For three years we have had war in Ukraine, masterminded on the NATO side by senile warmonger-in-chief Joe Biden. This war included bizarre moments, like direct attacks on German energy infrastructure, and also escalatory brinksmanship, as when Biden authorised long-range missile strikes within Russian territory, and the Russians responded with a not-so-subtle threat of nuclear retaliation. Throughout all of this madness, the Europeans slept, sparing hardly a single thought for their defence. Now that Donald Trump hopes to end the war in Ukraine, however, Continental political leaders are losing their minds. War: not scary at all. Peace: an existential threat.
The first way our leaders hope to dispel the disturbing spectre of peace, is via Ursula von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe” initiative, which will permit member states to take on billions debt to fund their rearmament. In this way, the clueless histrionic Brussels juggernaut hopes (in the words of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk) to “join and win the arms race” with Russia, even if (in the words of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – h/t the incomparable Roger Köppel) we must “avoid for the moment a confrontation with the new Washington.” Becoming a global superpower with a view towards confronting the hated Americans is all about spending and time, you don’t need strategy or a plan or anything like that.
Those of you wondering whether it might be a better idea to rearm first and then set about alienating our powerful geopolitical partners simply lack the Eurotardian vision. These are such serious people, that in the space of a few days they spun up this remarkable logo for their spending programme …
… which obviously portrays the EU member states smearing yellow warpaint on themselves and in no way evokes the most notorious obscene internet image of all time. Nations just do stuff, but the Eurotards cannot even take a shit without bizarre hamfisted branding campaigns.
As I said, these are deeply serious people, and they also speak very seriously, in declarative sentences that don’t mean anything. In a publicity statement, von der Leyen said that these are “extraordinary times” which are a “watershed moment” for Europe and also a “watershed moment” for the Ukraine.” Such extraordinary watersheds require “special measures,” such as “peace through strength” and “defence” through “investment.” Top EU diplomat and leading Estonian crazy person Kaja Kallas for her part noted that “We have initiative on the table” and that she’s “looking forward to seeing Europe show unity and resolve.” Perhaps there will also be money in the ReArm Europe programme to outfit Brussels with an arsenal of thesauruses so we do not have to hear the same words all the time.
The European defence-spending orgy was inspired partly by our deeply spooked and unstable soon-to-be Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, whose spirit animal is a pigeon.
Merz spent the entire campaign assuring CDU voters that he would never, ever, under any circumstances at all, in any conceivable universe, agree to lifting the German debt brake. Campaign Merz was the Pigeon of Fiscal Responsibility, and he even had his stalwart opposition to deficit spending in excess of 0.35% of GDP inscribed into his party’s election programme. Merz rhapsodised on the wonders of the debt brake at every opportunity He said strict deficit spending rules are necessary to “protect the money and tax burdens of the younger generation” and that “we collect one trillion Euros in taxes a year,” and he asked, “shouldn’t we be able to make do with that?”
Merz no longer believes we should be able to make do with that, and the story of his turnabout is so farcical, I can hardly believe it. Last Tuesday, all of the Eurotards managed to terrify themselves that Donald Trump would announce the withdrawal of the United States from NATO in his pending congressional address. I said in my last post that this was not going to happen, but none of our Eurotard ruling class have any good lines of communication to the Trump administration or any understanding of American intentions at all. Thus Merz apparently believed these crazy rumours, and in a fit of panic he decided that Germany should abolish the debt brake after all. Overnight, he announced plans to reform the German constitution to exempt much defence spending from debt limits entirely, and also to establish a 500 billion-Euro “special fund” for infrastructure spending. (In German politics, “special fund” is a euphemism for “great big wad of debt.”)
Altogether, Merz’s proposed spending spree will reach something approaching 20% of German GDP. To piss away all of this money, Merz will need a two-thirds vote of the parliament, and so he’ll have to force his plan through in the last days of the present Bundestag, as the establishment parties will no longer have the necessary votes when the new Bundestag sits at the end of the month (the AfD and the Left Party will be too powerful then). Democracy!
Obviously it would be a good idea for Germany specifically and Europe in general to begin funding their own defence, but three things dampen my enthusiasm for the present hysteria. First, there is the hysteria part: If Covid has taught us anything, it is that little good can come from these self-reinforcing spirals of childish hyperventilation. The second is the imprudent undertone of isolationist Amerophobia and the total lack of any coherent plan beyond “we must spend a bunch of money immediately.” The third, which proceeds from the second, is the absence of any talk whatsoever about serious institutional reform. Pouring money into our existing defence bureaucracies is not going to yield shiny new powerful armies, it is just going to get us more bureaucrats and a few ridiculous, deeply expensive and impossible-to-maintain pieces of military hardware.
Don’t believe me? Consider what happened under Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, when our Bundeswehr attempted to procure updated Puma infantry fighting vehicles for German soldiers. In the insane upside-down world of the Federal Republic, not even the military is exempt from our complex workplace health and safety regulations. Thus the new Pumas had to provide such optimal interior climactic conditions “that they could transport heavily pregnant female soldiers during combat missions.” Specifically, the vehicles had to be built such that munitions fumes would not threaten “amniotic fluid damage among female crew.” These and other bizarre requirements drove the cost and complexity of manufacture so high, that the notoriously incompetent procurement authority in Koblenz never succeeded in replacing our outmoded 1970s-era Marders, hundreds of which remain in service. Original plans to buy 1,000 Pumas had to be scaled back to a mere 350 – still the number that remains in service today. These overwrought machines are prone to maintenance problems and probably at best half of them are operational. In the end, the Pumas ended up ranking among the most expensive infantry fighting vehicles in the entire world, costing between €7 and €10 million Euros per vehicle.
Merz hopes to spend at least 400 billion Euros on expanding the Bundeswehr, and this money will either be poured into disgraceful boondoggles like the Puma, or go straight to the Americans – our newfound geopolitical rivals! – because at least their stuff kind of works. And what is not wasted on unworkable albatross projects will be absorbed by bureaucrats, planners, consultants and other official layabouts. The wide-ranging, fundamental reforms have to come first, but all the present German and European leadership can imagine doing is spending money. I fear that we will not emerge from the present panic stronger or more secure; we will just end up poorer, more geopolitically isolated and vastly more bureaucratised than we already are.
This originally appeared on Eugyppius.
