A potentially historical moment

Politics and history work on very different time scales. The noisy politics of today will be a footnote of history in a hundred years time. But in reverse, something that has historical potential isn't necessarily recognized as such when it happens. Tomorrow might just be such a day.

If you open a US newspaper tomorrow, and search for news about Germany, there might be a rather small article, and that only if your newspaper has pretty good international coverage. That articles will be about the German parliament voting on a constitutional change, lifting the "debt brake" introduced just 15 years earlier, in favor of more spending on defense and infrastructure. Boring stuff that nobody outside Germany is interested in. Or is it?

Trump recently said that the European Union had been specifically created to screw over the United States. Which is not only extremely self-centered, but also extremely false. While the creation of the European Union was a complex process, if you wanted to put it into a short statement, it would be more correct to say that the EU was created to contain Germany's economic power and handle it in a way that doesn't result in another world war. Since German unification in 1871, German economic power had twice risen very strongly, that economic power had twice been channeled in infrastructure and military spending, and that military spending had been the basis for two world wars. Keeping the German economy down after the first world war hadn't worked at all, and it was thought that it would be a better approach to work together with the Germans and channel their economic power into other projects. Although NATO is older than the EU, over time it became part of the construct, as even the US preferred Europe and Germany to be part of a military block under US leadership, rather than a totally separate power block.

How much debt should a country have as percentage of their GDP? Economists disagree on that question, and it is likely that richer countries can afford more debt. The US has a debt of 122% of GDP, the EU as a whole 87%, Japan 255%. Germany, shocked by the financial crisis of 2008, decided in 2009 to put a "debt break" into their constitution, stopping German governments from taking on too much debt. That resulted in two things: Germany today has rather low debt, 62%, or half the percentage of GDP that the US has, and under-investment. Thus, as a result of the recent German elections, tomorrow's vote that will add exceptions to that constitutional debt brake rule, with 500 billion Euros for infrastructure, and "whatever it takes" for defense.

While Germany is a much smaller country than the USA or China, it is only on place three of overall GDP behind those two. If Germany decides to raise its debt from about 60% to about 80% of GDP, that is a rather huge pile of money. Thus my unease as a historically minded person: Germany putting a huge pile of money into the Autobahn and tanks, what could possibly go wrong? It worked so well 90 years ago!

The political system being better today than it was last century, there is probably very little chance of Germany starting world war III. The EU as a project to integrate Germany was a smashing success. But this could still be a historical moment: The moment the EU decides to not rely on the USA in matters of defense, feeling it can't rely on their former allies anymore. If you have a perception of Germany or Europe being weak, militarily speaking, that is partially correct, but it is a temporary condition, and voluntary. The EU wanted to be part of the western block, and rely on NATO, rather than being their own military powerhouse. But it isn't as if the population (449 million) or GDP ($16.6 trillion) wouldn't allow them to. They even have nukes. Given their performance against Ukraine, I wouldn't bet on Russia being able to wage a successful war against the European Union. Not today, and certainly not tomorrow, after Europe goes on a rearmament spree.

The main problem with military spending is that nobody ever threw away a tank. You probably read some astounding number of how much military aid the Ukraine received. What rich countries usually don't say is that that is expressed in the value of the military hardware and ammunition when originally bought. "Military aid" is a code word for getting rid of your old military hardware and ammo, and replacing it by new stuff. And the new stuff is going to be given as "military aid" to somebody again later, if it isn't used by the country that bought it. Germany and Europe investing heavily in military hardware means that most probably in some time, somewhere, somebody will find himself at the receiving end of that purchase.

At the very least, tomorrow could be the start date of the end of US global military dominance. When Trump is constantly complaining that the the US is spending so much more on NATO than the other partners, he simply doesn't understand what exactly the US is buying here. It is far from obvious that America would be better off if Europe had a military their size. Again, keep in mind the difference in time scales between politics and history: Today this is a political story of America unilaterally offending all its allies. Germany's vote tomorrow is a first sign that the allies won't just let this slide, and at the very least know that if the US won't defend them, they'll have to do it themselves. How that will evolve over decades to come is anybody's guess. My guess is that more weapons is seldom good news.