Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
1mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for February 20, 2025
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Federal elections are over, results as following (630 seats total):
All the other parties didn't make past the 5% minimum and thus aren't allowed to play in this term.And if you noticed one seat missing, that one went to the SSW, the South-Schleswig Voter Union, a party for ethnic Frisians and Danes that is allowed to skip the 5% rule for reasons of, effectively, Affirmative Action.
So we'll get another Great Coalition, as they call themselves - CDU and SPD giving us four years of Weiter So: more of the same.
The CDU campaigned on a tough-on-migration platform. They correctly judged that this would allow them to appeal to voters who consider migration the top issue but still find the AfD unacceptable. I for one don't find it at all credible. The party sat by and let Merkel do her thing or even supported her as she welcomed the mass migrations of 2015 and onward, and a bit of electoral campaign rhetoric isn't much convincing evidence that they actually changed their minds. This was a successful tactical move, and the next step is to backpedal and form a coalition with the SPD who are still married to the old idea of "German bad, foreigner good".
Someone please tell me I'm wrong.
The only other coalition that would have a parliamentary majority would be CDU + AFD, and the CDU reaffirmed their categorical adherence to the anti-AFD zero-cooperation "firewall" policy.
Silesia is in south-western Poland. Schleswig seems to have its own name in english.
You're right, sloppy of me. Corrected.
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The thing you're likely to be wrong on that makes things different is the spending.
One of the major elements for the timing of this election in the first place, besides avoiding a lame duck government during the earnest Ukraine negotiations later this year, was the German balanced budget requirement. The prohibition on taking debt not only caused a major issue when the last government's spending plans fell through in court, but it drastically reduces the German government's- and thus by proxy the European Union as a whole which depends on German financial inputs- to do things like major state-directed investments in, say, military procurement / aid to Ukraine / European military-industrial spin-up etc. This was because the German system had already reached a political parity of social spending that was high enough- and too politically difficult to change- to free up state capital investments in strategic ends.
Once upon a time, this was considered a good thing. Such a good thing that the Germans also helped make it a vaguely equivalent policy restriction on other EU governments via the EU's spending limits and debt restrictions set up after the 2008 financial crisis. Part of this was the debt concerns, especially for the PIGS, but part of it was also to limit the ability of others to get relative advantage.
This could all change. If Germany shifts to allowing greater debt, you should expect more, if not most, EU governments to do the same. Economically, because the Germans being able to engage in debt-driven economic capital growth while others are bound by debt restrictions would break the EU's internal dynamics. And strategically, because if Germany is getting a pass, and they can get a pass, that makes it an opportune time to try and pursue long-sought goals.
The point to watch for going forward in the coalition talks isn't the new government's immigration stance, but the coalition politics around removing / reforming the debt break. As goes Germany, so will go the European Union, and if the European pocket books open that is a potential flood of money entering the (global) economy, much of it for the purpose of geopolitical competition.
You lost me at
You're not wrong about everything else, but you're also a neoliberal shill from the wrong side of the culture war breastworks! Fie!
I mean, I'd be fine with more military spending, but not fine with taking on more debt. Our spending is more than high enough for that already. I want to see spending redirected away from buerocracy and welfare, possibly decreased overall, but certainly not net increased. I just don't trust our political establishment to handle that responsibly. And I'm sure you know more about economics than I do and it's perfectly fine to take on more debt and state investments are a valid tool, but I just can't overlook the immense degree to which the state makes economic life in Germany more difficult than it needs to be. Less state will be more valuable to the economy than more state (powered by debt or otherwise), as far as I can see on the ground.
But ultimately none of that matters if we can't get a handle on immigration. What do I care about Ukraine, Europe and the world if Germany ceases to be the country of the Germans?
So the conservatives won in Germany and the change will be they will rack up debt by increasing spending. All to finance an empire's war, that already tanked their economy and that is already lost.
Sounds pretty Germany yeah.
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I suppose I wasn't clear on what that was supposed to mean. Apologies, and more elaborated-
If you want to look at the longer-term implications for your immigration stance and if it will change, don't look at the government's immigration stance with this coalition, look at the new government's willingness to take on debt. The initial government policy position is less important than the fiscal bounds of future government policy positions.
IF the government is willing to take on debt, THEN a significant precondition/contributing element of the continent's general migration pressure will also change, enabling migration change regardless of what the government says starting out. However, IF the government keeps the debt limit, THEN much of the dominant economic case for the migration-based economy remains, regardless of a nominal change in the government's position on migration.
One of the main economic pillars for the pro-migration arguments is that migrants are required to afford the social state within the bounds of the debt limit. For the past decade(s), really since the monstrous costs of East Germany re-incorporation this has generally been the dominant theme of German economic policy- Germany needs the labor force to maintain the export economy to afford the obligations of the state (re-integration then, social welfare for the aging population now), and the bigger that obligation grows the cheaper the labor needs to be. This is one of the reasons why neoliberalism took root in Germany- post-reunification Germany couldn't really afford to subsidize bad east german economics (budget / debt limits), but poorer east germans were a major potential labor force, and neoliberalism was a model to make a virtue out of necessity.
This paradigm is fundamentally changed if you aren't bound by the debt limit. Then you can tolerate larger costs for the same thing, because those costs are offset as debt. As long as you aren't concerned with the economic most efficient thing (the 'neoliberal' thing) in the first place, then you can afford to spend on the politically popular priority (immigration). It may not be the best economic decision, but as you say- ultimately none of that matters if you can't get a handle on immigration. But whether a German government views immigration as The Problem, or The Necessary Part of the Solution, is going to hinge on the view on debt, which for Germans has a practically religious level of significance (for various historical reasons).
Regardless of the origins, though, the government needs to change both the debt and the migration policy to actually carry forward with the migration change as opposed to walking it back on grounds of costs. If debt policy changes but migration policy doesn't, then migration policy is far more prone to compromising without the economic necessity argument.
Hence, watch for the debt policy change first. If that changes, then you know that the economic-paradigm of the German state has fundamentally shifted, and with it new things that were previously economically unjustifiable are not justifiable.
WTF I love debt now.
Seriously though, this is...kinda convincing. I suppose I to need to decide whether to be single-issue on anti-buerocracy or on anti-immigration, and the latter seems more urgent. So you convinced me, for the time being.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Ha. Want me to try to argue you to the other side?
As Remzen noted, debt has some tiny issues associated with it, particularly if done to prop up a social model...
But more seriously- my point is not advocacy here, or even on what the position will be, but more of an indicator to watch for to see how much change is potentially in the making.
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You’re a pretty knowledgeable guy, Dean. But the problem is, the more one knows, the more spurious relationships one’s brain can come up with. There’s really nothing linking german elites’ mistaken evaluation of islamic third-worlders’ productivity, to the debt ceiling, to german unification. They could easily have rejected any one of those, and keep the others. Those are all independent events.
Not really, no. Not in the academic sense of the word.
Independent events are events that, by definition, do not effect each other's odds of occurring. Coins flipping do not shape how the next coin flips.
However, the policy field is a series of events where policies in one context (the past) influence the policies in another (the present) not only because of lessons learned and drawn for, but often because it's the same or generally related groups of people implementing them. Because these variables are shaping the current events, they are- by definition- in a dependent relationship. It is not two way- the events in the past are not influenced by the events in the present- but events in the past and the present influence events in the future.
Which is easier to remember you remember that events happen, but policies are chosen. Often by the same people, who in turn raise and influence similarly minded people who go on to make decisions shaped by their formative professional experiences and professional mentors, who in turn were influenced by their formative experiences and mentors, creating chains of influence.
This is precisely why 'personnel is policy' is such a critical maxim in understanding politics. States are not entities which approach each problem in a vacuum, they are groups of people influenced by past events and people shaped by past events, and as such they are the dependent variables of the non-independent events of their policy choices.
That's bullshit, Dean. You're always long-winded even when you have little to say. They would have taken east germany and showered it with money regardless of the the retirement benefits situation. East germany was full of pensioners anyway, so there was no relative gain to be had from the cheapness of the rest of the labor force. In your theory, east germany is both a cost and a profit, depending on what your theory needs it to be.
You weave these elaborate causal chains which bear no relation to reality. People never believe stuff, they 'have to' believe it, because random cause X is the true cause.
I disagree. They believed in neoliberalism, they believed in the productivity of syrian refugees, they believed that debt is a bad thing. Their opinions, like mine and yours and even the german people's, matter. When they're right, good things tend to happen, when they're wrong, the opposite.
Do not become antagonistic just because you feel like you're losing an argument.
Is someone reporting all your comments? Your mod notes always end up in my janitor duty.
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I am pleased to see you have abandoned the independent versus dependent event line of the argument, which was the only point of the definitional dispute you just replied to.
A definitional point, I will note, you are further validating with your emphasis on the 'they.' When there is a 'they' that can be meaningfully referred to as choosing multiple policies, those policy-events are not independent. The 'they' is the factor linking factor that makes the evaluation of islamic third-worlders’ productivity, the debt ceiling, and german unification a series of dependent rather than independent relationships.
Now, if you want to say the 'they' is a more spurious relationship a brain can come with... go ahead! But if the same group made policies, and those policies shape how the group makes other policies, those policies are in a dependent, not independent, relationship.
And this would just be a dispute on the nature of the history and a misunderstanding of the premise. East Germany was not both a cost and a profit- East Germany was an immediate cost by almost any model, and a longer-term profit opportunity by a neo-liberal model.
The neo-liberal model arguably turned out correct, neo-liberal political influences gained significant power and influence, and their neo-liberal paradigm contributed to later policy decisions... decisions informed not only by dynamics of german reunification, but the historical paradigms (such as post-WW2 immigration policies) that helped drive the reunification neo-liberal models.
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This still doesn't make sense to me, debt spending isn't an alternative for increasing the labor pool. The debt will have to be repaid or it will simply spiral and the welfare state will collapse, and Germany is even more constrained by being part of a shared currency whereas the US is not and the dollar benefits from being the world reserve currency so our money printing decisions are our own and costs can be foisted off on the rest of the world to some degree.
There's also a limit to productivity based on labor that doesn't change by throwing more money at it. If you want a bunch of infrastructure projects military or otherwise and your labor pool is limited spending more money would increase demand for foreign labor and the pull factor, not reduce it.
This is all hinging on the neoliberal assumption that more immigration is an economic boon in the first place as well. When it comes to Europe and most of their migrants being MENA or sub saharan this doesn't seem to be the case.
Being poorer as a state is not lack of alternative. It is just a question of whether what you bought in exchange for it- like say maintaining some quintessential 'German'ness- is worth it.
And that's if you accept the premise of the consequence that debt will simply spiral, as opposed to grow but in a manageable way- or that the social welfare collapse will only occur later, after the current welfare beneficiaries are dead and gone. Their descendants will inherit the debt, but they (might) still be German to do so.
But that's missing the point of what was previously raised. Rather, your counter-argument's premise is lifted from the neoliberal consensus that- using that as a premise- reasons to the economic necessity of mass migration. Which is why the economic justification of migration is, in turn, the welfare state- there's a reason such systems are often called ponzi schemes that need constantly growing worker pools to remain solvent. And in absence of native born workers...
But this isn't a counterargument to the argument that was being made. Rather, the argument you are confused on was making the point that the economic truth of the neoliberal consensus isn't what's relevant, only the government's willingness to ignore the neoliberal consensus (which, among other things, is BOTH pro-migration AND balanced budgets).
Whether they will prove true or not, if you want a government that will ignore the economic warnings of the consequences of removing the migration pillar of the economy, you will need a government that ignores such warnings from the people who make them regardless of whether the warnings are accurate or not.
Sure. But you are thinking in terms of expanding output by expanding spending. That is one use of debt, and the economist-smiled upon version. However, the political economy alternative is to spend more money on the same [thing], but the [thing] being politically preferable despite being more expensive.
Take a job category of your choice. If, say, [plumbers] could be provided by [Germans] for 15, [Poles] for 10, or [Algerians] for 5, the [German] labor option may be 3x more expensive than the [Algerian] option, but it can still be purchased. You'll just have less money leftover to act with it, and the [Germans] doing those things wouldn't be available for other things.
This is the classic union labor dilemma. This is part of why neo-liberal economicsts generally (in a vacuum) support lower labor costs... and mass migration.
But again- if you want a government who will ignore neoliberal economic reasoning, you need a labor government that will ignore economic reasoning.
Possibly. Alternatively, Europe could be in considerably better economic health today than it would have been without the post-WW2 immigration policies which led to present immigration policies, and the counterarguments against the neoliberals today involve copious amounts of cope that because the neoliberal logic leads to things not liked (immigration), they must be wrong, and if they are wrong then their warnings can be ignored.
Personally, I suspect we'd agree that the chain of logic there is lacking. Really it's just a variation of the just world fallacy. But the willingness to be wrong about the neoliberals being wrong is a policy precondition for policies that go against neoliberal judgement.
In Germany, the neoliberals were architects and advocates for the debt break, and were willing to break the last government on that issue. If you want to see if the neoliberals have lost their veto on policy in practice, watch for their influence in the field they care most amount.
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https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-pneumonia-sepsis-vatican-respiratory-infection-bab5b9a141517171d4efc71fadafa0a4?taid=67ba16173b0b7700014170ca&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
https://satreport.catholicsat.com/p/the-sat-report-making-sense-of-the
The pope's condition has worsened.
Do you think it could make a difference to the outcome when the next pope is elected? With such long terms, 5 years shouldnt make a big difference to what the right choice is, but in many organisations it would anyway.
The pope is unlikely to be appointing new cardinals before he dies. So the current college of electors minus whoever turns 80 in the meantime is who'll be voting. With so many papabile on the younger end the compromise candidate will likely be one of the oldest popes elected recently(so that papabile will have another shot at being pope in the next conclave). Francis isn't popular enough to generate the incumbency advantage that elected Benedict so it's probably irrelevant how long he spends in the hospital before he dies.
News and events could certainly effect things- the sex abuse crisis in the news would probably point many cardinals towards Bagnasco as a compromise candidate over Oullet or Piacenza, for example, and renewed horrors towards middle eastern Christians would likely make Pizzaballa more of a kingmaker.
What would be the purpose of a compromise candidate that you know wont be around for long? Wouldnt you have the same reasons that drove you to compromise again in a few years?
The cardinals normally know each other much much better than they currently do now; possibly this was a deliberate strategy by Francis to limit cliques which could counterbalance his own power(if so it didn't work) exacerbated by a slew of previously unheard of cardinalatial appointments. It's reasonable on the part of Pizzaballa, Zuppi, Erdo, etc that an establishment figure would have a more 'typical' college of cardinals which allows them to build consensus behind their own candidacy in a few years.
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India imposes direct presidential rule (rather than local elected government) in rebellious state
Drone strike on Chernobyl
IRGC holds large-scale military exercises in southwest Iran
Last week I was worried about Congo affecting more african nations. Since then:
And in Sudan:
Transmissible brain disease is spreading through Canadian deer.
US seizes weapons shipment to Yemen's Houthis from Iran; Iran denies provenance.
NK building capability for missiles to reach US
South Korea stages military drills near inter-Korean maritime border, and air drills with the United States
Zelensky warns of Russian invasion of NATO countries.
US/Russia holding talks without EU or Ukraine
Stray Russian drones hit Moldova and Romania
Former Bangladeshi PM Hasina accusses Yunus of deploying terrorists, pledges to return and avenge police officers. This seems unlikely, as she doesn't control the state apparatus. However, if she does return, it would lead to wider turmoil in the region.
Southern California has a 36% chance of a M7.5 or greater earthquake in the next 30 years," Elizabeth Cochran with the USGS Earthquake Science Center says. This would wreak havoc upon the state's most populated cities, causing roughly 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and $200 billion in damage.
How does this:
affect injunctions and rulings? In a plain reading,
if the Trump administration does something,
and a judge disagrees and issues an injuction and then a ruling,
the Trump administration can still disagree with that
Until it goes up to an appelate court, and then to the Supreme Court.
At which step does the president/AG's interpretation cease to be binding?.
Washington post article on the topic: https://archive.is/XIMum
Geologists warn of an "overdue" very large earthquake for Istambul, and warn that Turkey doesn't have the infrastructure to mitigate it, and millions could die.. Die Erdbebenwarte Kandilli gibt die Wahrscheinlichkeit für ein Beben mit einer Stärke über 7 bis zum Jahr 2030 mit 60 Prozent an.
H5N1 also in India. They were doing less testing so they've caught it later. Or it could be that it only reached them now (unlikely). Authorities in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh have issued an alert and a series of containment measures following the outbreak of bird flu (Avian Influenza H5N1), officials said Thursday.. The outbreak has been reported in Eluru, West Godavari, East Godavari, Krishna and NTR districts of the state, where over half a million poultry birds had died over the last three days
CDC conducted a small survey of 150 bovine veterinary practitioners; 3 had H5N1 antibodies. Also wow is this very little testing still.
Nevada and Ohio report first human cases of bird flu; nominal egg prices hit record high – The Moderate Voice
41 Former Bangladesh Police Officials Arrested Over Crackdown On Hasina Ouster Protests
Following up. The headline is misleading.
The state of Manipur is in the midst of a tribal civil war. It isn't a separatist war. It's between the state's 2 main tribal groups. Certain events sparked the civil war in 2023, but the social tensions were already like dry tinder, ready to pop off. In that sense, the inciting event is less relevant. The incompetent governance that let the issue spiral into a wildfire is pertinent.
For 2 years now, tribal militant groups have killed and raped on opposing sides. Having being called ethno-nationalists before, the center wants to avoid being seen as taking sides on a sub-ethnic conflict. This is a border state (think Puerto Rice), and mainland Indian voters haven't shown concern towards the conflict. So the BJP has let the conflict rage on. Direct interference would only hurt their electoral outcomes.
The center and the state are ruled by the same coalition (BJP-NDA). Once things went haywire, the BJP employed a dual strategy. They let the chief minister (state governor) be a lightning rod for blame, nominally keeping him in power. behind the scenes, they've been running the state through bureaucrats who're attempting to limit damages. Last week's change simply reduces indirection. The only shame is that the BJP didn't do this sooner.
She's right. But it changes nothing.
To be fair, this isn't her first post-coup exile. At least this time her entire family wasn't genocided.
Thanks man, this is good context that I didn't understand.
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