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Sunday, Germany held national elections for the parliament, the Bundestag. Congrats to the German people and their ~83% turnout, the greatest I believe, since unification.

The previous government led by SPD and hobbled the the Greens was unstable at best, and was not doing great things for the German people. That would be why the SPD’s results were the worst since 1887.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has clear words for the performance of his SPD. "This is a devastating, catastrophic result," he said. "There is no way to sugarcoat it." He congratulated the Union on its election victory. "I hope that - especially in view of Friedrich Merz's speech in Munich yesterday - they will now strike the right tone and understand that it is about keeping the democrats together and not playing them off against each other." An AfD at 20 percent cannot leave the Social Democrats in particular at rest.

Nuff said.

The above numbers were from Sunday night and are not final, but we can safely assume that they are roughly where the final count will be.

You need 316 seats to control, and you need 5% to enter government. That last bit puts FDP and BSW out of the picture. I’ll chat a bit about that at the bottom of the post, but let’s focus on the big boys.

First things first, Germany voted for right-wing governance. CDU/CSU (Union), and AfD got 49.2% of the vote. However, no one will form a government with them, so the Germans will not be getting what they voted for.
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They will either whisper that they're with AfD or flat lie about it. And I'm sure plenty are with AfD and still vote CDU to assuage their own guilt.

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I was an exchange student in Germany in 1988...

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Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Of course polls are polls, and results are results. The former tend to get the latter well around here, but election.de has helpfully compiled charts showing average deviation of the three biggest German pollsters from actual outcomes a week ahead of national elections since 2005; both as an average of all three in each, and of every single one across all elections. Basically, the two big(gish) parties tend to come out one or two points worse than predicted by individual pollsters, while Greens and Left Party mostly meet expectations, and FDP and AfD tend to exceed them by one or two points.

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Also again, the AfD should have been able to profit from the suspicious concentration of public attacks by Muslim refugees ahead of the elections as the most radical anti-immigration proponents. But apart from Chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz of the CDU taking the topic away from them with his controversial move to accept their votes in the Bundestag on it in late January, the textbook case of clueless American intervention on their behalf by Mssrs. Musk and Vance clearly spiked their football. After a three- to four-point rise in polls from early December to late January, they hit a wall and eventually finished one to two points below their most optimistic numbers at 20.8 percent.

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In 2018, then-US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell publicly stated in a Breitbart interview that he absolutely considered it his mission "to empower conservative governments in Europe", after which noone in German government talked to him again...

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I've said it before above, everyone knows voters everywhere are just waiting to be told by foreigners what's good for their country, right?

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Originally posted by chellim1:
A fair point on Ric Grenell but I don't think that's what JD Vance was doing at the Munich Security Conference.

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I've said it before above, everyone knows voters everywhere are just waiting to be told by foreigners what's good for their country, right?

I don't disagree. Perhaps we should stay out of Europe/exit NATO?

It's a relic of WWII, but we are clearly far too involved there. The United States Army has over 40 military installations in Germany, I don't think that's any longer good for us or for Germany. My nephew is an Army Apache helicopter pilot based there.

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No Choice after the Election: condemned to lead

March 1, 2025

Following the widely expected outcome of the federal election, designated new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced swift negotiations on forming a government with his preferred partner, the SPD. In view of the domestic, but above all foreign and security policy challenges, everyone knows that there is no time to lose. Germany, along with the whole of Europe, is caught between a still-aggressive Putin Russia and a ghostlighting Trump America. For better or worse, Merz will have a leading role to play in dealing with this situation. He still has to prove whether he can fill it. He has already set the right path when he declared the gradual independence of Europe from the US to be the top priority on the one hand, but also vowed to do everything to preserve the transatlantic relationship on the other.

Depending on the definition of the transatlantic relationship, these two statements can certainly contradict each other. Different definitions on both sides of the Atlantic are foreseeable. As long as we continue to work together as closely as possible, but go our own way in Europe where necessary, this will be bearable. The incoming Merz government must first lay the foundations for this in Germany. For defense policy, this means money, personnel, procurement, organization. And not one after the other, but at the same time if possible. Although, according to widespread speculation, the money question could still be submitted to the old Bundestag in order to forestall a future combined blocking minority from the left and right when it comes to possible solutions through new special funds or reform of the debt brake.

Whoever wins the Election does not have to worry about the Pressure

According to the Basic Law, the new parliament must be constituted within 30 days of the election, i.e. by March 25th at the latest. This means additional pressure for an agreement. It must not only precede the formation of a government, which is planned for Easter, but also include the Greens to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority. An already-rumored sum of a further 200 billion euros in special funds is likely to represent the lower limit until the necessary expenditure is covered by the regular defense budget. If the debt brake is not to be touched, a permanent solution will foreseeably simply be postponed to the next legislative period from 2029. Possibly in the hope of a different majority - but then also facing the deadline set by current Defense Minister Boris Pistorius for the Bundeswehr to be ready for war.

Apropos. In Berlin party circles it was already said before the election that Pistorius could remain in his current position even in a CDU-led coalition with the SPD. The background to this is not only the cross-party recognition for his work as Minister of Defense at a turning point, but also wider partisan considerations on the division of departments for the further development of the German security architecture. According to the usual coalition arithmetic, the Foreign Ministry would then return to the Union for the first time since Gerhard Schröder (not that one, the other) in the Adenauer IV and Ehrhard I and II cabinets. They are hoping for trouble-free cooperation with the Chancellery on issues such as the establishment of a National Security Council.

Ministers and other Personnel

That the position of defence minister has a fact-supported reputation as a hot seat may also play a role in view of the challenges ahead - and speaks against the SPD wanting it. However, there are far more far-reaching personnel issues on the agenda, namely the future strength of the Bundeswehr. A new national service is foreseeable that goes beyond the Pistorius model of a simple questionnaire requirement, which CDU/CSU rejected as inadequate. It is almost certain that more will be required. But the Bundeswehr will not be able to build up the necessary accommodation and training capacities any faster. If anything, by rejecting the proposal after the traffic light coalition ended, the Union has delayed the necessary reconstruction of the structures for military registration by at least half a year. Here, too, there is now additional pressure.

If there is any good news in this predicament, it is this: With peacetime numbers looming at over 300,000 - possibly up to the 370,000 limit set by the Two Plus Four Treaty - there is no need for any major contortions to meet the principles of equality in serving required by the Constitutional Court. The last time the Bundeswehr was this strong was during the era of Army Structure 5 (N) in the 1990s, when basic military service was still twelve months long and more than 100,000 young men were drafted each year. Given the current class strength of around 350,000 annually, this would still be a minority, but it could be balanced out by civilian alternatives of compulsory service.

The Devil is in the Details

The devil is in the details, such as questions about gender equality, whether conscripts can achieve a sufficient level of training for the conditions of modern combat even after twelve months of basic military service, whether they could and should be stationed and deployed outside Germany as part of alliance defense, and how the organization of the armed forces must reflect this. In the end, suitable tasks will be found for everyone, especially since the younger generation already brings along many technical skills. The hope remains that the Bundeswehr experience will be positive enough for a sufficient number of them to commit themselves to greater challenges. And that a situation never arises in which such distinctions become unnecessary.

It goes without saying that any reinforcement of personnel must be backed up materially and therefore financially. In the extreme case of independence from the US, additional capabilities are required. Particularly in the areas of command, control, communication and reconnaissance as well as long-range precision strikes. The specter of European, if not German, nuclear weapons looms over everything, to compensate for the possible loss of the American protective umbrella. The necessary German participation in this would probably not only be the biggest cost of all, but also the most difficult to achieve politically and organizationally. But Germany, as the largest European actor, would also have no choice but to take on a leading role - despite or precisely because of its own role as a non-nuclear power, which has been agreed by several treaties.

The European Poles (like Poland)

In any case, the next federal government is condemned to lead Europe, even if neither its own voters nor other Europeans have ever been enthusiastic about this idea. In addition to its position as the most populous country and the strongest economic power, there is also Germany's traditional role as a mediator between different camps - the transatlanticists and Eurocentrics, the western, eastern and southern Europeans with their different ideas of community policy and poles such as Great Britain, France and Poland. In the foreseeable future, a Chancellor Merz will not only have to deal with a President Trump who today describes his Ukrainian colleague as a dictator and the culprit of the Russian war of aggression, tomorrow wants to win back occupied territories such as Mariupol from Russia for him, and the day after tomorrow accuses him of a lack of gratitude in front of running cameras.

Merz will also have to mediate between those Europeans who would, if necessary, conclude bilateral agreements with the US at the expense of the community; those who cannot end the American leadership role quickly enough, also at the expense of the community; and those who see themselves more on the side of Russia and China anyway. But all of this will only work if Germany can also demonstrate military capabilities that give it credibility as a reliable ally sharing responsibility with powers such as France and Great Britain. Of course, this does not even include the domestic political problems of the future Chancellor, the ailing economy and the potential for division in society. But then no one promised him before the election that it would be easy.

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Originally posted by chellim1:
Perhaps we should stay out of Europe/exit NATO?