Mr. Scholz Goes to Berlin: Germany Shall Emerge as a 'True Global Power' while Any Problems are Deemed 'Manageable' like the Covid Situation

Be afraid, be very afraid of Mr. Scholz who holds: 'If you are a good leader, you listen to the people…But you never think they really want you to do exactly what they propose.'

A fortnight ago, Olaf Scholz, currently serving as chancellor of Germany, was interviewed by Time magazine. Speaking with Lisa Abend for about two hours in late April, Ms. Merkel’s successor was treated quite nicely and said a lot of things that will certainly make the Swamp Masters of DC happy. Here’s a selection of quotes from the piece, as always, with emphases and commentary supplied by me.

‘Feb. 24, 2022, marks a watershed moment in the history of our continent’, he said, calling the Russian invasion a Zeitenwende, an epoch-changing event…

While announcing Germany’s rearmament to the tune of €100 billion, Mr. Scholz’ self-awareness appears to be in about the same ballpark as, for instance, microbial lifeforms:

‘The issue at the heart of this is whether power is allowed to prevail over the law’, Scholz told his Parliament, ‘or whether we have it in us to set limits on warmongers like Putin.’

Before entering politics, Mr. Scholz practiced law, so, I surmise that he reads things, you know. Things, such as newspapers and the like, which would have informed him about the war of aggression against Yugoslavia, incl. the similarly indictable offence of preparing for one, by the German government in 1998/99.

Don’t just take my word for, though, here’s what Chris Clark (Regius Prof., Cambridge U) wrote about the ‘Kosovo War’ in his 2012 best-selling book The Sleepwalkers (from the UK ed., Allen Lane, pp. 456-57; my emphases):

It would certainly be misleading to think of the Austrian note [the ultimatum to Serbia delivered on 28 July 1914] as an anomalous regression into a barbaric and bygone era before the rise of sovereign states. The Austrian note was a great deal milder, for example, than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the form of the Rambouillet Agreement drawn up in February and March 1999 to force the Serbs into complying with NATO policy in Kosovo. Its provisions included the following:

‘NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access through the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, manoeuvre, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.’

Henry Kissinger was doubtless right when he described Rambouillet as ‘a provocation, an excuse to start bombing’, whose terms were unacceptable even to the most moderate Serbian. The demands of the Austrian note pale by comparison.

Back to Mr. Scholz and the Time interview:

With his Zeitenwende speech, Scholz presented a road map for Germany to emerge as a true global power—with a military to match. ‘We have to be strong enough. Not so strong that we’re a danger to our neighbors’, Scholz says, during an April 22 interview with Time, his first with a major English-language publication since the start of the war. ‘But strong enough.’

Leaving aside idiotic statements like the following about Gepard tanks that ‘will be rolling across Ukraine’, which constitute, according to Time, ‘a rare delivery of heavy weapons systems from a Western nation’. Iit’s a sham, for these AA tanks were decommissioned a decade ago; also, the gun is Swiss-made, and the Swiss gov’t has forbidden the export of ammunition, so, I suppose these tanks are little more than glorified roadblocks.

Here’s Mr. Scholz on how he views the people vs. his leadership:

In his view, he has been entrusted by the German people to lead based on what he believes—and not what polls say—is right for the country. ‘If you are a good leader, you listen to the people’, Scholz says, seated on the top floor of the Chancellery, the lush green of Berlin’s Tiergarten stretched out behind him. ‘But you never think they really want you to do exactly what they propose.’

Unlike many politicians who woo voters with rhetoric and charm, Scholz has never been one for effusive expression or even the clear explanation of his actions. If Volodymyr Zelensky is Europe’s great orator, Scholz is his opposite: reserved instead of emotive, methodical instead of spontaneous, and reticent to the point of opacity about his decision-making.

So, please think twice if you thought, well, that above statement by Scholz may have been a gaffe. This abomination of a politician is Germany’s chancellor

The Chancellor cites his electoral success as proof that his understated approach works. ‘The first rule for a politician is to be yourself’, he says. ‘Leadership needs to be clear, to have a course, an idea about where the country has to go.’

Scholz’s idea of where the nation should go is, of course, shaped by where it has been. ‘Living in Germany, you can’t go away from the disasters of the first half of the 20th century, which were caused by Germany. It is in all the things we do politically, and it is in my mind too, because we have a historic responsibility to help secure peace.’ For Germany, that means learning to think beyond itself to the broader collective. ‘We should be the nation that is willing to find the European solutions that are good for all, not just for our country.’

As a sidenote, here’s what Austria’s leading tabloid, Kronen Zeitung, wrote about it on 6 May 2022:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who so far has been rather bland, level-headed and hesitant, made some strikingly revealing statements in an interview with the US magazine Time last week. The SPD politician expressed a very strange, downright shocking understanding of democracy: the people should not be taken too seriously anyway, Scholz said—and European solutions come strictly first for him, even if they drag Germany into a war with Russia. If this is also the opinion of the comrades [once upon a time, SPD members addressed themselves this way] in this country, it is to be hoped that Dr. Rendi-Wagner's dream of becoming chancellor will remain such a dream.

Penned by Eva Schreiber, the last sentence refers to the current chair-woman of the Austrian Social Democrats, who’s an ardent admirer of Scholz’ accomplishment. Currently, if polls can be believed (/sarcasm), the Austria SP leads with 25-30%, barely ahead of Nehammer’s People’s Party.

The Bigger Picture, Again

Mr. Scholz has told everyone that he’s putting ‘European solutions’ ahead of national interests. Heck, he boldly stated that he knows what ‘the people’ are saying isn’t what they want.

Still, there’s so much more in this piece, which I recommend to you, but the below segment should be the most troubling one (yes, I know, the above stuff is bad, too, but then…judge for yourself):

For now, Scholz is following the lead of Germany’s industry, which warns that an abrupt cutoff would lead to factory closures and mass unemployment. On April 22, the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, reported that an energy embargo now would cause the German economy to contract 5% over predictions for 2022, and provoke one of the deepest recessions in decades. But that amount roughly corresponds to the 4.6% that the German economy shrank in the first year of the pandemic, which helps explain why many economists conclude that such a contraction would be manageable—especially if the government applies some of the same tools it did during that crisis. ‘There would be a recession and there might be some scarcity’, says Veronika Grimm, an economist at the University of Erlangen-Nüremberg, who sits on the council of economic experts advising the Berlin government. ‘But it would not be a catastrophe.’

See: even if there’d be a bad economic downturn due to the Ukrainian mess, the same people that screwed up the ‘pandemic management’ are now claiming to be able to manage the fall-out ‘if the government applies some of the same tools it did during that crisis’.

We’ve been warned.

Government by these people is the problem, not the solution.