What Price Will Germany Choose?

[Annie]

Found this via Medienkritik

http://www.aspenberlin.org/jeffgedmin.php?iGedminId=185&sShowMedia=0

The price of Germany's indecision

Financial Times, 21. 09. 2005

So Germany is at a crossroads - once again. We have been here before (a search on Google for "Germany at a crossroads" yields 5m hits). Still, it is hard not to think that something special is happening in the Berlin republic beyond the utter confusion following last Sunday′s federal elections.
For a start there is the intricate Chinese puzzle that everyone is trying to solve. Will the Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens join the Liberals to form a new government? Will the Greens join the Liberals and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)? Could the SPD and Greens make common cause with the new Left party, a mix of communists and SPD defectors? Or perhaps we will get a "grand coalition", with the CDU and SPD working together - which raises the question of who becomes chancellor and whether Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder can survive the coming weeks. No matter what the outcome, the new government is likely to be unstable and short-lived.
At the moment, Germany is looking a little like Italy. Alas, the stakes are higher.
Yogi Berra, the American baseball sage-comedian, once said: "When you get to the fork in the road, take it." That is what the Germans have done. In the near-term, Europe and the world will pay the price for German indecision. For one thing, the promise of more rapid German economic reform is dead, for now. Forget about another engine of global growth coming online in the next couple of years. In foreign policy, Washington had hoped for more positive energy flowing inside the Nato alliance. That is now highly unlikely. Europe desperately needs strong leadership, but it is hard to imagine a weak, inward-looking German government offering much promise. The trend was already apparent before the election, but now the picture is becoming clearer. This Germany will be all about Germany over the next couple of years; there will be little room for anything else and developments inside the country are likely to move at a snail′s pace.
Beyond the gridlock of the day, though, Germany is in the throes of a much deeper crisis. The country faces two fundamental choices. First, what kind of an economy do Germans want? It seems the majority still yearns for the old West German model - the days of economic growth, low unemployment and high social protection. They were also the days, of course, when Germany had a younger population, when the Federal Republic lived in the cocoon of US protection, before the costs of unification and before the pressure of globalisation. That era is over.
Germans know this. But they still love their "social-market" economy and have not yet decided whether allowing more market forces can be in tune with their values. Until now, it has been too easy for Germans to defer painful choices. The country has been doing - simply put - too well. In Berlin, a city with 19 per cent unemployment, the cafes are packed with people drinking over-priced café lattes, the employed and unemployed alike happily indulging themselves. Will economic circumstances soon hurt enough to give people the swift kick they apparently need?
That is not to say that Germany is anywhere near becoming an abject failure. The country is too wealthy, the population too educated and the political class too smart to allow this to happen. German industry has already done well in figuring out globalisation and seizing new opportunities.
The question, though, is: can the country regain momentum and position itself as a leading economy in the years ahead? Will Germans be willing to pay the price for strong and astute leadership, or is being a less affluent, second-rate nation enough? The results of this latest election show that Germans are confused and still undecided.
The second question Germany faces is: what kind of foreign policy does it want? Germans still love to deny it, but nationalism is back in vogue. Germans are becoming more assertive about pursuing their national interests. Witness the campaign for a German - not a European Union - seat on the United Nations Security Council. There is nothing wrong with that. But will this Germany pursue its interests in a mature, strategic fashion? Or will it express the "new nationalism" through simple anti-Americanism and "oppositionally defiant behaviour", to borrow the child psychologists′ expression.
Like a petulant teenager, the Schröder team believed it derived power from the fact that it rejected US requests for support on Iraq. This apparently felt so good that the chancellor kept pushing anti-American buttons throughout his election campaign. In truth, subsequent governments will face the same challenge: to define German interests and find the right touch for leadership in Europe, while educating the public about the continuing importance of strong transatlantic ties.
For nearly half a century, Germany has embraced a political system and culture that favours cautious decision-making based on the broadest possible consensus. Today, circumstances cry out for bold steps and strong, principled leadership. Of course, crises create opportunities. That is why we optimists have to believe that from the current mess in Germany, good things may still emerge.

 

[nosarcasm]

The SPD/ Green coalition in power implemented pro capitalistic
laws.

Now we have to wait how the grand coalition works out.

My prediction the conservatives will provide the chancellor
the SPD gets some important ministers.

The change in Germany is on its way nevertheless.

Pro capitalistic measures are discussed the severity of them
is in question.

I am just glad the SPD did not go for a minority goverment
tolerated by the commies.

That would have meant a severe setback.