May, 8th, 2016, 18:47 hours
Defense Minister:
Armed Forces to Grow Again
On arrival in the peaceful town of Terracina, we were welcomed by a soft Mediterranean evening. However, as soon as I started reading the SZ-online version, my good mood was gone.
The doctor of medicine who reigns over us, Ursula von der Leyen, wants to expand the armed forces. In April, she had announced that now the Armed Forces have a new Cyber Regiment (Cyber-Truppe). It was not an April fool’s jest and Frau von der Leyen is now feverishly looking for nerds.
In May, there were again news from the Ministry for War and Peace: according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the military planners decided that 14,300 additional military officers will be needed until 2023.
Currently, the upper limit of Bundeswehr personnel is allegedly around 185,000 soldiers, 177,000 of whom are currently in active service. This would mean that even the upper limit would have to be increased.
Now you could ask the stupid question why a medical doctor of all people wanted to be “Minister of Defence”. After all, as a doctor of medicine, she should have sworn the Hippocratic Oath (Eid des Hippokrates). Even the modern form of said oath should still mean that a doctor of medicine should not cause misery for humans.
Also, it is certainly about time that we realize growth is not categorically a good thing. As I see it, this is particularly true for the military and war. They also say that there is a new arms race between the USA and Russia, which basically is the heir of the USSR. The next US president might well be a person who gives more fuel to that race. Except – do we really want to and have to be part of such a race?
What ails me most about this news is that the “west-allied” Germany manifested the re-establishment of Armed Forces in 1955 by the FRG re-armament decision, regardless of the fact that the German Parliament had refused the national re-armament of Germany in its first state debate on November 24th and 25th, 1949.
As a consequence of the growing East-West-Conflict (Ost-West-Konflikt) during the Korean War (Koreakrieg), the Federal Government of Germany joined (or had to join because of the west-allied super-ego?) the European Defence Alliance (EVG –Europäischen Verteidigungsgemeinschaft) (1952) and theNATO (1955).
To be sure, the former general Gerhard Graf von Schwerin had been appointed as early as May, 24th, 1950 to be the technological advisor in questions of security for the secret establishment of German armed forces by Konrad Adenauer.
I was born in Germany in 1950. At the time, I was a small child. I think children are wise and will certainly oppose armament and war. Today, I would be happy if the German Parliament would have been wiser and more courageous in the 1950ies. To me, it seems that the German population was wiser. They did not want another army such a short time after the Second World War.
If the people’s will had prevailed, we would have no armed forces in Germany and no armament industry. And that would be a good thing for our country and probably for the rest of the world, as well.
This is what I believed 50 years ago and it is what I still believe.
RMD
May, 9th, 2016, 08:47 hours
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Dear nerds – please do not wear a uniform.
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