For the last 65 years the Germans have been easy to guilt trip into paying for Europe by invoking WWII and the Holocaust. Sadly this appears to be changing and they are acting like a normal country again as shown by their reluctance to bail out Greece, so other countries will now have to start paying their own way.
It is for the best though, it has always seemed absurd that generations of Germans born after the war were treated as being somehow responsible for it.
German demilitarisation is probably the next thing to go unless they realise what a good deal they have going on with not having pay for their own defence. The rationale behind demilitarising Germany was that given its size it would inevitably dominate Europe, but since the USA took up it+s role as a world power in 1941 Germany have not been able to dominate Europe even if the Germans still wanted to (which they don't seem to).
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5 comments:
It's "its" not "it's".
If you think this one through, the Germans might stop bailing out the EU generally, in which case there's no reason for the UK to chip in as much either (I'm not sure why we are being guilt-tripped anyway?) and then the whole thing will collapse most gloriously.
Would they really want to spend much more on defence? They spend about 1.5% of GDP, and we spend about 2.5% of (a smaller) GDP, but we attempt to maintain a nuclear deterrent and a blue-water navy with that, and presumably if the Germans don't want one of those, they've got plenty of money.
Its a modern thing.
In olden times, big powerful countries wanted to rule small weak countries.
Nowadays, big powerful countries was small weak countries to keep their thieving hands to themselves.
I was a student in Germany in the late 1960s. The atmosphere of Liberal Guilt, particularly among the intelligentsia and the academics, was pervasive and almost physically palpable. As it was among the student mob, too young too have participated themselves but always well up for a bit of guilt by proxy.
It would barely have caused an eyebrow to flicker if rivulets of blood from the anguished self-flagellations of the Righteous had been seen flowing along the gutters of the Hauptstraßen.
I'm glad they're getting over it. And I am not really surprised. The current German ruling elite is now largely my age or younger. And I was born in 1948. I sink ze vor ended some time before zen.
"Would they really want to spend much more on defence? "
Maybe not, I'm sure the British or French governments would like to spend less, but simply having the option to spend more makes a difference to how powerful they are.
"The current German ruling elite is now largely my age or younger. "
Exactly.
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