What to expect from the German elections
- By Sumantra Maitra
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E-mail China.org.cn, September 5, 2017
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel [Chinanews.com] |
Angela Merkel is a lucky leader. Only few leaders manage to be in the right place at the right time, and Merkel is one of them.
She was astute enough to change her political clothing during the dying days of the Soviet Union, turning conservative and being smart enough to sabotage her seniors when she ran for the leadership of her party. Various international developments thereafter also allowed her to show true leadership.
During the early days of 2016, however, it looked like Merkel’s days were numbered. Her policies of open borders ravaged Europe, and the millions of migrants who flocked into southern Europe, along with the gang rapes and terror attacks that resulted, seemed likely to end her monopoly on power.
Luckily for her, Donald Trump came along. Facing an uncharted catastrophe like Trump, Merkel recovered some of her footing. Germans also rallied behind her, simply because German hegemony in Europe is dependent on the liberal order America has created. Without American backing, Germany, much less EU, could barely survive.
At first, it seemed this was a perfect time and ideal opportunity for a proper centrist leader to rise up in Germany. Instead, we have Martin Schulz, trailing in various polls, saying he would push to remove American nuclear weapons from Germany soil and oppose any more spending on NATO if elected. While those are noble intentions, they are unrealistic, and naturally no one is taking him seriously as a coherent alternative to Merkel.
The ultra-right AFD, which is beset by infighting and outright racism and anti-semitism, on occasions, is holding on to only about 8 percent of the potential vote, despite Germans being fed up with immigration.
That doesn’t mean Merkel has changed; of course not. I wrote in September 2016 that Merkel’s mea culpa was completely meaningless. She is not apologetic for her austerity measures, which more than anything else destroyed European productivity. Nor does she regret her social engineering, which has led, more than anything, to the rise of the far right and a nativist backlash.
The reason is, Merkel has no reason to apologize. Germany recently had a record budget surplus of €18.3bn in the first half of 2017, according to government figures. It was perfectly timed, as Merkel seeks a fourth term as the chancellor. Unemployment in Germany is down to 3.8 percent, while unemployment in Greece and Spain is now hovering around 25 percent.
The reason of the high growth, however, is somewhat dubious, being due to massive taxation and government spending on housing and integration for the more than a million asylum-seekers who have arrived in Germany since 2015. So, we need to be cautious about the future.
Merkel has also taken the opportunity to crush her rivals. German intelligence has closed down far right websites before. That’s standard in Germany. Now, they have started to close down left and far left websites as well. After the G20 Hamburg unrest, where 400 people were arrested, Germany cracked down on Antifa and other far left groups.
Unfortunately, for Merkel, structural problems remain. Recently German Defense Minister Sigmar Gabriel claimed a second cold war running in Europe. Cold War 2.0, as it is termed, as before, pits Russia against the West.
In fact, any suggestion that Russia is equal to NATO in military and geostrategic terms is laughable. However, even for the sake of argument, if we do agree that Russia is a major threat to the West, why did Germany hypocritically oppose American sanctions on Russia?
The fact that Germany acknowledges a threat from Russia, but on the other hand refuses to do anything about it, whether through sanctions or raising the military budget, suggests it expects the U.S. or the U.K. to take care of the problem, while it can spend on social services and migrants. The trouble is, Britons and Americans are not dumb and can see what’s happening. That’s the reason why Brexit and the rise of Trump have occurred.
Merkel will possibly win. Possibly, because these days no one can definitively predict anything. However, the structural problems of EU will only exacerbate with time, with or without Merkel.
Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm
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