Skip to main content

UK Defense Minister to Germany: Time to get over World War Two

Today I can still remember being recalled on alert status in central Germany in September 1983 when North Korea shot down KAL 700, and pretty much everybody in the US Army Europe thought we were about to go to war.  It was a scarey feeling.

What I also remember was watching the company of German Leopard tanks attached to the US 4/73 Armored Battalion pull up into Panzer Kaserne in Boeblingen FRG, attaching themselves to the 1st Infantry Division (forward) as required by treaty and under NATO war plans.  Back then the Bundeswehr was carrying a major part of the load of its own defense, and even though most of the soldiers were short-timers (two-year draftees and enlistees) they were highly professional, and we were damn glad to see them.

(They were also good drinking buddies and loved to go bowling at the base bowling alley.  More importantly, they love to drink while they bowled, and were terrible at sending the ball down the lane.  Even more importantly, they loved to bet on their non-existent prowess, so if you got them into  game you almost never had to pay for your drinks for the rest of the day.)


When NATO's mission began to change in the 1990s, with Desert Storm and interventions in the Balkans, however, Germany's role changed.  The Bunderepublick constitution, adopted in the 1950s to reassure the West during Germany's rearmament, forbade the use of the German armed forces outside the country under all but the most stringent conditions.  The Japanese postwar constitution did the same. While understandable, these two institutional barriers allowed two of the world's foremost industrial economies to take a "free ride" in defense alliances, and that explains a lot about how Germany's economy and social welfare state grew during the 1990s, and how politics in the FRG took an increasing turn to the Left.

Now The Telegraph reports that UK Defense Minister Phillip Hammond has issued a strong call for Germany (and by extension, Japan) to “pick up the burdens that go with a globally-important economy," because World War Two "was quite a long while ago."


“In the case of Germany and Japan, two of the worlds biggest economies, both of them spend a significant amount on defence but have been reluctant historically to engage.”
Don't misunderstand me:  I am not in favor of rampant global interventionism.  I opposed the Iraq war and have long championed getting the hell out of Afghanistan.  Military intervention in places like Libya or Syria, if justified at all, should be undertaken by our far closer (and far more directly affected) European allies--you remember, the nations whose economies we propped up and rebuilt, and whose borders we defended for over forty years.


On the other hand, when there is genocide in Kossovo, or Bosnia, or there's a Joseph Kony to be neutralized, and there is consensus in among the NATO allies to intervene, then Germany should no longer be given that free ride.


Curiously enough, that's exactly what Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson says,




  • Decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American troops remain scattered throughout Europe. It is time to reevaluate these deployments.
  • The U.S. must make better use of military alliances which allow greater sharing of the human and financial burdens at less cost of protecting national interests.

If we ever expect to be able to cut back the bite that the military industrial complex takes out of our economy, then we have to pressure our allies into shouldering more of the load.


And you've got to ask yourself, why is it that the Brits are calling for this, but from President Obama and Govenor Romney on the subject . . . . crickets . . . .

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...