I love the thought pauses in that video.
There was a .… big sigh of relieve, that finally the germans understand, that (emphasis on emotional connotation) FREEDOM, doesnt come without … costs. [Then the break from constructing the statement to preprepared text] you have to invest, not only on a moral level, but also in terms of money, you have to contribute, you have to step up to your own security interests. And let me add that .. [slight pause to switch preprepared narratives], I think [emphasis on I think] that way too long germany has done things wrongly [sic!], first we have WEWEWEWEWE [stutter in failing to recall the actual first point in that statement he had to have memorized] were hiding behind our own history, that - well germany, weapons, out of territory missions, very dangerous, that is not the right thing to do - that was wrong, and the second thing, which I think we completely misunderstood, for many years - is that the germans would not understand [big smile], that if we increased tremendously our defense spendings, it the *shake head* evil weapons, as they are perceived many times, maybe - by people, but I think that was wrong, but I thing would we have stepped up much earlier, turned to our own citizens and explained - the stability, the peace and the prosperity, that we all enjoy, 82 million germans in this country, does not come out of the blue sky, it has to do with security, and we can not always rely on others that they spend their tax payers money, that they invest in our security, that we have to take up our own responsibility, I think if we had turned to our citizens earlier, they would have understood that. [CUT BY DW]
Oh propaganda is so important in times like these..
Also - there is this faint smile before answering the question, that also was present in the GMF call where we updated our partners on the fact, that the german policy revisal in three major policy sectors only took one and a half days, and the speech in the parliament revealing those was only known to 12 people before it took place. Oh, and more people in the parliament were allowed to applaud - just from a policy perspective.
So lets go through the logical fallacies in that statement.
- GMF positions that germany has to pull its weight not only through monetary contributions, but also through building up infrastructure were long standing, as the US shifted its focus to the pacific region.
- It is highly questionable that he is talking about “freedom” (emotional emphasis of freedom) in the context of out of territory missions that germany was not prepared to take on. Energy security - maybe.
- The entire language of “I think german people would have understood it earlier if we had explained it to them nicely”, is just playing peekaboo with hard concepts of propaganda, where you get a nation to reinvest in remilitarization by painting them the presence of a constant or inherent threat. It is also playing with the concept of “this war could have been averted by employing more military deterrence”, which is highly improbable, if anything other than the psychological effect is expected. (Let another person explain the point to you, why Nato involvement was always out of the question.) There we also get into demographics and all kinds of other fun stuff, but lets not.
- The point, that the 100 billion investment package, for military defense spending is a one time investment, and apart from that germany has committed an increase of defense spending to 2% of GDP sustained (from 1.5%) is largely bolstering up NATO, which the US is shifting monetary commitments away from these days - so the outcome in the best case scenario should be that it remains right about at status quo. (At about two years worth of defense spending currently the 100 billion direct respond fond, longterm isnt exactly a course correction.)
- The entire concept, that you ask your “transatlantic coordinator” on camera, how the changes that partly have yet to be implemented in the german Grundgesetz have been perceived by our transatlantic friends, in war times -- and that is the speech that follows, …
PR is so important in times like these..
