Sometimes, you have to laugh. I know I did.
Source: DW
The news that the German defence minister suggested sending the emaciated German military into Syria, to provide the illusion that the EU can project power abroad, was quite something.
A German peacekeeping operation in Syria assumes the Germans can travel to Syria.
That assumption alone could land them in a lot of trouble considering the state of their air force. Let’s just say the Red Baron would have a lot of trouble getting off the ground these days, let alone earning a reputation as a fighter ace. “How is the German military going to get to Syria? Uber? Lufthansa doesn’t fly there…” joked one geopolitical analyst.
And that’s just the getting there.
The Turks may not have waged a solid military campaign since WWI, but considering the Germans show up to NATO exercises carrying broom handles instead of firearms, I’m not sure that much experience would be required to fend them off.
And that’s just the Turks. Say what you like about the Russians, they certainly know how to make the most out of chaos. They’ve used Syria as a (literal) sandpit to test hundreds of new weapons systems, improve old ones, and make showreels of them in action to use as marketing material for selling them abroad. What better evidence that the former centre of the Soviet Union has embraced capitalism than such a display of entrepreneurial spirit – and at the state level no less!
The grand irony of this was that when the Soviet Union existed, the German military was actually thought of as something other than a laughing stock. After all, it had to be: the Berlin Wall was the frontline in the Cold War, and if the West was to win, it needed to defend it.
But when the Berlin Wall fell, Berlin became the frontline of the post-Cold War era, and all that came with it: ever freer global trade and ever larger global supply chains to support it. The rise of cosmopolitanism, and the decline of nationalism to the point of a politically correct hatred of it. Ever closer union in Europe, requiring ever lower defence budgets.
All of these assumptions, which led to the creation of the euro, will bite the European project and its proponents ever harder in the ass as time goes on.Â
That belief that Germany’s military spending can simply be turned on when necessary after decades of neglect, as though a politician can simply order an airforce and Amazon will deliver it the next day, is one such example.
William Ralph Inge, the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, once wrote in his diary that “if you marry the Spirit of your own generation you will be a widow in the next”. Germany married the Post-Cold War era – and finds itself a widow, in comical fashion, as the Second Cold War begins.
(I must admit I feel sorry for the soldiers serving in the Bundeswehr. Can you imagine how humiliating it must be to represent your country at a joint NATO exercise, arrive in a Mercedes van instead of an armoured personnel carrier, and pretend a broom handle painted black is a gun in front of soldiers from other countries who’re armed to the gills? That happened back in 2014, but I bet the memory still stings for those involved. And it’s not like the Bundeswehr is any better equipped now…)
As you’ll likely have noticed, there’s no shortage of Inge’s widows as we enter this new era. Coincidentally, just across from St Paul’s where the good Dean did his work, lies one of the largest of such widows: the Financial Times.
The FT abandoned its headquarters by Southwark Bridge a few months back, retreating back over the river to its old lair by the cathedral.
I walked past their now vacant HQ by the Thames at lunchtime yesterday; I had a hankering for a cheese toastie and needed to wander over the river to get one. Though its famous monogram was still nailed to the side, a banner for “Principle Demolition Ltd” was strapped to the railings, and the sounds of some major interior redecorating was echoing out from within.
The FT had been there since 1989, the very same year the Berlin Wall fell. Now it retreats to the same building it inhabited when Sputniks were being launched into the sky and the Cuban Missile Crisis still lay in the future, now that the Second Cold War begins.
I doubt the editorial board appreciates the irony: they’re still strongly wedded to the era we’re leaving behind. The world’s premier financial paper still spouts platitudes on the economic cost of tariffs, and the importance of global supply chains, as though governments will care more about cheap iPhones than winning a war for global control.
Many observers, including high profile investors, have claimed our recent past indicates we’re returning to the 1930s. I disagree. We’re returning to normality.
It was the past 30 years that were the anomaly. We’re going back to the real status quo: of great power competition, nations struggling and striving against one another in between in pursuit of their own economic interests, occasionally resulting in armed conflict. One could almost say that we’re going “back to the future”…
Many of those in charge have forgotten a time when national security was more important than GDP, but they’ll remember pretty soon. As you already know, I reckon Mike Pence’s speech later today will jog their memory.
For those wedded to the past era, now widowed in the new one, it’s time to grieve and move on – or make way.
All the best,
Boaz Shoshan
Editor, Capital & Conflict
Category: Market updates