re: "More EUro Alarmism"

Emperor Misha I at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") welcomed some remarks by Angela Merkel.

Money quote(s):

"German chancellor Angela Merkel very reasonably warned that if the EUropeon FAIL continues much longer, Europe may find itself in serious shit."

&

"(A)dd one source claiming that Germany has already issued orders to start printing Deutschmarks again instead of the laughably moronic “Euros” in “preparation for a possible withdrawal from the EU” and you have the beginnings of a full court press panic."

CAA still has a few DM (bills and change) rattling around the CAA-cave, come to think of it.

"Merkel is only stating the obvious, after all. If the whole Marxist Utopian nonsense collapses, which is will as inevitably as night follows day, Europe is going to be a clusterfuck and it will be every man to himself" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

EM1 is talking about more than just the unraveling of the "common currency," but then it's not irrational to believe that an Euro devolution would be just that and no more.

What's that rule about "you can't just do one thing"?

(Something to do with "unintended consequences.")

"What’s Germany, or any other European country, supposed to do if that happens?

....go down with the Marxist Titanic or try to fulfill their obligations to their own citizens and do what they have to do to survive?

Just exactly when did Greek public employees become entitled to the fruits of German, or any other workers’ labors?" (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

That's the question that Germans (and others) are asking themselves. The answer seems to be (mumble, mumble, mumble) "solidarity"!

"If Europe collapses and the socialist hordes descend like the vermin they are to rape the few remaining European nations who still retain a sense of responsibility and our nation sides with the socialist locusts, I’ll burn my passport and take the next flight out to join the 21st century equivalent of the Escadrille Lafayette.

The only good socialist is a dead one."

10/27

re: "America's Soul"

Jens David Ohlin at Lieber Code read this book that you might want to read too.

Money quote(s):

"Gregory Wallance has just published a fascinating – and contrarian – new book. Titled America’s Soul in the Balance: The Holocaust, FDR’s State Department, and the Moral Disgrace of an American Aristocracy, the book shines an uncomfortable spotlight on a rather unsavory moment in American history during World War II. Lawyers for the U.S. State Department became aware of the Nazi’s growing extermination of Jews, and rather than actively publicizing this fact, actually conspired to cover it up. At around the same time, the State Department blocked the rescue of 70,000 Romanian Jews on a death march in the Ukraine.

Wallance’s book paints a devastating portrait of the State Department at this crucial moment in time. In so doing, it adds much to the historical record regarding U.S. governmental conduct during the time period. In particular, it avoids the quick and facile reduction of a state’s government into a single agent with a unified approach to a complex situation. Instead, it provides a micro-analysis of how different departments -- and different lawyers all presumably serving the same organizational client -- were responding to the increasingly disturbing reports of Nazi atrocities. "

CAA is currently reading Erik Larsen's In the Garden of Beasts, which provides a similar perspective on American diplomatic impotence in the face of evil.

5/8

Happy Independence Day!

As part of eDiplomacy and "Communities @State on OpenNet", FSO Andy Miller runs an internal web log at the State Department. It's good stuff, for those with access to OpenNet (i.e., State's internal internet).

In Andy's latest post there he discusses the phenomenon of July 4th from the Foreign Service perspective. CAA won't excerpt (or outright steal) from his internatl blog, but will expand on his theme.

Independence Day in the Foreign Service breaks-down a couple of different ways.

If you're in a domestic assignment, it's a lot like a normal, hometown America Fourth of July, except 90+ percent of FS jobs in the U.S. are in the D.C. area and FSOs come from all 50 states. So for only a few of us are ever actually "home" even when we're back in the U.S.

Not a complaint, mind you; military folks go through the same thing, and since FSOs (and their families) will spend around a third of their working careers stationed in D.C., it becomes home.

Of course, there are more than a few FSO jobs jobs in D.C. that are going to make you work over the July 4th holiday, but that can happen in any job or career.

Overseas is a bit different.

In diplomatic circles, every embassy celebrates their "national day" and for the U.S., our national day is Independence Day.

So we put on a great big official shindig. And it's generally an all-hands evolution, with the "official" embassy Americans acting as the hosts, with lots of local dignitaries, diplomatic bigwigs, and quite a few guests with whom the mission may have established working relationships of one sort or another, a July 4th invitation being a very tangible way of expressing our appreciation for continued cooperation, &tc.

Official Fourth of July celebrations can be held at the ambassador's residence, the embassy itself, or even a hotel. Some are very informal affairs, with the familiar barbecue grill taking the place of honor; others are on the dressy and ceremonial end of the spectrum.

FSOs and other embassy staff do all the preparation, planning, set-up, execution, and clean-up. And while its going on we're "working" the party. And it is work, even if we're smiling and acting like it's a good time.

And, just due to the problems of local climate or other scheduling considerations, the official observance may be weeks or even months in advance, or after, the actual holiday.

Again, not a complaint; just an explanation of how this works overseas.

(Since 2003, CAA always takes a moment on Independence Day to recall the July 4th he spent in Iraq, at an out-of-the-way place he's unlikely ever to visit again. The MP battalion co-located with us expended some colored illumination flares by way of a fireworks display. Good times.)

(Some of my most favorite, if somewhat blurrily remembered, July 4th memories are from my military assignments in Germany, where the entire week of Independence Day was "Deutsche-Amerikanische Freundschaft Woche" or German-American Friendship Week, complete to beer tents and oompah bands. Good times.....)

At many posts, as Andy Miller noted in his blog, there are other, unofficial celebrations at most U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

That's when we'll organize a picnic/cookout at somebody's house or on a residential compound, play some slow pitch softball, drink some beers from our coolers, and watch our kids and dogs play.

Or whatever; it's the low-pressure, letting-off-some-steam version where we let our hair down, relax, and act very much like our friends and family do back home on Independence Day.

Only without fireworks (in a lot of places), parades, and other public patriotic observances; it's not our there country after all.

That's not to say that in many countries we're not wished well on our national day, just that it's not their national day.

Anyhow, I hope this gives something of a feel for how July 4th works in the Foreign Service.

re: "Managing decline"

David Warren at DavidWarrenOnline ("newspaper columns") argued against the inevitability and necessity of declinism.

Money quote(s):

"Gideon Rachman got his otherwise much-ignored Financial Times column linked on the Drudge Report, this week. (Drudge is "the bull" in this scenario.) In his smuggest, most superior, British tone, he lectured the Americans on "the management of decline." "

Even last October (when this saw print), it was far too late for any Europeans (even the British) to be lecturing Americans on this topic.

"(T)he phrase was meant to be droll: to ridicule the mindset of people who were destroying the British economy through nationalizations, while walking away from her responsibilities "east of Suez"; who portrayed Britain's decline as inevitable, and themselves as the ingenious lords of this great recessional dance."

The British have always done droll quite well.

"We "running dogs of American imperialism" (as the Maoists used to call us) regret the decline of American power, not necessarily from adoration of everything American, but because the alternative to American power in the world is Chinese power, and the rise to consequence of an array of regional powers perhaps nastier. For as America goes down, these unspeakable powers go up, relatively, and get their opportunity to throw their weight around."

True enough. America's decline, to the extent that it is real and not merely public relations in advance of reality, does not occur in a vacuum. Nature, and international relations, abhores a vacuum.

"In a similar way, in a previous generation, many not British themselves, cheered on the works of "British imperialism." For imperialism is always with us, and the British form was rather more benign than, say, the German form.

That is a point characteristically lost upon "progressive" minds, with their underlying, usually unexamined, utopian premises. This has been on exhibit throughout the Arab Spring, where it is assumed that the overthrow of Arab dictators must naturally lead to roses."

Clearly Mr. Warren's crystal ball was working pretty well last year, since he saw where the Arab Spring would almost inevitably lead in places like Egypt.

"Decline is of two kinds, relative and absolute. The relative decline of the U.S. was inevitable, as other countries which had destroyed themselves through war and totalitarianism gradually recovered, and wealth with its accompanying powers was disseminated through the world. The misfortune here is that America's allies in Canada, Europe, and elsewhere, declined their share of military expenditure. All were content to let the U.S. carry the weight of NATO, while they embarked on nanny-statist ventures more advanced than the American.

These in turn contributed to absolute decline: and to the effective bankruptcy of states across the European Union, as well as America and Japan. Behind the budgetary catastrophes are the demographic realities of aging societies, which can never catch up. They simply don't have enough working young to pay all the "entitlements."

Relative decline was unavoidable; but absolute decline was a choice."

Relative decline isn't such a bad thing when a rising tide is lifting other countries out of poverty. It's less of a good thing when poor countries are getting poorer.

""Managing decline" now means making the best of the fallout; of choosing what we can still afford and what we can no longer. The British "managed their decline," and now sneer at Americans whose turn it is to manage theirs.

There was in Britain a Churchillian force that did not accept decline. It "won the war" on its last sprint, then snuffed out just after.

There is likewise in the United States today a force - call it Tea Party - that does not accept inevitable decline. It is allied with every other faltering life force in American society. And, as an exponent of this "rabid right" myself, I will not only cheer them on, but continue biting their detractors. "

10/19

re: "Germany and France are not happy with Schengen"

Helen at Your Freedom and Ours ("A blog about politics and other things... ...but always from the right perspective.") noted dissension in the ranks of the Schengen zone.

Money quote(s):

"Dear me, what is it I see? A certain lack of faith in the effectiveness of the Schengen agreement. It seems that Germany and France are discussing the possibility of reintroducing national border controls to deal with illegal immigration. But was (not) Schengen and the general common border policy supposed to be the best weapon against illegal immigration?"

The evaporation of national border controls within the (European) Schengen zone puts the entire burden of illegal immigration on periphery states (plus international sea- and airports). It also means that residency restrictions on asylum seekers, once admitted to any state in the Schengen zone, are illusory.

4/21

re: "Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic "

Andrew G. Bostom provided a translation at Gates of Vienna ("At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war.").

Money quote(s):

"Binswanger’s seminal 1977 study examined the discriminatory and degrading conditions imposed upon non-Muslim “dhimmis” — predominantly Christians — subjugated under the Ottoman Turkish sharia in the 16th century. His analysis elucidated the key role played by the creation of Muslim “satellite” colonies during the Islamization of these vanquished Christian societies:

"Geographic integrity is shattered by implanting Islamic nuclei.; The sectarian reference point of Dhimmi communities is removed, and further sectarian pruning occurs according to Islamic standards. The autonomy of Dhimmis is reduced to an insubstantial thing… They are driven out the moment that Islamic nuclei appear in the area. Dhimmis’ possession of their churches is granted. These are closed or razed the as soon as a mosque is established in their neighborhood…Regulations in the social area…demoralize the individual: [they] are consciously instituted for their degradation. The social environment of the Dhimmis is characterized by fear, uncertainty and degradation." "

This model has been replicated again and again. After all, it worked.

"Arguably the most accomplished (and easily the most unapologetic) scholar of how the Ottoman Turks progressively imposed the sharia on non-Muslims, Binswanger became alarmed by the obvious modern parallels to that phenomenon he observed in the behaviors of their contemporary Turkish descendants in Germany.

Twenty-one years later, the author and veteran television journalist Joachim Wagner published his analysis of the parallel Sharia-based Islamic “legal” system burgeoning in Germany, entitled Richter ohne Gesetz (“Judges without Laws”). Wagner’s alarming investigation — summarized in English during a two-part Der Spiegel series — demonstrates how what he terms “Islamic shadow justice” undermines Germany’s Western constitutional legal system, ultimately abrogating even German criminal law. Joachim Wagner’s contemporary study has lead him to conclude that even the ostensibly limited application of Sharia arbitration within Germany’s Muslim community nullifies the state’s Western conception of legal justice." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Read the whole thing.

2/29

re: "It's Still The Politics"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("The one and only.") looked at systemic and structural problems with the Euro.

Money quote(s):

"The notion of a “stand-alone” single currency was always an idiocy."

No, really, don't sugar-coat it. We can take it. No need to beat-around-the-bush: tell us what you really think.

"German voters never wanted the euro, and were never given the chance by their political class to say no. Adding injury to injury, the promises that were made to them about their new currency have been shown to be false."

9/23

re: "diplomacy"

CAA (that's me!) continued his response to Jeff Emanuel's post at RedState:, responding to Jack_Savage's comment of Friday, February 10th at 8:40 AM EST(link).

Jack Savage said:

"When we are in a foreign land, aren’t we ALL diplomats?"

My response:

"Only when we screw up.

Seriously, I got that same briefing as a Private (E-2) in Germany back during the Bad Old Days (TM) of The Cold War as well.

So in a broad-swath philosophical sense that’s true.

From a perspective of international law (specifically the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations), anybody we send over on a diplomatic passport (IF THEY ARE GRANTED A DIPLOMATIC VISA BY THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT) is a “diplomat.”

But in terms of reality, it’s our Foreign Service Officers (FSO; both from State, USAID, and Dept. of Commerce “Foreign Commercial Service) and Foreign Service Specialists (FSS) who are “actual” diplomats by training and profession.

You could add to that some (but not all) of the various attaches (such as military ones) from other government “tenant agencies” as they get specialized training for working in a diplomatic environment."


2/11

re: "Sticking It Out"

CAA (that's me!) continued his response to Jeff Emanuel's post at RedState:, responding to Marcus_Traianus' comment of Thursday, February 9th at 1:29 PM EST(link).

Marcus said:

"I was only thinking they would eat MRE’s until they could get to Liberty for some Taco Bell or BK. Either that or to hold them over until the crudites dip was replenished in a week.

Realistically DoS is always a crap shoot. But I think he was hoping for Europe, Scandinavia or even Namibia (Ja, sie sprechen Deutsch). It’s like another guy I know who speaks fluent Spanish and ended up in Rome (where he became a chain smoker waiting for the constant PLO threatened attacks on the embassy).

Look, I don’t like whiners not matter where they live. There is always someone who has it a lot worse. Plus this Walmart-Embassy in Iraq was really not well thought out. That above all else is obvious."

My response:

"I hope your friend stuck it out and got a German-speaking post eventually. While not as widely useful as, say, French or Spanish, it’s certainly not a “boutique language” where you go to a lot of effort learning it and there’s only one place that speaks it (Slovenian, Estonian, that sort of language). With German, you’ve got utility in not only the (several, but not as many as there used to be) posts in Germany, but in Austria and Switzerland as well.

Italian isn’t bad for a Spanish speaker to learn, and Rome a lot nicer than some of the places Spanish speakers get assigned.

As a working level diplomat, I’m not really privy to the big policy-level decisions like “what’s our post-invasion plan for Iraq” or “how big should our embassy be in Iraq.” But those decisions were generally made outside of State or at its very highest levels; i.e., by political appointees."

2/9

re: "Groundbreaking Report on Anti-Americanism in European Media"

Ray D. at Davids Medienkritik remarked on anti-American bias in European media.

Money quote(s):

"Perhaps the most striking statement on German media was made by Andrei Markovits, who related that a German journalist openly admitted to him that the editors back home were pushing him to provide negative material - because it sells so well. That is something we have known for years - but his statement is just further evidence."

&

"It is also beyond argument that individuals of faith in the United States have been unfairly vilified and targeted in European media. To conclude, let's hope that the larger mainstream media picks up on the subject of anti-Americanism in foreign media as well. Considering the general political attitude of the American mainstream media, however, (one of sympathy and empathy for the America-bashers) it is relatively unlikely that this will happen." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)


12/9

re: "If one Eurozone can't work - have Two (or more)"

Charles Crawford at his Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") postulated that be more might better.

Money quote(s):

"The best chance for some sort of orderly outcome is to divide the Eurozone into two new currencies (Euro 1 - based on the deep logic of the old Hanseatic League which did well for 402 years! - and Euro 2), letting those countries which need a devaluation boost join Euro 2. If Germany heads Euro 1 and France Euro 2, the Franco-German axis can have a fine new job."

It reminds me of the Cold War story of some national leader or another saying he liked Germany so much he wanted two of them.

"What do we Europeans basically want? To get richer, live nicely and not fight.

There is no reason why this should not be achieved through a network of several smaller regional European Unions with customised levels of integration and mutually reinforcing basic trading and security relationships. This arrangement would also make further enlargement much easier - Turkey might become the core of a new Regional Union.

All the expensive and annoying central bureaucracy could be scaled back or even abolished - farewell, European Parliament. Legitimacy and public accountability within each Regional Union would soar, as the governing arrangements would be much less remote.

Above all such a scheme would not be brittle, subject to horrible institutional contortions as one sprawling Union tries to accommodate quite different needs, policies and cultures."

8/20

re: "Voodoo Science; Praetorians; borrowing to pay bunny inspectors; missed opportunities; and more."

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") dealt with several topics of interest.

Money quote(s):

"(T)the Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies to military and policy organizations, particularly in peace time; it’s not quite so visible or severe because the standards for admission to the organization can and often are kept high, and the Mamelukes and Janissaries and Praetorians do not admit fools and cowards to their brotherhood; but of course that may change in peace time.

We live in a Republic founded by political leaders who were very much aware of Roman history, who had read their Plutarch, who seriously debated the working of the Venetian Republic – in 1787 the longest surviving Republic in the history of mankind, not yet ended by Napoleon and the bayonets of the French Army – and who were quite familiar with the careers of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Octavian, Marius, and Sulla, the Gracchi – most of whom are known to modern Americans from movies."

Iron Law of Bureaucracy?

Oh yeah, that.

Our military is an armed bureaucracy, at least some of the time.

"The French want us to sit on Fritz. The Germans like having Americans spend money in Germany, and not having to have a large Wehrmacht. The troops like it in Europe. The taxpayers have never read George Washington’s advice on entangling alliances and not being involved in overseas territorial disputes. So it goes."

The taxpayers (and their representatives) in the immediate post-WW2 period should, perhaps, be forgiven their understandable desire to not have to come back and settle the Jerries hash, so to speak, for a third time; the second time being perceived as the result of their disengagement after the first time.


"Europe could afford Socialism because they didn’t need to defend their territory against Russia during the Cold war. It’s a tradition."

Likewise, Russia harbors lingering fears about various of its neighbors to the west; that too is tradition and it informs their view of geopolitics even today.


"The Marines acted without thinking of the consequences and must be made to realize that; but I have always believed that far more serious acts take place in every combat action. War is Hell. A rational army would run away. Those men did not run away, and I’d far rather have troops who urinate on the enemy than troops who surrender to get their throats cut while in captivity."

That about sums it up.

_____

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.

1/15

re: "The last professional"

The Phibian at Cdr Salamander ("Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.") let his inner history-geek out for a reflective moment.

Money quote(s):

"It was often said that in most nations, the nation has a military. In the case of Prussia - the seed of the modern German state - a military had a nation.....

The post-Franco-Prussian War Germany took that Prussian professionalism with them. To this day, those who have worked with the rump-German military can speak of their professionalism - though they are firmly under their nation now days."

This was still true as of my last interactions with Bundeswehr folks, just a coupla short years ago.

What's key to remember, though, about the post-WW2 German is how thoroughly their professional ethic has been infused with the U.S. sort of civil-military dynamic.

(Let's chalk that one up as a success.)

"In their mid-century descent in to madness, there was one branch of the German military that held its honor the longest - some would say they never lost it; that was the German Navy.The fact they had the last Jewish officers is one point, they were also the service that held out the longest with the traditional military salute, though with time that faded as more and more officers saw the personal-professional gain by "joining the club" with the fascist salute. Many stuck with it throughout.

There are all sorts of pictures out there where some are saluting normal, and others the fascist salute."

Military, and naval, officers are a conservative lot. Not in their politics per se necessarily (although that's often true as well), but in their habits, both of thought and of custom.

Getting an old soldier to change how he salutes (or marches)? Good luck with that. It just goes to show how thoroughly transformative National Socialism was in Germany.

"(W)hen I see that picture all I can think of is sadness. Sadness for the last professional before his nation descended in to suicidal madness."

7/27

re: "Harsh. Very Harsh"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") borrowed extensively from a Wall Street Journal piece.

His own comment(s):

"Apart from Belgium which ceased to exist long ago, no EU member state really wants to be subject to German intrusive control over its finances."

&

"Read the whole thing. Then run out and buy tinned food while the shops still operate."

9/20

re: "DIPLOMAT Articles on All and Sundry"

Charles Crawford at Blogoir ("A digital hybrid of blog and memoir presented on a daily basis, or not.") provides a nice block of excerpts from his recent article at DIPLOMAT, "Diplomatic Drafting and Wikileaks."

Money quote(s):

"(T)the Wikileaks document dump exists in a category of its own.

The material is so powerful precisely because it blows away Assange’s banal anti-Americanism. Yes, it’s horribly embarrassing for Washington that all these cables have leaked. Confidences have been ruined. Sources endangered. In terms of writing style the cables often err on the dense and overlong side.

However, far from exposing the dark side of American/Western policies they show as never before the strengths and values of the Western Anglosphere diplomatic method. The documents uncover mile after mile of sensible, balanced, practical, timely and reasonable analysis and comment by American diplomats, often with amusing extra insights and personal touches..." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Which is nice of him to have said. One tries, after all.

"The UK has of its own free will (at least as expressed through Parliament when ratifying the Lisbon Treaty) accepted EU voting rules which allow this to happen, just as the Treaty also provides a procedure to enable a Member State to leave the Union and get back all its sovereignty once again.

Nonetheless, as the eurozone crisis gathers momentum, the existential question of sovereignty is coming back to the fore even in placid, postmodern Europe. What claims, if any, do (say) Greeks have on (say) German resources and hard work by virtue of EU ‘solidarity’? What claims do eurozone members have on (say) the UK, smugly watching the disarray from across the Channel? Tricky."

These are not exactly idle questions nowadays.

11/3

re: "Prodding a Sleeping Giant"

Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner ("a web-leading source of real-time conservative opinion") had this to say about the European bailout situation.

Money quote(s):

"Greece is falling into the abyss, and we already know that the new rescue package will not be big enough either to bail out Athens or to halt the contagion that is spreading rapidly elsewhere. Meanwhile, Germany’s political class appears to have declared war on its own people."

Calling it "war" would be a stretch but calling it 'ignoring popular sentiment' would be sugar-coating it.

"Germany’s regulators should at least be insisting that its banks are (truly) well capitalized enough to cope with any storm that may come. That might encourage the French to do what they have to do with their banks too…"

This gets into that area known as "moral hazard." Major banks in all the country's mentioned above (and our own) hold a lot of paper assets issued by polities without the economic wherewithal to ever make them real. So they're looking for a bailout package that doesn't make them write them off or down. It's that "too big to fail" syndrome again. We know how well that turns out. Unfortunately for European bankers, when their own "Occupy" movement gets started "Over There," it's not likely to be as (relatively) well-behaved as ours has been.

10/2

re: "Greece's Dangerous Gamble"

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway ("an online journal of politics and foreign affairs analysis") looked at the Greek financial crisis.

Money quote(s):

"As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out profligate Greece, the Greeks resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more."

Likewise for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Iceland. To name a few.

"European integration has been achieved through stealth and technocratic maneuvering on the part of elites, quite frequently bypassing the clear preferences of the ostensibly democratic populations in various countries. The passing of so much authority to the European Central Bank and to appointed officials in Brussels has been inexorable, with little input from the European publics and often against the expressed wishes demonstrated via referenda."

This is not a bug in the European experiment: it's a feature.

11/1

re: "Understanding Germany"

Joerg Wolf at Atlantic Review ("strives to be the center for news analysis and thoughtful online discussions on contemporary transatlantic relations issues ranging from defense to economics and culture") examined a Wall Street Journal piece on Germany.

Money quote(s):

"(M)ost Germans are not convinced that America's current wars are advancing our security significantly. We are war-weary rather than pacifist. To understand why most Germans do not want to send troops, I would add to the above reading recommendations the movie Das Boot, which is based on the book by Lothar-Günther Buchheim. The battle of Stalingrad is still very strong in the collective memory and informs many Germans' positions on contemporary wars IMHO, but I don't know if any movie or book is responsible for it."

If the U.S. was only sixty years (two generations) past the last time the U.S. had been on the losing side of a major land war, we might have a similar stance. That we didn't, historically, is probably due to our being both sides of the American Civil War.

6/27

re: " "German Soldiers Can't Shoot" "

Joerg Wolf at Atlantic Review ("A Press Digest for Transatlantic Affairs") considered how the Bundeswehr must transform.

Money quote(s):

"We constantly hear about the Bundeswehr's huge transformations since unification in 1990, but I am beginning to wonder how much of that was rhetoric. I am not underestimating how much the world has changed since the Cold War and how difficult it to transform military institutions and doctrine, but the fall of the Berlin Wall was more than 20 years ago. Two decades is a long time for Christ's sake. Soon we will mark the ten's anniversary of 9/11. I am getting tired of German pundit's talking about the post-Cold War world or even the post-9/11 world."

Most of the Bundeswehr's "transformation since absorbing the East German Volksarmee has been to downsize. When I was briefed a few years ago on just how far that had progressed, I was (as a former NATO inhabitant) truly shocked.

"1 percent of GDP is still a lot of money. We have to change faster, more creative, pool resources with allies to develop military capabilities more efficiently.

There was not enough pressure to reform the Bundeswehr in the past. One of the reasons for the lack of urgency was (and still is) the popular perception that a) finally we don't have enemies, but are surrounded by friends, b) we cannot increase our security with military means at the moment, and c) US led wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are not enhancing Germany's security, thus we do not need to contribute much. Very shortsighted indeed."


(6/27)

re: "Tom Ricks Mistrusts Germany"

Joerg Wolf at Atlantic Review ("A Press Digest for Transatlantic Affairs") exposes a puzzling mindset.

Money quote(s):

"(M)ost US experts -- with the notable exception of Tom Ricks -- do not worry about a war with Germany or a return of militarism and Nazi ideology in Berlin. Instead they are concerned that Germany (and many other European countries) demilitarize so much that we are not of use to the US anymore."

SecDef Gates recent speech to this effect has been much remarked-upon.

"Tom Ricks, however, has a totally different view of Germany. Mr. Ricks worries about "Germany's resurgence" "

Yeah, that Kaiser could just be waiting around until our suspicions are lulled.

Seriously, any Mr. Ricks looked at Germany's current military strength. Has he missed to demographic meltdown that most Western European nations, including Germany, are undergoing? Ralph Peters thinks the Germans still have it in them (along with other Europeans) to put the boot to the colonizing underclass that's already within their borders, but Mark Steyn and Tom Kratman are less "optimistic" (for values of "optimism").

"It seems that Tom Ricks is of the opinion that Germany (or the German people, culture etc) have not substantially changed since 1945 and is still a threat."

By all accounts, Mr. Ricks is a very bright guy. His recent SF-1001 form was absolutely brilliant, parodying not only the American military's mania for checklists, the bureaucratic impulse to require a written form, and the demonstrated strategic ignorance of Washington policy and decision makers.

"There are still quite a few Germans, who use our violent history and crimes against humanity as an excuse for the lack of burden sharing in NATO missions. Tom Ricks' blog posts support their claim that our allies still don't really trust us and that we should therefore not support their military missions... "