Schlagwort-Archive: German Politics

German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

The Next Tirpitz?

Ha – I knew it. My gentle readers, I am going to tell you a little secret.

On last new years eve I bet a young German Navy officer for six bottles of Champagne that, in ten years, Germany would have at least ordered a brand new Aircraft carrier… and today – according to Spiegel Online – Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen and friend of George W. and eternal conservative hopeful in the CDU took advantage of a day trip to the coast to explain that, well, the changed requirements of military interventions might very well include ordering an Aircraft Carrier…

Don’t worry, Roland Koch is not quite the next Tirpitz. This is, above all, funny – for the time being. But yes, the Navy brass will vote CDU next time… ;).

And for the real deal, Harvard’s Andrew Moravcsik shares his thoughts about “Striking a New Transatlantic Bargain” (full text requires subscription) in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled “After Saddam”.

Here’s Moravcsik’s brief sketch of the current transatlantic reality –

“The Iraq crisis offers two basic lessons. The first, for Europeans, is that American hawks were right. Unilateral intervention to coerce regime change can be a cost-effective way to deal with rogue states. In military matters, there is only one superpower — the United States — and it can go it alone if it has to. It is time to accept this fact and move on.

The second lesson, for Americans, is that moderate skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic were also right. Winning a peace is much harder than winning a war. Intervention is cheap in the short run but expensive in the long run. And when it comes to the essential instruments for avoiding chaos or quagmire once the fighting stops — trade, aid, peacekeeping, international monitoring, and multilateral legitimacy — Europe remains indispensable. In this respect, the unipolar world turns out to be bipolar after all.

Given these truths, it is now time to work out a new transatlantic bargain, one that redirects complementary military and civilian instruments toward common ends and new security threats. Without such a deal, danger exists that Europeans — who were rolled over in the run-up to the war, frozen out by unilateral U.S. nation building, disparaged by triumphalist American pundits and politicians, and who lack sufficiently unified regional institutions — will keep their distance and leave the United States to its own devices. Although understandable, this reaction would be a recipe for disaster, since the United States lacks both the will and the institutional capacity to follow up its military triumphs properly — as the initial haphazard efforts at Iraqi reconstruction demonstrate.

To get things back on track, both in Iraq and elsewhere, Washington must shift course and accept multilateral conditions for intervention. The Europeans, meanwhile, must shed their resentment of American power and be prepared to pick up much of the burden of conflict prevention and postconflict engagement. Complementarity, not conflict, should be the transatlantic watchword.

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German Politics, oddly enough, quicklink, sex

Skandal im Sperrbezirk?

The ongoing investigation regarding a ring of east European women trafficers that has led to alligations of Cocaine posession against the German “political” talk show host and vice-chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Michael Friedman seems likely to become some sort of the Berlin Republic’s first Heidi Fleiss scandal.

Meanwhile, Sueddeutsche Zeitung reviews the Bonn Republics history of scandals and comes to the conclusion that there really wasn’t anything saucy… but now, luckily, things are about to change ;-).

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compulsory reading, German Politics, media

Skydiving. The Life and Death of Juergen W. Moellemann.

There are a lot of things one could say about Juergen W. Moellemann. And I am pretty sure that the German media is going to say pretty much all of them in the coming days and hours of reporting the details of the circumstances surrounding his dramatic death earlier today, when he – in what clearly looks like suicide for an experienced parachute enthusiast who often performed jumps as campaign events – jumped, then separated himself from his main parachute and did not use the spare one. Only fifteen minutes before this happened, the German Bundestag had lifted his Parliamentary immunity and police had entered several of his houses and his company’s offices with search warrants investigating several charges, especially tax related campaign funding fraud.

Despite his political record as federal minister, his self-declared role as vocal advocate of Palestinian cause, and last year’s unfortunate and eventually unsuccessful attempt to push the German Liberals even further to the non-economic right than they had gone on their own – including some forays into what many said was a verbal anti-semitism previously unheard of in post-war German politics that caused a huge stir of protest, and ultimately led to his latest political downfall, the sort-of-forced resignation from the party whose deputy leader he once was – most people will probably remember Juergen Moellemann for his abilty to crash and rebound. The teacher-turned-politician’s all-too-evident desire for public attention was certainly helpful to achieve this. And his ability to perform a good political show is hardly matched by anyone in the German political arena.

Political commentators in Germany have often dwelt upon how Moellemann’s high-risk hobby reflected his high-risk political life. Today, it seems the latter one was indeed the riskier activity. He had manoevered himself into a situation where he apparently felt that no parachute would assure a safe landing.

So he decided he did not need one anymore.

PS: Check Stefan Sharkansky’s Shark Blog for English coverage of the story.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, quicklink

The Slow End Of German Corporatism

Almost unnoticed by the media, an important part of the medieval remnants of German corporatism was silently buried by the Federal cabinet today.

The ‘Meisterprivileg’ – master privilege – effectively keeping people from opening businesses in a lot of markets – mostly those with medieval guild-predecessors – by handing over the right to grant the permission to do so to the “guilds” of those who already own one. It certainly kept the returns high for those who were in the business and thus it was not too surprising to hear them scream today that increased competition will cost employment.

In the short run, this is a possible scenario. In the medium run, this reform is a major step to help create the sort of entrepreneurial environment this country needs so badly, especially in conjunction with the small business tax simplifications about to be implemented. Go Gerhard, go!

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German Politics

Even More Zeitenwende

Finally online. In this post, I try to address some of the points raised by the two discussants Markus and Hans ze Beeman with regard to my Zeitenwende entry below.

Is there really a “union demonisation game” going on, as Markus alleges? It would be a very interesting academic question to identify in detail the extent of “responsibility” the unions have to bear with respect to this econom’s problems to adjust to a changing economic climate. But that would be a question that would have to be addressed in a multitude of phd theses in economic history and political science. But that’s evidently a bit beyond the scope of this little blog. But to cut the long story short – here’s what I think.

The union’s involvement in the corporatist decision making process in Germany, directly in institutions like the Federal Employment Office (Bundesanstalt für Arbeit) as well as indirectly through political parties, in particular the SPD, in my opinion allows to assert that their organisational interests in combination with the specificites of the German social security system are indeed to a significant extent responsible for a the German economy’s problems to adjust to changing economic climate. In fact,

What I wanted to say in my first Zeitenwende entry was not that the Unions are the only ones responsible for the lack of flexibility in the German economy. But their sometimes healthy, but these days often unhealthy, class-warfare-reminiscent interventions are part of what I referred to as “failed leadership”.

I don’t see them as a victim of “neoliberal discourse hegemony” [neoliberal has become a rather empty label these days, if there ever was a real meaning to it]. But even if, I don’t think scapegoating them would have negative impacts on their functional role – it is not their wage bargaining function that being scapegoated but their claimed general social policy mandate. The latter is mainly a question of discourse hegemony, in my opinion. I agree that an analytical seperation is difficult – where should the line be drawn? In the end, it probably comes down to the question whether the unions can credibly claim to fill the term “social justice” with a meaning.

For a long time, they could. But now, I am sensing that the balance of power has shifted. This country has been debating these questions for ages. There hasn’t been fundamental growth since 1992. While some said back then what others are saying today, timing is very important in politics, especially, of course, when it comes to such a major social policy overhaul as we will be witnessing soon.

It is certainly difficult to separate signals from noise and echos in this debate, but I sense that the union’s constant opposition in the light of continuing economic gloom has led many people to conclude that they haven’t quite mastered the available figures. An example of what I am referring to is that Germany’s most popular satire programme mad fun of unions in its final episode. I can’t remember a single previous episode in which the unions were dealt with in a critical way. Actually, watching this was the original motivation to write an entry about “the end of an era”. In this respect, Hans ze Beeman has posted a link to some interesting ones generated by a huge internet survey carried out by the consultancy McKinsey & Company.

So I stand by my opinion: More and more people are willing to invest in the size of the pie rather than simply fight about their share.

In the end, as we all seem to agree on the necessity of deregulation, the question of union demonization comes down to one of processual ethics in politics. I would say that it is perfectly in order to use the unions as scapegoats, should that be necessary – others might disagree because they fear that this could be taked too far, thereby seriously damaging the fundamentals of corporatist coopration without any real alternative. This clearly is possible. But I don’t think so.

Sure, in an ideal world, I would prefer to have a Habermas’ ideal speech situation and have everyone agree on what’s necessary for everyone. But – Markus guessed rightly that I would say so – such a world does not exist. And in this world, in my opinion, careful union bashing is just what is necessary now.

PS: The comments are not gone. I just don’t know why Reblogger does not display them. I hope I can fix that later. In the meantime, please find the two “lost” comments below. All others are in the comment section to the first entry.

markus(www) said at 12:20 25/5/2003:

the missing part of your post may make this comment stupid, but I’ll risk it nonetheless: why do we need a scapegoat? why can’t we go about this in a rational way?

as far as I can tell, there are some suggestions from the unions which make sense. For instance, downsizing the about 80.000 tax rules Germany currently has (I got the number from a recent documentary). on the other side, there are restrictions, which hinder the economy, which the unions try to keep and in which the unions truly represent the workers in the electorate. job security for instance. so why is this issue tackled by bashing the unions, instead of entering into a dialogue with the electorate and explaining slowly and carefully, without spin and hype, why this step is necessary. You might say, politics don’t work that way, to which I’d respond we can’t afford the traditional ways of politics any more. To me, the purely party-san style of politics we have now, where each side cries “murder” whenever opposing an unpopular but necessary measure might gain some votes is far more damaging to the economy (basically because I believe it adversely affects the psychological requirements for growth) than the unions. They are of course part of it, playing along, just as e.g. the “Bundesaerztekammer”.

If we agree, that the problem is the electorate’s unwillingness to change the status-quo, bashing a scapegoat won’t help. Sure, those doing the bashing may feel better afterwards, for venting some righteous anger but IMHO it’s just a further distraction from the real problem.

That said, I’d like to add I don’t wholly agree with your distinction between the wage bargaining function of the unions and their claimed genral social policy mandate. Please elaborate, why representatives of a sizeable percentage of the employees cannot adress other issues than wages, like for instance job security, working conditions etc. We certainly both have a gut feeling for the point at which the unions are no longer doing their real job, but I can’t think of an analytical solution to this. Ceterum censeo, your input windows are too small, please change width from 122px to a percentage.

hans ze beeman(www) said at 23:33 25/5/2003:

why is this issue tackled by bashing the unions, instead of entering into a dialogue with the electorate and explaining slowly and carefully, without spin and hype, why this step is necessary

because this has been done ad nauseam. It is not time to ponder, ruminate, explain or discuss anymore, it is TIME TO ACT. And the trade unions today showed what they thought about Agenda 2010, which is NOTHING compared to the necessary future changes: they protested in a fully rational way. I predict there will be a grand coalition at the end of the year, and Schr�der will be gone. This would end the immobility and solipsism of the big parties.

If we agree, that the problem is the electorate’s unwillingness to change the status-quo, bashing a scapegoat won’t help.

Errrm, 75% of Germans according to Emnid want changes. And look at http://www.perspektive-deutschland.de for an intersting picture of public opinion. Personally, I bash the unions because they represent socialism and etatism, which is the contrary to freedom. They hide their socialism under the label of “social justice”, which is even more appaling (the representants of the trade unions are either incompetent or cynical and sardonic concerning the people they claim to “represent”). Just look at the renoveling of the “Betriebsverfassungsgesetz”, which produced larger unemployment because those companies having more than 200 employees must now put up with a “Betriebsrat”. See here: Many companies with 20x employees put some out of job or did not hire new ones to stay beneath the 200 border.

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compulsory reading, Economics, German Politics, Germany

Zeitenwende. End Of An Era.

It took some time and more of their money to make Germans understand.

It took more than ten years of subsidizing consumption and unemployment in a previously bankrupt former communist economy and virtual non-growth to make us see that it is not only necessary to think about the problematic long-term consequences of the current incentive structure in the German version of the continental model of the Welfare State but to actually change them.

It was no joke when, earlier this year, two people working in a zoo, who were fired for grilling the animals they should feed, successfully sued their former employer for a golden handshake. An extreme case, of course, but one indicating rather lucidly what’s keeping Germany from growing (possibly apart from too high interest rates, but that’s another story – albeit a connected one).

For ages, Germany’s consensus democracy was unable to get reforms going because, well, there was no consensus to speak of – whichever party was in opposition made a bet that it would pay off to block government reforms as far as possible because the electorate would not believe change was necessary. Sure, such a perception is partly a consequence of failed leadership. But only to a small part. Because they were right – the electorate did not want to see.

Then Schroeder won the 1998 election, largely because of the implicit promise that he would become the German Blair – that he could transform the German Social Democrats into some sort of NewLabour without the need for a Thatcher or a “Winter of Discontent”. But when he had just won his first power struggle and made the loony left’s star propagandist Oskar Lafontaine quit the finance ministry in March 1999, he realized that the internet bubble induced growth (weak, in Germany, but real economic growth nonetheless) would allow him to put off fundamental reforms and to mend relations with the loony left with even more rigid labour market reforms.

Unfortunately, after the bubble burst, it was too late for reforms that would have paid off for the government in last year’s election. A fiscal expansion was impossible and, moreover, unwise given strained public budgets. So Schroeder had to play the hand he was dealt – rectal rapprochement to the trade-unions, exploiting the flood-disaster in East-Germany, and betting on the public’s opposition to the American stance on Iraq.

Having narrowly won last year’s election, Schroeder knew that he would have to deliver on his 1998 promise, even thought the economic climate was far worse than it was back then. And even if though delivering would probably lead to the most serious conflict the SPD ever had with trade unions which, for no obvious reason given the steady decline in their membership, still claim to be speaking for “ordinary Germans” when it comes to “social justice”. The readjustment of the social security system, as well as the “intellectual” separation of the Social Democrats from the unions – developments that will undoubtedly be beneficial to both the SPD and Germany as a whole – will be a lot harder now than they would have been back in 1994, under Kohl, or in 1998.

The difference is that now, for the first time, a growing majority of Germans seems to be willing to give up something for a risky future benefit – or put differently, a lot more people are scared by what they think could happen to them, their children, and this country, if the social security system is not dealt with right now. Let’s hope it remains this way for sometime. The tough reforms are still out there in the think-tanks waiting to be pasted into bills.

Of course, the loony left is barking and whining about its loss of discourse hegemony on “social justice”. But don’t we all know that dogs that bark don’t bite?

If only because they have lost their teeth.

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compulsory reading, German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

Inabilty? Or Willful Wreckage?

So Colin Powell and the German chancellor tried to look forward, not to explain, and not to complain. And what does Geroge W. do? He behaves like a spoilt kid trying to get even by chatting for fifteen minutes with Roland Koch, the premier of the German state of Hessen, a leading figure of Germany’s main opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

No one would have believed the White House affirmations that the meeting happened “accidentally”, that Bush “just walked in” after a scheduled talk between Dick Cheney and Koch anyway, but in an interview with ZDF television’s afternoon programme “Mittagsmagazin”, Koch was pretty much unable not to smirk when the interviewer suggested that a German state premier hardly gets fifteen “accidental” minutes with the US president. GWB’s childish behavior is good news only for those in the US administration who want to strain transatlantic relations even further, and for Koch, who is said to have ambitions to become the next chancellor-candidate for the CDU instead of the current leader Angela Merkel. It is bad news for everyone else.

Was it inability, or willful wreckage? While some people might be tempted to give Bush the credit of inability, the Involvement of Cheney makes it a lot harder to come to this conclusion. So the chancellor is probably quite right to take this as a serious personal attack that he is unlikely to forgive soon. And he, as the German population, will certainly remember that the CDU has chosen to become a pawn in a game originating in the White House.

But Schröder is not the only who has been embarrassed by the latest Bushism. For Colin Powell and the US state department the Bush-Koch meeting conveys an even more serious message – it confirms again and very visibly to everyone abroad who is actually in control of US foreign policy – that Foggy Bottom doesn’t matter and that Powell’s role has apparently been reduced to that of chief messenger. I wonder how long he will go along.

The Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow wrote in October last year with respect to the transatlantic rift that

“… the [US] administration wants doormats, not allies.”

Today, Bush powerfully confirmed this. And while Schröder has repeatedly stated in the last few weeks that Germany does not wish to be forced to have to choose between its most important allies, the US and France, it looks like the American President is indeed waiting for an answer.

I highly doubt he will like it.

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German Politics, oddly enough, quicklink

I’m frightened.

Fair enough, all this is probably even more speculative than the much debated question how long the US will stay in Iraq. Now that a lot of people believe that Joschka Fischer will go to Brussels next year to become the first ‘European Foreign Minister’ once the Constitution will be ratified, the establishment of his party is already vulturing for his current job.

According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, even the current Minister for environmental affairs, Juergen Trittin, is interested in the top-job in the German foreign ministery. Even though his most notable foray into foreign affairs was rather successful (he managed to get the Kyoto treaty through against W’s opposition), I cannot possibly imagine “Juergen-can-deposit-Trittin” as Germany’s top ambassador. No way. Never.

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