Germany Holds an Election in an Alternate Reality
Germany held an election yesterday. It went about as expected. The biggest surprise continues to be how the majority of parties all support some flavor of ongoing belligerence towards Russia — a policy that is destroying Germany.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved its best result in any national vote (20.8 percent) since it was founded in 2013. The party which started out more as an anti-EU, anti-NATO party and became more ethno nationalist and now favors both an end to conflict with Russia as well as strong ties with the US, looks likely to be excluded from government according to statements from Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leaders.
The pro-war, capital-friendly CDU came in first with 28.6 percent and will likely head the next government with former Blackrock executive Friedrich Merz at the helm.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centrist Social Democratic Party (SPD) was rewarded for its disastrous governance of the past four years with its worst national election result (16.4 percent) in more than a century. Yet its stance on “supporting” Ukraine remains unchanged.
And the warmongering Greens lost a few points from 2021 but remained mostly steady with 11.6 percent of the vote.
As of Monday morning in Berlin the anti-war Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is at 4.97 percent, which means the party would just miss getting into the Bundestag. Some BSW members are crying foul:
The Germans abroad referenced by De Masi cannot vote at embassies or consulates and postal delays might have prevented their ballots from arriving on time. Euronews, for example, reports on abroad voters still waiting for their ballots on Thursday, which even if returned immediately via express mail would have been unlikely to arrive before the 6 pm Sunday deadline.
Here are some possibilities on the future governing coalition from Deutsche Welle:
To form a government, a majority of at least 316 seats out of the 630 seats in the Bundestag is needed. A coalition between CDU and AfD would have been possible numerically, as both parties easily pass this threshhold, adding up to 358. But according to conservative leader Friedrich Merz, this is out of the question.
That leaves Olaf Scholz’s SPD as a possible partner, which together with CDU scrape by with 328 seats. A bigger majority could be formed if CDU were to add the Greens to the mix, reaching 416. But the CDU’s junior partner CSU has repeatedly ruled out governing with the Greens.
Over the coming days and weeks a coalition will likely be formed, voter shifts will be dissected, and campaign promises will fade away.
There will be plenty of time to examine that, but here I’d like to pose a few questions. Will the new chancellor and the new government be able to confront reality and begin to seek a path out of Germany current …predicament? How could they do so? And are any of the parties that will be seated in the upcoming Bundestag even asking the right questions that would lead to possible answers?
Germany’s House of Mirrors
Germany’s political elite largely represented by the four parties (the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens, and the Free Democratic Party, which fell below the five percent threshold to be seated in the Bundestag) remain stuck in the “rules-based order” transatlantic fantasyland championing their democracy and liberal values while demonizing Russia, reality is at the gates.
It’s increasingly difficult to square that paradigm while remaining obsessed with supporting Israel’s genocide campaign and criminalizing speech (notice JD Vance in his widely celebrated Munich dress down didn’t criticize Germany’s heavy handed approach when it comes to this area of free speech).
But more than anything it is an economy circling the drain, which is largely the result of the war against Russia, as well as hitching itself to the US empire with a more combative stance against Beijing.
And for all the talk of a US-Russia peace, what do we have so far? Let’s cut away all the headline-grabbing transatlantic political fights and look at the ways Germany and Europe remain on autopilot on a journey to becoming the next Ukraine:
- The EU is using the current US-Ukraine split for a renewed push to repurpose cohesion funds and/or get Eurobonds. The idea of joint EU debt in order to fund militarization is reportedly “picking up steam.”
The madwoman in Berlin, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock let the cat out of the bag on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that $700 billion is coming. She told Berliner Zeitung the following:
“We will launch a large package that has never been seen on this scale before,” said Baerbock. “Similar to the euro or the [Coronavirus] crisis, there is now a financial package for security in Europe. That will come in the near future.”
According to Baerbock, the deal will be announced sometime after the German election. The package is believed to include money for ”military training, the acceleration of relief efforts, arms deliveries and what Europe could offer for security guarantees.”
Merz, too, is reportedly on board. He had this to say following yesterday’s victory. From DW:
The favorite for the future German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, sharply criticized Donald Trump’s administration and urged Europe to distance [itself] from Washington during a post-election panel airing on state broadcaster ARD.
“I am communicating closely with a lot of prime ministers, and heads of EU states and for me it is an absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible, so that we achieve independence from the US, step by step,” Merz said.
“Step by step” is doing a lot of work there. Merz was after all recently floating the idea of buying F-35s from the US.
How will the European public, which has largely soured on the war, react to more power going to Brussels and loads of debt in order to keep losing to the Russians?
The humiliation from the US has been so thorough — self-inflicted by Europe but humiliating nonetheless — while the propaganda against Russia so relentless for years, I wonder if we’re going to see a rally around the EU flag moment similar to the time after the official start of the Ukraine war in 2022. The hatred and fear of Russia certainly remains strong:
- Where will the EU get most of the weapons paid for from the proposed $700 billion package? They’ll turn to the US. There will be little benefit for EU economies. Bloomberg notes how if increased military spending were funded with tax increases, or cuts in other areas, military keynesianism won’t be in the cards:
One factor limiting the stimulus to be had from rearmament is that Europe buys much of its military gear from American suppliers. Former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s competitiveness report estimated that 78% of purchases come from production outside the EU—and 63% from the US alone. That means any “multiplier” effect of stepped-up spending on growth would be low. What’s more, recruiting more Europeans to the military and defense industry would bring down unemployment, possibly fueling inflationary pressures that would lead to higher interest rates. In all, Rush calculates that EU economic output might be higher by about 0.6% in 2028, “which implies a modest nudge up in GDP growth in the next few years.”
- Neoliberal dream. Germany’s railway system is in a state of collapse, it and other EU countries are now cutting sick benefits, and other social programs as the costs of “supporting” Ukraine’s national suicide and the EU’s economic suicide add up.
And yet the priority is more weapons to fund an unwinnable war and prevent the Russians from conquering Europe — a threat for which there is still no evidence and makes no sense if you spend ten seconds thinking about it.
But on the plus side from the perspective of the European vultures, it provides cover to continue dismantling the welfare state and privatize everything from infrastructure to social services.
- For a time US natural gas exporters get to continue to profit. Following the Munich Security Conference humiliation, the EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič flew to Washington promising more concessions from Europe in order to please the empire’s capital. Among the potential offers from the EU: axe EU methane emission rules that would punish the US LNG industry while ponying up evermore money to buy more from the US, cut tariffs on US-made cars, and get tougher on China.
- Oh and there’s the potential that should the US and Russia eventually enforce a peace, American companies will in the not-too-distant future return to Russia. European ones? Not until the EU swallows some humble pie. And it will be the US that gets to pick over the scraps of whatever is left of Ukraine (Washington is targeting more than just rare earths in Ukraine’s real assets: pipelines, ports, nuclear power, and key infrastructure). The EU can deal with the fallout of the failed state on its and Russia’s borders.
The US and Russia could work out some rapprochement, which some in Washington believe will help with other wars in the Middle East, as well as the looming confrontation with China.
Meanwhile, the EU continues to piss into the tent, and should talks between Washington and Moscow fall apart, Europe’s militarization is setting it up to become the next Ukraine. That would certainly “extend” Russia as the famous 2019 RAND report suggested. At the very least, Europe’s doubling down on suicidal belligerence ensures that it remains walled off from the Eurasian project for the foreseeable future, and the US can focus its efforts on blowing up other bridges in the world’s heartland.
One would have thought that the US would have had to stay in the heavyweight fight against Russia in order to continue to profit off of Europe’s misery, but this line of thinking might have underestimated the EU’s impotence. As of now, it looks like the EU countries are content with ongoing vassalage despite the increasing abuse coming from Washington.
What Is Needed to Get Germany — and Europe — out of This Mess?
The New York Times ran a Friday guest essay by one Konstantin Richter entitled “Germany Is in Big Trouble, and Nobody Knows What to Do About It.”
What? There are plenty of people who have been saying for the past three years (at least) that Germany was heading down a ruinous path.
To change course all it would take would be a minimal amount of courage to imagine Germany as part of Eurasia, break with transatlantic slavishness — including quitting NATO, repair ties itself with Russia, take up China on its offer to merge the Belt and Road Initiative with Europe’s Global Gateway, and forge stronger ties in other areas.
Rather than spend untold billions on arming against some imaginary Russian invasion, the EU could use that money to rebuild its economies with the help of Russian energy, Chinese investment, and integration with Eurasia. Yet, there are no signs this is being considered — at least not yet.
Why, for example, are European heads of state not requesting their own bilateral talks with Russia? There is nothing preventing them from doing so. Why not resurrect the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe? At some point — one way or another — Europe is going to have to come to terms with Russia’s desire for a new European security architecture agreement.
Do any of Germany’s leaders look capable of such a task? Are they even thinking about it? Are any in Europe for that matter? Maybe Orban?
What’s on Offer Instead?
Well, let’s take a brief look at the positions of the parties in yesterday’s election.
Merz and the CDU. They represent the status quo with regards to Russia and atlanticism with more financialization to boot. Merz is the author of 2008 book “Dare more capitalism” and dare he does. The former Blackrock executive loves himself some privatization and deregulation. German workers are likely to see their living standards continue to decline under a Merz government.
Merz likes to talk about Germany taking on a leadership role in Europe. What does that entail?
Here’s a taste:
Here’s what the European Council on Foreign Relations expects:
Should Merz triumph, the new German government will have a mandate to pursue a foreign policy based on integration steps concerning defence spending and debt-sponsored innovation policies. Eventually, Germany will be less likely to aim for the broad supranational alliances it previously developed to ensure no state was left behind. Instead, a ‘two-speed Europe’ is likely—although it come at the cost of alienating Germany’s core EU partner, France.
…apart from Merz, the CDU’s leaders are generally younger—the powerful leader of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, is 49; the informal leader of the CDU’s conservative wing, Jens Spahn, is 44. Politically socialised in a reunified Germany, this new generation refers to their country as a clear leader in both Europe and the EU. Their parents were born after the second world war, while their grandparents—who might retain some connection to the post-war order—have long since passed away. Consequently, they lack the ties which defined previous generations of German leaders. To them, restraint is a foreign policy concept not rooted in personal conviction.
AfD – Who knows? What Wolfgang Streeck said last year in an interview with Die Zeitabout the AfD rings increasingly true:
I don’t know a single consistent thought from [Bjorn] Höcke and his followers. It’s all just cynical symbolic provocations.
Lately that lack of consistency means taking a more friendly turn towards the US. The party that started out as an anti-EU and morphed more into an anti-immigrant has long been hated and feared by the German political-media establishment. Yes, it has a small core support from neo Nazis, but the real reason was its anti-NATO stance, brutal honesty about Berlin being a “slave” to the US, and a desire to make nice with Moscow seeing as it is in the national interest of Germany to do so.
Well, last month the AfD adopted a motion in support of Germany and the US building closer relations, and it has embraced of Elon Musk and the Trump administration. So one can expect it to be an extension of the US rebrand in Europe. The shift also shows up in polling. German public opinion begins to take a more realistic view of the country’s relationship with the US:
But the AfD supporters, unlike other German voters, are softening their stance towards Washington:
Streeck, in that interview with Die Zeit, continued:
Conservatives on the right believe in a natural hierarchy, a world in which the better ones are there to tell the less good ones what to do. But I am an unconverted egalitarian: all people are of equal value. Furthermore, right-wing conservatives believe that there can be no peace in this world: there are Schmittian existential enemies with whom we can only live if we don’t let them live. The latter has become a central theme of the American neocons and the European NATO conservatives, including our foreign minister.
Zeit: Are you comparing Annalena Baerbock to Höcke?
Streeck: If you say that this war can only end when we hand Putin over to The Hague, then that means final victory: German tanks in Moscow. And I say we should think about that again.
And that leads us to…
The Greens
At least we know what we’re going to get here: more crazy, exemplified by Baerbock.
The Greens are already angling to get into the next government with the party’s Bundestag leader, Britta Haßelmann, telling DW that the Greens are now more of a governing party than an opposition party. Wonderful.
SPD. Representative of the “center.” Largely on board with Germany’s neoliberal war path, but might get there slower than the Greens and CDU.
Die Linke. The Left Party collapsed in recent years after abandoning nearly all of its former working class platform in favor of identity politics in an attempt to appear “ready to govern.” The party saw a resurgence in response to the AfD’s rise, as well as a renewed focus on economic issues. It also softened key foreign policy stances including dropping any pretense of opposition to NATO, and there’s no evidence that the party is prepared to consider what is necessary to get Germany out of the hole it has dug for itself.
BSW. Sahra Wagenknecht from the party that bears her name might be the one politician who grasps the enormity of Germany’s challenge and what it takes to tackle them. She’s been pushing the balancing of ties between the US and Eurasia and rebuilding German industry while also curtailing immigration. Alas, as of Monday morning in Germany BSW is only at 4.9 percent — just short of the 5 needed to get the party’s anti-war voice in the Bundestag.
If Merz and company are serious about moving forward with hundreds of billions for militarization, it’s hard to see how the situation in Germany doesn’t go from a disaster to devastation. Even without that colossal misstep, it still appears as though the situation is destined to get a lot worse before it can get better.
It all brings to mind something Glenn Diesen wrote the other day:
… idealism is dangerous as unrealistic demands and uncompromising moral slogans are destroying both Ukraine and Europe. A key rule in political realism is that refusing to accept the world as it is will result in devastation.