Friedrich Merz [AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi]<\/p>\n
Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) delivered his first government statement on Wednesday. It was an open declaration of war on the population. Merz\u2019s remarks make it unmistakably clear that his coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) is the most right-wing federal government since the fall of the Third Reich 80 years ago.<\/p>\n
Merz\u2019s government is pushing ahead with massive military rearmament to make Germany \u201cfit for war\u201d again, in the words of Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. Domestically, it is adopting the anti-refugee policies of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), planning historic social cuts and establishing an authoritarian police state to enforce these policies against broad opposition among the population.<\/p>\n
Significantly, Merz began his speech by praising the pro-war and rearmament policies of his predecessor, Olaf Scholz (SPD). He claimed that the coalition he led with the Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP) had \u201cguided Germany through times of extraordinary crisis\u201d and that its response to the war in Ukraine was \u201cgroundbreaking\u201d and \u201chistoric.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merz made it clear that his government would deepen the \u201cnew era\u201d proclaimed by Scholz. At the centre of this is the escalation of the war against Russia, the rearmament of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and the militarisation of Europe under German leadership\u2014with the aim of enforcing the geopolitical and economic interests of German imperialism worldwide.<\/p>\n
To justify the war course, Merz resorted to vile anti-Russian war propaganda in the style of the Nazis. Russia, he claimed, had \u201cbroken all the rules\u201d that had applied in Europe since the Second World War. Russian troops were \u201craging,\u201d killing \u201cwomen and children, civilians and soldiers every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The outcome of the war, according to Merz, will decide \u201cnot only the fate of Ukraine,\u201d but also \u201cwhether law and order will continue to prevail in Europe and the world\u2014or tyranny, military force and the naked right of the strongest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reactionary, but it is the imperialist powers that provoked and escalated this war. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, NATO has encircled Russia militarily. Now, the leading EU states\u2014above all Germany\u2014are pushing the escalation ever further in order to assert their predatory interests.<\/p>\n
This is not about peace or international law but about building a new imperialist war order. The goal is to completely control Ukraine, reduce Russia to the status of a semi-colony and establish rule over the resource-rich and geostrategically central Eurasian landmass.<\/p>\n
The ambitions of German imperialism extend far beyond Eastern Europe. Merz stated that China\u2019s policies contained \u201celements of systemic rivalry\u201d and that \u201cthe growing closeness between Beijing and Moscow is viewed with concern.\u201d The Indo-Pacific region was \u201cof great importance,\u201d especially with regard to \u201cfree shipping and secure trade routes.\u201d Germany will be \u201cstrongly engaged\u201d there in the future.<\/p>\n As in the past, German world power politics goes hand in hand with genocide. In his speech, Merz declared the \u201csecurity and existence of Israel\u201d to be a \u201cmatter of state\u201d for Germany and pledged support for the genocide of the Palestinians. \u201cWe stand unwaveringly by Israel\u2019s side,\u201d he assured, while the Netanyahu regime pushes ahead with the systematic destruction and expulsion of the population of Gaza.<\/p>\n To achieve these imperialist goals, Germany is massively rearming. The war credits approved in March by the CDU\/CSU and SPD\u2014supported by the Greens and the Left Party\u2014are comparable only to the rearmament programmes before the First and Second World Wars. An amendment to the constitution now allows all military spending above 1 percent of GDP to be exempted from the debt brake\u2014meaning that war spending can rise without limit.<\/p>\n Merz announced that the Bundeswehr would be made \u201cthe strongest conventional army in Europe.\u201d If one excludes the Turkish army, with 355,000 active soldiers and 379,000 reservists, this would mean increasing the Bundeswehr from its current 181,000 to at least 300,000 troops. According to current plans, this is how large the Polish army is to be in 10 years. This is not possible in Germany without the reintroduction of compulsory military service.<\/p>\n At the NATO meeting in Turkey on Thursday, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) stated that he shared Trump\u2019s assessment that defence spending amounting to 5 percent of economic output was necessary. For Germany, that would correspond to \u20ac225 billion annually; the current defence budget is just under \u20ac53 billion.<\/p>\n Merz made no secret of the purpose of this rearmament: under German leadership, Europe should be shaped into a global power that participates in the imperialist redivision of the world.<\/p>\n The federal government, he said, would \u201cfocus our energy on taking Europe a big step forward at a time when we as a continent must redefine and defend our position in the world.\u201d Europe was \u201clooking to Germany today\u201d and the new federal government accepted this responsibility. A National Security Council would be created to enable \u201crapid action\u201d in crises.<\/p>\n In other words: war. Merz made it clear that entire generations of young people are to be sacrificed once again as cannon fodder for German imperialism. \u201cFreedom\u201d\u2014i.e., imperialist interests\u2014must also be defended with one\u2019s life. The \u201coperational readiness\u201d of the Bundeswehr must be improved, and therefore \u201ca new, attractive voluntary military service will be created as a first step.\u201d There were \u201cmany young people who want to take responsibility for Germany, its defence and security,\u201d Merz claimed.<\/p>\n In reality, however, the rejection of militarism and war is enormous, especially among young people. That is why the government has long been preparing measures for compulsory recruitment. Defence Minister Pistorius stated unequivocally in the Bundestag (federal parliament): \u201cThe emphasis is on \u2018initially,\u2019 in case we cannot recruit enough volunteers.\u201d The service would be \u201cmeaningful\u201d and contribute to the creation of a \u201cready reserve.\u201d<\/p>\n These great power politics are to be financed by massive attacks on the working class. \u201cGermany\u2019s security and creative power\u201d depends upon \u201ceconomic strength,\u201d according to Merz. \u201cEverything would be done to put Germany\u2019s economy back on track for growth.\u201d He named only a few concrete measures\u2014including the abolition of the \u201ccitizen\u2019s income\u201d (welfare payments) and \u201cincentives\u201d for longer working hours\u2014but the direction is clear: the model is the United States, where the Trump administration is cutting social spending and destroying all remaining social achievements in the interests of the financial oligarchy.<\/p>\n As in the past, the implementation of these policies requires the establishment of an authoritarian state. Merz praised the police and security agencies, announced their expansion and used repressive rhetoric against all opponents of the genocide in Gaza. What was happening \u201con German streets and in the German public sphere, even in the arts and sciences\u201d was \u201cshameful,\u201d he ranted, with reference to the majority rejection of the mass murder in Gaza, which Merz defames as \u201cantisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n Merz\u2019s belligerent stance is due not only to the unconditional support of the Greens as the most aggressive warmongers, but above all to the role of the Left Party. It\u00a0voted in the Bundesrat<\/a>\u00a0(upper chamber of parliament) for war credits amounting to \u20ac1 trillion and then helped Merz to a\u00a0quick election as chancellor<\/a>\u00a0in the Bundestag. Now it is confining itself to empty phrases to obscure and secure the government\u2019s course and suppress the enormous opposition to it.<\/p>\n Significantly, the Left Party\u2019s lead candidate in February\u2019s federal election, Heidi Reichinnek, did not say a single word in her speech in the Bundestag about rearmament or war policy, with which she actually agrees in substance. Instead, she appealed to Merz to cooperate with the Left Party on social policy\u2014where the Left Party has for years represented the same class position as the banker chancellor himself. She concluded her speech with the flippant and stupid announcement: \u201cWe are going to have a lot of fun together here over the next four years.\u201d<\/p>\n The support of all the establishment parties\u2014including the Left Party\u2014and the trade unions for the Merz government makes clear that the struggle against war, rearmament and social cuts requires the independent mobilisation of the working class.<\/p>\n In its initial statement on the formation of the government, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) therefore called for \u201cthe establishment of rank-and-file action committees in workplaces and neighbourhoods to take the fight against mass layoffs and wage cuts into their own hands and link it to the struggle against war.\u201d<\/p>\n And it declared:<\/p>\n We oppose growing nationalism, trade wars and rearmament with the international unity of the working class. War can only be stopped and social and democratic rights defended if capitalism itself is abolished and replaced by a socialist society in which the needs of people, not profit interests, are central. The big banks and corporations must be expropriated and placed under democratic control.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Join the fight against the Gaza genocide and imperialist war!<\/p>\n Fill out this form and we\u2019ll contact you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friedrich Merz [AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi] Chancellor Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) delivered his first government statement on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,13862,44400,1824,49379,49378,24861,2821,11332,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-108226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-fascism","11":"tag-genocide","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-great-power","14":"tag-imperialism","15":"tag-militarism","16":"tag-nato","17":"tag-rearmament","18":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114521553876999620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
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