Four more years “in search of lost time” for Europe? “Madame Alternativlos” and her eurozone austerity disaster

Angela Merkel was sworn into office as German Chancellor for the first time on precisely this date, November 22^nd, in 2005, eleven years ago. On Sunday (November 20th) she announced her candidacy at the next parliamentary elections in Germany, well ahead of her initial intention to wait until January. The election is due to take place in approximately ten months from now, most likely in late September or early October, 2017. The current “political climate“ in Germany seems to be that there is no alternative to her continuing on after the next election. Yet, there is.

Chancellor Merkel (July 2010), here pictured with hands folded in a diamond shape, a
gesture which  has widely been interpreted as her signature hand gesture, or
the signature hand gesture of her "there is no alternative" attitude .
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Just three days prior to that, at Thursday's (November 17^th) press conference with US president, Barack Obama, in Berlin, at the occasion of Obama's last state visit to Germany, she had evaded clear answers to questions about her own future beyond 2017 and had urged everyone to wait until the beginning of the election year itself. A couple of minutes later, she also stated „Demokratie lebt vom Wechsel - democracy is kept alive by change“. This was, of course, in reference to the current transition from the incumbent president Obama to president-elect Trump in the U.S., but it could also have been a hint at her own future. Yet, in hindsight, and in line with the decision she announced just a few days later, it turned out not to be, or in other words, to merely be a diplomatic phrase. The current “political climate“ in Germany seems to be that there is no alternative to Merkel (aged 62) continuing on after the next election, thus extending her tenure to over twelve years, and to fifteen years if she would stay on for the entire next four-year term. Thus she would, in late 2019, be overtaking the famous first post-war Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (fourteen years, 1949-1963) and, at the end of the said term, in 2021, be just short of the sixteen years her mentor in the 1990s, Helmut Kohl, was in office (1982-1998; both Adenauer and Kohl also representing her own party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)).

Yet, within the last couple of months, meetings have taken place of some members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens (bourgeois centre-left), and the democratic socialist Left Party (Die Linke), in order to (tentatively) make preparations for a possible alternative centre-left coalition to replace Merkel's Grand Coalition (formed by her own Conservative fraction (made up of the CDU and the - more conservative - Bavarian sister party CSU) and the SPD) a year from now. For this to be possible, the SPD would have to modify its current profile the most, by moving left again, away from current centrist or even centre-right positions on most issues, that the party took to be able to govern together with Merkel; but this seems in the realm of the possible in light of the (by German standards) still rather early pre-election stages we're currently in (usually the main campaigning doesn't really kick off before the end of the winter, so about five months ahead of the election date).

Latest polls (if we can still “trust“ any of them after the failures of the pollsters in the UK and the US this year) suggest that a “Red-Red-Green“ coalition is just short of the 50% mark and thus a majority in parliament; but it could gain more dynamics if, from the coming spring at the latest, it presents itself as a viable left-wing alternative to Merkel's current centre to centre-right policies - as, with the exception of the refugee policy (at least prior to the cynical Turkey "refugee deal"), the Grand Coalition is centre-right to hard right on most other issues. This is true especially with regard to fiscal policy, where the mantra of “fiscal responsibility“ or “fiscal conservatism“ has led to austerity, both domestically (German: „schwarze Null“ ("black zero"), i.e. a balanced budget, a no-debt policy, and no Keynesianism, despite Germany's current interest rate for borrowing being negative (!!)) as well as, much more drastically, outside Germany, in the “Euro crisis“ countries. Greece, which was driven into abject poverty, but similarly Portugal and Ireland, and to some extent Italy, were most affected by German-initiated austerity “measures” to “solve” the “Euro crisis” - i.e. socialize the debt by cutting public goods and services, and privatize the profits of banks and corporations (by “bailing them out”).

At the same time, the German government is increasing the military budget, allowing arms exports to autocratic states in the Middle East and elsewhere (most prominently Saudi-Arabia and Oman) and ratifying the notorious transatlantic "free" trade agreements with Canada (CETA) and the US (TTIP), which are opposed by many in the European populace (Berlin saw a demonstration of more than 200 000 against TTIP already in October of 2015). With a centre-left government, a change of direction in this crucial field (national and European economic, fiscal, infrastructure and social policies) can at least be hoped for – a bit “against hope”, of course, as there would be strong resistance to any Keynesianism or any kind of real European "Marshall Plan" by the European and global financial institutions, such as the IMF and some other EU institutions (such as the ECB or the infamously political (neoliberal) European Court of Justice), but still a spark of hope.

Anti-austerity protest in Athens, Greece, on June 21st, 2015,
"ΟΧΙ" στην ΕΞΌΝΤΩΣΗ ("no to annihilation")
Source: Wikimedia Commons

 

In light of Brexit, the upcoming presidency of the (at least economically (remains to be seen?)) nationalist Donald Trump, the likelihood of a much more illiberal or conservative-nationalist government in France early next year, and generally an increasingly more illiberal political and societal climate in Europe and globally, Merkel has been dubbed as the “new” or “last remaining” leader of the “free world”.

"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"? Sanctions and “twisting arms” or: On being on the right or wrong side in the “world of rules”

According to our business and political elites, we in Europe and North America (and, ideally, in all of “global society”) are living in a “world of rules”. According to our business and political elites, we in Europa and North America are living in a free and democratic society. According to our business and political elites, some countries have “left this world of rules” and thus have to be punished.

This "world of rules" (and Russia's "leaving it") was what Radoslaw Sikorski, former foreign minister of Poland, mainly spoke about at a talk on the Ukraine crisis at Harvard University in November of 2014. Yet, time and again, it is becoming increasingly clear, that these “rules” are just political tools – as President Obama put it recently, “we occasionally have to twist the arms of countries that wouldn't do what we need them to do.“ Since 2004, a "Presidential proclamation allows the US government to ban foreign nationals whose corrupt conduct hurts US interests, without providing proof of the charges."

Radoslaw Sikorski (left) elaborating on and defining who is on the good and the bad side of the "world of rules", at Harvard University, Cambridge, Ma.,  November 20th, 2014

So it is up to Washington and New York, but also their transatlanticist (neo-)“liberal“ allies in London, Frankfurt and elsewhere (e.g. Warsaw) and some of their lackeys in the media, to define what is treated as corruption and what is not – i.e. there is “good“ corruption, white-collar crime and fraud, as long as it happens on Wall Street, K Street, in the City of London, at Frankfurt high-rises, at Brussels institutions, or in Ukraine, and “bad“ corruption or white-collar crime, in Greece, Russia, Hungary, or Venezuela etc. You can not only be on the right or wrong side of history, but also of corruption, geopolitics or the war on terror, as above countries and countless civilians in embattled conflict regions elsewhere have learned the hard way (by having their “arms twisted“ or as “collateral damage“ of austerity or "democracy promotion").
Many countries/regimes or armies/groups haved turned from Paulus to Saulus in recent decades, because they started challenging US domination or hegemony: the Mujaheddin, anti-Soviet allies in the 1980s, became the “Taliban“ and enemies in the 1990s, with a war against them starting in 2001; Iraq, an ally against Iran in the 1980s, turned enemy in the 1990s, with a war toppling the regime in 2003; Libya, a business partner until well into the 2000s, turned enemy at the beginning of the next decade, with the regime toppled in 2011; the Syrian opposition fighters, supported with arms, then turned enemies (ISIS/ISIL); Russia, a “friend and partner“ in the 1990s and in the “war on terror“ of the early 2000s, increasingly was seen as an enemy from the late 2000s, with NATO expansion into the Baltics and the war in Georgia, and now the current, even bigger conflict over Ukraine. Others, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, have always held US support despite the former's illegal settlement policy and war crimes in Palestine, and the latter's funding of Islamist terrorism (not to mention the human rights violations). They have always been exempt from “the rules“, and “more equal than others“.

The discord between the U.S. and Europe over their different approaches became increasingly visible ahead of Minsk II in early February

President Obama recently admitted that the US was more than just an benevolent bystander and its politicians more than purely coincidental visitors to Kiev (V. Nuland/J. McCain) in the "Maidan" conflict between pro-Western protesters and the government in Ukraine. These protests, that had started in late 2013, escalated in late January/early February of 2014 and led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich almost exactly a year ago, on February 22nd/23rd. A treaty signed by all parties to the conflict, that would have set up a transitional government, was breached by the radical wing of the protesters, who toppled Yanukovich anyway - but as they were on the right side of the Western “world of rules“, they didn't have to stick to them. Subsequently, as a backlash of this coup and thus the expansion into what Russia perceives as its sphere of influence, the Kremlin annexed Crimea (important due to its Russian naval port Sevastopol), and an “anti-Maidan“, pro-Russian insurgency in the Donbass Region, in Eastern Ukraine, ensued. The US/NATO is allowed to expand its sphere of influence, Russia is not. On the other hand, the Kremlin hasn't acted in the most conciliatory manner either within the last few years; but diplomatic failures have also been committed by the EU/Brussels in its dealings with Russia over the envisaged EU membership of Ukraine. Most recently, though, for the first time since the run-up to George W. Bush's Iraq War in 2003, remarkable cracks in the transatlantic foreign policy axis are highly visible again.

"Enough is enough": Outrage on the outposts of the American Empire. The NSA scandal, mass surveillance, drones and “free trade” corporatocracy

German president Joachim Gauck ("enough is enough") and Chancellor Angela Merkel are yet again “indignant and outraged” over a new surveillance scandal - an employee of the German intelligence service (BND), who has been spying on the NSA inquiry commission of the German parliament, for the CIA. (Will any serious consequences follow? Of course not). Yet, to observers of the usual U.S. modus operandi in foreign relations, this is not surprising, but just the tip of the iceberg of a liberal U.S. imperialism that is becoming increasingly illiberal under the threat of the Empire declining, at least economically, and of intelligence agencies (the “deep state”) acting with as much impunity as ever. 

A graffito of the whistle-blower and leaker Edward Snowden in Astoria, New York (July 2013)

About a year ago, Edward Snowden, whistleblower and hero to most liberally-minded in the West and elsewhere, traitor and foe to conservatives and regressives in the U.S., fled Hawaii to reveal to the “Guardian” and the “Washington Post” documents indicative of the scale of the scandalous mass surveillance of citizens of other states by the NSA and other security agencies in five Anglophone countries (the “Five Eyes”). Later last year it became clear, that even high-ranking officials, most prominently German Chancellor Angela Merkel, were spied upon; (official) indignation was big then, much bigger then among them, in comparison to their indifferent reaction to the revelations that the communication channels of the hoi polloi are being tapped. Nothing followed. But now, after a year of humiliating revelations, even politicians who are not deemed on the left side of the political spectrum, such as Gauck and Merkel, are slowly (at least rhetorically) beginning to doubt the value and sincerity of the transatlantic partnership, or in Germany's case, the “German-American Friendship”, that so far had been invoked as the basis of European-American partnership, security and trust.

Imperial disregard for so-called "friends and allies"

Direct U.S. influence is now felt not only outside Europe, e.g. in the Middle East, anymore, where Israel, despite illegal settlement policies and disproportionate actions in dealing with the Palestinians (and another full-on war on Gaza pending), has been backed with no questions asked and all possible U.N. sanctions on Israel vetoed for decades. In Eastern Europe and the Caucasus pro-capitalist, pro-NATO, pro-neoliberal revolutions (Georgia, Ukraine) have been more or less openly supported, financially and otherwise, by Washington. In the Pacific, a geopolitical confrontation with China in the South Chinese Sea is slowly, but steadily evolving into a serious conflict. While Arabs and other non-Western populations are more or less rightfully accusing the U.S. of meddling into their affairs, if not open imperialism, for decades, this has now, most recently, also been a theme for an increasing number of citizens of states that so far undoubtedly were deemed part of the “West”. The populations of these countries, the most prominent and most powerful of them being Germany, are now also increasingly aware of direct instances of U.S. imperialism in their countries, after decades of indirect U.S. influence through cultural imperialism, i.e.“soft power” (Disney, Hollywood etc.) after World War II. The mass surveillance is just the most obvious instance, that is specifically coming to light with regard to U.S. behavior towards “friends and allies”, and that is now even known to the bulk of the population. Many in the political elites continue to stress the steadfastness of amicable transatlantic, specifically German-American, relations; however, the latest scandal is just another sign that the United States couldn't care less how its “friends and allies” feel about its behavior. This has started (at least) a decade with G. W. Bush's war on Iraq, with which he followed through in 2003, against the resistance of many other states, most prominently France, Germany and Russia, and has been continuing until today, with the PRISM mass surveillance program, and the spying on the citizens of “friendly states” coming to light. Today, news broke that the U.S. intelligence agencies are also spying on some of their own citizens, i.e. on those that are Muslims.

logo of the PRISM surveillance program, in existence since 2005

Drones/UAV's and PRISM: A fictionalization of human rights, international law, democracy and transparency 

It's necessary to “fight terrorism”, is the less and less credible official legitimation of the mass surveillance; the use of drones to kill “terror suspects” without trial (i.e. legal murder) is legitimated the same way (new Ukrainian president Poroshenko has quickly learned this lesson in rhetorics and is now also “fighting terrorism” in Eastern Ukraine by bombing civilians, breaking a truce brokered by diplomats of all parties involved with impunity). Those in Guantanamo are not given a fair trial, Osama bin Laden was immediately shot instead of tried (as a trial would have raised interesting questions over inconsistencies with regard to 9/11). 

While most of the (Western) world is focusing on the events in Eastern Ukraine and most of the (Western) media is hyping Russia into the the role of the (old and new) antagonist of the “free” world, the rotten, inverted side of the Western Janus face remains largely unseen for many followers of the average mainstream “news”. The covert drone war of the U.S., for example, goes largely unnoticed in the mainstream media. UAV's (“unmanned aerial vehicles”), many of them steered from U.S. bases in Southern Germany, have killed more than 2 400 (not convicted, just declared) terror suspects (with at least 276 civilian casualties as “collateral damage”) since 2004. The latest targeted killings, the biggest U.S. drone attack since December (when at least 12 civilians died (out of 17 victims overall)) went almost unnoticed in the West, as it was overshadowed by the coverage of the anniversary of the Boston marathon bombings, where three people were killed and 264 injured a year ago. While Christians celebrated Easter, at least 13 Yemenis were killed by drones, including at least 3 three civilians; the Yemeni government had officially forbidden the U.S. to carry out further strikes in its territory after the last attacks, but regardless of that, the imperial masters make the rules, not the government of (from the U.S. perspective) a petty Arab state. National sovereignty, who cares? The lawfulness of those targeted killings by drones is doubtful at best, but the U.S. (along with their U.K. poodles) are blocking any resolution criticizing them, let alone initiatives calling for an investigation of the matter. On Monday, April 21, the U.S. government was ordered to release the documents that, from its perspective, legalize the killing of U.S. citizens by drones, by a circuit court of appeals in Manhattan, after the NY Times sued it for doing so; the court ruled that the government waived its “right to secrecy” in the matter by publicly making statements justifying the killings, which means: Had the government remained silent, those documents on the matter could have legally remained secret and the right to secrecy would have overridden the public right to know about the justification, i.e. transparency, that is a vital right in a democratic system. 

The policies and strategies behind the "terrorism" rhetoric are mere instruments of power politics, though, and conducive to nothing else but the increased fictionalization of human rights, international law, democracy and transparency, as is the talk of sanctions to “punish breaches of international law” and “free trade for the benefit of everyone”.

Sanctions: Some animals are more equal than others

Sanctions and free trade are the other “principles”, better mantras, of the neoliberal rhetoric, promoting shiny, happy principles of “more humane warfare”, of “democratic capitalism and creation of wealth” and a liberal world order with seemingly equal rules for everyone (but some (U.S., the “Five Eyes”, Israel) are more equal than others (Russia, Arab states)).