[Skybird]

^ Also a lack of maintenance capacities and a general underfunding of the armed services. Thats a constant in all branches of the services. I do not have the numbers in my head right now, but major shares of our tank fleet, IFVs, helicopters, interceptors and transports are not operational, too. Too few volunteers are coming, too. Last time I heard about the German contingent for that coming Easteuropean NATO force - where the Germans should lead, if I am not mistaken - had only three of the needed IFVs from the assigned brigade working. THREE!!!



Now with even more people avoiding the services, and development aid for third world countries partially now counted as military spendings to beautify the numbers, I do not see things getting better anytime soon. Also, the red socialists of the SPD have been given control of the finance ministry, and they are traditionally extremely Russophile and see no reason to be on guard against Russia. And Merkel does what she does best: nothing but sitting.



Thats what its all about these days: she could not become SED Staatsratsvorsitzende anymore, so she occupies the chancellory as a second prize.



Fact is she has nothing to say anymore. The power is where the control over finances is. But she has never really led to new shores anyway, only managed a stagnating status quo that was caused by others before her, and occasionally u-turning on some issue when her "authority" was in danger and public opinion swung. She is one of the most overestimated duds in politics I have ever seen anywhere. She would be nothing in history if on a national level she would not have flattened and suffocated everybody around her who could challenge her. An elephant in a room of so small dimensions that the grey skin squeezes out of the door and windows.


And the whole personnel regime in Berlin is like that. Totally disconnected from the realities the ordinary people have to live in. Problems grow dramatically. Law and order are it dramatic decline, with the government itself leading the competition of breaking the rules, Degrees of freedoms to react and counter the challenges, got intentionally given up, and additionally vanish by themselves, in the face of an overwhelming tide of problems, many of them them self-made, the rest being consequences of earlier self-made problems.


Say good-bye to world history and the stage of global relevance, Germany. You're done. And you want it.