Today, Germany has been shaken by a series of political and economic crises — from the Covid-19 pandemic to war in Europe — fueling nostalgia for a more optimistic and ostensibly uncomplicated past. In that search, attention often turns to the early years of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship — and to the 2006 World Cup, the subject of a recent three-part German series.

That nostalgia is easy to understand. In 2006, Germany welcomed the footballing world under the slogan “A time to make friends.” Flags covered balconies and cars; public screenings of matches turned into festivals. German footballer Philipp Lahm opened the tournament with a curling shot into the top right corner against Costa Rica, and �ұ�������Բ�’s run to the semifinals helped shape the tournament into what many remember as weeks of seemingly carefree celebration. The German news magazine Der Spiegel : “A happy nation — Germany, a summer fairy tale — the World Cup becomes a national Love Parade,” referencing the country’s once famous techno parade to evoke mass celebration. The magazine suggested that Germany had begun to “settle into its own history.” In a country long defined by its struggle with the Nazi past, this was a loaded idea.

For many, the tournament symbolized a newfound ease with national identity. Then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan remarked, “Here you see a united and happy German people … No one sees the spirit of today’s Berlin or of the Germans as being in any way connected to the past.” 

The narrative of a carefree summer — one in which Germany supposedly showed what it is really like — has become something of a national myth. Questioning it is often seen as needlessly negative. For many, it feels like a spoilsport attack on the “ of their lives.” Not even later corruption allegations surrounding �ұ�������Բ�’s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup sufficed to fundamentally shake this collective memory.��

In light of growing far-right and exclusionary views — and rising support for authoritarian and anti-immigration positions — an uncomfortable question must be asked: How harmless was the “summer fairy tale” really? What kind of impact do large-scale sporting events have? And how do they shape and intensify national sentiment?

Sporting events and national identity

Major sporting events like the FIFA World Cup have become central moments of collective communication in modern societies. They are mass media events with enormous reach and a powerful capacity to mobilize emotions and participation. These events are far from politically neutral. They function as global stages where political, social and economic interests are expressed and advanced.

show that such events can affect how strongly people identify with their nation. A key factor is the degree of emotional and practical engagement: The more people feel involved — through shared experiences, celebrations and media consumption — the stronger their sense of belonging becomes.

Through their narratives, symbols and rituals, sports and media mega-events make the host nation emotionally tangible. In Irish-American political scientist Benedict ’s sense, the “imagined community” of the nation becomes something people can actually feel. In Germany, football-driven patriotism has thus become a mass phenomenon deeply rooted in the social mainstream.

At the same time, research points to double-edged effects. A German found that pride in national sporting success is positively correlated with nationalism and xenophobia, raising doubts about whether sports can foster patriotic attachment without simultaneously reinforcing exclusionary attitudes.

by the University of Marburg suggest more strongly that the 2006 World Cup contributed to an increased acceptance of nationalist views: “Individuals surveyed after the World Cup expressed more nationalist and less purely patriotic attitudes than those surveyed before the tournament.”

The myth of the “summer fairy tale”

These studies challenge the dominant images of 2006 that continue to shape �ұ�������Բ�’s collective memory. German writer Max Czollek reflected in 2018:

In , people behaved as if they were shaking off a heavy burden they had carried for a long time … Germans experienced the World Cup as a collective sense of relief that it was finally acceptable to wave the national flag again, like in the past.

The sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer had already dismissed the image of a peaceful, open-minded patriotism in 2006 as “ nonsense.” His warnings about the risks of so-called “” were often seen as overly pessimistic. In hindsight, however, they appear strikingly prescient.

As of 2026, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which is monitored by �ұ�������Բ�’s domestic intelligence agency, has become the largest opposition party and leads national polling in some surveys. Although it has never been part of the federal government, it has shaped political discourse for over a decade. It has steadily pushed the boundaries of what is considered acceptable further to the right. Its growing strength has raised concerns about democratic stability.  Reflecting this, voices within the governing coalition led by incumbent Chancellor Friedrich Merz have described the current government’s success or failure as a make-or-break moment for German democracy.

Exploiting patriotism politically

The 2006 World Cup can be read as a highly visible moment in the broader normalization of national pride — and as a symbolic loosening of what some had long described as an excessive or “misplaced” sense of historical guilt. It helped make a vocabulary of national identification more socially acceptable, creating an emotional and symbolic terrain that far-right actors later found easier to appropriate. The AfD did not invent these sentiments; it sought to capitalize on them. 

If this link seems far-fetched, consider Götz Kubitschek, a key figure in �ұ�������Բ�’s far-right intellectual scene, who the AfD’s strategy as “normalization patriotism” — a deliberately low-threshold, broadly appealing and seemingly harmless form of national identification designed to serve as a common point of reference.

In a 2025 special issue titled “Football: The National Sport – The Heartbeat of a German Passion,” the far-right magazine Compact claimed that patriotism “releases feel-good hormones.” After �ұ�������Բ�’s early exit from the World Cup in Qatar, the right-wing conservative weekly struck a nostalgic tone, recalling the 2006 “summer fairy tale” as “collective loosening-up toward a more relaxed, unselfconscious patriotism.”

The AfD itself openly recognizes the political and identity-building power of sport. In its 2025 policy guidelines on sports, the party emphasizes that sporting success fosters “ identification with one’s own nation,” explicitly citing the 2006 World Cup as a key example.

This strategy fits into a broader modernization of right-wing extremism. It marks a departure from the more overt neo-Nazi subcultures that were still prevalent in 2006, and that had dismissed the World Cup’s mainstream, apolitical enthusiasm as a shallow, system-conforming display.

Patriotism as a vehicle for historical revisionism

The normalization of patriotism as part of the AfD’s broader identity is closely linked with its ethnonationalist and revisionist approach to history — one that seeks to downplay or reframe the memory of Nazi crimes and their victims. In its 2016 party manifesto, the AfD called for an end to what it described as the “” of German historical memory to the period of National Socialism, advocating instead for a more “balanced view” that emphasizes supposedly positive and identity-forming aspects of German history.

Leading figures within the party have made this position explicit. Alexander Gauland, the party’s honorary chairman, notoriously referred to the Nazi era as “a of bird droppings in over a thousand years of successful German history.” Björn Höcke, one of its most influential and controversial extremist figures, demanded a “ turn” in the country’s politics of remembrance.

Similarly, party chairwoman Alice Weidel has rejected the widely accepted German framing of May 8, 1945 — the day of Nazi �ұ�������Բ�’s surrender — as a “ of liberation,” arguing that it is inappropriate to celebrate what she describes as the defeat of one’s own country. Against this backdrop, her call for Germany to “ proud of itself again” becomes part of a broader political project — one that links national self-affirmation to a redefinition of how history is remembered and interpreted.

For actors seeking to promote a more affirmative national narrative, the 2006 “summer fairy tale” can function as a useful point of reference within a broader national narrative: one in which the Nazi past serves primarily as a negative backdrop to a supposedly renewed, democratic present. This framing can obscure deeper continuities and mask broader social tensions.

Distraction in the euphoria of sport

Moments of national self-celebration and patriotic euphoria can create societal blind spots, masking those tensions. Even as Germany celebrated its “summer fairy tale” in 2006, the country was already experiencing a wave of far-right violence. Between 2000 and 2007, the neo-Nazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground () ten people, most of them of Turkish descent.

Victims’ families held demonstrations during the World Cup. Yet for years, investigations wrongly focused on the victims’ social circles — shaped in part by racist stereotypes. The NSU’s responsibility for the murders, as well as the extent of failures within �ұ�������Բ�’s security agencies, only came to light in 2011. The contrast is striking: While the country celebrated itself as open and welcoming, the most serious far-right murder series in postwar Germany remained largely unrecognized at the time.

A more nuanced patriotism

As the next World Cup approaches in the US, similar dynamics may come into view. The Trump administration is likely to use the tournament to project belief in American exceptionalism (“America First”) through highly visible, “.” A form of patriotism long rooted in an “ of America-branded totems, like flags and statue��” — a tradition amplified and radicalized by President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

But does patriotism inevitably have to lead to self-aggrandizement and political instrumentalization? Or are there other ways to express a sense of national belonging?

Attachment to one’s country can also be self-critical and nuanced. The German-Iranian writer Navid Kermani articulated this in a 2014 speech in the German Bundestag marking the 65th anniversary of �ұ�������Բ�’s Basic Law. Rejecting the idea of a “normal” and “unstrained” relationship with the nation, he : “There never was such a normal and unstrained relationship — not even before National Socialism.” Instead, German history has always contained both “an excessive, aggressive nationalism” and “a strong tradition of self-criticism, a commitment to Europe, and a turn toward cosmopolitanism.”

Echoing a by former Chancellor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Willy Brandt, Kermani concluded: “A good German cannot be a nationalist.”

And yet, Kermani in a different Germany: “Not a boastful one, not the swaggering one … a country that has matured through its own failures and no longer needs grand displays … This is the Germany I love.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Twenty Years Later: Demystifying �ұ�������Բ�’s 2006 World Cup Fairy Tale appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Exile has traditionally been understood as a territorial threshold: Once a dissident reaches a democratic state, persecution is assumed to end. However, contemporary authoritarian governance challenges this assumption. Authoritarian states increasingly project coercive power beyond their borders through surveillance, intimidation, cyber operations and pressure on family members. This practice, known as transnational repression, undermines conventional notions of democratic sovereignty and protection.

In classical political theory, denotes exclusive authority within a defined territory. However, transnational repression complicates this framework, as, while authoritarian states may lack territorial jurisdiction in Europe, they can still exert coercive influence within democratic countries. This results in a sovereignty paradox as formal authority remains intact, but informal coercion penetrates borders.

How the Iranian regime’s repression transcends borders��

According to Freedom House’s 2023 on transnational repression, authoritarian governments have carried out hundreds of documented incidents of cross-border repression since 2014, with Iran among the most active perpetrators. Transnational repression takes many forms, including digital harassment, surveillance operations and threats against relatives of activists abroad. The goal is not always physical violence. In many cases, cross-border repressive functions as a form of psychological deterrent.

Domestic and transnational repression are interconnected. The characterizes civic spaces in Iran as “closed,” citing systemic restrictions on journalists and civil society actors. Cross-border intimidation thus extends the logic of internal governance. Where dissent is criminalized domestically, suppressing it abroad becomes a logical extension of that strategy.

Human rights organizations have documented patterns of coercion by proxy. and describe cases in which Iranian dissidents in Europe are subjected to retaliation against family members back home. The UN Special Rapporteur on the landscape of human rights in Iran has similarly highlighted cross-border intimidation practices. Such cross-border coercion poses a substantial challenge to European legal systems built on the concept of territorial harm.

Transnational repression threatens European democracy

However, the responses from European capitals remain fragmented. The of the EU has imposed targeted sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for human rights abuses. Meanwhile, �ұ�������Բ�’s of the Islamic Center Hamburg signaled concern about foreign state-linked influence structures. Yet these measures address individual nodes rather than systemic architecture. When exiled dissidents self-censor out of fear for relatives back home, authoritarian regimes achieve deterrence without resorting to overt violence within Europe.��

Parliamentary inquiries in the UK have warned about expanding foreign interference by authoritarian actors, including Iran. The pattern is cumulative: Each unaddressed case reinforces the perception that intimidation carries limited cost. Addressing this challenge requires conceptual and legal adaptation. European states must adopt several practices. These include a move toward harmonized legal definitions of state-linked intimidation, coordinated evidentiary standards for cross-border coercion and structured cooperation between intelligence and judicial authorities. Digital security assistance for high-risk activists should also be institutionalized rather than applied ad hoc. Moreover, Public attribution of foreign intimidation networks can strengthen deterrence.

Ultimately, asylum is not merely a humanitarian gesture. It is a sovereign commitment. If dissidents who sought refuge remain vulnerable to external coercion, the promise of democratic protection weakens. Transnational repression, therefore, challenges the ability of European democracies to defend political freedom within their own jurisdictions. The sovereignty paradox will persist unless liberal states adapt their legal and strategic frameworks to directly confront authoritarian states’ cross-border coercion.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Transnational Repression Tests European Democracies appeared first on 51�Թ�.

�ұ�������Բ�’s historical struggle with far-right extremism

The history of far-right extremism in Germany is long and complex. Ultranationalist movements that in the late 19th century culminated in the rise of the Nazi Party. After World War II, Germany enshrined militant democracy in its constitution and passed laws banning Nazi symbols and political parties threatening democratic .

Over time, this framework new challenges, including the resurgence of far-right parties like the National Democratic Party, the xenophobic violence after reunification, and today’s rise of the Alternative for Germany, a populist party capitalizing on fears related to immigration and economic uncertainty.

How militant democracy works in practice

Militant democracy involves government actions to curb hate speech, ban extremist organizations and enforce antidiscrimination laws. Agencies like the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution monitor extremist groups and help prevent violence, while educational and integration programs to address radicalization’s social roots.

Yet militant democracy raises difficult questions. While many see these policies as necessary to safeguard democracy, others worry about their impact on freedom of expression and political dissent. Critics that restrictions can suppress minority opinions and deepen societal divisions. Far-right groups often portray these measures as oppressive government overreach, fueling further polarization. This tension between protecting democracy and preserving democratic freedoms remains an challenge.

A recent example highlights this dilemma. Felix Klein, �ұ�������Բ�’s Federal Commissioner for Combating Antisemitism, has legislation to criminalize chants such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” Here is where it all falls: Critics of Klein can easily argue that this is censorship and not fighting against antisemitism.

The law reflects �ұ�������Բ�’s tradition of militant democracy but also raises concerns about where the line should be drawn between hate speech and free political expression. While these policy responses address the recent sharp rise in antisemitic incidents, some argue that certain measures are misplaced or premature. However, they often overlook the fact that Israelis also use the phrase. Should we then also ban that usage and label it antisemitic?

The ongoing tension between security and freedom

At the same time, �ұ�������Բ�’s experience invites reflection on the complex balance between safeguarding democracy and upholding freedoms. As militant democracy policies evolve, questions persist about their potential to suppress legitimate dissent or alienate segments of the population. Does militant democracy effectively prevent extremism, or does it risk deepening divisions and undermining the very freedoms it seeks to protect? �ұ�������Բ�’s case remains a live experiment in managing this tension in a democratic society.

Ultimately, militant democracy reminds us that democracy is not guaranteed but requires ongoing defense against both old and new threats. Understanding the psychological and social dynamics of radicalization is essential to shaping policies that are effective yet respect core democratic values. The evolving German response, including Klein’s legislative initiatives, offers a crucial example for democracies worldwide as they navigate the challenges of protecting pluralism and freedom in an uncertain world.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Militant Democracy in Germany: Balancing Protection and Freedom appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The split reflects ideology and policy more than strict party lines. The petitioners lean center-left, while Netanyahu’s supporters stand on the center-right with a stronger right-wing character. Olmert observes that many signatories are not strictly tied to party politics, but most on the right likely back Netanyahu.

War goals and progress

Olmert raises a central question: “What’s the goal? What does the government of Israel want to achieve these days?” After the infamous Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, Netanyahu declared the goals to be the total destruction of Hamas and the complete release of hostages. According to intelligence, of the original 250 hostages, about 20 are believed alive and 30 bodies are noted, leaving around 50 still unreturned. Olmert expresses the hope that all are alive. He adds that while more than 80% of Hamas may have been destroyed militarily, these figures show the government has not achieved its declared goals.

Political pressures and Knesset dynamics

Netanyahu faces relentless pressure from his far-right partners, particularly the factions of Israeli politicians Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who hold 14 seats. Together, they insist on nothing less than full achievement of the war’s goals. Israel’s Knesset — the Israeli legislature — has 120 seats, and a governing majority requires 61. Netanyahu’s coalition controls about 68–70 seats, meaning that if Ben-Gvir and Smotrich withdraw, his government collapses and new elections follow.

Netanyahu wants to avoid early elections, preferring the scheduled date of November 2026. Although his popularity plummeted after October 7, it has partially rebounded after what Olmert calls a “successful campaign against Iran,” an outcome Netanyahu claimed credit for. The far right, however, continues to push him to destroy Hamas completely, even if this endangers the remaining hostages. Petitioners, by contrast, urge ending the war to save lives and relieve international pressure.

External and international pressures

Olmert argues that Trump is also pressing Netanyahu to bring the conflict to an end, either through a decisive military blow or through a deal. He characterizes Netanyahu as reluctant to make such weighty decisions, fearing the loss of his parliamentary majority.

In addition to Trump, Germany and Great Britain are also applying pressure. According to Olmert, Netanyahu floats the idea of “final occupation” as a delaying tactic to appease the far right while maneuvering for time. He interprets Netanyahu’s stance as brinkmanship — a strategy of pushing Hamas to change its position on hostages under pressure from outside actors such as the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Qatar.

The Israeli establishment and historical precedent

Olmert highlights the petition’s extraordinary nature: For the first time in Israeli history, former officials openly appeal to a US president to restrain their own prime minister. He mentions reports that many senior officers of the Israel Defense Forces and Mossad national intelligence agency want to end the Gaza war and refocus on Iran, which they view as the greater existential threat. Netanyahu, however, remains mistrusted by much of the defense establishment — a mistrust he uses to his political advantage, casting himself as anti-establishment, much like Trump. Olmert stresses that Netanyahu relies heavily on Trump’s approval, treating it as the ultimate “green light or red light.”

Societal schisms and international perceptions

Olmert underscores that the war is widening Israel’s societal chasms, even though these divides always existed. He points to the extreme right’s rhetoric about “ethnic cleansing,” which unsettles many military and intelligence professionals who see it as diplomatically suicidal. He acknowledges Israel’s deteriorating international status but warns against blaming Netanyahu alone. Deeper forces of bias and antisemitism, he argues, also shape Israel’s isolation. Still, he emphasizes that while Israel was united against the Hezbollah paramilitary group and Iran, the Gaza conflict uniquely splits the country at its core.

Allegations and humanitarian claims

Human rights groups accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, but Olmert rejects these claims outright. He insists, “There is no genocide and no starvation in Gaza.” He argues that Gaza is “swamped with food,” and that problems stem from distribution, not supply. He blames the United Nations — and especially the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — for playing a “negative role” by enabling Hamas and controlling food aid. He strongly criticizes Cindy McCain, the executive director of the UN World Food Programme, for calling Gaza a humanitarian catastrophe and accusing Israeli troops of firing on civilians; he dismisses her claims as propaganda. For Olmert, starvation “as a phenomenon does not exist in Gaza.”

The catch-22 and Israel’s future

Olmert frames the conflict as a catch-22. If Israel utterly destroys Hamas, the result would be mass casualties and global condemnation. If it refrains, Hamas remains intact, undermining the war’s purpose. He insists that Hamas, not Israel, created this dilemma. On the West Bank, he calls for restraining settlers who “misbehave” but also stresses the need to prevent a Hamas-style threat from emerging there.

Olmert concludes that Netanyahu is not managing the Gaza situation well, prioritizing political survival over national interest. His proposed solution is new elections as soon as possible, though he acknowledges Netanyahu and his far-right allies will resist because polls show they would likely be swept from power.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: Hundreds of Israelis Urge Trump To End Netanyahu’s War in Gaza appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The image came to symbolize a welcoming Germany — one that, in 2015, took in people seeking protection, many of them fleeing Syria’s civil war. Merkel’s now-famous , “If we now have to start apologizing for showing a friendly face in emergency situations, then this is not my country,” provided the image with its moral caption. This was the beginning of the so-called “”.&�Բ�����;

Merkel’s decision was later portrayed as a humanitarian gesture — and, more critically, as a “” and a “.” As a matter of law, �ұ�������Բ�’s borders had never been officially closed. The , which normally requires asylum seekers to apply in the first European Union country they enter, was not consistently enforced. Merkel’s decisions were also in line with the underlying principles of the , which emphasizes open borders within the EU. Still, 2015 was frequently reframed in retrospect as a state of emergency, becoming a key reference point for political narratives that would gain traction in the years that followed.

Reinforcing the narrative

Ten years after the refugee summer, people can still hear the echoes. On April 9, 2025, the was announced by Chancellor Friedrich Merz at a press conference, highlighting its formation under the newly elected leader. The coalition is composed of the conservative CDU and Christian Social Union (CSU), as well as the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). 

In the proceedings, Markus Söder, leader of the CSU and Bavarian Minister President, , “We are going back to the pre-2015 era. These many years of uncertainty are over.” In doing so, Söder and his party reinforce the narrative of migration as a kind of national trauma — a decade-long chapter that Germany must now overcome. 

This framing has been shaped primarily by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which became the second-strongest party in the February federal election, winning of the vote. This narrative was echoed by Merkel’s critics within the CDU and by other EU voices such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The AfD: Agenda-setting from the opposition

Since 2015, the AfD has steadily pushed its migration stance further to the right, dragging the broader political discourse with it. At its 2016 national convention, the party’s nationalist-conservative wing took control, establishing hardline positions on border closures, anti-Muslim rhetoric and isolationism as central to its platform. In its 2017 , the AfD declared the constitutional right to asylum historically obsolete, claiming it could no longer withstand “.”

In the summer of 2021, following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the AfD reiterated its hardline stance with the familiar slogan: “ must not be repeated.” Afghan refugees, the party insisted, should be denied entry, not out of pragmatic concern, but as a deliberate act of identity politics.

By 2023, the AfD exploited the mounting strain on local governments to house asylum seekers, casting it as evidence of state failure. In parliament, the party demanded the “ halt of all intake program��” and popularized terms like “” or “illegal migrant��” — language that has since crossed party lines.

In the 2024 European elections, the AfD used the far-right slogan “” to call for a reversal of the migration that has occurred since 2015. Beneath its legalistic phrasing lay a nationalist agenda: the idea that Germany had been overrun and must be reclaimed. Public outrage was immediate and intense, but the symbolic impact had already landed.  The term once again shifted the boundaries of what could be said.

Reframed language enters the mainstream

The political mainstream around migration now reflects the terms and frames that originated in AfD circles. 

In 2022, then-CDU leader Friedrich Merz the “traffic light” coalition of SPD, Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) to deliver on its promised “” — a term the AfD had already used in its 2017 platform. In January 2024, that coalition passed legislation to speed up deportations and expand detention for those slated to leave the country. The notion of an “offensive” against rejected asylum seekers has since gained cross-party traction.

Merz’s rhetoric has increasingly mirrored AfD narratives and language. In 2022, he accused rejected asylum seekers of burdening the healthcare system, they “sit at the dentist getting new teeth while German citizens can’t get appointments.” He later described Ukrainian refugees as engaging in “welfare tourism” and, after the 2023 New Year’s Eve riots, referred to migrant children as “” who disrespect teachers. 

These remarks reflect how deeply the AfD’s narratives and terminology have entered mainstream political discourse, and that of �ұ�������Բ�’s current Chancellor. This rhetoric is more than a semantic shift. It reflects a deeper framing of migration, not as a societal task, but as a security, cultural or economic threat. 

Yet the data tells a different story: by 2023, around of refugees who arrived in 2015 were employed, most of them full-time. Many are now integral to �ұ�������Բ�’s workforce and society. By all means, it is the AfD’s narrative — not the empirical reality — that has defined the political language on migration across party lines.

Language becomes policy: the 2025 coalition agreement

The shift in language over recent years has long since made its way into actual policy, as seen in the new coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD.

Even under Angela Merkel, the German government had introduced the first : family reunification was restricted, certain countries of origin were declared “safe” and centralized intake centers for fast-track procedures were established. The “traffic light” coalition that followed largely maintained this course.

A key turning point came shortly before the 2025 election, when CDU leader Merz, still in opposition, sparked controversy by that migration legislation could be passed even with support from the far-right AfD. This broke with �ұ�������Բ�’s postwar consensus and signaled a further erosion of the political firewall around the extreme right.

The new agreement, helmed by  Merz, doubles down on and enforcement. The “repatriation offensive” promises accelerated deportations, aided by fast-track courts and stricter expulsion rules. The government will no longer be obligated to actively investigate asylum claims — refugees must now prove their cases themselves. The plan also includes detention without legal counsel, permanent holding facilities for rejected asylum seekers with criminal records and a two-year suspension of family reunification. 

The new government has broken with the political ethos of 2015. 

Migration researcher Marcus Engler the current approach as “hyperactive,” noting that “It’s one restriction after another, with no impact assessments and no evidence they will actually work.” 

A case in point is Merz’s order for intensified border checks across the country, launched symbolically on the first day of the new government. While these led to a short-term uptick in rejections, Engler notes their actual impact has been “ at best.” Meanwhile, the costs are high: strained police forces and mounting criticism from European neighbors.

Numbers were already falling before the new government took office in May: just asylum applications were filed in January 2025, less than half as many as the year before. 

Politicians, such as former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), cited this as proof that tougher measures were effective. 

But migration scholars like Hannes Schammann caution against simplistic interpretations. Migration, he , follows complex global dynamics and cannot be turned on and off like a faucet: “Border checks, deportations, migration deals – these are just small puzzle pieces. The bigger picture is far more complex.” Schammann further points out, “In some of the key crisis regions affecting Germany, the situation has recently stabilized.”

Alternative narratives on the sidelines

The new coalition agreement has solidified a political reality: the AfD, which was as a far-right extremist party just this May by �ұ�������Բ�’s domestic intelligence agency, continues to set the tone of the migration debate. The party did not merely react to the events of 2015; it interpreted them, reframed them and rewrote their meaning.

Attempts to challenge this narrative have gained little traction. Critics accuse the new government of abandoning responsibility and integration in favor of “further isolation and calculated deterrence.” 

According to a by Pro Asyl, a leading refugee advocacy group in Germany, the coalition agreement blocks “the last legal escape routes for the persecuted” by limiting humanitarian admissions and suspending family reunification. Pushbacks at the borders represent “a blatant violation of human rights obligations and European law.” Rather than tackling root causes or building structural solutions, the agreement reflects a logic of political symbolism.

“It is not so-called ‘irregular migration’ that divides our society,” the group argues, “but longstanding social inequality and unresolved problems that have been ignored for far too long.”

As early as 2023, a group of 270 scholars specializing in migration and refugee law had called for a reset of asylum policy grounded in human rights and constitutional principles. They advocated for concrete strategies and investments in reception, integration and local capacity. Many municipalities, they , were still willing and able to take in asylum seekers — a potential that remained largely overlooked in the national conversation.

The underestimated power of the far-right

With the AfD’s language, demands and interpretations moving from the fringes of the opposition into the mainstream of political discourse and practice, a new consensus has replaced Merkel’s 2015 approach. In essence, an approach rooted in deterrence has replaced an approach rooted in international and European legal norms.

The idea that better social policies could undercut support for the far-right isn’t wrong, but it falls short. Parties like the AfD don’t just respond to crises — they help shape them discursively. They set the agenda, , emotionalize debates and push the boundaries of what can be said, often long before other parties react.

The AfD operates as a movement of fear. The threats it invokes don’t need to be real — they just need to be effectively narrated. This instrumentalization of fear isn’t unique to Germany; it reflects a broader global trend in authoritarian migration rhetoric. 

US President Donald Trump, for example, justified mass deportations and legal overreach in his early second presidency by an “invasion threat.” In Europe, similar language is gaining ground: the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer of an “island of strangers.” Sweden has radically restricted its asylum and integration policy and left-led Denmark advances a zero-asylum approach.

The AfD doesn’t just channel protest — it transforms fear into identity politics. Far-right politics is not just reactive; it is also a driver of its own success. And it must be recognized as such, confronted politically and challenged intellectually. Otherwise, its stories won’t just be repeated — they will become law.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How the Far-Right is rewriting �ұ�������Բ�’s 2015 “Refugee Summer” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

While France and the United Kingdom have never abandoned nuclear power, others that once rejected it, such as Germany and Switzerland, are now reconsidering. Japan needs to stabilize its energy production for an ever-growing economy.

The resurgence of nuclear energy in political discourse comes at a time when climate targets are urgent — if not past due — yet economic pressures often dictate policy more than safety or public interest. This debate is not just about science or technology — it’s about politics, economics and public trust. While some governments argue that nuclear power is essential for meeting climate goals, the reality is that investment, regulatory hurdles and energy security concerns are often the real drivers of policy decisions.

Complex realities and divided narratives

A far more complex reality lies beyond carbon dioxide emissions alone. Water scarcity and its safety are already instigating regional conflicts, while biodiversity loss and soil degradation are preparing serious food security issues.

With this context, let us talk about the feasibility of nuclear expansion. Can we bear the financial cost of diverting resources from other endeavors? The timelines that may be too long? The unresolved waste issue? Not to mention the decommissioning that has never been done?

Proponents argue that nuclear power is a necessary low-carbon energy source. They will tell us that France has than other countries because it invested in nuclear power plants when it was time. But critics highlight its prohibitive cost and inherent risks, reminding everyone of the infamous accidents of in 1986 and in 2011. The public remains caught between narratives of climate urgency and energy independence, often without full transparency on the trade-offs being made in their name.

What is the renewed push for nuclear energy across Europe and Japan telling us? We must question whether its revival is truly about climate strategy, or whether economic forces are steering the conversation in ways most people don’t yet realize.

National relationships with nuclear energy

Nuclear power plants are considered the and cleanest energy sources, releasing carbon dioxide than coal or gas. Scientists use carbon dioxide as a measurable proxy to better understand complex environmental processes. However, this may be difficult for the public to grasp and is often overlooked in policymaking. As a result, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have prioritized carbon emissions, which has led to the complex and often problematic rise of carbon credits. This system is prone to manipulation and corruption, a bit like money laundering in some respects.��

The great nuclear disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima prompted a Swiss that terminated nuclear power plants. People are rightly questioning their safety. The Fukushima incident sparked the development of the Energy Strategy 2050, which legally prohibits the construction of new nuclear power plants. It received approval by nearly 58% of voters on May 21, 2017. Hence, building new nuclear plants is banned. This leaves uncertainty about how to replace electricity production, especially during winter months.

Even as the two disasters affected the public, French authorities and influential groups remained committed to nuclear energy. France had rigorous safety standards, and nuclear power’s economic advantages and role in ensuring energy independence couldn’t be ignored. The country operates 56 nuclear reactors today, making it the producer of nuclear energy in the world after the United States. The French state owns the country’s nuclear plants as well as eight plants in the UK through the state-owned EDF Energy. Currently, more than of France’s electricity is generated from nuclear power, with only about 21% coming from renewable sources.

Conversely, only a few weeks ago, Reporterre, an investigative journalism organization in France, that the construction materials for a new plant are not compliant with industry standards. Astonishingly, the relevant state department was informed by the journalists, not by the contractors. So nuclear power plants can only be as safe as humans make them.

The UK public is that its nuclear power plants are owned and by the French state-owned company Électricité de France (EDF). And post-Brexit, this ownership structure presents complications related to energy security, regulatory alignment and investment strategies. But are they informed about this material’s noncompliance?��

The Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents heavily affected the German public. Germany shut down its last reactors in 2023. Yet already Friedrich Merz, who is expected to succeed Olaf Scholz as chancellor, supports a of nuclear power production. Rafael Grossi, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, believes that it should be for Germany to recover its nuclear energy production plans. Let’s consider that restarting even only one reactor would cost Germany greatly in reactivation, maintenance, retraining and everything that’s necessary.��

In Japan, economic matters and drives political decision-making. Japan is set to revise its climate targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 66% from 2013 levels by fiscal year 2035, with a broader strategy to adjust the country’s energy mix by 2040. This plan seeks to provide businesses with a predictable framework for future investments and ensure compliance with international environmental standards set by the Paris Agreement.��

Economic and environmental consideration

Nuclear power is often seen as a solution to energy instability. The real issue isn’t the technology itself, but the economic implications of unpredictable energy production in a world where constant growth is still considered the only acceptable option. While some argue nuclear is key to meeting climate goals, the rising cost of nuclear energy, alongside falling costs for renewables like wind and solar, makes the question of investment ever more urgent. Nuclear plants are slow to build and require massive investment, which conflicts with the “free market” mindset that prioritizes short-term returns.

Countries like Germany face the reality that nuclear plants are becoming increasingly expensive to maintain. The unresolved issues of waste management and decommissioning only add to the growing concern. Sites where nuclear power plants have been active may remain radioactive for .

The nuclear debate is about more than just science or technology — it’s a matter of politics, economics and public trust. Governments are driven by energy security concerns, regulatory barriers and economic interests, not just environmental imperatives. With renewables advancing at a faster pace, the true question is whether nuclear power is the right investment for a future of sustainable energy.

Without greater transparency and accountability in energy decision-making, and without a revised process to bring large, powerful Manhattan-style projects into the world, we risk prioritizing short-term political and economic gains over long-term sustainable solutions. We need to take measures that will safeguard our future and the sustainability of human civilization.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial��policy.

The post Is Nuclear Energy the Path to a Sustainable Future? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Glenn Carle: Well, the structure of Atul’s and my discussion today, and thus of the world that we’re trying to address, is to begin with farce and then to discuss hope, and now to move to tragedy.

Atul Singh: It’s a great structure.

Glenn Carle: Yes. Well, such is life, I think, for us all. The Middle East has, all of our lives, been in chaos. It’s long been known by anyone who focuses on the Middle East that it’s a part of what the CIA has called for many, many years, and scholars have, the of Instability, where you have increasing existential climate and environmental factors, apart from human action: falling rainfall, increasing desertification, declining fertility of soil, an uncontrollable demographic bulge — in particular, of young males. It’s young males that create all the trouble in the world. And that’s not a facetious comment, actually. It’s flippant, but it’s also accurate. On top of which are, to use the Marxist framework, the superstructure of political institutions that have been ill-adapted prior to decolonization and since, to address any of these problems, and then being victim of the great power conflict and the pawns thereof. So there’s always been a problem, but the current issues, I think, have become even more acute, clearly because of the last two years, I guess it is already, of the Gaza war. We’ll call it the Gaza war. And before that—

Gaza conflict and the limits of military strategy

Atul Singh: October 7 is when it begins. So it’s not yet two years. October 7, the attack. 

Glenn Carle: Not yet two years, yeah, it’s a year and a half.

Atul Singh: Yeah, so Hamas attacks and then Israel responds.

Glenn Carle: Yeah. But I think the criticism hasn’t extended sufficiently to embrace the destabilizing effects on the entire Middle East of the American invasion of Iraq, which led to the collapse of Syria, much as one might have opposed and disliked the Assad government. And thus to 50% of the Syrian population of 30 million people becoming refugees, more than half of whom now reside largely in Germany, leading to the problems that we just touched upon, at least indirectly, before.

Atul Singh: Glenn, sorry, they reside elsewhere. They reside in Lebanon, they reside in Turkey and, of course, some of them have gone all the way to Germany. So not all of them are in Germany. Half of them are out of the country.

Glenn Carle: No, but about five million of them are in Germany and Europe. Yeah, five of the 12, I think. So, let’s talk about specifically Gaza, and then Syria and then Turkey. And if you talk about Gaza, that means talking about Israel. And I’ll have to be quick. Netanyahu’s policy has been to destroy Hamas. The problem he is confronted, although many deny and disagree with, is the same problem that the United States faced in the way it framed, defined and understood the “War on Terror” — which is, of course, an incoherent concept to begin with. I mean, how do you fight a war against terror? Well, we fought a war against a specific organization or organizations, thinking that there could be, in military terms in the United States, a kinetic — which means a lethal — solution, by killing enough people and breaking up an institution or an organization. It’s true we did largely destroy al-Qaeda and kill a lot of people. But you don’t kill a sociological problem or a political dispute almost ever by using a conventional military. Military strategists and trainers, for all of my adult life — all of our adult lives — have been concerned about the problems of asymmetric warfare. Why did the United States lose in Vietnam? Why did Britain lose in what became the United States? And why do I think Israel has created an unsolvable problem for itself in Gaza? You can’t really eliminate the frustrations of the Palestinians and thus their enduring hostility and actions against Israel, by killing Hamas. And you can’t completely kill Hamas as it is. Gaza has been almost literally destroyed. Dozens of thousands of people have been killed, and Hamas remains extant. The consequences there are that, I think, really, Israel clearly has won a short-term victory and almost certainly will win a medium-term victory. Strategically, existentially, Israel was not threatened prior to October 7 or on October 7, and hasn’t been and will not be threatened now. Also not receiving, I think, adequate attention is what’s happening in the West Bank. Gaza has been destroyed, Hamas has been seriously weakened, Israel’s strategic security is, in some ways, unchanged because they were not existentially threatened prior to the beginning of the Gaza war.

West Bank, demographics and internal Israeli politics

Glenn Carle: But on the West Bank, the same thing is happening, and there are three ways forward: You can expel all of the Palestinians, which is an increasingly plausible solution that the far right of Israel is advocating, both from Gaza and, progressively de facto, from the West Bank.

Atul Singh: You can send the Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, and you send the Palestinians from West Bank to Jordan, and voilà! We don’t have a problem. That is the thinking of the Israeli far right.

Glenn Carle: Exactly. And medium-term, which is years in duration — what’s medium-term, five years? Ten? Israel will be fine. But that doesn’t address the enduring enmity and hatred that existed before, and that probably guarantees — what it does likely do is destabilize Egypt and Lebanon and Jordan in ways that, long-term, will make the region even more unstable than it is now. And just as Lebanon has been destroyed and Iraq was largely fractured, and Syria has been destroyed, so you might see an exacerbation of all of those tendencies long-term. From the success of the right wing of Israel and the Israeli army to destroy, in many ways, the operational capabilities of Hamas in Gaza and eliminate the Palestinian populations. Also linked to that and Israel is that demographically, you will, in the medium- to long-term future — not ten years, fifteen — have a majority of the Israeli population that is actually Muslim. So Israel has a choice then: Is it a democracy, or is it a Jewish oligarchy? And that’s—

Atul Singh: Very quickly, that’s because 20% of Israel is Palestinian, and they are Israeli citizens. They are not in the West Bank, they are not in Gaza. They are in Israel. And when Glenn is talking about, in the long run, you could have them as a majority, it’s because their birth rates are higher than Jewish birth rates. Although the ultra-Orthodox might just compete with them and make sure that Israel remains Jewish. But the secular Israelis who form the tip of the spear of the Israeli state, they are the ones who serve in Mossad, in Sayeret Matkal, in Shin Bet, in their elite units, whether it’s Yahalom or whatever. They are the ones who are secular, do not generally have many children. Therefore, they are electorally, progressively weaker and weaker. And they are the ones under threat in some ways, because, as we have just observed. within Israel, something big happened. First, the Israeli cabinet decided to Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet. That is Israel’s internal intelligence agency. And everyone hears about Mossad, but they should know about Shin Bet. Shin Bet is an extraordinary organization. Shin Bet has some extraordinary officers.

Glenn Carle: The domestic intelligence service. Israel’s FBI.

Atul Singh: Exactly. Eh, a little different. FBI does investigation, Shin Bet does intelligence.

Glenn Carle: Don’t go into the weeds, we’re going to run out of time.

Atul Singh: Yeah. We’ll extend the time this time a little bit because of the ground we have to cover. But Ronen Bar joined the Israeli Defense Forces in 1984. He was an officer in Sayeret Matkal. He was head of Shin Bet’s Operations Division. He became the head of Shin Bet. And he’s a highly educated chap, he’s got aquiline looks, he’s ridiculously fit and good-looking. I’m told by friends who know him that he is a top man. And for the Israeli cabinet to just kick him out — well, kicking out the Shin Bet chief is obviously a political prerogative, but there is due process. And there’s not just the law, but there is convention, there is a certain tenor. And it was done under a cloud. Why? Because there is, as most people who follow Israel closely — and as I was informed this morning by some Israeli friends — the Qatari connection , which is a corruption scandal engulfing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Good old Bibi, that’s his nickname. Now, what has happened is that the nearest political advisors of Bibi were involved in paid jobs promoting the interests of the Government of Qatar. Now, why is this a bit iffy? It’s because Qatar was spending $15 million — or a pretty significant figure — to Hamas, and that’s where the leaders of Hamas stay. And in March 2025, Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar affirmed that the agency was investigating the affair. Now, this is a complex and multifaceted affair, as he acknowledged. And Ronen Bar was then kicked out whilst he’s investigating corruption which involves the Prime Minister. Now the Israeli Supreme Court has stepped in. The Israeli Supreme Court had said, “Hang on a minute, hang on a minute! You can’t just do this!” So they’ve issued an injunction to prevent Bar from being fired by Bibi. So what is happening in Israel is not just the conflict with Gaza, not just the tensions in the West Bank, not just the great successes in Lebanon. What is happening in Israel is a fundamental pull and push on the institutions of the state. It is indubitably true that a lot of Israelis find these institutions elitist, because the people who head Shin Bet, the people who head Mossad, the people who go into Sayeret Matkal tend to be officers who perform very well. Often, they may be from better-educated families. They’re almost invariably secular so far and the religious Jews who have the vote say, “Hang on a minute.” It’s a bit like people turning against elites everywhere and saying, “You can’t tell us what to do.” The difference between Israel and other societies is that this is a society which is, in some ways, a Spartan state. It has hostile neighbors. In many ways, as an MI6 friend said, it’s a modern-day Crusader state amongst a sea of hostile shores. And so if you’re playing footsie with the tip of your spear, with the sword in your scabbard, you’re playing with fire. And that is the fundamental tension within the Israeli society. And of course, there are demonstrations. Of course, people don’t like this. And people say that Bibi Netanyahu needs war to avoid scrutiny, and Bibi Netanyahu does not want any scrutiny. And by kicking out Ronen Bar, he’s postponing the inevitable. That may be true, may not be true. He’s certainly an impressive leader, he has more than nine lives, he’s much more resourceful than a cat. He’s cobbled together one coalition after another. And in democracy, things can get messy. But this is getting really, really, really messy. Of course, remember— Yes, sir.

Polarization and risks of civil unrest in Israel

Glenn Carle: I think the fundamental dynamic that you’re describing, and consequence of the Gaza crisis and the war is: Wars always polarize. And Israeli society is struggling with the ascendancy of its religious far right. So many times I’ve heard — probably many of us have, but certainly I did in Israel — that colleagues of mine or people of whom I had heard were denigrated and characterized by other Israelis as, “Oh, well, he’s not actually Jewish.” Why? Because he was a secular, reformed Jew, as opposed to an ultra-Orthodox. So we’re seeing this polarization.

Atul Singh: Yeah, and you’re right. On the one hand, thousands are rallying for a hostage deal, while there are others who say there can be no deal and we have to go hammer and tongs and destroy Hamas. So you’re absolutely right. The polarization is intense.

Glenn Carle: And I think the consequences are that Netanyahu — aligned with the far right in Israel — has defined the policy and will come to shape the nature of the policies in Gaza and the West Bank for the foreseeable future, and continue the polarization of Israel. And the consequences are much larger than in Israel, though. We’ll see these statements have contributed to— 

Atul Singh: Sorry, carry on. There’s just an anecdote I want to put in when you finish. (laughs)

Glenn Carle: —Have contributed to the cataclysmic collapse of Syria. I won’t go into all the details, and I don’t think I’m capable of going into all the details — there are so many factions involved — but the larger point is that the changes… Ahmed al-Sharaa is the new leader of Syria, someone who’d been relatively briefly a member of what was called al-Qaeda — it wasn’t actually al-Qaeda — but a in Syria, now rehabilitated because he, I think, really was a religious nationalist opponent of the secular regime of Assad. In any event, we now see growing stresses in an already destroyed society, which is Syria. And that will have consequences well beyond Syria itself, as it already has, as we touched upon in Germany.

Atul Singh: Very quickly, to add to this polarization: The polarization in Israel is so intense — going back to Israel — that there are newspaper reports of Ben-Gvir, an Israeli far-right minister, and the Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar almost having a physical confrontation, a . And two or three of Israel’s Special Operations officers told me their biggest fear in Israel is civil war. And they just have to look across the border, just across the Golan Heights, to see the civil war going on in Syria. Now, Glenn talked about broad context, and I’ll just give you one tiny detail. Well, many of the Alawites were loyal to the Assad dynasty, and by the end, it was really a sectarian dynastic regime. It began as a Ba’athist socialist regime which tried to create some idea of a secular Syria. But by the end, it was a sectarian regime — Alawites supporting the Assad dynasties, backed by Iran, a Shia power in the region, and of course, supported by Russia. And some of the Alawite officers loyal to Assad rebelled. The rebellion was forces that are now in charge in Damascus put the rebellion down and then conducted vendetta, killing many Alawites. And remember, the Alawite–Sunni schism goes back to Selim I, when he was them down in 1520 or something like that. And the Shia–Sunni divide is centuries old. So that can always flare up in the region. As Glenn said, that has potential far beyond Syria’s borders.

Syrian Collapse and Turkey’s authoritarian turn

Glenn Carle: I think that’s the relevant concern for us today, or now. Of the roughly 25 million Syrians, 12 million are refugees or more — 5.4 million of whom are in Turkey and Germany and elsewhere. To give it one little sense of the catastrophe that is overflowing and affecting Europe and everywhere else. 72% of Syrians — the entire country — can only literally survive because of foreign aid, food aid and others. Half of all of the hospitals in the entire country no longer function. So the consequence has been not just refugees, but in part, the rise of the AfD, the neo-Nazi far right in Germany and elsewhere. This has both destabilized and empowered Turkey, which is the last thing I’ll talk about. Now, we’ve all heard, I think, about the big headline of the moment, which is that the Erdoğan government has the mayor of Istanbul, who was the likely opponent of Erdoğan in the upcoming presidential election. This is just the continuation of the increasing totalitarian bent of the Erdoğan government and the erosion and destruction — one hopes, not ultimately — of the secular Turkish democracy.

Atul Singh: By the way, the mayor’s name is Ekrem İmamoğlu, and he has been a decent mayor. As, indeed — remember — Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was. He began as mayor of Istanbul, and he did a decent job, which is why he became prime ministerial candidate. And then, of course, he the constitution and then he became president. And then, of course, in his presidential terms, many terms, he’s built Aksaray the famous 1,000-room exactly on the spot where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s hunting lodge once stood. So, jokingly, many of my Turkish friends call him Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan because he’s literally looking back—��

Glenn Carle: He clearly aspires to that level of centralized control.

Atul Singh: Indeed. One quick thing, Glenn — I’ll add and then cede the floor to you. He looks back to the Ottoman Empire for inspiration. He wants to rekindle the Ottoman heritage. He wants Turkey to be a leader of the Muslim world, especially the Sunni world. He speaks out about Palestine and Kashmir. He definitely wants to intervene in neighboring countries, and in Syria, he has. So he’s very much neo-Ottoman. Over to you, Glenn.

Glenn Carle: Yeah. Well, all of us, every country and society, looks to its moment of greatest glory. So the Greeks still think that Pericles is ruling Athens, and the British think that Queen Victoria commands the sun. And the Americans think that we have just stormed Omaha Beach in France. And the Turks think that Suleiman the Great is building more mosques. The consequence of the arrest — and I would argue, in part because of the stresses on everywhere, Turkey in this instance, of what’s happening in the Middle East — are the largest demonstrations in over a decade. And I am pessimistic, because whoever controls the guns tends to win the arguments in a demonstration. And the changes of government in Turkey, which haven’t been peaceful, have come largely from the military, and the military seems to be well under the control of Erdoğan at present. What are the consequences larger than this, I would say? As I mentioned, the further cementing of Erdoğan’s near-dictatorship. The Middle East is being largely ignored by this administration. The Trump administration said — this is a paraphrase, but this is literally what came out of the White House: “Well, human rights are nice, but we have really nothing to say about the domestic affairs of Turkey,” which means that — also, the US administration will not just turn a blind eye to but will abet whatever the Israeli government does with regard to the Palestinians in the Middle East. And then this has implications also for what the US will do or won’t, and Israel will do or won’t towards Iran, which will affect the entire Middle East, which makes it more likely that with all this instability, Iran will seek a nuclear weapon. And it also is more likely that Iran’s government could collapse from internal opposition or external stress, which could well be military, by Iran or the US. 

Atul Singh: Or a combination of the two.

Glenn Carle: And the destruction of the current Iranian regime could be a good thing. But any radical change is going to be terribly painful for many, many millions of people, however it plays out. And so the Middle East is in probably the greatest turmoil, even if it’s not immediately apparent, of any time in recent decades.

Atul Singh: Alright, on that note, we’ve come well past our allotted hour. It was lovely to have you all here for the March edition of FO° Exclusive. We will see you next month. Until then, be safe. Greetings, wherever in the world you happen to be.

Glenn Carle: Salaam.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: New Troubles in Gaza, Israel, Syria and Turkey appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Atul Singh: Alright, so Germany. We’ve covered Germany in the previous edition, and we talked about the election. We told you how the CDU/CSU had emerged as the top dog. We told you about the rise of the far right and what has happened, as we predicted, which was almost inevitable because, obviously, the CDU/CSU combination, the Christian Democratic Union, wasn’t going to ally with Alternative for Deutschland, the Alliance for Germany. It will certainly steal some of the clothes, CDU will steal some of AfDs clothes. But the CDU has got into bed with the SPD yet again — they got into bed during Angela Merkel’s time. It’s not something new. They have an old marriage, they bicker, they spat, they break up and then they get back again. So hey-ho, there you go.

Debt reform and economic transformation

Atul Singh: The CDU/CSU bloc and the SPD have announced a preliminary to form a coalition on 8th March. Excellent. Both of them have put a debt reform plan which has won the battle of the Greens. This has gone through both houses of German parliament now. And they’ve said, “Look, we are going to exempt defense spending from the country’s constitutionally enshrined debt limit” — that’s known as the , this was a 2009 constitutional provision — “and we are going to create a special €500 billion fund (roughly $545 billion) for infrastructure development.” This €100 billion, which is $109 billion, will go to the Special Climate and Transformation , which is the pet issue of the Greens. The Greens have already got nuclear energy out of Germany, for which they’ve paid a hefty electoral price, and now they get their pound of flesh to put this release of the debt brake in terms of greater investment in Climate and Economic Transformation. Now, note there are risks to this policy, because a lot of Germans think that this policy has imposed extraordinary costs and a lot of suffering on the German consumer, on the German worker, on German businesses. So the coalition, there are risks to it, as our colleague at 51�Թ�, Alex Gloy, who’s a brilliant German economist whom you must read, has spoken about and will speak about at great length in the coming days. So roughly, let’s assume German GDP is around 4.5 trillion, okay? And right now, what we know is that German debt is historically lower, alright — compared to the southern Italians, definitely much lower. And if Germany boosts its debt by even a trillion, its debt–GDP ratio would still be lower than all other major Western economies. So there’s headroom, as many Germans have argued. And also, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU/CSU bloc and the future chancellor, he has a background in corporate law, much more successful than mine — I left that world, I clearly wasn’t bright enough or diligent enough. So here I am partnering with Glenn Carle, and the two of us are trying to make sense of the world and sort of pushing through multi-billion-dollar or multi-trillion-dollar deals, which Friedrich Merz has. He’s gone from billion-dollar deals to trillion-dollar deals, I suppose.

Challenges and risks of the new policy

Atul Singh: And what he has done is he’s taken the view that, “Look, we can no longer rely on the export-oriented model alone. Why? We are living in an age of protectionism. Chinese demand has plummeted. Russian energy costs have soared. American protectionism has kicked in, it kicked in even under Joe Biden in the guise of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now under Trump, we have tariffs looming. So if we don’t stimulate domestic demand, what is our economic growth model?” In fact, Germany has stagnated for two years. And we haven’t even talked about �ұ�������Բ�’s infamous red tape, which the previous chancellor, Olaf Scholz himself, talked about, and Glenn has mentioned many times, you need 200 permits to build something simple. Perhaps not 200, but you get the point — it’s ridiculous, it’s self-defeating, it’s a self-inflicted wound.

Investment in infrastructure and defense

Atul Singh: So we haven’t gotten into that, but here, Merz said, “Okay, we have to change the structure of the economy. We need structural change. How do we achieve that structural change?” Well, Germans are still going to save because Germany is an aging population, people fear for the future. People are not 25, but they’ll go out and get drunk and party and then go to a nightclub. A few may go to KitKatClub and the other posh clubs, or the other wonderful clubs of Berlin. But most people will lead prudent lives, and they are Protestants at the end of the day, culturally, even though Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are certainly Catholic. Culturally, they are Protestants. It was Prussia that reunified Germany in 1867, first by beating Austria in 1871 — it completed that process by beating France, two Catholic nations. So culturally, Germany is Protestant; they are going to be prudent. So what do you do? Well, you need government expenditure. German infrastructure is no longer cutting-edge, is no longer leading, and it makes sense for Germany to refurbish its once-wanted infrastructure — so train stations, train tracks, cranes, roads, ports, bridges, the list could go on. Alright, so that’s one. Green Infrastructure, charging stations, perhaps funds to develop new battery technologies, all other clean energy alternatives such as wind power or solar — which in Germany doesn’t make sense, they don’t get that much sun. It makes sense where I’m sitting in Jaipur, Rajasthan, which is ridiculously sunny and on the edge of the desert to the west of here. But anyway, let’s invest in clean, green energy and move forward. And of course, what makes sense now, given the increasing Russian threat, is investment in defense. Going back to the times of Friedrich the Great. Germany is now back in some ways. As we know, NATO was established, as someone once quipped, to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down. And now, of course, with Trump threatening to pull the US out of NATO or at least putting pressure on NATO; threatening to take Greenland away from Denmark, which is an ally; taking over Panama, that’s already done; maybe having Canada as the 51st state, or maybe 51st, 52nd, 53rd, whatever states and so on and so forth — Germany is having a bout of extreme nervousness. And Germany thinks, “Hang on a minute. We have a Trump-led US on one side and we have Vladimir Putin, a German-speaking former KGB colonel, very close, just after Poland, and so we should prepare.” So Germany has decided to invest in defense as well.

Potential long-term risks and political implications

Atul Singh: Now all this promise of investment in infrastructure and defense has boosted long-term yields because investors have priced in higher borrowing. On March 5, German yields jumped by 0.3 percentage points. This largest single-day rise in almost 30 years. Even the Euro surged, alright. Mind you, the dollar has dropped. The Euro has surged, that’s a new thing. So we have an export-oriented economy with a current account surplus that is nearly 3% of the GDP, an economy that exports capital now resorting to new fiscal laxity to spend more on defense and infrastructure. Some people are calling it the beginning of a new European growth model, because it shows that Germany is willing to take risks, finally. However, there are risks to this risk-taking. Let’s say if the Germans lose fiscal discipline, then what happens? Let’s say so many immigrants in Germany from conflict-ridden areas who do not come from Protestant background, they want more and more welfare, more and more boondoggles, and then politicians start promising them the boon. Then Germany could very easily turn to the Italian growth model, which is not much of a growth model, ladies and gentlemen. And of course, then the risk of AfD coming to power, just as Giorgia Meloni has come to power. And remember, Merz has broken his campaign promise: He said he wouldn’t release the debt brake, he said he wouldn’t increase spending. He promised, basically, a steady hand on the tiller. And instead, this corporate lawyer who is not terribly charismatic, in keeping with the German tradition of having dull leaders — they’ve still not forgotten Adolf Hitler, the ghost of Adolf dances in German nightmares every night. So this dull chap has taken a rather radical decision. And one of the big risks is that German voters are not in a mood to fight Russia. Neither the AfD, which got over 20.8% of the vote, if I remember correctly, and parties on the far left, one of which nearly got 5% of the vote, 4.97% of the vote. And if you add up the votes, well, most people voted for some kind of stability. There’s no mood amongst German voters to take on Russia. And if you have increased spending, then you have the risk of inflation, which is exacerbated by US President Donald Trump’s protectionism. And if the economy was eventually to turn south thanks to inflation, thanks to spending, thanks to loss of fiscal discipline, thanks to a new political populism, then this shedding of post-war German debt diversion — which will certainly boost animal spirits in Germany and in Europe in the short run and will create export opportunities for foreign firms, which can now sell more to Germany — it could lead to risks in the long-term and threaten the entire European economy. So yes, as of now, the relaxation of stringent borrowing laws will release a new burst of growth, but it has risks the coalition could collapse. It has risks of creating longer-term problems and it could presage the rise of the AfD which can say, “Look, none of the politicians you voted for kept their promise.” Over to you, Glenn.

Glenn’s perspective on �ұ�������Բ�’s economic shifts

Glenn Carle: Well, someone — I can’t remember who this sage was — that the “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And then, in keeping with today’s reverence — you’re my reverence today for John Maynard Keynes — he was asked one time why he had changed his position on a certain economic point, and he , “I don’t know about you, sir, but when circumstances change, I change my mind. What about you?” So what’s changed, and why is Germany possibly at this significant turning point? The big change is what’s happened in Ukraine and what’s happened in the Oval Office, and thus to the American relationship with Europe. The structural problems that Germany has slowly not been able to address successfully is demographic of fewer workers per pensioner; cultural and demographic, again, with a need for workers and a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants to Germany in particular, as you alluded to, from a different civilization and religion, which creates social tensions. And then from Vladimir Putin’s consistent efforts, with continuing success over 20 years, to reconstitute the Russian Imperium in what Russians call the near abroad and we all call the central European states. So the leaders of Germany are struggling with all of these things and nothing, to quote another great mind, Samuel Johnson, who’s in the English language quoted more frequently than anything except for the Bible. Samuel Johnson — I’m paraphrasing — “Nothing focuses the mind like the hangman’s noose.” And with Germany confronting conceivably, literally existential issues, but certainly civilization-changing tensions, there is a possibility that the German leaders, currently the chancellor, will be obliged to and able to rise to the occasion with fundamental shifts in tax structure, regulatory framework and allocation of resources. The €500 billion increase on defense can be very stimulatory if coupled with some regulatory issues, deregulation, it could be a historic moment that we are living. However, a lot of these problems have been known and German leaders have struggled to address them for decades already. I think the fundamental change is that there is just about to be 22%, I think it is, of a sovereign state immediately to the east of Germany being swallowed up by Eastern hordes. The historic fear of Germans and that that is combined with these structural, economic, social rigidities make it possible and obligatory for the German leaders to succeed. So it’s not at all one issue, but it has focused the mind and the German leaders seem to offer some real potential for historic change in the structure of �ұ�������Բ�’s economy, society and thus of Europe, because Germany is the key to Europe.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: �ұ�������Բ�’s Radical New Economic Policy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The German traffic light coalition government of the Social Democrats, Free Democrats and Greens (respectively red, yellow and green) has fallen. So has the French minority government led by Michel Barnier of Les Republicains. Now, neither France nor Germany has a government or a budget. Note this has not happened before.

Social divisions and political polarization

Germany and France are the two beating hearts of the EU. They created the EU and still drive it. With both in political limbo, the EU is lost.

Internally, both these countries are no longer homogenous or cohesive anymore. They have experienced unprecedented levels of immigration. This has created problems of assimilation since, unlike the US, Europe does not have a tradition of mass immigration. In Germany and France, immigrants form a greater percentage of the population in the US. Furthermore, Muslim immigrants in these countries tend to be more conservative than the local population or even their relatives back home. For example, German Turks voted for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in much higher percentages than in Turkey. Many Muslim women also tend to wear headscarves in societies where sunbathing nude or topless is no longer a big deal.

Most people find change uncomfortable. Europeans are no exception. People do not like the way their communities are changing so rapidly. They may not be racist, but they want to retain their character. The French want to remain French and the Germans want to preserve their Germanness. Yet the political correctness that blights expression in the US also censors conversations in Europe. If someone is uncomfortable with headscarves or Turks voting for Erdoğan, she or he is denounced as a racist and an Islamophobe. People find such denunciation deeply alienating and often turn to the far right in revolt.

European economies are in big trouble

Economically, European countries are in trouble. They have huge debts, high deficits, slow productivity growth and low birth rates. There is no way Greece or Italy can pay back all their debts. Furthermore, the Russia–Ukraine War has increased energy prices, weakened industry and unleashed inflation in the economy. People are hurting. Naturally, they do not want to keep paying for a war with no end in sight.

In contrast, European elites have committed themselves to Ukraine’s defense. So, they want to keep spending on the war even as they seek budget cuts elsewhere. Naturally, legislators are unable to agree upon the cuts and governments are falling. At the moment, no resolution to the budget crisis in either Berlin and Paris is in sight.

The euro is not the world’s reserve currency. That privilege belongs to the dollar; so, unlike the US, Europe cannot print money to finance its deficits and prosecute endless war. So, Germany, France and the EU find themselves in a bind; their monetary and fiscal options are limited.

Europe has other problems too. Europe needs to increase the flexibility of its labor markets. Given an aging population, this can only happen with immigration and less rigid labor laws. The oppressive regulatory state is throttling growth and needs urgent reform. None other than German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called for a war on red tape despite his socialist roots. European countries also have to reform and even shrink the welfare state. Only British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ever really achieved that in the last 50 years in Europe.

European economies have also suffered from external shocks. Chinese demand has declined and the US has taken a protectionist turn under both Republican and Democratic administrations. This protectionism will only increase once Donald Trump takes charge of the White House in January.

At a time of such upheaval, European political culture is in total flux. The traditional left and right are dead in France. They have been replaced by a constellation of pro-business centrists, the far right and a hodgepodge combination of leftist groups. German politics is also fragmenting, and the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) shows the degree of disaffection with the status quo in a country still haunted by Adolf Hitler. Something was not right in the state of Denmark and some things are certainly not hunky dory in Europe today. A full-blown crisis is now underway.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: Why is the EU in Crisis? What Lies Ahead? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the US, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” That historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one President-elect Donald Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.

Making the original prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, I was the historian.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of US decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. President Barack Obama’s administration was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the US was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of the empire agreed that the US would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely-read book on imperial decline, that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While the US’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, the “doom monger��” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the US was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires — particularly those of Britain, France and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary US citizens, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of the US’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating US global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany vs Great Britain in World War I — expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the US National Intelligence Council that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year later, Chinese President Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power. This would come in the form of what he called “the ,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the US–China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall : “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”

The global rise of the strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the in 1995, pressing open-market “” on developing economies and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the US and Japan, while simultaneously 2.4 million US jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the US and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia in 2000, Israel in 2009, Hungary in 2010, China in 2012, Turkey in 2014, the Philippines and the US in 2016, Brazil in 2018, Italy in 2022, the Netherlands in 2023, Indonesia and the US again in 2024.

Set aside their incendiary us-vs-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an . In Russia, President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, President Recep Erdoğan caused a crippling , while 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte 30,000 suspected drug users and China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to in office and stay out of prison.

Prospects for Donald Trump’s second term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, the US is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent re-election, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world the US made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the US will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029. That is the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also wind farm leases on Federal lands and the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the US economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that US-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petroleum-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the US automotive industry uncompetitive at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic–foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling US farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs. Simultaneously, it will dramatically raise the cost of consumer goods for US citizens, stoking inflation and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall meeting in May 2023, he he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he : “I would tell [Ukrainian President] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November 5 election, Trump reportedly Putin over a phone call “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator — should Trump actually appoint one — might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a . But �ұ�������Բ�’s coalition government has just collapsed; French President Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.

US allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for US global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, NATO is arguably the most powerful military alliance in modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the US into war. While campaigning last February, he that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the US presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the entente with Australia and Britain; the with Australia, India and Japan and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the administration US President Joe Biden those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so US power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he in June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the US position along the Pacific littoral, which for 80 years has been the fulcrum of its global imperial posture. This would push its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to the US’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.

A silent US recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Requiem for an Empire: How America’s Strongman Will Hasten the Decline of US Global Power appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The budget battle that broke the camel’s back

Scholz is scrambling to save face amid approval ratings that have plunged to an unprecedented low of 14%. The SPD’s own approval ratings are similarly abysmal.

Polls of voting intentions show the party now tied with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at around 16% — a dramatic drop from the SDP’s 26% support in the last election. The FDP faces even bleaker prospects, polling around 3–4%, just below the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

While tensions within the coalition were no secret, the breaking point came when a proposal by Lindner leaked. The 18-page “Turnaround Germany – A Concept for Growth and Generational Justice” suggested cutting financial aid to low-income families and refugees, which panicked the SPD and Greens.

The election of Donald Trump as the next US president has raised fears the US will soon cut its support for Ukraine, forcing Germany to pick up the tab or risk the defeat of Ukrainian forces. Lindner claims he was pressured to agree to another suspension of the debt brake. He refused, afraid of embarrassment by the constitutional court. Scholz floated the possibility of new elections, which Lindner leaked to Bild while parties were still deliberating. This was the final straw for Scholz, who asked for Lindner’s dismissal. 

The economic headwinds Germany has been facing only add to the drama. Budgets crafted on the assumption of GDP growth that never materialized have left government departments strapped. Austerity measures have strained even the nation’s soft power as cultural icons like the Goethe Institute have been forced to close German schools abroad.

Related Reading

Is the German Economy Now Destined to Decline?

The crux of the budgetary deadlock is �ұ�������Բ�’s “debt brake,” a constitutional limit capping new debt for structural deficits at 0.35% of GDP. While this debt brake was suspended temporarily during the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion, it has since snapped back into force, severely restricting the government’s freedom of action.

Who stands to gain?

With elections likely in early spring, �ұ�������Բ�’s political map could shift drastically. The center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), currently polling at 33%, are poised to regain power, though their numbers fall short of a parliamentary majority. A coalition with the Greens remains unlikely due to ideological divides, and the SPD’s recent failure makes it a dubious ally. That leaves the CDU/CSU with only a handful of feasible partners — including an intriguing, if controversial, one in the newly-formed Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).

BSW, led by former leftist Sahra Wagenknecht, has captivated voters disillusioned with mainstream parties but unwilling to embrace the far-right AfD. Known for her anti-immigration stance and advocacy for a negotiated settlement with Russia, Wagenknecht is a questionable candidate to offer the CDU/CSU a politically stable alliance. 

It should be noted that AfD came out as the party with the most votes during recent state elections in Thuringia (34.3%, slightly ahead of CDU 33.5%). It missed to reach that goal in Saxony, but only by a hair (34.0% compared to 34.4% for CDU).

Voter discontent in Germany, especially in the former East German states, has led to a surge in support for right-wing AfD. Due to �ұ�������Բ�’s history, politicians are very aware of the danger of fascism, but they seem rather helpless in addressing the root causes (increased unemployment in rural areas, social anxiety, xenophobia, feelings of being second-class citizens).

Financial and global implications

The collapse of the German government sends shivers through markets already sensitive to geopolitical risk. Shares of �ұ�������Բ�’s iconic automakers — BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen — have fallen sharply, anticipating the return of Trump-era import tariffs on European goods. With �ұ�������Բ�’s political attention diverted inward, “budget sinner��” like Italy, France and Spain may find relief, as former members of the hard-currency block, such as Germany, have historically pressured them to meet strict fiscal criteria under the Maastricht Treaty.

So far, little or no spread widening between German and other Euro-area government debt has been observed in reaction to the earthquake in Berlin. While the German 10-year government bond yield stands at 2.4%, France and Spain pay a clear premium at 3.2%, followed by Greece at 3.3% and Italy at 3.7%. Still, Italy (135% debt-to-GDP ratio) and Greece (162%) pay lower interest rates than the UK (98%) and the US (123%). Those yields only make sense if the political will to keep the Euro area together would galvanize politicians into further bailouts of countries should the need arise.

If no stable coalition emerges, Germany faces the prospect of another election, potentially plunging Europe’s largest economy into a period of prolonged instability. A caretaker government may limp along in the interim, but effective governance and ambitious legislative agendas will be on hold.

Internationally, the political crisis could have wide-reaching effects. As Germany becomes preoccupied with its own domestic woes, European allies such as Italy and France may gain breathing room in their own budgetary struggles, potentially facing less scrutiny from Berlin on debt under the Maastricht Treaty. However, any withdrawal from a Trump-led US could leave Europe drifting in the high seas without clear leadership, missing out on a potentially generational opportunity to determine the geopolitical direction of a future Europe unshackled from US dominance.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Collapse of �ұ�������Բ�’s Government: An Earthquake With Global Aftershocks appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This state of crafted ambiguity would inevitably lead to growing instability among the Western governments united in a poorly and clearly failing designed mission, a process confirmed by recent events in France, Germany and, of course, the US. This was further confirmed by the return not only of Donald Trump to the White House, but of a Republican majority in the US Senate, the House and of course, the Supreme Court.

Whether it’s been a good year for democrats — those who believe in the resilience of democracy — is debatable. It has clearly been a good year for Republicans, even in unstable France, where President Emmanuel Macron nominated a ��é��ܲ������������� prime minister, despite the fact that les ��é��ܲ�������������s, formerly the dominant right wing party, were clear losers in this summer’s parliamentary elections, drawing a mere 5.7% of the vote. It was the left-wing coalition, Le Nouveau Front Populaire, that came out on top.

In the meantime, the German coalition government, in power since September 2021, has collapsed and Deutschland will hold a new general election in February 2025. It appears likely that the Christian Democrats (CDU), the party of Angela Merkel, will win that election. That may sound reassuring to some, who believe in bringing back formulas that seemed to work in the past, but �ұ�������Բ�’s voters appear increasingly defiant of the ruling elites of the present and past. Rather, they appear attracted by solutions coming from the far-right (Alternative für Deutschland) and the far-left (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht). The sense of disillusionment and confusion related to �ұ�������Բ�’s policies concerning the Ukraine war have been aggravated by recent events in the US and in Europe itself.

In this context, of what took place at the BRICS+ summit in October 2024 in Kazan, Russia made that event and the order it adumbrates resemble a haven of peace and mutual understanding. A major outcome was the resolution to promote “expanding the use of local currencies to Promote Economic Stability” complemented by an expanding list of countries that will be associated with BRICS.

This may explain why the US Congress decided to act with the aim of ensuring that the public does not become seduced by such a harmonious approach to global affairs.

On November 4, Alex Gloy shared this bit of news with us, as he helpfully provided the link to a piece of bearing the ominous title: H.R.1157 – Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund Authorization Act of 2023.

“Who is paying for the music?” Alex asked. He then provided the figures.

“$1.6 billion ($325 million for 5 years each) appropriated by US Congress to be distributed to journalists to ‘counter the People’s Republic of China Malign Influence’ and the ‘malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party and the Government of the People’s Republic of China and entities acting on their behalf globally.’”

George W. Bush launched his famous “Global War on Terror” primarily with military means in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. Congress is launching what is beginning to look like a global war on malign influence. In this case the theater of war is journalism. This tells us something about how we should think about what we read in the media over the next five years.

Alex continued with these comments:

“This makes it easy to discard anything you read about China, Russia, and therefore the BRICS in traditional western media as propaganda. When you know what to look for, you see it everywhere. Western media reports on China used to be infatuated with pollution. Now that China is adding more solar capacity than the rest of the world combined – crickets. China’s success in making affordable EVs is greeted with tariffs. Western countries exporting their wares to China are ‘export champions.’ Chinese companies doing the same are ‘dumping overcapacities.’

There is a Chinese high-speed train making the 1,600 km (1,000 miles) trip from Shanghai to Hong Kong in 8 hours. It took my daughter more than that to travel from NYC to Burlington, VT (300 miles).

Every economic report paints a dire picture of the Chinese economy, despite it having grown 5.2% in 2023, and GDP having expanded 17x over the past 25 years.

A rather hilarious example: WaPo’s ‘China ruined caviar for us.’”

Before returning to the question of BRICS, which Congress certainly deems to be a vehicle for China’s “malign influence,” Alex notes that “$325m would have paid for 5,000 public school teachers.” Disinformation is clearly more valuable and especially more urgently required than the information schools seek to instill.

Alex then added the following observations:

“But back to BRICS:

• Yes, the US threw the first stone by cutting Russia off. Russia used to be in the top 20 international holders of Treasury securities ($109 billion in 2017). Russia helped finance the US budget deficit, including the US defense budget!
• From the BRICS perspective the aim to reduce dependency on the US dollar is nothing but logical – it would be stupid to continue to finance the US and run the risk of confiscation.
• As long as the US runs a trade deficit, the external sector (non-US countries), in aggregate, will be forced to accumulate US dollars AND will be forced to keep sending goods and services to the US. As the US dollar is overvalued, this benefits US consumers to the detriment of other countries’ consumers.
• From a US perspective, however, losing the ability to send digital dollars in exchange for real goods and services is, of course, a threat. Losing the status of the world’s reserve currency would go hand in hand with losing the position of global hegemon. Hence the US correctly identifies any attempts to do so as hostile.
• The official reason for the by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) from the mBridge project that aimed at creating a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, which had been developed to the MVP stage, was the fact that it would have meant working with a sanctioned country (Russia). But it is probably safe to assume there was heavy US pressure to do so.
• The BRICS countries will have to figure it out by themselves. One solution could be a supra-national currency, pegged to gold (but at a floating rate). National currencies will also have to float against the supra-national currency used for settlements; otherwise, imbalances pile up. Maybe a managed float, like the CNH (or the ECU before introduction of the Euro), to reduce volatility.
• A floating gold peg is, in reality, not a peg, but it helps build confidence.
• If a US person wanted to exchange dollars into gold, they can do so at $2,600 per ounce today. But few people take advantage of that possibility. However, once a currency rapidly loses value, people will line up to buy gold. So, you have to make sure the currency is somewhat stable. This means you need a stable banking system, and a credible lender of last resort (central bank). And some fiscal discipline. Which is hard, even for Germany. If it’s hard for Germany, with its currency account surplus, it’s even harder for emerging economies (strong growth usually leads to strong import growth leading to current account deficits).”

Since Alex’s contribution on November 4, the BIS rescinded its announced decision to scuttle mBridge and write off the investment. It has now agreed to leave it in the hands of central banks who wish to continue developing it and ultimately deploy it. Most observers agree that the likely candidates would be China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates.

Alex has also noted an important point: that the election of Donald Trump has buried any ambition of a US CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) at least for the next four years. This offers an opportunity for other nations to leap ahead. Privately-issued Tether is filling the gap for now, but other nations might take advantage of this golden opportunity and benefit from first-mover advantage.

Concerning the BIS decision to drop mBridge, Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council “that while China could continue developing mBridge, Western central banks may turn their attention to alternative platforms such as Project Agorá, a similar initiative backed by central banks in Europe, Japan, Korea, and the US.”

Will this be the face of a new currency cold war? The first Cold War famously pitted God-fearing capitalism against atheistic communism. This one is more likely to become a contest between “benign influence” on one side and “malign influence” on the other. Future observers will have to decide which one is which.

Join the debate

Money Matters…, is dedicated to developing this discussion and involving all interested parties.

We invite all of you who have something to contribute to send us your reflections at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We will integrate your insights into the ongoing debate. We will publish them as articles or as part of the ongoing dialogue.

*[51�Թ�’s “Crucible of Collaboration” is meant to be a space in which multiple voices can be heard, comparing and contrasting their opinions and insights in the interest of deepening and broadening our understanding of complex topics.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Crucible: Money Matters in a Multipolar World, Part 12 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the 1970s, in the southwest corner of Germany, the tiny community of Wyhl was bracing for the construction of just such a nuclear reactor in its backyard. Something even worse loomed on the horizon: a vast industrial zone with new and eight nuclear energy complexes that would transform the entire region around that town and stretch into nearby France and Switzerland. The three countries’ governments and the energy industry were all behind the project.

Even the residents of Wyhl seemed to agree. By a slim 55%, they supported a referendum to sell the land needed for the power plant. In the winter of 1975, bulldozers began to clear the site.

Suddenly, something unexpected happened. Civic groups and environmentalists decided to make their stand in little Wyhl and managed to block the construction of that nuclear reactor. Then, as the organizing accelerated, the entire tri-country initiative unraveled.

It was a stunning success for a global antinuclear movement that was just then gaining strength. The next year in the United States, the Clamshell Alliance launched a campaign to stop the construction of the proposed Seabrook nuclear in New Hampshire, which they managed to delay for some time.

A few years later, critics of the antinuclear protests would such movements with the acronym NIMBY — Not In My Backyard. NIMBY movements would, however, ultimately target a range of dirty and dangerous projects from waste incinerators to uranium mines.

A NIMBY approach, in fact, is often the last option for communities facing the full force of powerful energy lobbies, the slingshot that little Davids deploy against a humongous Goliath.

That very same slingshot is now being used to try to stop an energy megaproject in eastern Washington state. A local civic group, Tri-City CARES, has squared off against a similar combination of government and industry to oppose a project they say will harm wildlife, adversely affect tourism, impinge on Native American cultural property and put public safety at risk.

But that megaproject is not a nuclear power plant or a toxic waste dump. The Horse Heaven Hills project near Kennewick, Washington is, in fact, a future wind farm to power up to 300,000 homes and reduce the state’s dependency on both fossil fuels and nuclear energy. Aren’t windmills part of the solution, not the problem?

Critics of the project are, in fact, part of a whose criticism of “industrial wind energy development” suggests that they’re not just quixotically tilting at windmills but challenging unchecked corporate power. Left unsaid, however, is that the fossil fuel industry and conservative like the Manhattan Institute have been against wind and solar renewable energy projects, often plowing money into NIMBY-like front groups. (Donald Trump has, of course, sworn to scrap offshore wind projects should he again.)

It’s a reminder that the powerful, too, have found uses for NIMBYism. Rich neighborhoods have long mobilized against homeless shelters and low-income housing, just as rich countries have long outsourced their mineral needs and dirty manufacturing to poorer ones.

But even if you remove the right-wing funders and oil executives from the equation and assume the best of intentions on the part of organizations like Tri-City CARES — and there’s good reason to believe that the Washington activists genuinely care about hawks and Native American cultural property — two questions remain: What sacrifices must be made to achieve the necessary transition away from fossil fuels? Who will make those sacrifices?

Thanks to all the recent images of devastating typhoon and and , it’s obvious that much of the world’s infrastructure is not built to withstand the growing stresses of climate change. As if that’s not bad enough, it’s even clearer that political infrastructure the world over, in failing to face the issue of sacrifice, can’t effectively deal with the climate challenge either.

The need for sacrifice

The era of unrestrained growth is nearly at an end. In ever more parts of the world, it’s no longer possible to dig, discharge and destroy without regard for the environment or community health. Climate change puts an exclamation point on this fact. The industrial era we’ve passed through in the last centuries has produced unprecedented wealth but has also generated enough carbon emissions to threaten the very future of humanity. To reach the goals of the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change and the many net-carbon zero pledges that countries have made, at a minimum humanity would have to forgo all new .

Although the use of oil, natural gas and coal has already produced a growing global disaster, those aren’t the only problems we face. The United Nations projects that, by 2060, the consumption of natural resources globally — including food, water and minerals, those basics of human life — will above 2020 levels. Even the World Economic Forum, that pillar of the capitalist global economic system, acknowledges that the planet can’t support such an insatiable demand and points out that rich countries, which consume six times more per capita than the rest of the world, will somehow have to their belts.

Alas, renewable energy doesn’t grow on trees. To capture the power of the sun, the wind and the tides requires machinery and batteries that draw on a wide range of materials like lithium, copper and rare earth elements. People in the Global South are already organizing against efforts to turn their communities into “” that produce such critical raw materials for an energy transition far away in the Global North. At the same time, communities across the US and Europe are organizing against similar mines in their own backyards. Then there’s the question of where to put all those solar arrays and wind farms, which have been generating NIMBY responses in the US from the coast of to the deserts of the .

These, then, are the three areas of sacrifice on Planet Earth in 2024: giving up the income generated by fossil fuel projects, cutting back on the consumption of energy and other resources and putting up with the negative consequences of both mining and renewable energy projects. Not everyone agrees that such sacrifices have to be made. Trump and his allies have, of course, promised to “drill, baby, drill” from day one of a second term.

Sadly, almost everyone agrees that, if such sacrifices are indeed necessary, it should be someone else who makes them.

In an era of unlimited growth, the political challenge was to determine how to divvy up the rewards of economic expansion. Today’s challenge, in a world where growth has run amok, is to determine how to evenly distribute the costs of sacrifice.

Democracy and sacrifice

Autocrats generally don’t lose sleep worrying about sacrifice. They’re willing to steamroll over protest as readily as they’d bulldoze the land for a new petrochemical plant. When China wanted to build a large new dam on the Yangtze River, it relocated the 1.5 million people in its path and the area, submerging 13 cities, over 1,200 archaeological sites and 30,000 hectares of farmland.

Democracies often functioned the same way before the NIMBY era. Of course, there’s always been an exception made for the wealthy: How many toxic waste dumps grace Beverly Hills? Or consider the career of urban planner , who rebuilt the roads and parks of New York City with only a few speed bumps along the way. He was finally stopped in his tracks in, of all places, that city’s Greenwich Village. Architecture critic Jane Jacobs and her band of wealthy and middle-class protestors were determined to a Lower Manhattan Expressway. New York’s poorer outer-borough residents couldn’t similarly stop the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Although a product of classical Greece, democracy has only truly flourished in the industrial era. Democratic politicians have regularly gained office by promising the fruits of economic expansion: infrastructure, jobs, social services and tax cuts. If it’s not wartime, politicians might as well sign their political death warrants if they ask people to tighten their belts. Sure, US President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” and promoted the Peace Corps for idealistic young people. But he won office by making the same promises as other politicians and, as president, coined the phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” This image of unrestrained growth has become ominously prophetic in an era of elevated ocean levels and increased flooding.

In 1977, when President Jimmy Carter donned a sweater to give his famous “spirit of sacrifice” speech on the need to reduce energy consumption, he told the to the US people: “If we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust, and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive.”

for his earnestness and his sweater choice, Carter was, unsurprisingly, a one-term president.

Democracy, like capitalism, has remained remarkably focused on short-term gain. Politicians similarly remain prisoners of the election cycle. What’s the point of pushing policies that will yield results only ten or 20 years in the future when those policymakers are unlikely to be in office any longer? Democratic politicians regularly push sacrifice off to the future in the same way that NIMBY-energized communities push sacrifice off to other places. Whether it’s your unborn grandchildren or people living in the Amazon rainforest by oil companies, the unsustainable prosperity of the wealthy depends on the sacrifices of (often distant) others.

Sharing the sacrifice

With its , the European Union has embarked on an effort to outpace the US and China in its transition away from fossil fuels. The challenge for the EU is to find sufficient amounts of critical raw materials for the Green Deal’s electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines — especially lithium for the lithium-ion batteries that lie at the heart of the transformation.

To get that lithium, the EU is looking in some obvious places like the “” of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. But it doesn’t want to be completely dependent on outside suppliers, since there’s a lot of competition for that lithium.

Enter Serbia. Its Jadar mine has one of the largest deposits of lithium in the world. For the EU, it’s a no-brainer to push for the further development of a mine that could provide of lithium carbonate annually and meet of Europe’s lithium needs. In August, the EU a “strategic partnership on sustainable raw materials, battery value chains and electric vehicle��” with Serbia, which is still in the process of joining the group. Exploiting the Jadar deposits is a no-brainer for the Serbian government as well. It means jobs, a significant to the country’s gross domestic product and a way to advance its claim to EU membership.

Serbian environmentalists, however, disagree. They’ve mobilized tens of thousands of people to the plan to dig up the lithium and other minerals from Jadar. They do acknowledge the importance of those materials but think the EU should develop its own lithium resources and not pollute Serbia’s rivers with endless mine run-off.

Many countries face the same challenge as Serbia. Home to one of the largest nickel deposits in the world, Indonesia has tried to use the extraction and processing of that strategic mineral to break into the ranks of the globe’s most developed countries. The communities around the nickel mines are, however, but gung-ho about that plan. Even wealthy countries like the and , eager to reduce their mineral dependency on China, have faced community backlash over plans to expand their mining footprints.��

Democracies are not well-suited to address the question of sacrifice, since those who shoulder the costs have few options to resist the many who want to enjoy the benefits. NIMBY movements are one of the few mechanisms by which the minority can resist such a tyranny of the majority.

But then, how to prevent that other kind of NIMBY that displaces sacrifice from the relatively rich to the relatively poor?

Getting to YIMBY

Wyhl’s successful campaign of “no” to nuclear power in the 1970s was only half the story. Equally important was the .

Alongside their opposition to nuclear power, the environmentalists in the southeast corner of Germany lobbied for funding research on renewable energy. From such seed money grew the first large-scale solar and wind projects there. The rejection of nuclear power, which would eventually become a federal pledge in Germany to close down the nuclear industry, prepared the ground for that country’s clean-energy miracle.

That’s not all. German activists realized that the mainstream parties, laser-focused on economic growth, would just find another part of the country in which to build their megaprojects. Environmentalists understood that they needed a different kind of vehicle to support the country’s energy transformation. Thus was born �ұ�������Բ�’s Green Party.

One key lesson from the Wyhl story is the power of participation. NIMBY movements, when they battle corporate power, . Residents demand to be consulted. They want a place at the table to create their own energy solutions. Rather than a sign that the political system can accommodate minority viewpoints, NIMBY movements demonstrate that the political system is broken. It shouldn’t be a Darwinian struggle over who makes sacrifices for the good of the whole. Decisions should be made collectively in a deliberative process, ideally within a larger federal framework that requires all stakeholders to shoulder a portion of the burden.

As in the 1970s, the political parties of today seem remarkably incapable of charting a path away from unsustainable growth and the imposition of sacrifice on the unwilling. The Green Party in Germany transformed Wyhl’s antinuclear politics into NIABY — Not In Anyone’s Backyard. At this critical juncture in the transition from fossil fuels, it’s necessary to move from discrete NIMBY protests against offshore drilling and natural gas pipelines to a NIABY approach to all oil, gas and coal projects.

The parallel expansion of sustainable energy will require new political models for distributing critical raw material mining costs and benefits and siting solar and wind projects. Here again, Germany provides inspiration. The country’s first town powered fully by renewable sources, Wolfhagen, assumed control over its electricity grid and created a to make decisions about its energy future. When communities are involved in sharing the costs (the placement of solar and wind projects) and benefits (through lowered energy prices), they are more likely to embrace YIMBY — “Yes In My Backyard.” When everyone is at the table making decisions, the slingshot of NIMBY gathers dust in the closet.

In this new spirit of sacrifice, we should be asking not what the planet can do for us but what we can do for the planet. The planet is telling us that sacrifice is necessary because there’s just not enough resources to go around. Autocrats can’t be trusted to make such decisions. Conventional politicians in democracies are trapped in the politics of growth and consumption. The wealthy, with a few exceptions, won’t voluntarily give up their privileges.

It falls to the rest of us to step in and make such choices about sacrifice at a community level. Meanwhile, at the national and international level, new political parties that are radically democratic, embrace post-growth economics and put the planet first will be indispensable for larger systemic change.

If we can’t get to YIMBY and make fair decisions about near-term sacrifices, the end game is clear. When the planet goes into a carbon-induced death spiral, we’ll all, rich and poor alike, be forced to make the ultimate sacrifice.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Ask (Not) What You Can Do for Your Planet appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Furthermore, I believe opposition to CBI risks politicizing monetary policy. I recommend strengthening legal protections for CBI, enhancing the legal framework and prioritizing long-term stability over short-term political gains. Additionally, we should promote international agreements and cooperation among central banks to effectively manage global economic spillovers. These measures are essential for preserving the integrity and effectiveness of central banks in a rapidly changing global economy.

The role of central bank independence

Central bank independence is essential for maintaining a balanced approach to monetary policy, particularly in managing the trade-off between inflation and unemployment.

According to the (or the Fed), the Federal Reserve System is “independent within the government:” It works within the framework established by Congress. By operating independently of the government, central banks can focus on long-term economic objectives rather than succumbing to short-term political pressures. This independence governments from using monetary policy to achieve electoral gains, such as artificially lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy before an election.

Moreover, an independent central bank is better positioned to manage inflation, which is a critical component of economic stability. When inflation is allowed to rise unchecked, it can purchasing power, destabilize financial markets and harm economic growth. By maintaining a focus on price stability, central banks prevent these negative effects and actively an environment conducive to sustainable economic development. This offers a hopeful outlook for economic growth.

CBI has long been regarded as a cornerstone of sound economic governance, particularly in an increasingly globalized economy. As nations become more integrated through trade, finance and technology, the ability of central banks to operate independently from political influence has become crucial for maintaining economic stability.

One of the key drivers behind the global movement toward CBI is the need to attract and retain foreign investment. In a globalized economy, countries compete for capital and investors seek stability and predictability in monetary policy. Central banks perceived as free from political interference are more likely to inspire confidence among investors. As a result, many countries, particularly emerging markets, adopted or strengthened CBI as part of broader economic reforms aimed at integrating into the global economy.

The experience of countries like and in the 1990s illustrates this. Both nations, seeking to stabilize their economies and attract foreign investment, implemented significant reforms that enhanced the independence of their central banks. These reforms were instrumental in reducing inflation and fostering economic growth, demonstrating the positive impact of CBI in a globalized world.

During the Eurozone debt crisis that began in 2009, the European Central Bank (ECB)’s independence was critical in the collapse of the euro. As several Eurozone countries, including Greece, Ireland and Portugal, faced severe financial difficulties, the ECB resisted political pressure from member states to engage in direct bailout financing. Instead, it implemented unconventional monetary policies, such as the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program. This provided a backstop for sovereign bonds without directly compromising its independence. This approach was pivotal in financial markets and restoring investor confidence, helping to prevent the crisis from spreading further across Europe.

Donald Trump’s opposition to CBI and the risks of weakening it

Former United States President Donald Trump has expressed his that, as president, he should have more influence over monetary policy. He has suggested that his business success gives him better instincts than those at the Fed. He criticized Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for poor timing in policy decisions, asserting that central banking is largely based on “gut feeling.”

During a press conference in August 2024, Trump , “I think that, in my case, I made a lot of money. I was very successful. And I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.” Trump’s business success, particularly in the real estate sector, where he has built a multi-billion-dollar empire, gives him a unique perspective on economic growth. Trump’s preference for easy money and low interest rates reflects his background in real estate, where tight money can harm developers.

Trump’s desire for more direct control over the Fed is reminiscent of historical instances where political influence over monetary policy led to disastrous outcomes. A notable example is US President Richard Nixon’s over Fed Chairman Arthur Burns in the 1970s, which resulted in policies that contributed to the stagflation of that era — characterized by high inflation and stagnant economic growth. Trump’s approach risks repeating these mistakes by prioritizing short-term economic gains over long-term stability.

Trump Jerome Powell as Fed Chairman but later him when the Fed did not lower rates. Trump also favors a weak dollar, believing it benefits exports; critics, however, argue that this approach harms Americans. Regardless, Trump would need a legal change to gain more control over the Fed. This is unlikely given the political risks and the Senate’s role in confirming any Fed Chair.

Trump criticized the Fed’s timing on monetary decisions. In particular, he noted that its models are outdated, still relying on a flawed tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. He pointed out that the Fed’s policies, such as quantitative easing (QE) and the expanded balance sheet, have given it excessive influence over the economy. Trump believes a debate over the Fed’s mandate and models would be beneficial. Economists, however, warn that focusing on easy money and a weak dollar could lead to more inflation and economic problems in a potential second term.

Trump’s criticism of the Fed, particularly his calls for lower interest rates and more accessible monetary policy, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of central banks. As a businessman with a background in real estate — a sector that thrives on low interest rates — Trump’s preference for easy money is understandable but misguided when applied to national monetary policy. His critique overlooks the risks associated with such an approach, like the potential for inflation to spiral out of control.

Trump’s advocacy for easy money is particularly concerning in the context of inflation. While low interest rates can stimulate economic growth in the short term, they also increase the risk of inflation if not carefully managed. The Fed’s primary mandate is to balance the goals of maximum employment and price stability. However, political interference that prioritizes growth at any cost could lead to the of this careful balance, resulting in higher inflation and economic instability.

Additionally, weakening CBI could undermine the Fed’s ability to respond effectively to economic crises. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the importance of a strong and independent central bank in stabilizing the economy. The Fed’s swift actions, including quantitative easing and emergency lending facilities, were crucial in preventing a deeper recession. Political influence that hampers the Fed’s ability to act decisively in future crises could have severe consequences for the US and global economies.

Weakening CBI can also exacerbate economic inequality, which is a growing concern in many advanced economies. When political figures influence monetary policy to achieve specific economic outcomes, like lower interest rates to spur growth before an election, the benefits often accrue disproportionately to certain sectors, like those reliant on cheap credit. Meanwhile, the costs — such as higher inflation — can disproportionately impact lower-income households. Inflation erodes the purchasing power of fixed incomes and savings, which can wealth disparities and strain the social fabric.

The Biden administration’s commitment to CBI

The global shift towards CBI is not just a change in monetary policy but a significant evolution that carries the weight of history. It is a response to the devastating inflationary episodes of the 1970s and 1980s, a movement that was a deliberate rethinking of the central banks’ role. This shift is rooted in the understanding that politically driven monetary decisions could lead to destabilizing and unsustainable economic conditions.

In the US, the passing of the Federal Reserve Reform (1977) marked a pivotal moment in this global shift. By enshrining the Fed’s dual mandate — promoting full employment and maintaining price stability — Congress also took crucial steps to protect the central bank from political interference. Incumbent President Joe Biden’s administration, building on Trump-era policies, has pursued significant investments in key industries through initiatives like the CHIPS and Science (2022) and the Inflation Reduction (2022). Some of these major industries include green energy and semiconductor manufacturing.

These initiatives demonstrate a strategic alignment of fiscal and industrial policy, aiming to strengthen domestic supply chains and promote technological leadership. While advocates argue that they enhance economic resilience and innovation, they also raise questions about the potential erosion of CBI. Central banks, traditionally insulated from political pressures, might face increasing demands to coordinate with government-led industrial policies. This would challenge the delicate balance between fiscal and monetary objectives.

Though a more collaborative approach between fiscal and monetary policy could generate short-term economic benefits, it also risks the central bank’s ability to act independently to stabilize inflation and manage long-term economic health. This legislative move was significant because it showcased the importance of allowing the Fed to operate independently. It recognized that short-term political pressures could undermine the economy’s long-term stability.

The US experience set a powerful example that soon influenced global economic policy. In 1997, both the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) were granted formal . This signaled a major shift away from the historical norms of political control over monetary policy. Establishing the European Central Bank (ECB) in 1998 exemplified this trend. The ECB’s creation marked a new era in European monetary policy: It replaced national central banks that had been subject to varying degrees of political influence, thereby promoting a standardized and politically neutral approach to monetary governance across the Eurozone.

Empirical evidence robustly supports the benefits of this move towards CBI. It has become increasingly prevalent among advanced economies, connecting with a significant reduction in inflation rates and more firmly anchored long-term inflation expectations. These outcomes tie directly to the enhanced credibility and predictability that independent central banks bring to monetary policy. They allow them to focus on long-term economic health rather than short-term political considerations.

The global commitment to CBI has only strengthened over time. A comprehensive of 370 central bank reforms from 1923 to 2023 reveals a resurgence in support for CBI since 2016. This underscores its continued relevance as a fundamental pillar of economic stability. The renewed commitment is particularly noteworthy given the complex and evolving challenges facing global economies today, reaffirming CBI as a critical tool in maintaining macroeconomic stability.

Within the Biden administration, the historical context of CBI serves as a crucial guide. The administration’s steadfast support for CBI is not just a matter of policy preference, but a deep-rooted commitment to economic stability. In analyzing the Biden administration’s commitment to CBI, it is essential to recognize the delicate balance between fiscal policy and monetary authority. CBI is often celebrated for its role in safeguarding economies from politically motivated monetary policy that could destabilize inflation control. The separation between monetary and fiscal policy has been vital in maintaining long-term economic stability. The Fed’s autonomy is seen as critical to ensuring that monetary decisions remain focused on inflation and employment targets rather than short-term political gains.

The Biden administration wielded considerable influence over the economy using extensive fiscal policy measures. The American Rescue Plan (2021), the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as strategic executive actions such as the of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves and student-loan debt , reflect a pragmatic approach. They leveraged fiscal tools to influence economic outcomes in ways that monetary policy alone could not have achieved in such a short time.

While CBI remains a pillar of long-term economic stability, the administration likely recognized that, given the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, fiscal measures were indispensable. The unique conditions meant fighting inflation and stabilizing the economy required a broader, more immediate response — one where fiscal and executive action played a leading role, complementing rather than conflicting with the Fed’s independence. This dynamic, while preserving the long-term ideal of CBI, also underscores the reality that fiscal policy and executive power can shape economic outcomes in ways that transcend central bank interventions alone. Therefore, reversing the hard-earned progress towards CBI risks rekindling the inflationary pressures that once wreaked havoc on global economies.

Index of Central Bank Independence (CBI) in Advanced Economies, 1970-2022. Via .

Enhancing coordination and the role of globalization

While CBI is crucial, improving coordination between monetary and fiscal policy is merited, as Trump’s critique suggests. Fiscal policy, controlled by Congress and the executive branch, also significantly influences aggregate demand and inflation. Better communication and coordination between these two arms of economic policy could to more coherent and effective economic management.

One proposal to achieve this without compromising the Fed’s independence is to include the National Economic Council director and the Congressional Budget Office director as ex officio nonvoting members of the Federal Open Market Committee. This would allow for better between monetary and fiscal policies while the Fed’s autonomy in decision-making.

However, private conversations about economic stability are being held. The June 2024 between the BoJ, the Ministry of Finance and the Financial Services Agency highlights a critical moment in Japan’s economic policy. (Worth noting is the fact that the Minister of Finance, the Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy and their designated delegates cannot . When attending Monetary Policy Meetings, they can express opinions, submit proposals and request the Policy Board to postpone a vote until the next meeting.) The yen’s depreciation against the US dollar has raised concerns about its potential impacts on inflation and overall economic stability in 2024. The discussion about the BoJ’s independence becomes particularly pertinent in this context. Though the BoJ traditionally operates with a degree of autonomy to implement monetary policy based on economic conditions, the yen’s current weakness and its repercussions are stirring discussions of whether more direct government intervention is needed.

The independence of the BoJ is rooted in its mandate to focus on price stability and economic growth without undue political influence. This separation is intended to ensure that monetary policy decisions implement policy with the aim of maintaining price stability with long-term objectives, not short-term political pressures. However, there is a growing sentiment within the government to take more assertive actions. This is evidenced by recent statements from key figures such as Minister of Digital Affairs Taro Kohno, who has hiking interest rates in response to the yen’s weakness. Such proposals indicate that some policymakers view the BoJ’s current policy stance as insufficient to address the immediate challenges posed by the depreciating currency.

The involvement of other members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) further complicates the issue. Its discussions about potential interventions, including those that could impact the BoJ’s policy decisions, reflect a broader concern about the yen’s trajectory. While the BoJ has a clear mandate and operational framework, the mounting pressure from the government to align monetary policy with broader economic goals raises serious questions about the feasibility of maintaining its independence. If the government were to exert more influence, it could potentially undermine the BoJ’s ability to focus on long-term economic stability. This would pose significant risks to the economy.

CBI is closely linked to controlling inflation, which is a primary concern in advanced and emerging economies. Independent central banks are better equipped to resist the political pressure to pursue expansionary monetary policies that could increase inflation. This is particularly important in a globalized economy, where trade and financial linkages can transmit inflationary pressures across borders.

Empirical evidence supports the notion that CBI is associated with lower inflation. Countries with more independent central banks tended to experience lower and more stable inflation rates. For example, the relationship between CBI and inflation control became especially evident during the inflationary period of the 1970s and 1980s, when many central banks were subject to political interference, leading to high and persistent . This finding has been corroborated by subsequent research, which has shown that CBI contributes to the anchoring of inflation expectations, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of monetary policy.

The relationship between CBI and inflation control became particularly evident during the inflationary period of the 1970s and 1980s. Many central banks were subject to political interference during this time, leading to high and persistent inflation. Several countries, including the US and Germany, responded by granting greater to their central banks, resulting in a significant decrease in inflation.

Central banks navigate an increasingly complex global environment, balancing domestic objectives with the need to manage the global spillovers of their actions. The independence of central banks is critical to ensure economic stability and long-term growth.

In a globalized economy, the actions of a central bank have implications that reach far beyond national borders. The US dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency means that the Fed’s policies global financial markets, international trade and the economic stability of other nations. The importance of a non-politicized Fed in maintaining international confidence in the US dollar cannot be overstated. It helps capital flight, currency volatility and a potential shift away from the dollar as the dominant global currency.

Globalization has fundamentally altered monetary policy dynamics, particularly in the context of central bank independence. As economies intertwine, the actions of one central bank can have profound effects on others, amplifying the importance of independent decision-making. The growing complexity of global financial systems necessitates that central banks adapt rapidly to new challenges, such as capital flow volatility and cross-border financial risks. 

One critical aspect of globalization is the transmission of economic shocks across borders. Central banks must be vigilant in mitigating these shocks while maintaining domestic economic stability. For instance, the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated how quickly financial turmoil can spread globally, underscoring the for independent central banks to act swiftly and decisively. The also showcased the of international cooperation among central banks; while this is necessary, it must be balanced with preserving domestic policy autonomy.

Looking forward, central banks must navigate the delicate balance between maintaining independence and participating in global monetary coordination. The potential for conflicts between domestic objectives and international pressures will likely increase, requiring central banks to adopt more sophisticated and transparent communication strategies. Ensuring that these institutions remain insulated from political pressures while engaging in necessary international cooperation will be crucial for economic stability in an increasingly interconnected world.

The Global Financial Crisis and central bank coordination

One historic economic event is especially imperative to study. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008–2009 marked one of the most significant economic downturns in recent memory, with worldwide impact. The crisis began in the US but quickly spread to other economies, highlighting the interconnectedness of global markets.

The US is one of the largest economies in the world, and its trade relations influence other nations’ economies substantially. For instance, during the GFC, the collapse of US demand had a , causing major slowdowns in export-driven economies like those of China, Germany and Japan. This exemplifies how shocks in the US “export” financial stress across the world, while the reverse influence is often less pronounced. The rapid transmission of financial shocks underscored the need for coordinated action among central banks worldwide to stabilize the global economy.

During the GFC, central banks took the following actions:

1. The Fed played a pivotal role by implementing a series of unconventional monetary policies, including lowering to near-zero levels and introducing . These measures involved buying assets to restore liquidity to financial markets and support economic recovery.
2. Faced with a severe sovereign debt crisis in several Eurozone countries, the ECB lowered and provided long-term refinancing operations to banks. The ECB later introduced the , which was crucial in stabilizing bond markets and preventing the collapse of the euro.
3. The BoE reduced interest rates and launched its own to support the UK economy. Its actions were coordinated with those of other major central banks to ensure a unified response to the crisis.
4. The BoJ expanded its asset purchase and maintained a low-interest rate to support the Japanese economy, which was also affected by the global downturn.

Central banks recognized that unilateral actions would be insufficient to address the global nature of the crisis. Therefore, they engaged in unprecedented levels of cooperation, particularly through these mechanisms:

1. Currency Swap Agreements: Central banks, including the Fed, ECB, BoE and BoJ, established currency swap lines to ensure that banks in other countries had access to US dollars, which were in high demand. This move crucially prevented a liquidity crisis and stabilized global markets.
2. Coordinated Interest Rate Cuts: In October 2008, several major central banks, including the Fed, ECB, BoE and BoJ, conducted a coordinated interest rate cut to reduce borrowing costs globally and stimulate economic activity.
3. G20 Summits: The G20, which includes both advanced and emerging economies, played a critical role in facilitating international coordination. The 2009 G20 in London prompted commitments to provide fiscal stimulus, increase resources for the International Monetary Fund and enhance financial regulation to prevent future crises.
4. Bank for International Settlements (BIS): The BIS serves as a platform for central banks to exchange information, coordinate policy responses and discuss strategies for maintaining financial stability. Its role in fostering international cooperation was vital in ensuring a coherent global response to the crisis.

The coordinated efforts of central banks were instrumental in mitigating the worst effects of the GFC. The rapid implementation of monetary easing measures, coupled with international cooperation, helped stabilize financial markets, restore confidence and set the stage for a gradual economic recovery. The crisis demonstrated that in a globalized economy, the actions of one central bank can have significant spillover effects on others, making international cooperation essential.

The experience of the GFC showcases the importance of sustained international cooperation among central banks. As global markets become more interconnected, the potential for spillover effects increases, making coordinated policy responses critical for maintaining global economic stability.

Moving forward, central banks should continue to strengthen their cooperation through global forums like the G20 and BIS, ensuring that their policies are harmonized to prevent adverse cross-border impacts. Additionally, they should work together to develop frameworks for managing future crises. In an interconnected world, the stability of one economy often depends on the stability of others.

What is the solution?

The independence of central banks like the Fed is vital for ensuring sound monetary policy, economic stability and global financial confidence. While Trump’s critique of the Fed highlights legitimate concerns about the need for better coordination between monetary and fiscal policy, his desire for more direct control over monetary policy risks undermining the very foundation of economic stability. A politicized central bank, driven by short-term political goals, would likely lead to higher inflation, economic instability and global volatility.

In an increasingly globalized economy, the role of central bank independence extends beyond national borders. The interconnectedness of global markets means that the actions of central banks can have profound spillover effects on other economies. Central banks must navigate complex global dynamics, where their decisions influence global capital flows, currency stability and international trade.

The solution lies not in reducing central bank independence but in enhancing the mechanisms for policy coordination while preserving the autonomy of institutions critical to the economy’s long-term health. By maintaining a strong, independent Fed, the US can continue navigating the complexities of a globalized economy while safeguarding its economic future. Central bank independence can secure a stable and prosperous economic environment domestically and globally by focusing on policies like the Fed’s : maximum employment and price stability.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Central Bank Independence Is Unbelievably Valuable for the World Economy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Both global and domestic issues defined the election

The European election campaign is better understood as 27 rather than one common one. Campaigns typically focused more on domestic rather than EU-wide issues. This year, in several countries such as , voters used the European elections to express unhappiness with the policies of the parties forming the current national government.��

had dominated the last European election campaign in 2019 when , inspired by the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, brought the topic to the headlines. This time around, climate policy was hardly discussed. Instead, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought the topic of security and defense to the of the agenda. In addition, domestic issues like the cost of living, energy prices and inflation took precedence amongst voters.��

Concerns over likewise played a big role. This is not a new development, as immigration has been a major topic already for the last decade. Anti-immigrant rhetoric was used in a lot of countries, including in those in which there is actually not a lot of immigration, such as the Czech Republic.

The center-right has risen in the ranks

Domestic issues such as the ones above ultimately garnered intense support for far-right parties in the EU elections. However, despite the gains of far-right parties, the coalition of the center parties continues to hold a of seats in the EU Parliament. There has been a shift to the right, but overall the result of the European elections shows more continuity than disruption. This came as a relief to those predicting a far-right sweep of Parliament.

The European People’s Party Group (EPP), a center-right group bringing together Christian Democrats and conservatives, emerged as the of the election. In total, the group comprises 188 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), or slightly more than 25% of seats. The Socialists and Democrats (S&D) remained largely stable, winning 136 seats. As recorded in the outgoing 2019 Parliament , both parties continue to be the two largest groups in the European Parliament.��

But the liberal Renew Group, which came in third in 2019, only won 77 seats and is now the fifth largest group after the extreme-right Patriots for Europe (84 seats) and the radical right Conservatives and Reformists (78 seats). Along with the Liberals, the other big loser of the elections were the Greens, who are now only the sixth biggest group with 53 members. Further, The Left in the European Parliament group and the extreme-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group comprise 46 and 25 seats respectively.

It is likely that the problem of the far-right on the European level will not play out in the European Parliament, but rather in the European Council, which assembles the heads of states and governments. Past mandates show that the far-right is a very bloc, especially when it comes to foreign and security policy. Internal make it difficult for the far-right to have any real influence on policy.

Already in the last few years, Viktor Orbán from the right-wing populist party Fidesz has often acted as a , or an obstruction, towards coherent policy.�� He has made it for EU leaders to find agreements, particularly when it comes to supporting Ukraine. As more far-right parties join governments at the national level across Europe, the problem of fractured policies is only likely to increase. Creating a solution to this problem falls on the shoulders of Ursula von der Leyen, who won another mandate as the EU Commission President.

Von der Leyen faced a challenging re-election

Despite the fact that the EPP, von der Leyen’s party family, emerged as the strongest force, the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen was by no means a given. In order to become Commission President, a candidate must not just be nominated by the Council comprising the EU heads of state and government, he or she must also secure a majority of MEPs in the European Parliament. 

In 2019, the lead candidate of the EPP had been German Manfred Weber. But in the aftermath of the elections, some heads of state expressed with his nomination, pointing to his lack of executive experience. Instead, the Council Ursula von der Leyen in a move that came as a surprise to everyone. She went on to secure a very narrow majority in the European Parliament, winning just in a secret ballot — only nine more than the required minimum.

This time around, heads of state and government agreed on the nomination of Ursula von der Leyen relatively . As part of a package deal that included Socialists and Liberals, the Council further agreed on the of the Portuguese António Costa as President of the European Council and the Estonian Kaja Kallas as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

Political fragmentation will create a challenge

The real challenge von der Leyen faced was not the nomination — the problem lay in securing support from the European Parliament. The combined majority of EPP, S&D, and Renew, the traditional coalition of the center parties, is much smaller than in the previous mandate and several MEPs from those three groups that they were not going to vote for her. Von der Leyen faced a political conundrum — should she reach out to the radical-right Conservatives and Reformists, angering Socialists and Liberals? Or should she reach out to the Greens, angering her own EPP, which had turned against several Green policies during the last mandate?

In the end, von der Leyen pulled off the perfect balancing act. She managed to bring a majority of to her side without turning her own party against her. In the that laid out her plans as Commission President, von der Leyen included promises to a lot of different groups. Ultimately, she was confirmed with in favor.��

In her last term, Ursula von der Leyen significantly the role of the Commission, shaping the EU’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In her second term, she seeks to continue this work, this time with a special focus on bolstering the Commission’s role in the realm of defense, economic security, and economic competitiveness.��

But the next five years are unlikely to be smooth sailing. Europe’s changing political landscape will make her job harder. In the Parliament, the increasing political fragmentation will make coalition-building more difficult. An increasing amount of legislation will likely need to pass with ad-hoc coalitions that focus on specific issues instead of passing legislation through the traditional grand coalition of EPP, S&D, and Renew.

Henry Kissinger supposedly once asked, “Who do I call when I want to call Europe?” For now, this question seems answered. National leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have been weakened by the European election results, with their parties or coalitions suffering heavy losses. Instead, it is Ursula von der Leyen who has emerged with strength and confidence from the European Parliament election, ready to take on a leadership role as chief of the European Commission once more. Yet, the term ahead of her will be a challenging one. 

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Political Fragmentation Poses a New Challenge for the EU appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Dear friends,

As fair observers, we have embarked on a wide open discussion about global trends concerning means of payment, currencies, trade and geopolitics. We agree that this is a transitional moment in history, in which the burning question of dedollarization is on many people’s minds. There are a lot of factors at play. As such, it requires literally thinking outside of multiple boxes.

In other words, we welcome discussion that is as open as possible, precisely because reaching a firm and convincing conclusion about the likelihood, the timing or the extent of the dethroning the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is highly unlikely. In such cases, the principle of democracy — rather than, say, “the wisdom of crowd��” — requires that we share enough of our collective insights to allow even those at a great distance from the “science” to have a grasp of the way things may be trending.

Because we acknowledge this as a transitional moment of history, evidence from multiple sources tells us that dedollarization is real, if only in the sense that it’s being more and more frequently talked about. That remains true even where there is no evidence justifying the suspicion that today’s efforts at dedollarization might succeed in the kind of coup d’état some people imagine.

To place the focus on history, I submit the following representation of the trends over the past eight decades.

Warm regards,

Peter 

*

I was pleased to see Ed Quince’s succinct response to this:

I like your categorization — it does outline the lifecycle of the USD as the world reserve currency very well. It also seems prudent to assume that the future will bring more choice and flexibility to the world.

Alex also approved, offering his own extended reflections.

One thing that is missing so far: we should get the “official” narrative. Of course, no official will admit that “the end for the dollar is near.” And the Europeans will have different views than the US. And, of course, the BRICS+ in turn will have even more radically different views. The hard part is to get people on the record; I assume the subject is so sensitive that nobody wants to go on the record.

But it would be great if anyone had a source that would be able to contribute anonymously. I am still searching for papers to the tune of “Reforming the International Monetary System” but wasn’t very successful. Any leads or connections at IMF, World Bank, European Central Bank, BIS, other central banks or think tanks are greatly appreciated. I am absolutely certain that discussions regarding the future of our monetary system are held among Western powers, who want to preserve the status quo, and emerging powers, who would like to change it.

The Europeans had to play their hand very carefully, being entirely dependent on the US after the destruction of their industrial base during WWII. A lot of their gold had been moved to New York, for fear of Russian invasion. The US took a dedicated path towards demonetization of gold, leaving the Federal Reserve without a single ounce of gold. But this only works if other countries follow suit; Germany had to promise the US not to purchase any gold with USD proceeds from its rising trade surplus (the “”). As a “work-around,” Germany exempted purchases of gold from VAT, thereby encouraging its population to increase savings in gold. The amount of gold held by Germans is unknown, due to the decentralized and often anonymous nature of gold ownership, but according to polls Germans might own 11,000 tons (which would exceed the amount held by the US Treasury).

This might turn out to be a smart move. Why? In case of a currency crisis, the ECB would not sell its gold, but rather purchase additional gold, thereby achieving three purposes:

Afraid Germans won’t part with their gold? As frugal as Germans are, being attracted by substantial seasonal sales promotions, they sure will take advantage of a scenario where the ECB (or Bundesbank) declares “We will be bidding for gold EUR 10,000 per ounce (or any other arbitrary number) for the next two weeks only.”

The Federal Reserve does not own any gold. It had to turn over its gold to the US Treasury, receiving a non-redeemable gold “certificate,” valuing gold at $42.22 an ounce. It’s worthless. Over 80% of the Treasury’s gold is under control of the military (West Point, NY and Fort Knox, KY), underlining the importance of gold holdings for the US (despite downplaying it perpetually). You can see it under “gold stock” (valued at $11 billion, pay attention to footnote 1).

The ECB system of central banks owns 10,792 tonnes, valued at market value. The ECB could buy or sell gold if it wanted to. The Federal Reserve cannot sell any gold since it does not own any. It probably cannot purchase any gold either, since US Code 5117 makes it unlawful to value gold at a price different from the last official price of $42.22 per ounce (for transactions among public entities). Why? Because Nixon merely ‘temporarily suspended’ gold convertibility – hence enormous amounts of gold are theoretically still owed to foreign official holders (central banks) of US dollars. The Federal Reserve would hence immediately have to recognize large write-downs on any gold purchased at market prices. But I am sure that would be their least concern in case of a currency crisis.

You can probably see how the Europeans and the Americans are set up differently to deal with a currency crisis (due to the role of gold). It is a pre-programmed collision course, and it is hard to see how an agreement would be found during a “Bretton Wood��” 2.0. And we haven’t even started to include any BRICS.

The US has one ace up its sleeve: gold held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for “foreign official account��” (non-US central banks, sovereign wealth funds). And it’s a lot. You can see itunder position 4, “earmarked gold.” 7.9 billion dollars, duly valued at $42.22, which comes out to 188.7 million ounces or 5,869 tons, worth around $430 billion.

The US might just choose to never return those tons to their rightful owners. What are they going to do? Invade New York? French President Georges Pompidou, pursuing his predecessor De Gaulle’s stated concerns, sent a French frigate to New York in early August 1971 to exchange dollars into gold. On August 15, Nixon closed the “gold window.” The convertibility of the dollar into gold did NOT exist for US citizens (which had been forced to hand over their private gold holdings in 1933). It existed for non-US central banks, but only as long as the bluff wasn’t called. The French called the bluff, and the game was over. But it failed to dethrone the US dollar!

Of course, a lot of conspiracy theories have spun up surrounding gold, but the above is all well documented and withstands any scrutiny. Gold, this inert stupid little metal, extracted from the earth under enormous efforts, has all but vanished from the eye of the public. But behind the scenes, the chess pieces are being moved quietly, by velvet-gloved hands, setting up the game of currencies for an epic battle.

Join the Debate

Money Matters…, is dedicated to developing this discussion and involving all interested parties.

We invite all of you who have something to contribute to send us your reflections at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We will integrate your insights into the ongoing debate. We will publish them as articles or as part of the ongoing dialogue.

Money Matters… in a Multipolar World!

*[51�Թ�’s “Crucible of Collaboration” is meant to be a space in which multiple voices can be heard, comparing and contrasting their opinions and insights in the interest of deepening and broadening our understanding of complex topics.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Crucible: Money Matters in a Multipolar World, Part 6 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In contrast, voters punished the incumbent traffic light (red-yellow-green) coalition, consisting of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Liberals (FDP) and the Greens.

The Greens received a sobering 11.9%. This result falls in line with the Greens’ steady decline of approval among the populace over the last couple of years. It also compounds another bruising election campaign — figuratively and literally. During this EU campaign, politicians and campaign workers across all major parties had to endure an unparalleled amount of verbal and physical attacks. Politicians and members of the Greens were particularly affected.

Greens are under attack

Greens chairwoman Ricarda Lang that, on February 16, 2023, she received death threats in her constituency office. Multiple other female politicians also received similar threats around that time. In January 2024, a mob of angry farmers Robert Habeck, the Vice-Chancellor, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and member of the Greens. He was unable to alight from a ferry because of this. On February 14, 2024, in the southwestern city of Biberach, farmers against the government’s agricultural policies vicious and hostile protests. These led to the cancellation of a Green party convent.

The harassment has not ended in more recent times either. In early April 2024, a 27-year-old far-right extremist was for plotting an attack against Green politicians. On May 1, 2024, during an EU election campaign event, protesters Green politician and the Vice President of the German Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, and prevented her from leaving the venue. A few days later, a group of passers-by physically two Green politicians in Essen after a party event. A 66-year-old man a Green member of the Lower Saxony state while canvassing on May 24, 2024.

Green party members refuse to run for local elections due to safety fears. Online hate speech directed against Green politicians and supporters is rampant and by conservative media, most notably �ұ�������Բ�’s highest-circulating newspaper Bild.

Increased threats against politicians, journalists, academics and activists are a sad reality in a politically polarized Germany. Greens are disproportionately affected. Of the  politically motivated crimes reported in 2023, 1,219 were aimed at Green politicians. Why are the hostilities of many voters dissatisfied with the traffic light coalition targeted at the Greens in particular?

Reactivating the Greens’ old stigma

In the fall of 2021, the Greens achieved their best-ever federal election result with 14.7% of the vote. Even a year into the legislative period as part of the governing traffic light coalition, the party rode a wave of popularity, polling up to .

These highs invited political rivals to target the Greens. In doing so, they picked up on the tried-and-tested stigma of the so-called “prohibition party” that has tainted the Greens since their foundation in the 1980s. An ostensible example is the Greens’ call for a “Veggie Day” in public canteens in 2013. Despite the Greens being in opposition back then, this minor proposal dominated the national headlines. Politicians from the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) it as “a building block for the federal Green ban republic” and branded the Greens as a “Bevormundungspartei” (patronizing party).

Today’s campaigns against the Greens strike the same tone. A prominent example is the controversial Buildings Energy  pushed by the Greens and passed last year. According to the law, oil and gas heating systems must be gradually replaced with heat pumps powered by at least 65% renewable energy. A crisis-weary population and quarrels within the traffic light coalition provided the conservative and far-right opposition with a breeding ground to use the Buildings Energy Act as a lever to reactivate the Greens’ old stigma: Once again, the Green Party allegedly patronized the hard-working population by imposing new and costly heat pumps and ignoring already persisting financial hardship due to stubbornly high energy costs and inflation.

Jumping on the far-right anti-Green bandwagon

The Buildings Energy Act is a new expression of a long-standing culture war unleashed on the Greens. The far-right AfD pinpointed the Greens in particular as their prime target in a strategy paper before the 2017 federal election: “The AfD does not win votes from the Greens but against them … The AfD should starkly differentiate itself from the Greens and tackle them head-on even more than before. The more it does this, the more support it will find … in all … target groups — and the more it will provoke a backlash from the Greens, which will then benefit the AfD again.”

According to the paper, the Greens embody “everything the AfD rejects: genderism, self-serving environmental lobbies, political correctness and … ‘multiculturalism’.”

This enmity flourished during the 2021 Bundestag election campaign, when Annalena Baerbock, then the Greens’ lead candidate and now Foreign Secretary, the prime target of misinformation from the far-right.

Seven years later, the AfD garnered up to  in nationwide polls in December 2023 and more than  in its East German state strongholds. These highs arise from declining trust in democratic institutions, including the parties of the traffic light coalition.

To win back voters from the AfD, the conservative CDU adopted the AfD’s scapegoating of the Greens despite governing with them in five states. Party chairman Friedrich Merz the Greens out as the CDU’s “main opponent” (instead of the AfD), accusing them of “educating the people” and blaming them for the “polarization around energy (and) environmental policy in Germany.” The party chairman of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party CSU, Markus Söder, on the anti-Green bandwagon: “The Greens’ worldview doesn’t suit Bavaria,” further , “The Greens rely on ideology and ever new bans.”

Even parts of the political left hope to benefit from applying an anti-Green stance. Sarah Wagenknecht, leader of the new and upcoming left-wing conservative party “Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht” (BSW), the Greens as the “most incompetent, most hypocritical, most mendacious and … most dangerous party” in the Bundestag and attested to its “infinite arrogance … towards people’s social problems.”

The Greens have become vulnerable on two flanks. Some denounce them as a radical eco-socialist party. Others see them as a bourgeois party that has traded its ecological DNA for the pursuit of power.

Contentious Green policies

Accordingly, criticism of the Greens can be justified twofold. On the one hand, little remains of their ecological-pacifist founding ethos in the 1980s. Arms deliveries to Ukraine, lacking policy support for Palestinians in Gaza, a hasty phasing out of nuclear power while remaining dependent on coal energy and liquid gas, and tightening of migration and asylum policies are evidence of this.

On the other hand, the Greens have lacked modesty in communicating their ambitious climate policy proposals to a working class that fears the costly consequences.

Latest nationwide  show that support for the Greens has halved from the mid-twenties to only 12% within almost two years. According to another recent , 6% of self-proclaimed centrist voters and 26% of voters on the left of the political spectrum intend to vote Green.

Indeed, social cleavages are widening at the expense of the Greens due to perceived impositions in climate and migration policy. Traditional Green voters remain steadfast in their support. They are mostly young, female, educated and reside in affluent constituencies of West German states. Yet, centrist voters unsettled by a perceived overbearing “ zeitgeist” are turning their backs on the Greens.

Inordinate criticism of the Greens

One can make the case that the Greens receive disproportionate criticism. Rising verbal abuse and physical threats undergird this case. In 2021, the Greens regained power for the first time in 16 years as part of the traffic light coalition — once again as a junior partner in a coalition led by the Social Democrats. During the same 16-year period, the CDU/CSU and SPD governed for 16 and 12 years respectively. The level of hatred towards the Greens compared to the Christian and Social Democrats is astonishing given the Greens’ comparatively short time in government as a minor coalition party.

This illustrates how conservative and far-right campaigns against the Greens have infiltrated political and social discourse. These campaigns have successfully pitted democratic parties against each other. The hatred of the Greens has manipulated �ұ�������Բ�’s main democratic parties into believing that fighting the Greens equates to fighting the roots of discontent and the far-right’s success. The opposite materializes. Far-right narratives spread, democratic consensus erodes and hostilities shift into the democratic center and become entrenched.

The traffic light government and especially the Greens are trying to strike a fine balance between crisis management and structural change. After coming to power in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, major world-changing events, such as the Ukraine war, new migration movements, an energy crisis and the Gaza war, have occurred. These are duly unfavorable times to initiate a structural change in climate policy. Overdue change from which Merkel shied away from even in economically more propitious times and circumstances.

Who are the real enemies?

With pivotal East German state elections looming this year, the traffic light coalition is standing with its back against the wall. During the 2021 federal elections, the coalition parties gathered 52% of the vote. This figure has now plummeted to 31% in the latest EU election and to 32% in federal election. Nationwide protests in January 2024 against the AfD impressively demonstrated the strength of united democratic action against democracy’s adversaries. Prior to the AfD’s strong EU election results, these protests contributed to the AfD’s first significant dent in the polls for a long time, expedited by investigations into Chinese and Russian links of two EU candidates, Maximilian Krah and Peter Bystron.

However, this solidarity on the street must also translate into the political arena. The Greens’ coalition partners, the Social Democrats and the Liberals, are complicit in either buying into anti-Green narratives or in silence. After all, weakened Greens are weakened political competitors. Disproportionate violent hatred against any party, especially a democratic party like the Greens, should stir up fellow democratic parties. The real enemies lurk at the anti-democratic fringes and should be confronted in unity.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post �ұ�������Բ�’s Greens Now Targeted by Friend and Foe Alike appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This year, Schaffer returned by visiting the cities of Uzhhorod and Lviv. This trip was safer, yet more psychologically draining than the first. In 2023, morale was high. Ukrainians were confident. Now, the fatigue is palpable. Constant attacks on civilian infrastructure wound and kill people as Western support trickles in slowly . 

This is the Kremlin’s strategy, and it’s succeeding. Momentum is clearly on Russia’s side, and the longer the campaign lasts, the further Ukrainian morale sinks.

Will Russia win? What could this victory mean for Europe?

NATO vs. Russian expansionism

It’s unlikely Russia can fully occupy Ukraine. Russia can’t win by suffocating Ukrainian morale until they stop resisting — and Ukrainians know a loss would bring death, destruction and rape.

No one knows now exactly what a Russian victory could bring. Political scientist John Mearsheimer argues that Russia is not expansionist and it will stop after it secures the territory it now holds. Others say that Russia intends to overrun Ukraine entirely and that it will bring its conquest to other countries next. This would usher in a perilous era for Central and Eastern Europe.

Mearsheimer argues that Russia acted to achieve one political aim: preventing NATO from expanding further eastward. Russia sees its near abroad as a defensive bulwark against potential NATO military invasion. The United States reacted similarly in the 1960s when Soviet Union tried to into Cuba.

Hypothetically, Russia could achieve certain goals and then freeze the conflict. But to do that, it would have to control what it believes is now its sovereign territory, namely four Ukrainian of Kherson, Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhia. Russia organized sham referenda to annex these areas. As long as these oblasts remain partly outside of Russia’s grasp, negotiation seems unlikely. Likewise, on the Ukrainian side, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cannot negotiate a peace that would involve the surrender of national territory. This would violate Ukraine’s constitution.

Mearsheimer is right that the positioning of NATO missiles in Ukraine would be an existential threat to Russia that the federation would necessarily have to stop. But this could have been achieved through negotiation and reasonable planning. Instead, Russia denied Ukrainian statehood and began gobbing up pieces of it. Far from carrying out a defensive action, the Kremlin used the purported threat of NATO to justify its of international law.

The European divide

The Russia–Ukraine War is the first large-scale conflict in Europe since the fall of Berlin in 1945. French President Emmanuel Macron tried making peace with Putin in 2022, but now he’s asking for Western troops in -Ukraine. Once a dove, he’s now become a hawk. In his view, if Ukraine falls, others will follow.

Despite this, Europe will not get tougher with Russia. There are too many sovereign states with too many different approaches for that to happen. This is a hybrid war — a war that combines conventional and irregular warfare. A narrative battle rages inside each country in tandem with the deadly campaign in Ukraine.

Many countries are noticing this extra dimension. The last two years have brought a fundamental shift in thought: If Europe can’t defend the Ukrainians who are fighting for the EU’s values, how can it protect those principles? Europe’s security structure was destroyed on February 24, 2022; its freedom, values and democratic way of life are in jeopardy. Further, Europe cannot rely on NATO’s to defend itself. The US will not necessarily interve to defend Europe in the event of a limited engagement in eastern Poland or the Baltics, which Russia could plausibly try. If of the — the EU’s mutual defense clause — is not to be a dead letter, Europe must have an independent defensive capability.

This viewpoint has divided Europe. Many Europeans lack the will to fight, believing the threat to be exaggerated. Italy and Spain are far from Russia and protected by high mountains; the idea of Russian tanks threatening these southerly nations sounds like science fiction.

France and Germany have always shared the Great European Plain — easy to drive tanks across — with Russia and so perceive the possibility of war, however remote, as more realistic. Yet both nations are internally split on Russia. France has a semi-presidential system where Macron can dictate policy, but many in the National Assembly do not share his  hawkish views.

On the other side, Germany has a parliamentary system where three parties form the government coalition: the Social Democratic Party, the Green Party and the Liberals. There are hawkish Social Democrats, dovish Liberals and both tendencies in the Green Party. It’s difficult for these parties to compromise when debating a common policy.

On February 27, 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz delivered the famous Zeitenwende (“Watershed”) speech in the Bundestag. He announced a to the country’s security and foreign policy, upping defense spending significantly. Germany was to take an active role as a member of NATO. Yet Germany doesn’t want to get involved in this war. Unlike France, it has a large, resource-hungry manufacturing industry — and no nuclear plants to power it. This makes Germany much more dependant than France on Russian fossil fuels. War means that energy costs skyrocket, growth plummets and industry suffers. Already, Germans are saying that they’re the real losers of the war.

Danube regional affairs

Along with Ukraine and Germany, Europe’s Danube consists of Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova. As Ukraine’s neighbors, these countries would be directly affected if Russia occupied its entirety.

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has taken a questionable, pro-Russian attitude. Traditionally, Hungarians are suspicious of Russia, with dark memories of Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest to crush the Hungarian uprising against Bolshevism in 1956. Yet Orbán’s social contract with the Hungarian people relies on growth that cheap Russian gas fuels. Hungary has notoriously made a long-term contract with Russia’s energy corporation. Meanwhile, Budapest vetos EU measures to aid Ukraine. The country’s stance seems rooted in business, not ideology.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico from power in 2018 over a political crisis: Journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, nearly exposed a financial flow running through the government, but were mafia-style. Now, Fico regained the people’s favor by using their frustration with the war; he was in 2023. He blames his country’s high inflation on the war and the war on anti-Russian Western policy.

Just outside the Danube region, Poland is also divided on how to should position itself. Supporters of the nationalist Law and Justice party are less hawkish on Russia. Yet Law and Justice is no longer in power as of 2023. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s new government marks a return to European values and feels that, if Europe does not stop Russia at the Donets, they will soon have to do so at the Bug.

Poland is a hotspot because, if it feels threatened and insufficiently protected by NATO, it may decide to develop its own nuclear weapons. Indeed, Europe needs a nuclear deterrent independent from that of the US. This war has caused Europe to see that it must stand on its own two feet, invest in military production and prepare to defend itself. If Russia makes a move, the Yanks may not be coming.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: Where Is Ukraine Headed Now? What Does Europe Think? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Differences on crucial issues pushed the three countries apart during these two decades. Germany and France opted for strengthening their relations with Russia and declined to deepen the European–US alliance, whereas Poland represented the opposite stance, warning against Russia and following a more Atlanticist defense policy while increasing expenditure on its own armed forces. The 2015 rise of a populist conservative government in Poland further cooled relations. The new government used openly anti-German rhetoric and also had reservations about France.

Recent events, however, have reversed the situation. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2023 election of a new pro-European government in Poland gave an impulse for renewed cooperation. Already in February 2024, all three countries’ foreign ministers met in France, followed by a previously unplanned meeting of French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Germany in March. The next high-level meeting, in Poland, is planned for June.

The authors of this article, a Pole, a German and a Frenchman, met in Vienna. What sounds like the beginning of a joke turned into a serious discussion about the potential, shortcomings and the varying national perspectives of this minilateral format. We will explain what our respective countries hope to achieve and what they will need in order to do so.

How do Berlin, Paris and Warsaw see the revived forum?

Many in Berlin hope that the revived Weimar Triangle will alleviate the strained relations between Scholz and Macron. They are excited about the possibility of putting together (a) the biggest economy in the EU, (b) a permanent UN Security Council member and nuclear power and (c) the most populous and most important country in Central Europe. Together, these three nations represent around 40% of the EU population, or 188 million inhabitants.

On March 15, the partners they would jointly procure weapons for Ukraine on the world market. This, along with ramping up production, is music to many German ears given Scholz’s notoriously hesitancy in providing Ukraine with the means to defend itself. like “Two Churchills and half a Chamberlain” appeared in the aftermath of the announcement, comparing Scholz to the infamously dovish British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who failed to take a firm stance against Adolf Hitler.

Germans also relish the historic opportunity to polish up the city’s name. “Weimar” has unfortunately become a byword for the failed Weimar Republic, which Hitler transformed into his dictatorship. More importantly, they look forward to finally getting some tangible results from one of the many minilateral formats that have sprung up across the EU.

In France, the inauguration of Donald Tusk’s new government in Poland has caused a resurgence of enthusiasm for the Weimar Triangle. Historically, Paris has perceived the Weimar format as unbalanced, dominated by German–Polish ties at the expense of French-Polish relations. However, France is coming to see this format as a potentially valuable and beneficial complement to the traditional Franco-German “couple,” which is currently going through a rough patch due to differences over the war in Ukraine. France sees Poland as a valuable partner in encouraging Germany to adopt a more aggressive posture in the East.

For Poland, Russia’s war in Ukraine raging and the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential election heighten the need for a European security “back-up plan.” Poland shares a border with Ukraine and could be under threat if the war expanded. Warsaw thus has a vested interest in countering “solidarity fatigue” within Germany and France. Hence, it has proposed future “Weimar + Ukraine” meetings.

The revival of the Weimar Triangle has become a flagship project for the Tusk government. After eight years of right-wing rule marked by conflict with the EU and neighbors under the Law and Justice party, the format represents a chance to move away from the troublemaker image. Tusk wants Poland to be seen as a key player in European affairs.

Further, unlike at the outset of the format in the 1990s, Poland is striving to be seen as an equal partner with Germany and France that represents the sentiments of Central and Eastern Europe — although it is disputable whether all countries within that region would agree. Additionally, the Polish press enthusiastically portrays Poland’s role as a between Germany and France.

Moreover, the format is also convenient for ameliorating strained Polish–German relations. On the other hand, the Law and Justice party has circulated unfounded rumors about Donald Tusk being a “” and “,” and so they could use frequent bilateral meetings with Germany against the government.

Coincidentally, Scholz, Macron and Tusk also represent three different factions in the European Parliament. This adds to the possible benefit of the format on a EU level. Coordination between these factions could help to counteract the expected surge of far-right, Eurosceptic parties after the European elections in June. However, it remains to be seen if the Chancellor, the President and the Prime Minister can actually bring added value to their respective factions. Macron may face an uphill battle within Renew Europe, but the European People’s Party, to which Tusk belongs, will likely remain the biggest political group, resulting in a second term for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

How successful can the format be?

Although minilateral formats are indeed many, few operate across the ominous European East–West divide. If they do, they involve smaller actors (e.g., Slavkov Triangle of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria). The Weimar Triangle would be the exception.

The format faces certain headwinds. It lacks institutions and is dependent on personal chemistry between politicians. The next elections could change these dynamics.

Further, cooperation on the side of civil society is sorely lacking. It needs to be intensified, which would require more funding for NGOs and think tanks.

For the Weimar Triangle to evolve into a significant and effective minilateral framework, it cannot remain confined to contacts between leaders and foreign ministers. Secondary-level relationships, like parliamentary exchanges as well as municipal and regional connections, should be developed. Those relationships must be institutionalized, or at least systemized, and assigned a more strategic importance.

Will the Weimar Triangle meet expectations and use its potential to become a new power engine for the EU? The Weimar Triangle could be just what Europe needs at a crucial moment, but nothing is set in stone yet. Like great inventions, successful cooperation formats are often a matter, not only necessity and a good idea, but also of the right timing.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will the France–Germany–Poland “Weimar Triangle” Be Europe’s New Powerhouse? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The West has progressively raised its involvement by supplying long-range artillery, advanced air defense systems, tanks and air-launched cruise missiles, as well as sea-based weaponry, to hit Russian targets. Satellite intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) has been provided to Ukraine for more accurate strikes.

Western escalation is brewing

The New York Times has , somewhat surprisingly, that the CIA has been “financing” and “partly equipping” several underground bunkers near the Russian border. Their goal is to gather vital information on defenses and equipment, as well as assist the Ukrainian military in directing fire. Despite strong warnings from Russia, the Dutch have their decision to supply 18 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg Radio Free Europe that Ukraine’s right to self-defense includes attacking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine. Elsewhere, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that UK and French special forces are on the ground in Ukraine to operate the advanced equipment supplied to Kyiv.

Scholz seems opposed to the supply of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. If these warheads are used for strikes inside Russia, it may draw Germany into direct conflict with Moscow. However, the exchanges between German officers suggest a huge disconnect within the German establishment. They seemingly discussed the efficacy of using Taurus missiles to target the Crimean Bridge and ammunition dumps to its north. They also deliberated about how to launch these strikes without directly involving the German government, suggesting that the missile’s manufacturer, MBDA Deutschland GmbH, could act as a front.

Another potential step could seriously exacerbate the situation. On February 26, at a summit of 20 European leaders in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron the possibility of putting European troops on the ground in Ukraine. This disregards Russian warnings that such a move could trigger a direct war between NATO and Russia.

The US, Germany, the UK, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, among others, have ruled out the possibility of sending their troops to fight in Ukraine. Macron, however, believes that the people decrying this idea today are the same ones who decried the supply of tanks, aircraft or long-range missiles to Ukraine two years ago. In the face of rebuffs and political opposition at home, Macron insists that what he said was fully contemplated and that the intention is to put Putin in a “strategic dilemma.” He did not explain what that could be or why it would be only one-way.

Ukrainian support and Baltic aggression

The thought behind the proposals to increase EU military support for Ukraine is that European countries must take more responsibility for their own security. This is especially true considering the possibility of Donald Trump being re-elected as US president in November. He Europeans that if they do not ramp up their defense spending, rather than relying on the US for security, he will leave them to fend for themselves against unstated Russian threats. EU members are now increasing their defense budgets even when their economies are under pressure. Germany and the UK are facing a and social unrest is spreading in several European countries, as indicated by widespread from farmers.

France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Denmark and Canada have bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. What these precisely entail is not clear. However, it seems the objectives are to give assurances of support to Ukraine, should there be a change in the US administration; to give Kyiv confidence that despite flagging public support for the conflict in European societies, aid will continue and to signal to Russia that the EU’s investment in the conflict will continue regardless of Ukrainian losses and the war of attrition favoring Moscow. There is also a hint that Ukraine’s entry into NATO may not be imminent. Kyiv needs assurance that individual European countries are willing to commit themselves to Ukraine’s defense.

The Baltic states are the most vociferous in pushing for a confrontation with Russia, both within the EU and in international conferences. Many countries of the Global South believe that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a European affair. This has adverse consequences for them economically because of the disruptions it is causing in food, fertilizer and energy supplies. The Europeans argue this conflict goes beyond their continent and involves the international community as a whole, claiming that it violates the UN Charter, international law and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. This is not a convincing argument; European nations are themselves guilty of such transgressions, and there is no guarantee that this will not continue in the future.

Russia has not attacked the Baltic states, which are members of NATO and have the bloc’s troops stationed on their soil. These countries are hardly central to international geopolitics, have a combined of only six million and have negligible military strength. Given their deep grievances against Soviet rule, their desire to drive an increasingly dangerous conflict in Europe, along with Poland, Finland and Sweden, is concerning to non-Western countries.

Russia may not escalate its warfare

The argument that Russia will attack other countries if it defeats Ukraine is fictitious. Putin has been in power for 24 years now, NATO has expanded five times and the bloc’s troops and US missiles are stationed close to Russia’s borders. Russia has only aggressively responded to Georgia and Ukraine. In both cases, Putin that Russia would take action if these two countries were drawn into NATO.

Putin’s repeated that Russia has no intention of attacking any European country are being dismissed, as they do not fit the narrative of Moscow’s threat to Europe. Why Russia would enter into a conflict with NATO is not explained. As for Russia’s imperial ambitions, it has refrained from tightening control in erstwhile Soviet territories in Central Asia. Armenia is the most recent example.

The other argument Europeans champion — that a Russian victory over Ukraine will embolden China to intervene militarily in Taiwan — is equally trumped up. The Taiwan issue long predates that of Ukraine. China will judge the rapport between Taiwan, the US and its regional allies, then make its decision based on that. Washington has itself to the “One China” policy, though it is against the use of force by Beijing to conquer Taiwan. China also has to take into account that the US is its biggest trading partner.

The prevailing belief among European nations is that, considering Russia’s past reactions to the West’s incremental support for Ukraine, Moscow is unlikely to escalate militarily. Even if the West continues to do so by supplying Ukraine with additional weapons to potentially damage mainland Russia, they likely will not exacerbate the conflict. This may explain why Europeans are undeterred by Russia’s formidable nuclear arsenal. But this could be a serious misjudgment, potentially leading the West to drag the world into a nuclear nightmare.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The West Risks a Disastrous Nuclear World Conflict With Russia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A large business partner for Germany

Over the years, Qatar and Germany have considerable bilateral ties. Germany ships billions of euros’ worth of civilian and military equipment to Qatar, and Qatar sends Germany a huge amount of gas in return. In addition, Qatari funds flood the German economy.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU a huge list of sanctions against Russia. About 27% of Germany’s energy from natural gas, of which 55% came from Russia before the invasion. It is clear why Germany began to scramble to find a new supply of gas.

New energy supply mean Qatar will up to 2 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas per year to Germany for 15 years starting in 2026. Because of this, the Qatari–German relationship has jumped from considerable to strategic. It has also enabled Germany to break free of Russian gas supplies. The completion of the Qatari deal led German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to : “These are long-term contracts. This is also a good statement for the security of Germany’s energy supply.” They slash German dependency on Russian energy by a factor of four.

Speaking to Qatar News Agency, Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman Khalifa bin Jassim Al Thani that Germany is one of Qatar’s largest trading partners, as the volume of trade exchange between the two countries increased last year to 6.8 billion Qatari riyals ($1.87 billion), compared to 6.4 billion riyals ($1.76 billion) in 2020. Khalifa bin Jassim also mentioned the increasing mutual investments between the two countries. The immense income generated by the trade enables this small, autocratic Middle Eastern country to finance itself comfortably. The new energy supply agreement is bound to this trade exchange considerably.

With the Qatar energy deals and financial investments, Germany has taken another step towards securing its economy, but at the cost of placing itself under Qatari influence. This risks Germany being associated with ongoing investigations and tarnishing its image.

Not as peace-oriented and compliant as it may claim

Since the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, came to power in 2013, he has put major efforts into brushing up the image of Qatar. He aims to present the picture of a modern, moderate and reputable international partner. Ranging from infrastructure to sports, Qatar has spared no effort in connecting with Western powers. Al Jazeera Media Network, which receives funding from the Qatari government, is also a massive influence asset, with its global presence.

This quest for respectability, of course, included changing domestic policies. Following the UN Human Rights committee in 2014, Qatar two major international treaties guaranteeing basic rights for workers, namely foreign ones, after years of blatant abuse. Western partners and the UN unanimously these progressive developments, but they are showing their limits today.

These reforms also afforded Qatar a level of influence that is disconnected from its actual demographic, economic and military power. (An exception is in the case of gas exports to Germany, where Qatar actually does yield considerable power.) Qatar’s public relations efforts were overall successful. Politico editor Jamie Dettmer : “For a small Gulf emirate located on a spit of desert jutting into the Persian Gulf, Qatar has long punched way above its weight in the corridors of Western power.”

These efforts have successfully gone beyond classic public relations campaigns. In 2022, the EU underwent a . It became apparent that Qatari corruption efforts had penetrated all the way to the heart of democratic institutions. Timo Lange, an expert with LobbyControl, : “Several MPs and a former EU commissioner were supposed to exert influence on behalf of the governments of Qatar and Morocco and receive large sums of money in return.” As more and more news outlets began to investigate the matter, Qatar’s practices came to light.

Der Spiegel an investigation in June 2023 about suspicions of corruption surrounding German electronics and defense subcontractor Hensoldt. It described how several German companies, with Hensoldt as the subcontractor to Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW), discreetly worked with several intermediaries for Qatar. The main one that KMW and Hensoldt worked with was Multi Services Company (MSC) — a Qatari company providing various services to aid businesses in expanding their operations.

MSC is 70% owned by a relative of a military general who is part of the Al Thani family and 30% owned by an investment fund for Qatar’s armed forces. This goes against Hensoldt’s own policy of not working with companies who are “directly or indirectly owned or otherwise controlled or managed by Public Officials or politically exposed persons.” There were also questions of whether bribes were made to military personnel involved in the transactions between the businesses, but Hensoldt vehemently denies this.

Finally, Qatar’s support to Islamic fundamentalist movements is to all. They have provided financial support to extremist and terrorist groups, harbored their exiled leaders and supported them diplomatically. They have done this with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Bahraini Shia opposition groups. Qatar also still funds a large number of media outlets that support the Brotherhood’s ideologies.

On October 7, 2023, the military arm of Hamas launched an attack on Israel, killing almost people and taking roughly 250 people as hostages. Israel responded with an invasion, intent on rescuing the hostages and destroying the Hamas military. Qatar seized the diplomatic opportunity to act as a “” in the region, given its numerous pre-existing ties with Hamas.

Scholz accepted this position of respectability, but it does not well with many other German officials. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a representative of the Free Democratic Party, which is often in coalition with the CDU, the relationship with Qatar acceptable only to increase the chance of hostage release, and demands it be readjusted in the long run: “Nevertheless, this conversation with the Chancellor is unfortunately necessary in order to hopefully free as many hostages as possible from the clutches of the terrorist group.”

These oppositions could snowball and reignite critical voices, which were heard during the and following the gas supply . “Following the preventable human rights catastrophes of the Sochi Olympics, Russia’s World Cup, the Beijing Winter Olympics and the Qatar World Cup, Germany should step up and tie funding to transparency and adopting and implementing human rights policies,” Wenzel Michalski, Germany director at Human Rights Watch. Large international events, such as the Olympics, have systematically highlighted that human rights were not universally upheld and stressed how democratic nations such as Germany should use their economic and diplomatic power to protect minorities and the rule of law.

Will Qatar go down the same road as Saudi Arabia and Turkey?

Saudi Arabia, Qatar’s neighbor, has already been down this road. For decades, the West created and maintained close ties with that Arabian kingdom, which it saw as a key partner in the region. There were many collaborations ranging from strategic to infrastructural and military. In 2019, Germany, along with many other nations, an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

As time went by, Germany revealed itself as even more strict and demanding with Saudi Arabia than other European nations. Others, such as the , did not impose full embargos. Germany based its position, among other reasons, on alleged human rights violations in the Yemen war. The German Bundestag made the decision to military supplies to Saudi Arabia. Although this has in recent times, no doubt it could do the same with Qatar.

At a more moderate but comparable level, Germany has been Turkey to act more in accordance with international standards and has embargos to enforce its policy in the past.

In 2013, Qatar 62 Leopard 2 tanks, one of the world’s most advanced models produced by German firm KMW. As the operator, Qatar is highly dependent upon maintenance and supplies from Germany, in order to keep its military potential intact. Any further violations of international law, corruption practices and complacent attitudes towards minority discriminations from Qatar could lead Germany to limit interactions.

This could go as far as severing contractual ties, thus reducing Qatar’s military power for the duration of a military program. A military program, which spans from the political initiation to acquire or develop a new weapons system to the retirement of said equipment, can last over 40 years, making military potential highly vulnerable to momentum breakdown.

As a major defense equipment exporter, Germany has the ability to influence partners towards respecting human rights. In cases of violence and injustice, silence amounts to complicity, something the German foreign policy has pledged not to do. This is in no small part due to �ұ�������Բ�’s painful past and responsibility for the Holocaust, a mass psychological feature named Kollektivschuld (collective guilt).

Qatar is putting less effort into its disguise as it gains power and self-confidence. That said, its true nature never changed. The small Gulf state is still a monarchical dictatorship, with no intention to align itself with international standards and respect basic human rights, save a few cosmetic reforms, designed to play along with Western diplomacy. Europe of this — Germany most of all — when confronted with the dubious respect for minority rights Qatar displayed during the FIFA World Cup. The above-mentioned EU corruption scandal, dubbed Qatargate or the Qatarstrophe, also considerably damaged the Gulf nation’s image and put the German government under pressure.

In 2023, Der Spiegel economy minister Robert Habeck in a way that reflected the German public’s incomprehension of the gap between their nation’s stance and practices: “Mr. Habeck, in 2022, you had to beg the emir of Qatar to sell Germany natural gas, coal-fired power plants had to be brought back online and you were forced to extend the lifespans of nuclear power plants in the country. As a member of the Green Party and as German economics and climate minister, it must have been an awful year for you.”

Germany is attached to its influential image and will need to protect it, even as it seeks to replace formerly necessary Russian relations. The new strategy places Germany at the center of international attention, making it crucial for Berlin to align its values and its factual choices.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Qatar’s Wealth and Resources May Be Unwelcome in Germany appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In the air war against the Nazi regime, the British Royal Air Force (RAF)’s Bomber Command initially sought to attack specific German military and industrial targets. This effort proved too costly and relatively ineffective. Then under its new leader, Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Bomber Command turned to a new tactic: “area bombing.” In effect, area bombing meant largely indiscriminate on German cities in an attempt to “de-house” the civilian population and break its morale. In 1943, an estimated 40,000 civilians were killed in the two-day Bombing of Hamburg, known by the code name “.”

Initially, US decision-makers had other ideas. Equipped with new, more accurate bombsights, the Eighth Air Force’s commanders were determined to �ұ�������Բ�’s industrial infrastructure. These attacks were more successful, especially those that targeted the country’s oil refineries and synthetic rubber facilities. Yet by the war’s final years (1944–1945), the Eighth Air Force was carrying out almost daily raids on Berlin, a target with limited economic value. By the time of �ұ�������Բ�’s surrender in May 1945, Berlin and other German looked like the surface of the moon.

There is also the case of Dresden. A city with very limited economic value, both the RAF’s Bomber Command and the US Eighth Air Force targeted it. Between February 13 and 15, 1945, they a series of ruinous attacks that killed approximately 35,000 civilians. Winston Churchill supposedly decided he wanted Dresden bombed to Joseph Stalin the power of his arsenal.

Historical devastation unleashed on Japan

The strategic bombing campaign launched against Japan during the war was almost exclusively a US operation. It began in April 1942 with the famous on Tokyo. Physically, it did little overall damage. Psychologically, however, it was a spectacular for the US. They saw it as payback for the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. It also showed the Japanese public how vulnerable their home islands were to aerial assaults.

Serious air operations against Japan only began in the middle of June 1944, following the US of the Mariana Islands, notably Guam, Tinian and Saipan. The Marianas were close enough to Japan to permit the US Air Force to launch strategic bombing raids on Japanese cities. These attacks were also made possible by the deployment of the new Boeing B-29 bomber.

After some experimentation with its use, this craft was employed by General Curtis LeMay’s 509th Composite Group to stage firebombing raids on Japanese cities. The most lethal of these was the bombing of Tokyo, otherwise known by the code name “,” from March 9–10, 1945. One estimate is that approximately 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed during this one offensive. From March–August 1945, the US Air Force was also employed in mine-laying operations, under the code name “Operation Starvation,” with the goal to prevent fishing in the seas surrounding Japan.

The weapons used against Tokyo and the other cities were conventional weapons: incendiaries. The on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945, respectively) were something different. They were the first and so far only use of atomic weaponry in wartime. Not only this, but against a helpless civilian population.

These nuclear attacks and the radiation they left behind an estimated 214,000 people. They contributed to the Japanese government’s decision to surrender unconditionally to the Allies, bringing an end to the war.

Allies approved civilian slaughter

Seen in retrospect, one of the most striking things about indiscriminate British and US air attacks on civilian populations was the virtual absence of public criticism. It is true a handful of US nuclear scientists, led by Leo Szilard, circulated a to some of their peers objecting to the impending use of the atomic bomb. In Britain, the question was retrospectively about the need for the attack on Dresden. But at the time, there were no widespread public demonstrations about the Allied air attacks on civilians, nor any US or British radio commentators objecting to the carnage. If anything, Allied journalists tended to the bombing operations as significant achievements.

Why was there no public opposition or objections from Anglo-American newspaper or radio journalists and their attentive publics? Certainly, part of the answer was the widespread desire to retaliate. British civilians wanted revenge for the Nazi firebombing of major cities, especially London, during the Blitz. The US demanded payback for Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, followed by the “fight to the death” response of the Japanese military as it struggled to prevent the Allied conquest of its occupied islands.

German and Japanese propaganda efforts to weaken British and US morale were unsuccessful. In Nazi Germany and Italy, British Fascist William Joyce and US turncoats Mildred Gillars and Rita Zucca — using the nicknames, “” and “,” respectively — made regular radio broadcasts stating the invincibility of the Axis Powers. In the Pacific, Iva Toguri D’Aquino, using the nickname, “,” made similar and equally unsuccessful attempts to undermine US morale — especially that of GIs fighting there.

To a significant extent, British and US journalists tended to define themselves as part of the war effort. There were exceptions here and there, however: In 1943, the isolationist Chicago Tribune the fact that US codebreakers had deciphered Japan’s Naval Code. That same year, journalist Drew Pearson made headlines when he a story that General George S Patton had slapped a soldier convalescing at a Sicilian hospital.

Substantial opposition to the Allied bombing of civilian targets developed well after World War II. The 1957 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marked a shift among Western intellectuals against strategic bombing. This retrospective opposition appeared in the context of the Cold War conflict between NATO and the Soviet Bloc countries.

The Israel–Hamas war: How does history compare?

To what degree does the current Israel–Hamas war resemble the exponentially larger struggle of World War II? At first glance, the answer would be little. The battle between the two sides is restricted to a small corner of the Middle East, while the scope of World War II was practically global. The same applies to the number of soldiers directly involved in the fighting: thousands, not millions.

The drones, missiles and other weapons being used by the Israelis and Hamas fighters are far more sophisticated than those available to either side in World War II. And the Israeli Iron Dome air defense would have been the envy of the soldiers of yesteryear. And, althought the Israelis do not advertise this fact, they possess nuclear weapons and the means to launch them.

There are no Hamas equivalents of “Lord Haw-Haw,” “Axis Sally” or “Tokyo Rose” employed to weaken Israeli morale. This is not because Hamas lacks the means, such as social media, to convey such messages. Rather, it is because the organization leaders regard their members as engaged in a holy war not only with Israelis, but with altogether. So, there is no point in surrendering. Hamas does not recognize any distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Israeli civilians, following the October 7, 2023 attacks, are not susceptible to such an appeal.

Aside from the scale and scope of the conflict, a crucial distinction between the two wars is the reactions of their audiences. With the possible exceptions of pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, his Indian followers and a few Axis wartime collaborators, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan enjoyed little popular support around the world.

The opposite is true for Hamas. Almost the entire ummah — the worldwide community of Muslim believers — and their religious and political leaders have for Hamas and its holy war with Israel. Strengthening their support is the fact that Israel controls Jerusalem, the location of many Muslim holy sites.

During World War II, most print journalists and radio reporters behaved as cheerleaders for the Allies’ cause. In the current conflict, with the technologies of mass communication being more varied and vastly superior, many journalists and influential people active in the West are now cheerleaders for Hamas. After briefly expressing sympathy for the Israelis murdered or kidnapped by Hamas fighters on October 7, major news outlets in Britain, the US and elsewhere reacted with thinly disguised hostility once the Israeli Air Force began bombarding Gaza. This malice was not confined to the civilian casualties involved, but to the existence of Israel itself. Antisemitism loomed large in both conflicts.

Antisemitism persists

One similarity between then and now, sadly, is antisemitism.

Hatred of Jews had no meaning in the war on Japan, but in the European conflict, it certainly did. In addition to the destruction of around two-thirds of the European Jewish community by the Nazis and their collaborators across Europe, the Western Allies were hardly immune to Jew-hatred. In Britain, foreign office officials repeatedly how tired they were of listening to the “wailing Jew��” that sought their assistance.

Throughout World War II, the Royal Navy His Majesty’s Government’s White Paper of 1939. This seriously restricted Jewish emigration to Palestine. In other words, just as many European Jews were fleeing the Nazis, the British blocked the ports and sealed the exits.

The situation in the US was different. Figures in the Roosevelt Administration voiced sympathy for the ordeal of European Jews. But for the most part, their hands were tied. Surveys of US public opinion reflected widespread antisemitism. In view of this outlook, Congress was to modify immigration laws to permit more European refugees to enter the country. State Department officers controlling entry also did their best to deny visas to European Jews.

In the current Israel–Hamas war, the Jewish state has few friends aside from political leaders in the US and Britain. Even in these two countries, the present conflict has unleashed a wave of widespread antisemitism among professors, university students and Internet users that has not been seen in decades.

Animosity towards Jews appears to be a latent phenomenon throughout the Western world , needing only a stimulus to set it off, e.g.,�� the Israeli response to October 7. Among Muslims, on the other hand, antisemitism appears to be something visible and constant, reflected by the fact that Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to be throughout the Middle East.

What lessons should Israeli Jews and Westerners learn from these two wars? The obvious answers that come to mind are these: When the chips are down, you are on your own. And if you wish to survive, you had better learn to fight.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About Allied Air Operations in World War II appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Yet, to date, these fascist movements in the Arab world have not been compared to fascist movements in Europe. Some were heavily influenced by Europe’s fascism. In the case of the Lebanese and Spanish Phalangism, for instance, they both strongly emphasized religious identity to push their fascist agendas.

Addressing this gap in the literature, this article explores the Lebanese “Phalanges,” known as ����-��������’i�� in Arabic, a paramilitary group which presented itself as but actually concerned itself with the national interests of Lebanon.

How the Phalanges drew inspiration from European Fascism

While some researchers have focused on the Lebanese Phalangesin the , no research has compared them to fascism in Europe. This is striking because they were inspired by the German Nazi regime, the in Czechoslovakia and, as the name implies, the Spanish Falange. Modeling them after these movements, Pierre Gemayel created the Lebanese Phalanges in 1936.��

The Lebanese Phalanges shared several characteristics with European fascist movements at the time, such as upholding the importance of family and home and identifying an “other” to blame while picturing a glorious imaginary past.

Gemayel visited Berlin during the 1936 Olympic Games. He was greatly attracted to Nazism and envisaged a Lebanon that would take after the :

I was the captain of the Lebanese football team and the president of the Lebanese Football Federation. We went to the Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin. And I saw then this discipline and order. And I said to myself: “Why can’t we do the same thing in Lebanon?” So when we came back to Lebanon, we created this youth movement. When I was in Berlin then, Nazism did not have the reputation which it has now. Nazism? In every system in the world, you can find something good. But Nazism was not Nazism at all. The word came afterwards. In their system, I saw discipline. And we in the Middle East, we need discipline more than anythingelse.

During his trip, Gemayel also visited several other European countries. In each of these countries, he made connections with their radical youth movements, studying their structure and observing them closely.

The Lebanese Phalanges

The Lebanese “Phalange��” were founded as a Christian “democratic” political organization in the 1930s that aimed to create a Westernized. The organization’s leaders were young, middle-class Christians with connections to France, which at the time ran the League of Nations Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. In spite of the movement being officially secular, it was supported mainly by the Maronite Catholics, who often saw the Phalanges as the political expression of their Christian faith. The Maronites trace their origins to St. Maron (Arabic: Mārūn), a Syrian hermit of the late 4th and early 5th.

In line with fascist ideology, the movement upholds the importance of family and home with the “God, country, and family.” Their flag, which is also their logo, shows the cedar tree, which is often a trademark of Lebanon and “Lebaneseness.”��

It is important to point out here that the Maronites, unlike some European fascists, did not see the Phalanges as a for their religion. The Phalanges connected fascist aspirations with religion.

The Lebanese Phalanges were also founded as a reaction to Muslim irredentist demands and to the growing strength of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, which advocated for the absorption of Lebanon into a Greater Syria. The latter was a secret society that from a few students to about 1,000 members by 1935. In the 1930s the party into Syria, Transjordan, and Palestine.

For Lebanon, this era, 1936–1946, falls within the French mandate of the country. Lebanon gained its independence in 1943, and the French left the country in 1946. Also, 1945 was the end of WWII; in that same year, the Lebanese Phalanges put members but failed to win any seats until 1958.��

The Spanish connection

The founders of the Phalanges chose the name, meaning “phalanx,” because they wanted it to be a semi-military group to instill discipline and organization in the Lebanese. Spanish political leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera had named his party the Falange Española for similar reasons. This kind of concentration on youth was common in European fascism, particularly Nazism and Italian Fascism. Thus, most Lebanese Phalanges supporters at the time were the youth, particularly students and recent graduates. They stormed the streets of Beirut, chanting for Lebanese independence while asserting the country’s unique non-Arab identity.��

Similar to their Spanish Falange, the Lebanese Phalanges adopted a nostalgic about “the return to empire.” For these Lebanese, this meant a future where the Phoenician legacy in Lebanon would once again take its place among the world’s nations while placing Christianity at its center.

In Spain, Falangism also placed a strong emphasis on Catholic religious identity, though it held some secular views on the Church’s direct influence in society, such as believing that the state should have supreme over the nation.��

The Spanish movement gained importance from 1936 onwards, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War between right-wing nationalist rebels and supporters of the left-wing Second Spanish Republic. The Falange enjoyed an enormous influx of membership from frightened and disillusioned middle-class people to anti-republican militants. 

By the beginning of, it had several hundred thousand affiliates. General Francisco Franco, leader of the nationalist cause, weakened the movement’s original national-syndicalist ideology and made the Falange the official state party with a nominal membership of 900,000 in a country of. They provided the largest organized political following fully committed to the regime, and Franco found them indispensable. Franco was a Spanish military general who led the nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator.

Spanish Falangism promoted the revival and development of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish Falange and its affiliates in Hispanic states across the world promoted a form of pan-Hispanism which they described with the term Hispanidad. This advocated both a cultural and economic union of Hispanic societies around the world.

In fact, the Falange even produced maps that included Portugal as a province of Spain, especially during its early years of existence. After the Spanish Civil War, some radical members of the Spanish Falange called for reunification with Portugal and the annexation of former Spanish territories in the French Pyrenees. It has sought to unite ethnically Hispanic peoples, with proposals to create a commonwealth or federation of Spanish-speaking states headed by Spain.

Similarly, the Lebanese Phalanges believe the Phoenicians were the original residents of the Mediterranean coast. The Lebanese Phalanges imagined a glorious past, combining stories of a mythical golden age with ancestral legends and national��

The Phalanges’ leaders often used Phoenician phraseology to express the non-Arab identity of Lebanon, for instance, “Lebanon is not Phoenician […] it is Phoenician, however, in culture and ethos, bequeathed to the modern Lebanese by their forefathers.” In this way, the Phalanges saw themselves as protectors of the Lebanese nation and carriers of Western influence against Arabs.��

Although more work is needed on both movements’ ideological placement, this preliminary treatment should make clear how the Phalanges of Lebanon drew from the nationalist ideologies of their European counterparts.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Lebanese Phalanges in the Interwar Era appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Deflation is worse now than it was during China’s COVID slump. From 2020 to 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping attempted to stop the spread of the virus by instituting extreme lockdown measures across the country, which became known as his infamous zero-COVID Policy. Predictably, this brought the Chinese economy to a standstill. Following nationwide protests in November 2022, Xi lifted the policy. Yet, a year later, consumer demand has not rebounded. China is still stuck in the doldrums. Beijing policymakers have set a growth target of 5%, the lowest in decades. Even then, Chinese bureaucrats, notorious for cooking the books, cannot meet this low target.

China is in a very risky situation. Systemic weaknesses make the world’s second-largest economy surprisingly brittle. Unlike Europe or even the US, supposedly socialist China has almost no safety net for retirees. And, after four decades of the one-child policy, older Chinese cannot fall back on their few children to support them, either. They have to rely on their personal savings in order to survive.

In Western economies, people put their retirement funds in a mix of stocks and bonds. These provide a diversified and (usually) reliable return. But China’s financial sector is not nearly as sophisticated. The country lacks a well-developed stock market for private investors to invest. So, 60-70% of household savings are tied up in real estate. And it is the real estate industry that is in the most trouble.

Property prices are plummeting. Developers are finding themselves with properties on their hands that no one will lease or buy. Chinese cities are full of apartment and office buildings with no occupants. Developers cannot make the money back on their investments and therefore cannot pay back their creditors. In 2021, China’s second-largest property developer Evergrande Group defaulted. In 2023, China’s largest developer Country Garden defaulted, too. Dozens of other firms are teetering on the brink of collapse. If the real estate industry crashes, China’s population of over 250 million people over 60 will see their savings vanish into thin air.

Banks are in trouble, too. As real estate firms default on the debt they owe, their creditors, i.e. banks, have to write off huge losses. Defaults by these firms could make the banks insolvent as well. If this contagion spreads throughout the Chinese banking system, the workshop of the world may descend into a recession of titanic proportions.

Xi is taking the ship down

How did China’s economy get so bad?

Zero-COVID took a huge bite. But other forces are afoot. The US is turning increasingly protectionist, unwilling to have its domestic industry compete with China’s low, low prices. As China undergoes deflation, those prices will only get lower and calls for protection stronger. Both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden hiked tariffs and sanctions on China.

Historically, protectionism has done wonders for the US. In the 19th century, the US used tariffs to protect its markets from cheap manufactured goods coming out of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Instead of becoming a source of raw materials and a market for British goods, the US fostered its own industrial revolution that made it the most prosperous country on the planet. Now, the US is developing a domestic microprocessor industry and no longer wants to rely on imports.

Other countries, too, have cut down on imports from China. “Reshoring,” “nearshoring” and “friendshoring” are the words of the day. Democracies would rather buy from each other than rely on an authoritarian China that uses economic leverage against them. This means the money that used to pay Chinese labor is now going to Mexicans, Indians and Poles.

While overseas changes are a big factor, the fundamental causes of China’s slowdown are internal. For one thing, China is following a pattern that all growing economies go through. Thanks to the biggest and fastest industrialization in history, China made huge profits selling goods at prices that developed countries, with much higher wages and costs, couldn’t match. Now, China’s population is wealthier and demands higher wages. This means that China has trouble competing with other developing nations, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh. Both can underprice China. In transitioning to more profitable high-tech goods, China faces stiff competition from developed economies like the US, Germany and South Korea. China is now very firmly stuck in the “middle income trap” and there is no easy way out of it.

China is also facing other unique problems. Typically, a nation first becomes wealthy, and then its wealthier citizens have fewer children. But China is facing a demographic bust caused by its now-abandoned one-child policy. The Chinese have gotten old before they’ve gotten rich. With fewer young workers, China needs to squeeze more productivity out of each worker to keep growing. Meanwhile, they are increasingly burdened with supporting their elders. That is an impossible task.

A pragmatic administration could make the transition less painful. “Demography is destiny,” goes the adage there is likely no stopping China’s relative economic decline. However, this decline does not have to turn into a crash. Unfortunately, China is no longer ruled by a pragmatis like the legendary Deng Xiaoping but by an ideological Xi.

Like Mao Zedong, Communist China’s founder and dictator, Xi has tightened state control over all aspects of Chinese life. This includes the economy, reversing Deng’s measures. Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was one of Mao’s confidants. Zhongxun later fell victim to Mao’s purges and was thrown in prison. Instead of souring on Mao, Xi seems to have doubled down on Maoism, striving to be even more faithful to this ideology than his father.

Every company has a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on its board as an “observer.” This has a chilling effect at every level. Entrepreneurs now have to keep their heads down, fearing retaliation if they question the party line. They risk getting their stocks delisted from exchanges and even disappear. The Alibaba CEO Jack Ma vanished for a bit after criticizing the CCP. Such a climate of fear hamstrings business leaders’ ability to give feedback to the government and warn them of potential problems.

Poor communication and misallocation of resources now characterize the Chinese economy. In a market economy like the US, nine million financial service employees are at work ensuring that capital is allocated to productive projects and not spent on wasteful ones. But China has an undeveloped financial sector. Instead of banks, investment firms and entrepreneurs decide where to invest. Behind the scenes, party capos in each province call the shots. They’re incentivized to boost numbers artificially to meet the central government’s growth targets. This creates system-wide misallocations of capital. Wanting to impress the bosses in Beijing, regional governors have massively over-invested in real estate, building shiny new cities with no one to work in them.

On top of this, the Chinese government has discouraged domestic consumption. With falling foreign demand, China could have turned to domestic demand to drive growth. But instead, it has instead encouraged households to save. Xi has resisted calls for boosting domestic consumption, perhaps for ideological reasons. He may simply see consumption as decadent and capitalist. Xi could still correct his course but he seems disinclined to do so.

In this way, Xi resembles the celebrated English writer Samuel Johnson. This towering literary genius composed the first English dictionary and had a great appetite for life. As he lay dying in 1784, he wanted bloodletting treatment, which was then prevailing medical wisdom. His doctors prudently refused. But Johnson snatched a knife from them, stabbing himself as he cried, “I want life, I want life.” Like the great Englishman, Xi is trying to save the economy even as he stabs it incessantly.

China’s economic problems are deep but not insurmountable. Here, the great man theory of history becomes relevant. If someone like Deng had won the struggle for power in the 2010s, things could have been very different. Instead, China has got another Mao at the helm and is heading over a cliff.

What does this mean for the rest of us?

If China goes down, it’ll take a lot of other economies along with it. Too many economies import from the Middle Kingdom and too many export to it. Even without a crash, China’s current deflation will cause damage. It is bad news for Germany and France who will suffer from lower Chinese demand.

Unlike the UK, which makes a lot of money through financial services, Germany is a manufacturing-based economy. The country’s second-largest company is Siemens, which makes machines for manufacturers. As the workshop of the world, China buys a lot of these machines. 51�Թ�’s Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh learned this first-hand when he first visited China in 2005. He found Chinese hotels to be full of Germans selling their wares to factory owners.

In a nutshell, Germany is dependent on the Chinese market. When China sneezes, Germany catches a cold.It is for this reason German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew all the way to Beijing and returned without even spending the night thanks to Xi’s ridiculously rigid zero-COVID policy. This trip made plain what everyone knew: German prosperity is highly dependent on Chinese demand.

Related Reading

Is the German Economy Now Destined to Decline?

The French depend on China too. They sell luxury goods to China’s growing bourgeoisie. Young Chinese have embraced both Christianity and Christian Dior with equal fervor. With the Chinese feeling less wealthy, Christian Dior will not be able to sell them as many perfumes and bags as before. Luxury goods are the first consumption item to be axed in a recession.

Unlike Europe, the US relies less on exports and makes goods mostly for domestic demand. Still some companies will feel the pinch. A slowing Chinese economy means Boeing will sell fewer planes in China.

To respond to falling demand, China might respond with another stimulus. This time, it may not work as well. A slowdown might lead to China dumping even more goods on the global market at rock-bottom prices. Don’t be surprised to see other nations raise anti-dumping duties in response.

The slowdown is causing a cash crunch for China. Now, Beijing will curb spending on its Belt and Road Initiative and other ambitious projects from Latin America to Africa to Asia. These economies will feel the pain as Chinese capital dries up even as exports to China go down as well.

For now, China is continuing its astounding development into a great power despite all of its problems. But it is now more brittle both as an economy and as a political system. The CCP has neither democratic nor ideological legitimacy. The CCP’s claim to legitimacy rests on its ability to deliver growth. With the economy slowing, the Xi-led CCP increasingly relies on nationalism to command blind obedience. This has made China aggressive on its borders and the adjoining seas. Beijing has exacerbated historical grudges with Taiwan, Japan, India and the nations of Southeast Asia. The CCP has also stepped up military parades, a common tactic of fascists and communists. Only the North Koreans rival the Chinese in their love of tank-filled parades and goose-stepping soldiers.

So, China will be both defensive and aggressive at the same time for the foreseeable future. The risk of conflict is now greater everywhere. All it takes is one radicalized young officer with an itchy trigger finger to  start a war in the Himalayas. After all, the Chinese, remember that Indian troops under Lord Elgin’s command destroyed the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.

Nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. As it rears its ugly head in East Asia, there is little in the way of good news to end this piece. The future looks bleak.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: China’s Worsening Deflation Now Spells Big Trouble appeared first on 51�Թ�.

McDonough’s book describes the fall of democracy in one of the most sophisticated societies in the world and its replacement by a violently authoritarian regime built around one man, Adolf Hitler.

Hitler said he intended to come to power by legal means, but he stated openly, before he came to power, that he would not shrink from the use of illegal methods to hold onto power. “When our party emerges victorious by legal means,” he said, “a new Supreme Court will replace this one, and the criminals of November 1918 will find their reward. Then heads will roll.”

This language is not dissimilar to the “” being promised now by Donald Trump.

How Hitler got the German people to give up democracy

The “criminals of November 1918” Hitler referred to were the democratically elected German politicians who signed the Treaty of Versailles, ending the state of war that had existed between Germany and the Allies.

A completely unrealistic view of the balance of power obtaining in November 1918 was lodged in German public opinion. Germany had by then been comprehensively defeated militarily and economically. But the High Command, led by Field Marshalls Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, persuaded the public that it was the politicians who wanted to give up and that the soldiers were able and willing to continue.

The second part was simply not true. German military capacity was exhausted.

It would have been better if the allies had insisted on unconditional surrender and full occupation as in 1945.

The interwar democratic politicians in Germany were talented leaders who, in other circumstances, could have been very successful. Chancellor Gustav Stresemann and Finance Minster Matthias Erzberger stood out. They made improvements in unemployment insurance. But reparations to the Allies heavily burdened the budget. Paralysis in parliament and hate-filled rhetoric meant that the president had to pass key legislation by decree.

It is not impossible that similar paralysis might evolve from the divisive debates that we will soon face over the related costs of aging societies: pension inequalities, immigration, healthcare costs, etc.

In 1933, the Nazis came to power and soon overthrew democracy. Hitler became chancellor with the aid of other authoritarian-inclined political parties. These other parties were closely associated with the army and/or were highly nationalistic. Alfred Hugenberg and Franz von Papen were principal leaders of this group. They thought they could control Hitler. So too did Hindenburg, who had become president.

When a lone arsonist burned the Reichstag in 1933, Hitler seized the moment. He blamed the Communists and persuaded Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree. The decree suspended civil liberties, effectively abolishing the last remnants of German democracy.

Joseph Goebbels, �ᾱ�ٱ����’s propaganda master, had created a public mood that would accept this. He used a technique that we should watch out for today among the arsonist far right in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Goebbels’s technique was to find something that people already hated, and encourage them to hate it even more. The “big lie” is a variant of this technique. It played to people’s emotions, rather than to their reason.

�ᾱ�ٱ����’s foreign policy aspirations

One other thing that interested me in McDonough’s book was the long-term foreign policy that Hitler had prepared as a Second Book (Zweites Buch) in the summer of 1928. This sequel to Mein Kampf was not published in �ᾱ�ٱ����’s lifetime, and it did not appear in English until 1961.

One wonders if Vladimir Putin has a “second essay,” a sequel to the long historical he published on the eve of his so far unsuccessful invasion of Ukraine.

Putin could mount no Blitzkrieg, but his intentions are no less malign than �ᾱ�ٱ����’s.

�ᾱ�ٱ����’s Zweites Buch laid out a four-stage process. Stage One envisaged massive German rearmament, the revision of the Versailles Treaty and the formation of military alliances with the UK and Mussolini. Stage Two envisaged German wars against France, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Stage Three would consist of the destruction of the Soviet Union. Stage Four was a planned war against the United States.

Hitler saw the UK as a natural ally of Germany. He thought the English and the Germans were racially close, as did many English people at the time. But a skeptical democracy was too well implanted in Britain for an alliance with a loud-mouthed German dictator ever to have taken off. Yet Hitler continued to dream of an alliance with the UK even after the war had started.

A military alliance with Italy in the 1930s would have been a liability for Germany. This was demonstrated when the war actually started and Germany had to rescue Italy many times. The reasons for the degree of Italian military weakness are hard to understand.

We know, with hindsight, that important parts of �ᾱ�ٱ����’s plan did not work out. But the fact that a relatively unsuccessful opposition politician, as Hitler was in 1928, could think in such ambitious terms is a warning from history.

The 1930s was a dark decade for Europe. I fear we are entering a similarly dark decade now. We need to study what happened in the 1930s if we are to avoid the mistakes made then.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post An Informative Book Tells How Hitler Seduced a Democracy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This widely accepted standard is the of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (UNCSR) and the international legal system human migration. The government so blatantly broke this agreement that the Court felt compelled to state so. The UK government has indicated that it will merely ��ɲ��Ի岹’s as a safe third country. Additionally, it will withdraw from several international agreements that require it to uphold the principle. This will let it ignore the law and its bothersome requirements.

The UK’s externalization of asylum

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may have made these as a political ploy ahead of the country’s next election. After all, immigration control has been one of the most contentious political issues of our day, if not the most. As an electoral , it has successfully fanned xenophobic while offering no substantive answers to the migration problems in the UK’s asylum .

Some could argue that this kind of deliberate illegality is nothing new. Liberal-democratic constitutional governments have long been known for their flaws. These include extreme , breaking , weaponizing ideals and migrants’ standards — the same ones they are obligated to uphold. This may occur visibly or more covertly. It has mainly been the case when they deal with people who, in their view, belong beyond the purview of their legal frameworks.

When we take a broader view of the UK situation, we see that the asylum and immigration results from more extensive issues. These may also be seen in the EU’s with , and . Further, the issues appear in the EU’s attempts to distance itself from the of human rights, drownings and other that occur within its borders.

After the Supreme Court rejected the , Suella Braverman, the sacked home secretary, increased the pressure on Sunak to disregard human rights legislation. Recognizing that there is little hope of the boats within the current legal framework, Braverman has asked for revisions to her own Illegal Migration Act to resuscitate the Rwanda deportation system. Braverman’s are not limited to the UK; they are prevalent throughout Europe, Oceania and the Americas.

, a former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, highlighted the broader threat such politics pose to refugee protection. Refugee protection is a global concern and a common trust. It means that it is a shared , not an individual one. Unless it is shouldered widely, it may be borne by none as a normative .

Until recently, the of these liberal-democratic states was accompanied by a persistent (though flimsy) conviction that the law’s constraining force was still necessary. The law has always been put to the test, twisted and molded, and its principles have been stretched, distorted and abused. But there was still an underlying belief in the liberal legal that the law’s prohibitions and authorizations would matter. They would play a crucial role in how we treat others and ourselves. 

To guarantee states’ commitment to some hard-won European refugee protection , this role was used for executing governmental authority and as an instrument for setting its lawful boundaries. In my view, some of the democratically elected political leaders, as well as the UK’s public and their electors, have lost this dual of the law’s purpose. Rather than being seen as an essential component of effective governance, the law’s regulating and restraining role seems increasingly to be a barrier and to it. This is especially true in immigration control, where legislative on the government’s authority are being violated or legislated over.

Sunak is, in fact, in excellent company. The Italian government’s has likewise demonstrated a great deal of passion for the boundaries of the law, and it reacts angrily to courts’ to enforce them. To some extent, the EU has also started to play the same game. The regulatory power of the law is diminished each time enduring legal precepts are codified into new procedures and reception .

Good governance vs. immigration control

This rejection of the law as a tool of authority, limiting force and regulatory ideal seems to stem partly from the of good government being established within the of immigration control. A liberal constitutional prohibits good government from being defined by convenience or efficiency, nor can it include any governmental goal that most people find acceptable. In the age of globalization, liberal constitutional democracy has been under attack from the inside. The of illiberalism, populism and authoritarianism have attacked it further. We demand that normative standards of freedom, and human constrain the goals and actions of the government. That is the yardstick by which we judge, or ought to consider, the goodness of each government action and its underlying goal.

It is worth emphasizing that we did not choose these principles randomly. Despite potential hypocrisy in liberal legal and their problematic application, we deliberately incorporated these principles into our constitutions. We have seen firsthand the devastation that results from simultaneously deregulating political power and concentrating it in the hands of a minority.

For immigration control, however, good governance is defined in a way that denies the cultural, ethnic and religious and that characterize our political communities. Governments like the UK’s even view that as a threat. The pursuit of universal and human is no longer what good governance means in this regard. Instead, the purpose of government is to serve “u��” at all costs. It makes no difference whether this cost comes in the form of invaluable human lives lost or a more intangible cost to the values by which we live — this is ultimately the price we must pay to protect what is right, and “right” is now what benefits us rather than the ethereal concepts of equal human .

This form of ethnonationalist has probably never wholly vanished from the political and judicial following World War II. Instead, it has consistently existed in the background, patiently awaiting an opportunity to resurface in the European shared political since the first European migration was heralded. 

The fallacy of Anglo-American human rights principles

Since then, ethnonationalism has undoubtedly grown in visibility, audacity and boldness in the demands it makes of the government. Along with it, we have witnessed the rise of a new kind of deliberate , a rejection of the law, which is viewed as both a regulatory ideal and a of political power. This logic leads to inhumanity and human , as seen in the recently revealed immigration by former US President Donald Trump. His commitment to resurrecting and extending programs like , , , and enormous mass is consistent with his criticism of the law as a restraint on governmental power.

Sadly, Germany has also shown itself to be to the perils of similar reasoning. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the nation should finally stand firm in deportation — that Germany being tough does not make it heartless. Scholz would do well to embrace the law as a restricting factor and a tool for , even if it happens to forbid the exact toughness he aims to impose. This would prevent inhumanity from becoming the pattern for �ұ�������Բ�’s immigration .

Will the Rwandan deal be stopped?

The UK Supreme Court has its own government’s “cash for human��” agreement with Rwanda to be highly unethical and illegal. The continuous attempts to externalize asylum and indefinitely detain asylum seekers are violations of non-refoulement and the UNCSR. Thousands of torture survivors are stuck in the massive asylum backlog, unable to reconstruct their lives or recuperate. The UK government should concentrate on eliminating this backlog before enacting cruel policies that violate their moral and legal obligations. 

The agreement was fierce and misguided, especially because Rwanda has a history of grave human rights abuses. These include torture, arbitrary incarceration and the suppression of free speech. The arrangement with Rwanda and the Illegal Migration Act ought to be scrapped by the new home secretary, James Cleverly. Only then will decency prevail.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The UK’s Ruthless Immigration Compromise Means Refoulement in Rwanda appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It’s the sixth time that the Central European nation has grabbed the top spot in the eight years the rankings have been around, including last year.

“Switzerland has been a perennial and a winner in this particular assessment,” Wharton marketing professor , who helped create the rankings, told Wharton Business Daily. “They are economically stable, they’ve got great education, and it’s one of the top countries people say they would like to live in.”

Canada comes in as a close second, moving up from third place last year. Sweden, Australia and the United States round out the top five, respectively. Despite the high marks of these countries, it’s hard to beat Switzerland, which also landed perfect scores for being “open for busines��” and offering “a comfortable retirement.”

“Switzerland is very high in terms of quality of life and entrepreneurship. It’s just a really stable and safe country,” Reibstein said.

The professor produces the rankings in partnership with U.S. News & World Report and WPP, a global marketing and communications services company. The 2023 list measures perceptions about 87 nations chosen because they contribute most to the world’s GDP. More than 17,000 people around the world were asked to evaluate the countries based on 73 attributes ranging from political stability to racial equity to health consciousness. One third of the survey respondents were business leaders, one third were college-educated individuals who were middle class or higher and one-third were from the general population.

More than just interesting trivia, the list has become a sort of competition for many countries because it relies on scientific data analysis. Reibstein said he’s frequently contacted by country representatives who ask what their nations can do to improve their overall rank.

“This has an impact on tourism, on foreign direct investment and on foreign trade,” said Reibstein. “Those are the three major components of the GDP of a country, and these factors are indicative of how much people are willing to visit a country or how much they are willing to do business with a country.”

The nations of North America

The United States dropped from fourth to fifth place this year and has been hovering around the same spot since the rankings began in 2016. The exception was its of eighth place in 2018. Reibstein attributed that slide to fallout from the contentious presidential election of Donald Trump, which changed global perceptions about the US.

This year, the US hit the highest marks for agility, entrepreneurship and power, but it ranked 23rd for quality of life and a shockingly low 59th for being open for business. “That’s primarily based on the cost of labor,” Reibstein said. “People don’t want to move their manufacturing to the United States because the cost of labor is really high.”

Canada fared much better on those sub-rankings and achieved an overall score of 99.3, which is very close to Switzerland’s perfect 100. “Canada is No. 2 for totally different reasons than the United States,” Reibstein said. “They’re perceived to have a great quality of life and also a very strong social purpose. Even though the countries are right next to each other and located in North America, they are perceived as very, very different, and what they bring to the table is obviously very different.”

Mexico ranked 33rd overall, the same as last year. While it received high numbers for adventure, heritage and cultural influence, it fared poorly along business rankings.

France, Germany and the UK

Reibstein noted two European nations that have been struggling to climb up the list: the and .

The UK ranked third when the list premiered, and it has steadily gone down. It’s No. 9 this year. Reibstein pinpointed the likely cause as the turmoil around Brexit and political leadership. The country is on its fourth prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in eight years.

France has fallen out of the top 10 for the first time. It landed this year at No. 12, behind . “France has really taken a dive downward,” Reibstein said. “Some of that is because of all the [political] strife that’s been happening in the country and terrorist acts that have happened there over the years.”

FO° Exclusive: Make Sense of the Hellish Rioting in France

The professor also noted which was No. 1 when the rankings premiered and has bounced around the top 10 since then. “Some of that has been changing leadership, some of that has been taking in [immigrants],” he said. “They’re down right now at No. 7, which is the lowest they have been in the eight years of the study.”

China’s power

slipped from No. 17 last year to No. 20 this year, but it ranked second behind the US in power, a reflection of its strong political and economic influence in the world.

“There’s probably no country for which there is greater divergence of perceptions than China,” Reibstein said. “There are some people that totally admire China, some that detest some of the practices of China and almost universally there’s fear of China. Part of that fear is the power that they have.”

FO° Exclusive: Distressed China Plays Nice With US for Now

But China’s massive economy is , with capital investments generating more debt than growth and a slump in the property sector. “I’m really interested to see what happens in next year’s rankings, when we see some of the downturn in the economy and how that affects things,” he said.

India Is a “Rising Star”

is inching up slowly, from No. 31 last year to No. 30 this year. Even though it hasn’t cracked the top 10, Reibstein said he’s keeping an eye on the country. India doesn’t score well on social purpose, but it ranked fifth as a mover.

“People believe India is a country to invest in, and a country they believe is going to be a rising star,” he said. “If you want to bet on development in any country, India is the one that a lot of people put their money behind.”

India Is Growing Confident in Its New Role as a Powerful Nation

The top 10 were, in order, , , , , the , , , , the and the

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Is The Best Country In The World? Here Are The Rankings appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It is not just the Russia-Ukraine War that is causing inflation anymore. The Financial Times that, even excluding food and energy, inflation remains at 5.5% with higher wage pressures making it sticky, if not structural. Inflation is affecting all industries. In construction, costs are now 38.5% higher than the pre-pandemic early 2020.

An economy in deep crisis

New orders for construction companies have dried up. Note that these orders are canaries in the coal mine and indicate confidence in the future. They are a forward-looking indicator for the economy. In August, the lack of new orders to 44.2%, up from 40.3% in July and a lot more than 13.8% in 2022.

�ұ�������Բ�’s prestigious ifo Institute us that cancellations in residential construction have reached a record high. In August, 20.7% of companies reported canceled projects. The building industry is in trouble. Rising interest rates, soaring costs and weaker demand threaten to force many firms out of business. Several real estate groups are filing for insolvency. Germany is facing a shortage of 700,000 homes, and its housing crisis is bound to intensify. Last year, 295,300 dwellings were built, well short of the 400,000 target, and this year the gap will be worse.

Industrial gloom is deepening too. The Federal Statistical Office’s September 7 press release that industrial production “was down 0.8% in July 2023 month on month after seasonal and calendar adjustment.” Carmaking has declined dramatically. Rising energy prices have hit German industry hard, and Europe’s manufacturing superpower has shrunk or stagnated for the past three quarters.

Even before September, stories about the German economy have been pessimistic. On July 24, Reuters that “activity in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, contracted in July.” Investor confidence has been plummeting and foreign direct investment in Germany . The OECD the German economy to stagnate and be the worst performer among the major economies in 2023.

In August, the ifo Business Climate Index for the fourth consecutive time. Sentiment among German managers darkened in manufacturing, services, trade and construction. The index is at its lowest level since August 2020, and companies are increasingly pessimistic about the months ahead. 

The Hamburg Commercial Bank’s Purchasing Managers’ Index () shows that German factory output has deteriorated at a rate not seen since 2009, the pandemic years excepted. Given that manufacturing accounts for a quarter of the German GDP, the fall in HCOB PMI is rather alarming. 

On July 13, Matthew Karnitschnig in Berlin published a titled “Rust on the Rhine” in Politico. He described how “German companies are ditching the fatherland.” In Karnitschnig’s words, “Confronted by a toxic cocktail of high energy costs, worker shortages and reams of red tape, many of �ұ�������Բ�’s biggest companies — from giants like Volkswagen and Siemens to a host of lesser-known, smaller ones — are experiencing a rude awakening and scrambling for greener pastures in North America and Asia.”

Politico has been grim about the German economy for a while. On November 10, 2022, Johanna Treeck “Mittel-kaput? German industry stares into the abyss,” asking whether the prolonged energy crisis was causing “the beginning of the end for German industry.”

Not only manufacturing but also services are now . High inflation and rising interest rates are taking a toll on consumer confidence. Unemployment is rising. Once, the land of the Mittelstand — the small- and medium-sized industry that arose in the late 19th century and long powered the economy — was a world leader in innovation. That is no longer the case. In the World Intellectual Property Organization’s “Global Innovation Index 2022,” Germany only eighth among world economies. Three European economies — Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands — are ranked above it.

In a nutshell, Germany is in big trouble. Why?

Russia–Ukraine war spikes inflation

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, German industry increasingly relied on cheap Russian gas. Nord Stream 1 was a lifeline for Germany and Nord Stream 2 was set to begin operations too. Then, the Russia–Ukraine War upended German industry. Post-Nazi peacenik Berlin had not expected war to break out in Europe again. Germany had not diversified its energy supplies and was caught with its pants down.

In fact, , �ұ�������Բ�’s former chancellor, became the head of the supervisory board of Rosneft, a Russian oil giant, and was nominated to join the board of Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas exporter, in his post-political career. Schröder had led the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party, and served as chancellor from 1998 to 2005. His reforms in the early 2000s transformed Germany from “the sick man of Europe” into the continent’s economic engine.

Schröder refused to support George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq War and, in the words of The Economist, was a “vocal advocate of Ostpolitik, a policy of rapprochement with the eastern bloc, including the then Soviet Union, conceived in the late 1960s by Willy Brandt, another SPD chancellor.” Many damn Schröder as Putin’s lobbyist today, and it is true that he has made big money from Russian energy giants. However, Schröder and many other Germans genuinely wanted to tie Russia into “an energy partnership of mutual dependence with Europe.”

All of that came to an end on February 24, 2022. Fuel, food, fertilizer and other commodity prices shot up. In particular, this supply-side shock caused inflation to skyrocket in Europe, especially because, unlike Canada and the US, the continent does not have substantial oil and gas reserves.

Germany suffered more than others even in Europe. Postwar Germany has been an idealistic nation where a strong environmentalist movement became politically powerful. After all, the Greens are currently in a coalition government with the SPD. In fact, Germany attempted a green energy transformation, the so-called . As the war was stopping the supply of Russian gas, Germany was switching off all nuclear power. 

Sadly for Germany, this move caused an energy scarcity. Germany simply did not produce enough renewable energy to take up the slack. This exacerbated the inflationary shock, and Germans ended up paying three times the international average for electricity.

Inflation increased input costs for manufacturing. In parallel, when central banks raised interest rates to combat inflation, the borrowing costs for industry shot up, as did the servicing costs on debt that was not locked in under old rates. For years, German industry had gotten used to low interest rates. Just like the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank had followed a policy of quantitative easing, which really means printing more money. This meant that the cost of capital was really cheap for companies. That cheap money era is over, and companies are scrambling to adjust to the new higher cost of capital.

Furthermore, the double whammy of increasing inflation and rising interest rates has hit consumer confidence hard. Even in the best of times, culturally Protestant Germans are savers, not spenders. Now, they are spending even less. They have more incentive to keep the money in the bank instead of spending it. Naturally, demand for goods and services is falling, and the economy is .

Chinese economy crashes, demand for German imports crashes too

In recent years, Germany has profited greatly from trade with China. After Deng Xiaoping opened up the economy in 1978, the Middle Kingdom grew spectacularly. Even as China became the factory of the world, Germany provided the machines that kept this factory running. Naturally, German exports to China boomed.

When this author traveled around the eastern seaboard of China in 2004, he met German businessmen everywhere. Almost all of them were exporting their goods to the Middle Kingdom. By the 20th century, China was �ұ�������Բ�’s most important trading partner. Bilateral trade volumes amounted to (€204 billion) in 2018.

On October 24, 2019, published a piece titled, “As China Sneezes, Will Germany Catch a Cold?” It posited that “China’s weakening domestic economy and the ongoing trade tensions simmering between Washington and Beijing” would take a toll on the German economy.

DHL’s piece turned out to be prescient. As the US–China trade war has heated up, Germany has found itself squeezed in the middle. Increasingly, China sees Germany as a US ally. So, Beijing has been German imports into China implicitly and explicitly. In the first four months of 2023, German exports fell by as compared to last year.

German ardor for China has cooled too. The Bundesbank, �ұ�������Բ�’s renowned central bank, has German companies to cut exposure to China, warning that “the country’s business model is in danger.” No fewer than 29% of German companies import essential materials and parts from China. Rising US–China geopolitical tensions could disrupt this trade, bringing the German economy to a grinding halt.

Earlier in July, �ұ�������Բ�’s 64-page “Strategy on China” attempted to chart a new policy towards the Middle Kingdom. It , “China has changed. As a result of this and China’s political decisions, we need to change our approach to China.” This document goes on to say, “China is �ұ�������Բ�’s largest single trading partner, but whereas China’s dependencies on Europe are constantly declining, �ұ�������Բ�’s dependencies on China have taken on greater significance in recent years.” The new German strategy deems China a “systemic” rival and “accepts competition with China.”

Yet it is not easy for the land of the Mittelstand to decouple from the Middle Kingdom. German industry is still expanding in China. In July, BASF on a polyethylene plant at its seventh site in Zhanjiang, China. Even as this German manufacturing giant is investing $10 billion (€9.4 billion) in China, it is 2,600 jobs and reducing production in Germany. A slowing Chinese economy has hurt BASF this year, with the company’s second-quarter net income to $533.38 million (€499 million) from $2.24 billion (€2.1 billion) in the same quarter a year earlier. When China sneezes, Germany indeed catches a cold. 

�ұ�������Բ�’s dependence on China made Scholz fly all the way from Berlin to Beijing on a on November 4, 2022. The chancellor took along a gaggle of German CEOs to meet President Xi Jinping and Chinese authorities. Scholz’s visit was the first by a G7 leader to China in three years, and the chancellor flew back without even staying the night. Unfortunately for Germany, this visit has not yielded much in the way of results, and its new China policy has undercut Scholz’s pilgrimage to Xi. The German economy now faces a China dilemma, and there are no easy choices ahead.

US protectionism hurts �ұ�������Բ�’s export-oriented economy

Since the 1980s, the champion of global free trade has suffered from deindustrialization. People in the rust belt are angry and hurt by the loss of manufacturing jobs. In part, this resentment fueled Donald Trump to the presidency. In office, Trump adopted protectionism as a means to revive American industry and repeatedly tariffs on German cars. During Trump’s time at the White House, trade ties between the US and the EU remained tense.

Joe Biden’s presidency was supposed to change that. Instead, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has upset America’s European allies. French President Emmanuel Macron the bugle against the IRA, arguing that Europe needed an urgent response amounting to a whopping 2% of the EU’s GDP. Like China, the US is now subsidizing critical sectors of its economy. After decades, the US now has a full-blown industrial policy that subsidizes semiconductors, green energy and other technologies of the future. Posh think tanks in Washington are now breathlessly trumpeting the idea of .

After China, Germany is the country most hurt by the Biden administration’s new industrial policy. It has made timid Berlin ally with flamboyant Paris in for a joint EU response to the IRA. The Europeans argue that US subsidies tied to locally produced goods are worth $207 billion. This disadvantages European companies, contravenes World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and further erodes the world trade order.

As a result of the new American industrial policy, German companies are finding it increasingly difficult to export to the US. Note that exports matter a great deal to Germany. They comprise of the GDP. In contrast, exports comprise only 10.9% of the US GDP. Last year, a German CEO and a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, complained bitterly to the author about American protectionism in two separate conversations. Both remarked that the US was kicking Germany when this loyal ally was not on its knees but on its back.

A key reason for German economic troubles is that the post-1991 order is now dead. The US championed free trade and globalization for the last three decades. After the initially painful adjustment after reunification, the German economy boomed. Fueled by cheap Russian energy, Germany became a manufacturing powerhouse and an exporting superpower. In 2012, the BBC “a country whose inhabitants work fewer hours than almost any others, whose workforce is not particularly productive and whose children spend less time at school than most of its neighbors.”

What a difference a decade makes. Today, Germany is once again “the sick man of Europe” and The Financial Times a German manufacturer complaining, “everything is tired here.” In this post-globalization world, reshoring, nearshoring and friendshoring are the new buzzwords in the US. Washington, the architect of free trade and globalization, is turning its back on those ideas. Germany, which profited immensely from that system, is struggling to adapt.

Germany has its own self-inflicted wounds too

Like India and France, Germany is infamous for its red tape. There are innumerable forms to fill and boxes to tick before starting and while running any business. Approvals take too long. Environmental, labor and governance standards are unrealistically high, making entrepreneurship and business activity in Germany notoriously difficult.

Unlike India and France, the German political leadership is more candid about its economic problems. In an uncharacteristically bold speech, the mild-mannered Scholz in the Bundestag, his intention to “shake off the mildew of bureaucracy, risk aversion and despondency that has settled on our country over years and decades.” The trick for Scholz is to emulate Schröder and implement far-reaching reforms.

Is the Dollar’s Top Dog Status Now About to End?

Unlike Schröder, Scholz does not command a majority in the Bundestag and is in charge of a fractious coalition, comprising the SPD, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats. This traffic light coalition named after the colors of the three parties —  red, green and yellow — has been plagued by infighting and has found it difficult to get anything done.

Meanwhile, Germany has many other problems that need to be addressed quickly. Manufacturers complain taxes and labor costs are too high. They are not only moving production to other EU members and Asia but also to the US and even the Brexit-afflicted UK. High taxation is also the reason talent hesitates from moving to Germany. In 2018, Deutsche Welle, �ұ�������Բ�’s reputable state-owned international broadcaster, that if “you’re single with no kids and thinking about working in Germany” then “your tax burden will be 15 percentage points higher than the average among rich-income countries.”

In part, labor costs are high because Germany faces an acute shortage of workers. In June, the Federal Labor Agency’s annual analysis that 200 out of about 1,200 professions surveyed had labor shortages in 2022, up from 148 in 2021. Germany is struggling to fill jobs “in nursing care, child care, the construction industry and automotive technology, along with truck drivers, architects, pharmacists and information technology specialists.” Improving labor immigration is high on the government’s agenda, but little progress has been made so far.

Germans work per year, the least in the OECD. In contrast, Americans work 1,811 hours annually. Managers complain of a decline in �ұ�������Բ�’s fabled work ethic. Many have confided to the author that the quality of candidates for �ұ�������Բ�’s impressive apprenticeship programs has fallen significantly from even a decade ago. The Financial Times has also similar complaints.

For decades, much of the world has admired Germany’s dual education system. It combines vocational training with apprenticeships. This has made German labor highly skilled and its industry competitive. Now, fewer people are enrolling in vocational training and apprenticeships. In 2022, 469,000 people apprenticeships, approximately 100,000 fewer than in 2011.

�ұ�������Բ�’s declining demography amplifies its labor shortages. As per the Federal Statistical Office, deaths births by 327,000 in 2022 and there were just 1.53 births per woman in 2020, well short of the replacement level fertility of 2.1 births per woman. This means that �ұ�������Բ�’s population is shrinking and it simply does not have enough people to work in the various sectors of its economy. In May, Deutsche Welle a story titled, “Germany’s labor crisis is an economic time bomb.” The government has admitted that it will lack seven million workers by 2035. 

FO° Exclusive: Germany in Spotlight as Russia-Ukraine War Intensifies

An aging population causes a rising pension burden as well potentially higher taxation on a shrinking labor force to support �ұ�������Բ�’s rather generous welfare state. This means that most skilled workers are likely to prefer to immigrate to countries like the US, Canada and Australia, which have the English language advantage as well.

51�Թ�’s economist author Alex Gloy also points out how Germany has missed the boat in software and digitalization. In an email, he said that “the only German software company to speak of is SAP, which was founded 1972. Germany has no social media company. The only dynamic sector is delivery startups. But you have 30 of them in Berlin, right next to each other. This makes absolutely no sense.”

�ұ�������Բ�’s weakness in the digital economy and digital infrastructure has made it rely on Huawei for 5G. That is an apple of discord with Uncle Sam, which wants Germany to use more expensive American infrastructure instead. The US has also pressured Germany to increase its defense expenditure for years. Germany finally agreed to do so in the light of the Russia-Ukraine War. Yet this increased expenditure will make the tax burden even heavier for Germans unless the government makes some cuts to its overly generous welfare measures.

The German economy needs to make major reforms and painful decisions. To steal a word from Scholz’s February 27, 2022 speech to the Bundestag, the economy faces a — a historic turning point — because business as usual in the post-2022 world simply will not suffice. Sadly, Scholz’s weak traffic light coalition has little appetite for tough decisions and the German economy faces a few painful years ahead.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is the German Economy Now Destined to Decline? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Part of �ұ�������Բ�’s social beating heart

Germany has over firefighters, a substantial portion of the nation’s citizens. Of these, over a million are volunteers, along with an additional 270,000 junior firefighters. Germany is unique in this regard; in few other European nations do volunteers provide such a great share of fire protection.

Fire control in Germany would fall apart without the volunteer work of firefighters. Their activities extend beyond providing vital fire safety. Volunteer fire departments are the social beating heart of the nation, driving community life, especially in rural areas. For example, they organize fairs and other recreational events. In Germany, where around  of the population older than 14 commits to volunteerism, volunteer fire departments are a nationwide pillar of civic engagement.

Due to their deep-rootedness in German society, zealous conservative actors have cast an eye on volunteer fire departments to penetrate into the center of society.  to the former president of the German Fire Brigades Association, Hartmut Ziebs, 10,000 extremists have infiltrated volunteer fire departments, and a 2021 on the threats to the constitution counted as many as 34,000.

A long list of far-right incidents

Inevitably, the list of extremist incidents in volunteer fire departments is long. This year, five firefighters in Leonberg, a town in �ұ�������Բ�’s southwest,  politically charged slogans over the fire truck’s loudspeakers. Berlin’s fire department discharged a former volunteer after he repeatedly spouted  slurs at fellow members. In 2021, in the wake of incidents of racism in the volunteer fire department of the northern German city of Bremen, an investigative  by the Bremen Higher Regional Court stated that racial slurs, down to the most extreme “are used at almost every station“ with varying frequency.

Earlier this year, extensive by the German magazine Stern revealed the magnitude of extremist infiltration in volunteer fire departments. Some firefighters perform the Nazi salute. Some use slurs targeting Middle Eastern people among colleagues. One police station in Cologne has the birthdays of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Eva Braun noted on the calendar. Stern’s research triggered a fierce backlash. The magazine received countless hateful letters and hostile comments on social networks. It proved that criticizing German volunteer fire departments is stirring up a hornet’s nest, hitting a sore spot of the country’s civic soul.

A thriving environment for the far-right

The overwhelming, and partly concerted, backlash is a glimpse into the organizational culture that attracts radical actors to fire departments. A tomboyish and comradely esprit de corps, clear hierarchy structures and authoritarian communication styles are compatible with right-wing extremist views of society. 

Equally enticing to these zealots is the demographic composition of firefighting units. According to the latest Volunteer  of 2019, less than 1% of fire department members were of immigrant origin. In light of �ұ�������Բ�’s population’s  share of people with an immigrant background at the time, this represents a glaring under-representation. Meager ethnic diversity is complemented by a low proportion of women in German fire departments, at just .

The unabating dominance of “ heterosexual men from the working class“ in fire departments is by no means a merely unmediated result of external factors; it also stems from an internal skepticism of change. Volunteer fire departments operate largely under the state’s radar, and measures that could help combat the lack of diversity, like complaints offices in the event of racist or sexist incidents, are rare. Hence, volunteer fire departments are fertile ground of influence with little supervision for these radicals.

Strategic advances from the AfD

Unsurprisingly, AfD has zeroed in on volunteer fire departments to gain political power. The strategy seems to have paid off: AfD recently reached a historic peak of  in opinion polls, only trailing the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).

As early as 2017, AfD formulated a strategy as to which lobbying in civic organizations “ important to anchor the AfD in the middle of society and gain access to expert knowledge. … AfD members must also be encouraged to participate in associations or to use their association membership discreetly but consciously for the AfD.“ In another internal strategic paper from 2019, the AfD explicitly classifies volunteer fire departments as nationwide organizations with strong membership bases, regarded as “ to the AfD.“ 

Complementing the strategic personnel infiltration of volunteer fire departments are legislative proposals from AfD intended to portray the party as their only true advocate. The AfD state associations of the eastern German states of Saxony and Thuringia, both electoral strongholds of the party, an increase in firefighters’ pensions: “As a sign of our recognition and gratitude for the fact that the women and men of the volunteer fire department have risked their health and their lives … we demand that the benefits from the fire department pension for those who work on a volunteer basis be increased.“

Not only are AfD’s advances appreciated by some members, but they are also reciprocated by fire departments at regional leadership levels. In September , the Thuringian Fire Brigades Association invited Björn Höcke, the AfD parliamentary group leader in the state parliament of Thuringia, to deliver the welcome address at their annual meeting. Höcke is considered the enfant terrible of AfD and the most prominent representative of the party’s far-right wing. Due to his ultra-nationalistic statements and use of Nazi vocabulary, he has been under by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution since the beginning of 2020.

Standing up for democracy

In December 2019, Hartmut Ziebs under ominous circumstances as president of the German Fire Brigades Association. Prior to his resignation, he publicly warned that fire departments were being infiltrated by the nationalist views of AfD. Zieb’s warning caused ripples in the departments, prompting both support and outrage. Although numerous members jumped to his side, Zieb received countless hate messages and death threats. His sparked a power struggle at the leadership level of the firefighters’ associations. “Intrigues and obstructions to [his] work“ led to his resignation, according to Ziebs: “I did not correctly assess that I might have had one or two people close to me who felt a certain affinity for the AfD.“

Radical infiltration attempts and incidents of racism have been known to German fire departments for decades. The internal diversity and anti-racism campaigns have fallen flat given lackluster public demarcations against the zealots from within, as Ziebs stresses: “I  like to see a sensitivity … for the dangers to our democracy.” He called for “fire department commanders to be assertive and always explicitly stand behind the constitution.”

Moreover, �ұ�������Բ�’s government has failed to grasp the mantle and take this danger more seriously. In a parliamentary question in 2021, the leftist party Die Linke enquired as to “ knowledge [the government has] of suspected cases of right-wing extremism among members of volunteer fire departments, professional fire departments, or plant fire departments.“ The government’s response was sobering, stating that, with two exceptions, it did not know of any further .

AfD’s intrusion into volunteer fire departments should warn �ұ�������Բ�’s other democratic parties in the Bundestag to pay more attention to civic organizations outside election campaigns. Civic engagement, whether in volunteer fire departments or elsewhere, contributes to a vibrant democracy. Conversely, neglecting civic organizations can turn them into darkrooms of extremist machinations.

History offers �ұ�������Բ�’s democratic parties a stark lesson. The infiltration of civic organizations by right-wing extremists was a precursor to the destabilization of Weimar democracy and the rise of totalitarianism.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post �ұ�������Բ�’s Firefighters Fail to Put Far-Right Infiltration Out appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A comprehensive on Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine War from the end of June this year showed that solidarity for Ukraine among Germans is steadfast. 42% supported maintaining the West’s military support for Ukraine. 30% called for increased military aid, while 23% preferred to see support scaled back.

Nonetheless, �ұ�������Բ�’s political fringes on both the left and right are attempting to disrupt this consensus by stirring fears of nuclear escalation and economic downturn. They latched onto the German government’s to deliver heavy weaponry, most notably Leopard 2 battle tanks. Moreover, they have managed to polarize public discourse with calls for peace talks that dictate terms to Ukraine and downplay Russian aggression.

The so-called “” by far-left politician Sahra Wagenknecht and feminist publicist Alice Schwarzer garnered the most . It demanded that the government “halt the escalation of arms deliveries and lead a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.” In February, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer spearheaded the “” protests in Berlin. Organizers that 50,000 people rallied. Attendees included members of the far-right. The protests were unsettlingly void of symbols of solidarity for Ukraine and made only lackluster attempts to distinguish themselves from right-wing and anti-Ukrainian messaging.

In January this year, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) a motion titled “Peace Initiative” to �ұ�������Բ�’s parliament, the Bundestag. The AfD’s honorary chairman, Alexander Gauland, called for peace talks and created doubts about his solidarity with Ukraine. “ one can win this war, and only if we finally accept that and work for a peaceful solution will peace have a chance,” he said.

These calls particularly resonate with voters in East Germany, where historically pro-Russian sentiment persists.

The fringes also attempted to build upon some showing that more than half of the population favored more substantial diplomatic efforts to resolve the war.

At first glance, the debates fueled by these initiatives are ubiquitous, drawing in opinions from across the population. Yet there is a major group missing. People with actual experience of war and migration hardly featured in public discourse, especially Syrians exiled from their country to Germany by a civil war that Russia exacerbated.

At the end of 2021, roughly  people from Syria resided in Germany, an enormous leap from 33,000 Syrians ten years earlier. In spite of this, the influence of Syrians in the debate has been imperceptible, save for at the very . Then, Syrian voices were present in about whether Ukrainian refugees were receiving preferential treatment compared to Middle Eastern and North African refugees. German media thus only reduced them to their status as refugees, meaningful only in terms of what they had experienced in Europe — and not what they had experienced in the country of their birth, in terms of war, freedom and peace.

Two young Syrian voices

So, what do Syrians in Germany think of their new home country’s struggle to find its role in the Ukraine war? What do they have to say about the Russian invasion, �ұ�������Բ�’s support for Ukraine and the calls of some Germans for peace talks?

I spoke to Montaser Alrasheed, age 29, and Taoufek Morad, age 25. Like many Syrians, they left war-torn Syria for Germany in 2015. Approaching a decade of life in Germany, they no longer see their future in Assad’s Syria and intend to build new lives in their new home country.

Fearing compulsory military service, Morad fled Syria’s so-called capital of the revolution, Homs, which was ravaged and reclaimed by Assad’s Syrian Arab Army in 2014. He has been making the most of his new-found opportunities in Germany. Along with his full-time job as a social worker, he volunteers on an international advisory board in his new hometown of Pforzheim in �ұ�������Բ�’s southwest, an organization that gives immigrants without German citizenship a political voice at the municipal level.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 left Morad speechless. Soon enough, the images of war and destruction — resembling those of his hometown — made him realize that Putin would “do the same thing in Ukraine that he has done and is doing in Syria.” Morad refers to Russia’s military intervention in Syria that started in September 2015 and killed at least civilians.

Alrasheed fled to Germany from Ar-Raqqa. This enabled him to continue his studies, which he had to interrupt because of the war. He is now studying civil and environmental engineering in Hanover. The first impressions of the war in Ukraine saddened and surprised him, as he, like so many, did not expect Putin to take such a political risk.

Lessons to learn from Syria’s civil war

Morad and Alrasheed understand why some Germans are speaking out for increased diplomatic efforts. They feel the same horror over recurring gruesome images and the number of victims caused by Russia’s aggression.

Yet Alrasheed opposes peace talks that include territorial concessions from Ukraine. “Occupation should not be a basis for a solution,” he told me. According to Morad, a diplomatic solution entailing a loss of Ukrainian territory should only be considered “if the people of Ukraine think it is right.” Likewise, he sees German arms deliveries as appropriate “as long as the Ukrainians want them.”

The arms deliveries to Ukraine remind Alrasheed of the complicated web of foreign interventions in the Syrian Civil War. He describes Ukraine as “a chessboard” of a proxy war against Russia that serves the various actors’ interests.

Alrasheed complements this sober view on foreign involvement in the Ukrainian war with a stark warning, also drawn from the Syrian Civil War: “If military support to Ukraine wanes, there is a risk of exposing Ukrainian civilians to revenge and despotism similar to Assad’s ruthlessness against his people.” to Human Rights Watch, the Syrian regime has been found responsible for 85 chemical weapon attacks during the Syrian Civil War. To this day, Assad arbitrarily and tortures Syrian citizens.

Both Morad and Alrasheed see Putin’s intervention in the Syrian Civil War, similar to Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia and Crimea, as a blueprint for the invasion of mainland Ukraine. “Syria served as a testing ground for Putin on warfare and how the international community responds to military intervention. The international community, by its silence or lack of consequences, sowed the seeds for the Ukrainian war”, Morad said.

Despite the West’s more unanimous and robust reaction to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Alrasheed fears that, like in Syria, “the population of Ukraine could be forgotten as soon as the nations involved no longer see their interests represented” and the political and economic costs for the support turn out to be too high.

Lack of representation and participation

The discourse surrounding the war in Ukraine lacks the valuable opinions and experiences like Alrasheed’s and Morad’s. Since , 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Germany due to flight and displacement, including 1.2 million between 2014 and 2021. In addition, 1.1 million Ukrainians immigrated between March 2022 and May 2023. Germany, as an (albeit reluctant) immigration society with a large share of people who fled their homelands, should do better to represent refugees in political discourses, regardless of their state of citizenship. 

The inadequate representation is merely a symptom of an underlying participation deficit. It shows migrants and refugees are reduced to passive spectators, even when the political debates touch upon their lives. They often find themselves in a political and participatory limbo due to insecure residence statuses or missing citizenship.

Voters increasingly see refugees as a burden on �ұ�������Բ�’s social fabric, which is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy when they consign refugees to political invisibility and deny them political participation. The preconceived notion of a belittled refugee who is to be grateful for the shelter received does not allow for dialogue and shared experiences.

Refugees’ opinions could be valuable and authentic additions to virulent polarized discourses. Yet, without German or EU member state citizenship,  for formal political participation are sparse. Municipal advisory boards and similar voluntary and informal participation structures cannot fully compensate for exclusion from political elections. Germany must face the reality of being an immigration society. Progressive steps, such as a municipal voting right for foreigners, are overdue to make migrants and refugees politically more visible.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post We Need Syrian Voices in Debates on the Ukraine War appeared first on 51�Թ�.

“All the elements were present on the spot for the outbreak of a conflict which might have precipitated the catastrophe,” one of those diplomats after the conclusion of the agreement. “We had populations inflamed to a high degree; we had extremists on both sides ready to work up and provoke incidents; we had considerable quantities of arms which were by no means confined to regularly organized forces. Therefore, it was essential that we should quickly reach a conclusion.”

The diplomat, of course, was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had just negotiated the Munich Agreement with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. In September 1938, Hitler had given Europe an end-of-month deadline to give Germany the Sudetenland, a section of Czechoslovakia where a large German minority lived. Otherwise, the German leader intended to seize the region by force.

Hitler that it would be the last territorial demand he would make of Europe.

In the brief speech he gave in front of 10 Downing Street, Chamberlain declared that the Munich Agreement was “peace for our time,” which for some reason has been repeatedly misquoted as “peace in our time.”

It wouldn’t be �ᾱ�ٱ����’s last diktat or his last territorial grab. The following September, after Germany invaded Poland, Chamberlain would reverse himself and declare war against �ᾱ�ٱ����’s regime.

In retrospect, it’s easy to criticize Chamberlain’s �Բ�ï�����é. Perhaps he wasn’t fully versed in �ᾱ�ٱ����’s appropriation of the concept of lebensraum (“living space”) to justify his desire to expand the national borders of Germany. Maybe he didn’t know that, in 1936, Hitler had of the “rich forest��” of Siberia and the “incalculable farmland��” of Ukraine.

But of a “peace for our time” in Ukraine by compromising with Russian President Vladimir Putin — effectively trading land that is not theirs for a peace that won’t endure — have a much harder time explaining away their �Բ�ï�����é. For one, they have to reckon with this earlier history of appeasement that holds lessons for all those who engage with authoritarian leaders with imperial ambitions.

These “peace advocate��” must also deliberately close their eyes and ears to Putin’s version of lebensraum, namely the “Russian world” that he routinely invokes to extend Moscow’s “protection” to Belarus, Ukraine and areas on the Russian border with significant Russian-speaking minorities.

These erstwhile lovers of diplomacy probably don’t know that the word mir in Russian means both “world” and “peace.” So, when Putin talks of this “Russian world,” he is also speaking of a Russian peace. Such a “peace” would preserve Russian territorial gains in Ukraine, grant amnesty to all Russians who have committed war crimes during this conflict and absolve Russia of its financial responsibility for damages incurred during the war. In other words, any such consolidation of the “Russian world” of Vladimir Putin requires a “Russian peace.”

Instead, peace activists should be clamoring for a “peace in their time,” namely a peace on Ukrainian terms. Ukraine, after all, is the victim in this conflict. It should ideally decide the timing and the parameters of any peace deal.

Fortunately, it now seems that the international community may be coming around to that position as well.

The meeting in Jeddah

In August, representatives from over 40 countries came to the Saudi city of to talk about peace in Ukraine.

Russia was not invited.

The snub was deliberate. The meeting was designed to build a peace plan around principles that Ukraine has put forward, especially the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory and the return of those lands to Ukrainian control.

Territorial integrity and the inviolability of sovereignty are bedrock principles in international law that inform the operating consensus of the United Nations. So, it’s really no surprise that the participants in the Jeddah meeting that these Ukrainian demands should be at the heart of any peace deal. Other issues, such as war crimes and compensation, remain controversial.

That so many countries showed up in Jeddah is already a step forward for Ukraine and the prospects for a “peace in their time.” The participants were not just the usual suspects who are already supplying Ukraine with arms. Many of the countries in the Global South who showed up had been hitherto reluctant to anger Russia, which is a source of arms shipments, grain and occasionally other products. But Russia’s and its deliberate targeting of Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, a war crime in and of itself, has been a step too far for many countries in the Global South who have come to depend on cheaper Ukrainian grain exports.

For the time being, countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil continue to insist that they are working with both sides. But the Jeddah meeting sends a signal to the Kremlin that it can no longer take for granted even the qualified support it has received from these powerful countries.

Ukraine that the Jeddah meeting will lead to two summits that will finalize a peace deal that could come with the imprimatur of the international community.

Putin cracks down (again)

Boris Kagarlitsky is the most prominent Russian leftist of his generation. In October 1990, during the waning days of the Soviet Union, I in Moscow about the challenges of creating a left party and the emergence of a “second dissidence” in response to the ruling elite and their economic programs. He was the most interesting commentator on the ultimately quixotic efforts to pull some version of democratic socialism out of the wreckage of Soviet communism.

Kagarlitsky is now sitting in jail, having been arrested for his statements against the war in Ukraine. This week, the Russian government him a “terrorist.”

Opposing the war in Ukraine required something of an about-face for Kagarlitsky, who improbably Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Donbas secession struggles in 2014. Becoming part of the “patriotic left,” he took advantage of the greater media exposure that came with his newfound allegiance to the Russian government.

But that only made his subsequent criticism of Putin’s war in Ukraine all the more threatening to the Russian government. His arrest has come amid a crackdown against dissent across the political spectrum. This week, the government also to the sentence of the country’s most prominent dissident, Alexei Navalny. A rather conventional nationalist during his protest days, Navalny has also recently changed his tune on aspects of the Ukraine War, for instance now supporting the of Crimea to Ukraine.

And then there’s Igor Girkin, who occupies a position on the political spectrum further to the right of Putin. A former intelligence operative and mercenary, Girkin helped set up the pro-war Club of Angry Patriots in April. But not even these extremist, pro-war credentials have saved Girkin from the wrath of Putin. When the military blogger directly criticized the Russian president last month, he too was .

Russia will hold presidential elections next year. Though press spokesman Dmitry Peskov of a landslide victory, Putin is clearly concerned that someone or something will pose a significant challenge to his authority.

But as long as Putin remains in charge, Ukraine will face a major obstacle in achieving peace on its own terms. Like Hitler, Putin has been coy about his own territorial ambitions. His spokesman Peskov that “we just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours.” That means the Donbas and Crimea — and a few more pieces of territory — but Russia doesn’t currently control all of the Donbas. So, even this “modest” imperialism would entail a broader land grab.

Putin’s ambitions, meanwhile, range from a “” of Russian-occupied territory that prevents Ukrainian missiles from reaching Russian territory, to the seizure of all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, to the all-out replacement of the “Nazi” government in Kyiv. The Russian government has also threatened to use nuclear weapons, so it is not above using nuclear blackmail to achieve its aims.

But all talk of Putin being satisfied with control of the territory the Russian army currently controls is �Բ�ï�����é at the level of believing �ᾱ�ٱ����’s promise that Nazi Germany wouldn’t occupy any territory beyond the Sudetenland. The world soon saw through the claims of “peace in our time.” With the wisdom of hindsight and given the widely available evidence of Putin’s intentions, it’s time to rally behind the alternative: “peace in their time.”

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Peace in Their Time: No Appeasement for Putin appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The two countries, as well as the other members of the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members, plus Germany), had reached an in 2015 known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That agreement called for severe curtailment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for gradual suspension of sanctions and the return of billions in funds held in mostly Western financial institutions.

While many in the US hailed the accords as President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, others — especially in Congress — characterized it as capitulation and refused to consider it. In 2018, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the US from the agreement, despite Iran’s having all requirements up to that point.

One year later, Iran restarted its centrifuges and stockpiling large amounts of enriched uranium, though stopping short of weapons-grade levels, which would be 90% highly enriched uranium.

No agreement like a non-agreement 

During his presidential campaign and once in office, President Joe Biden the US to either reentering the JCPOA or negotiating an alternative that would halt Iran’s march to production of nuclear weapons. While slow off the mark, the did start, albeit indirectly as Iran refused to meet face-to-face with its American counterparts. However, those talks in August of last year, and the JCPOA was seemingly consigned to the shelf, if not the morgue.

Despite even the president’s own death of the JCPOA as recently as last December, there was still some apparent life in the negotiations. Facilitated by Oman, Qatar and Switzerland, continued between the two sides starting earlier this year for several months as Biden seems determined to curtail the Iran nuclear program. Then, earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken the impending release of five US citizens from Iranian prison (they have not yet been allowed to leave Iran). Not long afterwards, the Wall Street Journal that Iran was limiting its production of HEU to no more than 60%.

In exchange for the prisoner release, the US has agreed to the gradual release of $6 billion in Iranian funds held under US sanctions in South Korean banks. It has also Iraq to pay back $10 billion in debts owed to Iran for electrical power purchases. Perhaps more importantly, Iranian have begun to creep back up after years of crushing sanctions on such exports. Sanctions, however, have not been lifted.

Why no actual agreement?

There may be more to all of this, but there’s no way of knowing for sure. There is no formal agreement, and for good reason. Congressional Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have that they want still more aggressive action against Iran, not a deal.

Moreover, the US presidential election campaign has begun. When Obama made his 2015 deal, he was not up for reelection; Biden is. Biden will not jeopardize his chances in the 2024 election, in which he’s likely to face the man who canceled the last agreement, Donald Trump. Introducing the hot-button Iran issue, on which there appears to be no middle ground, would surely distract voters from Biden’s campaign messaging.

On the other hand, there is the promise he made in his 2020 campaign of restarting the JCPOA, one which has encountered repeated frustrations, most (but not all) of Iran’s doing. The non-agreement format would seem to allow him to have it both ways: no official agreement with Iran, but seeming success in curtailing its weapons production program.

For those unfamiliar with the obscure ways of diplomacy, this might all seem like hookah smoke and mirrors. With no officially approved written agreement signed by both sides, how can there be an agreement? How is it enforced and how can each side be held accountable? And how can anyone not involved in the negotiations know what was actually agreed? That uncertainty, doubt, haziness and mysteriousness are probably just what both parties wanted.

Biden can publicly assert, as members of his already have, that there is no agreement. But he can also take credit for having fulfilled (at least so far) his pledge of the 2020 campaign on Iran’s nuclear program. Call it deniability without liability.

The Iranians have their reasons as well. Extremists in an already very conservative government, most especially among the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have been to any agreement with their sworn enemy, the US. They miss no opportunity to claim that the US cannot be trusted after having already abrogated the 2015 agreement in 2018. And there is little doubt that they would like to elevate the country to nuclear weapons status.

But the Iranian economy is in deep trouble. is running around the 40–50% zone and hovers around 8%, though many suspect it is actually higher, with over 25%. The latter statistic is especially important, given the widespread demonstrations that followed the murder while in official custody of Mahsa Amini for allegedly failing to abide by Iran’s strict dress code for women to cover their hair. With the first anniversary of her death approaching, Iran is anxious to proffer any economic relief it can to the Iranian people.

An agreement by any other name…

So, for the Americans and Iranians alike, there is no agreement, but each side is apparently taking the very actions that would have been included in one. It’s a “non-agreement.”

Diplomats have long used the device of a “non-paper” to communicate unofficially, in writing, their government’s position on any number of issues to another government. It clarifies a position or expectations without necessarily formally committing. It is understood that such a document is for the internal working use of the receiving government, which might in turn respond with its own non-paper. Usually, the objective is getting to a point at which something more official and formal may be exchanged.

It would appear the Americans and Iranians have employed the same concept for their non-agreement. Presumably, either side may walk away at any point that it perceives the other as not complying, or it has everything it wants.

Can all of this take on something perhaps of greater consequence? That would not be a good bet, given the decades of bad blood between the two. Hatred is not too strong a word to describe the feelings of many on both sides toward one another. But one could see a second-term Joe Biden pursuing something more official and long-term. Moreover, there could be — though it’s hardly likely — a more amenable leadership in Iran, making agreement somewhat more possible. 

And the Iranians, too, might hold out hope that, if the non-agreement holds and Biden returns to the White House in January 2025, something more permanent might be in the offing. All of that is aspirational in the extreme. Barring monumental changes in circumstances, especially in the leadership of the Islamic Republic, settling on anything more permanent and formal does not seem to be in the cards for the foreseeable future.

If there is any hope, it may be in the actions of other countries in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf states, which all want to lower the temperature in the region. The slow rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the between the UAE and Iran all suggest the countries of the Gulf want to move in that direction. Israel will not publicly endorse and may even criticize a non-agreement, but the US administration has surely shared its details with the Israeli leadership. They too want to see Iran’s nuclear activities at least curtailed, if not eliminated. So, success of the non-agreement in the months ahead will give it more staying power over a longer period of time.

Lastly, tensions throughout the world are not propitious for whatever understanding may now be in place between Tehran and Washington. Iran’s into the orbit of the China–Russia alliance will only exacerbate tensions between Iran and the West. Iran’s elsewhere in the Middle East and its overt support for Russia (e.g., with Iranian drones) in the latter’s brutal and unjustified war against Ukraine have increased American and Western enmity toward Iran. And Iran’s ongoing on regime opponents, including on the outrageous hijab law, further poisons prospects for improved Western–Iranian ties.

Iran’s status as a pariah seems unalterable. Therefore, it would be virtually impossible that a US administration could seriously negotiate something more permanent and official with the Islamic Republic.

The world will have to content itself with the uncertainty and mystery of a continuing “non” relationship … and the fear of another potentially nuclear-armed state. Like any understanding, agreement or treaty, it’s only as good as the intention, will and good faith of the parties.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is There a US–Iran “Non-Agreement”? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It’s a tricky question since the Third Reich is probably the highest expression of hard power in human history. Hard power consists in financial or social coercion and, above all, military power. Soft power, on the other hand, is usually felt through diplomacy, science, sports and, most effectively, arts and entertainment. 

Hollywood turned the Nazi regime into a soft power asset for the United States throughout movie history, showing the moral, intellectual and martial superiority of the Allies in films like Casablanca (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), From Here to Eternity (1953), Patton (1970), Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). All of these got took the most important Academy Awards; the Oscars, indeed, are the final coronation of Hollywood’s soft power.

The UK also used the victory against the Nazis as a soft power asset in films like in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The English Patient (1996). Russia, likewise, has its World War II films, such as Only “Old Men” Are Going Into Battle (1973), They Fought for Their Country (1975) and Stalingrad (2013). Coincidently or not, since Russia became the West’s political enemy during the Cold War, none of them got any significant awards in major festivals.

Turning other nation’s hard power into our own soft power is an old strategy of Hollywood, sometimes with direct help from the seat of hard power, Washington itself—like when US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered movies to be made to engage citizens in the American cause, like Frank Capra’s Why We Fight (1942) and Walt Disney’s of characters like Zé Carioca for movies like Saludos Amigos (1942) as a conscious effort to keep Latin America close to the US during the war and supplying foods and commodities for the allied soldiers.

All Quiet on the Western Front

This year, however, a German movie made Oscar history and , including Best Picture, by showing World War I from �ұ�������Բ�’s point of view. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), Edward Berger’s adaptation of the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, is a war spectacle that trails Paul Bäumer, played by Felix Kammerer.

Bäumer is a frightened soldier during most of its 150 minutes, as Germany and France negotiate a ceasefire. Ceaseless scenes of brutality, shot in a widened scope, and powerful images closely follow Bäumer, deepening his human character, an essential cinematic tool to keep the viewers intimate and close to the protagonist, even if not because of his cause. The adaptation’s greatest quality lies exactly here: its ability to avoid stereotyping, something that Hollywood done has many times with Nazi Germans, Viet Cong, Soviets and so on. In contrast, Paul Bäumer is shown with his fears, desires, human mercy and naivety, through which we instantly connect with him. 

World War I, however, is not a big “cinematic taboo” for Germans like World War II—the greatest human tragedy of modern times or maybe of all times, responsible for the deaths of 35 to 60 million people or . With the help of Hollywood’s soft power, the Third Reich became solidly portrayed as the greatest enemy of human history. So, again, the question: can World War II, the Nazi regime, become a soft power asset through cinema for Germany?

Are we ready for a new look at WWII?

It’s probably impossible to imagine modern democratic societies accepting any German movies that simply show a sympathetic German point of view about World War II, no matter how good the movie is. It is hard to believe that any film could repeat the feat of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), which is considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made, studied in all film schools around the world because of the director’s use of techniques such as aerial photography, long-focus lenses, moving cameras, distorted perspective and music. Even despite its fame, none of the several awards the film won in Germany, France and Italy are today listed by major websites like IMDb, except for “Best Foreign Documentary” in the Venice Film Festival held during Mussolini’s dictatorship. 

German filmmakers and production companies have long circumvented this taboo with the same strategy Berger used in All Quiet on the Western Front: a script that relies on character density and preferably puts the conflict as a half-distant background. The Tin Drum (1979), directed by Volker Schlöndorff, accompanies Oskar Matzerath (David Bennent), who falls down the stairs at the age of three and stops growing up. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film by leaving the horror of the war distant and caricatural. Two years later, the German director Wolfgang Petersen got six Academy Awards nominations for his Das Boot (1981), an achievement only made possible because the movie portrays the horrors of the Nazi regime inside the claustrophobic submarine in the same way Hollywood had portrayed it for decades.

Recently, though, German movies that portray the Nazi regime with a closer and less stereotypical look from Germans themselves are getting recognition from relevant festivals around the world. Before the Fall (2004) directed by Dennis Gansel, takes a close look at the war while showing the boxing abilities of Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt), whose athletic skills take him to an elite Nazi high school in 1942. He applies, against his father’s wishes, to pursue a better future. 

More recently, Robert Schwentke’s The Captain (2017) follows the last days of World War II with a young German soldier, fighting for survival, who finds a Nazi captain uniform and assumes his identity. To escape the Nazis’ monstrousness, he becomes, himself, a monster. The movie won 23 international awards in festivals like the European Film Awards and the San Sebastián International Film Festival. 

The Academy Awards, considered the most important film festival in the world, still have not shared their soft power with German filmmakers who portray the Nazi regime with a less stereotypical look. But the success of All Quiet on the Western Front in the last iteration of the Academy Awards shows that even the most horrifying episodes of the human race may become a soft power asset to a nation that carried it out if filmmakers manage to depict human goodness, mercy and hope among evil and chaos.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is the World Ready for German WWII Movies? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The site reminded me of my visits to the in Berlin. The gate was built during �ұ�������Բ�’s imperial era. At the time, the iconic Quadriga, a bronze sculpture of Victory riding in her chariot at the top of the gate, symbolized triumph. The Brandenburg Gate was destroyed and renovated several times throughout the course of time, most recently in 2002. Today, the Quadriga represents German unity and peace. Many global leaders have given addresses at the Brandenburg Gate, hailing it as a symbol of democracy.

We admired the German approach of infusing national traditions with democratic ideas. It is relatable to us, as Indians, since it is very much similar to the Indian way of immersing our way of life in traditions. In many cases, the Western world has amalgamated monarchical traditions with liberal democratic legacies. These emblems consecrate the conviction that the march to the future must not be at the expense of the country’s culture and heritage.

India inaugurated a this year. This calls us to ponder the relationship between the new and the old in our country, which as a state is very young, yet harbors a millennia-old civilization. What do we value? Where are we going?

It is relevant to discuss these issues as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits France. France has invited Modi as the guest of honor at the Bastille Day Parade. Bastille Day, France’s national holiday, is celebrated on July 14. It represents the victory of the people against the rule of King Louis XVI.

A section of the French strategic community has suggested that it is a to invite Modi for the Bastille Day celebration. They have emphasized a missing link of common values between the French and Indian administrations. They stress that the Modi administration is keen to turn India into a Hindu nation.

France is a revolutionary nation. Its national day celebrates the overthrow of the old order and the creation of something untested and new. Even the of France has been facing the heat in the last few weeks. Indians, on the other hand, seek a more organic relationship between their democracy and their history. For a keen observer, the episode provides an insight into the workings of Indian political and social life.

Symbiotic bond of traditions with modern times

There is a dynamic character to Indian civilization. This dynamism has been manifested in Indian culture’s peculiar lifestyle decisions and philosophical perspectives on human existence and its problems.

The finest instances of these are to be found in the history of the drafting of India’s Constitution. On July 22, 1947, the first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru to adopt the Ashoka Chakra symbol on India’s national flag. The symbol represents the wheel of Dharma, the principle of order and law. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who would later serve as India’s second president, endorsed the adoption. In his beautiful speech, he synthesized the notion of progress with loyalty to India’s spiritual tradition:

We cannot attain purity, we cannot gain our goal of truth, unless we walk in the path of virtue. The Asoka’s wheel represents to us the wheel of the Law, the wheel of Dharma. Truth can be gained only by the pursuit of the path of Dharma, by the practice of virtue. Truth—Satya, Dharma—Virtue, these ought to be the controlling principles of all those who work under this Flag. It also tells us that the Dharma is something which is perpetually moving. If this country has suffered in the recent past, it is due to our resistance to change. There are ever so many challenges hurled at us and if we have not got the courage and the strength to move along with the times, we will be left behind.

The deliberations in the Constituent Assembly created a space for the harmonization of the country’s deep-rooted cultural traditions and symbols with modern-day, progressive advances. It hailed the possibilities of combining ancient wisdom with modern advancement.

The new parliament building has a larger seating capacity than the older building, and the voting process now uses a graphical interface and biometrics. As a “Platinum-rated Green Building,” the new edifice demonstrates India’s commitment to environmental sustainability. The Constitutional Hall’s gallery area houses another remarkable installation called “Foucault’s Pendulum,” adding to the distinctive features of the new Parliament.

The for the chamber of the Lok Sabha, or lower house, was inspired by the peacock, the country’s symbol. In the Mahabharata, one of India’s national epics, Bhishma Pitamah argues that a king should adopt forms like the plumes of peacocks in a variety of colors. For the upper house, the Rajya Sabha, the theme is India’s floral emblem, the lotus. The original document of the Indian constitution’s preamble also has motifs of lotus and peacock. The installation of the Sengol scepter, a powerful religious symbol, in the new parliament building unquestionably signaled the amalgamation of Dharma with democratic norms. 

What to make of Sengol?

As a Maharashtrian, I am familiar with scepters. In front of the Speaker or Chairperson’s seat in the legislative assembly and council of Maharashtra, there is a designated spot for the rajdand, a scepter. Union Home Minister Amit Shah revealed Sengol and reintroduced it into the national discourse. Sengol was by the Modi government close to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s chair. The act suggests that sovereignty rests with the people of India.

The new Sengol is not a symbol of royal authority or insignia of military victory. Instead, it serves as a metaphor for the, i.e., Dharma. The installation of Sengol in Parliament is a sign that the government is not unquestionable, that real power rests with the people in a democracy. It implies that a person or organization in possession of the Sengol is only a servant guided by the highest law, Dharma. Sengol alludes to a of power.

The transfer of power is comparable, metaphorically speaking, to the change from day to night. Indeed, a seamless and effective democracy is marked by a smooth handover of power. Sengol encourages the beholder to follow the path of righteousness by being devoted to it throughout the journey, just like the Sun does. Sengol reflects a subtle shift, and re-introducing native ideals that support democracy. This is part of the creation of a democratic vocabulary for Atmanirbhar Bharat, “Self-reliant India.”

Is India becoming a Hindu state?

The reintroduction of Sengol has drawn criticism from certain quarters who saw the move as anti-democratic. They held the view that new symbolism is akin to monarchy and that India under the Modi regime is abandoning the modern principles it espoused during the Nehru era. Supporters of the move, on the other hand, dispute these claims. Both parties have strong reasons on their sides. Real life, of course, can be somewhere in the middle.

Nehruvian intellectuals have faith in Western modernity and the secular world. Their story predominated for most of the period following independence. They look at tradition with contempt. For them, the installation of Sengol and the process of are comparable to the creation of Hindu Rashtra, a theocratic state. They believe Modi is changing the national narrative to emphasize regressive views rather than progressive ones.

In Germany, the monarchical icon of Brandenburg Gate is celebrated today as a democratic achievement. Similarly, Sengol, a scepter of righteousness, may aid in honoring the past and upholding the values of the rising India.  Nehru recognized the importance of Indian traditions. At the same time, he was an interlocutor of the European notion of modernity. He was mindful of maintaining a balance between Indian traditions and European modernity. His followers may have failed to understand these intricacies, blindly following what they see as Nehru’s ideals.

Modi appears to be questioning the universality of Western modernity and making Indian wisdom and knowledge relevant to the rest of the globe—consequently, making India a decolonial state. Modi is suggesting that the ideals of modernity and socialism succeeded in Europe because they were shaped by local circumstances. Modi wishes to construct Indian modernity within the context of the country’s history.  The Sengol installation underlines the narrative that Modi is regaining the self-identity of India in Amrit Kaal, the upcoming quarter-century golden age foreseen by Modi. along with modern advancements. Thus, modernity and traditions are not diametrically opposed; they coexist together.

Modi seems to be challenging the binary of choices. The Indian populace had two options during the last three-quarters of a century post-independence: the temple of development, which was focused on contemporary concepts, or the temple of tradition, which dabbled in rituals and caused barriers to advancement. Modi indicates that he is holding Sengol in one hand and progress, development and technology in the other hand. Modi is not a utopian that repudiates the West. Modi does not dream of an ideal Hindu state as like you might hear about from a right-wing foot soldier on social media. He wants India to interact and cooperate with the West and other stakeholders as a self-assured and confident nation.

Thus, it is better for anyone, including the French and other Western strategic communities, to understand Indian politics and social life before arriving at any conclusion regarding values. Two narratives are having a dialogue with each other and playing for space in the public imagination. The dialogue is like the noise produced when a train is changing tracks; it is perfectly in accord with the noisy and messy democracy of India. The outcome of the Indian General Elections in 2024 will help us to answer which narrative may win.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Tradition And Modernity: Shifting Gears in the Indian Discourse appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Meanwhile, the countries that would form the EU pursued a vigorous and profitable policy of promoting trade with China. Germany led the way in this respect, especially through the export of German automobiles. This particular trend is weakening at the moment, although generally trade with China has recovered well.

There is a new problem. This is the openly declared and increasingly explicit US policy of curbing the growth and sophistication of the Chinese economy. This is being done because the US fears that China could pose a security threat to the US, and its allies, including Taiwan. The US wants to deny China access to certain types of semiconductors. Security concerns were cited by the Trump Administration when it imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. China responded with tariffs of its own. The US is also putting pressure on its allies to join in some of these measures.

An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China

The goal is to prevent China from developing strongly in areas that might make a key contribution to its national security. The World Trade Organization (WTO), of which China is a member, aims to ensure that global trade is governed by predictable and transparent rules. But “national security” is a matter of subjective judgment, to which such rules cannot easily be applied. Furthermore, China does not want WTO rules to apply to state-owned enterprises, while the US is undermining the appeals mechanism on WTO rulings.

The law of the jungle in international trade suits big counties, but not smaller ones. Economies such as Ireland are fortunate to be part of an EU bloc that will defend their interests.

Recently, the US published its National Security Strategy. It accused China of “wanting to reshape the international order” and of “assertive behavior”…hardly a hanging offense.

It said that it wanted the US to “outcompete” China, and added that it would oppose any unilateral change in relations across the Taiwan Strait. It also said that the US does not support Taiwan independence and remains committed to a “One China” policy.

This language is quite conciliatory and makes one wonder what the then Speaker Nancy Pelosi was trying to achieve with her recent high-profile visit to Taiwan—at a time when we may need China to talk sense into the Russians and get them to back out of their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

China had a strong record of defending the territorial integrity of states, notably against European powers in the nineteenth century. So it should not be neutral about the imperialist behavior of Russia!

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “ appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being and ready to assume their duties as US forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Spin and Lies Make a Comeback

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies. 

Fair is Foul: In Ukraine Fairer Can Also Be Fouler

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.   

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counter-offensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.” 

Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into. 

Back to the Future: World War I Again?

General Erich Vad, who was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s senior military adviser for seven years, spoke to Emma, a German news website. He called the war in Ukraine a “war of attrition,” and compared it to World War I, and to the Battle of Verdun in particular, in which hundreds of thousands of French and German soldiers were killed with no major gain for either side. 

Vad asked the same persistent unanswered that The New York Times (NYT) editorial board asked of President Biden last May. What are the US and NATO’s real war aims? 

“Do you want to achieve a willingness to negotiate with the deliveries of the tanks? Do you want to reconquer Donbas or Crimea? Or do you want to defeat Russia completely?” asked General Vad. He concluded, “There is no realistic end state definition. And without an overall political and strategic concept, arms deliveries are pure militarism. We have a militarily operational stalemate, which we cannot solve militarily. Incidentally, this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff Mark Milley. He said that Ukraine’s military victory is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way. Anything else is a senseless waste of human life.”

Whenever Western officials are put on the spot by these unanswered questions, they are forced to reply, as to the NYT eight months ago, that they are sending weapons to help Ukraine defend itself and to put it in a stronger position at the negotiating table. But what would this “stronger position” look like? 

When Ukrainian forces were advancing toward Kherson in November, NATO officials that the fall of Kherson would give Ukraine an opportunity to reopen negotiations from a position of strength. But when Russia withdrew from Kherson, no negotiations ensued, and both sides are now planning new offensives.

A False Narrative of War

The US media keep the narrative that Russia will never negotiate in good faith, and it has hidden from the public the fruitful negotiations that began soon after the Russian invasion but were quashed by the United States and United Kingdom. Few outlets reported the recent revelations by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about the ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey that he helped to mediate in March 2022. Bennett said explicitly that the West or “stopped” (depending on the translation) the negotiations.

Can NATO and the Pentagon Find a Diplomatic Off-Ramp From the Ukraine War?

Bennett confirmed what has been reported by other sources since April 21, 2022, when Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, one of the other mediators, CNN Turk after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, “There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue… They want Russia to become weaker.”

Advisers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the details of Boris Johnson’s April 9 visit to Kyiv that were published in Ukrayinska Pravda on May 5, 2022. They said Johnson delivered two messages. The first was that Putin and Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” The second was that, even if Ukraine completed an agreement with Russia, the “collective West,” who Johnson claimed to represent, would take no part in it.

The Western corporate media has generally only weighed in on these early negotiations to cast doubt on this story or smear any who repeat it as Putin apologists, despite multiple-source confirmation by Ukrainian officials, Turkish diplomats and now the former Israeli prime minister.

The propaganda frame that Western establishment politicians and media use to explain the war in Ukraine to their own publics is a classic “white hats vs black hat��” narrative, in which Russia’s guilt for the invasion doubles as proof of the West’s innocence and righteousness. The growing mountain of evidence that the US and its allies share responsibility for many aspects of this crisis is swept under the proverbial carpet, which looks more and more like The Little Prince’s of a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant.

Western media and officials were even more ridiculous when they tried to for blowing up its own pipelines, the Nord Stream underwater natural gas pipelines that channeled Russian gas to Germany. According to NATO, the explosions that released half a million tons of methane into the atmosphere were “deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage.” The Washington Post, in what could be considered journalistic malpractice, an anonymous “senior European environmental official” saying, “No one on the European side of the ocean is thinking this is anything other than Russian sabotage.”

It took former NYT investigative reporter Seymour Hersh to break the silence. He published, in a blog post on his own Substack, a spectacular account of how US Navy divers teamed up with the Norwegian navy to plant the explosives under cover of a NATO naval exercise, and how they were detonated by a sophisticated signal from a buoy dropped by a Norwegian surveillance plane. According to Hersh, President Biden took an active role in the plan, and amended it to include the use of the signaling buoy so that he could personally dictate the precise timing of the operation, three months after the explosives were planted.

The White House predictably Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction”, but has never offered any reasonable explanation for this historic act of environmental terrorism.

Eisenhower Was Right

famously said that only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” can “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

So what should an alert and knowledgeable American citizenry know about the role our government has played in fomenting the crisis in Ukraine, a role that the corporate media has swept under the rug? That is one of the main questions we have tried to answer in War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict. The answers include:

The US broke its not to expand NATO into Eastern Europe. In 1997, before Americans had ever heard of Vladimir Putin, 50 former senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics President Clinton to oppose NATO expansion, calling it a policy error of “historic proportions.” Elder statesman George Kennan it as “the beginning of a new cold war.”

NATO provoked Russia by its open-ended to Ukraine in 2008 that it would become a member of NATO. William Burns, who was then the US Ambassador to Moscow and is now the CIA Director, warned in a State Department, “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red-lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

The in Ukraine in 2014. This installed a government that of Ukraine’s people recognized as legitimate. The coup led to the disintegration of the country and a civil war that 14,000 people.

The 2015 peace accord achieved a stable ceasefire line and steady in casualties, but Ukraine failed to grant autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk as agreed. Angela and Francois now admit that Western leaders only supported Minsk II to buy time for NATO to arm and train Ukraine’s military to recover Donbas by force.

During the week before the invasion, OSCE monitors in Donbas documented a huge escalation in explosions around the ceasefire line. Most of the in four days were in rebel-held territory, indicating incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. US and U.K. officials claimed these were “” attacks, as if Donetsk and Luhansk forces were shelling themselves, just as they later suggested that Russia blew up its own pipelines.

After the invasion, instead of supporting Ukraine’s efforts to make peace, the United States and the United Kingdom blocked or stopped them in their tracks. The U.K.’s Boris Johnson said they saw a chance to Russia and wanted to make the most of it, and US Defense Secretary Austin said their goal was to Russia.

What would an alert and knowledgeable citizenry make of all this? We would clearly condemn Russia for invading Ukraine. But then what? Surely we would also demand that US political and military leaders tell us the truth about this horrific war and our country’s role in it, and demand that the media transmit the truth to the public. An “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” would surely then demand that our government stop fueling this war and instead support immediate peace negotiations.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Ukraine: How Lies Fuel a New Bloody War of Attrition appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After speaking to many German politicians and intellectuals, Atul Singh points out that Berlin’s policy is based on three principles:

1. Support Ukraine as much as possible.
2. Avoid direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
3. Avert unilateral action by any single supporting nation.

Simply put, this means that Germany is unwilling to send talks unilaterally. It wants to send its tanks whilst hiding behind the US. Germany is unwilling to be seen as an aggressor by Russia. Berlin wants to minimize the chances of an escalation of conflict with Moscow.

The current center-left coalition has always been more pacifist than its counterparts on the right. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Alliance 90/The Greens are in power together. Their traditional colors are red, yellow, and green respectively. Hence, this government is called a traffic light coalition.

Until recently, the SPD championed change through rapprochement. Gerhard Schröder, the last SPD chancellor who was in power from 1998 to 2005, worked for Russian state-owned energy companies, including Nord Stream AG, Rosneft, and Gazprom. The FDP and, especially, the Greens are also peaceniks. Old habits die hard. Germany has a culture of restraint. Singh thinks a U-turn is bound to be difficult.

The Germans were once ruthless jackboot-wearing swashbucklers. Now, they have turned into soft and soggy sissy pants. Once led by authoritarians like Otto von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler, the Germans have swung to extreme consensual coalition politics. Germany has gone from the Führer to incoherence and paralysis.

Singh also points out that the war is not in German or even European economic interest. Industry in Europe relied on cheap Russian gas. With war breaking out in Europe, gas prices have gone up. European industry is withering on the vine. So, it is not in European interest to prolong the war. Hence, support for Ukraine is not in European or German interest. Therefore, this support is likely to wane in the coming months.

Besides, many are making the argument that the Russians are gradually recovering from their early blunders. Initially, they had an intelligence failure, their logistics were ghastly and they carried out a ham-handed version of blitzkrieg. They also lost a lot of senior officers and retreated poorly. Now, they seem to be improving.

Ukraine has a big problem: it is running out of fighting men. Recently, Ukraine lost many members of its top leadership in a helicopter crash. The country is also in the throes of a massive corruption scandal. Since 1991, Ukrainian women have had very few children.  In 2020, the country recorded just 1.22 births per woman. So, Singh believes Ukrainians might just run out of men. The disparate tanks coming from many countries might not be too few and too late to make a difference.

Carle takes the view that Ukraine will not run out of men, Western equipment will eventually make a difference and Russia will suffer increasing strains in 2023. The numbers of Russian tanks are inflated because many are obsolete and/or nonfunctional. Most of Russia’s modern armor has been destroyed. Russia is working its factories around the clock but it is no longer an industrial power and is unable to supply its military with much-needed tanks. This means that the West has a window of opportunity for the next 12 months to put pressure on Russia and help Ukraine achieve victory.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Exclusive: Germany in Spotlight as Russia-Ukraine War Intensifies appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Sunak’s rise and the number of minority candidates who ran for the top job in the previous party leadership race demonstrate a key fact: the Tories are brimming with ethnic diversity. Six of the original eleven candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Rehman Chishti, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, and Nadhim Zawahi, come from ethnic minorities. Such a diverse group of contestants was no fluke. It was the result of targeted approaches, particularly toward South Asians in the UK, and a willingness to propel ethnic minority MPs into ministerial offices.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-right party of Germany, does not represent ethnic minorities in the same way as the Tories. The Conservative Party could potentially serve as a model for the CDU.

Merkel’s Cabinets – Ethnic Diversity Missing

A comparison of Boris Johnson’s and Angela Merkel’s cabinets highlights the ethnic diversity gap between the Tories and the CDU. Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, from July to November 2019, was already ethnically more diverse than that of his predecessors. In Johnson’s second and last cabinet, about of cabinet ministers had an ethnic minority background. The percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK is only , making this overrepresentation remarkable.

Merkel’s four cabinets during her 16-year tenure from 2005 to 2021 reveal a contrasting picture. Under Merkel, not a single CDU cabinet minister came from an ethnic minority background. This is striking because ethnic minorities comprise of �ұ�������Բ�’s population. While of Tory MPs come from ethnic minorities, the figure is only for the CDU.

Neglecting German Turks for Too Long

The rise of ethnic minorities in the Conservative Party has roots in the . The Tories identified the South Asian community as a target group. Margaret Thatcher’s government was particularly successful in winning over prosperous East African Indians. Her party slowly detached itself from its xenophobic legacy, epitomized most starkly by Enoch Powell’s speech.

On the other hand, the CDU failed to make such an appeal to the German Turks, the largest ethnic minority comprising more than 1.2 million voters.  In fact, in 1982, Helmut Kohl’s government tried to lure the immigrant Turks from the 1960s to return to their homeland with an incentive of a return payment. In  confidential conversations with none other than Margaret Thatcher, Kohl communicated his ultimately unexecuted intention to reduce “Turks in Germany […] by 50% […] It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers […] Turks come from a very distinctive culture and would not be easily integrated.”

Furthermore, in the 1990s, Kohl’s so-called “ compromise” restricted the possibility of invoking the fundamental right of asylum. Consequently, the CDU lost trust among the German Turks. Added to that, the CDU conducted election campaigns ignoring the German Turks by opposing their demand for dual citizenship.The “C” that stands for Christian in the party name also had a deterrent effect on  many Turks. Meanwhile, some conservative values of German Turks are close to those of the CDU. As migration researcher, Haci-Halil Uslucan told the newspaper, : “If the CDU does not emphasize the “C” too strongly, it is very close in terms of its attitude to a large part of the population of Turkish origin.“

The CDU eventually recognized German Turks as potential voters and managed to loosen the traditional electoral grip of the Social Democrats (SPD) on German Turks in its favor for the last two federal elections. The SPD’s failure to enforce dual citizenship while in power and the belated expulsion of Thilo Sarrazin, a party member and author who published books with Islamophobic undertones, alienated German Turks from the SPD.

Besides the inadequacies of the SPD, Merkel’s well appreciated refugee policy, which allowed 890,000 asylum seekers to enter Germany in 2015, drew German Turks to the CDU. “I  also the Chancellor of German Turks.”, canvassed Merkel in 2016, reinforcing her commitment to fortify Germany as an immigration society.

No Political Will at the Highest Levels of Power

Merkel’s already belated commitment further fueled the lack of representation of federal cabinet ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds since no further action was taken. 

The CDU has hardly shown any interest in awarding the highest party and executive offices to MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds. Before, during and after Merkel’s tenure, hardly any MP’s from ethnic minority backgrounds were awarded the highest party and executive offices from high-powered intra-party figures of the CDU. 

In contrast, the Tories underpinned their courtship of South Asians through political action at the highest levels of power. In 2015, former prime minister David Cameron resolutely , “The first black or Asian prime minister will be a conservative”. Under the slogan ““, he pledged to increase the proportion of parliamentary party members with an ethnic minority background by 2020. 

Boris Johnson built upon this vision with his ethnically diverse cabinets, though his underlying motives for these appointments to offices are open to debate. Johnson calls himself a “ melting pot” in light of his Turkish and Russian-Jewish family history and his second wife being of Indian origin. However, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, and Rishi Sunak’s appointments to their ministerial posts could be viewed as rewards for their pro-Brexit stances. The same rationale can be applied to the appointments of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, and Kwasi Kwarteng into Truss’s “ right-wing cabinet for a generation”, all of whom also voted for Brexit.

In comparison, the CDU has a lack of similar influential political figures willing to promote ethnic minority representation in government offices. During her four terms, Merkel missed a vital opportunity to hire more personnel from ethnic minority backgrounds into the CDU/CSU’s Bundestag parliamentary groups. Instead of seizing this opportunity, she simply failed to concretise her lip service. 

Armin Laschet, Merkel’s direct successor as party leader, could have been a rare facilitator of change and spearheaded a more diverse government. He proved his credentials as the integration minister of �ұ�������Բ�’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia, calling for more ethnic minority MPs in 2010. He also published a entitled “The Upstart Republic: Immigration as an Opportunity“ the year before, highlighting his pro-immigration stance. 

After he was elected North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister-President, Laschet set an example by appointing a Turk, Serap Güler, as State Secretary for Integration in 2017. To this date, Güler is considered one of the few prominent German Turks in the CDU who could ascend to the federal party’s highest ranks in the years to come. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hürryiet during the Bundestag election campaign in 2021, Laschet displayed his determination to canvas German Turks.

When asked whether there would be a CDU minister with an ethnic minority background under his chancellorship, he replied, “We’ll  about the cabinet formation after the Bundestag elections. But in fact, [our Bundestag is] not really diverse […]. If a quarter of the population has an immigration biography, but in a parliamentary group, there are only one or two people, that is not representative. […] I would like to see more people with immigration history, including more people of Turkish origin […] in the Bundestag – and the federal government.” Yet, he was defeated by Olaf Scholz after a disastrous election campaign, handing over the party chair to Friedrich Merz after just a year. 

More Ethnic Minority Representation Under Merz?

The successful careers of Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Sajid Javid, among others within the party, should serve as a target position for the CDU. The Tories have been accused of mere symbolism as there has been a lack of substantive representation in terms of policies benefiting ethnic minorities. Despite this, the party has continued to recognize that ethnic minority representation within the cabinet has to reflect the UK’s realities of an immigration society and is paramount to winning new electoral majorities. 

The CDU still lags behind the Tories in representing minorities. They have been late in approaching ethnic minority target groups such as the German Turks. The belated avowals of CDU politicians of Germany as a society with a high number of immigrants and the lack of political�� will to represent them have led to inadequate representation of minorities as MPs and ministers. It is doubtful if this representative deficit will be rectified under Merz, the present party leader and staunch conservative.
Despite promising to modernize and open up the party to new target groups, Merz has done the opposite. He countered his promise by advocating for more restrictive immigration policies and pronouncing the target of winning back voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This does not bode well for ethnic diversity in the CDU and will ensure that the representative deficit continues.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Could a Rishi Sunak Rise to the Top in Germany? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Who Are �ұ�������Բ�’s National Minorities?

Four state-recognized autochthonous national minorities live on German territory: the Danes, Frisians, Sorbs, and the German Sinti and Roma. In accord with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), five need to be fulfilled to be granted minority protection by the German government: the minorities’ members are German nationals; they have a distinct identity, consisting of an own language, culture, and history; a wish to maintain and preserve that identity; they have settled in Germany for a long time within traditional settlement areas.

As demographic statistics and socioeconomic data based on ethnicity are historically not collected in Germany due to the Nazi past, the numbers of people belonging to the national minorities are estimates. About 50,000 members of the Danish minority live in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, bordering Denmark, and 50,000-60,000 Frisians live along the North Sea coastline between the Netherlands and Denmark. About 60,000 Sorbs, a Slavic minority, live in the Lusatia region, close to the Polish border in East Germany. The minority of the Sinti and Roma provides an exemption from the criteria of residing in a specific settlement area with 70,000 members living all across Germany.

Instrumentalizing National Minorities

The lack of demographic data on national minorities implicates that no figures are available on the number of eligible voters in the respective minority groups. Despite only making up a small proportion of the German electorate, �ұ�������Բ�’s far-right AfD has increased efforts to stage themselves as their true advocates. 

German Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Step Up Attempts to Undermine Schools

READ MORE

In November 2020, a speech by Beatrix von Storch, deputy chairwoman of the AfD Bundestag faction, laid bare the AfD’s attempt to instrumentalize national minorities to stigmatize other ethnic groups in Germany. Storch deliberately misrepresented the federal government’s pledge to protect national minorities. According to Storch, the fact that national minorities are promised protection based on origin, language, and culture, irrespective of their German citizenship, confirms the AfD’s long-held view that national identity cannot be obtained through the acquisition of German citizenship: “If we that ethnic groups and national minorities have a cultural identity that should be preserved, then the same applies to national majorities. You can’t claim that national minorities like the Sorbs, Frisians, and Danes have a cultural identity and at the same time declare that the national majority in Germany doesn’t.”

With this statement, Storch argumentatively and tacitly deprives some German citizens with an immigration background of their German identity as she had openly claimed before: “ is not part of German tradition and identity, and therefore it does not belong to Germany.” Furthermore, Storch misuses national minorities to spread an ultra-nationalistic ideology harbored by large parts of the AfD, according to which there is a national identity of a people that is deeply rooted.

Misusing the Sorbian Minority for Electoral Success

By spreading its nationalist ideology, the AfD is trying to appeal to the strong sense of home and belonging among many members of �ұ�������Բ�’s minorities and capitalize on this electorally. Yet, the election results of the last two federal elections do not indicate that the AfD is succeeding in areas with large populations of national minorities – except in eastern German constituencies and settlement areas of the Sorbs. 

During the 2017 federal election, the AfD managed to muster up 40 percent of the votes in the Sorbian-dominated district of Spree-Neiße in southeastern Brandenburg. Despite significant gains, the party still lagged behind the CDU, traditionally voted for by the mostly Catholic Sorbs. In the subsequent federal election, in 2021, the Sorbian village of Puschwitz hit the headlines when the AfD candidate emerged as the victor. Curiously, in the neighboring Sorbian village of Crostwitz the CDU candidate pipped the AfD’s competitor to first place. Hence, it remains questionable whether these two stand-out successes of the AfD in Sorbian counties and municipalities express a seminal affinity of the Sorbian minority to the AfD, especially since the economically weaker eastern German states have been AfD strongholds anyway.

German Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Step Up Attempts to Undermine Schools

READ MORE

On the contrary, the relationship between Sorbs and the AfD was strained before these election results. Sorbs have long experienced right-wing extremist hostilities and attacks, but since 2014, with the beginning of the far-right PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisation of the Occident) demonstrations and the rise of the AfD, the extent has significantly increased. According to Heiko Kosel, an MP of the Saxon state parliament for the leftist party Die Linke, “ on Sorbs are linked to increased xenophobia in Saxony in recent years.” Bilingual street signs were smeared and even graffitied with swastikas. Another example of the AfD’s contribution to the hostile climate toward Sorbs was its resistance to a socio-cultural community center in the East German city of Bautzen, where many Sorbs live, warning against ongoing “ �����澱�Բ�“.

Against this backdrop, an incident during the 2017 general election stirred up the Sorbian community when the AfD once again instrumentalized minority groups to incite xenophobic attitudes toward other ethnic groups. The bone of contention was an election poster that depicted three women in traditional German, one of them in Sorbian attire, with the caption “ diversity? We have it already!” That was unequivocally condemned by the umbrella organization “Domowina,” representing the interests of Sorbs in Germany: “We the use of the Sorbian people to exclude other minorities.”

Overt Racism Against Sinti and Roma

The fact that the AfD’s representation of the interests of national minorities is nothing more than a smokescreen is shown not only by its attempts to play national minorities off against each other but also by its open racism against the national minority of Sinti and Roma. Among �ұ�������Բ�’s national minorities the Sinti and Roma occupy a special historic role. During Nazi Germany, they were prosecuted and murdered, resulting in a Genocide of up to 500.000 Sinti and Roma, often referred to as the ” Holocaust.” To this day, Sinti and Roma face discrimination and structural racism. In 2021, authorities recorded antizigan crimes, the year before 128. Antizigan attitudes and sentiments in the center of German society are prevalent. According to a study, 29 percent of the population showed antipathy toward Sinti and Roma. To uncover the dark figure of antizigan sentiment and crime, the German government mandated the Independent Commission on Antiziganism (UKA) in 2019, and an anonymous Reporting and Information Center Antiziganism (MIA) started work in July 2022. In March 2022, the government appointed the first commissioner against Antiziganism and for the life of Sinti and Roma in Germany.

Concerning the Sinti and Roma, the AfD has willingly and repeatedly dropped the covers and counteracted its supposed self-image of being the true representative of the interests of all national minorities. The AfD has been a driving force behind picking up on and promoting antizigan racial prejudice. In a 2019 speech in the German Bundestag about measures to combat antiziganism, the AfD MP Markus Frohnmaier referred to Sinti and Roma as “” („Gypsys“), a racial slur that is condemned by the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, the main advocacy group representing the interests of German Sinti and Roma: “‘Gypsies‘ is a foreign used by the majority society that is overlaid with clichés and rejected by most members of the minority as discriminatory – because the Sinti and Roma have never called themselves that.” Disregarding this terminological clarification of the people concerned, Frohnmaier contested the designation Sinti and Roma as an “ �ٱ����.”

Evoking Ghosts of the Nazi Past

In June 2018, the Saxon AfD showed no inhibition to evoking the inhumane ghosts of the Nazi past. They did so by submitting a parliamentary request, demanding the collection of demographic data on Sinti and Roma living in . Part of the requested data was the number of German and foreign Sinti and Roma living in Saxony, including their education status. Particularly startling were the queries about irregularities in the compliance with compulsory education and the number of homeless Sinti and Roma. With these suggestive and disparaging questions, the AfD consciously tapped into the persisting circulating prejudices of educational alienation, homelessness, and criminality among Sinti and Roma. With the feeding of false preconceptions and request for a registration of the Sinti and Roma population, the AfD summoned gruesome memories of the systematic genocidal policy of the Nazis against the Sinti and Roma and the Jews, which had also entailed a registration of respective population groups. Hence, collecting population data based on ethnicity is prohibited in Germany.

Paranoia and the Perils of Misreading

READ MORE

Not only the Sinti and Roma were affected by the AfD snubbing this particular lesson from the past. A few weeks after the request for the data collection on the Sinti and Roma, the AfD in the Saxon state parliament also asked for “” on the number of Sorbs in Saxony. Given these efforts, �ұ�������Բ�’s National Minority Secretariat, which bundles the interests of the four national minorities, reaffirmed that belonging to a minority is the personal of each individual, which may not be registered, verified, or disputed by the state.

The national minorities in Germany unite in the same vulnerability and need for protection, although their identities and cultures differ. Be it the pitting national minorities against other ethnic groups in Germany, the abuse of national minorities’ symbols for electoral campaigns, open racist attacks against Sorbs and Sinti and Roma, and the disregard for the Nazi past. All these incidents contribute to exposing the AfD’s duplicity and its specious advances toward national minorities for electoral success at the misfortune of others.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The AfD’s Duplicitous Attempt to Target �ұ�������Բ�’s National Minorities appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Gravitational Pull to the Right

As of February 2020, across Germany, approximately  pupils attended the 254 state-recognized Waldorf schools, whose curricula originate in an anthroposophical worldview. According to the Anthroposophical Society, the Waldorf pedagogy system, which was developed by the Austrian spiritualist in the early 20^th century, “ways of recognizing and exploring the supersensible-spiritual world that exists in the sensory-material world. This ‘spiritual science’ sees itself as a new approach to a deeper and more comprehensive knowledge of nature and man.”

German Pharmacies at the Heart of an Anti-Racism Debate

READ MORE

The behind Waldorf schools is a “developmentally appropriate, experiential, and academically-rigorous approach to education.” Compared to the pressure to perform in state-run schools, the goal is to strengthen individual responsibility as well as creative, practical and social skills. Another difference lies in self-administration by parents and teachers of a “hierarchically organized external control of the state schools.” 

Through close personal ties with teachers, parents can actively influence everyday school life according to their with fewer interventions of internal school control bodies compared to state schools. Hence, the self-administration model makes independent schools to infiltration by far-right actors and conspiracy theorists. According to Ansgar Martins, a religious studies scholar at Frankfurt University, this structural weakness is by the “pronounced anthroposophical inclination toward conspiracy theorie��” of Waldorf schools that stems from Steiner’s original teachings.

Steiner held a developmental, esoteric and essentially view of humanity that saw the world divided into superior and inferior races, exemplified by countless discriminatory statements against Jewish and especially people: “How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? … The Negro race does not belong in Europe, and it is of course nonsense that it now plays such a large role in Europe.”

These remarks are joined by Steiner’s pseudoscientific conception of the physical and intellectual superiority of the white race, reminiscent of the Nazi-era Volkstum concept according to which humanity reached its developmental endpoint in the : “If the blue-eyed and blond-haired people were to die out, people would become increasingly stupid unless they developed a kind of cleverness which is independent of blondness. … The white race is the future race, is the spirit-creating race.”

According to �ұ�������Բ�’s Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, these “are to be regarded as particularly serious, since they are by no means random products or racist stereotypes caused by the spirit of the times. Rather, they are to be seen as manifestations of a specifically Steinerian esoteric racial science.” In the Stuttgart Declaration of 2007, the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools “any racist or nationalist appropriation of their pedagogy.” Nevertheless, this declaration did little to prevent attracting far-right conspiracy theorists even before the pandemic.

Far-Right Infiltration

In 2013, the managing director of a Waldorf school in the German town of Rendsburg was dismissed because of connections to the far-right (Citizens of the Reich) movement. He attracted attention by distributing leaflets in the school that “the Federal Republic of Germany … is not a state, but the managing legal advisor of a state simulation [is]. There is no de jure and de facto state of the Federal Republic of Germany.” 

The ��𾱳������ü������� is a heterogeneous movement that, referring to the historical German Reich, rejects the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany and its legal system, thus denying legitimacy to democratically elected representatives. A small proportion of the ��𾱳������ü������� movement is made up of , but the anti-state and conspiracy theory tenets of the entire scene facilitate a connection to anti-Semitic narratives that are central to the far-right domain.

At another Waldorf school in the German town of , a teacher taught unchecked for 20 years before his connections to ethno-nationalist right-wing extremist groups became known. Even before Wolf-Dieter Schröppe became a teacher, he maintained contacts with veteran Nazis, including the war criminal Erich Priebke — the man responsible for the massacre of 335 people as a captain in the and sentenced to life in prison. It took more than four months before the school terminated Schröppe’s employment contract, partly because some colleagues spoke out in his support.

In 2015, these incidents prompted the Association of Independent Waldorf Schools to publish a  conceding that the anthroposophy-based Waldorf pedagogy has a “great attraction” for the right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists, specifically for the ��𾱳������ü�������.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Waldorf anthroposophy again garnered attention. To this day, Steiner’s worldview translates into a greater vaccine skepticism in Germany as a whole and in Waldorf schools in particular due to public acceptance and influence of anthroposophy. Underlying Steiner’s philosophy is the dangerous belief that diseases serve a  purpose by stimulating child development and making amends for mistakes in past lives.

Hence, over the last decades, vaccine skepticism has itself in lower in Waldorf schools, resulting in regular measles outbreaks. In this respect, an incident at a school in the city of  came as no surprise when 117 COVID-19 cases were recorded and more than 50 forged medical certificates were discovered exempting students and teachers from wearing a mask.

At a Waldorf school in the Bavarian town of Landsberg, a father who is both a doctor and a homeopath issued certificates to families of other students to circumvent mandatory mask-wearing, people who choose to do so as “mask hypochondriacs.” At a demonstration against COVID-19 measures, he showed the indictable Hitler salute that resulted in criminal charges.

The Bavarian Ministry of Education  these incidents are not isolated cases. Mask exemption certificates were seven times more likely to be issued at Bavarian Waldorf schools than at state schools. Nevertheless, many Waldorf parents show resolve against COVID-19 deniers and far-right activities. According to the mobile counseling service against right-wing extremism in Bavaria, Waldorf parents “” reported similar incidents at schools during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Denier Schools

To evade resistance at state but also independent schools and shield children from COVID-19 measures, some parents and teachers went a step further, founding their own learning initiatives and so-called supplementary schools. Insights into the network groups behind those supplementary schools reveal political affinities not only with the ��𾱳������ü������� but with another the far-right esoteric movement.

In , Bavaria, an elementary and middle school teacher founded a (Lateral Thinkers) school to reflect the movement’s pandemic skepticism. More than 50 pupils were taught here by parents and educators, including herbalists, music teachers and shamans. On advertising leaflets, the school falsely claimed to be located on Russian territory so that German law would not be applicable.

The school principal was active in networks spreading far-right esoteric ideas of the movement, a decentralized conspiracy group of far-right esotericists and settlers, based on the protagonist of the “Anastasia” fantasy novel series by Russian author Vladimir Megre. According to sociologist Matthias Quent, the  “transport cultural racism and anti-Semitism. These are ideological patterns that we also know from National Socialism. According to them, modern society is doomed, and people must retreat to the native soil or family estates.”

Connections to the Anastasia movement also existed in the newly founded Bauernhofschule (farm school) in the state of Hesse, which was registered as a supplementary school. Hesse’s school  enables parents to establish schools with scant bureaucratic hurdles as long as they supplement, not replace state curricula. According to the German state of Hesse’s public broadcaster, HR, Telegram chat transcripts revealed that the school operators to teach children how to keep animals, grow vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Nevertheless, the chat was inundated with extremist, anti-Semitic views from the ��𾱳������ü������� and Anastasia movements.

Even Holocaust denial — a criminal offense in Germany — received indifferent or approving reactions in the chats. The ideological connections of the Bauernhofschule reach as far as the fringes of the QAnon movement, as Martin Laker’s membership in the group suggests. Laker is an active member of the Anastasia movement and runs his own online platform where he spreads QAnon myths.

Underestimating the Problem

�ұ�������Բ�’s political establishment has been slow in reacting to the growing problem. While the authorities are taking action against the newly founded supplementary schools, including enforced closures due to a lack of permits, there is still no sign yet of German politicians taking the danger posed by far-right anthroposophists seriously enough.

In January 2021, the Green Party’s national parliamentary group issued a asking what connections between right-wing extremist opponents of the COVID-19 measures and anthroposophical groups are known to the German government and how it assesses “the potential danger in this regard, given the fact that anthroposophy in Germany maintains a far-reaching network of companies, foundations, and public institutions.” The answer: “The Federal Government has no knowledge of this.” 

This rection is particularly disappointing considering the fight against right-wing extremism has gained political traction in recent years due to record high of politically motivated crimes by right-wing extremists. In 2020, the government published a substantial  of measures accompanied by a 100-page final  on combating right-wing extremism and racism the following year. According to the report, programs to prevent extremism in state schools are to be promoted more vigorously but fail to mention the right-wing extremist slant of anthroposophical groups and independent schools.

It remains to be seen whether the new government under the leadership of Angela Merkel’s successor Olaf Scholz will turn its eye to this blind spot. There seems to be no lack of will on the part of Scholz’s fellow party member and the new minister of the interior, Nancy Faeser, who at her first public appearance in the new role that “A particular concern of mine will be to combat the greatest threat currently facing our free democratic basic order, right-wing extremism.” 

The threat posed by far-right conspiracy theories and fake news might have only entered the public consciousness with the triumph of social media platforms. But conspiracy theories don’t germinate in a vacuum. Instead, often far-reaching causes are behind their emergence. In Germany, the societal impact of widespread anthroposophic views, promoted in state-approved institutions like the Waldorf schools, is one of the many causes that deserve increased critical, not at least political, attention.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post German Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists Step Up Attempts to Undermine Schools appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Learning Lessons in Ukraine and Beyond

READ MORE

In case the Melians refused, the Athenians threatened with complete destruction. The Melians did refuse, pointing out that justice was on their side. In response, the Athenians laid siege on the island, took its main city and, after its surrender, killed every surviving male and sold the women and children into slavery.

Exigencies of Defense

One of the central points of the Melian dialogue is the notion that might makes right, or, as the Athenians , “you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” It is a prime example of what in international relations theory is known as realism. Over the past few decades, realism has gone out of fashion, especially in Western Europe — and for good reason. Nobody is eager to live in a Hobbesian world where life is “nasty, brutish and short” — in Western Europe, nobody more so than the Germans.

This, of course, has had a lot to do with Berlin’s position during the Cold War, when Germany was, as the prominent German-American political scientist Peter Katzenstein put it, a semi-sovereign state. During the Cold War period, the Federal Republic of Germany pursued a number of strategies that marked a fundamental break with realism: toward its neighbors to the west, a process of economic integration; toward its neighbors to the east (particularly Poland) a policy of détente and reconciliation, which came to be known as Ostpolitik.

The idea behind Ostpolitik was that rapprochement would ultimately lead to change — Wandel durch Annäherung.  When, in 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, it appeared that the policy had worked. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall was soon followed by the crumbling of the Soviet Union and German unification, which meant that Germany had finally regained its sovereignty — somewhat of a troubling reality, and not only among �ұ�������Բ�’s neighbors. In Germany, too, not a few people were worried. They shouldn’t have been. Germany was perfectly adapted to the new times where the “” appeared to have disappeared and where, as the then German minister of defense would , Germany, for the first time in its history, was “only surrounded by friends.” 

The end of the Cold War appeared to have ushered in a fundamentally now global reality, informed by interdependence, globalization and the end of history. Here, Germany was poised to play a prominent role as the epitome of a “” and a “.”  

Civilian powers such as Germany rely on what the American international relations theorist Joseph Nye famously called . Soft power comes from the appeal of consumer products (all those sleek BMWs and Mercedes Benzes) and popular culture (TV series like “Derrick” and Bundesliga clubs Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund with their millions of fans all over the world), rather than from the barrel of the gun. 

Civilian powers scale down their military. After all, a country surrounded by friends has little use for a military that is up to the task of defending the country. Instead, they are tempted to follow the lead of the Danish Progress party whose late leader  in the early 1970s to replace the country’s ministry of defense with an answering machine with the recorded message of “We surrender” in Russian.

Mugged by Reality

On February 24, Germany got mugged by reality and was caught flat-footed. In the face of a Melian scenario, Germany is like the emperor with his new clothes. Over the recent days, a growing number of articles have appeared exposing the sorry state of the German military and lamenting its lack of preparedness. Some of the stories would make for great slapstick comedy were they not describing a pathetic reality. 

The German soldiers stationed in Lithuania, for instance, not only lack warm jackets but even underwear, or so �ұ�������Բ�’s defense ombudsperson has . At the same time, the commander of �ұ�������Բ�’s army went public,  that the military “stands more or less naked.” His remarks led France’s center-left daily Liberation to  that “the generals of the Bundeswehr were ready to lay down the arms at the first Russian attack.” Another French newspaper  that the German military, because of “deficient gear and the lack of flexibility of its soldiers,” was not in a position to efficiently support its allies in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

None of this is new. It has all been known for years. In late 2018, for instance, �ұ�������Բ�’s weekly Die Zeit  noting that only a third of the new tanks, fighter jets and helicopters the military had received were ready to use. Four years later, one of �ұ�������Բ�’s major dailies, the Süddeutsche Zeitung,  that the military continued to suffer from massive problems. The German navy, for instance, could count on less than 30% of its ships to be completely ready for action. 

A few days before the Russian invasion on February 24, the Ukrainian government asked the Germans for anti-tank missile systems. Berlin declined. The reason is simple: Even if it had wanted to, Germany would not be in a position to supply the weapons — they were .

No matter the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Germany will be collateral damage. For too long, the Germans have believed that interdependence and constructive engagement would fundamentally change international relations. This view, however, is based on theoretical constructs that ignore some of the fundamentals informing international relations: the legacy of history and, closely linked to it, emotions. Europe’s history abounds with grievances and resentment, more often than not triggering intense passions. The Balkan wars of the 1990s should have served as a reminder. Instead, they were dismissed as a remnant of a bygone era. 

There is another lesson to be drawn from this disaster. A few years ago, two American political scientists  the phrase “weaponizing interdependence.” The authors used network theory to  how “coercing actors could exploit interdependence and why targeted actors would find it difficult to evade coercion attempts.” Germany is a textbook case. For decades now, it has increased its dependence on Russian inputs, particularly natural gas and oil.

The controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline is only the latest example of this. Dependence on Russian commodities was once again informed by the same belief in the power of interdependence to engage the other side in a way beneficial to both. But, once again, the whole thing is in shambles, and Germany is caught in the trap largely of its own making.

Time for a Change

But the times there are changing, and rapidly so. Over the weekend, Germany agreed to cut Russian banks off from the SWIFT payment system, announced it would deliver anti-tank missiles to Ukraine (leaving some observers wondering how they suddenly materialized) and sent a military contingent to be stationed in Slovakia. 

What is much more significant, however, is the fundamental change in tone with regard to Russia, its assault on Ukraine and �ұ�������Բ�’s response. The two parties that in the past have been most indulgent toward Vladimir Putin’s regime, the Social Democrats and the Left, have made a complete volte-face, condemning Moscow’s aggression. 

At the same time, there has been growing recognition on the side of �ұ�������Բ�’s left-wing intellectuals that the “times of illusion” are over, that the notion of “wehrhafte Demokratie” — a democracy that can defend itself — only has meaning if it is backed by real forces, and that this will require not only resources but a fundamental change of mindset. The reality is that �ұ�������Բ�’s allies will no longer allow Germans to evoke the horrors of the Nazi regime as an explanation for their neglecting its defensive capabilities. 

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information..

Given the new geostrategic realities, what Western Europe needs, and desperately so, is a strong German military. It must be relieved that on Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz  an allocation of €100 billion ($112 billion) toward the 2022 military budget, aiming to raise defense spending to over 2% of GDP set out in NATO guidelines going forward; last year, it stood at 1.53%.

Finally, it seems to dawn in Germany that Putin’s aggression is driven as much by historical revisionism and revanchism as by the boundless  to snuff out and eradicate Ukraine’s civil society and democratic spirit, turning it into a second Belarus, a Russia en miniature. It is hardly a coincidence that the invasion of Ukraine started almost to the day of the anniversary of the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Moscow regime in February 2014.

The only one who has remained steadfast in his Putinophilism is former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has always prided himself in his close relationship with the Russian autocrat. Whereas Austria’s ex-chancellor, Christian Kern, and the former French premier, François Fillon,  from lucrative posts on the boards of Russian enterprises, Schröder refused to follow suit, much to the embarrassment of the German Social Democrats. 

But then, Schröder belongs to the same generation as the Putins, Trumps and Xis of this world, old men living in an alternative reality who would like nothing more than to turn back the clock. In Germany, at least, dreams and illusions have given way to a new realism, one that is likely to have profound repercussions not only for Germany but for Europe in general.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Is a Wake-Up Call for Germany appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Clubs such as the G7 itself and the “climate club” envisaged by the German presidency are often able to make quicker decisions and act faster than more inclusive multilateral organizations such as the United Nations. Despite this, a speedboat, for all its pace and maneuverability, cannot cross the ocean on its own. So, too, the G7 cannot tackle any global challenges alone.

Time for a Sober Look at the Ukraine Crisis

READ MORE

The German G7 presidency has thus announced in its program that it intends to forge close links with the UN and the G20 in particular, with the goal of achieving a “fair and rules-based multilateralism.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also underscored the importance of pioneering initiatives and partnerships within the framework of an “inclusive and networked multilateralism.”

In his , “Our Common Agenda,” building on the commitments in the  adopted by the member states on the occasion of the UN’s 75^th  anniversary, Guterres develops numerous ideas for how to strengthen international cooperation. He  for progress to be made wherever there are common interests.

So, is what belongs together growing together? Unfortunately not (yet), as the G7 program is rather abstract and dutiful in its references to the UN. However, the German G7 presidency has an opportunity to change this and implement shared priorities on a collective basis.

Tether “Strong Alliances for a Sustainable Planet” to the UN

Both the G7 and the UN are opting for pioneer projects and partnerships with non-governmental stakeholders, such as the COVAX vaccination drive and the G7 initiative for infrastructure projects in poor countries. It is positive to see the UN secretary-general not shying away from dealing with these formats and advocating for their greater use in order to implement global goals, most notably those of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 2015 Paris climate agreement. While many UN member states may support such partnerships, there is no  on this kind of multilateralism beyond mere inter-governmental relations.

In order to achieve the greatest possible impact, it is important for the G7 that as many states as possible consider its initiatives to be beneficial and legitimate. To this end, it would be worthwhile to tether these initiatives to the UN system, which would ensure that partnerships meet human rights standards, are transparent in their design, monitored on an ongoing basis and further developed in line with the needs of the target groups.

The UN secretary-general has proposed strengthening the existing UN Office for Partnerships, which is not currently in a position to carry out the aforementioned tasks. After the failure of earlier reform attempts, due not least to financing issues, digital solutions are now to be employed. The G7 should support the development of an effective UN hub and link its own initiatives through this hub. This could help the G7 generate acceptance and, at the same time, galvanize other partners. By subjecting partnerships to this kind of quality control, the UN could strengthen its central role in global governance.

“Investing in a Better Future” — With the UN

Like the German G7 presidency, the UN secretary-general places a particular focus in his report on future issues in conjunction with matters of justice. The world organization needs to become far better at avoiding shipwreck — that is the UN must respond more inclusively and justly to acute and future transnational crises. Developing greater strategic foresight, taking increased account of the interests of young people and future generations, and bringing key players together quickly in the event of the outbreak of new crises — these are the ambitious proposals for placing the UN further into the center of global problem-solving.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

Here, too, the member states are divided when it comes to the increase in authority and knowledge for the UN that would go hand in hand with these measures. The issue of upgrading the UN is also contested within the G7 due to concerns about effectiveness and sovereignty and given the influence of states such as China and Russia.

In view of overlapping interests with regard to major concerns for the future, the G7 should, nonetheless, insist upon pooling the existing capabilities of the UN system more effectively, while at the same time supporting the targeted development of the UN’s strategic capacities politically and financially. This can be done via voluntary contributions or, beneficially in some cases, the  of the regular budget. In 2021, the G7 committed in the  to make crisis management more effective and fair in the future. This year, the G7 should discuss the role of the United Nations in this.

Currently, member states are  in the UN General Assembly which of the secretary-general’s proposals they intend to support, while preparation processes for the G7 summit are also underway. It is time to consider processes as one whole and bring them together for a future-proof multilateralism.

*[This  was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How the G7 and UN Can Make Multilateralism Sustainable appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Godfather of Fascist Terrorism

READ MORE

This is just one of a score of videos with the “Love Animals, Hate Antifa” label circulating in recent months, and one small part of an even larger phenomenon of national socialists using animals to promote their message. Defying the more commonly-identified brutal aesthetic, certain national socialist circles have jumped on a bandwagon elsewhere used on and in : gain appeal by featuring animals.

From Telegram to Reddit

WAP1488 serves as one of the most unadulterated manifestations of this attempt to wed animal rights and national socialism. The name of the organization alone signals its ideological disposition — the numbers being a reference to the “14 Words,” a slogan of the white power movement, and to the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” (“H” being the eighth letter in the Roman alphabet).

“There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany among the country’s leadership,” the group’s pinned post reads. “Adolf Hitler and his top officials took a variety of measures to ensure animals were protected.” What follows is a list of the various conservationist and anti-hunting efforts by the likes of Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Goring, men more widely known for their role in orchestrating World War II and the Holocaust.

The post goes so far as to observe that “Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels described Hitler as a vegetarian whose hatred of the Jewish and Christian religions in large part stemmed from the ethical distinction these faiths drew between the value of humans and the value of other animals,” a statement followed by an observation that “Hitler planned to ban slaughterhouses in the German Reich following the conclusion of World War II.” This last comment is perhaps most jarring to mainstream audiences, given the morbid irony of �ᾱ�ٱ����’s use of slaughterhouses in the form of concentration and extermination camps that killed millions of Jewish people, individuals with disabilities, sexual minorities, Romani, intellectuals and political opponents.

Beyond these written arguments articulating Nazi care for animals are scores of photographs and videos of Nazis with animals. Not only is there an array of images of Nazi soldiers playing or relaxing with German Shepherds and cats, but also dozens of images of Hitler posing with dogs, rabbits and fawns. At times, the images do not feature humans at all, and yet they still publicize this line of reason, typically through tea-cup-sized animals perched among Nazi uniform.

This is not just a strategy of WAP1488, though. It is a tactic used by many supporters of national socialism. Telegram channels such as the NSDAP International (almost 10,000 subscribers), the NSDAP (more than 5,000 subscribers) and the nSDAP International (almost 2,500 subscribers) now all fairly prominently feature animal-centric images and rhetoric.

Meanwhile, on Reddit, several subreddits discussing national socialism post both official Nazi propaganda of animals and unofficial Nazi-animal content. Perhaps exemplary of this is one private subredding called , which describes itself as a subreddit “for pictures of adorable or cute things that one would not normally associated with positive emotions,” and which an observer as a dispenser of “all your cutesy Hitler needs.”

More than just cute photos and references to �ᾱ�ٱ����’s alleged vegetarianism, a common refrain among neo-Nazis across various platforms is one claiming that the current German animal welfare legislation is the descendant of Nazi policy. In fact, contemporary national socialists depict Nazis as being trailblazers of animal rights and preservation of the natural world. The obscuring of these “fact��” are then denounced as attempts by biased media to unjustly vilify Nazism and all its devotees.

The Nazi Regime

Universal cuteness of fuzzy baby animals aside, it appears that there exists a propagandistic through-line between the arguments of Nazis then and certain national socialists now. Current national socialists rely heavily upon the plethora of staged animal-Nazi propaganda produced and initially disseminated in and by the Third Reich itself. Scholars such as , and have described high-ranking Nazis as demonstrating a public interest in animal welfare due to some mixture of personal affection for animals and political messaging.

To the latter point, it is clear that many of these images were staged rather than natural displays of affection, as signaled by the unnatural poses and contexts of the photographs — soldiers patrolling war-zones bending over to play with cats, Hitler staring off into the distance flanked by a dog standing on hind-legs in the same pose, and kittens curled up in Nazi helmets that dangle from fences. All of these images may simply exist because the regime felt that an articulated interest in animal welfare for the purposes of presenting a compassionate and trustworthy side to the public, but also to normalize their social Darwinist ideas and vilify racial, ethnic and religious others that they strove to paint as cruel toward animals.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

In the Third Reich, the “other,” and Jewish people in particular, were characterized as brutal toward animals. This was most frequently discussed in relation to alleged cruelty in the kosher butchering process, which Nazi propagandists noted as being evidence of Jews’ “other” status and depicted as ritualistic and sadistic. Meanwhile, Nazi attacks on intellectuals — particularly Jewish ones — also made use of animal welfare issues, claiming that Jewish scientists engaged in the practice of (operating on live animals for experimental purposes), tormenting their test subjects and fulfilling Jewish bloodlust.

Curiously, the Nazis also produced a plethora of propaganda that painted these “others,” their enemies, as animals in their own right, the only animals for which the Nazis did not show any care. The Nazis waged a relentless propaganda campaign dehumanizing their opponents, particularly Jewish people. Nazi propaganda depicted Jews as rats, snakes, spiders and unpopular animals.

It is significant to note the animals most often chosen: those with multiple appendages, such as spiders and octopuses, to reflect the narrative of Jewish control over society; or dangerous, poisonous or diseased animals. The snake, for instance, harkens back to parallels of the creation story and Satan in the form of a snake, whilst rats carry diseases and spiders fatal venom.

Today’s National Socialists

National socialists today rely upon the exact same framing of these issues, though with an expanded pool of racial, ethnic and religious communities to vilify and with one additional purpose. Juxtaposed with other national socialist content, be it animal-Nazi propaganda or otherwise, are images of the “other” as subhuman or as animals, as well as animal cruelty perpetrated by non-white peoples.

In the latter case, the most commonly used scenarios are Jewish kosher slaughter practices and (used by some communities in the lead up to Yom Kippur to cleanse the person of sin through the transference of sins to a chicken, which is then ritually killed in the street); halal slaughter practices by Muslim communities; the killing and consumption of dog meat in and (taken as metonyms for all Asian cultures); detusking elephants and other killings of large animals; and vivisections by pharmaceutical companies.

The examples have been carefully selected, attempting to characterize non-white people as inherently violent, as Kapparot and the dog meat festival are annual, while the vivisections, religious slaughtering and big game hunting are relatively common practices. National socialists use these moments of violence against animals to make audiences wonder: Would these “other��” attempt to mainstream such practices if given the opportunity?

Beyond this, though, is an implication of supremacism, with white people displaying the more advanced emotions of empathy and compassion absent in the “uncivilized” communities that commit animal cruelty. The videos and images are incredibly violent — blood spurting, animals squealing and resisting their victimization, and carcasses in disrepair. Aside from being graphic in their own right (as any slaughter video, kosher, halal or otherwise, is want to be), the cruelty in these videos may be said to also encourage audiences to extrapolate — if this is how these communities treat innocent animals, how might they treat white people?

Using a Different Brush

Finally, in addition to the obvious attempts to paint the Nazis as less brutal than these other groups through their contrasting approaches to animal welfare, the use of animal content is meant to chip away at mainstream anti-Nazi sentiment. These images clearly seek to generate an implicit connection between viewer and subject, resulting in the humanizing of individuals involved in a regime considered so brutal that it is widely denounced as unequivocally inhumane.

As social media commenters in these sections — even those professing not to be radicalized but mere observers of said content — have noted, seeing and hearing about Nazis’ care for animals has the effect of chipping away at the whole evil characterization of the Nazis as depicted in mainstream history. According to the logic of neo-Nazi propagandists, if Nazis were not always cruel and instead cared for innocent animals, then the stories about Nazism — and by extension national socialism — are exaggerated; if stories of their cruelty are exaggerated in this regard, then perhaps they are dramatized in other areas as well, such as in relation to the Holocaust. Meanwhile, if Nazis were caring for animals, i.e., the innocent, then it would stand to reason that they vilified communities that were not innocent and instead the bloodthirsty “other��” living in Germany. Thus, neo-Nazis use animal welfare concerns to pull at a thread of the metaphorical tapestry of Nazi evil, a thread that they want to tug to the point where it entirely unravels.

It warrants reiterating that absent from this modern national socialists analysis is any acknowledgment of the unprecedented violence and cruelty of the Nazi regime. No matter how many kittens SS officers held or dogs that Adolf Hitler posed beside, the reality is that the most brutal butchers of life were the German National Socialists themselves. All of the torturous behaviors Nazis projected onto the “other” —  experimenting on and brutally slaughtering living beings — were acts that Nazis committed against other humans.

Advertisers and people on dating apps use animals in their content to grab attention, appear relatable and induce those positive thoughts that incline the viewer to further consider them. While for different goals, the same is true for national socialists today. Thus, a puppy falling asleep with a chick speaks less to national socialist interests in the cute and more with their hope that, in time, they can draw viewers near and make them dream of a national socialist world.

*[51�Թ� is a media partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Role of Animals in National Socialist Propaganda appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Was the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Mother of All War Crimes?

READ MORE

So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life  to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“T�ǻ岹��, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,”  Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch  in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued  for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after �ұ�������Բ�’s top court  that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on  in Germany for  58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Practice and Practitioners of Holocaust Denial

READ MORE

In Moses’ words, the “catechism” consisted of five strands: 1) the Holocaust is unique because it was the unlimited extermination of Europe’s Jews for the sake of extermination, without the pragmatic considerations that characterize other genocides; 2) it was thus a Zivilisationsbruch (civilizational rupture) and the moral foundation of the nation; 3) Germany has a special responsibility to Jews in Germany and a special loyalty to Israel; 4) anti-Semitism is a distinct prejudice and a distinctly German one — it should not be confused with racism; 5) and anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

Leading to Debate

Moses’ claims, not least his use of the term “catechism” with all of its religious connotations, gave rise to considerable debate in Germany and beyond. (The key texts are now collated on the New Fascism Syllabus .) Notably, many female scholars, especially women of color, engaged in this debate, which opened a space for a discussion of issues relating to German colonial history, postcolonial approaches to German history and the Holocaust.

But when the discussion took place in the feuilletons of distinguished German-language newspapers, the authors were mainly middle-aged white men. Here, the criticisms, now bound up with the belated German publication of Michael Rothberg’s 2009 book, “Multidirectional Memory,” tended to be more defensive of German memory culture and critical of Moses’ supposed intentions. Left-liberal historians such as Gotz Aly and Dan Diner, who had been instrumental in freeing the federal republic from its self-exculpatory and conservative-nationalist postwar culture, bringing the Holocaust into the center of the national discussion, seemed especially incensed; though this is hardly surprising since these were the very people Moses had in his sights, using an Arendt-inspired tone that seemed designed to enrage.

The “catechism debate” has revealed some intriguing fault lines in the German politics of memory. Moses’ insistence that the terms of his catechism mean that what began as a progressive movement to make Holocaust memory central to the Berlin republic’s self-understanding has gradually become a conservative shutting down of critical voices who want to address German colonialism and current-day racism has touched a nerve. The responses can be read on the New Fascism Syllabus website, where many fair-minded respondents, such as historian Frank Biess, have attempted to grapple honestly with Moses’ claims and to set out what they think their limits are.

Yet the debate is significant not just in its own right, but because it has spilled over into the reception of Moses’ new , “The Problems of Genocide,” a reception that is itself inseparable from the debate over Rothberg’s book, which turned — contrary to Rothberg’s intention to facilitate open discussion — on the extent to which the Holocaust in German memory culture prevents discussion of German (or wider) colonial atrocities or modern-day racism.

What Does He Say?

What does Moses argue in his book? The clue lies in the subtitle, “Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression.” By this, he signals that his argument is less about the politics of Holocaust memory — though this features in the book — than the way in which the concept of genocide, contrary to the intentions of many lawyers, historians and political theorists, facilitates rather than hinders atrocities and human rights abuses across the world.

Critics, especially Holocaust historians, have been quick to condemn what they regard as a conspiracy theory at the heart of the book, namely that Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and campaigned all his life to have it incorporated into international law, was a Jewish exclusivist who worked with non-Jewish groups in a way that allowed him to get them to take his concept seriously, but who was only concerned with the fate of the Jews under Nazi rule.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

Moses does indeed set out something like this argument, saying that to “mobilise action about Jews … it made strategic sense to link the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazis under a single conceptual umbrella. This is the task that Lemkin’s genocide concept was designed to perform. Far from unthinkingly eliding the differences between Jewish and non-Jewish victims as supposed by Lemkin’s critics decades later, uniting them was the point of the concept.” His conclusion is that “if anyone is to blame for the problems of genocide, it is Lemkin.” In response, Omer Bartov, exemplifying the critical reading of Moses’ book, claimed in an Einstein Forum that Moses was putting forward what sounds like a “Jewish–Zionist ����dz�.”

Moses’ reading is debatable. Putting it forward requires dismissing Lemkin’s own autobiographical claims that he was moved, as a child, by learning of the Ottoman Empire’s massacres of Armenians and, more importantly, asserting that Lemkin remained a Jewish Zionist-nationalist from the 1920s — an orientation well by James Loeffler — through to the wartime and postwar period. But this is a reading that, albeit contestable, is well within the norms of intellectual history.

Revisionism is what historians do all the time, and there is nothing about Moses’ position that justifies reaching for one’s metaphorical gun. Besides, this is not the heart of the book, which has a far more expansive remit than Lemkin and Holocaust historiography, taking in a remarkable range of references in world history. He has set out his argument plainly and in detail on numerous occasions. (See, for example, his with Geoff Eley at the University of Michigan or his on the New Books in Genocide Studies website.)

What Does This Mean?

It seems that what is happening here exemplifies Moses’ argument that Holocaust studies is riven by paranoia. Why should seeing the Holocaust as exemplifying the “problems of genocide” — understood in Moses’ terms — mean that one is downplaying the Holocaust? The opposite is the case: The Holocaust should tell us something about the destructive potential of modern states, but it has been siloed in a way that reduces the force of its potential critique, permitting “business as usual” in the modern world. Why, to return to old debates in genocide studies, should placing the Holocaust in a comparative context diminish its significance?

If one were to compare the Holocaust with the Boston Tea Party or the Peterloo Massacre, the critics would be justified in objecting. But analyzing it alongside other horrific occurrences, such as the Armenian, Rwandan or Cambodian genocides or cases of genocide in settler-colonial contexts, not only allows one to understand genocide as a generic phenomenon, but it also throws into sharper relief what distinguishes the Holocaust from other genocides — since none are the same. One can be a responsible Holocaust historian and still subscribe to the idea that motivates genocide studies.

This is a case of fighting the wrong enemy. In the same way that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) sometimes seems more concerned about which historians have signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and reinforcing its own singular and narrow definition of anti-Semitism than about combating the radical right, especially as it seeps into mainstream politics in the United States and elsewhere, Moses’ critics have embarked on seeking to have him “canceled” in a kneejerk fear that his critical takedown of the “genocide” concept paves the way to anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

What Dirk Moses is seeking to do is to show how the idea of genocide has had opposite effects to those intended, if not by Raphael Lemkin, then by his followers today. He is hardly proposing a world of anarchy or an opening the floodgates to scholarly anti-Semitism. One does not have to agree with everything that Moses says to accept that this is a serious book. Dismissing it as anti-Semitic is nothing more than paranoia in action.

*[51�Թ� is a media partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Paranoia and the Perils of Misreading appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In Switzerland, the COVID-19 Certificate Divides Opinions

READ MORE

As a result, Joshua Kimmich has become one of �ұ�������Բ�’s most admired football players — quite a feat, given that he plays for one of �ұ�������Բ�’s most disliked clubs — a model and icon for many youngsters. Yet these days, his image has become somewhat tarnished. The reason: A few weeks ago, it was made public that Kimmich refused to get vaccinated. Put on the spot, he explained that he wanted to wait for the results of “long-term studies.” Long-term studies, by definition, take a long time. In other words, it’s going to take a while for Kimmich to get the jabs.

We Are What We Are

Two weeks ago, the German national team played the last two World Cup qualifiers, the first against Liechtenstein, the second against Armenia. Germany won both, without Kimmich — not because he didn’t want to play or because the coach had decided that the two matches were unimportant enough to allow Kimmich to take a well-deserved time out. The reason was much simpler: A defender from Bayern Munich had tested positive for COVID-19 and had to go into quarantine, as did his contacts, among them Kimmich.

Last Friday, the German Bundesliga resumed play, with Bayern confronting Augsburg, again without Kimmich. His quarantine had ended, but in the days before the match, another Bayern player had tested positive and, once again, Kimmich was sent into quarantine. Bayern lost the match.

Needless to say, Bayern’s management is not amused. But until now, the club has maintained that it was up to its players to get vaccinated — or not. This is likely to change. Patience is running out, and not only in Germany. Bayern Munich is Bavaria’s source of pride, the poster child of regional identity and lifestyle, reflected in the club’s unofficial slogan, “Mia san mia” — “We Are What We Are.”

Its connotation is that we won’t allow others to tell us what we should do, that we are our own masters. This has a long tradition in Bavaria. Bavaria’s official name is Freistaat Bayern — the Free State of Bavaria, whose people have always valued their freedom, particularly against Prussia and Berlin.

Then the fourth wave of infections hit the Freistaat. Bavarians love their freedom, including the freedom to refuse to get vaccinated. As a result, vaccination rates here are significantly below the average for the former Federal Republic. They are even lower in the eastern part of the country, where the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been particularly successful in mobilizing the population against anti-COVID-19 measures. A recent has shown that infection rates are particularly high in areas where the AfD has done well in recent elections, and this not only in the east but also in the western part of the country.

Nowhere, however, is the situation as critical as in Bavaria. Over the past several weeks, infection rates in the region have exploded. I was born in Mühldorf, a small town between Munich and Salzburg, in Austria. A few weeks ago, Mühldorf boasted a sad record of having second-most new infections in Germany. At the time, the rate of new per 100,000 habitants stood at more than 600 per week. As of November 22, it stood at more than 1,130 — and rising.

Zero Tolerance

In the face of these rates, which threaten to overwhelm the German health care system, patience is running out. A recent in Der Spiegel, �ұ�������Բ�’s premier news magazine, sets the tone: “Zero tolerance for the unvaccinated.” Enough is enough, the author maintains. Germany has been far too indulgent with those who refuse to get vaccinated and, in the process, not only “play the lottery with their own health” but “endanger everybody else.” It cannot be that a minority “dictate��” to the rest of society how to live.

An in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, a major left-of-center daily paper from Munich, takes the same line. Dismissing the charge that forcing the unvaccinated to take the shot would lead to societal polarization, the author declares that “the unreasonable rob the reasonable of their freedom — and the governments have let themselves be intimidated by them.”

Such commentary reflects a dramatic change of mood in German society. It finds its confirmation in a recent commissioned by �ұ�������Բ�’s major commercial TV station, RTL, that found a two-thirds majority of respondents coming out in support of general mandatory vaccination against COVID-19. Commenting on the results, the deputy head of the station’s politics department that this would mean a restriction of basic rights. At the same time, it would avert further harm to society and the state. That’s what ultimately counts more.

Until recently, in the context of COVID-19, freedom was to a large extent defined as the liberty to choose whether to be vaccinated or not. Any attempt on the part of the government to introduce restrictive measures was seen as an assault on fundamental rights and freedoms. In Switzerland, for instance, like Bavaria a bastion of freedom, those opposed to the country’s COVID-19 certificate have equated restrictive measures as the beginning of the road to authoritarianism à la China, if not outright tyranny.

Good Advice

It appears that this pandemic poses a fundamental challenge to our notion of freedom, which is now being pushed to its limits. One’s freedom stops there, Immanuel Kant has said, where the freedom of the other begins. This sounds perfectly reasonable, as does the notion, advanced by Matthias Claudius, an 18th-century journalist and poet, that freedom consists in being allowed to do whatever does not harm others. The fact is that today, the vast majority of those who end up in intensive care units have not been vaccinated. When ICUs fill up to capacity with COVID-19 patients, the beds are no longer available for emergency cases.

to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, the likelihood “that a fully vaccinated person will end up in ICU due to COVID-19 is 33 times lower than for a non-vaccinated person.” With the dramatic upsurge in infections, the number of patients ending up in hospital is bound to increase significantly, with serious consequences for personnel and care facilities. Already in late August, in Switzerland, COVID-19 patients for around 30% of those in intensive care. As a result, some hospitals began to delay non-urgent operations. 

The same was true for other countries. In the UK, late last year, cancer patients had scheduled operations postponed or even because of the upsurge of patients needing intensive care during the second wave of the pandemic. It stands to reason that this is going to happen once again with the most recent fourth wave. In countries like Austria and Germany, the situation is already critical, as Bavaria’s health minister a few days ago: “The numbers are rising drastically. The intensive care units are filling up. Our health system is about to collapse.”

Under the circumstances, there can be no doubt that those who insist on their freedom not to get vaccinated put those who don’t get the medical attention they would otherwise receive unnecessarily in harm’s way.

In the meantime, Bayern Munich’s management talked to Kimmich and his four unvaccinated teammates — without success. In response, the club it would stop paying players who refuse to get vaccinated, including Kimmich, while they are in quarantine. 

For many of Kimmich’s critics this does not go far enough. They have that unvaccinated players should be excluded from practice and matches altogether, if only to send out a strong signal at a time when Germany is heading into a health crisis. The situation is serious, in some regions dramatic — with dramatic consequences: RB Leipzig will have to play its next home matches in front of an , a result of Saxony’s low vaccination and high infection rates.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

Under the circumstances, it might be time to rethink what we mean by freedom. One point of departure might be a point made by in 1947 during a prayer in the US Senate. Freedom, he said, is “not the right to do as we please, but the opportunity … to do what is right.” This jibes with a quote from the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, later adopted by Friedrich Engels and still later by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in his famous essay on the “,” which states that freedom “is the recognition of necessity.”

In an age characterized by hyper-individualism, where, as Margaret Thatcher famously quipped, society does not exist, these quotes might sound hollow. Given the urgency of the current situation, and not as populist sirens would like us to believe, they might be the best advice we can give ourselves in order to find the way out of this crisis.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Meaning of Freedom in the Times of COVID-19 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

From Opera to MMA: Nationalist Symbolism and the German Far Right

READ MORE

The quality of inertia is a common characteristic. By acquiring the cachet of ritual and tradition, far-right demonstration campaigns grow stronger as they persist. How, then, do these campaigns come to an end? How do they demobilize?

Countermobilization

In an recently published in Mobilization, I investigate this question. Looking at large far-right demonstration campaigns in Germany, Austria and England between 1990 and 2015 offers a useful cross-section of contexts because the of far-right movements varies, as do the measures governments put in place to constrain far-right activity.

The quarter of a century from 1990 to 2015 also marks an important era for far-right activism. A rising tide of far-right mobilization followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Particularly notorious is the in Germany in the early 1990s. Similarly, the end of 2015 coincided with a shift of far-right activism in Europe. Seismic geopolitical developments, such as the Brexit vote in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, coincided with specific changes to the context surrounding the organized far right.

In 2016, the UK banned a far-right group for the first time since World War II, and across Europe, the 2015-16 refugee crisis heralded a new era of far-right mobilization. In total, between 1990 and 2015, there were 32 large far-right demonstration campaigns active in Germany, Austria and England.

The study applied qualitative comparative analysis techniques and found four patterns that account for far-right demobilization. Within the study, the most common pattern is marked by civil countermobilization. This includes cases of social movement organizations and other non-state actors working to stop far-right campaigns. Looking at the cases covered in this grouping shows the presence of other conditions that are relevant to the demobilization outcome.

For instance, the second “” campaign, which occurred in the first half of the 2000s in Germany and honored the memory of Rudolf Hess, a prominent Nazi leader, demobilized only after a new law criminalized glorification of the Nazi regime. The law was certainly spurred on by civil countermobilization, when residents from the location of the campaign in Wunsiedel lobbied national politicians to “stop Nazi glorification.” In this way, civil countermobilization can act as a causal trigger, setting various demobilization processes in motion.

Opportunity Disruption

The second pattern represents coercive state repression in the form of arrests, prosecutions, bans and proscription. In flagrant cases of illegal activity or of public order, the state may intervene to stop the far right. However, when it comes to campaigns that are innocuous enough to avoid state repression, eschewing blatantly fascistic displays and not inciting unrest, state repression is rare. It is uncommon even in Germany, where its “militant democracy” principle is configured to defend against the perils of far-right mobilization.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

The third pattern reflects a phenomenon familiar to social movement activists and researchers: closing opportunity. New laws or changes to the surrounding (enabling) context can stop or deter far-right campaigns. In Austria, for example, commemorations in Ulrichsberg used to honor Wehrmacht and SS soldiers with state support. The Austrian army participated in the ceremonies and state subsidies supported transport to the memorial site.

But participation shrank dramatically to only a few hundred by 2015, after the state withdrew support and stopped the army from taking part. Notwithstanding the decisiveness of state action, non-state actors were important. The Working Group against the Carinthian Consensus began problematizing and counterprotesting the event several years before the national government intervened.

The final pattern covers cases of militant action against the far right. Non-state actors applying coercive measures — physical confrontation and violence, blockading far-right march routes or event venues, etc. — can disrupt and ultimately demobilize far-right campaigns. However, cases representing this pattern suggest brawling, bashing and “punching a fascist,” and are perhaps not the most effective approach.

Instead, blockades are a common and evidently powerful tactic. Indeed, much has been written about this tactic, particularly among German activists opposing far-right groups. Some suggests that confrontational tactics, whether blockades or more direct coercion, are counterproductive as they confirm the “stereotype threat” of far-right activists.

Yet militant anti-fascist activists tend to take a dim view of prospects for persuading far-right activists away from their prejudices. Rather, they assert firmly that far-right organizing must be stopped. Notwithstanding qualms and moral objections about the methods, the militant action pattern suggests that these tactics can stop the far right.

These patterns confirm that there are many means of demobilizing the far right. Most striking, though, is the importance of non-state actors. Sometimes, their actions alone are enough to demobilize far-right campaigns. At other times, state intervention is key, but non-state actors often spark and spur on state action. This point is especially relevant in England and Austria where, for different reasons, the state is reluctant to act against far-right demonstrations.

But even in Germany, where specific legal instruments exist and political actors are often willing to use them against the far right, non-state action is vital to problematize and resist far-right campaigns. Given the resilience of far-right scenes in these countries and beyond, non-state actors must remain able and ready to countermobilize against far-right demonstrations that menace state and society alike.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How to Demobilize the Far Right appeared first on 51�Թ�.

German Nationalism, From Revolution to Illiberalism

READ MORE

Meanwhile, in Europe, Sonny and Cher faced serious competition from another husband-and-wife duo, Abi and Esther Ofarim. Ironically enough, the duo celebrated their greatest success in Germany. Ironically because the couple was Jewish and both Israeli citizens. By the mid-1960s, the duo was the top-grossing pop act in Germany, one album selling more than 1 million copies in one year.

In 1966, German news magazine Stern had Esther on its , claiming that “the sparrow from Haifa” was “charging ahead of the Beatles.” �ұ�������Բ�’s premier tabloid, Bild, the couple in 1969 — on the occasion of their divorce after 10 years together — as the “world’s best duo.”

The End Justifies the Means

This background information is important to understand an alleged episode of anti-Semitism that currently takes up a prominent place in the German media. The victim: Gil Ofarim, son of Abi (who passed away in 2018) and his third wife. Like his father, Gil is a musician and singer. In addition, he is a TV celebrity, known to a wider audience for his winning performance in the German version of “Let’s Dance.”

His celebrity status, however, did not prevent him from being insulted — or so he charges. The facts are not entirely clear and getting murkier every day. The incident occurred when Ofraim was checking into the Westin hotel in Leipzig. From what he has charged, personnel at the reception demanded that he remove his Star of David pendant or he would not be allowed to check in.

After leaving the hotel, the singer posted an account of his experience on Instagram, under the heading “Antisemitismus in Deutschland” — anti-Semitism in Germany. The post provoked an outcry far beyond �ұ�������Բ�’s borders.

By now, however, serious doubts have been raised. As it so happens, the hotel’s security cameras appear to show that the singer did not have the chain with the pendants around his neck. In the meantime, the hotel employees accused of anti-Semitism have brought a charge against Ofarim for defamation and libel.

On social media, the revelations have provoked an outcry, accusing the singer of being a liar looking for publicity at any cost. The singer himself, in response to the new revelations, has that whether or not he wore the pendant was irrelevant.

The fact was that he was “often seen on TV with the Star of David, I was insulted because of it.” What was at stake was something bigger, namely the fact that anti-Semitism was “a daily reality facing Jewish people in Germany” today. In other words, as we say in Germany, der Zweck heiligt die Mittel — the end justifies the means — or so Ofarim’s words seem to suggest.

He might be right. The media attention provoked by the incident has once again forced German society to confront an issue that refuses to go away. Two years ago, the most recent on the subject suggested that anti-Semitism was on the rise again. According to the survey, one in four Germans admitted to having “anti-Semitic thoughts.” Roughly 40%, for instance, thought that Jews talked too much about the Holocaust, almost half held that Jews were more loyal to Israel than to Germany, and some that Jews could care less what happened to others.

One year earlier, a large commissioned by the European Union on the experience of the Jewish community in several major EU countries pointed in the same direction. Nine out of 10 respondents said they felt that anti-Semitism had been on the increase over the previous decade. Among German Jews, some 40% indicated that they had been harassed at least once during the previous 12 months. It seems clear that Germany, like other European countries, has a problem with anti-Semitism.

Youthful Errors

This brings us to a second incident that has provoked a rather impassioned response. This is the case of the 20-year-old federal spokesperson for the Green Party’s youth organization, Sarah Lee-Heinrich. Lee-Heinrich’s election engendered outcry on social media, centered around tweets the new speaker had posted in her early teens. Deleted and long forgotten by their author, they miraculously reappeared after her election, thanks to �ұ�������Բ�’s radical right.

Among other things, Lee-Heinrich, who happens to be a person of color, had commented with “Heil” on a third person’s post that displayed a swastika — a case of misplaced irony. This was hardly the only time that she used “Heil,” as she herself . As a result, even �ұ�������Բ�’s leading left-liberal and (a daily newspaper close to the Greens) characterized her tweets as openly homophobic (she used the German word for “gay” in a derogatory way) and anti-Semitic.

But what riled the radical right particularly was the phrase “eklig-weisse Mehrheitsgesellschaft” — disgustingly-white majority society — which she used in 2019 to her anger over the fact that in Germany, belonging continued to be partly defined in terms of “being white” and ethnic roots. Hardly surprising, once the tweets appeared on social and in print media, their author became the target of abuse and threats, which forced her to briefly disappear from the public eye.

Lee-Heinrich’s defenders have argued that she should not be judged on the basis of tweets that she composed at a very young age. Jugendsünden, as we say in German — youthful errors. Against that, her detractors have responded that this is the typical hypocrisy of the left. Just imagine the author had been a prominent politician from the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany.

An observation made in a comment in Der Spiegel offers a somewhat more fruitful point. How is it possible, the author asked, that adolescents in Germany would use words and phrases with anti-Semitic, Nazi connotations if not because this is the way adolescents communicate with each other? The normality of the schoolyard.

I don’t know whether or not today’s younger generation in Germany considers it “normal” to carve swastikas into desks or spray-paint them onto walls. It would not necessarily surprise me. The whole thing reminds me too much of the time when I was at that age. At the time, when we were mad at someone, we called him (and it was always a he, never a she) a “Grippl,” and when we were really mad, a “Saugrippl.”

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

“” is Bavarian for “����ü�����,” the German word for a severely handicapped person. “Sau” (sow) is used as an intensifier. I have no idea why the word took on this offensive connotation. My guess is it was a heritage from the Nazi period, when handicapped persons — including all those who survived the Great War maimed and scarred — did not fit into the propaganda images of the athletic blond Aryan. By the way, I think I got the word from my grandmother.

What all this suggests is that Gil Ofraim might have a point after all. Germans pride themselves on having learned from history. And, to a large extent, this is certainly true. And yet. There are patterns that are human, all too human. And unfortunately, to stay with Nietzsche, they have a tendency to recur when you least expect it.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post In Germany, Anti-Semitism Just Won’t Go Away appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Syrian Women Find a New Life in Germany

READ MORE

Most opted for the convenient and electable option of telling voters what they wanted to hear. In doing so, many made use of a new in-vogue and almost bipartisan that Germany must not see a repeat of what happened in 2015, invoking fear of uncontrolled immigration and a split society that supposedly followed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to grant entry to nearly six years ago.

But this framing oversimplifies, decontextualizes and exaggerates the events of that year. Most of all, it denies a shared responsibility for Afghanistan’s current predicament and the human stories behind the German-Afghan migration history that spans four decades.

A History of Afghan Migration

According to the UN Refugee Agency,  Afghan refugees lived in Germany in 2020, trailing only Pakistan and Iran as the largest receiving countries. At the same time, 1,592 live in the US and 9,351 in the UK. Afghan  to Germany dates back to the first half of the 20^th century, yet until the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, only 2,000 Afghans lived in Germany.

Historically, immigration to Germany varied vastly relative to the conflict phases in Afghanistan. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, approximately 3,000 Afghans arrived in Germany each year from 1980 to 1982. The second phase of immigration followed from 1985 onward, when predominantly Afghan communists sought refuge in Germany.

The largest movement of Afghan refugees began with the end of Soviet occupation in 1989 and the start of the Afghan Civil War in 1992. Restrictions and expulsions imposed by the riparian states of Iran and Pakistan forced many Afghans to choose Germany as an alternative migration destination.

With the mujahedeen victory and the  of the Taliban, migration to Germany increased drastically until the mid-1990s before numbers declined steadily. Since 2010, with the resurgence of the Taliban, the number of Afghan refugees heading toward Germany has rebounded continuously. While 9,115 Afghans initially applied for asylum in 2014, this figure almost  to 127,012 in 2016.

Since then, the number of Afghan refugees significantly, from 16,423 in 2017 to 9,901 in 2020. The causes for this decrease can be found both on the European and national level, in policies enacted in response to the 2015 refugee crisis. In March 2016, as part of the , European Union member states provided financial support for Turkey to take back irregular migrants, mostly from Greece. In the same year, the EU concluded the Joint Way Forward with Afghanistan to ease “the return and readmission of irregular Afghan migrants from the EU to Afghanistan.”

On a national level, German information attempted to dissipate alleged rumors about lavish living conditions in Germany. Other measures, such as restrictions to family reunifications, might have also had an impact.

A New Phase of Immigration

After the fall of the government of Ashraf Ghani, a new phase of Afghan immigration is likely. Its extent will be subject to political will. Initially, Germany responded quickly to the Taliban takeover by adapting its asylum policies by halting deportations to Afghanistan. That represented a significant shift. Before, in a controversial attempt to appease the German population after support had waned for Merkel’s refugee policy, more Afghans were forced back to their home country as some areas were declared safe. 

But Germany has been timid in its response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. As of now, fewer than 3,000 Afghans have been to Germany. It seems that six years later, Merkel’s so-called “open door” approach still casts an overwhelming shadow over German politics and is a strong impetus for the tentative approach toward aiding Afghan refugees today.

The issue of migration has become a hot potato that German politicians were keen to avoid during the election campaign. If addressed, candidates were likely to try to outdo each other in using restrictive immigration rhetoric in an attempt not to alienate voters.

During the election campaign, the chairman of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and candidate for the chancellorship, Armin Laschet, tried to capitalize on an immigration-weary German society by that 2015 “must not be repeated.” While this phrase failed to inspire a successful campaign, as the election results show, it aptly reflects the public mood: According to a  published in June, 60% of Germans reject accepting more refugees.

This collective backtracking by �ұ�������Բ�’s political class casts an unwarranted bad light on the decisions made in 2015. Essentially, it capitulates to the far right — particularly the Alternative for Germany — in its interpretation of that period. According to journalist Anna Thewalt in Der Tagesspiegel, “with a truncated reference to the year, the events of that time are decontextualized and exposed to myth-making.”

Margarete Stokowski, a correspondent for Der Spiegel, the cynicism and the lack of empathy in the shifting political climate against refugees: “2015 was the year in which civil society accomplished much of what politics could not or did not want to. … What must not be repeated is politicians treating fleeing people like nuclear waste they don’t know what to do with.”

To the relief of many German and European politicians, a scenario similar to 2015 is unlikely to materialize. Many Afghans already face barriers and restrictions in Pakistan and Iran, stymieing a journey to Europe. According to , a sociologist at Kiel University of Applied Sciences, 2015 “will not be repeated in Europe. Afghan refugees simply don’t make it to Europe because the borders are sealed. The border regime that was established during the so-called refugee crisis is working. Afghan refugees are a minority on all main routes to Europe.”

Migration as Misfortune

In light of the human tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the rhetoric in German politics that dismisses migration as  is not only lacking empathy, but avoids the responsibility for the country’s 21-year military involvement in a failed Afghanistan mission. German armed forces were part of the 2001 multinational International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mandate and initially helped to secure Kabul after the defeat of the Taliban.

From 2003 onward, German soldiers were largely deployed to the northern region of Kunduz to establish a secure environment and improve infrastructure. This mission came under severe criticism due to a military exercise on September 4, 2009, when a German commander ordered the bombing of two tankers, feared to be stolen by Taliban fighters, resulting in 142 casualties, most of them civilians.

Despite increasing public scrutiny and doubts about the purpose of �ұ�������Բ�’s involvement, its armed forces remained in Afghanistan until 2021, participating in Operation Resolute Support to advise and train local armed forces after the ISAF mandate ended in 2014.

Not only does the anti-immigration rhetoric shut its eyes to the military involvement with loss of civilian life, but it also ignores the history of Afghan migration and the human stories behind it. The of 2015 demonizes refugees “who came to Germany … started a new life here under difficult circumstances and are now part of society. What are they supposed to think now when they hear this?” asks Anna Thewalt.

Particularly Afghan women, for whom fleeing to Germany was the path to freedom and self-determination, are struggling to reenact the rising anti-migration sentiment. One of them is Adela Yamini, who had fled from Kabul to Germany in 1994 to escape the mujahedeen. She now lives in the state of Hesse, in the Rhine-Main region near Frankfurt, to a large proportion of Afghans. During her 27 years in Germany, she has thrived and excelled as a teacher in a vocational school and a local party chairwoman for the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The recent developments in her homeland filled her with great concern and horror, as escape routes that were open to her many years ago are now closed to Afghan women. “I am overjoyed that as a woman I could flee Afghanistan and study and work in Germany. … It is terrible just to think that as a woman you have no way out and are locked up forever and ever. … When I see the pictures and hear from my relatives what they are going through, I am at a loss for words and I can’t find the language to comfort them, to reassure them,” she wrote in an email.

Yamini believes that the German government needs to face up to responsibility in light of its military involvement by supporting Afghan people “who are currently in acute danger to leave the country.” For that, “bureaucratic hurdles must be overcome and people without passports or visas should be taken out of the country.”

As of now, she sees the current German government as avoiding its duty to those who supported its mission in Afghanistan. According to Yamini, by trying not to “scare off voters,” this responsibility is foisted off to a “future government” due to the events of 2015 which were “not discussed appropriately.”

Since 2001, Germany has taken in more refugees from Afghanistan than many other countries that were capable or had a moral obligation to do so. Instead of building on that legacy, Germany is caving into false doom-and-gloom narratives around the events of 2015 that do not correspond with the realities on the ground today. According to , of the German Institute for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), “Germany would be much better prepared today to receive refugees — both at the level of civil society and in terms of improved accommodation capacities as well as integration measures.”

One pretext against further immigration is that Afghans find integration particularly hard. This is not reflected in reality as high employment of Afghan refugees in Germany exemplify. That is even more remarkable in light of government measures that had an inhibiting effect on the integration of Afghan refugees. According to , also of DeZIM, “German integration policy … has disadvantaged Afghan refugees for years in their access to integration-promoting measures because as a group they have not had so-called ‘good prospects of staying’ in recent years.”

As soon as the obstacles are lifted, Afghans prove their willingness to integrate into German society. When refugees were allowed to complete shortened apprenticeships in understaffed professions in , it was mostly Afghans who seized the opportunity. Already in 2016, from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees showed that Afghans in particular, who are often young and low-skilled, are seeking to complete school education and vocational training.

New Government, Same Inhibition

Following the results of the recent election, the end of the Merkel era is imminent. That era will not only be associated with the courageous decisions of 2015 but also the hasty, scowling renunciation of those policies. There won’t be another policy shift in the foreseeable future, even with the upcoming change of government.

That was indicated by Olaf Scholz, of the SPD, who is likely to take over the chancellorship by forming a coalition with the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats. During an election campaign appearance, he for Afghan refugees — as long as this takes place as far away from �ұ�������Բ�’s front door as possible: “This time we will have to make sure that those who are also seeking protection in neighboring countries are not left alone, as was often the case in the past. Instead, we have to do everything in our power to ensure that there are prospects for integration, that they can stay there, that they can have a secure future there.”

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

With this statement, Scholz conceded that an affirmative discourse on migration to Germany is a hornet’s nest. For the time being, Germany is preoccupied with its own problems. By describing the events of 2015 as catastrophic for the country, portraying migration as bad fortune and disparaging successful integration, Germany’s political class has succumbed to the narratives of the far right. As a result, this retoric has fed and reinforced the public’s negative attitudes toward migration. Meanwhile, the suffering in Afghanistan, particularly among its women, slips from public view.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Germany Lacks Political Courage to Welcome More Afghan Refugees appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is Big Tech Ready to Tackle Extremism?

READ MORE

Germany’s positioning in European and international cybersecurity policy is listed as the last of four prioritized fields of action. These fields are largely of a domestic nature. This also applies to the German discourse on the topic of IT security: representatives of digital civil society, the Association of the Internet Industry (eco) and some computer science professors criticize the planned development of an active cyberdefense, including the possibility of digital counterattacks — so-called hackbacks.** However, they primarily discuss domestic federal competence or fundamental rights issues such as the separation requirement.

European Imperatives

There are four reasons why the EU would have to be much more involved in order for the strategy to work.

First, the number of serious cybersecurity incidents affecting EU services of general interest continues to rise. Diplomatic action, travel restrictions and asset freezes — for example, Russian intelligence officers blamed for cyberattacks — have proved cumbersome, incoherent and ineffective in the past. A purely national perspective means that EU member states do not react uniformly to cyber incidents.

Make Sense of the World

Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

I agree to receive emails and other content from 51�Թ�. I understand that I may repeal my consent at any time. You can review our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for further information .

Secondly, the EU is not only the framework for German policy, but it is also inextricably intertwined with it through the direct effect of European law. The 2014 ruling on data retention by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) not only formulated requirements for data protection, but also for data security. In the same way, the EU Cybersecurity Act of 2019 is a regulation and thus obliges all member states to implement it.

However, the importance of EU law and the case law of the ECJ is underestimated in the German cybersecurity strategy. Yet these are central reference points for German legislation. On the other hand, Germany cannot impose cyber sanctions against third countries or their so-called proxies without the European Union.

Thirdly, the German government cannot reduce the EU to a coordinating role, if only because internal market protection is inconceivable without the European Commission acting as a safeguard of EU treaty obligations. The security and stability of the EU is not the task of the member states alone. For example, the European Commission will set up a joint cyber unit by 2023 to take joint action against attackers. Part of the necessary investment will be provided through the Digital Europe program. The development of cyberdefense capabilities will be financed by the European Defence Fund. In her state of the European Union address on September 15, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also a cyber resilience act to define common standards.

Fourth, transnational cybercrime cannot be solved effectively on a purely national level. Europol and the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) are regarded by other states as role models in the international fight against cybercrime precisely because of their transnational investigative successes. The call for a European investigative agency modeled on the Federal Bureau of Investigation is therefore becoming louder in cybersecurity policy.

Overall, it is clear that cybersecurity in the EU is no longer a national matter, but must be understood as a component of its shared sovereignty.

Germany in a Global Context

However, the necessary integration in the German cybersecurity strategy is not limited to the EU. It must also be coupled with strong transatlantic cooperation between the European Union and the US within the newly established Trade and Technology Council. Far too often, transatlantic cooperation is thought of in terms of national bilateralism between Germany and the United States.

The first argument in favor of this is that alliance solidarity obliges the German government to maintain an active cyberdefense even in peacetime. However, a demanding technical, legal and political attribution can neither be coordinated without the European External Action Service nor realized without US cooperation.

For this, Germany must in turn act in close coordination with its EU partners such as France, the Netherlands, Denmark or Sweden. Germany’s transnational critical infrastructure in itself effectively precludes it from going it alone in cyberdefense, not least because the expertise for sophisticated technical solutions is not sufficiently available in Germany.

A convincing security strategy, therefore, requires close cooperation with international experts as well as the knowledge imparted at the EU level via Europol in coordination with cybersecurity research centers and the European Union Agency for Cyber Security (ENISA). Sustainable influence on global standards and norm-setting in the multi-stakeholder forums of Internet governance can also only be successful in the long term if democratic states coordinate among themselves in data protection and data security policies.

In the face of increasingly complex global politics, the new German government should promptly Europeanize the cybersecurity strategy so that it sees itself as part of the EU cyber strategy 2020 and, in a global context, serves to cooperate with its democratic allies.

*[This  was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy. **Dr. Matthias Schulze was part of this initiative.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Weak European Reflex in German Cybersecurity appeared first on 51�Թ�.