“Germany must remain an anchor of stability in Europe,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said after his coalition finally passed a budget and headed out for summer recess.
It’s unclear exactly how the coalition erased a roughly 25 billion euro funding gap. They didn’t take the trouble to provide a detailed explanation.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner might have been busy doing other things as he posted a picture of himself toting a Stinger missile during a recent military exercise.
Parts of the budget are leaking out however, and it is being reported that the historically unpopular traffic light coalition of the Greens, Social Democratic Party, and Free Democratic Party cut aid to Ukraine and its contribution to the EU, as well as moved some defense purchases off the 2025 budget, but they will have to be accounted for in future budgets by the next government.
Anyone paying attention knows that Scholz is out of mind to invoke the term “stability” for the state of Germany at the moment. Let’s consider the following:
- He leads the most unpopular government in modern German history. Three quarters of the population are dissatisfied. According to a survey conducted July 1-3, zero percent of Germans said they were “fully satisfied” with the ruling coalition’s work. Even accounting for the margin of error, that’s suboptimal.
- The three parties in the ruling coalition are together polling at around only 30 percent, and they were embarrassed in the June European elections. Scholz’s own party, the once-proud Social Democrats, came in at less than 14 percent in the European elections. That is the party’s worst result in a national election since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949.
- Washington and Berlin just announced that they’re deploying long-range U.S. missiles that could reach Russia (including SM-6, Tomahawk, and at some point probably hypersonic weapons) on German territory from 2026 for the first time since the Cold War in a move that will almost certainly make the country less secure.
- The Russians are everywhere. The recent news that Russia planned to kill the CEO of arms manufacturer Rheinmetall, comes on the heels of the Russians allegedly behind a fire at a metal factory, espionage on Ukrainian targets in Germany, the murder of a Chechen in Berlin, payments to spread Kremlin propaganda, and all types of “information warfare.”
- The German economy has been stagnant for seven years running, which I suppose is a form of stability.
- Meanwhile, the government in Berlin is cutting social spending, German industry “has taken a permanent hit,” real wages have dropped back to 2016 levels, and the government is investing 12.4 billion euros in the stock market in a new “Generation Capital Foundation” as part of a scheme to continue financing pensions. Stability.
- And still no one can figure out who destroyed those Nord Stream pipelines.
Despite Scholz’s stability reassurances, more upheaval is likely in a few months’ time.
“The Big Worry”
If the freak out over a few political parties who favor repairing ties with Russia and who performed well in the European Parliament elections is already at a 10, expect it to be turned up to an 11 should they continue their rise in the polls ahead of September state elections in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia.
The EU vote clearly sent a loud message about voter dissatisfaction. The upcoming state elections could present challenges for German support for Project Ukraine by heaping more pressure on the country’s ruling coalition that is already on life support.
Some background on the two parties threatening to upset the apple cart: Sahra Wagenknecht’s old-school left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) focuses on working class issues, ignores identity politics, and opposes the US-led new Cold War.
The other party is of course the ethno-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD). It wants to reclaim German sovereignty from the EU and NATO and make nice with Russia since that is in German interests. While the party has attracted widespread working class support, detractors like BSW argue it is no friend of the people, but instead favors a different flavor of oligarchs – German rather than global. What really propelled the AfD into prominence is its outspoken opposition to the dramatic increase in immigrants to Germany in recent years.
We can see the effect on the electorate:
There is also evidence that a sizable chunk of AfD support is a way to give a raised middle finger to the current political establishment, which is at record-low approval ratings.
