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29. May 2010 by admin.
By George Friedman
Discussions about Europe currently are focused on the Greek financial crisis and its potential effect on the future of the European Union. Discussions these days involving military matters and Europe appear insignificant and even anachronistic. Certainly, we would agree that the future of the European Union towers over all other considerations at the moment, but we would argue that scenarios for the future of the European Union exist in which military matters are far from archaic.
For example, the Polish government recently announced that the United States would deploy a battery of Patriot missiles to Poland. The missiles arrived this week. When the United Statescanceled its land-based ballistic missile defense system under intense Russian pressure, the Obama administration appeared surprised at Poland’s intense displeasure with the decision. Washington responded by promising the Patriots instead, the technology the Poles had wanted all along. While the Patriot does not enhance America’s ability to protect itself against long-range ballistic missiles from, for example, Iran, it does give Poland some defense against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles and substantial defense against conventional air attack.
Russia is the only country capable of such attacks on Poland with even the most distant potential interest in doing so, and at this point, this is truly an abstract threat. In removing a system that was really not a threat to Russian interests — U.S. ballistic missile defense at most can handle only a score of missiles, meaning it would have a negligible impact on the Russian nuclear deterrent — the United States ironically has installed a system that could affect Russia. Under the current circumstances, this is not really significant. While much is being made of having a few U.S. boots on the ground east of Germany within 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) of the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, a few hundred technicians and guards are simply not an offensive threat.
Still, the Russians — with a long history of seeing improbable threats turning into very real ones— tend to take hypothetical limits on their power seriously. They also tend to take gestures seriously, knowing that gestures often germinate into strategic intent. The Russians obviously oppose this deployment, as the Patriots would allow Poland in league with NATO — and perhaps even by itself — to achieve local air superiority. There are many crosscurrents in Russian policy, however.
For the moment, the Russians are interested in encouraging better economic relations with the West, as they could use technology and investment that would make them more than a commodity exporter. Moreover, with the Europeans preoccupied with their economic crisis and the United States still bogged down in the Middle East and needing Russian support on Iran, Moscow has found little outside resistance to its efforts to increase its influence in the former Soviet Union. Moscow is not unhappy about the European crisis and wouldn’t want to do anything that might engender greater European solidarity. After all, a solid economic bloc turning into an increasingly powerful and integrated state would pose challenges to Russia in the long run that Moscow is happy to do without. The Patriot deployment is a current irritation and a hypothetical military problem, but the Russians are not inclined to create a crisis with Europe over it — though this doesn’t mean Moscow won’t make countermoves on the margins when it senses opportunities.
For its part, the Obama administration is not focused on Poland at present. It is obsessed with internal matters, South Asia and the Middle East. The Patriots were shipped based on a promise made months ago to calm Central European nerves over the Obama administration’s perceived lack of commitment to the region. In the U.S. State and Defense department sections charged with shipping Patriots to Poland, the delivery process was almost an afterthought; repeated delays in deploying the system highlighted Washington’s lack of strategic intent.
It is therefore tempting to dismiss the Patriots as of little importance, as merely the combination of a hangover from a Cold War mentality and a minor Obama administration misstep. Indeed, even a sophisticated observer of the international system might barely note it. But we would argue that it is more important than it appears precisely because of everything else going on.
The European Union is experiencing an existential crisis. This crisis is not about Greece, but rather, what it is that members of the European Union owe each other and what controls the European Union has over its members. The European Union did well during a generation of prosperity. As financial crisis struck, better-off members were called on to help worse-off members. Again, this is not just about Greece — the 2008 credit crisis in Central Europe was about the same thing. The wealthier countries, Germany in particular, are not happy at the prospect of spending taxpayer money to assist countries dealing with popped credit bubbles.
They really don’t want to do that, and if they do, they really want to have controls over the ways these other countries spend their money so this circumstance doesn’t arise again. Needless to say, Greece — and countries that might wind up like Greece — do not want foreign control over their finances.
If there are no mutual obligations among EU member nations, and the German and Greek publics don’t want to bail out or submit, respectively, then the profound question is raised of what Europe is going to be — beyond a mere free trade zone — after this crisis. This is not simply a question of the euro surviving, although that is no trivial matter.
The euro and the European Union will probably survive this crisis — although their mutual failure is not nearly as unthinkable as the Europeans would have thought even a few months ago — but this is not the only crisis Europe will experience. Something always will be going wrong, and Europe does not have institutions that could handle these problems. Events in the past few weeks indicate that European countries are not inclined to create such institutions, and that public opinion will limit European governments’ ability to create or participate in these institutions. Remember, building a super state requires one of two things: a war to determine who is in charge or political unanimity to forge a treaty. Europe is — vividly — demonstrating the limitations on the second strategy.
Whatever happens in the short run, it is difficult to envision any further integration of European institutions. And it is very easy to see how the European Union will devolve from its ambitious vision into an alliance of convenience built around economic benefits negotiated and renegotiated among the partners. It would thus devolve from a union to a treaty, with no interest beyond self-interest.
We return to the question that has defined Europe since 1871, namely, the status of Germany in Europe. As we have seen during the current crisis, Germany is clearly the economic center of gravity in Europe, and this crisis has shown that the economic and the political issues are very much one and the same. Unless Germany agrees, nothing can be done, and if Germany so wishes, something will be done. Germany has tremendous power in Europe, even if it is confined largely to economic matters. But just as Germany is the blocker and enabler of Europe, over time that makes Germany the central problem of Europe.
If Germany is the key decision maker in Europe, then Germany defines whatever policies Europe as a whole undertakes. If Europe fragments, then Germany is the only country in Europe with the ability to create alternative coalitions that are both powerful and cohesive. That means that if the European Union weakens, Germany will have the greatest say in what Europe will become. Right now, the Germans are working assiduously to reformulate the European Union and the eurozone in a manner more to their liking. But as this requires many partners to offer sovereignty to German control — sovereignty they have jealously guarded throughout the European project — it is worth exploring alternatives to Germany in the European Union.
For that we first must understand Germany’s limits. The German problem is the same problem it has had since unification: It is enormously powerful, but it is far from omnipotent. Its very power makes it the focus of other powers, and together, these other powers can cripple Germany. Thus, Germany is indispensable for any decision within the European Union at present, and it will be the single center of power in Europe in the future — but Germany can’t just go it alone. Germany needs a coalition, meaning the long-term question is this: If the EU were to weaken or even fail, what alternative coalition would Germany seek?
The casual answer is France, as the two economies are somewhat similar and the countries are next-door neighbors. But historically, this similarity in structure and location has been a source not of collaboration and fondness but of competition and friction. Within the European Union, with its broad diversity, Germany and France have been able to put aside their frictions, finding a common interest in managing Europe to their mutual advantage. That co-management, of course, helped bring us to this current crisis. Moreover, the biggest thing that France has that Germany wants is its market; an ideal partner for Germany would offer more. By itself at least, France is not a foundation for long-term German economic strategy. The historic alternative for Germany has been Russia.
A great deal of potential synergy exists between the German and Russian economies. Germany imports large amounts of energy and other resources from Russia. As mentioned, Russia needs sources of technology and capital to move it beyond its current position of mere resource exporter. Germany has a shrinking population and needs a source of labor — preferably a source that doesn’t actually want to move to Germany. Russia’s Soviet-era economy continues to de-industrialize, and while that has a plethora of negative impacts, there is one often-overlooked positive: Russia now has more labor than it can effectively metabolize in its economy given its capital structure. Germany doesn’t want more immigrants but needs access to labor. Russia wants factories in Russia to employ its surplus work force, and it wants technology. The logic of the German-Russian economic relationship is more obvious than the German-Greek or German-Spanish relationship. As for France, it can participate or not (and incidentally, the French are joining in on a number of ongoing German-Russian projects).
Therefore, if we simply focus on economics, and we assume that the European Union cannot survive as an integrated system (a logical but not yet proven outcome), and we further assume that Germany is both the leading power of Europe and incapable of operating outside of a coalition, then we would argue that a German coalition with Russia is the most logical outcome of an EU decline.
This would leave many countries extremely uneasy. The first is Poland, caught as it is between Russia and Germany. The second is the United States, since Washington would see a Russo-German economic bloc as a more significant challenger than the European Union ever was for two reasons. First, it would be a more coherent relationship — forging common policies among two states with broadly parallel interests is far simpler and faster than doing so among 27. Second, and more important, where the European Union could not develop a military dimension due to internal dissensions, the emergence of a politico-military dimension to a Russo-German economic bloc is far less difficult to imagine. It would be built around the fact that both Germans and Russians resent and fear American power and assertiveness, and that the Americans have for years been courting allies who lie between the two powers. Germany and Russia would both view themselves defending against American pressure.
And this brings us back to the Patriot missiles. Regardless of the bureaucratic backwater this transfer might have emerged out of, or the political disinterest that generated the plan, the Patriot stationing fits neatly into a slowly maturing military relationship between Poland and the United States. A few months ago, the Poles and Americans conducted military exercises in the Baltic states, an incredibly sensitive region for the Russians. The Polish air force now flies some of the most modern U.S.-built F-16s in the world; this, plus Patriots, could seriously challenge the Russians. A Polish general commands a sector in Afghanistan, something not lost upon the Russians. By a host of processes, a close U.S.-Polish relationship is emerging.
The current economic problems may lead to a fundamental weakening of the European Union. Germany is economically powerful but needs economic coalition partners that contribute to German well-being rather than merely draw on it. A Russian-German relationship could logically emerge from this. If it did, the Americans and Poles would logically have their own relationship. The former would begin as economic and edge toward military. The latter begins as military, and with the weakening of the European Union, edges toward economics. The Russian-German bloc would attempt to bring others into its coalition, as would the Polish-U.S. bloc. Both would compete in Central Europe — and for France. During this process, the politics of NATO would shift from humdrum to absolutely riveting.
And thus, the Greek crisis and the Patriots might intersect, or in our view, will certainly in due course intersect. Though neither is of lasting importance in and of themselves, the two together point to a new logic in Europe. What appears impossible now in Europe might not be unthinkable in a few years. With Greece symbolizing the weakening of the European Union and the Patriots representing the remilitarization of at least part of Europe, ostensibly unconnected tendencies might well intersect.
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22. May 2010 by admin.
The U.S.-Pakistan Conundrum and Europe’s Existential Test
May 20, 2010
U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER JIM JONES and CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pakistan’s top civil and military leadership Wednesday and reportedly urged it to take more aggressive action against jihadists, especially in North Waziristan. (The region is the main hub of an array of international jihadist actors, which the Pakistanis have yet to target in their yearlong counterinsurgency campaign.) The visit was prompted by revelations about the deep connections the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, had with Pakistan’s jihadist community as well as its military. Shahzad’s father is a retired Air Vice Marshal, the third highest rank in the Pakistani air force. His uncle is a retired two-star general who once headed the Frontier Corps in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province. The Frontier Corps is the paramilitary force currently playing a key role in the counterinsurgency campaign against Taliban rebels in northwest Pakistan.
Given the level of religious radicalization that the country has experienced over the past three decades or so, it is not unusual for a person with Shahzad’s pedigree to have joined al Qaeda transnational jihadists. Furthermore, being from an elite family also does not mean that senior people within the army have ties to the global jihadist nexus involved in plots to attack the United States. However, Tuesday there were reports that Pakistani authorities had arrested a serving army major suspected of being an accomplice to Shahzad, which further exacerbates an already complicated U.S.-Pakistani relationship.
Cooperation between Washington and Islamabad on dealing with the jihadist menace had just begun to improve when the Times Square bomb incident took place. It had hardly been three months since U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus had applauded Pakistani efforts against the militant infrastructure. He said Islamabad’s forces were doing the best they could with limited resources, and should not be expected to expand the scope of their operations anytime soon. The shifting paradigm in Washington vis-a-vis Islamabad came to a screeching halt when it became clear that Shahzad had been dispatched by jihadist elements based in Pakistan.
The problem is not that the United States has completely reverted to the old policy of pressuring Pakistan. Rather it has to do with the dilemma where on one hand U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration needs to stabilize Pakistan to deal with the Afghan Taliban, while on the other it needs to pressure Pakistan to take tougher action against al Qaeda, which could further destabilize the already dangerously weakened Pakistani polity. In other words, the U.S. strategy for the region has been knocked off balance.
This precarious situation should not be considered an unintended outcome of the plot to detonate an improvised explosive device in the heart of Manhattan. It is very clearly the work of transnational jihadists headquartered in Pakistan who view increased U.S.-Pakistani cooperation as a lethal cocktail. The jihadists have been able to exploit the weakness of the Pakistani state and the contradictions within its security establishment to their advantage.
But in the past year they have faced a major onslaught and find themselves caught between U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle strikes and Pakistani ground assaults. They are in no position to resist the combined U.S.-Pakistani offensive. Their only way out is to undermine the bilateral relationship, which, given its fragility and the tools at the disposal of the jihadists, is not hard to do.
This strategy mimics efforts to ignite conflict between India and Pakistan by staging attacks in India in an attempt to force New Delhi into taking unilateral action against militant facilities on Pakistani soil. Doing so would lead to an all-out war between the two South Asian rivals, giving militants even more room to maneuver. In the case of the United States and Pakistan, an attack does not have to be successful, such as the case with the Times Square plot. All that is required is an attempt by an individual with easily traceable connections to Pakistan and its security establishment, which would undermine the ties between the two. Ideally, the goal is to create a situation where the United States is forced to be more aggressive about unilateral action on Pakistani soil. Doing so would create further chaos, which is the environment in which the jihadists thrive.
It should be noted that the whole idea of the al Qaeda-allied Pakistani Taliban claiming responsibility for the failed Times Square attack makes no sense. Why would the jihadists expend resources on an individual who did not have the skill set to pull off a real bombing? It only makes the organization appear weak, unless of course the intent was not to stage an actual attack, but rather undermine U.S. strategy for the region by creating problems between Islamabad and Washington.
Lest our readers think there isn’t anything going on in the world beyond Pakistan, the financial crisis in Europe has not gone anywhere — in fact, it continues to build. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament that Europe is facing an “existential test” from the Greek-triggered crisis, noting that “if the euro fails, then Europe fails.” The chancellor is laying the groundwork for a Friday vote on approving Germany’s 123 billion euro contribution to a eurozone bailout fund.
While it was not designed that way, the euro has become the EU. The euro was intended to inject German economic dynamism into the rest of Europe, providing capital and markets that would act like the ocean tide and raise all boats. Instead, the common currency allowed poorer Southern Europe to delay reforms.
The issue of the day focuses on German subsidization of the South versus a series of rolling collapses should Berlin refuse. Unintended or not — and economically beneficial or not — the link between Germany’s checkbook and “the preservation of the European idea” is undisputed. If Germany is to seek global stature, it will have to make donations of similar scale to the European South over and over again. And should it refuse to participate, the great unraveling of Europe will begin with a vengeance.
It is not so much that we are attracted to the drama in Berlin — although it is worth noting that there has not been this type of drama in Berlin since the 1940s — but rather that the Germans are enacting policies that have a hint of desperation to them. On Wednesday the Germans instituted a ban on naked short selling, market parlance for betting that a certain horse will lose badly. Such trades usually only affect the margins of the market, and governments only get nervous about them when the ship seems about to go down.
For comparison, the United States instituted a similar policy in July 2008, just before the American markets degraded from wobbly to free fall.
Posted via web from Jay’s Blogs
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7. April 2010 by admin.
The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Reich
By Peter Zeihan
The first lesson of geopolitical theory is that location matters: The behavior of states is rooted in where they are; the idea of place is fundamental. Rivers are roads of commerce and cultural unifiers. Plains are easy for armies to march across and thus engender a sense of vulnerability — and a culture of pre-emption.
These principles hold for all regions, and Europe is no exception.
For example, any government running the United Kingdom lives in fear of the emergence of a united Europe, which would present a titanic threat east of the Isles. If the various powers of Europe are quarreling amongst themselves, however, Britain has no fear of invasion and can more freely intervene in Continental affairs. It invariably uses this freedom to ensure the Continental powers remain in competition. So long as Europe remains divided and busy counteracting itself, London has the option of expanding its reach well beyond Europe’s shores.
This freedom of action, a blessing derived from geography, allowed for the birth and sustenance of the British Empire. That empire endured until Europe actually did unite — first under Nazi Germany and later under NATO. Moreover, when Britain finally entered the European Union in 1973, it was not because of the privileges of membership, but because the EU was now where European conflicts were played out — joining the fray would give London greater ability to influence policies in its own favor and sabotage aspects of European development that did not serve its interests. Foreseeing this, French President Charles de Gaulle consistently vetoed London’s application as long as he was alive.
For a country like Germany — which always has been geographically and politically right in the thick of things — policy options are far more constrained than they are for the United Kingdom, however.
German security rests on three fundamental conditions. First, Germany has to be perfectly happy in its borders and have no designs or ambitions to expand its relative power. Second, Germany must believe all of its neighbors are similarly content. Third, the second condition must actually be true.
To put it bluntly, European history is a chronicle of what occurs when those three conditions are not met.
Germany’s central location and greater size and population relative to the rest of the major European powers mean it is destined to always be a massive geopolitical weight in the center of Europe. Its mere existence demands that other powers react to it, and it has a profound effect on every aspect of their planning — particularly as regards security policy. Germany’s size and location make it unique, in that with a few minor tweaks of circumstance, it has a realistic chance of dominating the Continent politically, economically and even militarily — and all of its neighbors know this.
This reality, which has had a weighty effect on 500 years of European history, again is becoming extremely relevant, as Germany’s interests versus those of its neighbors and partners change dramatically.
Now, it is true that Germany is a democratic, highly advanced state that is well entrenched in transatlantic and European institutions. But it must be remembered that institutions are built to serve a purpose arising from a set of circumstances — and the circumstances in existence when NATO and the European Union’s predecessor organizations were founded are very different from those in place today.
Germany itself is much changed as well. For all practical purposes, Germany ceased being an independent state in 1945 and did not again join the global community until reunification was completed, with the return of the federal government to Berlin in 1999. It was only with the end of the Cold War and the beginning of reunification that a real German state emerged from the geopolitical wilderness and began to make its presence felt once again.
Germany: The Heart of Europe
It is difficult to understate the effect this simple fact has had on both German and European history. Since the Renaissance and before, European history has been a tale of turmoil, conflict and war among the major and minor powers of the Continent.
What we now call “Germany” first existed as the Holy Roman Empire, founded in 800 by Charlemagne. This first empire, or First Reich, played a leading role in European affairs until the schism of Protestantism from Catholicism fractured it into a gaggle of disunited and squabbling mini-states in the 16th century. The Thirty Years War in the early 17th century shattered what was left, and the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 formalized the final disintegration of Germany’s first incarnation as a major power.
Germany’s declining power during the 16th century and its de facto non-presence in the 17th and 18th centuries created the geopolitical conditions necessary to forge the foundations of modern Europe. If some version of a unified state had survived Europe’s religious wars, it would have created a massive, unavoidable geopolitical presence. Its mere existence would have exerted pressure on all of its borders, and the history of what we know as “Europe” would have been radically different.
But instead, a melange of squabbling principalities and statelets formed a kind of no-man’s-land in the center of the Continent. Prussia, the foremost of the First Reich’s successor states, was certainly no pushover, but it certainly lacked the punch of a consolidated mega-state. This geopolitical vacuum afforded the other major powers — notably the British, French and Russian Empires — a chance to grow into their own in relative security.
But the Germans were merely down, not out.
Throughout the 19th century, the three dozen-odd mini-Germanies began pulling together economically, politically and militarily. Initial efforts to unify the German states, in 1848 and 1849, were derailed by the efforts of an outside power, Austria. The result was the Treaty of Olomouc, which, in essence, gave legal weight to Austria’s domination of the German Confederation.
The humiliation enshrined in the treaty triggered German resentment — and action. In 1866, Prussia roared to life under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck, won the Austro-Prussian War and ejected Austrian influence. Bismarck then went on to lead a smattering of allies into the Franco-German War. The end result was the consolidation of various pieces of “Germany” into the second incarnation of the “German” state in 1871. The Second Reich was born.
This development of a new-old major power in the center of the Old Continent massively disrupted the balances that had defined European affairs for 300 years. This was Europe’s first taste of just how fast Germany could change: In 1865, Germany effectively did not exist. Within six years, it not only existed but was capable of dealing decisive defeat to the Continental superpower of the time.
Germany Re-Reiched
The next 40 years chronicle the formation of alliances and counteralliances that were designed almost exclusively to offset or engage the new Continental hegemon. Those networks of competing alliances — often referred to as the “managing” of European relations under the Concert of Powers — ultimately spun into World War I.
World War I has been often misunderstood. Before the United States entered the conflict in 1917, the war was hardly a stalemate. Russia was not only on the ropes, but collapsing; Serbia already had surrendered, and Romania was about to. The Eastern and Balkan Fronts, therefore, no longer required German troops. Faced with a war on only one front, the Second Reich likely would have been able to overwhelm France, far and away Germany’s military inferior, but for U.S. intervention. Berlin was forced to accept the terms of the Treaty of Versailles — terms that, similar to those of Olomouc before it, were humiliating.
Versailles stripped Germany of many strategic pieces of territory and vastly limited its military capabilities. As the Great Depression crashed into Europe, the Weimar Republic, like Russia to the east, was written off as a state in terminal decline.
Here is where most misconstrue the true vector of German policy. Though most ascribe Germany’s interwar revival to the Nazis in general and to Adolf Hitler in particular — and these forces did indeed play a part — the true seeds of revival were sown with the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo, fully 11 years before Hitler’s rise to power.
At Rappallo, the Germans and the Soviets not only formalized a peace agreement, they forgave each other’s debt, renounced all war claims and implemented a free trade accord. They also agreed to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles by allowing Germany to develop and build advanced weapons in Soviet territory, far from prying eyes. All when Germany had been crushed. All when Germany had been forgotten.
All before the rise of Hitler and the dawn of the Third Reich.
Germany had been defeated in World War I, but it had never stopped acting like a state that occupied the heart of Europe. It was still a power in its own right, with policies dictated by its location. For its very survival, it required at least one secure flank, which would enable it to focus its efforts against the others. To thrive, it needed resources, markets and a military. The Treaty of Rappallo not only achieved this, but laid the groundwork for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, which would lead to the conquering or cowing of the bulk of Europe.
Though Hitler was head of the German state during the war, geopolitical realities would have been the same no matter who would was in charge. Specific policies such as the Holocaust perhaps would not have manifested under a different leadership, but it is extremely unlikely that World War II could have been avoided altogether.
What happened after World War II was strikingly similar to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648: Crushed and occupied, Germany simply ceased to matter.
During the entire Cold War, the geopolitical needs and desires of the Germans were sublimated by the cold clash of the superpowers. For the first time in its history, Europe was not at war. That extremely significant fact occurred for but one reason: the entire continent was occupied by powers with no interest seeing a cold war turn hot.
Europe Today — and Tomorrow
It is said that nature abhors a vacuum, and the same is true of geopolitics. With Germany occupied and divided, France sought to exploit its neighbor’s weakness and the American security guarantee to forge a new Europe — which would be led, of course, by France. It is no surprise that Paris chose twice to veto London’s attempts to join the European Union’s predecessor entity: The French had no use for a pro-American spanner in the works.
For 60 years now, French strategy has depended on a singular characteristic of the post-World War II European reality: German quiescence. But with Germany reunited and active, that circumstance no longer exists. France will soon discover — indeed, already is discovering — that its interests and Germany’s are not in lockstep. The United States’ partial disengagement is allowing the Concert of Powers to return to Europe.
Germany’s reunification — which put it back on the scene with its own interests and policies — robbed Paris of its German booster chair. True, the vast majority of German and “European” policy preferences have remained in alignment since the German capital moved back to Berlin in 1999, but cracks are showing — and widening.
Germany’s options for breaking out of its box are limited at present. But there are two lessons from the past that the state appears to be drawing upon to increase its options and its reach.
First, Germany is beginning to close ranks at home, and not in terms of political parties. During the past year, rhetoric in the press and among politicians has shifted inexorably away from such modern values as multiculturalism. This is partially due to growing dissatisfaction with Schroeder’s government, but there also are glimpses of something darker. For instance, after state elections in Schleswig-Holstein brought a small ethnic Danish party to power Feb. 20, party leaders found themselves the target of hundreds of threats — some from public figures — of which some of the more polite noted that “what is legal is not always legitimate.”
Countries under stress tend to pull together, and that often can mean identifying outsiders in their midst. The German economy has not performed well for 15 years. It is now in its third recession since 2001, unemployment has reached a 73-year high, and beginning in 2006, changes in social welfare laws mean that literally millions of Germans will cease to receive benefits payments. If these realities do spark some kind of social backlash, it could prove significant that Germany hosts Europe’s largest Turkish population and immigrants from a smattering of many other nationalities. There are plenty of outsiders to choose from.
Second, Berlin is resuscitating relations with Moscow. Germany is Russia’s largest energy and trade customer, and the Schroeder government has gone to great pains to push that relationship even further. Alone among European and NATO states, Germany has kept mum during the recent goings-on in Ukraine, and it alone is standing aside even as the rest of the West is pursuing a broad geopolitical advance throughout all of Russia’s former provinces.
A German-Russian alignment is not only logical in a geopolitical sense, but relations have a long way to grow before hitting any natural constraints. Though the two fought each other bitterly during World War II, it is often forgotten that they cooperated deeply until they actually bordered each other. Right now, there are a dozen countries in the zone of territory between them — broadly the same countries that were there in 1939, when Molotov and Ribbentrop decided to carve out the future.
After 60 years in a geopolitical coma, Germany is not just turning a page, it is beginning to write a new book. This in no way means that Germany is doomed to return to its fascist past, but neither is it a foregone conclusion that the Germany of the future will be an American ally, a British ally or especially a French ally (in fact, the past 60 years are the only period in which Paris and Berlin have seen eye-to-eye).
Where Germany will evolve is anyone’s guess: For all practical purposes, Berlin is only now waking up. A new balance of power must now be crafted. At present, Germany and Russia are both feeling quite unsettled, and some 21st-century version of the Treaty of Rapallo appears to be in the cards. That does not mean war is inevitable.
What is inevitable is change. The least likely result of a major power emerging at the heart of a continent is business as usual. And if history is any guide, Germany’s re-emergence during the next few years will slam into Europe with all the subtlety of, well, the German army.
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28. March 2010 by admin.
Germany: Looking for Bismarck
NEWS FROM BRUSSELS ON THURSDAY brought dire tidings to an already embattled Athens. A Franco-German negotiated deal — apparently agreed upon by the rest of the European Union — on a financial aid package to be offered to Greece has more characteristics of a loan shark proposal than of a “bailout.” According to the draft circulated on Thursday at the two-day EU heads of government summit, Greece would indeed be offered a financial aid package of around 22 billion euro, but only after Athens was no longer able to raise funds by selling its bonds in the international markets, and even then at above-market rates, entirely obviating the point of the bailout. That is akin to offering a homeowner, who is about to default on a mortgage, a refinancing offer that equals or increases his mortgage rates above the rate he already cannot pay.
According to DPA, the German press agency, the Franco-German proposal explained that “…the objective of this mechanism will not be to provide financing at average euro area interest rates…” — which is how Greece and its fellow “Club Med States” got into the problem in the first place — “…but to set incentives to return to market financing as soon as possible by risk-adequate pricing.” In other words, Germany is telling the entire Club Med — Greece, Italy and Spain — that the days of riding the German interest rates into an orgy of profligate spending are over. The problem is that Greece would not be asking for a bailout if market rates were not already too high.
The likelihood that Greece would go along with the proposal — despite initially positive comments from Athens — at the moment of an eventual default is highly unlikely. The proposal may very well push Athens to pursue an International Monetary Fund package independent of the eurozone, which could be the intention of Berlin perhaps looking to wash its hands of the entire problem.
The current crisis is providing Germany with one of the best opportunities to make its control over the eurozone explicit, before its own demographic problems catch up with it. Germany essentially has a limited window of opportunity in the next 10 years to make or break its leadership of the European Union and therefore its claim to global relevancy. Germany’s birth rate is lower than all of the major European powers that surround it (France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden), while its population is significantly older than that of Poland. Having a low birth rate means that fewer young people will enter the labor force and provide tax revenue. High life expectancy means more old people will burden the economy through social welfare and health care costs. Considering German resistance to allowing immigration to make up the difference, it is unclear how Germany will pull itself out of the rising social welfare and health care costs that will bury Europe’s economies to a varying degree in the foreseeable future. This is not to say that controlling Europe will help Berlin solve its or the continent’s demographic problems, just that if Berlin is ever going to take command of Europe, the time is now. If Germany ever had room for maneuver — room to bulldoze through domestic dissent over, say, bailing out Greece — then it needs to act before economic and social problems overtake its — and Europe’s — agenda.
The crisis with Greece has offered Berlin the chance to use any potential financial aid package as a carrot with which to motivate the rest of the EU to accept strict rules and mechanisms by which the EU can enforce the rules of the European Monetary Union in the future. But Thursday’s agreement only calls for a meeting at the end of 2010, at which point some proposals on new enforcement and punishment mechanisms, that include turning EU summits into “the economic government of the EU,” would be discussed. The problem for Germany is that there is very little chance that the Club Med countries will agree at the end of 2010 to give up sovereignty over their fiscal policy when they have seen how Germany has handled the Greek call for aid, especially considering the harsh terms of the proposed “financial aid.”
The ultimate problem for Germany is that the moment the rest of Europe perceives that Berlin is looking out solely for its own national interests — such as when it refuses to put up money to save a eurozone member state — it ceases to be a viable European leader. This is due to deeply entrenched fears — not unfounded considering Germany’s power and history — that Germany would completely dominate the continent. Berlin therefore needs a careful balance of sticks and carrots with which to cajole and entreat countries to follow its lead, the kind of balance that was the norm during the leadership of Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck in the late 19th century. This balance often means paying a high cost on the political or monetary front to get the rest of Europe to do what it wants on the geopolitical front.
Germany is of course just coming out of 60 years where domestic politics ruled supreme and foreign policy was outsourced to the United States through NATO, and to Paris through the EU. During those 60 years, Germany did pay for all sorts of European political adventures — starting with the EU project itself. It is therefore unsurprising that Germany today is uncomfortable with the concept of paying for yet another eurozone bailout. But this is only because Germany has yet to remember fully how to be… well, German.
This is not to say that when Greece’s current crisis is over, that Germany will not be able to get what it wants on enforcement mechanisms via other means, or that Germany will not have more opportunities in the future to become the EU’s undisputed leader. But the clock is ticking, and Europe’s demographic challenges are right around the corner. At that point, all of Europe will be so embroiled in domestic political, economic and social concerns that settling issues of leadership and power will be impossible, and that is if the EU even survives the coming crisis.
When the time comes, Europe will need Germany to be Bismarck and Germany will need Europe to want a Caesar. If they fail to accommodate each other before the crisis hits, all may very well slip into global irrelevancy.
Wonder if Japan is ever going to show its true colors again as well… or has it been pacified to the point of no return?
Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs
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