Two German warships await orders from Berlin, their commander said, to determine whether in September they will be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the disputed Taiwan Strait, drawing a rebuke from Beijing.
While the US and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the disputed strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the strait since 2002.
The Taiwan Strait is a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass, and both the United States and Taiwan say it’s an international waterway.
[…]
Germany, for whom both China and Taiwan, with its huge chip industry, are major trade partners, has joined other Western nations in expanding its military presence in the region as their alarm has grown over Beijing’s territorial ambitions.
Perfect trade-off for austerity measures back home.
Can you elaborate? I really fail to see what’s your point
I am not sure if I have used the word trade-off the right way.
What I meant is that Germany wants to cut welfare now, but there is no hesitation to invest in the military. I remembered war ships being a pretty big expenditure in these investments.
Yeah and they really have nothing to do with each other.
Germany has been neglecting it’s military investment for decades. It took the russian invasion of Ukraine to finally wake people up and realise that having a functioning military isn’t a luxury.
The only people that still “hesitation to invest in the military” are the far-right AfD and the anti-war left party, both of which are openly pro-russian.
I know about ties to russia in the AfD. But not in the ‘far left’ (Die Linke?) can you name the party and/ or provide any ‘sources’ to your claim? Thanks in advance.
Sure.
https://www.die-linke.de/partei/programm/
That’s their party programm on their official website. Go to 4.6
Basically they want to disband NATO and form a security alliance with Russia.
This is supposed to be proof for Die Linke being in cahoots with Russia?
I’ll bet my organs that Putins most and former wish is the dismantaling of NATO.
I mean, yeah. It couldn’t be more obvious. That’s their official party position.
And it is from 2011. And it might have been an acceptable standpoint until 2014.
But still having that in there after 2022 is just insane.
What is the alternative? They are too incompetent to update their website for 10 years? Or 2 years?
I’m not sure which is worse. But in my book, at least on the federal level in Germany, Die Linke is just as unelectable as the AfD. That pacifist crap doesn’t fly in our reality.
Not sure if you are MMT acolyte, but even if so, isn’t there holes in the budget, that need to be filled (or so we are told) while at the same time 100 billion Euros extra plus significant rises to the annually military budget were just a formality? Everybody’s talking about filling these holes by lowering social spending and other investment cuts. Bundesbahn for example. German politics defines itself by adhering to the avoidance of new credits, the Haushalt is sacrosanct, so how are these expenditures unrelated?
Does your last sentence reflect why you make this argument?