Posts by Oliverkrumme:
Shockwave Approaching – The Return of the Ugly German
April 23rd, 2016By Oliver Krumme.
What has been predicted for the past months has now happened. At today’s regional elections in three federal states – Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg and Saxony Anhalt – the right-wing AfD party achieved staggering results and will now send members to three additional regional parliaments. Germany is witnessing a political earthquake and a fundamental change in its political party structure.
The AfD (Alternative für Deutschland = Alternative for Germany) has easily outperformed established parties such as the liberal FDP, the Green Party, as well as the left wing “Linke”. Even more: first results indicate that the AfD has even outperformed the SPD and the Linke in Saxony-Anhalt, becoming the second strongest party in the federal state in East Germany, just behind the conservative CDU. Last week’s local government elections in the federal state of Hesse already predicted strong results for the AfD, where it partly achieved two-digit results in several cities and municipalities. Just a week later, the AfD has arrived in wide bases of the German population, in the West as well as in the East.
The Refugee Crisis and the Effects of Cologne
Frankly speaking, the results for the AfD were not a true surprise as the ongoing refugee crisis and the long-term effects of the Cologne New Year’S Eve incidents have raised significant concerns in wide parts of the German population, in particular in the view of security, the social welfare system, and the presumable loss of national identity through a steady – what the AfD calls – “alienation” of the country. While the government on the federal, on the regional, and on the municipal level struggle to find solutions for the integration process of acknowledged refugees and had even enforced harsher rules for quicker deportation regulations for rejected asylum seekers, the AfD and many other right wing parties and groups have been riding on an emotional wave of fear, panic making and polemics. Obviously, a significant part of the population was very receptive towards these loudmouths.
Even though the CDU tried to change its previous open-door policy that had strongly been advocated by Chancellor Angela Merkel, it now has to be regarded as a vain attempt to pull potential AfD voters towards the CDU. On the contrary, the open rebellion of several CDU politicians against their party leader Angel Merkel and even of the top candidate for the Prime Minister’s post in Rhineland-Palatinate, Julia Klöckner, caused a loss of credibility for the CDU overall. On the other hand, the left wing parties such as Linke, Grüne and SPD were unable to make a profit of the CDU’s inner quarrels and instead lost the opportunity to defend the refugee policy.
Fear eats Brain – The Louder, the Better
The AfD had one very simple strategy: creating fear through the instrument of the “evil, raping, and greedy” refugee. This was the main agenda not only of the AfD, but of all right wing extremist parties running for the elections – including the neo-Nazi parties NPD and III. Weg (Third Way), as well as from the anti-Islamic PEGIDA-Movement (Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes = Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the Occident). The initial overall welcoming-euphoria for refugees arriving in Germany last summer was almost completely wiped-out after the incidents of Cologne at New Year’s Eve, where thousands of presumable Arab and North African migrants have molested and robbed women. This image of the “sex hungry” refugee was the main image displayed on the AfD’s election wall papers, creating a picture of imminent threat and fear.
The message of the AfD’s policy agenda sent out was simple: enforce harsher asylum laws, deport illegal immigrants more quickly, and enforce national identity throughout society. Taking a closer look at the agenda, it becomes evident that the AfD is targeting a revisionist strategy towards German society: turning the country more restrictive towards all foreigners, elitarian in terms of taxation and social welfare (i.e. massively cutting the welfare system benefits, including withdrawing the voting rights for long-term unemployed people, introducing a flat-tax system from which only top earners will benefit), backwards-drawing in terms of society, i.e. enforcing so called traditional family images, or banning same-sex rights and privileges, and anti-European to the bone.
The Final Triumph of the Right?
Unlike other right wing parties, such as the infamous NPD, the AfD is rather well organized and achieved a stable voters’ base within a short period of time. What originally started up as a Euro-Scepticist, though liberal party has rapidly shifted into a populist right wing party with a strong xenophobic agenda setting under its new leader Frauke Petry. The AfD seems to have overcome the notorious dysfunctional and chaotic organisation of other right wing parties and is winning supporters not only in notorious right wing voters’ strongholds, such as in East Germany, but in West Germany as well.
If it is going to lead to a long-term success for the AfD, is hard to predict and needs still to be waited for, as it has to face parliamentary routine and daily real political life. In the past, other right wing parties that had achieved seats in regional parliaments, were unable to provide significant results in parliamentary work and failed to implement any significant results as opposition parties. Consequently, they could not repeat their previous electoral success and quickly dropped out of the parliaments at the following elections.
While this was specifically the case with the “Republikaner” (Republicans) in the 1980ies and the NPD in some East German states a few years ago, for the AfD it could be different, though. Having established a strong electoral base, and being intensively supported in East and West, it could become a part of parliamentary real life from now on – on the opposition’s bench, from now on. At the present time it is, fortunately, unlikely to become part of any government collation, as the party that is willing to set up any coalition with the AfD, needs still to be founded yet.
However, that is exactly what people thought of the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic, and the results are very well known.
A Repeat of History?
Germany is currently going through a phase of significant political changes where it needs to deal with an increasing sensitive electoral base, rapidly willing to shift to the extreme. If today’s elections were the beginning of a long-term change of voters’ preferences to extremism or just another act of short-term protest vote, has yet to be determined. Past elections with a strong tendency to protest votes have shown that it was rather a temporary rejection of the government’s current politics rather than a permanent shift of preferences. A reason why this time it could be different has to be found in the development of the AfD until now. At the 2013’s general elections, the AfD achieved 4.8 percent of the votes – just slightly missing the 5 percent minimum requirement to access to the parliament in Berlin. In previous votes, the votes have increased and as for now, the AfD is not only represented in the European Parliament, but will also have seats in 7 out of 16 regional parliaments in Germany.
If this tendency continues, the AfD is very likely to win votes in the Federal Parliament in Berlin at next year’s general elections. This will most definitely lead to a political earthquake and fundamentally reshape the political life of Germany. Winning votes through loud emotional protest and a strong revisionist policy agenda was the agenda that made the NSDAP strong.
Although analysts and political scientists anticipate the support for the AfD to drop once the refugee crisis has been solved – in which way ever, it has to be determined yet if it will also be linked to the voters’ behaviour, or if the AfD will be a strong party by then.
Will the German people at least learn the lessons from the past this time, or repeat their mistakes once again? The numbers of right wingers’ protests are increasing and their high volume is over-shouting every sensible argument – on the streets and in political discussions throughout all media channels.
The shockwaves are approaching, and they are thundering in fast and loud.
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Chaos and shame in Europe – The results of the refugee crisis
September 16th, 2015By Oliver Krumme.
For months, refugees desperately try to enter Europe, escaping from violence in their home countries to find safety in Europe. For months, some EU member states do everything possible to keep refugees out of their countries, doing everything to not fulfil their obligations of the union. Instead of cooperation and solidarity, Europe is going through a period of rising nationalism selfishness and lacking humanitarian sympathy: a challenge for Europe as a whole which could tear the union apart and every country would potentially follow an independent policy rather than a communitarian one. If there is a chance to increase solidarity among the member states, then it is through humanitarian solidarity.
Source: The Independent; http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article10482764.ece/alternates/w620/syrian-refugee-boy-turkey-2.jpg
Aylan Kurdi’s body was lying on the beach, motionless, with his small head in the water. His image is the symbol for the current refugee crisis and the inability of Europe to cope with it. He is one of thousands of refugees who didn’t survive the long and dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea. Those who survived and made it to Europe are facing the ordeal of being cramped in overcrowded refugee camps and being mistreated by security forces, combined with harsh and hostile reactions of the receiving countries. Hungary had built a fence alongside its border to Serbia in the past months and that fence had been completed just recently but it didn’t stop refugees from entering Hungary. The image of the violent barbwire fence right at the border of the EU, however, symbolizes the message that many in Europe are unwilling to accept new reality.
Unwillingness and Open Resistance
Though presumably a transit nation, Hungary does everything thinkable not only to drive the refugees out of Hungary, but its government under Prime Minister Victor Orbán makes very clear that he or his country does not feel any responsibility for taking care of refugees in any way. In the past few days we have witnessed chaotic conditions at Budapest’s Keleti railway station, with refugees desperately trying to enter trains bringing them to Austria and later to Germany. First, the authorities let the refugees enter the trains without having registered them, then they stopped entering them the railway station, forcing them to sleep outside the station, without beds, without sanitation. Then, refugees left Budapest on an overcrowded train, only to be stopped a few kilometres outside the city to be relocated into a refugee camp. Dramatic scenes followed: people desperate not to be brought to a camp, refusing to be transferred there, even going on hunger strikes.
The Orbán administration shows itself unimpressed by the obvious chaos which it has caused in the past few days. Quite the opposite, Orbán stated that he “only followed the requirements of the Dublin III agreement”, which provides that refugees need to get registered in that country where they first enter EU territory. In addition, Orbán is not tired to blame Germany for having caused the crisis in the first place as “Germany has announced not to deport Syrian refugees when applying for asylum”. In short, he declared the refugee crisis a “German problem” as all refugees just wanted to transit Hungary to get to Germany. It is not only Hungary “washing” its hands in innocence, as it is not the only country of all EU member states unwilling to accept refugees.
Taking a look at a map with the number of asylum seekers registrations, you can see a clear East-West drift. With Germany expecting up to 800,000 refugees by the end of this year, other countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia or Poland accept far less refugees, and it also shows in the number of pending asylum applications, with 306,000 in Germany and in comparison only 2,500 in Poland (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7f7e0d28-5225-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html#axzz3klx4UTLv). But even western European countries like Denmark and the UK show unwillingness to accept higher numbers of refugees, the UK already threatened any “illegal immigrant” entering the UK to prevent them from getting a job, renting a house or buying a car. In addition to that, Prime Minister David Cameron was speaking of a “swarm” flooding into the UK through the Eurotunnel.
The March of the Refugees, the #Marchofhope
With no trains, no busses and the sensation of being trapped in a camp in the middle of Hungary, thousands decided to walk to Austria. Like a mass movement that reminded of the refugee movements at the end of World War 2, people started to walk more than 200 kilometres from Budapest to Vienna; through the city, alongside roads and motorways. An image that seemed to be forgotten, that Europe had not seen since the end of World War 2. But it is actually happening, in Europe, in a presumably unified and peaceful Europe, in the year 2015. By today, up to 10,000 refugees are expected to arrive in Austria, and alongside with Germany, it provided special trains to bring them across the border. Today, the first refugees arrived at Munich Central Station, being welcomed by hundreds of locals with water, food, and warm words.
Austria and Germany are both exceptions of a current tendency all over Europe, not to help refugees, but to lock them away and preventing them from entering countries or treating them like cattle. The images from Hungary sadly remind of times from the dark ages – ages we thought would never return in the early 21st century.
Europe’s Shame
Currently, Europe is witnessing a block setting between eastern and western European countries, in which Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia refuse to accept higher refugee numbers according to quota. Their argument is that a quota would just “encourage” movements of refugees and their policy is to prevent mass refugee movements towards their countries, and Orbán even repeatedly stated that “they don’t want large numbers of Muslim refugees” and underlying his position saying that “the EU hypocrites should take care of them”. Europe is witnessing not only a mass movement of people, but also – as a severe symbol of non-unified crisis approach – very uneven distribution of refugees according to the proposed quota (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7f7e0d28-5225-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html#axzz3klx4UTLv). As announced today, the EU is even considering sanctions against those member states that choose an opt-out from the quota scheme for 120,000 refugees (http://www.politico.eu/article/sanctions-considered-for-refugees-migrants-quota-crisis-opt-out/). Was this development in the mind of the EU’s founding fathers? Certainly not.
The original European integration idea was solidarity, assistance and support of each other, to create a sphere of peace and wealth. However, none of the founding fathers ever had in mind that the EU would eventually face masses of refugees trying to come to Europe, escaping from war in their home countries. Instead of trying to solve the crisis and find a bearable solution for the refugees’ wellbeing, the member states just blame each other for having caused and deteriorating the crisis, and not showing any willingness to share its humanitarian part in European community. Specifically regarding Hungary it is fascinating to see its own development regarding refugees. Back in 1989, when East German refugees tried to escape the dwindling situation in the former GDR, Hungary was the first of the former Eastern Block countries to open its borders to the West – hence Austria. Also, it was Czechoslovakia that sheltered thousands of East German refugees before letting them travel to West Germany. In short, both countries, Czech Republic and Hungary, have a historic record of support and help for refugees, and are now doing the exact opposite.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel once had said that “if the Euro fails, then Europe will fail”. This line needs now to be updated: Europe will surely not fail due to the Euro as a common currency, but due to the lacking solidarity among its members amid the biggest humanitarian crisis Europe has to face yet. As the things are currently evolving, the dissent among the member states is getting more severe and aggravated than in the wake of the Greek debt crisis. Unable to agree on quotas and various national governments unwilling to contribute even to the line of the leading EU institutions, the EU has basically initiated the beginning of its own demise, questioning the very basics of its key ideas of integration. Consequently, voices rise that the Schengen Agreement should be suspended in the view of “uncontrolled refugee movements”. Let there be no mistake: as soon as this happens, people can start to kiss good-bye to a common European idea.
Remembering the Victims
Aylan Kurdi’s body was buried in Syria, alongside with his mother and his brother. His father, Abdullah Kurdi, said that the only thing we wanted was to “sit next to his son’s grave until he dies”. These images of despair and resignation are Europe’s wake-up call for instant action and for common sense. Yesterday, the UK has finally announced to accept thousands of Syrian refugees, despite still refusing to accept distribution quotas among all EU member states. Thousands of refugees arrived in Austria and Germany, happy and relieved after having passed through a nightmare in the past weeks, who having risked their bare lives and who had to leave everything behind. In Germany and Austria, they will have a chance to start a new life in peace.
It is, however, too late for Aylan and his family.
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Picturing the Evil – Europe’s unwanted Misconception of Russia
August 7th, 2015
By Oliver Krumme.
Last Sunday, Russia celebrated its National Navy Day and President Vladimir Putin attended the fleet show in the Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia’s exclave at the Baltic Sea, surrounded by the EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania. In western media, the only message communicated to the public was Putin’s plan to create a “new nuclear powered ice breaker fleet”.
The image set is more than clear: the media pictures one more time the image of a “Russian warlord” who is provoking the west with new army technology – disregarding the fact that a nuclear powered ice breaker fleet has rather little to do with actual army technology. Even in presumably open online discussion on Twitter, the image of the “mad man” in the Kremlin is an omnipresent one. Europe is unsure how to react and seeks guidance from the US as the only strong actor to face Russia.
Washington’s advices here were quite simple: sanction Russia, punish Putin and his followers, and do anything necessary to pull Ukraine away from Russia. But, is this the true strategy? The results of this face-off are rising tensions, increasing military presence alongside the borders and joint NATO trainings in Ukraine; in short: a serious increase of distrust, a return of the West-East antagonism, and an escalating threat of war, that was unthinkable just a few years ago.
Understanding Putin, Misunderstanding Putin
In Germany, a new “derogative” word has been created since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis: “Putinversteher” (a person showing understanding Putin; hence: showing “sympathy” for Putin’s actions). But as several non-biased journalists state, understanding Putin does not automatically mean that they share full sympathy with Putin’s actions, but it is a mere linkage to the mind-set and the actions why Putin is doing it this way. Above all, journalists with years of corresponding experience in Russia (like Gabriele Krone-Schmalz) clearly state that trying to apply western standards on democracy, free market capitalism and western values cannot be applicable universally, and for sure not in Russia. In order to understand Russia it requires far more than only analysing from outside the potential threat emerging from Russia. Krone-Schmalz knows what she is talking about, she was a long-time correspondent for German public news in Russia and has spent a notable time of her life living in Russia.
Nevertheless, as the past has demonstrated various times on different occasions, once the West has drawn the face of a potential enemy or of a crazy man somewhere in the world, it is unlikely to get rid of the new enemy that easily; no matter if it was Saddam Hussein, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Muammar al-Gaddafi, or Basher al-Assad. Now, it is the turn of Vladimir Vladimirowich Putin.
From a western perspective, it is rather simple: Russia has dragged the Ukraine into a civil war and attempts to prevent Ukraine’s approach towards the West – towards the EU and NATO. Western policy makers claim that Ukraine’s future is laid down in a permanent linkage to the West, and NATO would have a key strategic focal point in Eastern Europe – right at Russia’s doorstep.
Any attempt to analyse the motivation of Russia’s moves in Ukraine, or critically questions the actual political situation in Ukraine with the still unclear role of the right wing extremist Svoboda Party in the government, will be answered with massive criticism on online platforms, or, if being a journalist or scientist, not published or broadcasted at all. The propaganda machinery is hence working effectively.
Propaganda Flourishing on both Sides
In times of crisis or near-war scenarios, media plays an essential role to inform or misinform the general public. Observing several public or official mainstream media coverage ever since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, it turns more and more into a media, information and propaganda war. The purpose of propaganda is not to inform the public and to tell the truth through objective and independent journalism, but to draw the image of a rising evil on the other side of the border. The black-and-white imaging of Ukraine and Russia, with a very biased supportive information campaign in favour of Ukraine, and a notorious Russia (respectively Putin) bashing on the black side has been maintained very actively and there is little or no room for objective news coverage.
It is very hard – if not impossible – to find unbiased news report about the rising tensions between Russia and the West – at least through the conventional newspapers and television programmes. The problem for German public broadcasting lies in its public funding through a broadcasting tax paid by the German population, and the board of directors of both main broadcasting stations ARD and ZDF are filled with high ranked politicians from the leading political parties CDU and SPD. As a consequence, high editor in chief and journalist positions are filled not necessarily by qualification or personal reputation, but rather by personal networking to the political board of directors and party membership. The risk of party biased news coverage and information is given quite conspicuously, and western media will not get tired to picture the evil side – hence: Russia.
The evil ones, as stated by German author Mathias Bröckers in his book “Wir sind die Guten” (“We are the good guys”), are always the other one, never us. But if you ask the question who the good ones are, it clearly depends who you ask. If you as the average American mainstream, they will say that it’s Russia. If on the other hand you as the Russian general public, they will say – obviously – that it’s the Americans. State run television programmes like Russia-1, NTV or RT use the same amount of propaganda tools as used in the west, blaming the West for its notorious intervention in the current Ukraine government and accusing them for backing the fascist movements inside the Ukrainian government; and the US’ strong desire to weaken Russia and preventing it to challenge the US on a global scale. Truth or propaganda? There is a hint of truth and lies, on both sides.
But can Europe be blamed in this propaganda war? Yes, it can, though it does it involuntarily.
De facto US power in Europe
In February this year, during a political talk show on German television, we could see a drift emerging between Europe and the US in the view of the Ukraine crisis and the approach towards Russia. Two of the prominent guests on this show were Martin Schulz (President of the European Parliament) and John Kornblum (former US Ambassador to Germany). Martin Schulz had clearly stated that Ukraine is a matter of European security and the US should not intervene in this matter as “Ukraine is not at America’s borders”. A bold statement by Schulz, but instantly brought back to harsh reality by Kornblum who stated that “the actual power is in Washington”.
Last week we had seen the NATO training “Rapid Trident” taking place in the Ukrainian town of Yavoriv, alongside with US, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Bulgarian forces. Presence of NATO forces in Ukraine, even for training purposes, can and will certainly be regarded as a provocative act by Russia. The message sent from the West is clear: the Ukraine is subject to a long-term affiliation/alliance with the West; and the Ukraine has to be considered as a part of the “Western Security Hemisphere”.
In a wider sense, the US is continuing to foster their “Full Spectrum Dominance” which should also be applicable to Ukraine. Europe, no matter how much they develop their own sphere of peace, wealth and stability, is only useful to the US as long as they may use their NATO allies as permanent base for military commands and troops. NATO has expanded over the past years, while its former counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, ceased to exist after the folding of the Soviet Union in 1991. Consequently, former Warsaw Pact members became NATO members in the past years, including the former Soviet Republics Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Russia had repeatedly criticized this move from the west after the assurance given after the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastwards. Apparently, NATO had forgotten about that quite quickly.
Calling off Sanctions as a first Step
Europe is powerless in the view of NATO activities in Ukraine, and to repeat Schulz’ words that Ukraine is a simple European matter and the US should not intervene in this conflict, shows how little Europe or even the EU can do against its bigger brother over the pond.
The current sanction regime is harming both sides, Europe and Russia, and it affects farmers in Portugal, France and Greece who can no longer export their agricultural goods to Russia, neither can Russian based companies expand business abroad due to lacking access to financial assets or sanction limited red tape barriers.
The German car manufacturer Opel has just recently announced to close down its entire production plants in Russia. According to the German economic news (Deutsche Wirtschaftsnachrichten) German exports to Russia have dropped by 4.4bn Euros, the prediction for 2015 estimate a total loss of around 10bn Euros, summing up the overall losses up to 20bn Euros since the beginning of the sanctions in 2014 (http://deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2015/07/23/deutsche-exporte-nach-russland-brechen-um-34-prozent-ein/). For Russia, the sanction regime led to inflation, cuts in government expenditures on the social welfare system, a partly dramatic depreciation of the Rouble, and job cuts in key industries.
Calling off the trading sanction regime would be the most logical solution to ease the tensions, as both sides, Europe and Russia, heavily depend on their trading relations. If Europe had the will and the courage to cease the sanctions, Russia would do the same and it would lead to a chance to ease the tensions on the continent.
History has proven on various occasions that economic sanctions do not work as a political instrument to force a state into negotiations. Instead, the just harden the front lines and lead to more sanctions and counter-sanctions. Calls for more sanctions on the Russian energy sector, as demanded by Alex van Ness, Manager of public information for the Center for Security Policy (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/07/01/us-and-eu-must-do-more-to-sanction-russian-energy-sector),are a dangerous strategy towards escalation of the conflict.
The trouble is, unfortunately, Europe is still hooked up to its direct line to Washington, and it’s the big brother over the pond that co-decides what Europe should do.
As such, Kornblum’s words in February this year are like a persistent echo, Europe has not enough courage to stand up against the US, even though it should.
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The Day The Lights Went Out – Europe 100 Years after the Outbreak of World War I
November 26th, 2014By Oliver Krumme.
On the 28th of June 1914, the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, Prince Franz Ferdinand, and his wife have been assassinated in Sarajevo. Their murderer, Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip, was most likely unaware of the consequences of his actions – not only for Bosnia, but to the entire world.
When British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey said that the lights were going out in Europe, he was aware of the outcome of the Great War that was falling on the European nations in summer 1914. While the European nations moved to the battlefields by the end of July 1914, no one was yet aware of the first full scale war of the early 20thcentury. People were driven between national euphoria, a personal seek for adventure, and the sheer confidence to win this war and to be back home by Christmas. When they finally got back home – more than four years later, they have left an entire continent in rubble, ashes and misery. Europe had been destroyed.
Oh, what a lovely war!
People had just been waiting for a war. The pressure inside the boiling pot in Europe had increased since the second half of the 19th century, since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. Colonialism, the affection of racial superiority of the white European race (jingoism) and of the upcoming pan-Germanic move in the German Empire, combined with a continuous arms race between the British and German Empire erupted in a collective hysteria throughout the European nations. In Germany, Austria-Hungary, in Britain, France and the Russian Empire, patriotism was a matter of course and even an obligation. Most importantly, each side was convinced of their own superiority and determination to win the war within a few weeks.
This euphoria was quintessentially strong in the German Empire. Having won nearly every war since the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century, the Prussian rulers of the still young German Empire and its generals were boasting in self-confidence to crush any enemy army in a blink of an eye – no matter if French or Russian. Young men enlisted to the army, not even finishing school as long as they have the right age already, reserve forces have been called into service. Within a few days, these men not only changed their uniforms, they changed their lives, their minds, everything. Young men claimed to be older, elderly coloured their hair to look younger – all this just to participate in the war. Everyone in the country – intellectuals, workers, students, farmers, civil servants etc. – wanted to go to war, and everyone one wanted to escape from their daily lives for a while. War was an adventure and it promised a prosper life and glory. Especially the younger generations were driven by national euphoria, to sacrifice their lives for the empire, for their families, even for their emperor.
Honour and hatred: those were the dominant words in the summer of 1914. It was a new national virtue to hate the other countries and their strange “oddities”. The Germans mocked the French uniforms which remained unchanged since the times of Napoleon – blue shirts with red trousers. The French mocked the German helmet design and their ridiculous emperor who seemed to believe that the world was a huge theatre stage and he was the main protagonist.
“Jeder Tritt ein Britt” (every kick for a British), “Jeder Schuss ein Russ” (every bullet for a Russian), “Serbien muss sterbien” (Serbia must die) were the slogans of the euphoric loudmouths. Show your rifle ones and you’ll be back home by Christmas. Euphoria and self-confidence were enormous, while critical voices have been silenced – partly violently. French socialist leader Jean Jaures was shot on 31st July 1914, shortly after Germany had declared war on the Russian Empire. Jaures had strongly insisted that workers would never go to war against workers from other countries. Even the German Socialist party (SPD) reluctantly agreed on the war loans, afraid that they might have been accused for non-patriotic behaviour.
By the end of July 1914 – a month after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand – everything went very quickly:
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Serbia’s ally, the Russian Empire, declared war on Austria-Serbia. The German Empire, which was unconditionally allied with Austria-Hungary, declared war on Russia. France, Russia’s ally, ordered general mobilization. As a reaction, Germany declared war on France and France gratefully responded in the same way.
The gates to hell were pushed wide open.
Western Front – Trench Warfare
The German generals had, in order to avoid the strong fortresses alongside the Franco-German border, drafted the “Schliefen-Plan”, which initiated a quick march through Belgium and Luxembourg in order to attack the French forces from behind and to march straight towards Paris. Completely surprised by this sneak attack, the French military leadership hastily redirected their forces towards the northern borders. After the German army had committed atrocities on the Belgian population and swarmed into France, the UK also declared war on Germany. From now on, it was a true full scale European war.
Unlike previous wars, World War I, which was also called the “Great War”, was not only marked by its length, but also by their characteristic trenches. With new warfare technologies such as long-range artillery, planes, machine guns and poison gas, killing became a mass slaughter. Instead of retreating, the army commanders ordered to dig. The result was a huge network of trenches through France, from the Channel Coast to the Alps. It almost seemed like they wanted to channel the water from the North Sea straight to the Alps. With trench networks on both sides, and massive artillery fire dragging on for days, the area in between turned into a no-man’s land. Landscapes, forests, hills, and even villages and towns simply disappeared; bombed, blown-up, and eradicated from the maps. Large areas of France were turned into a grey-brown blood drowned waste land.
Nobody invented the trench as such. They simply evolved naturally when both troops tried to avoid each other. For the soldiers, the trenches became a home for four years. Stuck in muddy, cold and stinking graves, with the corps of their fallen comrades, rats and flees, all soldiers – no matter if German, French, British or Russian – shared the fate of being degenerated into mud, dirt and blood – mostly accompanied by hunger, by repeated visit by rats which eventually became a primary food source for the starving soldiers. French soil was drowned with the blood of millions, contaminated by poison gas, burnt by flame throwers and exploded shells. The area around Verdun has been changed forever. Nowadays, the remaining of the shell holes and trenches are silent witnesses of the destructive power of the first total war of mankind.
In Storms of Steel and Gas – Industrialization of Warfare
In previous wars, honour and glory were essential virtues by any nation. Soldiers had a strong code of conduct how to behave and which rules to follow. With a rapid technological progress since the late 19th century, new weapons and arms have been used in World War I for the first time, but the strategies by the army generals have not been updated accordingly. Army generals simply disregarded the technological changes since the last wars and their strategies were still outlined for lightly armed armies and cavalries.
New artilleries and machine guns were supposed to bring an even quicker decision in war, but not taking into account, that the other side was equally equipped and having a sheer unlimited manpower at their disposal. With this possibilities and still blinded by the illusion of a quick victory, more and more men were thrown onto the battlefields, against the approaching enemy, and into the enemy’s bullet hailstorm.
The most horrific new weapon was, however, a non-steel one. The Germans were the first to use chemical weapons on a large scale. With its original purpose to confuse the enemy through smoke and tear gas, lethal mixtures like chlorine gas, mustard gas or phosgene have ensured a slow mass slaughter in agonizing death – making dying at the front more atrocious and terrifying than through bullets and shells themselves. Although the Hague Convention prohibited the use of any chemical weapon, no one could be bothered. In fact, if someone could have been bothered to care about international conventions after all, around one third of all fatalities could have been prevented. But in war, everything is allowed, as long as you think it will lead to success, disregarding the victims.
With mass barrages and mass shelling day and night, for several days in succession, the enemy troops were quickly demoralized, exhausted and driven into insanity. Even the most sophisticated trench networks did not help in the event of mass bombardments, as any shell could hit you anywhere in any trench. Under conditions like these, it simply became a matter of pure fortune if a soldier survived or not. As World War I participant and later author Ernst Jünger had written in his war diaries: “It would have been honourable to die in pure man-to-man-combat, face to face – but not to be squashed by accident like an insect.” The survivors of the trench warfare simply did not survive because of bravery, but because by pure luck.
By the end of the war, armoured vehicles and tanks completed the industrialization of war. Fighter planes and zeppelin air raids on turned the skies into battlefields. The first air raid by a German zeppelin on London in September 1915 also eradicated the border lines between military and civilian targets. While any civil involvement in the war and civil population remained unaffected by war actions for centuries, World War I marked the beginning of the end of this separation. It also showed that from now on, every target – military or civilian – was a legitimate one; a rule that should have been driven to perfection about two decades later.
The Home Front – Starving for our boys
Not just the civil population has been started to get involved in the war, but above all the domestic industries. War industry became the only industry in a country and the entire production was swapped into the production of canons, shells, machine guns etc. With the war dragging on for years, raw materials and resources eventually become so scarce, that extra materials from the populations was needed. That meant that the population had to provide anything made out of metal from their homes. Pots and pans were melted to make shells; even church bells were turned into canons – including the same bells that announced the outbreak of the war all over Europe in summer 1914.
The most severe effects were, however, visible on the food supplies. To support the endless man power at the front, around two thirds of all available food supplies were redirected to the fronts – only one third of total food stocks were left for the civil population. For Germany it was even more severe since the country was predominantly dependent of foreign food supplies. With the war bringing international trade to a complete standstill and the sea routes blocked by allied fleets, food crisis in Germany become so devastating, that by 1918 there was not even enough food for the own troops. The propaganda made it, nevertheless, imperative for the people to starve and to suffer for their boys at the front, for the final and decisive victory.
Europe in ruins, peace not secured – The road to the next war
By fall 1918, Europe was exhausted: the home front, the soldiers upfront, the general staff, even the old monarchic system. The end of the war on the 11th of November 1918 marked the end of imperial Austria-Hungary, with a number of new independent nations emerging in Central Europe. For the German Empire, the end of the war did not bring peace at all. Instead, the allies ensured in the Versailles Treaty that Germany was punished accordingly, as they unanimously declared Germany for the only initiator of war in Europe. In particular, France had a genuine interest to humiliate Germany in revenge for the total devastation of wide regions on their own territory.
The German military command escaped from their responsibility and left it for the newly republican government to sign the ceasefire agreements and in the end the peace treaties of Versailles, enabling inner resistance against the new democratic Republic of Weimar that was proclaimed on 9th November 1918. In secret, army generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff refrained from all responsibility and made sure that national resistance in Germany was on a high level. While the new democratic government struggled to ensure stability in the country, generals and other ultra-conservative forces started to weave the plots for more conflict.
The provisions of the Versailles Treaty (signed on 28th June 1919 – exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand) included not only harsh economic reparation obligations in financial and good assets, but also a loss of territories (especially in the East, Alsace-Lorraine, all its colonies in Africa and in the Pacific), the entire disarmament and demilitarization of the Rhineland, the loss of land connection to Eastern Prussia, the loss of the entire trading fleet, and further reparations obligation lasting for several decades. In immediate consequences, Germany was struck by bankruptcy, hyper-inflation and inner civil-war like turmoil from left socialist revolutionaries and right-wing paramilitary troops and free corps.
Sensible approaches for an international cooperation as laid down by US President Woodrow Wilson in his 14 points, including the League of Nations, were ignored and outweighed by national revenge. With the USA withdrawing from Europe and any further cooperation on the international level, Europe was left to itself again, with all unresolved conflicts.
Versailles marked the end of the war and everyone all over Europe was waiting for peace. What Europe got, however, was the prelude for the next catastrophe. Versailles and all the other treaties signed in 1918 and 1919 did neither bring peace, nor stability, nor freedom for most. When Sir Edward Grey said that the lights were going out in Europe in 1914 and that they would not see them lit again in their times again, his predictions should be reality for more than 30 years. With the “Great War” starting in summer 1914, Europe had entered the darkest period in its history.
The end of the Great War did not solve the power question in Europe, but made a lot of room for later conflict, and even more devastating consequences for the entire continent. Several new questions came up instead.
The French were asking themselves: Did we punish Germany harsh enough?
The British were asking: Why is our empire nearly bankrupt though we won the war?
The new independent nations like Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia asked: Why can’t we live in peaceful coexistence though we finally got freedom now?
The Germans asked: How can we rectify the humiliation of Versailles and everything linked to it?
The answer to this came 20 years later.
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Beyond the Boiling Point – Russian Aggression triggering a Global Conflict
November 26th, 2014
By Oliver Krumme.
If anyone has ever doubted that Putin’s Russia is playing hardball on the international level, then Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula are proving it again. With a Russian military intervention in Ukraine being imminent, Europe is facing a war in its immediate neighbourhood, with incalculable consequences for Europe, and even for the whole world.
We have witnessed some eventful weeks in Ukraine. The fall of President Victor Yanukovych, civil war like events at Kiev’s Maidan, and the return of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. But this time, unlike the Orange Revolution ten years ago, the changes are more profound and by far more dramatic – not only regarding Ukraine itself, but most of all the reactions by Russia and President Putin. In fact, Ukraine is turning into a battle field of the world powers, with the idle Cold War to turn back to pre-1990’s conditions – and an imminent threat of turning hot.
Ukraine is not only a predominantly western oriented former Soviet Republic tangled between Europe and the Russian Federation; it is above all a strategic key country for both Russia and the Western World. The protests and riots at the Maidan were a clear dead-giveaway for the predominantly western orientation of the Ukrainian people, and a signal to Russia not to interfere in their domestic or even international relations – and that Russia cannot simply buy a country’s approval. The Ukrainian people demand the freedom to decide on their own fate and to become a part of Europe in the long-term. Evidently, it will tear the country apart.
An emerging second “Crimean War”
The events on the Crimean Peninsula are edging towards increasing violence between the predominantly Russian majority and Ukrainians. Recent events show that the Crimean Peninsula is on the verge of breaking apart from Ukraine, with ethnic Russians calling for a referendum to decide if it shall go on belonging to Ukraine, declaring autonomy, or even remerging with Russia. Ironically, one of the reasons for these tensions has to be found in an administrative change during the Soviet era, back in 1954. The Crimean Peninsula used to be under administration of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic, but then transferred to the Ukrainian SSR by decree.
Russian nationalists have been demanding to return Crimea to Russia ever since, and now, Russian nationalism has dramatically increased in the wake of the violence and turmoil on the peninsula. With unidentified paramilitary people occupying airports and nationalists raising the Russian flag on administrative buildings, the pressure inside the pot keeps growing.
Russia is keeping its Black Sea fleet at key points on the Crimean Peninsula, paying a huge amount to the Ukrainian government to obtain the rights to deploy their fleet there. For strategic reasons, Russia has a vital interest to keep its fleet there, demonstrating pure military presence and keeping its interest in the Black Sea. Should the Crimean Peninsula fall to Russia, it will be a significant political shift towards Russia.
Putin’s Red Herring
Sochi was a party, but as ever, even the greatest party comes to an end. What remains is a massive hangover with all its negative consequences. This hangover is Russia’s economic situation, internal pressure from right wing extremists, separation tendencies from Caucasus republics, and rapidly depreciating rubble with an imminent financial crisis to break out. Every statesman, authoritarian or democratic, knows what to do when it’s getting messy in your own country: to cause some turmoil and some military action in another country, raise some patriotic feelings, and your own people will ignore the inner trouble for a little while.
Putin triggers a military conflict in Ukraine to distract its own people and its own critics from imminent deteriorating problems in Russia itself. It might have a short-term success, but with even more severe long-term consequences. If the military intervention slips into a long-term conflict on a wider scale, and if it fails to implement the outcome Russia wants, Putin will face even more domestic resistance. This could either lead to a revolution inside Russia, or intensified reprisals against the own Russian population. No matter the outcome of the upcoming war in Ukraine, it will eventually lead to Putin’s demise.
Old Soviet backyard behaviour
Putin has re-established Russia as a global power, especially in the view of the Syrian civil war. Ever since he is in power, Russia claims to restore its former Soviet power status. This is visible in Russia’s relations to its former Soviet Republics, treating them like their own backyard and claiming ultimate right to interfere in internal affairs and their bilateral relations with other countries or international organisations. Last year, Russia prevented Ukraine to sign the Association Agreement with the EU by offering financial support through its puppet president Yanukovych. Putin, however, did obviously not expect the Ukrainians’ reaction.
Though Ukraine is a former Soviet Republic, it is no longer a Moscow controlled country. As such, Moscow will have to accept the fact that neither the Ukraine, nor any other Eastern European state or former Soviet republic is a Russian satellite state and Russia is well advised not to treat these countries like its own backyard. Conceivably, Putin is aware that such a revolution as occurred in Ukraine could also erupt in Russia, or even in its last puppet state Belarus. As a consequence, his domestic and foreign politics strategy turns more and more into violent policy implementation by force.
Internationalization of the Conflict
From a western perspective, Ukraine is having an intensified dialogue with NATO, after joining the Partnership for Peace Agreement in 1994. In a long-term, NATO membership of Ukraine is a potential objective. As such, the western alliance has a genuine interest to ensure its security ambitions in the wider Eastern European theatre. As such, the Black Sea and the Crimean Peninsula is a strategic key region for them also.
US President Barack Obama has warned President Putin of the consequences and the “costs” of a military intervention in Ukraine, and the foreign ministers’ of France, Germany and Poland success to negotiate between former President Yanukovych and the opposition was a temporary sign of diplomatic efforts by Europe. Nevertheless, it is questionable of the EU, the US, or the International Community as a whole will take any action whatsoever. The UN Security Council won’t implement a resolution as Russia will veto anything the other Security Council members will submit. Logically, NATO won’t have any legal base to intervene – which might not be that bad as the current Ukrainian crisis is a lethal cocktail for a global crisis.
It is more likely that none of the Western actors – neither the US not the EU, nor the UN – will take any action at all, knowing that any kind of even remote elevated reaction beyond words would trigger an even bigger crisis. The EU won’t take any actions because of their own financial crisis and their non-existing hard politic instruments; and the US has announced to significantly cut its military budget, which makes extensive out of area missions too costly. This reveals the West’s dilemma: if they don’t intervene at all, they passively grant full freedom of action for any action in Ukraine and other regions in the world. On the other hand, if the Western world intervenes, the entire conflict could escalate from a regional to a global scale.
Cold War turning hot
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Red lines crossed – Send in the troops, now!
August 28th, 2013
By Oliver Krumme.
It was long overdue, the red line have been crossed several times now it has been confirmed. According to very recent reports by UN Inspectors, the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its own population and above all against the rebels, resulting in an imminent launch of an allied military mission to counter-fight the persistent atrocities. The US and its allies (the UK, Turkey, and most likely France) are ready to strike, evidently within the next few days, with limited and targeted air strikes.
The decision was late, very late indeed. With the civil war in Syria dragging on for more than two years, and humanitarian disaster going beyond imagination, it is now a question of speed and determination to launch effective a military action that ensures a significant impact against the Assad regime. For the US, it would be the third theatre after Afghanistan and Iraq. Regarding this, the Obama Administration is determined to leave it to a limited commitment, without deploying ground troops.
Ignore the UN and don’t feel bad about it
The international community is desperately yelling for an international and collective mission in Syria, but strictly under UN Mandate and unanimous consent of the UN Security Council. This, however, is unlikely to happen. Russia and China have repeatedly blocked any sanctions against the Assad regime proposed by the UN Security Council, and they will never agree on a military operation under US leadership. From the current perspective, it seems to be unreasonable and morally even irresponsible to keep on blocking vital and necessary decisions when action is desperately needed.
The thing is that the UN has, notoriously, failed to implement necessary decisions or sanctions over the past few years, especially regarding its sustainable long-term impacts. Libya is stuck in a post-war chaos, and for Syria it fails to come up with a mandate. In the view of the disclosures of the use of chemical weapons, the so called red lines that have been drawn by the US have been crossed several times already. Now, the US and its allies are well advised to finally take some action, even if it means to ignore the UN – for the sake of the Syrian people.
Causa Kosovo as legitimation for Syria
If we look back to the Kosovo War in 1999, NATO has launched targeted air strikes against Serbian troops without UN Mandate, for humanitarian reasons in order to avoid the continuation of ethnic cleansing. In the end the conflict was terminated and the military objectives were achieved, with UN recognition and legitimation provided ex-post.
For Syria, the situation is per say very different, but the circumstances are.
Who’s really going to prevent it?
Russia and China have been providing arms to the Assad regime and will most likely continue to do so. Syria is slowly but steadily turning into a proxy war, just as it was during the Cold War in Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. The question is how Russia and China will react when the US and its allies starts striking Syria, even if it’s only a limited operation and exclusively limited to air strikes as such.
The truth is that China’s or Russia’s instruments here are limited. They will veto any decision in the UN Security Council, for sure, but that’s basically it. Neither Moscow, not Beijing will take much further steps to prevent the US from actually launching air strikes, at least not through an own direct intervention.
Nevertheless, the risk is given that the entire conflict might spread on the entire Middle East. Above all, Israel is the actor that is most concerned about any escalation of the conflict. With Iran in the background and waiting for a chance to jump to the stage, Israel will be determined not only to prevent any further spread of violence in the region, or even intervention by Iran itself, but also to take own measures in order to safeguard its own security perceptions. However, a direct or even indirect involvement might have severe effects. Still, the risk is given.
And Germany? Still at the side-line
As ever, Germany is reluctant to take any clear position, except for an immediate rejection of any military action. The current German government insists on an international and collective decision by the UN, but a recent comment in German television provided that not even Chancellor Angela Merkel has a clear and concise opinion on a possible military strike on Syria.
Germany, however, is in a middle of a more urgent dilemma. With three weeks until the general elections, none of the parties wants to take a clear position on the Syria case – neither the ruling CDU-FDP coalition under Merkel, nor the SPD under Merkel’s main rival Peer Steinbrück. Both know that any too precise statement or position might cost them the elections on 22 September 2013. War, or even talking about war, is the ultimate vote killer. More dramatically, Germany continues to neglect and ignore its own role in foreign policy and its own potential and leaving European security leadership to the UK and France.
No one can and may expect a quick decision by Germany, at least not before the end of the elections. Also, Germany is not in the position to make any decisions, and some foreign policy analysts even miss the days under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder when Germany took a brave move to stand against the Bush Administration and against the Iraq war. Sadly, Foreign Policy is not a number one policy field anymore, at least not in the current government.
Short or long?
Military strategists, analysts and policy makers anticipate a rather short intervention, using limited air strikes as an instrument to force Assad for negotiations with the rebels and to end the conflict peacefully. Therefore, air strikes can have a strong effect for further negotiations.
However, the Assad regime already announced strong resistance at all costs – the same rhetoric as used by the Hussein regime in Iraq, ironically just ten years ago. So, the world should prepare for a long-term commitment, even after military action.
Also, the international community should consider a fuller scale operation using limited ground troops to give it a stronger and sustainable impact.
For now, air strikes should do the job – hopefully.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Heading Towards a Damned Cold Winter – The Snowden Effect
August 13th, 2013
By Oliver Krumme.
If someone believed that a sole insignificant man would have no effect on the broader global scale or even the relations between two countries, Edward Snowden is proving the exact opposite. However, he is not doing it in a beneficial way. The consequences of his behaviour are, in fact, severe, edging towards disastrous.
US President Obama’s cancellation for the US-Russia meeting in Moscow as a reaction to Russia’s decision to grant asylum to Snowden was mostly regarded as a short-sighted reaction. The Obama administration has repeatedly articulated its “disappointment” and stated a disturbed relation with the Russian Federation under Putin. Some commentators even argue that the Snowden effect is so severe that it would lead to a “new Cold War”.
But, is it actually that new or even renewed?
The never ending Cold War
During the East-West antagonism, it was almost certain that the US and the former USSR would try to prevent any kind of escalation of the Cold War, knowing that otherwise it would lead to catastrophic consequences in the worst case. Since the “end” of the Cold War, everyone expected in a hysteric enthusiasm move that future antagonisms would be over and would never come back again – a rather naïve assumption.
An arch enemy remains an arch enemy, even though the pretences change. The end of socialism in the Eastern hemisphere did not lead that the main rival suddenly disappears. In Russia’s case, it only changed its system, and especially with Putin in office the US has to face a global power that has been coming back to the arena after a prolonged absence.
The Snowden case shows the US that they cannot determine global politics without being challenged by an equal power. While the world was unipolar for almost 20 years, it is turning at least bipolar again – a required constellation in the view of the developments since 1991.
The Re-challenged Superpower
The US has been in an outstandingly comfortable situation, without being challenged by any other power in the world. That was mostly the case until 9/11. After the terrorist attacks, it became aware that the US was neither unlimitedly powerful, nor untouchable. In its renewed paranoia, any administration (Bush and Obama) struggled to maintain its self-appointed ultimate leadership ambitions and not accepting any other power to challenge it – neither by China, not by Europe, and not at all by Russia.
President Obama’s decision not to attend the US-Russian summit in Moscow is a rather immature one, which proves the lack of the US’ unwillingness to face the new challenges on the international stage. Obama’s furious reaction has to be, however, considered as reasonable reaction for the US perspective as it is facing a severe security breach. Snowden not only revealed a few information about what the US has observed about people or organizations over the past years, but above all the entire surveillance system. More significantly, on Snowden’s route to Russia via Hong Kong, it is apparent that he might have sold certain information to the Chinese or even the Russian government. Having this in mind, the US sees itself in an in-deep reconciliation discussion of its relations with Russia – especially pushed forward by the Republicans.
One more Olympic boycott for nothing?
Recently, discussion about a possible boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi are under way, as a reaction to Russia’s new “Anti-Gay” laws. Like this, history is repeating itself one more time, even though under different pretences. While 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow have been boycotted by the Western World as a reaction to the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, Sochi would be directed against an internal legislation process. In the end, it would not have the same impact as the 1980’s boycott. Evidently, the US might use this “excuse” for not participating in next year’s games.
From ideology to self-focused power
The situation is more than clear: the US will have to deal with a strengthened Russia one more time and even make concessions to Russia’s rekindled ambitions for global leadership. Obama and Putin will meet anyway, at the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg. The question remains: how substantial will the Snowden effect affect the G20 agenda? Which direction will the US-Russian relations take and how will the US deal with the new level of international competition?
From an ideological standpoint, the new antagonism is completely free of any ideology. It is no longer a question of predominance of one or two political ideologies, as both systems are more or less identical – assuming that there is any “ideology” at all. Now, it is about power and power preservation, and mostly the preservation of the monopoly of power enforcement.
The Bear slaps the Eagle
Being “slapped in the face” is something the US has to re-learn from scratch. Putin is not only showing to Obama that the US’ power, domination and mass control has its limits. Above all, the Snowden case shows that the US cannot and must not claim the entire world as their own legal territory where US laws apply unrestrictedly. Particularly, this applies to the US’s observation and surveillance structures which have been disclosed by Snowden.
Is the US ready to face this new reality? It does not look like that, not the way the Obama administration is reacting on the whole subject.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
I spy with my little eye: Nations between mutual paranoia and the greed for information
July 2nd, 2013
By Oliver Krumme.
If you live in a neighborhood, you want to know what’s going on in the apartment next to you. However, you don’t want them to mess around in your life, nor to even spy on you. But that’s what nations do all the time, and still they react appalled and gutted if one of them secretly gathers information about the others.
In close cooperation with Google, Facebook, Skype, Amazon etc. the NSA (National Security Agency) has gathered billions of information about users all over the globe, around half a billion files from Germany per month. But if you think that only private users are affected by this massive data attack by the US, you were wrong. I fact, in its essence, it’s nothing new.
Bug plague
Espionage is nothing invented by the NSA, throughout human history nations and superpowers always tried to gather as much information from the adversary as possible, to gain a strategic advantage. It was intensified through World War 2, and made perfect and commercially popular during the Cold War. As such, it is nothing unusual to observe and wiretap embassies, consulates, or other government related premises. Even non-governmental organizations are legitimate subjects for tapping.
The idea is simple: the more you know about your enemy, the better off you are in an anarchic international system, the more you can use this data against your enemy. The amount of information and their analysis is a useful weapon. In some cases, even information from allies or partners (no matter if first or third degree partners) is not excluded.
As such, the furious rage all over Europe about the recent news that the US intelligence services have bugged EU delegations and representations in the US and other countries spread all over the world is humongous. Even the cable connection on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is a subject to be tapped, via submarine (carried out by the US submarine “Jimmy Carter”, as reported by the German news magazine “Spiegel”).
I know that you know that I know…
Germany’s and the EU’s reactions to the recent disclosures about the NSA’s “Prism” and the British “Tempora” programmes raise a question: how many footprints do we leave in the web, and not only through our (daily) posts on Facebook. Every user shall be aware that, no matter what he does on the web, leaves a footprint: getting a delivery from Amazon, sending a regular email, or even chatting. Some users tend to react in panic and take drastic measures, such as closing their Facebook accounts, demanding information from online providers according to European data protection and privacy legislation etc.
What bothers Germany most is something else: that these espionage and bugging activities are happening under the administration of President Obama, the one Europe and the whole world anticipated to withdraw from such Bush-like behaviourism. No one expected that from him and the disappointment it pretty much obvious.
Running the gauntlet for an egocentric traitor
Love him or hate him? That’s the question for Edward Snowden. Fact is that, as a former member of a government intelligence service, he was obliged to remain silence regarding business or governmental related issues in any occasion. After he left the NSA, Snowden started a self-promotion tour throughout the world by providing a vast number of prism facts to the public. However, while he blames the increasing observation and espionage activities by the US and the NSA, he sought refuge in Hong Kong first and currently spends his time in the presumably “neutral” transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow; basically in two countries which excessively and increasingly observe their own citizens and cut all possible civil rights.
A coincidence? Probably not.
Snowden was working as an external contractor for the NSA, and might have set up some contacts with financially sound background. It sounds wage, but owning exclusive data about the US’ spying and hacking activities in the world wide web makes you the owner of the most delicate and valuable cargo in contemporary times. Russia and China know that, and probably already got some data backups from Snowden. As a result, President Putin’s offer to Snowden to grant him political asylum in Russia was a smart move: to keep him away from US actions to capture Snowden and to get access to classified data.
But who wants Edward? He obviously rejected Putin’s offer and continues his uncertain journey.
Snowden applied for political asylum in 14 different countries, including Germany. However, Snowden is aware that any NATO country – as an ally of the US – will be obliged to hand him over to the US, or that the US will execute a cloak and dagger operation to get him back to the US by force, without the asylum providing country able to protest or to intervene – or not even willing to do so.
Germany has rejected Snowden’s asylum seeking request, and for the moment Snowden will keep staying at Sheremetyevo Airport for another while.
Paranoia as a necessity in international relations
Still, Snowden will not change the on-going espionage activities of countries against others, allies or non-allies. Mutual and multiple paranoia is a persistent behaviour among countries, and even the “victims” like Germany or the EU as a whole have own espionage networks and observe other countries, even its own allies, on a smaller scale though.
The rule of modern survival is simple: distrust everyone and gather as much information about everyone as you can. Then you can be sure to survive in an anarchic world, and any hysteric reaction is just as hypocritical and illusive as the demand for a footprint free web.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Only Fools and Horses – Protest parties in Germany
April 22nd, 2013Oliver Krumme.
Two weeks ago, the political party landscape in Germany has been enlarged by the creation of a new party – but without making things any easier.
The new “AfD” (“Alternative für Deutschland“ = Alternative for Germany) is, as a couple if other smaller parties, based on an „anti-Euro“ slogan and the demand for Germany to leave the EMU (European Monetary Union). So, basically not a completely new slogan, at least not for a protest party.
Old Men’s Club
The most visible difference between the AfD and other German protest parties, like the Pirates, is its members. While the Pirate Party is mostly dominated by younger people, it’s the exact opposite with the AfD. Their steering committee is marked by a dominance of elderly gentlemen with high academic degrees. Most notable, all of them are economists.
Who’s going to be their voters? Unlike the Pirates, the AfD establishes its main bias from “disappointed” voters of the conservative CDU or the liberal FDP – voters who have been “disappointed” by the course of the current government regarding economic policy implementation and the Euro crisis management. Alexander Gauland, co-founder of the AfD – considers himself to be one of these disappointed ones.
While the party was founding itself in Berlin, a little glance at the supporters’ list unveils an interesting detail of their background, making a Ph.D. title essential to be a supporter of the party, or even a professor’s title. Above all, it makes the AfD a technocrats’ club only.
Intellectual right-wingers?
Calling for a return to the former German currency sounds like a typical demand from any right wing party. The logical consequence is, of course, that the AfD will start queuing with all the other smaller right wing extremist parties at the line for a complete Euro withdrawal. Even though potential right wingers were instantly excluded from the AfD’s founding congress, there is plenty of potential for such a tendency. One of them is 71-years old Korad Adam, an expert in the field of education who has published an article in the right wing weekly newspaper “Junge Freiheit”.
Polemic agenda setting is quintessentially a starting point for future extremist tendencies, even if a new party has an academic background. Unlike most protest parties, the AfD sets its political agenda most exclusively on economics. But all economic agenda is useless as long as there is no one who is young enough and “not too academic” to promote it. The AfD can consider itself happy to have one of these: Bernd Lucke, professor for macroeconomics at Hamburg University, is the designated public figure for the AfD and apparently the only one who can communicate the agenda in a non-too-academic-way, who understands modern political communication and to present the AfD in public.
The question remains: will it help?
Yobbo protests without substance
All German protests parties have in essence the same problems. They suffer from a mere lack of long-term policy agenda setting which survives individual elections. That was specifically the case with the Pirates Party. A sudden and unexpected hype was followed by an utter organizational chaos, political and human immaturity and a personnel vacuum which in the end led to the literal sinking of the Pirates.
Not mentioning smaller right wing extremist parties, which are levelling on the brink of illegality and only have one objective in mind: the complete eradication of democratic and European Germany. It is the same with the far more dangerous NPD which is still subject for on current banning discussions, but without any further progress neither from a political, nor from a legal point of view. In the end, it is apparent that the NPD will abolish itself through simple financial bankruptcy.
In term of protest party only the Left-wing Party (“Die Linke”) can actually provide some basis for a sustainable alternative – if you want to consider them as a protest party after all. Like others, the “Linke” also advocates against the EU, but not in economic and national terms, rather in social terms. It has, however, one significant flaw: it is sometimes regarded as an “established party” due to its vast electoral basis in East Germany and its membership to the Bundestag.
Once successful, no longer protest
The same effect applies to the Green Party. Having partly revolutionized the German party system after their unexpected win at the 1983 federal elections, it has turned into an established opposition party with temporary government assignments as coalition partner on a national and regional level. From a pure protest perspective, the contemporary Green Party is completely free of any remaining protest movements or ideas.
Naturally, disappointed members or voters look for alternatives, taking the risk into account that their new votes won’t have any significant impact at all. This is a risk every new party has to face, especially if it should be successful. The trouble is, however, that you can only have sustainable success if you adapt to the established parties. But then they’re no longer a protest party.
The chaos makers
Straight to the point: the AfD won’t stand a chance to achieve any seats in the Bundestag for the general election in September this year. But still, it might have an effect on the possible majority constellations after all. Even if the AfD achieved around 3 or 4 % of the overall votes and remains out of the Parliament (due to the minimum requirement of 5 %), it could – in a worst case scenario – even cost Angela Merkel her government.
If the AfD manages to pull voters from the CDU and the FDP, it will be far more difficult to continue the current Black-Yellow-Coalition and could in fact cost Merkel the chancellorship. The result will be prolonged coalition negotiations and possibly a change of government and politics in Germany after eight years of Merkel administration. Merkel’s adversary, Peer Steinbrück and the SPD, are already waiting for this to happen.
No Beppe in sight
The AfD and all the other protest parties have one major deficit: they’re not even remotely comparable to Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star-Movement in Italy which achieved a spectacular triumph at the last general elections. None of the German “protest” parties has the same movement or the same leader as the 5-Star-Movement, and none of them will be as successful.
The Pirates have been sunk, the NPD is nearly dead, and the “Linke” has no reasonable perspective for power. It is questionable if a bunch of elderly technocrats and professors can make any difference whatsoever.
They won’t be an alternative, at least not on a real national scale – at least not for reasonable voters. But in the end, protest parties gain votes from unreasonable protest voters, and there are more of them than you think.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
It’s getting cold – Russian-German relations at stake
April 18th, 2013By Oliver Krumme.
There he is again: the evil Russian – or the evil German, depending from which side you look at it.
During his visit to the Industrial fair in Hanover, Russian President Vladimir Putin had to face a deterioration of the Russian-German relations. From the other perspective, German Chancellor Angela Merkel showed herself “disillusioned” from the recent developments in the bilateral relations. The situation is bleak, according to a recent report from the German weekly news magazine “Spiegel”. A common dinner with President Putin and Chancellor Merkel was reported to have taken place in a frosty atmosphere.
Putin’s paranoia
Russia’s increasing authoritarian system not only affects the own Russian opposition, but also foreign organizations and NGOs. A few weeks ago, the offices of German NGOs such as the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Saint Petersburg and the SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert Foundation were rounded up by the Russian police and several records and computers have been confiscated. It is not a single event though, since numerous Russian and foreign NGOs are under strict surveillance by the Russian authorities.
The cause for this new Russian “paranoia” is a new law which classifies any foreign NGO and member of those NGOs based in Russia as a potential “foreign agents”. Especially since the anti-Putin demonstrations of the past two years, the state authorities are increasingly observing any activity that could potentially be anti-Putin directed.
It even includes embassy staff, the Russian intelligence FSB had ordered all Russian employees of foreign embassies to provide any possible information of foreign activities and collaboration with opposition groups – including the Russian staff of the German Embassy in Moscow.
Germany’s Russia-trauma
Germany’s policy towards Russia was mostly marked by two main streams: pro or anti. Contemporarily, Germany is heading back to a general anti-Russian tendency after a period of close cooperation.
During the Red-Green coalition under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, he and Putin not only used to have an excellent interpersonal relation, but especially business relations as well. Unlike the common European tendency to make itself more independent from Russian gas supplies, Schröder set up the exact opposite, establishing the North Stream pipeline to get direct gas supplies from the Russian Federation through the Baltic Sea and avoiding unreliable transit countries like Belarus or the Ukraine. Additionally, Schröder rejected any criticism against his new best friend Putin and described him as a “flawless democrat”. However, since Angela Merkel is in office, the bilateral relations started to nosedive.
In particular, the Euro crisis has enforced the Russian-German drift, and Cyprus was just one example. Since wealthy Russians use Cyprus as a tax haven, it was the EU’s and above all Germany’s interest to embed Russians into the austerity programme through a mandatory flat tax payment on savings and investments.
Rich Russians, poor Europeans?
This has awakened the image of a hyper rich Russian oligarch, buying his way through Europe and especially through the European crisis countries; hiding his money from Russian tax administrations by buying real estates and investing in exquisite housings in the Mediterranean region. Spain has reacted to this investment boom by making concessions to Russians: if they invest in real estates or buy exquisite houses in Spanish cities, the Spanish authorities grant permanent residence permits to these Russian investors and their affiliates.
In the media, the image is unmistakably drawn: the rich Russians are buying out Europe, and as a result, an increasing Russophobia is on the move – all over Europe, parallel with a persistent Germanophobia.
From a German perspective, the Russia trauma is a persistent one. Russia is in fact Germany’s nemesis, struggling for supremacy in Europe. Both, however, are not necessarily the most popular countries on the European continent. One is being hated for returning into Soviet style authoritarianism with a hyper rich elite, and the other one is being hated for it’s mostly unilaterally imposed austerity programme on the crisis states, disregarding horrific social consequences.
Back to mutual post-war trauma
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian State Duma, Alexey Pushkov, has accused Germany to rewrite history after the broadcast of the World Word 2 drama “Our Mothers, Our Fathers (“Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter”), and having defined down the attack of Nazi-Germany on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The movie, which tells the story of five friends and their lives during World War 2, did show atrocities committed by the German army in Russia, but without stating any comment or criticism. It is, however, exaggerated to anticipate a full scale history lesson in a movie that is supposed to explain Germany’s World War 2 trauma with the fate of five individuals.
Even though none of them – neither Russia, nor Germany – is interested in reducing trade partnership (as Germany is Russia’s most important trading partner in Europe), bilateral “friendship” might be over. A disastrous assumption, as both countries have the potential for European leadership across the entire continent. Russia knows that it needs its trade ties with Germany, and Germany knows about Russia’s political and economic power in the East and as a political and cultural counter balance against China.
The Bear vs. the Valkyrie
The struggle for power on the continent leads back to ancient rivalry, and all the efforts for bilateral consolidation will be wasted in vain. Surely, while Schröder and Putin were best buddies, Vladimir is having a rough time with Angela.
The question remains: who is stronger: The “flawless democrat” or the “German Iron Valkyrie”? In the long-run, both are dependent from each other – economically as well as politically. But both are re-entering a damned cold winter.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Don’t tread on us! Cyprus vs. the flat-tax
March 19th, 2013
By Oliver Krumme.
Who would have thought about that? The tiny little island of Cyprus defends itself against the mighty EU – especially against a vain and useless attempt to bring the country out of its monetary crisis by obviously picking the wrong strategy.
After the announcement of the most recent bailout plan, the Cyprus government and the top EU decision makers have come up with a plan to rescue Cyprus: by burdening every single citizen and bank account keeper in the country. The bailout plan outlined a mandatory one-time tax of 6.75% of everyone’s savings below 100,000 Euros, and 9.9% for everyone owning more than 100,000 Euros. As a result, the Cypriot rage was enormous, and many are desperately trying to withdraw all their savings from the bank – an image that seemed to have been banned to the history books.
However, the Cypriot parliament opposed the plan, not a single Member of Parliament agreed on the plan during the vote last Tuesday, leading to a failure of the entire EU austerity bailout plan for Cyprus. In short, Cyprus will either have to face imminent bankruptcy, or renegotiate the whole portfolio all over again.
The idea of collective expropriation
It is a unique step in the current development of the Euro crisis, something that has neither been done with Greece, nor with Spain, Italy or Portugal. So far, any bailout and austerity plan did not include a direct monetary contribution of the country’s citizen into the bailout plan through the people’s savings, even though austerity steps involved painful cuts for all citizens.
Even though there were two levels of payments – depending on the amount of saved money – 6.75% is a lot, especially for those who have little or almost nothing, and this is the vast majority of the Cypriot population. For the big earners of investors, their 9.9% share to the bailout plan nearly looks negligible. Most likely, the Cypriot government, the EU and the IMF wanted to charge the main amount of the big investors, especially those who use Cyprus as a tax haven.
The new proposal to be presented to the European Council and to the Cypriot parliament suggested and adaption of the savings limit, so that low income or low savings won’t be affected by the “flat-tax”. That again raises another problem: if even the high savers get inadequately taxed, then the rescue attempts for Cyprus remain insufficient, or foreign investors pull back and withdraw necessary assets to keep the Cypriot economy alive.
Open the flood gates!
The biggest threat however is, that even the mere idea of a mandatory one-time tax payment by all citizens can open the flood gates to all the other crisis states in Europe. Out of a sudden, everyone will have to pay directly for a bailout, no matter if low or high income, no matter if he’s an unemployed Cypriot or a hyper rich foreign investor.
Even though the Cypriot government , the EU and the IMF make the decisive U-turn and prevent a full scale flat tax on all savings, it does not mean that the idea will be banned for ever. In the view of the crisis, it might be an attractive solution for the other crisis states – not necessarily for the lower savings, but for foreign investors who seek a relatively safe tax haven.
But even for high tax countries like France or Germany, this one-off levy might be used as a last resort instrument in the event of an imminent monetary collapse. The results, however, will be exactly the same as it happened in Cyprus in the past few days: heavy cash withdrawals by desperate citizens, trying to rescue their money from a system that has turned into a self-destructive monstrosity, no longer serving the citizens but ruining the foundations of social stability instead.
When greed wins
It is apparent that the banks have caused a crisis which is turning into a dangerous vicious circle, with ruinous consequences not only for a nation’s GDP but also for fiscal security of each of its citizens. Paying a big chunk of your own money in an emergency is painful, but reasonable if you can protect yourself from further harm. This flat-tax, however, will not prevent any further damage to you or your country, and you are in essence paying for something you were never able to take influence on or which will not even remotely improve your own economic situation. As a consequence, you not only lose faith and trust in the own economy, but above all in your own country.
The Parliament’s very recent rejection of the plan is also unique in the view of the entire Euro-Crisis, it’s the first time that a crisis state refuses to follow the austerity requirements implied by the EU and the own government. In fact, the Cypriot leaders have listened to the roar and the anger of the people. This might also be a wake-up call for all the other countries in crisis, a message that a people is no longer willing to accept drastic and unreasonable manners in order to balance the national budget, or simply to rescue some highly indebted banks.
More losers than winners
At least, the decision by the Cypriot parliament has completely changed the situation and the whole bailout plan has to be redrafted. But still, the idea has been provided, and it is only a matter of time until it comes back again.
The losers are already visible: every citizen is going to pay, and especially the low earners will have to bear the highest burden. That’s the case in Greece, in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, and now in Cyprus. But the list is not finished yet.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Number 266, please! Habemus Papam and the pope factory
March 13th, 2013By Oliver Krumme.
He left quickly, and he came back very quickly indeed. With the new pope Francis I – the first pope ever to come from Latin America – the Vatican has overcome the sudden and brief emptiness of papacy after Benedict XVI’s surprising retirement just a few weeks ago. While the whole Catholic world (and maybe also all the other ones) desperately waited for the white smoke to come out of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney, discussion rise again about the sense and the nonsense of the Vatican system.
On a first glance, everything looks like a big change in the Catholic Church: the first pope ever from a non-European country, the first Jesuit pope ever, and the first who has chosen the name “Francis” as a papal name. The Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio is considered to be an advocate for the poor, and his election could not only strengthen the role of Latin America in the world, it could also be a signal for the global struggle against poverty.
So far the first enthusiastic reactions of experts and mass media just moments after Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran has spoken the words “Habemus Papam” to the global public.
Very high expectations for no reason?
But quite frankly: if someone expects big changes with the new pope, then he will be bitterly disappointed. If there is something the Vatican definitely is not famous for, then it’s radical or remarkable changes. On the contrary, the Vatican is a symbol for medieval rite keeping, even in the early 21st century.
The new pope Bergoglio is known for having antique views on abortion issues, gay marriages, and euthanasia. As a result, the Catholic Church will continue its highly conservative views on aspects of life that have become normal for a modern society and which have evolved strong progress for our understanding of an open-minded world community. In short: the Catholic Church goes on ignoring changes.
The tiny medieval isle
Cleary, the vote of the new pope did not even take place under contemporary democratic principles. Someone might argue that in the smallest country in the world you cannot expect a reasonable sized population for which democratic standards can be applicable for the election if the pope, since in this case it’s not necessarily a regular political position. However, in legal terms and regarding international laws, the pope is also the head of state of the Vatican and as a consequence, his election should also be conducted in accordance with the principles of democracy and good governance.
That’s the theory so far. But neither the Vatican, nor the election of the pope, nor any other “eligious or social “policy making” progress has been conducted according to democratic principles. Technically, this sets the whole Vatican on an equal step with a pre-industrial absolutistic monarchy.
The pope, as a person, is merely a public figure for the catholic believers; he is neither a policy maker, nor an agenda setter. And even though some pope tried to implement reforms in the Vatican system, the system inside prevents a significant change of paradigms. Even necessary and contemporary essential adaptions to modern society are being completely ignored by the Vatican – such as equal treatment of homosexuals, abortion policies, or a modern understanding of family structures.
Advocacy for the poor or free market corporation?
Bergoglio will make no difference whatsoever and he will follow his predecessors long tradition of system keeping behind the Vatican’s closed doors. Inside this world, the Vatican works like a multinational corporation. In short, the new CEO was elected by his board of directors to continue the company’s main strategy without further changes, but keeping their customers at their dogmas and questionable believe system, not to mention their own definition towards justice for the poor.
The Catholic Church works like an ordinary profit oriented corporation and the pope as a person is functioning like a marketing tool. While all other companies have a product, a series of products or even a bitten apple as a symbol, the Catholic Church’s main selling product or unique selling proposition (USP) is no longer the bible, the cross, or its churches’ architecture, but the single person carrying who has been chosen to head the Vatican until the end of his life, under normal circumstances. And after him, the next one will take charge of the factory. And even the claim to advocate the poor sounds like a desperate and no longer trustworthy marketing slogan.
Waiting for number 267
During his inaugural speech, ”Francis” has asked the masses waiting on Saint Peter’s Square to pray for him. How shall this request be interpreted? As a message that his papacy will be a short one? He is already 76 years old, and his predecessor Ratzinger (“Benedict XVI”) assumed the papal chair at the age of 78, before resigning from office just eight years later.
Once again, it is most likely that the new pope will just be a temporary one, but this time the Vatican cannot afford another pre-mortal retirement.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
From serious to ridiculous – The North Korean itch
March 10th, 2013Oliver Krumme.
If you didn’t know that Kim Jon-un was in charge, you could believe that nothing has ever changed in North Korea – at least, not in terms of propaganda or war rhetoric.
After the latest nuclear test, North Korea has – once more – enforced a war like tone by rejecting the bilateral armistice agreement with South Korea, and threatening the US with a “pre-emptive nuclear attack”; as a reaction to the newly announced sanctions by the international community after the new nuclear test.
Can it be taken seriously? Not really.
The lonely Kim
It is a matter of fact that North Korea is turning into complete international isolation, even its sole remaining ally China is withdrawing its support for the Kim regime. The international community’s decision to impose more sanctions is a logic reaction to a regime that shows itself unimpressed by international laws and multilateral cooperation, but which is desperately drawing attention by a voice of violence and almost ridiculous threats than can hardly be considered as imminent threats, at least not in terms of a nuclear attack on the US – due to a simple lack of efficient and reliable technology.
So far, every single step made by the new North Korean leader is identical to everything his father and predecessor Kim Jong-il has done, just dragging the country deeper and deeper into isolation without significant progress in the bilateral relations to South Korea.
The newest bomb test was just another proof of North Korea’s unwillingness to respect international rules for conflict resolution, shattering the humble and small approaches in the bilateral relations to South Korea. After Kim Jon-un has seized power, North Korea seemed to have taken a slight course of consolidation and probably even rapprochement with its main advisory South Korea.
Now, all hopes are shattered and the conflicts is about to turn hot again.
Threat of sanctions insufficient
All the international community can do is threatening North Korea – but with no more than mere economic sanctions affecting the elite of the country. This measure will – however – not necessarily affect the North Korean war machinery since this “branch” of the North Korean economic system is the only one that works more or less properly, while all the other economic sectors remain way underdeveloped, compared to its immediate neighbours. More economic sanctions by the UN will just harm the population which has been used to devastating starving periods and painful supply shortages.
In the meantime, the war machinery is obviously going strong and cannot be bothered about the visible humanitarian disaster. And even though the outrage in the world is pretty much visible, the question remains. How long will the world go on just looking at this threat?
A severe regional problem
North Korea’s military potential is not only a threat for the region itself, but for the entire stability theatre in East Asia, not only affecting South Korea but also Japan. Japan is currently re-evaluating its own security role in Asia Pacific and considers a change of the merely self-defence character of its constitution – a radical change of paradigms since the end of World War 2. This is a clear indication that the looming conflict in Asia Pacific is about to enter the next step of regional arms race, or even pre-emptive action against any further weapons development on the Korean Peninsula.
What is actually more concerning of the most recent step by North Korea, are the potential immediate effects. With the termination of the armistice agreement with South Korea, Seoul will be on high alert from now on. Not too far away from the South Korean capital is the inner Korean border, and alongside that border, on the North Korean side: a notable number of artillery batteries, with Seoul in its firing range. Experts estimate that, in the event of a North Korean attack, there will be more than 1 million casualties within the first 24 hours.
Therefore, it is only natural for South Korea and Japan to be on high alert now. A regime that turns its own propaganda more aggressively is unpredictable in its possible actions, even though its technical options are relatively limited for a full scale regional war.
The beginning of the end?
There is a common behaviourism for authoritarian regimes: the more a regime is facing imminent collapse – in economic, political and moral terms, the more aggressive the own propaganda turns. The new sanctions will mostly hit the regime and its elite only, while the North Korean population will go on suffering, ignored and supressed by their leaders.
However, China – North Korean’s sole remaining ally – has finally come to the conclusion that Kim’s ridiculous policy is no longer acceptable. With practically no one left, how long will North Korea go on with this black comedy?
If there is any ally left, then it could only be Iran. Experts already anticipate an increase of trading and weapons deals between both regimes, and for North Korea to draw financial assets from Iran to finance its nuclear weapon programme, and the comedy opens a new chapter.
One thing is pretty sure: the days of Kim’s regime are numbered. But a question remains: how soon will Kim fall?
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Over the cliff – The on-going decline of a superpower
March 3rd, 2013By Oliver Krumme.
The die is cast! The worst case scenario could not be prevented. After the deadline has expired and no consensus has been made between the Democrats and the Republicans, the US is facing a painful austerity programme.
No one can predict the full extent of the cost cuts yet, but it will be horrific for the US economy and society. But besides of all cost cuts with all possible consequences for domestic economy, social structures, the US labour market and social stability as a whole, it will be a massive blow for the US regarding its own position in a shifting global world, in which the US is continuously losing its predominant leading position – and this time it’s for good.
From hero to zero
No one asks when this American decline did start, since it’s pretty obvious: The 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy – combined with the subprime mortgage meltdown – marked the beginning of the end of America’s predominance in global economics and finances. Ever since, the US has not only lost credibility and accountability in the finance sector, it also lost its leading position in all the other policy fields: in international trade, security, climate policy (although it was never ever a serious actor in that particular field), and international diplomacy.
Today, the US is no longer an economic leader, it’s China. It isn’t a diplomacy leader either, but it left this field without leaving it to a clear successor. This post remains vacant until now, with the EU stuck in its own economic crisis and other actors reluctant to take a leading position. But it is pretty obvious that China is on the brink to jump into onto it sooner or later. And looking at the crisis regions of our times (Syria, Mali, Israel-Iran, Afghanistan etc.), the US’ strategy is either marked by withdrawal or a complete absence of action.
Is a country that behaves like this supposed to be a global superpower? Certainly not!
For a very brief period of time between 2008 and 2010, it looked like the US could restore some of the international reputation and respect it had lost during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration. Unfortunately, international needs were severely overshadowed by domestic political quarrels and inflexible political trench warfare between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Domestic political immaturity
If you want to look for someone to be blamed, you have to blame both, the Democrats and the Republicans. Of course, either side will tell that it was the other’s fault. But at the end of the day, both messed it up. An unwillingness to cooperate, unreasonable stubbornness, and above all mutual party bashing lead to a step which makes it almost impossible to comprehend the full scale of the imminent disaster. But what makes the whole situation even more incomprehensible is the simple matter of fact that none of the political leaders – not even President Barack Obama – showed any sign of determination to prevent a fiscal cliff at all costs, never mind the obvious and painful cuts waiting to hit the bottom of this cliff.
This kind of immaturity on both sides is a disgrace for such a “superpower” like the US, a superpower that claims to be a shining example for most parts of the “free world” and claims overall global leadership for all policy fields. After the failure to prevent the fiscal cliff, however, this leadership is shot into bits. The US cannot be regarded as a global leader any longer, but rather as a political amateur.
The fiscal cliff is nothing that has occurred out of a sudden; it was a looming threat for the past two years. American policy makers, economic leaders and the public were aware of this, with all consequences. And still, being aware of all these crucial fiscal consequences and painful cuts, neither the Obama Administration, nor the Congress, nor both together have succeeded to come up with a deal.
What effects?
There is only one who is going to pay the bill, and this bill will be humongous: the American people.
It’s not only a matter that the defence budget will be affected by the cliff, since there is a general consensus in the American public that the defence budget has been way off scale since the Busg Administration. As President Obama has clearly stated, people are going to lose their jobs, unemployment and social aid assistance will be cut, state-funded services will be painfully cut, and even Obama’s main project (the public health care system) is at stake. The people is losing because their leaders were unwilling and not qualified to find a reasonable and feasible solution.
But even on a transatlantic agenda the fiscal cliff will have severe effects. The proposed free trade area between the US and the EU will be questioned in the view of the economic disaster waiting for the American economy. US protectionists will shout for rising tariffs and trade regulations. Basically, history is about to repeat itself, again.
From bad to worse
Fact is that the US’ role in the world will continue its nosedive, not only in economic terms. Since the defence budget will be massively cut as well, America’s role as a predominant global military power will be jeopardized, especially in the view of the rising number of regional conflicts throughout the world. Even more, it seems likely that the US will pull inwards, leaving a power vacuum to be filled. The fiscal cliff will not only have domestic effects, but above all international ones as well.
US foreign policy was already declining through false foreign policy implementations of the former Bush-Administration. Even though the new Secretary of State John Kerry promotes a rejuvenation of the Transatlantic Bridge during his visit in Europe lately, it is more apparent that the fiscal cliff will lead to a general re-evaluation of the transatlantic relations under domestic economic pretences.
In short, fiscal cliff is also a foreign policy cliff, and Washington, D.C. is continuing its self-destructive downsizing. The American decline is entering a new stage, a new chapter leading to the end of American saga – a humiliating and disgraceful end of a world power, just because none of their leaders was willing to prevent the cliff.
If the US was a person, it would be diagnosed with severe masochism and self-mutilation symptoms – but who wants to be its therapist?
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
With Beppe to the stars? A new form or protest against political establishment
February 24th, 2013By Oliver Krumme.
Today and tomorrow, Italy is voting; again. There is nothing unusual about changing governments in Italy, since the end of World War 2, Italy had up to 39 different governments with 25 different Prime Ministers until now. The question is: how is the 40th going to look like – and will there be a 26th Prime Minister?
There are two dark shadows over this year’s general elections in Italy: the first one is the economic situation in which Italy is currently stuck. Just like Spain, Portugal and Greece, Italy is severely suffering from the economic and financial crisis, from high unemployment rates (especially among the younger population), economic recession, and a general loss of future perspectives for large parts of the Italian population.
This crisis is, in fact, causing the other dark shadow rising over Italy – the possible return of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Back to Italian absurdity?
Berlusconi’s return to power is a scenario no one on the European level dares to imagine – nor does the majority of the Italian people. Still, Berlusconi can be sure of a big support from voters, especially by those who are unsatisfied with the austerity programme of the current administration of incumbent Prime Minister Mario Monti. Not a charming thought to have Berlusconi back though, since everyone still remembers his embarrassing adventures and his authoritarian governing style, and his excessive control of the Italian media.
No one wants his adventures, his endless lawsuits, or his massive ego back in politics, and from a reasonable perspective it seems unlikely that Berlusconi is about to regain power in Italy. However, voters’ behaviourism is unpredictable and in the past, Italian elections used to provide surprising results – and there are plenty of Italians who want him back. Evidently, this has to be regarded as a protest voters’ reaction to Monti.
Anti-politics as a key for success?
However, Berlusconi is not the only option for the Italians. Apart from the socialist candidate Bersani, the probably most shining example of all the Italian candidates is – without any shadow of doubt – Beppe Grillo and his “Five Star Movement” (“Movimento 5 Stelle”). Grillo, a famous Italian comedian, blogger and online activist, could possibly be a decisive factor in the outcome of the general elections. Not necessarily in terms of seizing power, but in terms of coalition building. Polls of the past few weeks have been indicating high results for Grillo and his party, and in the 2012 regional elections in Sicily, they have obtained 15 seats out of 90 in the Regional Assembly.
Grillo’s key for success is, certainly, his unusual and unconventional agenda setting, which is the complete opposite of any other political party in Italy. The 5 Star Movement focuses on direct E-Democracy, open and free internet access for everyone, as well as a complete U-turn in previous Italian politics with a combination of radical proposals – such as abolishing cars specifically for government officials or cutting politicians salaries, and a free access to health care and education, but also with Euro-scepticism.
Do these ideas ring a bell to you? They certainly do!
Why it works in Italy and not in Germany
If you look to Germany, the Pirate Party has – in essence – the same political demands, but with a major difference compared to Beppe Grillo.
First of all, the 5 Star Movement has leadership (well, kind of), something that is seriously missing in the German Pirate Party. Instead, the recent news from the Pirate Party is mostly marked by a notorious internal quarrel – for leadership, for agenda setting, but mostly for articulating shitstorms and making them public. Now, Grillo’s personality and capabilities for political leadership might be questioned, but on the other hand, Grillo might still be the better option compared to Berlusconi.
Secondly, unlike 5-Star, the German Pirates were not focusing on political sustainability. While the 5 Star Movement did in fact keep a progressive electoral base and increase their support, it is the exact opposite for the Pirate Party. After their surprising and unexpected successes in 2012 on several regional elections, this year was so far marked by a severe blow as a result of the missing agenda setting and the amateurish leadership quarrels, seriously damaging any sustainable policy making agenda that goes beyond their original open source and free online accessing policies. At the present time, the Pirate Party is back on a low level as it used to be before 2012.
Effects for the rest of Europe?
Still, can Grillo and the 5 Star Movement be an example for the rest of Europe, especially for the countries in crisis, as form a sustainable and reasonable protest movement? It is probably too early to say, but the long-term wave of success Grillo is currently riding on could have profound effects. If Grillo and “Movimento 5 Stelle” achieve a high result at today’s and tomorrow’s elections, it could boost alternative political movements across Europe – and maybe cause a re-thinking for the German Pirate Party.
On the other hand, since Grillo is a Comedian and “Movimento 5 Stelle” is in essence a comedy related party (with significant success tough), it can only have a “wake-up-call” effect for the other established parties, including a message: “Get things done, improve the situation, or we’re going to vote utter nonsense, and you’ll lose us!”
In 2007, “Movimento 5 Stelle” has impressively conducted a so called “V-Day”, but “V” does not stand for “victory”, but for the Italian word “Vaffanculo” (= “Kiss my ass!”). This is basically their slogan towards the established parties, and it is still echoing today and tomorrow.
Still, Beppe Grillo is far better than Silvio Berlusconi!
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
Where is the Euro-Army? Another clumsy attempt for a military mission
January 15th, 2013
By Oliver Kummer.
It’s on! Discussions have been persistent how a possible European intervention in Mali could look like. Now, after weeks and months of discussions and in the middle of a deep economic crisis some action is finally under way. Last weekend, France has launched a military mission in the Western African state of Mali to prevent further spread of Islamist movements in the country and to assist the Mali government and army.
At the very beginning it seemed to be an exclusively French military intervention, now more alliance partners declared to assist France’s mission. The US and the UK already announced significant military assistance and NATO welcomed the French step towards military action. Shortly afterwards all views went straight to Germany, waiting for some reaction from Berlin. As predicted, reactions came in a persistently hesitating form.
Germany’s sudden “response”
Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long for Berlin to respond. Just yesterday, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle announced that Germany will support France in its military actions in Mali in terms of logistics, transport and medical assistance. This actually goes beyond previous announcements in the prequel to the Mali mission that Germany would only commit itself in training missions under an EU CSDP mandate. In the view of previous behaviour in German Foreign Policy – specifically regarding the abstention policies towards Libya and the UN observer statute for Palestine, this announcement sounds like a quantum leap.
Evidently, this strategy is not even remotely close to a complete U-turn in German foreign and security policy. It is rather more a slight adaption as a result of an absence of significant foreign policy action, combined with a self-limitation towards any form of military intervention or decision making that could potentially alter Germany’s general foreign policy positions. In detail, Germany’s assistance will be merely a provision of Transall military transporter planes, but without stating where exactly and for which purposes they might be used for. These details shall follow on Thursday.
Although Germany has finally announced to contribute to the Mali mission (though on a relatively limited scale), it is obvious that its own contribution is far below of what Germany could potentially do. Even the UK and the US have announced to assist France on a wider scale, through material and even the use of unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles. The reasons for this continuous self-limitation might be explained with Germany’s general reluctance towards any kind of military involvement (no matter how minor it seems like) and the pre-election condition Germany is currently preparing for. If you want to lose an election, you have to be involved in military action. Germany is stuck in a dilemma, caught between its international obligations towards its alliance partners to support the mission and not promote soft policy approaches on the other hand.
Single nation action – Lessons not learnt for CSDP
France as a former colonial power in Africa is heavily intervening in Africa and also did it on past ESDP/CSDP missions – such as in Congo in 2003 and in Chad in 2008 as the single lead nation. For a common European security and defence policy single nation lead mission are not necessarily beneficial for common strategy implementation and they do not promote the CSDP as a whole. However, this is not France’s fault.
All EU member states should be obliged to assist France in Mali in any possible way, since Mali is a severe security risk for the immediate EU neighbourhood policy. Potential terrorist movements may use Mali as a hub for future actions against Europe, especially since Mali is in the middle of vast refugee transit routes towards the Mediterranean Sea. Islamist terrorist groups can and will use the commotion of mass refugee movements to camouflage own groups on their way to key targets.
For Europe it is essential and vital to take immediate action in Mali, therefore it seems absurd that the EU proves nearly no collective security position. It is in fact even more absurd that other EU member states keep such a conspicuous reluctance for more contribution. Past missions in the Congo and in Chad should have been sufficient as bad examples for counterproductive single nation operations. These two missions were limited in success also because of the short-term mandates (mostly for a year). If Europe is serious about its own common security and defence policy then there should be more collective action and coordination among its member states, and they will have to be committed for long-term missions ensuring sustainable effects. The way it is right now will neither lead to more efficient counter terrorist measures, nor to a strengthened European alliance.
Ready … Aim … Talk … and keep talking!
Usually, people learn from the past, especially when they don’t want to repeat mistakes. It is not the case with European Security and Defence. For the moment it appears that the EU remains negotiating about the actual scale of the mission in Mali. In the meantime, France continues to impose action, unravelling the dilemma of the whole CSDP that even after the first mission has been launched back in the Western Balkans in 2003 there is still no consensus or common strategy when immediate action is strongly required.
In an interview with the German newspaper “Die Welt”, the chairman of the German Soldiers’ Association (“Deutscher Bundeswehrverband”) – Colonel Ulrich Kirsch – excludes any military involvement and criticizes that the entire Mali mission’s objectives have not been laid down properly (https://www.dbwv.de/C12574E8003E04C8/CurrentBaseLink/W293YJB4869DBWNDE). It is questionable if the whole mission will have any sustainable long-term effects that go beyond the “fire fighting” actions by France.
The CSDP was originally created so that the EU could provide strong security keeping measures outside the NATO frame, independent from the predominant US led alliance. However, even the latest attempt is nothing but a single nation mission rather than a common one. Like that, even the legal and political implications of the CSDP will be reduced to absurdity.
Recommendations
There is no strategy without common position, and there cannot be any strategy without strong actions – and actions are currently far more urgent than notorious consultations and self-withdrawal. Especially Germany’s unwillingness is irresponsible in the view of the full security risk Mali is providing in the long-term in case of further non-action.
Germany is very well advised to have the courage to commit itself more than just through transporter planes and assist its closest European partner – it would be a sign of reliability and European decency.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
All units: Pullback! The imminent failure of western influence in Afghanistan
January 13th, 2013By Oliver Krumme.
Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was on visit in Washington D.C., meeting President Barack Obama, just before the inauguration into Obama’s second term by next Sunday. The purpose of Karzai’s visit was rather obvious: it is about the future of foreign presence in Afghanistan.
His visit couldn’t be any more convenient for the Obama Administration. Just recently, the US has stated that a complete withdrawal of all US military out of Afghanistan is a possibility. Not a big surprise though, since a long-term withdrawal was a matter of course for the entire ISAF mandate. However, it now happens under the wrong scenario.
Great expectations not met
It is almost 12 years since the Taleban have been defeated in the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), although this victory was a temporary one rather than a permanent one. The western community initiated its ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and OEF mission in great expectations to finally bring peace to a war-torn country and to significantly weakening the terrorist movement of the Taleban and al-Qaeda. The anticipation that a massive international presence in Afghanistan with all humanitarian and economic support for rebuilding efforts would lead to a sustainable stabilization of Afghanistan turned out to be a utopian fairy tale.
Although western lead-nations like the US and Germany were deeply committed to ensure centralized and forceful Afghan security, the present situation is far from the own anticipations; contemporary Afghanistan if not even remotely close to a state which can be described as “safe” or “stable”. On the contrary: Afghanistan is not any safer than it was right when NATO initiated all western action in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The tragedy is, however, that the entire international community is doing everything possible to NOT improve the entire situation.
Leaving without results
Since its very beginning, the ISAF mandate has been made clear that the whole mission’s purpose was to establish strong Afghan security forces so that the central government in Kabul would be able to handle stability and safety on its own in the long-run, without foreign support. Evidently, an enormous effort was made to train and re-establish the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) – Germany was in charge for the police training. A vast number of NGOs, local military-civilian reconstruction teams (Provincial Reconstruction Teams =PRC), and a humongous amount of money, however, were apparently not enough to pull Afghanistan out of its constant war condition.
Afghanistan is an exceptional case, with more than 30 years of almost uninterrupted war going on it has been in the centre point of foreign intervention even before its independence in 1919. The United Kingdom was unable to control it, so were the Soviets in the 1980ies. Even brief periods of relative stability and prosperity where shaken by the ethnic clashes in the multi-ethnic society; clashes that are still present and made the entire Nation-Building efforts even more challenging.
Furthermore, this turmoil prevented any significant counter narcotic measures; the UN programme to minimize poppy production did not meet the own expectations. Afghanistan was and still is a leading narco-state, and local warlords use the profits from narco-trafficking to fund their own military and political weight in the respective region. Predictable, the international community’s achievements in combating poppy production or even trafficking is hardly measurable. As it turns out, poppy production is the only sector in the non-working Afghan economy that actually works.
Worst case scenario imminent
Basically, three exit scenarios have been outlined for the entire Afghanistan mission, of which the best case scenario (a democratic western oriented Afghanistan) has always been a utopian fairy tale – despite the euphoria after the “defeat” of the Taleban in late 2001.
The other two scenarios (either a notorious failed narco-state or a constantly dependent state by western support) more and more became likely to occur, and now it is obvious that in the long run, the worst case scenario will prevail. In short: Afghanistan is about to fall back into its pre-2001 failed state status, since the central government in Kabul is simply unable to cope with the imminent security challenges persistently deteriorating in the country. Furthermore, as soon as the last western security actors withdraw, Afghanistan will most likely “restored” as a terrorist haven for the Taleban and al-Qaeda. As a consequence, the global security situation will be the same as right after the 9/11 attacks, maybe even more severe.
Withdrawal = Unconditional Surrender
Everybody knew that Afghanistan would not be an easy job and everybody fears the consequences of failure of such a mammoth project. Now, everyone talks about a complete pullback (Germany will completely withdraw by 2014) and no one seems to realize the full scale of such an “escape”. A couple of years ago, the late German Minister of Defence, Peter Struck, stated that “Germany will be defended at the Hindu Kush”. This maybe sounds exaggerated, but at the end of the day it has dramatic consequences.
For NATO, Afghanistan is a prestige project and the biggest and longest “Out of Area” mission conducted so far. For the western defence alliance, the outcome of the entire Afghanistan mandate is extremely crucial and might decide on NATO’s political and military future – critical voices even state that NATO will stand and fall with Afghanistan.
The simple matter of fact is that the more the international community keeps talking and planning about a withdrawal, the more likely it’s going to happen. A withdrawal at this state of non-progress is a dead give-away of the imminent failure of the entire ISAF Mission. A withdrawal with the job not completed and with the enemy still on the move and significantly weakening the fragile Afghan structure is in fact equal to an unconditional surrender of NATO in Afghanistan.
The Graveyard
In the long-term, this step will have profound negative effects on NATO’s future role as a global security actor and as the only western security alliance, maybe even devastating ones leading to a potential collapse of NATO. As Milton Bearden had titled his Foreign Affairs article back in 2001 – right at the time the ISAF and OEF missions have been launched – Afghanistan is the Graveyard of Empires; this might also apply to NATO.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
The Ignored War – The need for collective security enforcement
December 12th, 2012By Oliver Krumme.
War in the immediate neighbourhood
A violent conflict with catastrophic humanitarian consequences in going on in the immediate vicinity of NATO and the western security alliance is standing aside and watching. While Syrian President Assad goes on brutally crushing the opposition and even announcing to use chemical weapons, the international community keeps articulating their disgrace and communicating their “deepest concerns” about the current development of the civil war.
However, anything else aside from words of deepest concern or sympathy cannot be expected, at least not at the present time. So far, all action taken by the international community have proven to be inefficient, unhelpful and above all useless in terms of imposing ceasefires or even peace negotiations. Even the Turkish request for Patriot missiles of the past few weeks and their deployment announcement alongside the Turkish-Syrian border before the end of the year is just a mere placebo effect to what NATO should be doing in the view of the on-going atrocities in Syria.
Conspicuous reluctance
With the civil war dragging on, and the humanitarian situation becoming more and more unbearable for the Syrian population, the need for an intensive foreign military intervention is evidently increasing. However, NATO shows a conspicuous reluctance to consider a military operation against the Assad regime. Lacking consensus inside the alliance and unclear resource deployment among its member states lead to a non-intervention in a region that was declared as a designated area of strategic interest and importance for the alliance and especially for the western community – especially since the beginning of the so called “Arab Spring”.
This reluctance is caused on one hand by the lacking support in the international community – especially with the position of China and Russia to block any motion – and the tedious economic crisis. From single actors’ perspective, the US has in general marginalized its Middle East Policy in the past four years, and regarding the Obama Administration’s current strategy for the next four years, it doesn’t predict any major changes.
The same rule applies to the European actors (for obvious reasons); none of them – neither on the national, nor on the common EU level – does in fact come up with a sustainable and helpful solution for the conflict that might lead to a rapid conflict solution. Even the Patriot Missile deployment is being widely discussed as an “unpredictable” option that might cause more uncertainty rather than actual help.
There is one obvious question arising from this dilemma: why does no one launch strong and useful actions against the Assad regime?
The collective fear to fail
Obviously, both NATO and single countries are unable to persuasively convince all members of the UN Security Council – above all the last remaining supporters China and Russia – to impose strong sanctions against Assad. From the UN’s side, as long as two or even a single permanent member of the UN Security Council vetoes any resolution that imposes more than just economic sanctions, the UN and therefore the entire international community is doomed to fail and to remain inactive.
However, even if you disregard the blocking position of China and Russia, the remaining community shows no visible willingness to take any action. Not just because of the lack of the necessary formal requirements, but above all because of self-limiting hesitation and the simple fear to fail.
Taking a look at previous international actions in other crisis regions (e.g. in Libya or Afghanistan), the international community is suffering from overall disappointment due to the obvious deficits in peace-keeping and post-conflict nation-building efforts. The consequences are catastrophic in the long-run: negative examples in the past have a massively discouraging effect and completely annihilate the determination to impose future security enforcing actions. This reluctance though is a combination of deteriorated self-confidence, lacking overall international support, and the uncertainty of the consequences of a military operation in Syria – also in terms of possible impacts for the entire Middle East.
Formalities over necessities
The western community, being aware that neither China nor Russia will agree on a common resolution of military action in Syria, is paralysed and trapped in non-action, for one simple but decisive reason: As long as there is no UN mandate based on a commonly agreed resolution for action in Syria, there will be no collective action whatsoever. Tragically, the entire international community is hindering itself due to minor formalities. The flaws are within the UN system itself, a notorious hunt for collective consensus and agreements will predictably not lead to efficient and sustainable conflict resolution, not even when quick responses are imperative.
It sounds like a bad joke that the simple matter of formalities are preventing necessary actions in a stage where it becomes evident that diplomacy or economic sanctions alone do no longer lead to conflict resolution. However, there is no doubt that any further delay for action will increase the suffering of the civilian population in Syria and the danger of a spread of hostilities to neighbouring countries, such as Turkey. In the long-run, the crisis will not be limited within the Syrian borders and it is only a matter of time until the civil war will no longer be a Syrian war. With Turkey demanding Patriot Missiles from the alliance (with the US, the Netherlands, and Germany being the only NATO members able to provide Patriots), an immediate threat for a NATO member and the alliance as a whole has already been identified and an imminent threat for peace and stability is a sufficient mandate for military counter measures – in purely military terms.
Recommendations
It is an unpopular suggestion, but necessary decisions are not popular by default. Even though there is no apparent collective support for military action in the UN Security Council, the need for intervention is given, specifically for humanitarian reasons. Back in 1999, NATO did not have a UN mandate for military action in Kosovo in the first place, but the obvious humanitarian disaster made in inevitable to launch air strikes, the necessary mandate was acquired ex post. Syria is not a different case. The constant and almost impelled feeling for perpetuation of so called “collective international laws” will only increase the humanitarian catastrophe, especially if the international community goes on unintentionally ignoring the fact that there is a war going on in a globally crucial region with disastrous consequences for western and global security.
The only recommendation that can be given here is a demand for an immediate military operation in Syria and the rapid deployment of peace enforcing troops in the region. Any further delay will lead to a destabilization of the Middle East and expand to a sever security menace for the western alliance. Action has to be taken at once, disregarding the UN regime or opposing positions by single actors. Self-imposed reluctance has to be overcome, for collective sake. (This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de) The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
The Abstention Champion – A review on contemporary German Foreign and Security Policy
December 2nd, 2012Oliver Krumme.
Foreign policy without clear position
On the 29th of November, the UN General Assembly has approved a motion to grant a non-member observing state status to Palestine with a vast majority of its members. Exactly 138 states have approved, with 9 opposing votes only, and 41 abstentions. As predicted, Germany was one of these abstaining countries, again.
It is still 10 more months until the next elections for the German Parliament in September 2013, but it is time already to evaluate German foreign and security policy after nearly four years of Conservative-liberal administration. If you have to summarize this period, it has to be evaluated like this: amateurish and in particular marked by the pure absence of precise foreign policy positioning. In short: there is no German foreign policy.
In the past, German foreign and security policy was in particular marked either by an Atlanticist approach towards a close transatlantic cooperation, or by the exact opposite, a counter balance towards a stronger European position. That was in particular the mainstream tendency of the past decades.
Internal crisis management and alternative security policy tools
In the past four years, however, German foreign policy was lost in inner-European crisis management and other foreign policy fields remained on the side-line. In particular, security policy making was marked by a self-limiting abstention policy in the UN Security Council in the view of the Libyan War last year. Recent developments in the Middle East and the Syrian Civil War are a direct follow-up to the Libyan development: Germany’s reluctance to provide Patriot Missiles for Turkey to secure its border to Syria is another indication for Germany’s confusing foreign and security policy strategy under the current administration, but in particular under Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
It is not only a personality issue that Germany is currently losing international importance in hard policy terms, but it is above all a preference shift towards fiscal and monetary importance in inner European crisis management. Germany’s contemporary foreign policy is completely dominated by the Euro Crisis and the result of the notoriously persistent crisis is a complete policy priority shift towards fiscal and monetary crisis solutions. This will lead to a dramatic, almost catastrophic decline in security policy making.
If you sum up the most essential step stones in German foreign and security policy of the past four years, it is nothing else but a constant downsizing procedure: Starting with the suspension of compulsory military service combined with a dramatic cut of military personnel, the long-term plans to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan until 2014, and the overall reluctance to be directly involved in military operations lead to an assumption of lacking international self-confidence, or even an anti-military foreign policy strategy.
On the other hand, Germany has increased its arms sales (e.g. tanks and submarines) to individual Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. In terms of security policy, Germany is shifting strategy implementations from direct to indirect agenda and contribution setting through arms sales. This strategy has been underlined by Chancellor Angela Merkel as an “equal security policy tool” to direct intervention. However, the truth is that it is not the case! Mere arms sales do not replace a direct security policy intervention with actual troop deployment and mandate implementations, as I have mentioned in an earlier blog post: http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de/2012/07/change-of-paradigms-german-arms-sales.html
A small glint of international self-confidence
Contemporary German foreign policy is seriously suffering from a competence transfer away from the foreign ministry towards the governing Merkel administration under Chancellor Merkel herself. This is not just a tendency that has just come up since the black-yellow coalition has been re-established in autumn 2009, but already since the late 1980ies. Basically, every German government coalition has entitled the foreign policy department to the smaller coalition partner. In case of a conservative government, it was the liberal party to provide the foreign minister. During the administration of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, his liberal foreign ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Klaus Kinkel have particularly succeeded to place Germany as a respected and reliable international partner, specifically in terms of transatlantic relations and soft policy agenda setting for European integration progress.
During the Red-Green coalition under social democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, his green foreign minister Joschka Fischer has boosted Germany’s international self-confidence by openly criticizing apparent security policy mishaps committed by the Bush-Administration in the view of the Iraq crisis. Although some critics would state that this policy has led into an international isolation of Germany, it actually led to opposite results. Germany’s foreign policy under Schröder and Fischer has prevented Germany and Europe from catastrophic consequences of a foreign and security policy adventure, such as the Iraq conflict and the exclusively counter-terror measures focused strategy of the former US administration. Also, this brief transatlantic “hick-up” provided the opportunity for Germany to mature in international affairs and diplomacy and to enhance international self-confidence, especially for Europe itself. This self-confidence was kept alive during the four years of the Grand Coalition (conservative/social-democrat coalition, CDU/CSU-SPD) from 2005 till 2009, even though the SPD was the “junior partner” of this administration, first time led by Angela Merkel. Fortunately, the strong personality of its social-democratic foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (one of former Chancellor Schröder’s closest followers) retained a strong position for the German Foreign Ministry.
Foreign policy demoted to an administrative procedure
As it turns out, the current black and yellow coalition (CDU/CSU-FDP) does not continue the foreign policy heritage of its predecessor administrations. Instead of an actual burden sharing and cooperation between the two coalition partners – as it used to be hitherto, Merkel has completely taken charge of nearly all foreign and security policy agenda settings and decision making actions, specifically the ones directly related to the Euro Crisis, declaring them as a matter of personal top priority. The result of this is quite dramatic: the German foreign ministry has lost nearly all independent foreign policy making competencies, it has been degenerated to a mere administrative tool of the chancellery, with its foreign minister Guido Westerwelle being Merkel’s main executive clerk.
With this significant weakening and gradual demotion of the foreign ministry and the entire foreign policy in the view of changed priorities and security policy strategies, German foreign policy as a whole is lacking clear and understandable positioning. Germany’s abstention in the Libyan war in 2011 and its very recent abstention regarding Palestine are creating awareness that Germany is not able to take any foreign policy position; respectively it is not even willing to take any position at all.
Consequences and recommendations
If Germany wants to be treated as a respected international actor and if it wants to implement own and stringent foreign policy action, it has to be brave to take clear positions. Bad foreign policy is not just marked by bad decisions or bad strategies, but above all by the pure absence of any foreign policy. As a result, Germany’s overall foreign policy remains vague and blurred. By this, Germany is losing reputation, reliability, respect and above all sustainable predictability.
Germany cannot and must not afford to keep on abstaining from decisive international policy decisions; it has to rekindle its briefly proven self-confidence and maturity as it has shown in past administrations. It also has to take courageous steps and have the confidence to implement some unilateral and unusual positions. In the case of Palestine, Germany saw itself stuck between its traditional close relationship to Israel (for obvious reasons), and its own unclear position towards the Palestine question as a whole.
Unclear foreign policy positions can and will have disastrous long-term consequences, especially if it drags on for many years – and Germany is persistently dragging it on the diplomatic floor.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.
The New Exodus – How Spain loses its own potential
November 19th, 2012By Oliver Krumme.
A new wave of migrant workers
In the late 1950ies and the early 1960ies, Europe was marked by a movement of labour forces from the southern European countries into Germany. As guest workers (“Gastarbeiter”), young people from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey settled in Germany to help their new home country with its “economic miracle” in the post war period. For the migrants and their families it was a chance for a better life.
Now, the “migrant workers” are coming to Germany, again; but under different circumstances.
For young and highly qualified people in Spain, their home country is no longer a place to live. With an overall unemployment rate of more than 25 %, and more than 50 % for people under 25, young Spaniards only have one answer to the question what to do next: “Learn as much English and German as possible and get out of Spain!”
It sounds like an outcry of desperation and a monumental loss of confidence in the own country and government, and it actually is. The constant economic downturn, the strict austerity strategy of the conservative government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and by the EU, and the massive unemployment rates pushed Spain into a vicious circle. Cuts in investments lead to decreasing demand, combined with painful cuts and the austerity programme causing an increasing lack in public investment, which again leads to mass firings and deteriorating demand from the consumers’ side. A simple economic rule: no consumption, no GDP growth, no investments, no labour. The result of this: Spain is massively downsizing its own internal market demand and investment prospects, causing growing public pauperism all over the Spanish population. Middle-class Spaniards become poor, poor Spaniards get even poorer, or even homeless.
Looking abroad
Since there are no more job prospects in Spain, not even for the own high educated graduates, young people have to seek for their professional and private future abroad. The numbers of Spaniards signing up for English and German language courses has notably increased; not only for university graduates, but also for young people with a non-academic education. The reason for this mass run on language schools has also to be found in a flaw of the Spanish education system in which foreign languages are not thoroughly taught at schools and universities – in comparison to other European countries. In this case, the Spanish education system has failed to train foreign languages to their own youth. As a result, a vast majority of Spaniards only have limited foreign languages skills and – as an even more dramatic consequence – Spaniards have shown little readiness to seek for opportunities outside Spain. Now, in the view of the own imminent economic disaster threatening the sheer fiscal existence, a desperate point has been reached where people would do anything necessary to get back into the labour force. The scale of desperation becomes obvious, when highly trained university graduates, partly for Ph.D. degrees, start working abroad as waiters, hotel employees, call centre agents, factory workers or even construction workers.
Generation lost
The Spanish youth is a symbol for an entire lost generation. A generation that grew up in relative prosperity with all opportunities given to achieve high academic standards, and the hope to make the next step in career and personal wealth; now ending on the bottom end of society in the struggle of surviving. As a result, family solidarity has regained a major value to overcome individual loss by strengthening smaller communities. What Spain is going through at the moment is a warning signal for all the other European countries which are not yet that heavily affected by the crisis. Spain is the second biggest trouble candidate for the EU after Greece, and the entire southern European region is suffering from the same social developments as Greece and Spain.
During her visit in Portugal last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was – once again – main target for demonstrations against the European austerity programme. As Portugal is experiencing exactly the same catastrophic effects of deteriorating economic performance, mass unemployment, and exorbitant public debts many Portuguese not only head towards the UK or Germany, but also to Angola. The south-western African state is currently going through a remarkable economic growth and it has become a main investment country on the African continent. Being a former Portuguese colony until its independence in November 1975, the common language is a certain incentive for many Portuguese attempting to leave their home on the Iberian Peninsula and to emigrate to Angola.
Looking to the other side of the Atlantic
From a Spanish perspective, however, it is a bit more difficult. The readiness of Spaniards to relocate to Latin America turns out to be difficult, although it seems to be the most obvious choice for them regarding the common language. However, anti-Spanish resentments for ancient historic reasons have notoriously been en vogue for decades, combined with the new Latin American self-confidence against their former “masters” from the old continent.
A few days ago, during the 22nd Ibero-American Summit in the southern Spanish city of Cádiz in the autonomous region of Andalucía (which by the way is the poorest and economically weakest of all the Spanish regions), King Juan Carlos I. of Spain has called upon the Latin American states to support the Spanish economy through higher investments in Spain and closer cooperation between Spanish and Latin American corporations.
An irony of history though, a former colonial power requesting help from its former colonies. Evidently, it is a chance for an entire generation to have a new start. Either way, if Latin America or Europe, the Spanish people will have to look outside their own box for now, but leaving their home country without high potentials, and limiting Spain’s own resources to restore economic growth.
The Spanish fate remains just as uncertain as the Greek one, but it will be written without most of its young people.
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(This article was originally published on http://ollys-blog.blogspot.de)
The author is an independent blogger and political analyst with a main focus on security and defence, EU affairs, and German foreign policy.