Lately he's been beating the drums for more military intervention by Germany. And not so much in a particular place. He just wants Germany to do more military actions!
Annika Breidthardt reports for Reuters in President urges Germany to take more military responsibility 06/14/2014:
Europe's largest and the world's fourth biggest economy has faced criticism from allies for not taking a more active role. Gauck said he had repeatedly heard such pleas during his travels.It was unacceptable coming from Köhler in 2010. But after four years of nationalistic posturing by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the euro crisis, Gauck's demands are yet creating the same kind of uproar.
"That's what I want from Germany, too" Gauck said in an interview with Deutschlandradio Kultur after a trip to Norway.
"I have the feeling our country should maybe drop the reluctance that was in order in past decades in favor of a stronger sense of responsibility." ...
"Sometimes it is necessary to take up arms in order to fight for human rights or for the survival of innocent people," Gauck said.
In 2010, remarks by a previous president, Horst Koehler, justifying military action to back Germany's commercial interests sparked criticism that prompted him to step down.
Gauck, who took office in 2012, said taking a stronger international role did not imply being dominant. "I don't mean the behavior that Germany put on in past centuries or in the decade of the war: a demeanor of German dominance. The opposite is what I mean," Gauck said. [my emphasis]
This is a sad turn of events. When Horst Köhler stepped down in 2010, Gauck was backed by the SPD and the Greens in the campaign for his replacement. Merkel's preferred choice Christian Wulff was selected instead. Gauck is from the DDR, the former East Germany. A pastor there, he managed to stay away from being tainted by involvement with the ruling Communist Party. After unification, he was the director of the archives of the Stasi, the former East Germany secret police. And as such, he was a prominent and influential figure in shaping the public conversation over the history of the DDR after unification.
But like Merkel, who grew up in the DDR, Gauck doesn't seem to have acquired the same sense of a need for foreign policy restraint that politicians in the former West Germany developed.
That's not meant to be a broad generalization. There are definitely former residents of the DDR who aren't in favor of a nationalistic policy by today's Germany. But it is striking that the Chancellor and the President both have taken their lessons from the DDR's past and assimilated it to a more nationalistic foreign policy than former West German leaders were inclined to display, certainly in relation to the Western European countries.
Klaus Stuttmann captures this side of Gauck's public persona in this cartoon of 06/17/2014:
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| "Germany Onward!" |
Gauck has actually been as crass as Köhler was in his comments. What got Köhler in hot water was that he made it sound like Germany should be ready for military interventions for its own national convenience and commercial benefit. (Stefan Berg und Christoph Hickmann, Horst Lübke Der Spiegel 22/2010 31.05.2010) This would sound unexceptional from an American politician. But the German public wasn't quite so content with that kind of thinking from their President. Gauck has managed to avoid sounding quite so crass.
Köhler was Merkel's pick. And once he got himself in trouble, she was quick to dump him. Merkel knows about Dolchstoß, the knife in the back. She's good at it. When her next pick, Christian Wulff, beat out Gauck for the Presidency in 2010 and then got embarrassed with a scandal about taking expensive benefits from a German plutocrat, she dumped him as well and brushed the dirt off her hands. Then she was okay with having Gauck as President.
The postwar German Constitution set up the office of President as the head of state, although with limited powers, due to lessons learned from the mischief made by President Paul Hindenburg during the Weimar Republic that contributed so mightily to its well-known demise. The office's incumbents established it over the years as a moral and humanitarian voice defending democracy in a generally non-partisan way.
Stefan Berg et al in a Spiegel article from 2012, the year Gauck took Wulff's place as President, Apostel der Freiheit 19.03.2012, noted that Gauck could be expected to be a spokesperson for "freedom" in the form of economic liberalism, i.e. free markets:
Seine Gegner, darunter alte Weggefährten aus der DDR, werfen Gauck vor, er lasse über sein Bekenntnis zur Freiheit die Begeisterung für die Gerechtigkeit fehlen. Gauck hat dagegen eingewandt, ihm liege auch die Gerechtigkeit sehr am Herzen. Aber im Kern ist der Befund so falsch nicht. Man darf vermuten, dass das Wort „sozial” für den neuen Bundespräsidenten nicht den Wohlklang hat, den es bei den meisten Bundesbürgern auslöst. Dazu ist es ihm im Sozialismus ein paarmal zu oft um die Ohren gehauen worden.Berg seems to be speculating a bit much there.
[His enemies, among them old acquaintance from the DDR, accuse Gauck of leaving justice out of his profession of faith in Freedom. He has objected in response that justice is also very dear to his heart. But at its core, the claim is not so wrong. One may assume that the word "social" doesn't have the harmonious sound that it triggers by most German citizens. He's been whacked on the ears with a few times too often in socialism [i.e., East Germany}.]
But Jesuit social ethicist Friedhelm Hengsbach also points to Gauck's East German experience as limiting his realism about the present-day Federal Republik. In "Kapitalismus kann töten" domradio.de 17.01.2014, Hengbach commented on a speech Gauck gave in January in praise of some the notions of "ordoliberal" economic doctrine of the "Freiburg School," a doctrine to which Merkel adheres rather dogmatically in her eurozone policies:
Natürlich hat diese Rede Schwachstellen, sie lebt aus den Erfahrungen in der früheren DDR und ist begeistert von der Freien Marktwirtschaft wie Frau Merkel, bevor ihr Handy abgehört wurde. Da klingt einerseits eine bestimmte Freude über die Freiheitsgeschichte und über das, was der Freie Markt in einer Demokratie bedeutet, heraus. Auf der anderen Seite greift der Präsident die Ideen von Walter Eucken und der Freiburger Schule auf, und da wird eigentlich ganz deutlich gesagt, dass der Wettbewerb gefährdet wird durch private Macht. Als Beispiel dient die Weimarer Zeit. Aber das ist ja heute genauso durch die Lobbyisten in den Banken und den Großkonzernen. Und da heißt es auch, dass der Wettbewerb natürlich auch gefährdet wird durch staatliche Macht. Also: Immer dort, wo Machtballung auftritt, die nicht kontrolliert ist, da sieht er große Gefahren.Hengback compares Gauck's perspective unfavorably to that of Pope Francis I, referring again to Gauck's DDR experiences:
[Of course this speech has weak points; it lives from the experiences in the former DDR {East Germany} and is enchanted by the free-market economy, like Frau Merkel {was} before her mobile phone was tapped {by the NSA}. So on the one hand, a definite joy sounds out over the story of freedom and over what the free market means in a democracy. On the other hand, the President pick up the ideas of Walter Eucken and the Freiburg School, and there it is actually said very explicitly that the competition is endangered by private power. The Weimar time serves as an example. But that is the very same today through the lobbyists in the banks and large concerns. And there it is also said, of course, that competition is also endangered by state power. Therefore: Always there, where concentration of power emerges that isn't controlled, there he sees great dangers.]
Man muss immer den konkreten Kontext sehen, aus dem die Menschen kommen, und ihr Erfahrungsmilieu. Gauck hat das Erfahrungsmilieu des real existierenden Sozialismus in sich aufgesogen. Er sieht natürlich immer den glänzenden Schein der Bundesrepublik, der aber in Wirklichkeit ein Glanz ist, hinter dem sich entregelte Arbeitsverhältnisse und zunehmende bzw. stabil gleichbleibende soziale Armut verbergen. Und beim Papst ist es genau umgekehrt: Der Papst kommt vom Ende der Welt, wie er sagt, nämlich aus Argentinien, aus einem Milieu von Armut und Ausgrenzung, und von daher kann er sagen: Ein Kapitalismus, der Menschen in diesem Maße ausgrenzt und die Verteilung von Einkommen und Vermögen systematisch so asymmetrisch gestaltet, der gefährdet Menschenleben. Dann kann Kapitlaismus töten.
[One must always look at the concrete context out of which someone comes, and his milieu of experience. Gauck has absorbed the experience milieu of real existing socialism {an ironic term in this context for East Germany] into himself. He naturally always sees the shiny appearance of the Federal Republic {Germany}, which in reality is a shine behind which are hidden deregulated working conditions and social poverty that is increasing or at best remaining stable. And by the Pope is it the exact reverse: The Pope comes from the end of the world, as he says, namely from Argentina, out of a milieu of poverty and exclusion. And from that perspective he can say: a capitalism that excludes people to this degree and the division of income and wealth is shaped systematically in such an asymmetric way, it endangers human life. Because capitalism can kill.]
Albrecht von Lucke, Der nützliche Herr Gauck Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3/2014
Agnieszka Brugger, a Green Member of the German Bundestag, writes on Facebook on 06/16/2014:
Die Äußerungen von #Gauck gehen in die falsche Richtung. Statt Militäreinsätze zum Normalfall in der Außenpolitik zu erklären, sollte der Bundespräsident für zivile Krisenprävention, mehr Entwicklungshilfe und weniger Rüstungsexporte werben.
The article she's linking is Annett Meiritz, Bundespräsident: Scharfe Kritik an Gaucks Ruf nach Militäreinsätzen Spiegel Online 15.06.2014. This is a disturbing trend.
Tags: angela merkel, germany, joachim gauck
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