The Duran Podcast - Germany deindustrialized, taps out of Ukraine

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Germany deindustrialized, taps out of Ukraine

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Germany. There is a finance budget crisis, according to German publications, German reporting. The finance ministry, they have notified, I believe the defense ministry, and they've told the defense ministry, we just don't have any more budget for project Ukraine. And this has caused quite a stir. In Germany, actually, I've read reports from the Schultz government spokesman, saying that this reporting from German media is not true. They're going to continue to fund Ukraine. Obviously, if Germany wanted to send money to Ukraine, they could find ways to send money to Ukraine,

money to Ukraine. I don't know. Maybe tax German citizens a little bit more to get money to Ukraine. I don't know. If they wanted to get money to Ukraine, they would get money to Ukraine. So something else is going on. My guess is that the German military and industrial complex, they just don't have any more production capacity left to fulfill Ukraine's requirements. But I don't know. That's my guess. That's my hunch. Something else is happening. This is not strictly a budget thing, though it may play a part in everything, maybe politics of it. The optics of giving more money to Ukraine may not sit well in political circles. But if they wanted to get money to Ukraine, they would get money to Ukraine. So something else is going on by hunch is demilitarization

But what are your thoughts? You're right about this. Can I just say this is a fascinating story in so many respects. Now, you talked about a budgetary crisis in Germany. And if you look at the raw figures, by comparison with every other major Western country, you would say that Germany is the country with the best position in terms of its government finances of all. the debt to GDP ratio of Germany is 65%. I mean the United States, Britain, France, Italy is, you know, hovering around 100% or more.

It's in a far worse state there. The Germans are running a budget deficit, but it's not a huge budget deficit. At least not a huge budget deficit compared with what we see in all the other Western countries. Now, of course, this is now, because we've become used to situations where the budget, the debt to GDP ratio is around 100%. If we took a time machine back 10, 15 years, a country in the West at that time, which had a debt to GDP ratio, 65%, would be thought of as being in a very, very bad mess indeed. But nowadays, we've become used to thinking, you know, that 100% debt-to-GDP ratio is the new normal. The same goes for Germany's budget deficit. It's relatively small by comparison with what you see in the US and France and Italy and places like that.

But in Germany, it all amounts to a crisis. and the reason this is so is twofold. Firstly, yes, it's perfectly true that there is a psychological issue. The Germans have always been careful about their finances, they've always budgeted very carefully. This stereotype of the Germans, there is a lot of truth to it. But the other thing is that the Germans passed constitutional law to give themselves debt breaks and to prevent their budget exploding.

out of control. Back in that time, 10, 15 years ago, when, you know, having a debt-to-GDP ratio about 40% was considered, you know, bad news, and you wanted to keep it as low as possible. So this is partly why we are in this situation. But there are laws, there's constitutional laws, laws can always be changed,

and they can always be disrepeach, guarded. So why are the Germans taking this hard line or why is part of the German government taking this hard line at this particular time? Well, I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, there is the general situation in mood in Germany. Now, to repeat, I was in Germany myself a few weeks ago and it's quite clear to me that at a popular level there has been a shift against the war and against support for Ukraine. There's also, a widespread sense, and I think you're absolutely right about this, that in terms of military, the ability to support Ukraine militarily,

it is now effectively exhausted. The German military is in a worse state now than it was before the war began because so much hardware has been sent to Ukraine. They're having to bring out Old Leopard One tanks out of storage and refurbish them, and that is turning into a massively complex an expensive business. The business with shell production has been a colossal embarrassment.

Germany has come nowhere close to meeting the targets that Schultz and co. Set out for German artillery shell production. We've discussed this many times. I don't want to go over all of that again. So the Germans are not keen to do that. So there is this concern.

On top of that, we've had the north. Nord Stream revelations, if that's what they actually are. And of course, that's hardening some feeling in Germany against Ukraine. And maybe that's why the story about Nord Stream has been circulated at precisely this time. And we discussed it in a recent program, the indictment against Volodymyr Z, whoever he is supposed to be. But there is also, within all of the... this politics because there are going to be parliamentary elections in Germany relatively soon.

Everybody can see how deeply unpopular the German government led by Olaf Schultz is. It's presided over two recessions. The economy is stagnating. The de-industrialization process is continuing and getting stronger. There have been attempts to pretend otherwise, But there's no doubt about this at all. Prices in Germany are much higher than they were. Living standards have been affected. There's all of this, this mood of malaise about the current government in Germany. And all of the various parties that make up the coalition are now manoeuvring against each other.

So the greeds, which have been very much falling in support, they're now trying to, to distance themselves from Schultz. Robert Habek is now going out and saying that he's going to be the Greens candidate for Chancellor in the next elections, which looks like the Greens are looking to break with the current coalition at some point and are really putting down markers that they no longer want to be part of the coalition. And the FDP, the Liberal Party, led by Christian Lindner, which controls the finance ministry. They too have become deeply unpopular, so they want to increase their popularity before the elections.

They know how Germans feel about budget deficits. They know how Germans feel about debt to GDP ratios. They know about the dissatisfaction and unhappiness that many Germans feel about the whole conflict in Ukraine. The FDP has historically been the party in Germany that has been, been closest to the German military, just saying this was always the case. And so Christian Littner is now making his big move. He's cutting spending and he's telling the Germans, look, we've got to cut spending. And that means we've got to cut spending on Ukraine because we can't afford this anymore. It's bad for the military. It's bad for Germany's finances. Everybody has

to economize. And we can't just go on, give it. money to Ukraine. They know it's popular with many Germans. They know it's probably supported by quite a few people in the military. And from their point of view, it's a good pitch. Yeah. So this is bad news for Zelensky. Any way you look at it, it's basically Germany, in one form or another, saying we can't keep this going much longer. Even if they somehow managed to scrape up some money to get to the Zeletsky regime, it's obvious that Germany sooner or later is going to be tapping out of Project Ukraine. Of course, the United States, they're going to tell Germany to continue to destroy itself on the rocks that are Project

Ukraine. And so what does Olaf Schultz? What does Germany do about that? Because the pressure from the US is going to be tremendous for Germany to continue to demilitarize, to de-industrialize at the expense of, or for a project Ukraine at the expense of Germany's sovereignty. Well, you're absolutely correct. Now, in theory, Germany, big countries, strong country economically, at least historically it was, you would have thought that Germany would be able to tell the United, the U.S., well, look, these are German interests. You've got to. We can't force us to de-industrialise and to do all of the things you want. This is ridiculous.

We've got to change course. We have to look after German interests. Now, to some extent, remember, Angela Merkel did that, and she was quite popular in Germany. Just saying, I mean, she's stuck by Nord Stream 2, for example, despite all of the pressure to pull out of it. She continued to meet with Putin, even though that was unpopular in Washington and London as well. So, you know, it can be done.

The problem is the very weak and disorganised political class that we have in Germany up to now has reliably followed American orders. And so especially has the Green Party. Now, maybe with what Christian Littner is trying to do, we're starting to get the pushback. But, you know, don't count on it. you know there'll be the cause perhaps in washington and maybe they'll fall into line and um the the german media most of it reliably follows the um what's called the atlantis this line and you know they'll they'll be no doubt coming back and they say you know ukraine can't be betrayed and all of this um it does raise further questions about this whole north stream

story because I one does wonder whether perhaps that story has been circulated at precisely this time in part in order to counter the pressure that there's going to continue to be to go on supporting Ukraine already the IFDA by the way making a lot of you know them bringing this up all the time, Alice Vidal in particular, and so is Sarah Wagenet on the left. So, you know, it's as if this isn't being talked about in Germany. And one sense is that the political establishment, at least that part of it, which wants to continue supporting Ukraine, is a bit on the back foot over this, because it's not easy to see how exactly they can, you know, explain their way out of this issue with Nord Stream.

How do you justify giving more money to Ukraine when you've got outlets like the Wall Street Journal saying that Ukraine blew up the North Street pipeline? And that is what the AEDA is saying. That's what the Sarawaghan Act is saying. Ukraine should pay us back. I mean, they're saying it. Ukraine should pay us the money for the economic damage that they have done to Germany by blowing up the North Stream pipeline, the Wall Street Journal.

This is not some other Putin-controlled publication. This is the Wall Street Journal, right? The Wall Street Journal has said that Zelensky was in the know, that Zaluzni was coordinating the thing, that even the CIA knew about it. So, you know, the Avdei is saying, we demand money from Ukraine. Yes.

They blew up the pipeline. So how do you justify more money to Ukraine? One would have thought with great difficulty. One would have thought with great difficulty. Well, logically, it ought to be. possible. Of course, if you're Habek and the Beavork and people like that, well,

you say, well, you know, we should have blown it up ourselves. We shouldn't have, we should have, we should have, we should have, we should have passed the explosives to our friends. We should fake Zelensky. Yes, exactly. I mean, that's what they're going to say. But, you know, um,

from my relatively brief visit to Germany, I did get the sense that a lot of people are becoming very, very tired of this and are starting to see through it. Germany does have, as I said, an alternative and independent media of its own.

People do talk about these things. Obviously, there's always a very, very large number of people in Germany who axiomatically accept the neoliberal Atlantis' position, and they're still there. But I do think that there is, that there are, the doubts are there, and that they are growing, and that they are getting traction amongst more and more people in Germany as well. So anyway, there is a debate now in Germany about support for Ukraine, which, of course,

there wasn't even a year ago. All right, we'll wrap it up there. The durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, Bitchie, Telegraph, and Rock Finn, and go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch. you will find a link in the description box down below. Take care.