you don't want that. Because my country will pay to defend your country while the poor people in the U.S. need schools, teachers, and access to healthcare more than Germany does. Thanks for nothing.
The same speech actually mentions energy security [0], and the new government is planning to invest a huge amount into renewable energy and a deeper integration of the european energy market.
One thing that is often left out of the international discussion of Germany's domestic policies is that we actually put a law into our constitution to limit governments from making new debt... So if the current government wants to take on new debt for Defense and Energy Transition, it will have to either do some tricks (the 100B for the military is supposed to come from a different, special pot), or change the constitution again, for which they would need the votes of the opposition.
I suspect Germany (and other EU countries) approach to debt is gonna be based in tricks and stuff over the next few years.
A lot of the 90s era monetary economics that the euro is intertwined in has been collapsing as a dominant school of thought. Covid plays a role here, but a lot of it has been building since 2009 & the greek debt crisis. I don't think many are ready (especially in germany) to throw out institutions, even ethereal intellectual ones... but OTOH change has come. Military emergencies, historically, are pivot points for monetary infrastructure... FWIW.
Interestingly, I'm not sure the german constitution necessarily has to change. In some sense, the more conceptually radical solutions wouldn't require it. ECB debt, or at least the debt transferred to the ECB in the 90s, just needs to stop being considered debt.
It’s a unique opportunity because it’ll force conservatives who are mostly to blame for the status quo to choose between Weak in defense and Fiscal restraint
Part of the speech the chancellor gave was also the announcement to build two new LGN terminals „pretty quickly“ in order to gain more independence. This of course goes hand in hand with a general push to more renewables.
Germany has no long term storage for nuclear waste, it is sending 12.000 tons of depleted uranium-hexafluoride from its reprocessing plant in Gronau to a plant in Novouralsk, Russia, where its turned into uranium-oxide for usage in MOX fuel for fast breeders sometime in the future. Until then it is stored above ground, hoping the containment doesn't leak dust clouds. And those are the few parts of the problem that can be reused. For the vast majority of radioactive and contaminated waste, there is no such solution: there is no reprocessing decades old contaminated reactor parts that are replaced due to old age and material fatigue. The burial site in Asse turned into a disaster and the waste stored there is being digged up again, costing billions. Gorleben is on hold since it was build under the assumptions that lead to the Asse problem, Konrad is not even finished and already booked out, without even taking all of the waste that currently exists. So most radioactive, irradiated or contaminated waste is stored in "temporary containment" with no long term plan. Nuclear power is neither clean nor cheap: its lobbyists are just very good at pushing externalities toward tax payers and future generations. American nuclear industry is trying to convince people that their ocean dumping sites are safe and that the contamination of the Savannah river or the Columbia river are not a problem. Note that these are the same kind of people that argued in favor of leaded gasoline, fracking gas infused tap water and smoking tobacco. Nuclear waste is not a solved problem. And if you look at the other side of the supply chain, uranium mining is even worse. The mines in germany are closed, and most of what was produced there over decades was sold to the SU and USA anyway. Handling millions of tons of uranium trailings and irradiated pumping, mining and milling equipment is left as a problem for future generations. You think the selling price for yellow cake pays for these problems in advance? Think again.
While I would appreciate that, this would be political suicide for the Green party involved in the coalition. While they want a lot less co2 they are also very much anti-fission.
Would that really make a difference? Europe gets about 10% of its total energy (ie not just electricity) from Russian gas. I find it hard to believe Germany’s 17 reactors provided that much.
One might discuss prolonging the life-time of the reactors still operating and bringing back the ones switched off a few weeks ago. But this might be more difficult to do than it sounds, as their end-of-lifetime was planned long ago so they might no longer be in a state where you just could keep them running.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make sense to go back to nuclear power. It is afterall a very expensive technology. It is much more efficient to go full in with renewables. And nuclear power does not work well together with renewables, as it cannot be controlled fast enough.
That's outright impossible. Not just on the political level - no one aside from the fascist party wants nuclear energy. The closed-down reactors are being torn down as we speak, it is impossible to put them back together. For those still running, we do not have the capacity to make new fuel rods for and to maintain the reactors themselves, they are at the end of their designed life time. And new projects are completely out of the question - the French and Finnish projects are many years and many billions over budget.
"Back in the 1970s, when France decided to switch from fossil fuels to nuclear energy, the climate problem was not even on the agenda. And yet, within about 15 years France had almost fully decarbonized its electricity sector and had electrified a lot of other stuff (such as electrical heating and high-speed trains). Countries like France and Sweden have demonstrated in real life that it is possible to eliminate fossil fuels without sacrificing economic growth and prosperity. The reason why the carbon intensity of German electricity, even after two full decades of Energiewende, is still more than five times higher than that of nuclear France is [...] because anti-nuclear environmentalists [...] have more political clout in Germany than in France and have convinced their political leaders that it’s an excellent “climate policy” to abandon atomic energy and close down all of their remaining reactors.
Nuclear also needs to be paired with gas to meet demand shifts. I'm not sure why nuclear supporters are so oblivous to this fact, they constantly mention 'baseload' but it seems like they may have only a vague understanding of what that actually means. The non-baseload also needs to be generated somehow when people are awake and doing stuff.
So how do we reduce gas use the most, building $X Billion nuclear or $X Billion solar, wind and batteries? The expert consensus is the latter.
Where do you get that from? There's a large interconnected grid that helps balance production imbalances over many countries and regions. During hot summers, when the water level in French rivers is low, Germany exports renewable energy to France (Germany, btw, exports more electricity to France than it imports). In the winter with low wind, Germany imports electricity from France.
Why the hell do we have these highly polarized discussions whenever Germany, France and electricity production comes up?
Angela Merkel has made two crucial mistakes in foreign policy/defense spending that have now become clear. The first was the assumption we could appease Russia by offering it a carrot, namely gas pipelines and mutual investments. We now see that the economic dependence goes both ways, making Germany vulnerable to what a dictator like Putin decides to do. The second mistake was the belief that investment in its own military was a waste of money. Germany has diverted hundreds of billions to other areas over the decades, because it relied on the assumption that its alliances would protect it - Trump and Brexit have harshly shown that this might not be the case -, or that it no longer had actual enemies left to fight.
In her defense, her options were logical and a lot of the money that would otherwise go to less productive sectors of the economy, such as defense, went into more useful ones like research and development. Russia has also bought a ton of German goods, although arguably it would have regardless. However, compounded with her disastrous energy policy, Merkel made Germany more dependent than ever, a weak regional power at best. She simply did not foresee a future like our present.
Actually quite a bit, leading Europe by a comfortable margin[1][2]. Note that its two foremost European competitors (UK and France) were spending proportionally more into military in this period.
How did Trump and Brexit show that German alliances wouldn't help in a crisis? Trump pushed Germany and other NATO states to meet their pledge of 2% GDP, and Brexit had nothing to do with NATO which is probably the most relevant treaty in a time like this.
You are correct about Trump pushing for the pledge. But what I meant is that in a broader sense, both his presidency and Brexit showed that mutual commitments can change according to short-term political will. If the UK can leave the EU, then why can't it also leave NATO? It doesn't even need a referendum for that. Likewise, Trump or a similar figure might not follow what a treaty demands, or what their military commanders advise.
Germany was late in offering armament to Ukraine. Moreover, this move is defensive in nature. I would be very surprise to see Germany getting more involved in this conflict from its current dependence on natural gas.
Honest question based on some of the comments current, past events:
Given the background of pacifist education enforced/encouraged for long by Allies post war in German schools, is it not possible to assume generations have been brainwashed into thinking that they can stay safe while the world burns.
Can such a populace take rational decisions when it comes to defence or offense?
I can honestly can't think of any reason for such bad decisions taken collectively like:
1) Getting into a deep trade relationship with a dictator
2) Assuming such relationship will keep the nation safe
3) Starving their own army of weapons and budget that their own chief of army says he can't guarantee safety of the nation:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-army-chief-fed-u...
Better late than never I guess...That's a lot of money but there's also a reason the nato quota is calculated as a percentage of GDP.Now let's just hope this money won't somehow go into the oligarch's pockets, as we've seen germany likes to spend money on russia way too often.(Remember NS2)
>but there's also a reason the nato quota is calculated as a percentage of GDP
Which reason?
Since when is money spent a measurement of effectiveness?
Some companies will just make more money but the people are fucked. Rotting infrastructure and overloaded social security systems.
In the end this will lead to better armed extremists.
Fixed values don't mean much of anything if you're a big economy like Germany. The reason the percentage is of GDP is, to put it very bluntly, because 'money needs protection'.Becoming an economic force without spending properly on defence is just stupid.And we're not talking about money spent being a measurement of effectiveness: defense spending is mostly investing and protecting the economy itself, that's one simplistic view of why it's measured as a percentage of gdp.(Alongside with the fact that more members spending 2% means Europe becomes less reliant on US)
Readit News
I'd actually say it is much more prudent to shore up your defenses BEFORE you need it, not after. Playing catch up is hard to do when the tanks start rolling in.
At long last, it would appear that German politicians understand what you still fail to grasp: You can ignore your defense budget, refuse to pull your (contractually defined) weight in a defense pact, and invest your ill-gotten savings elsewhere – but ultimately these investments will have been all for naught if you are unable to defend their returns when push comes to shove.
Also NATO is not some kind of puppet Germany can use however it sees fit. It’s a group, where each member has its own interests and views and one day they might diverge from Germany’s.
While all the things you mentioned are very much needed, so is the power that ensures their security.
ppl die every day, it's the quantity and reasons that should inform a strategy. (saying this as about 60 ppl died in a mining accident the other day)
NATO may or may not have enough guns, but some members aren't paying their share, and this has (as we've seen) bad consequences for everyone.
The personnel is there, they are just not getting the license to open an office.
* https://www.investing.com/rates-bonds/germany-government-bon...
10Y bonds have been negative since April 2019, before the pandemic:
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IRLTLT01DEM156N
By borrowing money Germany can actually make a 'profit'.
Merkel has starved the Bundeswehr of resources relying on assumptions that have revealed themselves to be false. Historical alliances can be unreliable (Trump) and historical rivalries can be reignited (Russia). I fully support this move by Scholz.
The lack of reliability regarding the relationships between nations is truly the most significant sign of a changing (changed?), unstable, world.
Germany has so many social issues, we honestly should spend more money to get people off the street and have affordable housing. Not spending another 100bn on weapons and destructive activities.
International treaties are only worth the will of the signing parties to enforce them. Just like the Budapest Memorandum. And NATO is just another treaty.
Europe's deterrent is basically "We're really good friends with the USA."
What does the USA gain from this setup?
The challange is EU governments and armies don't act in unison.
Same with Britain, and any number of other examples throughout history.
Times change, there is no right for Russia to control Ukraine (or to be a "superpower") just because that's how it used to be.
One thing that is often left out of the international discussion of Germany's domestic policies is that we actually put a law into our constitution to limit governments from making new debt... So if the current government wants to take on new debt for Defense and Energy Transition, it will have to either do some tricks (the 100B for the military is supposed to come from a different, special pot), or change the constitution again, for which they would need the votes of the opposition.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_F1xCKi5vY
A lot of the 90s era monetary economics that the euro is intertwined in has been collapsing as a dominant school of thought. Covid plays a role here, but a lot of it has been building since 2009 & the greek debt crisis. I don't think many are ready (especially in germany) to throw out institutions, even ethereal intellectual ones... but OTOH change has come. Military emergencies, historically, are pivot points for monetary infrastructure... FWIW.
Interestingly, I'm not sure the german constitution necessarily has to change. In some sense, the more conceptually radical solutions wouldn't require it. ECB debt, or at least the debt transferred to the ECB in the 90s, just needs to stop being considered debt.
> German nuclear energy companies reject demands for nuclear power extension
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make sense to go back to nuclear power. It is afterall a very expensive technology. It is much more efficient to go full in with renewables. And nuclear power does not work well together with renewables, as it cannot be controlled fast enough.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/27/why-environmentalists-pose-...
So how do we reduce gas use the most, building $X Billion nuclear or $X Billion solar, wind and batteries? The expert consensus is the latter.
Germany should start building nuclear themselves, instead of bailing out the French nuclear industry. $100bn can build a lot of nuclear powerplants.
Why the hell do we have these highly polarized discussions whenever Germany, France and electricity production comes up?
You are aware what Habeck is currently doing?
Dead Comment
In her defense, her options were logical and a lot of the money that would otherwise go to less productive sectors of the economy, such as defense, went into more useful ones like research and development. Russia has also bought a ton of German goods, although arguably it would have regardless. However, compounded with her disastrous energy policy, Merkel made Germany more dependent than ever, a weak regional power at best. She simply did not foresee a future like our present.
What does Germany have to show here?
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03320-2 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03318-w
Deleted Comment
But now it's time to accept Putin for what he is.
Given the background of pacifist education enforced/encouraged for long by Allies post war in German schools, is it not possible to assume generations have been brainwashed into thinking that they can stay safe while the world burns.
Can such a populace take rational decisions when it comes to defence or offense?
I can honestly can't think of any reason for such bad decisions taken collectively like: 1) Getting into a deep trade relationship with a dictator 2) Assuming such relationship will keep the nation safe 3) Starving their own army of weapons and budget that their own chief of army says he can't guarantee safety of the nation: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-army-chief-fed-u...
Which reason? Since when is money spent a measurement of effectiveness?
Some companies will just make more money but the people are fucked. Rotting infrastructure and overloaded social security systems. In the end this will lead to better armed extremists.
I don't know the details of the politics, but i believe this (outdated) article has good explanations about it: https://carnegieeurope.eu/2015/09/02/politics-of-2-percent-n...