Germany government collapses at a perilous time for Europe
nytimes.comThere's a whole bunch of stuff happening that collectively hurts the German economy:
- German economy is heavy on manufacturing: Part of their success was cheap raw materials (oil, gas, etc.) from Russia. That edge has disappeared thanks to the war in Ukraine.
- More competition from China: China is moving up the value chain in manufacturing, competing with Germany in previous strongholds. Lowers margins for lots of German companies.
- At the same time subdued demand from China itself: A large part of growth - esp. in the automotive section - came from China. Domestic manufacturers of EVs have now better offers than Germany, meaning it's losing market share.
- Misguided energy politics: With an unnecessary exit from Nuclear energy (German nuclear power plants were among the most reliable ones). Driving up energy costs just at the moment when gas is already in short supply due to sanctions on Russia.
Will any new Government fix all these issues? Unlikely, they are structurally too deeply a part of the German economic model that a new Gov. could change them (except for restarting Nuclear power plants - but that seems unlikely atm).
The hardest part to build a car these days is the emissions. Without it, the next thing is safety, but that is an easier solve.
I feel that Germany felt like EVs wouldn't take off, and thus ignored them for too long, and they got taken by surprise.
For example, the Model 3 Performance on 20" wheels has 303 miles of range, a 0-60 of 2.9 seconds and is about 20k cheaper than the BMW i4 M50 on 20" wheels has 227 miles of range and a 0-60 of 3.7 seconds.
Why? Well, the i4 isn't a purpose built EV. It sits on a platform that must incorporate everything, starting at a tiny 1.6 liter 4 banger, a 2 liter 4 banger with electric motor, a 3 liter 6 banger, and a plethora of configurations, manual, automatic, (air)suspension, performance (M3/M4), bodies (station wagon). And on top of that a battery pack beneath everything and electric motors.
Look under the hood on a BMW i4. Take the cover off. There is empty space there. It's wasteful.
So now I'm looking at our next car. Do I get the Tesla? Or the BMW?
I mean, you have a lot of choice and the Tesla quality isn't exactly known to be as high as the BMW (Also Tesla real-life range != stated range).
For context: Losing this vote was intended. The government already fell apart in November, so this is the next formal step towards new elections.
American news outlets just love to use the click-baity word "collapse" when it comes to parliamentary systems not being able to form a government.
Technically I guess it's true, but this is not exactly a rare occurrence in parliamentary systems, and since we don't really have an equivalent event in American federal government (the lengthy process to elect a Speaker of the House last year was probably the closest we've come), I think most American readers interpret "collapse" as something much more dire than it actually is.
> American news outlets just love to use the click-baity word "collapse" when it comes to parliamentary systems not being able to form a government.
Not disagreeing with the American media’s love for click-baity nonsense, but I’ve been under the impression my whole life that this was a Britishism we imported. Not that British media is known for shying away from shock-value, but for what it’s worth, the BBC and The Guardian both refer to this as a government collapse, and have done so in the past when the French and Dutch governments collapsed.
Also a bit less confident this is a British import now than I was since I can’t track down a useful etymology. Would appreciate if anybody could post one here if they have it.
FWIW I thought the Washinton Post's headline on this topic was much better and less click-baity, "Chancellor Olaf Scholz loses confidence vote, triggering early election".
>and since we don't really have an equivalent event in American federal government (the lengthy process to elect a Speaker of the House last year was probably the closest we've come),
No. The closest is when the federal government shuts down because of the debt limit, which has happened multiple times. It's also arguably more impactful compared to a government "collapsing" (ie. new elections called).
Disagree. In a parliamentary system, the executive roles (e.g. prime minister and his cabinet) all come from parliament - there is not the same separation of executive branch and legislative branch like there is in the American system. So when no party or coalition in parliament has a majority, there is essentially no "executive branch" and new elections must be called.
In the US, again that can't happen because the executive branch is fully separate, and even within Congress it rarely happens because we only have 2 major parties. So the situation where the House couldn't elect a Speaker due to the problems cobbling up a majority vote, which then froze any other work the House could do, is most analogous in my opinion. Debt limit standoffs are a completely separate process, and the impacts they have are nothing like what happens in a parliamentary country when a government can't be formed.
Nitpick: in a parliamentary democracy, the executive functions just fine in times of a lame-duck government (Just like in a presidential democracy like in the US right now.) What does not work is the legislative function - which in a parliamentary democracy usually works in tandem with the executive which has the parliamentary majority. But countries can work for years without legislators pushing through sweeping reforms…
Yeah I think the title is a bit too hyperbolic considering the situation. I guess it’s about the Russian invasion and aggression, but Schulz has been hopeless for Ukraine so it shouldn’t sound so tragic.
I think the proper way to say would be "it shouldn't sound much more tragic than it already is".
What's there in the meantime before the elections? Would they appoint some kind of interim ministers? Which of course would not do anything at all to stir whatever policy currently there is, because they are not supposed to have any initiative. Also, "what if AfD wins?".
Situation normal, all fucked up...
Yeah my thoughts exactly. Better to just get the election done and move on.
Schulz has been hopeless for Ukraine so it shouldn’t sound so tragic.
Oberfeldwebel Hans Schultz was known mostly for turning a blind eye to the prisoners' various doings at Stalag 13 (to whom he was known simply as "Schultz"). Having proved himself hopeless in that capacity, it's not surprising that he'd be hopeless for Ukraine as well.
Something tells me you may be thinking of the current German Chancelllor, Olaf Scholz.
And an election was scheduled in March anyway.
No, in October was the regularly scheduled date. Now an election is planned for February, but technically it depends on the president dissolving parliament, and is not certain. In practice, it is though.
I see, I saw the chart and 02-03 I thought that was the reg scheduled election date.
Oh! It is going to be the circus over there too (I am french).
The Germans have a much bigger experience of large coalition governments than us.
Feli from Germany her channel explains it a bit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ywqDbHiMrs
The political landscape in Germany is closing to the one we have in France. Happening in the UK too, at a slower pace, but it is happening.
I thought the "we are fed up" political trend was frenchy french... well, nope, it spans all over EU.
Here, political coalition has never been a thing (we tried after WWII, but hardcore failed) : either one party has the majority by itself, either it is the circus. If we had the same election system than in Germany and UK, the "rassemblement national" would have been in power for years.
We have a "weakest link" election system: if the biggest party is not big enough, all the other parties can team up to block it.
Maybe now we can elect a new government who will actually use their brains. That would be something.
Anyone with a link without the paywall? I see only one snapshot on web.archive but it doesn't work so well..
Here you go: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/world/europe/germany-conf...
@dang feel free to update to this, I generated it myself.
The stoplight coalition is incoherent. You can't have socialists, greens, and neoliberals in the same party. The only thing they can agree on is more immigration, and that's not going to make voters happy.
CDU should just agree to work with AfD in return for some bright lines excluding the most extreme stuff.
Finland has had a few of those. Wide coalitions can work if people focus on getting things done, or they can fail if they focus on identity politics.
Get what done? What does FDP want to do that Greens also want to do?
Your question is a perfect example of identity politics.
Most political parties want mostly the same things. They have differences in priorities, and they may oppose the specific means other parties propose, but they are rarely opposed to the actual goals of the parties on the other side of the political spectrum.
Radical fringes often have too different visions of the society to work with those on the other side. But we are not talking about radicals here, but a coalition of three moderate center-left / center-right parties. Those parties should be able to collaborate most of the time, even if you add CDU (another center-right party) to the mix.
You can specify goals at a high level of abstraction. But do they agree on concrete policies to achieve those goals? The fact that the government failed suggests the answer is no. Same thing in France. Countries where half the political spectrum twists itself into a pretzel to oppose the right on immigration will become ungovernable.
If you want a majority government, half the political spectrum must twist itself into a pretzel. The key issue is will the people in question try to find common ground, or do they prefer to play identity politics.
The most stable government coalition in Finnish history was Lipponen's first government in 1995-1999. It consisted of SDP, National Coalition Party (center-right), the Greens, the Left, and Swedish People's Party (center). The coalition was stable enough that it lasted the full four-year term and another three years after the elections.
Government stability is ultimately about people. Are those people willing to work together, or do they let political labels get in the way.
I imagine the argument here is: FDP wants lower energy prices enough to horse trade with Greens for new conservation designations. That kind of thing.
Well, they claimed for years they wanted to strengthen civil liberties, stop surveillance, progress digitalisation of government etc. That all should have worked well with their coalition partners and the fact that they never actually intended to do these things and thus didn't certainly plays a role in that they lost so much voter approval, even if the keep telling themselves the only reason is that the were not neoliberal enough!
X5555
The only way Germany reboots their economy is if they ditch the disaster the Greens implemented in regards to energy policy, drastically slash red tape and bureaucracy, stop the industrial policy that favors old-economy manufacturing, and promote entrepreneurship and new companies.
But that's the playbook for France and the UK, and all of Europe. I think it will take 10+ more years of slow-grind reductions in their standard of living for Europe to change its ways.
Hmh, this notion is quite widespread, but it is not reflected by reality. Especially the Green ministry of economy significantly reduced red tape across the board, esp. with regards to large-scale infrastructure projects, i.e. projects of the Energiewende. Just take a look at BImschG V10 or the new NABEG.
I'm an entrepreneur myself and there is still a lot of red tape I'd rather get rid off, but the last four years saw a lot of movement and were really good in this regard. If anything I would hope that any new government keeps up the pace!
"Slashing red tape" and "ditch the disaster the Greens implemented in regards to energy policy" are two separate items in that list, I think. In other words, it doesn't help that they slashed red tape for their energy policy projects.
Especially since their slashing red tape for energy policy projects didn't even help the energy policy projects in any way. They intended and announced an uptick e.g. in onshore wind projects which just didn't happen. One thing is that they didn't slash all the red tape, just symbolic amounts. The other thing is that there is no investment because all the rest of the economy is in the toilet and people and investors hold on to their money.
My company happens to be active in this neck of the woods and I assure you, the acceleration is significant. It is just that things are still running on time-scales that are still incomprehensible for the general population. We are talking about slicing off 50% time but in the end this means cutting projects down from 10 to 5 years.
I'm, however, with you in the matter of public investment. The Schuldenbremse needs to go.
> drastically slash red tape and bureaucracy, stop the industrial policy that favors old-economy manufacturing, and promote entrepreneurship and new companies
You just described word-for-word "Industrie 4.0" - Germany's attempt at this back in 2014 [0]
It did not take off.
And this is the issue - these are all buzzwords, but there are more systemic issues in Germany caused by it's conglomeratization. It's always the same handful of conglomerates (Siemens, VW, Bosch, etc) lobbying for industrial policy.
[0] - https://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/image/docu...
> [...] stop the industrial policy that favors old-economy manufacturing, and promote entrepreneurship and new companies
New companies that do what?
The "what" can be anything that brings the money these days.
But with which skilled workforce? Investment? Regulatory flexibility? Infrastructure? Energy?
So the real question is "how", IMHO.
I‘m curious, what do you mean by disaster in regards to energy policy?
HN is for some reason utterly obsessed with the Germany decision to close it's nuclear power plants, even though they only ever contributed a small percentage and were replaced with about the same amount of renewables.
If there is any reference to a disaster, a catastrophe or poor decision(which there always is in any thread about Germany, even if it has nothing to do with energy), it's ALWAYS about Nuclear.
My favourite was a comment which unironically described it as "the most catastrophic peacetime decision in human history".
> only ever contributed a small percentage
It was more than 30%
> replaced with about the same amount of renewables.
That turns out not to be the case. You cannot compare electricity produced by intermittent/weather-dependent renewables with electricity produced by dispatchable sources. Different products.
So we replaced cheap, reliable, CO₂-free electricity with expensive, unreliably and also CO₂-free electricity. At a cost of € 400-600 billion.
Pretty bad.
> "the most catastrophic peacetime decision in human history"
That's actually pretty apt description. Since you think it is ridiculous, I am sure you will be able to trivially come up with a at least about ten that were worse. (If it's less than ten, it would still be in the top 10 of most catastrophic decisions).
Sabine Hossenfelder described it as "the dumbest thing the Germans ever did" in one of her videos.
(To the objection that there might be this other thing she replies that that was evil, not dumb)
Getting out of nuclear power. Getting out of coal power. Getting out of gas power. All before even the previous "getting out of..." was really done, understood and compensated. Blindly building renewables without regard for grid stability. Negative growth in necessary energy storage capacity. Negative growth in on-demand power. Decades of lag in building new transmission lines between the wind-rich, solar-poor, industry-poor north and the wind-poor, solar-rich, industry-rich south. All while having to vastly increase energy taxes (which make up roughly half of the energy bill in Germany now) to pay for all the getting-out-of and greening, while having to import liquefied gas and reactivate gas and coal power plants at massive costs.
Assuming they mean nuclear. But it’s too late to fix that it takes many years to build nuclear plants I think we are doing ok on renewables.
What was the cost per MWh last week again? No, we're not "doing ok on renewables"
And no, it's not "too late to fix that". We have 8 restartable reactors, we don't need to build new ones to do that. (Isar 2 is probably restartable within a year or two)
Yes sure, I agree. It’s extremely expensive. I can only speak for my region (Berlin Brandenburg) but there’s solar going up everywhere around. Perhaps not fast enough, but movement is happening.
You want to change energy policies based on the price of power during a few days a year? That is rather short sighted.
Even with those 3-5 days of high prices, the average price is expected to be 30% lower this year compared to last year. This is also reflected in the prices consumers and the industry have to pay. Consumer prices are still trending downwards and the industry price has been very close to the lowest prices over the last 10-20 years, especially if you consider inflation (but only if you had to pay the EEG before).
The prices also only jumped about as far up as to match the current gas prices, which is somewhat expected if there is no wind or solar and the missing energy has to be produced by burning gas. This is not what will be the case long term. Germany is almost doubling the installed battery storage capacity every year and has been keeping that up for almost a decade at this point: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....
This trend is likely to continue and will smooth out a few days of no renewables soon. Additionally so far biomass has been subsidized without it having to follow the load. This is expected to change this (there was at least one law proposed, don't know if that was decided on yet), which would make Germany follow a lot closer to how Denmark seems to operate its grid.
The big problems in the German energy grid are, that there is not enough transfer capacity, not enough storage and not enough renewables in the grid yet. More renewables make storage more attractive, but earlier conservative governments killed both solar and wind installations, because they wanted to focus on nuclear, only to then reverse course a short time later. Solar was on an exponential trend until the government implemented policies, that basically killed expansion around the 2012 time frame: https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/installed_power/chart....
A similar story applies to wind power, where additional regulation regarding the distance of wind turbines to living spaces made it almost impossible to build new wind turbines (around 2017).
Similar policies also prevented installation of new power lines or at least significantly delayed their installation.
Had conservative governments not implemented those, we would likely be at 100% renewables already most of the time in Germany and the average price for electricity would be significantly lower. But the distraction of nuclear and then gas and coal by conservative governments put us into the position we are in today. A completely renewable grid is possible and not too far off for many countries in the EU and elsewhere, but you need to actually build the infrastructure for it instead of sabotaging it.
Restarting reactors won't help in that regard. The few reactors that were still in the grid in 2022 did not reduce the record electricity prices that year. (They would also not have helped when they were at their peak with about 30% of the grid. Germany stopped constructing nuclear plants in the 80s after all and nuclear has been in a decline since then, even though officially that was only decided in 2002 and then 2011.) And the prices continue falling since the last nuclear plants were shut off in 2023. Today renewables are the cheapest source of energy. Storage is still a problem, but battery prices still half every few years, which makes battery storage economical today already and only cheaper in the long run.
For all intents and purposes Germany is doing ok in renewables. It could be a lot better, but there is a clear plan and if conservative governments don't reverse course next year (again) as well as stop sabotaging renewables in local governments (like Bavaria), prices will soon be the lowest they have been in 2 decades. This is backed up by plenty of data and studies. Nuclear plants are cool in theory, but they can't compete in price in the long term and trying to go back to them would be the same mistake the German car industry made, when it tried to push ICE cars and is now getting steam rolled by China in the EV market. Or when Germans invested into gas pipelines instead of renewables, because it was cheaper at the time. Germany can't afford to make plans only for the next 2 years, it needs to have plans for the next few decades.
> You want to change energy policies based on the price of power during a few days a year? That is rather short sighted.
No, I want energy policies that account for the need to support a reliable base load in all circumstances. The prices are an expression that got fucked up. And that baseload specifically includes heavy industry, which has limited ability to rely on batteries alone.
Simply, "most of the time" is insufficient. That means we need an answer for what happens until we reached the "next few decades" state.
This is not advocacy to replace renewables with nuclear, but to a) do the baseload thing, now, and b) cut the LNG cord, which is a very tenuous tether to hang yourself off.
I don't think you and I are disagreeing much about the long term (though questions around battery sustainability need answering for the long term baseload case). But there's need for fairly immediate action. Germany is massively deindustrializing right now, and it's due to energy supply issues, at least in part.
Why do you act like German electricity prices aren't high? Any source including the one you link shows Germany to be above average. Hard to take the rest of what you say seriously when you don't acknowledge this reality.
Regardless I'll be curious to see whether what you predict will happen (energy storage becomes enough to deal with bad weather periods). Doesn't seem smart though to rely on the sun in a relatively cloudy country.
Nope. Actually, none of the nuclear reactors in Germany are restartable. By now, all of them have had their permit to dismantle for some time. In all of them, they already started sawing apart the less radioactive components and flushing the rest with agressive cleaning agents and sticky goo to get rid of mobile particles that could endanger the workers. Which means that none of the reactor components are in any usable state and would need to be exchanged for new ones. Doing that in an old reactor is more expensive than building a whole new one, and would probably take a lot longer.
Making energy expensive is kind of the point, isn't it? The cost of destroying the planet was not billed in so far, so we need to correct that.
Actually, the energy sources that currently rake in the cash at 1Eur/kWh are gas and coal power plants. Because wind and solar are offline due to shitty weather.
I guess more coal and gas was "kind of the point"
Absolutely not. The alternative to using electric energy is using manpower. Blood, sweat and tears.
What must be gotten rid of is high emission energy sources.
The current system has created massive price variability which neither voting citizens nor industry are willing to accept. It provided a grid which eliminated nuclear and coal power which a large portion of the voter demographic wanted (for valid and non-valid reasons depending on who you ask), but it added a deep dependency on optimal weather, imports of natural gas and electricity from neighboring countries, which design has demonstrated high price variability based on supply and demand. The average price of energy has also slightly increased (20-ish%?) but it is really the variability that is the main problem when a single month can cost more than the sum of all other months. Average price isn't significant when there is an inelasticity of demand.
The outcome is political instability when voting citizens and industry demand that the government solve the issue, and people get more upset as the energy market get more unstable. A secondary effect is that most political solution to this problem results in significant government costs which get put on taxes and energy fees, which only infuriate people more when price variability continues.
Why does it feel like "interesting times" lay ahead....
When isn’t there ?
It’s quite depressing how weak with SPD and CDU policies are at a time when we should have something more to say to AfD than “more of the same”.
CDU’s policy document this week is likely to keep the debt brake which is actively preventing any meaningful investment in infrastructure here.
So the Germany economy can die while being in perfect health. Super.
"Operation gelungen, Patient tot" wie es so schön heißt.
Ich glaube nicht, dass das irgendjemand als Erfolg bezeichnet, sie haben nur zu viel Angst oder sind zu faul, um eine bedeutsame Veränderung herbeizuführen. Erbärmlich.
What are they going to say within the context of their coalition government? SPD has no majority without Greens and FDP, and what can those three parties agree on other than "we love immigration?" The only thing that ties the coalition together is opposition to AfD and that's not a recipe for a functional government.
Germany needs to get rid of absurd economic ideas that seem to predicated on bad notions of why the 1920s happened.
They have imposed 3% deficit cap and then expanded it all over Europe using the Maastricht Treaty. Economist Steve Keen has called a ‘suicide pact’.
Everyone I speak to agrees, no one seems to be running on such a policy.
There’s a definite time bomb coming on the aging population, to boot.
Although I still think things are looking better in Germany than the UK right now.
You don't seem to speak to a lot of people. The debt break is in high regard in Germany, for very good reasons. Just look at the latest absurd policy suggested by Habeck: a 1000€ voucher for electricity for everyone who buys an electric car. THAT'S the kind of policies which are prevented by a debt break.
The problem is not that the government cannot spend enough. We have higher tax revenues than ever. The problem is that most of the taxes are spent on consumption instead of investments. More money for the government through debts won't necessarily increase investments, but it will 100% increase consumption ever more.
Also, you should look into why the French government collapsed: because their high-debt policies haven't been sustainable.
High consumption, usually, eventually leads to investment. Germany has had a lot of bad investments, especially in infrastructure. Stimulating the economy by increasing the government spending is usually not the worst idea, as it will let the market decide on what to invest.
The opposite seems to be working in Argentina, sure, but I always quote Kuznets when it comes up: "there are 4 types of economies: developed, undeveloped, japan and Argentina".
As someone who studied economics and is doing wildly different things, I'm looking forward to see how the "DOGE" thing Elon is doing will change things. I bet it'll be for the worse, but there is a reason why I didn't become an economist at the end :)
Consumption in Germany means spending on social amenities such as unemployment benefits (no time limit, no more obligation to get a job or even show up for interviews) and stuff like that. That kind of government spending does not lead to any meaningful investment.
You don’t even have an obligation to go to interviews ? Why not?
Well, technically you do. But the late left-wing government decided that sanctioning people (usually decreasing their payments) for not fulfilling their obligations is "socially cold", so they ended all sanctions. Meaning that you can ignore that obligation and still get the full amount of money.
Which party are you going to vote for?
It feels better the blame history on inflation then racism
I don't follow him and his policies closely but whatever I caught in various types of media was just bad news. Germany's car manufacturers can potentially lose few million jobs if they go belly up, VW will definitely be closing at least few factories and the rest ain't in best shape neither. Does anybody know something positive on this guy?
Existential threat almost at the door yet 0 reaction, Germany is still massively under mandatory NATO 2% contributions and 0 attempt to get there. Wehrmacht is a joke considering size of the country.
He didn't turn around Merkel's horrible energy policies while whole world was just watching in awe how it unfolded. Nothing about semi-permanent migrant crisis.
Really, german population deserves much better leaders than him or Merkel, these are tough times and weak leaders lead to degradation of not only economy, plus it spills all over EU.
Wehrmacht was 1935-1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht
> Existential threat almost at the door yet 0 reaction
June 2022 "German lawmakers approve 100 billion euro military revamp" https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-lawmakers-approv...
> massively under mandatory NATO 2% contributions and 0 attempt to get there.
2015: 1.19%, 2016: 1.20%, 2017: 1.24%, 2018: 1.26%, 2019: 1.36%, 2020: 1.57% (https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/10/p...)
You cannot seriously be arguing that going from 1.19% of GDP to 1.57% of GDP in a decade counts as an attempt.
1.57 % in 2020. After the invasion and with the 100 mio it is at 2%.
No, that isn't a done deal yet: https://www.statista.com/statistics/810406/ratio-of-military... post-cold-war numbers until 2022 are under 1.4%
2023 is still well below 2% at 1.5%: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_mi...
2024 is expected to maybe barely scratch 2%, but maybe only with accounting tricks such as including road and train infra spending: https://www.politico.eu/article/berlin-germany-pump-defense-... Also, the 100mio are only expected to last until 2026 at most, and the budget for 2025 led to the blowup of the traffic-light-coalition government and is expected to include major slashes in spending when the next government after the spring election gets working on it.
Don't worry, Germany will hit the 2% mark soon due to decreasing GDP.
> Germany is still massively under mandatory NATO 2% contributions
Do you think German voters want to spend more money on military?
Unless they would like to experience a reverse Anschluss with Russia, yes.
Did you compared europes combined economic and military capabilities with those of russia lately?
If it weren't for the nukes, no one would talk about russia so much. China would be a different story.
People are consistently claiming that if Ukraine falls, Russia will move further west. This could bring a war on the border of Germany.
> Wehrmacht is a joke considering size of the country.
I would hope so, the Bundeswehr is the thing we should worry about though.
>Existential threat almost at the door yet 0 reaction
Why do people pretend that Russia is capable of even threatening the EU? They can't even subdue the backwater that is Ukraine. Even if Putin takes all of it, he will need decades to make Russia capable of striking meaningfully into Europe. And we can outproduce him 10 to 1 for every piece of military hardware, and we have enough fighting age immigrants pouring into Europe in the last decades that we can mobilize and throw into the meatgrinder before having to tap our own population. I am convinced that this is one of the reasons we have so lax borders in Europe - to have cannon fodder for WWIII
>and we have enough fighting age immigrants pouring into Europe in the last decades that we can mobilize and throw into the meatgrinder before having to tap our own population.
I could say that this is extremely macabre (which it is), but I guess I have a better chance reaching the HN crowd by saying that soldiers under force usually perform atrocioucsly, especially fighting for a cause they have zero interest in.
it works well for the US as some 5 to 12% of the US army is composed by immigrants
Why do people [maintain] that Russia is capable of even threatening the EU?
Because its regime has verbally done just that, and has conducted sabotage and assassinations on EU soil on multiple recent occasions.
The fact that is attacking Ukraine in part as a response to its attempt to join the EU is also very reasonably interpreted as part of this intrinsically threatening stance.
Putin's mouth is writing checks that his ass cannot cash. They are bogged down for 3 years in the only country in Europe less developed than them. He may have the desire, but he lacks the capacity to threaten Europe.
It doesn't matter that the threats have the additional qualifier of being mostly exaggerated. They're still plainly threats, by every accepted definition of the term.
And he absolutely does have the capacity to use his nukes. It'd be stupid and plainly irrational for him to do so. One can safely say it's objectively unlikely that he will.
But that in no way means he doesn't have the capacity.
Of course they are threats, but only stupid person would take them seriously. And nuclear war will be end of the world so no need to worry about it - the people pretend to be scared by conventional war. By this logic Erdogan wants to restore the Ottoman empire and right now is busy invading Syria - is he a threat too?
Of course they are threats, but ...
Meaning: "Of course he is threatening, but ..." after you just said "He isn't capable of even threatening".
Can't you just acknowledge that it wasn't the best choice of language you used up front?
No. Threat as a verbal construct and threat as a danger are different things. Putin can give verbal threats, but doesn't have the infrastructure to make them threatening.
A pomeranian barking when angry is not threatening but funny. So is Putin
Threat as a verbal construct and threat as a danger are different things.
This is just weird, verbal gymnastics.
I don't lose any sleep over Putin either. But there's nothing in the least funny about him, or what he says.
Since we periodically elect such parties and people, apparently we get what we deserve. Shitty governments, consisting of people, who care more about their own deep pockets, rather than improving the status quo. Every 4 years we have men in black walking around blitzdingsing everyone apparently, to forget how bad the government before the current one was and then we reelect those. Now "new" to the mix we have AfD and BSW, which are so far removed from reality, that I don't even know how to describe them any longer.
Of course part of this is by design, letting the education sector drift into becoming utter crap. Wouldn't want a populace capable of thinking for themselves, now would we? And as such maybe we do deserve better, but are somehow incapable of voting ourselves out of the bad situation we are in. Doesn't help at all, that there is a growing aging polulation, that is basically not actually capable of living democracy and simply always and forever votes for corrupt gangs, oops, I mean parties.
I expect from a person valuing and living in a democracy, to actually inform themselves before voting, instead of letting calcified brain cells vote. Maybe I am asking too much here, but all it takes is 2-4h once every couple of years, and not only thinking of oneself, actually being a member of society and understanding oneself as such.
> Wehrmacht is a joke considering size of the country.
You should strike that word from your active vocabulary. Our armed forces are called Bundeswehr, and people might mistake an honest mistake for some Nazi leanings.
And strong leaders are good as long as they think what needs to be done, matches what you want.
The reason Scholz came to power, was not because he is strong, but because he wasn't. Germany is as divided as the rest of europe. Some think the war in Ukraine is the most important. Some think climate crisis is. Some think cheap energy is the most important, some think the immigrants, ... so how does it all go together? Well, it doesn't. And since we are a democracy we need to find some compromise. Not a dictator.
But yeah, some indeed want to have a dictator and a strong Wehrmacht back. And their numbers are rising.
The rest of europe isn't in the same boat. Denmark and now Sweden have been able to bridge the divides by capitulating on the pro-immigration stance: https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-migration-eu-parliam.... If CDU were to give up the immigration issue and absorb the AfD defectors, it likely would be able to form a governing majority.
AfD is (like BSW) extremely anti-Ukraine. Seriously, the party boss just called for recognizing Russia’s victory. That‘s the big divider, on immigration issues they could find common ground.
I'm not German, but it seems to me that CDU could capitulate on immigration in exchange for a change in AfD party policy on the Ukraine war. I doubt there are that many hardcore pro-Russian voters (although who knows with the East Germans).