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.
I find your rationale too simple. It is reasonable to assume that it would have been at the same time unacceptable for the population and perceived as a threat by other nations, should that have been done proactively.
What exactly is 'too simple' about planning for the future? Do you also start shopping for homeowners insurance once the house catches on fire?
Last few decades have been 'relatively' peaceful for many parts of Europe, but given the almost 2 thousand year history of on and off warfare in Europe, nobody should have been surprised for the need for a country to defend itself or its neighbors.
What is 'simple' is assuming that because it is peaceful today, it will always be peaceful.
Since you're comparing a house to a country, resp. a fire to war, and resp. an insurance to diplomatic relationships, then I stand strongly by my initial comment.
Your comment is overly simplistic as it ignores a ton of the signals that nations and leaders emit by doing one thing or the other.
Think of the nuclear treaties: they're here to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, actually adding to the global security.
Si, yes, not beefing up your military can be beneficial to everyone.
> shore up your defenses BEFORE you need it, not after
This needs to be balanced against the public opinion, which is not (AFAIK) very favourable to war-related business in Germany. It is also complicated by the fact that nobody knows when they will be needed, so war spending can be practically increased as a matter of principle, not because war is expected in X years; this makes it more difficult to accept.
This is like the old saying that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
No one can change the past, so shoring up defenses now is better than waiting until later, especially when the need might be more acute and it is actually too late.
One can reason that engaging in an arms race is not a good idea neither. It may, on a systemic level accelerate things, and you may end up creating the world you wanted to prevent.
Moreover, everything seems obvious afterwards. But what if Putin had not started rampaging? The opportunity cost of spending 100B on defense if it wasn't needed, is huge. Integrated over decades, that sort of money is (part of) the difference between having a German economy and a Russian economy.
Also, investments age. It may make sense to make upgrades only when you need them.
Those are all maybes. I don't have the answer. But I think it'd good to have in mind that the world is more complex than that.
> 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.
The national healthcare system in Germany to a large extent is based on a command economy.
The number of licenses for psychotherapists - in fact, for any kind of physician - allowed to bill through the national healthcare system is artificially constrained (not unlike the taxi medallion system in New York, for example) by regional authorities for statutory health insurance physicians ("Kassenärztliche Vereinigungen").
This can create artificial scarcity for specific kinds of medical professions, such as psychotherapists in this case.
The association of public insurance providers in Germany provides a limited set of licenses that make psychotherapy reimbursable, everyone else practices in private. These licenses can also be transferred, making them a commodity among therapists.
It's a horribly outdated stance that has pushed waiting lists far beyond the stated legal maximum wait time. This means you can technically get private therapy reimbursed, but the bureaucracy in between (proof you have attempted to get therapy at 3+ places that get reimbursement, filing and often fighting over specific charges) is designed to stall people already fed up with life into simply giving up.
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.
That's just because all the bonds are bought by the government's themselves using printed money. It doesn't actually mean Europe is in a good position financially. Inflation is rising fast and had the potential to cause ruin. Of all times it is blue that Europe is financially wrap and unable to respond, thanks to our society being unable to detect academic pseudoscience.
Printed money is also cheap as long as inflation is low.
For example it took trillions in unexpected spending to bump US inflation above the target 2%.
And yields are going to remain low because of the aging population of the "west" put their pension into stable assets, and pension funds will buy gov. bonds.
Some think taxing the rich is some eternal well of a problem solve.
This well can be run dry very fast, when one talks about state level spending. And once dry, and once shown that all efforts lead to naught, is stays dry.
An example? I just work less, rather than pay more tax, and lose certain tax breaks.
Why would I toil more, only to make less per hour?
If you earn a wage, or otherwise rely on an earned income to live or sustain yourself, you’re not rich in the same sense that you’re using the word. Wealth and income are not the same.
afaik income tax is "progressive" in most nations but practically hyperbolic aka progressive in a way that is just barely true to the meaning of the word.
We are not. The amount of the wealth of billionaires and their number has exploded since the "golden 80s" era, and the corporate and individual tax rate has plummeted correspondingly since then.
We had so much tax money that we used to build and maintain swimming pools even in tiny villages. These days, after they had to close for lack of tax base, we have record numbers of children drowning because they have no nearby and affordable place where they can learn to swim.
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.
It's a long overdue correction. Alliances were not just big promises and handshakes and expectations of blind loyalty (and doing the right thing).
They were power structures forged in quid pro quo deals that continuously benefited the parties.
As the cold war, uh, thawed to room temperature and China became the new focus the old alliance deals started to make no sense. Now that suddenly the kleptocratic gas station attendant feels insecure the old alliance starts to make sense again, but the underlying deals might need a bit of tweaking.
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.
Germans have to pay more for gas because of Putin, not because of this investment. And I'm not saying there are no other issues, I'm saying that this should be a high priority right now.
Germany is a very rich country. It can walk and chew gum at the same time.
100B is more than 2% of Germany's economic output.
And no. Our leaders (especially Olaf Scholz) decided to put Nordstream 2 on hold, Putin didn't change anything regarding Russia's gas export.
I see it like this: Russia gets the eastern Ukraine, the US gets to export more expensive fracking gas, and the Europeans are on the losing side in both cases.
While you are exercising your whataboutism, people are fighting in the streets of Kyiv. If Russia succeeds they are probably going to put their weapons on the Polish and Romania's border. Germany now has to run against the clock and everything done without planning, is more expensive.
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 deal used to be that we soak up the refugees created in their wars, while also providing the military bases (think Rammstein etc) that cement their power, etc.
When media figures in the US make it look like the US were the generous gifters of freedom and security, and their allies are effectively parasites, that’s just populism/right-wing agitation.
And also given Biden's performance so far, it is not impossible the US gets run by Trump or a Trump-like soon. What will NATO assurances be worth then?
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 agree with your point on the political challenges, but not with your point on military hardware. There was a recent report on the French military by the rand corporation that stated that France wouldn't be able to sustain a long conflict [1], and the Franco-British intervention in Libya was critically dependent on US logistics and intelligence. I don't think that it is the european armies that provide the Baltic states any comfort right now.
Thank you for the link, haven't had a chance to read it yet, but this seems to talk about opearting in a distant theater while the scenario here is 'home turf' and we would be adding up 27 countries that make up Europe?
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.
Russia's economy is a bit smaller than Italy's. No offense to Italians, but Russia hasn't been a super power for decades. They're barely in the top five EU economies (and falling)
Do they have a button that can destroy you and everyone you know, making your land uninhabitable for the next thousand years? Yes. So they are a superpower. How many Big Macs they can buy with an hour of salary is irrelevant.
There are at least half a dozen countries other than the Russians that could say as much. For sustainable military might and to wield influence, you need economic strength. Without that, you're left with terracotta soldiers like we're seeing today in Ukraine.
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.
> I suspect Germany (and other EU countries) approach to debt is gonna be based in tricks and stuff over the next few years.
Now if that doesn't sound like the ideal starting point to ever more lying into ones own pocket about money and debt.
> ... ECB debt, or at least the debt transferred to the ECB in the 90s, just needs to stop being considered debt.
Without diving too deep into what such a sentence means in practical terms .. purely semantically it sounds a lot like consciously ignoring some inconvenient numbers, hoping they'll magically dissolve.
It'll "work" for some time and by "work" I mean, people will notice the bad effects but still put up with unsound government budgeting .. but it's surely not a healthy/stable dynamic of an economic system.
Pair this looking away with what is basically an imperative (because of climate crisis) to not further _increase_ the worldwide output of material goods but _reduce_ it (as long as most products aren't climate neutral, which will remain the case for quite some time) and you'll look at a dire prospect concerning prices/inflation.
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.
You can import gas via pipeline (from Russia) or in liquid form (LNG) from Qatar and others. You need a terminal to deal with LNG which is under high pressure and very low temperatures.
It will take longer to move away from gas as an energy source. That will happen over next decade at least.
The idea is to use these to import LNG from the US and Qatar, so that these terminals together with those in France, Belgium and the Netherlands can be used to supply all of Europe with gas - including the countries in Eastern Europe, that currently depend on Russian gas even more than we do.
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.
It's like pointing out that car accidents kill ~10x more Americans a year than 9/11 did so why are we so obsessed with making sure you can't bring weapons on a plane? The real threat is giving every moron with a pulse control over a 4,000lb wrecking ball.
Logically it's absolutely true that inattentive drivers are a greater risk to Americans than airline hijackers but 3,000+ people dying in one day in one location hits a lot harder than 30,000 people dying mostly one or two at a time, over 12 months, spread out across fifty states.
How does all that compare to continuing to burn coal and gas and dumping humongous quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere?
Maybe nuclear waste storage is not yet solved, but it is a long term problem while global warming is already here. I’d rather work on storage solutions for the next 1000 years than fighting floods, hurricanes and forest fires every day.
Instead of investing hundreds of billions to restart a nuclear industry that failed to deliver what it promised for seven decades and created lots of problems of its own, Germany is investing in solar, wind, geothermal and tidal power production to find out what kind of issues those have (turns out wind turbines shredder insects en mass, leading to a different kind of ecological problem - there is no free lunch). Knowing very well that the EU will likely continue to require energy imports in the foreseeable future, Germany is pushing to import hydrogen instead of hydrocarbons, and a major supplier will be Africa. Instead of investing into irradiating our country, we invest into building sustainable power infrastructure with our southern neighbors.
We already know what is the issue with only scalable renewables (wind & solar) - unrealiability. Germany is doing pretty much nothing to scale up energy storage, so this all is just a fig leaf to burn more coal & gas (or imported "renewable" wood). See last autumn - when wind did not blow and sun did not shine as much, you were pretty much just burrning stuff to make electricity.
Hydrogen is a joke, just the infrastructure to distribute it will dwarf any costs nuclear could ever have. Not to mention production costs . . .
And you are already irradiating your country by burning coal, so no idea what do you mean by "Instead of investing into irradiating our country".
It's not whataboutism - when intermittent energy sources are offline you need to have either storage or backup energy source. Fossil fuel (or biomass) sources are good at spinning up quickly, so it makes sense to assume that pushing renewables without storage is effectively pushing burner power plants.
And observed practice in Germany confirms this. Or do you have real data pointing in other direction? Say, period of low output from solar & wind which resulted in anything else than using mostly (imported) fossil-fueled electricity?
i reject your attempt to conflate my position with a strawman and will not provide any data for that strawmans position.
But to entertain your argument: yes i agree that it would make sense if i, personally, had more energy storage. However i don't see how that is relevant to my point against investing (tax money probably) into reviving a dead nuclear industry.
As a side note with you, _Tev, on a personal level: sure we could have a talk about that "fig leave" metaphor and if there is some kind of conspiracy in german politics and power industry that profits from coal. We could talk about whether hydrogen "is a joke" or a worthy investment, but honestly your rhetoric makes me not want to talk with you at all, as i don't think i will enjoy it.
Back to the point: this constant reiteration of "it is either coal or nuclear" is a false dichotomy and answering an argument against the nuclear industry with "but what about coal" is what-about-ism. My point is: the german nuclear industry is/was incredibly dirty, with an unsolved waste problem, expensive, reliant on Russia, failed to deliver its promises for decades and by now it is deader then disco. The newest german nuclear power plant was constructed in the '80s. Trying to revive that industry is not an actual solution to the problems of our energy market. That is like trying to revive the soviet union to get rid of Putin. The way forward must be something else. And no, that does not mean i am in favor of coal, russian gas, or american fracking.
So you say i should invest into energy storage? Sounds reasonable, any more concrete pointers?
My knowledge about the nuclear economy of France is limited, but i don't think La'Hague has a UF6 defluorisation plant. I believe there are some in southern France but those are unable to handle the amount of UF6 France produces on its own, without buying more from Germany. Also, much like the german reprocessing plant in Gronau, the french plant in La'Hague is only a small part of a long re-processing and re-enrichment chain. It is a producer of "uranium de retraitement" (URT). Ask the French what they do with it, their "nuclear circular economy" goes through Tomsk in Siberia.
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.
It would make a difference, more electricity generation softens the demand for gas.
Would it make more of a difference than just using the same amount of money that would need to be spent to refit the old nuclear plants for longer use to build out renewables across the EU? No, not even close.
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.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands are moving away from gas and are planning to build new nuclear reactors. Belgium has postponed the planned closure of their nuclear plants. France has decided to build new nuclear reactors.
France isn't building enough new reactors to replace all the aging ones - at best this can delay the exit from nuclear power. Whether Netherlands is going to see through building new reactors has to be seen.
That’s kind of a brittle take. Germany has suffered an embarrassment and is back peddling over the course of only a few days.
- From helmets to actual military aid to Ukraine.
- large increase in military expenditure instead of woeful inadequacy.
- reversal of Swift decision.
Why wouldn’t there be a change in energy policy if Russia continues its war in Ukraine? This huge reliance on Russian gas has Europe, and especially Germany, in this strange conflict of interest.
Building out nuclear plans takes years, many billions of euros, and considerable protest from wherever you install them. Installing wind and solar power is cheap and fast, in comparison.
It takes years because people like you in aggregate demand that it do so. Submitting plans, evaluations of those plans, comment periods, etc. etc. etc. only move so fast because that's how the process is set up. The process is set up to delay and deny because that's where the political winds blew at the time the process was created.
If political winds change to support nuclear then such processes would evaporate into something far more streamlined and efficient because they simply don't make any sense in the context of "we want to do this nuclear thing and we want to do it ASAP".
Lets imagine that the gas pipeline from Russia explodes due to war or Putin shuts it off. Is it still 'impossible', as in we'd rather freeze and have blackouts?
"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.
The largest, and essentially only, anti-nuclear movement that exists is it's own economics. Blaming "environmentalists" is a cop-out instead of facing the reality: If it was profitable private capital would build it, if not in Germany then in other countries, further reducing cost. As have been seen since the 1950s that is not the case, nuclear has never been economical to build.
Nuclear has a place to do what the French did, massive subsidies to achieve a national security motivated energy independence. With renewables at the fore front that argument does not exist anymore. Now nuclear only exists to share an industry base with naval reactors in submarines.
It is a highly political sector as well as a capital intensive one. You can sink as much money into your prep-work as you want, but if you don't end up getting the permits and regulatory approval, it is all for naught.
Contrast that to any other kind of power generation, and the regulatory uncertainty alone is enough to sink any interest in spending a large amount of money up-front on something so uncertain.
Half of the reactors the US ordered have ended up being cancelled due to the economics.
> By the mid-1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as quickly as once believed. Cost overruns were sometimes a factor of ten above original industry estimates, and became a major problem. For the 75 nuclear power reactors built from 1966 to 1977, cost overruns averaged 207 percent. Opposition and problems were galvanized by the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.[48]
> Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.[53]
"If it was profitable private capital would build it"
Ah yes, the magical private capital, we should trust in it's infinite wisdom and do no national policy or planning ourselves.
Thats why the greatest infrastructure projects, like tbe hoover damn or interstate highway system, or Netherland barrier system for holding back the sea, are all private capital, right?
Electricity is a commodity, it does not matter how it is produced. The examples you bring up are something which is purely sunk cost, but is a benefit for the common good of the population which are exactly the projects governments should get involved in.
The auctions for off shore leases for wind power are getting up into nuclear power range. This does not include the constructions of them. The capital exists, it simply seeks alternatives which can actually bring a profit.
"New York Bight Offshore Wind Lease Auction Smashes Offshore Energy Record with $4.37 Billion in High Bids"
And when will this private capital builds the multi-gigawatt energy storage required to go to renewable? My guess is never.
Yeah private capital is great at cookie-cutter projects, like buying factory-made pre-built windturbines or solar panels and operating them, this a low-risk operation and every bean-counter can model it's profitability in excell. But when it comes to developing new types of solar panels and suddenly without government research dollars there is zilch.
It is also nowhere to be seen when we need actually risky and difficult projects like build a massive hydroelectric damn or multi-gigawatt power storage which will be required to support these renewables. It is nowhere to be seen in Tidal and Geothermal, which you can't buy premade from a factory in China. It is also useless in keeping reserves of grain, gas, or any other critical resource.
So why should anyone take seriouslty this point about private capital if it only contributes in areas of least concern?
If the human race was sitting around for private capital, we'd have gone extinc by now.
The point is that nuclear is not risky or difficult. It is simply awfully inefficient.
The risky nuclear move, which states should take, is investigating the possibility of supercritical CO2 turbines and similar technologies. That is to get away from the dead end of boiling water into a steam turbine which haven't have not been economical for 40 years.
First steam turbines was out competed by gas turbines and now gas turbines themselves are having a hard time competing with the solid state components of PV or an axle right into a generator for wind turbines.
Given that we seem to have a nuclear accident every 10 years, which was always supposedly impossible to happen, it seems like we still haven't figured out all the edge cases. Combine that with that currently only ~500 reactors exist world wide, it paints a pretty bleak image.
We could have a nuclear accident every year and it still wouldn't equal the damage we are doing burning fossil fuels.
But as airplane crashes became rarer the more we flew, so will nuclear accidents the more we build and use nuclear power plants. The ones we have are a very old and early technologuy.
Why set the baseline at an accident a year when we have renewables?
The French famously had some negative learning by doing in their nuclear build out.
> The French nuclear case illustrates the perils of the assumption of robust learning effects resulting in lowered costs over time in the scale-up of large-scale, complex new energy supply technologies. The uncertainties in anticipated learning effects of new technologies might be much larger that often assumed, including also cases of “negative learning” in which specific costs increase rather than decrease with accumulated experience.
Good chance that Green Party received significant support from outside forces to derail a sensible energy policy. Relying on fossil fuels / gas makes Germany way more dependent on the US and Russia, then otherwise.
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?
He made a plan for a new renewable energy push and started to visit every constituent state to discuss his plans. He is doing this hands on and pushing a strong renewable agenda.
There are already plans for laws which will force more investment and reduce burdens.
He definitely has an agenda but what is he doing? He does talk a lot, that’s true. Right now he’s only achieved rising energy prices (before the Russian invasion, through co2 tax increases) and stopping KfW-Bauförderung.
I am yet to see systemic renewable power source that is available to country like Germany (or Poland where we also have discussion about going nuclear).
All renewables available to us are considered supplementary (they generate power when conditions are favorable, eg. wind blows, sun is shining). But this means they can’t be used to maintain power grid.
Ofc you can try hydro or geothermal, but those depend on your river network, underground warm waters availability, as well as population density around country. Those work for country like Norway but in practice German increasingly relies on French nuclear power as systemic source to maintain their grid, and Poland (sadly) sticks to coal and gas.
Power density of the atom is unmatched by anything currently by a wide margin. It's a pure fact of measurable and confirmed science. Arguing against that is arguing against objective reality itself and that makes you medically insane.
The cheapness of renewable is due to its guaranteed prices by law. Once these subsidies end and the free market prices take over, you lose everything. Reason will take over sooner or later - bubbles can't be inflated forever.
Don't worry your head with the technical challenges surrounding nuclear tech. There are real scientists working on it, coming up with newer and better designs, not to mention the move to modular reactors which will further increase the reliability of individual modules (parts) and drive down costs.
Reality is such that the atom is the most potent energy source. If you don't like that, turn to medical help, because sure as hell Reality won't magically align with your desires.
And it's tragic beyond belief what has happened in Chernobyl, but that is on those idiotic communists and their total incompetence and arrogance. On this i can agree - some people are simply too stupid and should be limited to only solar cells and wind turbines.
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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)
Both percentage and fixed amount is useless if you don't define a goal that must be accomplished.
Von der Leyen wasted lots of military money with McKinsey.
The US wasted lots of money on a shitty next-gen jet fighter.
So making money the measurements leads to corruption.
In Germany's case it's even worse because if the debt brake.
The money that goes to the military is cut from others expenses, most often healthcare, social security and education.
So the future will be full of devasted, poor people who can't afford education and health care for themselves and their children.
And that without the guarantee of proper ability of self-defence.
Of course poor people without social security are good for the military because many would join them to make a living.
The effect of this is pretty obvious in Russia and the US.
In the case of germany specifically i think the situation is more complicated, because they have been missing their 2% quota for some time now, compared to France, UK and even some EE countries after Trump began pressuring member states to fulfill that mark.
There's no discussion we don't want to take from healthcare and other institutions that are beneficial for the citizens, but at the same time with this 100B investment i think germany somewhat catched up(it's not an arms race though, germany has a lot of US presence).As for the poor people joining the military, I don't exactly know how much that applies to Europe's population as it does to US'.Saying we will have poor people >because< there's more funding for defence is a little off for me.Poverty is a more complicated issue even than defence.
>Saying we will have poor people >because< there's more funding for defence is a little off for me.
Not because there more funding but because more funding for one thing means less funding for another one.
Where does even the 2% come from?
Why only for the military and not education and health care?
Doesn't NATO need educated and healthy people?
Does it count towards the 2% if we fix infrastructure because military is mainly logistics?
How about health care workers.
More money for them is also part of military capability.
In the current form these 2% are just subsidies for weapon manufacturers.
I wonder who the biggest beneficiaries are.
Especially since armies don't win wars these days. In the end, it boils down to house fighting and guerrilla warfare. You don't need 100 billion for that
In a way you answered your own question: the 2% comes to not have to spend a lot of fixed money in a one blow, like the case here with 100B.Instead you spend constantly and improve, after all defence is an investment and that investment is not lost even if you don't have any wars.(unless you spend on active training and decades pass w/o wars)
Referencing my previous post with the link for the politics of 2%, there are a lot of things Germany frankly is really behind when it comes to military: Poland for example has stronger military relatively speaking if you compare the manpower, reserves, total population and military hardware.
The money indeed goes to the mil. industrial complex which is undesirable,that's why i'm skeptical about this, but at the same time: do you take the chances when a nutjob like Putin keeps daring you? There's no good answer, only compromise
I don't want to sound like a broken clock, but Germany could have used the investments of NS2 into energy independence(more nuclear, electric,etc),NATO contribution, or infrastructure.Socialistic policies are also good, but there's higher volatility in terms of what you get, and if you want to actually put socialistic policies in practice, follow the hungarian long-term model, not welfare-state for everyone: Merkel probably learned this the hard way, and the barely-not-recession numbers show that.
No it is. As NATO members you are committed to defend each other, but to also spend a % of your GDP on military. I know Belgium always payed the fine, which is less than actually spending it.
That's like saying a bunch of buddies team up to defend each other, and each go take self defense lessons. Then in the end only the biggest buddy takes self defense classes, and the rest just hopes this guy is present the next time shit hits the fan. Not really fair is it? I hope Belgium also starts spending the proper amount, as they should have done already.
Or Germany could, you know, build and purchase local made weapons instead. It could ally with the France, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, etc. to lower development costs.
That was a decision made by CDU and FPD, the greens were not in the government at the time.
Germany also added twice the amount of renewables than it ever had in nuclear power. And that is despite the heavy hits against the industry that the late Merkel governments landed, after boosting them for a while in the early ones.
After 16 years of CDU being in charge, yelling at the greens about today's situation is not just ignorant, it's a fake news attack on democracy.
It's wrong but not an attack on democracy. Modern environmentalism is a big astroturfing campaign. It pretends to be a grass-roots movement with little girls at their front. In reality it is backed by billionaires who do not want their private islands to sink (metaphorically and literally).
Ah, yes! The weak environmentalists are ACTUALLY in charge, so they are the REAL problem, let’s just ignore that fossil fuel companies have been fighting against science for decades…
How about providing some evidence that environmentalists are astroturfed by island owning billionaires…?
Just dig a little the backgrounds of key activists, the institutions that back them or where they get to speak. These are not exactly middle, underclass or grassroots institutions, but multinational orgs, banks and media monopolies.
Well, historically the madman in this part of the world has been Germany. Germany doesn't really have a border with Russia to worry about like for example the Baltics have.
Madmen need a fertile soil to grow in, otherwise they don't get any support from the population. That is no longer Germany, but I can think of another country which has a charismatic head of state with ambitions of restoring the country to its previous level of international standing.
Can you clarify what part of this you are disputing? The first half of the 20th century was indisputably dominated by German aggression in Europe and I'd like to see a history book paint that differently.
I'm not sure I agree with GP's broader point but your riposte makes no sense.
It wasn't just the first half of the 20th century, either. The various German states were warmongers for much of the 19th century as well. Bismarck was a monster; people look far too kindly upon his history, he was an outright war criminal that was obsessed with conquering.
One wonderful thing after WW2 is the French-German friendship developed. They are the closest partner and together an important cornerstone of the EU. And of course, in contrast to Germany, France has nuclear weapons.
Germany is much more powerful economically and has benefited massively from the Euro.
EU extension to the East benefit them most. Brexit reinforced their domination.
Now, if they also "wake up" militarily then France can soon be outclassed on all fronts and more of a "junior partner" than an "equal friend" (let's be honest, it already is). At least France has nukes and I hope no-one will have the "brilliant" idea to share them...
>Sadly because of historical reasons we can't have a European army
No, history is not the issue, it's because good luck convincing French or Germans for example, they gotta send their men to fight protecting Poland, Romania or Bulgaria for example, or vice versa.
All you have to do is look at how badly EU countries cooperated during the Greek economic crisis, the migrant crisis of 2015, the Covid crisis, etc. Every EU member government was blaming each other or the immigrants from poorer countries and refusing to cooperate or come to a consensus.
And you think military cooperation will somehow work better?
These crises have all increased cooperation within the EU to some extent:
- The Greek economy is not dead thanks to an EU debt jubilee that could not be called that way.
- The migrant crisis has increased the role of Frontex and other EU level instruments by an extent unimaginable before.
- My significant other is Latvian, lives in Belgium, got her first and second covid shot in France, and her third one in Germany.
- In this crisis, even - hm, let's call them "less cooperative" politicians- like Matteo Salvini, Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orban got behind several common EU policies at political light speed.
- Did you see the recent flurry of NATO moving east announcements?
We don't have an international pact triggered by historical experience around handling refugees, or infectious disease control. We have one like that exactly for the purpose of military support. So yes, we expect NATO members to step up for protection of other members. We have joint exercises so that the forces do have common approaches and plans.
> EU announces it has agreed unanimously amongst all member countries to take in Ukrainian refugees fir up to 3 years without asking them to first apply for asylum.
What would the point of a European army be when our national military’s are sitting by watching as a peaceful European country gets invaded? We’re all up for participating in unjust wars against weak opponents in the Middle East, but when there’s a war worth fighting we roll over. And I say this as someone very anti-military. If anything, the current situation is showing me we should be reducing our military spending because we’re not making any use of it.
Participation in this war could lead to nuclear annihilation. We have no treaties or commitments to be involved in it, and so we won't. This investment is to make sure Russia doesn't get any wrong ideas about invading any NATO or EU countries.
It’s politically complicated of course. But I don’t think our Western European governments have ever looked weaker. We can barely all agree on the right economic sanctions.
1. It may be a few days old but we stood by as Russia took Crimea years ago. We shouldn’t have allowed that in the first place.
2. Many counties have nukes. Ukraine had them and gave them up in exchange for security assurances from UK/US/Russia.
3. The UK gov is now saying if British citizens want to go and fight in Ukraine they support them. Maybe we should send some of the soldiers we’ve spent lots of taxpayer money training instead?
That is a mistatement of facts. There were Russian troops controlling Russian nukes under Russian control on Ukrainan soil. Even if Ukraine somehow seized them they couldn’t have maintained them in the long run.
Saying that “Ukraine had nukes” is equivalent with saying that Belgium has nukes just because the US keeps some nuclear warheads in an airbase physically located in Belgium.
But a Russian allied governement was installed at that time ( the president then wasn't even born in Ukraine and was a member of the Communist Russian Party before).
It's Russia who broke that word and the West did react pretty quick. This could and probably will decimate the Russian economy and shorten the lifespan of the potential invasion significantly.
Sure, because buying Uranium from the Russians is so much better than buying their gas. Also totally not a limited resource, absolutely not extremely expensive, does for sure not take a long time to build, has now
downsides at all, does not even produce waste.
It’s great to see Europe waking up to taking action although I think EUR 100B could be spent more constructively than buying guns and bullets.
Watching the crisis from afar (I’m based in Asia, but born in Europe), I can’t help but think how hypocritical Europe and US are right now.
1) Most EU countries right now open their borders with arms wide open to provide for Ukrainian refugees, help them find a job, and send food and clothes. We show basic human decency. Yet, when there was genocide in Syria, which forces 1000s of Syrian refugees to seek shelter in Europe, few countries (apart from Germany) wanted to help. In Denmark, my country of birth, locals were spitting at the refugees from the bridges crossing the highways where the refugees were walking. They were treated, by and large, in a hugely inhumane way. Nobody wanted them. The former Danish right wing government forces refugees to sleep in cold tents with very little space.
2) The US, UK, EU and the NATO allies have been swift and decisive (mostly) at imposing sanctions against Russia. Within days after the invasions, they will now be blocked from the global financial system. Don’t get me wrong, this is the right thing to do. But when the US decide to invade Iraq without a clear UN mandate (and later find out there were actually never any WMDs without any political repercussions) or when Israel conduct another carpet bombing of Gaza followed by further tightening of apartheid policies against Palestinian civilians, the West turn their back on the problem and dare not say a word.
3) The glorification of war and honour. Over the last few days, I’ve seen this photo circulate on social media of a famous Ukrainian boxer who is now out serving his country at the frontline, proud with a rifle in his hand. Yet at Ukrainian-Polish border, families are being split in two by border control so fathers and young men don’t leave the country, they have to stay and fight the enemy.
We are humane when it is convenient (Russia), idolise war heroes even thought 1000s will likely get killed in this country (have we never learned from the psychological damage to civilians and soldiers from the US atrocities, war crimes and aggression against civilians in Vietnam?), and turn a blind eye to breach of basic human rights in our own backyard when things get tough. I don’t want to troll, but it really bugs me how simple and utterly hypocritical we are in facing the tough questions. Putin is a madman and the invasion of Ukraine is awful. Yet I wish our politicians and we, citizens of the world’s richest and safest countries, could face some of the other real issues at stake.
Asylum seekers are supposed to stop fleeing from war in the nearest safe country, not go choose the country that they want to stop in. That rule is a big part of why the Syrian refugee crisis is different than the Ukranian one.
Also, a lot of the "Syrian refugees" weren't actually from Syria: once people from Africa and poorer middle eastern countries learned that Syrians were getting asylum, they tried for it too, pretending to be from Syria.
This is not a proof of racism. These are the rules about asylum.
> Most EU countries right now open their borders with arms wide open to provide for Ukrainian refugees, help them find a job, and send food and clothes. We show basic human decency.
Not sure why you think this is surprising and/or wrong. Ukrainians are Europeans, they look the same, have similar institution, a compatible culture, etc... It's not hypocritical to feel the need to help your neighbor, and not everyone on the globe.
In other words, if there were US refugees, Canada would most likely accept millions of them because at the end the day we "know" and interact with them a lot.
I’m not surprised but it doesn’t make it any less wrong or awful. A human is a human and has the right to protection regardless of skin colour, religion, sexual orientation… if refugees come from a largely Christian nation, we accept them with open arms, yet Muslim refugees we spit on and send away to cold tents.
Empathy only extend so far. Yes ideally we should all care about everyone, but that's not the case because there is a very real limit to our ability to care.
I'm not afraid to accept that if there is some war in Asia I care a lot less than when 9/11 happened because I can barely pronounce the name of one while I've been to the other several time.
Yes, that's racist thinking, but you are reading too much in my definition, if south Italy was invaded they would let in refugees for the same reason. Same goes for Ireland.
It's a European war ergos Europeans feel involved. It's not hard to understand. If stuff explodes in Syria it's just a headline for most people.
>If stuff explodes in Syria it's just a headline for most people
Nothing todo with how people look, but more with "get used to" for example in the middle east. Not many in Germany felt involved even in Iraq where German soldiers where stationed (nothing to see here...it's like that since 2002).
And if you look at Serbia...after 3 month it was "just" normal news, that's how humans work.
Of course it is. And this is the sad fact, most Europeans would rather take in Ukrainians than Syrians. It is not surprising, even though it is (morally) wrong.
Russia is Europe
I don't think Europeans have any issues with Russians, only with Putin's aggressive behavior. I think most Europeans are just sad that Russians live under an oppressive regime that takes the country's wealth and redistributes among a few oligarchs.
Has nothing todo with how you look but with your culture and history, it's just logical that you feel more bonding with a culture that is like yours, and probably a bigger reminder that it can happen to yourself.
Truly depends on your expectations. If you hold being morally right above all sure, but in this case they will all take plenty of refugees and lives will be spared. That's a good thing to me.
I'm not a big fan of the simplistic left-right political spectrum, but...
You'll generally find the left of those countries on the correct side of all those issues. And the right on the wrong side. Even within the countries doing the bad stuff, like Russia or Israel, the people protesting their own leaders will be left, the people doing the bad stuff on the right.
As I said, it's simplistic, but it's less simplistic than "The West are hypocritical", we're talking about hundreds of millions of people, who often get their news from fascist media monopolies.
That must have been a calculated risk of Putin. This was going to happen, besides neutral European countries reconsidering NATO membership (e.g. Sweden, Finland, Austria). Especially because they cannot join NATO once they are in a military conflict.
I can't imagine that he wouldn't have foreseen this. Except if he'd thought to replace leadership in Ukraine in a few days, Western countries would impose some sanctions, and would move on as usual (as happened after the annexation of Crimea and MH-17).
Yeah, and Biden plans to seek more than $770 billion in the 2023 defense budget while doing nothing to implement any significant item of the agenda he was running on.
Defense contractors are dancing and singing and praising the war while people die and suffer.
To put this into perspective : 155 billion is almost 4.5% of the German GDP. The US is spending 3.7% this year. The original 55 billion was equal to what Russia was planning to spend this year on its military (at least officially) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
To put this into perspective: Build Back Better was at its highest $4.5 trillion over 10 years. The lowest point was $1.5 trillion for 10 years. Biden didn't do anything serious to actually pass it. But $700Bln+ for yearly defense budget? EASY!
yes, and also thanks to Biden, energy companies are now making record profits once again after being in the doldrums for years under trump; we are also now burning almost 25% more coal in the US under Biden than Trump.
People need to stop believing what Biden says he is going to do, and watch what what he actually does.
When Trump was crying about the cozy Russia-Germany relationship[1] and talking about how NATO was not contributing its share, the fact checkers were busy concentrating on his tone rather than the substance of what he said.[2] They must be very pleased today that they were able to do that then.
> President Trump told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a meeting in 2018 that the Western alliance, particularly Germany, is "totally controlled" by Russia through oil and gas deals.
> "We're supposed to protect you against Russia but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia?" Trump asked. "I think that's very inappropriate."
> "And the former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas. Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. So you tell me, is that appropriate? I've been complaining about this from the time I got in."
> Trump called on Germany to "step it up" on their contribution to NATO immediately, "not 10 years from now."
> "Germany as far as I am concerned is captive to Russia ... we're supposed to protect Germany while they are getting their energy from Russia, explain that," Trump asked the NATO Secretary-General.
> Trump called it "very unfair" to the United States and its taxpayers.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Most europeans are aware of germany’s involuntary aid for russia but cant do much since germany dominates eu politics. There is a near conspiracy theory amount of decisions that Merkel took and played right into putin’s favour.
Also worth noting the german ceo of north stream is a former stasi officer, the east german communist secret police - a russian tool.
These are many of the reasons why i am against a european army. It will likely be dominated by germany, and regardless of how much germans will try and pr their country’s image, germany has made colossal mistakes.
The reason I don't want a European army is that I don't really see Germany def ending a couple of countries that hate it.
Germany demilitarized after WW2 and decided to use diplomacy and economic integration to ensure peace, instead of war. And they tried to play nice with Russia, after they killed 27 million Russians in WW2.
Now everyone is acting like Putin going mad is Germany's fault. Now everybody wants Germany to be a military power again. The last two times they were, the world burned.
And yes, the German approach to reign in Russia failed. But so did the US approach of treating Russia as an enemy forever.
I am curious - what countries hate germany? And what country wouldnt want to defend germany in case of an attack?
Edit: i dont think projecting this back on the us is the right approach. The us showed its not ready to appease a country that sponsored dictators, assassinated journalists and enslaved its own citizens. I see a few germans here and there feeling guilt for what germany did to russia, but what about what germany did to east europe? It invaded those countries making them weaker for russia to take. East europe forgave german war reparation debts and now germany is barely doing anything. Where it the guilt for that?
That edit just proves my point. Germany not doing anything my ass.
Just check out where that sweet EU money is coming from. Think about where Eastern European people migrate to for work. Think about who is building factories and industry in these countries.
And many if these countries are in NATO, so Germany is literally willing to go to war for their protection.
Germany just can't win in this situation. Someone will always figure out a way to claim it's the Germans faults and that they still owe from WW2.
Germany is trying to be less militaristic because of WW2 and now Germanies victims from back them are complaining about Germany not being more militaristic.
Ok but where is the hatred in my reply? I could also say that your reply is mainly german superiority pointing out the money it contributes.
Where do the sweet german money come from? East Europe accounts for 15% of german exports.
This needs to stop really, we are all in this. There is no hate in having disagreements, as there is not hate in germany being proud of its economy.
But we are all in this together. We all depend on each other. And its fine to disagree but not when it comes to security and thats what i mean by germany not doing enough. I am not saying germany is a total slacker, i am saying we need to move fast and show unity. We’ll argue in the eu parliament thereafter and it wont be hate.
Edit: sorry, the only reason i brought ww2 into this is in reply to you bringing it and stating that germany dhows compassion towards russia for what it did in ww2 and i said but where is the compassion for east europe.
Germany is of colossal help to europe and is an undeniable positive player in european affairs. Period.
You are saying Germany isnt doing anything. When I point out what Germany is doing, you call it German superiority.
And then you end on German is important and positive.
What is it?
You ask Germany to act fast and unified, basically disallowing them to disagree about anything ever. We can argue in the parliament after? Aren't you supposed to find a common stance via discissions?
The whole thing is completely ridiculously focused on everyone else having an opinion what Germany is supposed to do, disregarding even so much as allowing Germany to think about it and completely ignoring everyone else.
France, Italy, Hungary and some others also opposed the SWIFT exclusion. Itlay tried to get Gucci handbags excluded from the sanctions for gods sake.
We are all in this together but God forbid Germany just spends an extra minute considering the effects of a certain sanction and God forbid Germany naivly tries to work towards peace by using diplomacy over weapons.
We are all in this together, unless Germany isn't immediately doing whatever anyone else wants, then we quickly remind them that they didn't pay for WW2.
Germany spends more than 50 bullion on its army every year, compared to Russia's 60. Now they are doing 3 times that. That money will be taken from schools, social services and taxes on the working class. How much more?
With all due respect i still dont see hatred in all this.
I suspect the americans had to take a lot of money from their schools to finance the marshall plan and the reconstruction of germany.
The british has a lot to spent yet they are rallying around the troops and telling their citizens their security starts in the forests of latvia and lithuania.
The east europeans have yet again money to take from schools to spend defending against russia and essentially shielding germany.
I think many germans are feeling pressure for the first time in their lives, and for the first time in modern german history they have to sacrifice comfort in order to do their part.
I agree its a sacrifice but i dont agree its the end of germany. If anything germany will come out stronger. A secure and stable east europe is directly in the benefit of germany.
Anyway i still dont see hatred, or injustice made to germany. No one’s threatening germany with sanctions, as it so often happens to east eu countries when they are out of line, and no one is saying germans are bad.
There is no contradiction in saying germany is great while saying germany can move faster. Just like i see no harm in your comment - indeed germany needs to take its time, its fine.
I am sorry if anything i wrote makes you think there is anti german sentiment - there is none!
> I think many germans are feeling pressure for the first time in their lives, and for the first time in modern german history they have to sacrifice comfort in order to do their part.
And here we are with the "weak westerners" trope. I can't count the jokes about Germans being to soft to manage slightly colder rooms in the last two days. You perpuate this in the same comment I which you claim there is absolutely just pure love for Germany, nothing else.
And then the whole Germany isn't doing anything. They spend 50 billions on the military each year. The added another 100 billion on top now. They support all sanctions, including SWIFT.
Still not enough? Why? What else? Do you want them to march on Moscow again? Kill another 26 million Russians?
Why are you trying to act like all the negativity towards Germany does not exist? I'm not saying you hate Germany, I'm not saying everyone hates Germany, but just look around. Think about all the examples I gave you for a second. From the German perspective, they sure get a lot of shit for everything the do and not too much recognition either.
Nobody is even mentioning France and Italy, who were also opposed to SWIFT exclusion.
Remember, this discussion started by me saying that I don't see Germany loving the idea of a unified army, given the internal differences in the EU and the way many people from other countries like to hate on Germany. You have continuously just denied that. You think Germany and Poland can happily fight for freedom together, when in Poland that freedom does not extend to women with unwanted pregnancy? You think Germans want to die in the trenches for Orban, who is stealing their money? For people who are openly racist against Muslims?
In a unified EU army, can I even trust that this army will always be used for defense? Or do I have to support Poland's phanasies of drowning refugees in the Mediterranean sea?
Don't get me wrong, standing together against Putin is easy and we are all in. But I don't think Germans want their soldiers be controlled via the EU, in which PIS and Orban would get a say one who they should kill.
I’ll stop this here because at no point have you criticised how germans and germany treat other europeans, making me think you are playing victim or simply trolling. I thought we were having a genuine debate.
I never said that Germans are perfect or that they don't criticize other European countries. I am in fact Austrian, we are the number 1 nation in Europe when it comes to bashing Germans. So I also don't know how I can play victim, given that I am not German.
It's easy for you to accuse me of not having a "genuine debate". From my perspective, you have continuously ignored all points I brought up.
Again, remember what we are discussing here: a unified EU army. My whole argument is that when I look at the way Germany is bashed by some EU countries, I don't know how the Germans will like that. Go ahead and rephrase: "If I look at the amount of disagreement between European countries, I don't see how many nations can be happy about a unified army."
Please, explain to me how Germans would feel when Orban and PIS have power over their soldiers? Again, easy when it is to fight against Putin. But what about the refugee situation? How can we fight for common values, when in Hungary and in Poland, the leaders are actively against freedom and promoting authoritarianism?
When Germany sent helmets to Ukraine, the whole world laughed at them. The Polish PM came to Germany and basically spat in Scholzes face. Now Germany is shipping weapons. In violation of German law, which states that Germany is not allowed to ship weapons to active war zones. A law that was made to ensure Germany would not repeat mistakes of the past.
Is it so hard for to acknowledge that Germany might have a hard time with all this stuff? Can you not see how the descendants of the Nazis, who swore themselves "never again", might have a hard time to jump back into being a military power? Can you not maybe try to empathize with people who, after they opened their borders to refugees have been met with harsh criticism from other countries, who are openly anti-muslim, now have hard time seeing these "shared values"?
And can you maybe also understand why these people might be a little upset about how everyone constantly harks at them for "not doing enough", when in fact they are always on board with all sanctions and already have one of the biggest military budget in Europe?
And again, this is not about fighting Putin today, this is about the idea of unified EU army.
So what are you genuinely debating about? What is your point? My point is that a lot of people seem to want to tell the Germans what to do, whenever they don't the others suddenly remind them of unpaid Nazi debt, and when the Germans are unwilling to be a military power because of the same Nazi history, they are being ridiculed. And we are having this whole conversation here, where you basically deny the Germans right to feel a little annoyed by all this.
100% poland would step in for germany. Matter of fact east eu memeber states account for 15% of german exports and they never voiced the idea of sanctions against germany in their disagreements.
Anyway we can keep disagreeing all day about this. There is absolutely no hate towards germans or germany, i am not sure where this comes from. I imagine east europeans can also claim germans hate them for calling them cheap labour and the south europeans for calling them lazy and it would lead nowhere and so on.
Germany is part and parcel of a free european history and germans are loved. End of story.
You can't just say Germans are loved end of story. Doesn't make it true.
Greeks called Merkel Hitler because of helping them with their debt. Poland and Hungary is raging against Germany because of them helping refugees since about 5 years now. Whenever there is any kind of disagreement, Poland brings up WW2 reparations.
Whenever a German voices concern about how their EU tax money is embezzled I Hungary, they are called arrogant.
Dont we all love free political discourse? Calling each other names doesnt equal to hatred. Thats how europeans do. We love throwing insults at each other. Dont tell me there are no germans calling greeks lazy yet they bear the burden of their own mistakes?
I think its a bit hypocritical to claim germany is a victim. Arent germans all too happy to welcome refugees against eu member state concerns yet when east europeans travel to germany for work they are looked down upon? Aren’t germans all too happy to point out how lame all of these other eu countries are when they make mistakes?
We can spin in circles all day long and the only conclusion i can draw is that europeans replaced wars with insults and thats ok. I prefer this over invasions.
> I think its a bit hypocritical to claim germany is a victim.
Which I did exactly where?
> Arent germans all too happy to welcome refugees against eu member state concerns yet when east europeans travel to germany for work they are looked down upon?
Exactly, here we go. The most evil thing you can throw against Germany is that ... they helped refugees. And when east europeans travel to Germany for work they are looked down upon? I thought they were mostly getting paid! I thought the EU opened borders for people looking for work, well knowing that this puts pressure on the low wage workers in the richer countries.
> Aren’t germans all too happy to point out how lame all of these other eu countries are when they make mistakes?
Germany does, in fact, criticize other EU members for violating the EU contracts that they signed. Like when the Polish and Hungarian governments are hard at work and turning their democracies into authoritarian states modeled after Putins Russia.
> We can spin in circles all day long and the only conclusion i can draw is that europeans replaced wars with insults and thats ok. I prefer this over invasions.
Just read the comment I answered to. Any many others here. Every time Germany does something or proposes something, they are called Nazis in some other countries media. Poland and Hungary have explicitly anti-liberal leaders. The Hungarian guy openly states "the end of liberal democracy". There is blatant anti Muslim racism in many European countries. The same people who now are so proud of helping the Ukrainian refugees were acting very differently towards the Syrian war refugees.
Orban is Hungary for example is a despot quite similar to Putin and has been spending years of stealing EU money for him and his friends.
I don't feel like fighting in drenches for this guy. I would for many Hungarian people, but not really for the ones that are fostering hate against my Muslim neighbors or the ones that steal the EU money that is meant to prop up the Hungarian economy.
The german media also does a good job at creating an image of east europeans being criminal and south europeans being lazy.
As does the british media portray germany as a treacherous country.
But those are petty politics on all sides and not hatred. Hatred is declaring war and stating that your country shouldnt exist and denying that your people are a fake people.
Europe can only defend by sticking together. I am 100% sure that poland will go to war for germany in a heartbeat as would ANY country in nato and the eu.
But indeed we need to stop the petty politics of calling each other names and imposing diktats on allies.
Orbans corrupt and polands politics are lame, but no where near the danger we are facing. We’ll sort these two out and germany’s diktats in the eu parliament without tanks and bullets because we dont hate each other we just behave like the siblings that we are.
The dependence is true, but I feel like this was accepted by most with the hope that economic integration of russia would avoid war in europe. Losing so much business would be a deterrent.
I and many other, probably mistakenly, believed this would keep putin in check.
You have to remember that for the US russia is far away, but for us it's a neighbor and our history is bound together for centuries. East germany was part of the soviet union for decades.
We live, lived, in the longest stretch of peace on the european continent and maybe it was NATO and a common enemy but it was also because of diplomancy, compromise and economic integration.
The US is also importing $25bn of crude oil from russia while telling germany to cut down on gas imports from a reliable parter at that point.
> accepted by most with the hope that economic integration of russia would avoid war in europe
Why? Not everything in the world is for sale, particularly what one perceives to be their national security and interest. Former Pakistani President and Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once famously said: "If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own."[1]
> for the US russia is far away, but for us it's a neighbor
Technically, only 50 miles separate the US and Russia from each other across the Bering Strait. But, yes, I can see how distances might be perceived in the European context.
> the longest stretch of peace
In geopolitics, permanent peace is not possible. At some point in time, someone will do something to break it. And every generation has to be ready for it.
> The US is also importing $25bn of crude oil from russia while telling germany to cut down on gas imports from a reliable parter at that point.
The US can be self-reliant very quickly if it wants to. I don't know if the same can be said for Germany.
That's too naive. How can you try be logical and diplomatic when you know you're building dependent relationship with a dictator who already had several wars under his belt. I mean, it was opportunistic, cheap gas is nice and Germany is far away from Russian border, some countries are closer but you know, you can always build a pipeline or two around those. Not your problem afterall.
I just can't believe anyone could eat the diplomatic and logical narrative up.
I am sorry it came across that way but this is how wars start. Countries first have excuses to build up arms. Same reason why I would never want Japan to build up arms. It is NOT different this time. And Russia has shown that. It’s never the people. It takes just ONE bad apple to start it all back up.
And by the way, I did educate myself. Educated myself quite a bit on WWI and WWII.
The defense companies (aka military-industrial complex) lobby US military to force Russia/Ukraine (and in the past Afghanistan, Kosovo etc) to fight in order to push countries for military expenses and orders from the former.
In the mean time the world watches the theater on the TV and comply...
You can't always take a step back in response to bullying. Millions will die, let's give him Ukraine. Millions will die let's give him Latvia and Finland. Millions will die, maybe half of Poland and he calms down... Millions will die and you're cornered and have to fight but you're already in much weaker position.
It's not the way to play the game unless you really want to lose.
Part of the problem is expectations. No one was comitting troops prior to the invasion, and the possible commitment of troops was one of the reasons Putin claimed he developed this situation to begin with, so it would have made a possibly avoidable situation immediately unavoidable. (Obviously he just went ahead anyway, hindsight.)
As such it's even more difficult to commit troops now, as Russia committed to its strategy with the information it had, and thus it would be taking an extremely large gamble at massive cost to the world.
However, troops are committed to various NATO members with a reinforcement of more. There is also a clear expectation that they will be defended should Russian aggression expand. Putin would have to willingly decide to bear this cost should he attack one of those nations, and its consequences. That wasn't the case at the time for the Ukraine.
Responding to erratic behavior with erratic behavior does not lead to stability. It's a moral crusade, which you could argue is worth the possibility of World War 3.
It's a compelling narrative when you put it that way, but let's be more concrete.
Imagine a bet in which nothing is exchanged if NATO has not gotten involved five years from now, but if they get involved and fewer than 1 million die within the next five years, you give me 100 €, but if they get involved and more than 1 million die within the next five years, I give you 500 €, would that seem like a fair bet to you?
(Die refers to as part of this conflict, e.g. using Wikipedia for verification.)
`In light of this, we agree to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets and aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows; we will direct our defence budgets as efficiently and effectively as possible; we will aim to move towards the existing NATO guideline of spending 2% of GDP on defence within a decade, with a view to fulfilling NATO capability priorities. We will display the political will to provide required capabilities and deploy forces when they are needed.`
NATO can have higher military power, but mostly coming from the USA spending 4% of GDP in military, while the "pacifist" European countries keep under spending, with most of them at only 1%
Although European NATO members have been underspending, it's also a question of 1-2% of what.
For example, UK's ($59.2b) and Germany's ($52.8b) spending alone was almost as much as Russia ($61.7b) [1]. The combined economies of EU Nato members is so much larger than Russia's that even with 1-2% spending, their military spending outnumbers that of Russia by a large margin.
That said, I agree that all NATO countries should spend at least the required 2%.
Just want to counter the wrong impression of military power. Even the European NATO members have vastly more military power than Russia, let alone the full NATO including the US.
Of course, nukes change the equation, but once nukes start getting used, we are all doomed. Furthermore, neither the Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans or Americans want a nuclear war.
The russian army is propaganda and nukes. Putin’s psychological warfare triggered images of the soviet army in us making us think they are unstoppable. Seems like we were wrong. Sure russia can do damage but its nowhere near the image it tries to project. Furthermore, russians aren’t monsters and they are against such a war.
> Furthermore, russians aren’t monsters and they are against such a war.
While that's certainly true, Putin is a product of Russian culture. Just as the Russian state is today, and just as it was 30, 50, 70, 100 years ago.
The people of Russia are responsible for what's going on. Putin is a very logical outcome to their culture of power, conquest and empire lust. They cheered when Putin took Crimea, they reveled in the expansion of empire, it made them feel good, and Putin fed off of it. They are responsible. For how many centuries does an outcome have to persist before the people of a nation are held responsible morally for what has occurred? Golly gee, those poor Russian people, they're just never responsible for anything that happens even if a thousand years goes by. I just can't figure out why Russia keeps ending up with authoritarian leaders, century after century. Must be some bad luck, that's all.
And Americans don't bear responsibility for Iraq or the military industrial complex. Bull, of course they do. Yeah, but Putin is a dictator! The Russian people greatly applauded Putin's successes, gave him credit for things he didn't deserve credit for (oil prices artificially bolstering their economy during the Bush years), tolerated his behavior and extreme human rights abuses, and have never actually attempted to remove him from power (only relatively small challenges to his power have ever occurred). Overall they've barely lifted a finger in his direction to curb his behavior. They are responsible in every possible way.
How many monsters, tsars, conquerers have to come out of Russia before it becomes obvious that it's springing directly from the Russian culture. The Russian culture is made by the Russian people. Thus, they're responsible.
The German people were also responsible for Hitler, they made the culture of the region that produced him ideologically. They cheered the notion of empire and conquest openly, they reveled in the successes of their war machines.
If one goes swimming in the history of cultures that repeatedly produce leaders with the conquering, empire mentality, you see many similarities. Putin has the mentality of European conquerers of centuries past, he represents a regressive disease ideologically. Russia is the only major nation that is part of Europe today that is still holding onto (largely) vanquished ideologies of conquest and empire that were very common in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries (and before).
For Russia to not just get another authoritarian after Putin, the people of Russia have to consciously change their culture. Other European nations have done so, have eliminated barbaric cultures of conquest and empire, including prominently the Germans, French and British among others.
Just like germans were shown a better path and became undeniably democratic and a kind nation once their own despotic system was put to an end so can russians be free.
Russians for the most part simply dont know better. They are told by politicians and religious figures that and injustice has been made, that everyone hates them, that we are coming for their resources and that they are the only ones that can save them.
Their systems are clogged by putinist criminals, their courts are infested by mafias, while their culture is ideologically hijacked.
But the russians have it in them. They are part of european culture and have proven time and again they are.
Just like with nazi germans they are the first victim. I hold no grudge against russians. I think russia should be a developed, have a powerful economy and become a democratic free country. One can only hope.
