A faithful journalistic fan of Angela Merkel discovers she plays cynical politics on refugees

Dirk Kurbjuweit of Der Spiegel has been embarrassing himself for years with his fawning coverage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. See, for instance, my post of 08/05/2013, German siesta? Or neoliberal demobilization?

Now he seems to be actually surprised at the calculating and cold-hearted posture she is now displaying on the refugee issue: "Die Kanzlerin der Grimmigen" Der Spiegel 4:2018 20.1.2018 (print edition). Merkel had an intense year in 2015. After soundly defeating Greece's attempt to get out from under the absurd EU debt policies that were keep Greece in a state of severe depression, her image had take a hit. The cold, dogmatic, destructive stance she took in the Greek crisis had tarnished her reputation as a world leader.

Klaus Stuttmann captured this image of her in a cartoon of 28.06.2012 depicting her as Frau Fritz, a takeoff on a famous portrait of Frederick the Great, aka, Old Fritz:

Angie is saying in the caption, "Thrift, incorruptibility, efficiency and discipline: THAT's what Europe has to learn!!"

The refugee inflow to Europe has been a chronic crisis, as well, at least since 2011. But it hit an acute phase in 2015, when large numbers poured into Europe. Merkel and the EU had been handling the EU crisis according to her signature extend-and-pretend style, i.e., do enough to stave off immediate disaster but don't do the hard task of actually solving the problem. So in 2015, the EU countries were insufficiently prepared in emergency services. And, critically, they had not made long-term plans for burden-sharing among the EU countries.

Dirk Kurbjuweit has discovered in 2018 that Merkel displays "the arrogance of power." In 2015, she announced that Germany was taking a large number of refugees that year, which turned out to be around one million. She clearly thought that she could force her EU partners, who she sometimes seems to regard more as vassals, into taking significant quotas as the refugees. It doesn't speak well of the EU governments like France and Britain that failed to take what would arguably have been a fair share of them. But Merkel had momentarily solved the problem for them.

And she got a momentary bonanza in the short-term, transforming her image from that of Frau Fritz to the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter. A Spiegel cover that September featured her as Mother Theresa:

In that same Spiegel, (Der alte Kontinent 19.09.2015), Peter Müller succinctly described in inadequacy of extend-and-pretend on the refugee crisis:

Ähnlich wie in der Eurokrise die Währungsunion durch eine gemeinsame Finanzpolitik ergänzt werden muss, können Schengen und Dublin in Zukunft nur funktionieren, wenn die Europäer Asylstandards angleichen, sich auf einen festen Verteilungsschlüssel einigen und endlich damit beginnen, die Ursachen der Migration ernsthaft zu bekämpfen: Dazu gehören eine effektive Entwicklungshilfe, eine Klimapolitik, die ihren Namen verdient, und gemeinsame, legale Zuwanderungsmöglichkeiten. Fast alles Jahrhundertaufgaben.

"Zur Herausbildung einer europäischen Identität gibt es nur eine Alternative", schreibt Jürgen Habermas. "Der alte Kontinent verschwindet von der weltpolitischen Bühne." Der Philosoph hat recht. Aber die Flüchtlingskrise zeigt, wie weit der Weg noch ist.

[Similar to the way that, in the euro crisis, the currency union has to be widened with a common financial policy, the Schengen and Dublin [treaties on borders] can function in the future only if the Europeans equalize their asylum standards, come together on a firm allocation formula [for refugees], and finally start to seriously engage with the basic causes of migration. Included among them are effective developmental assistance, a climate policy that deserves the name, and common legal immigration possibilities. Almost all of them tasks of a century.

"To construct a European identity there is only one alternative," writes Jürgen Habermas. "The Old Continent will disappear from the world stage." The philosopher is right. But the refugee crisis shows how far the way still is.]

Since 2015, rightwing parties have exploited xenophobia to demagogue against foreigners and Muslims. Meanwhile, the Compassionate Pastor's daughter worked out an extend-and-pretend "solution" to contain the number of refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Literally to contain the refugees in overcrowded refugee camps in Turkey and Greece (!). In order to reduce the high-risk flights by sea from North Africa, the EU worked with what currently constitutes government in Libya to also establish refugee camps, or prisons, there. The stories coming out of there have been horrific, e.g., Emma Graham-Harrison, Migrants from west Africa being ‘sold in Libyan slave markets’ Guardian 04/10/2017.

Deutsche Welle reports in Outrage across Africa after report exposes slave trade in Libya USA Today 11/23/2017:

Politicians in Africa have expressed their outrage at the scandal — especially in West Africa where most African migrants originate. President of Niger Mahamadou Issoufou felt particularly revolted by the reports, summoning the Libyan ambassador to Niger and demanding the International Court of Justice investigate Libya for trading slaves.

Meanwhile the foreign minister of Burkina Faso, Alpha Barry, told the press that he had also summoned the Libyan ambassador to the capital Ouagadougou for consultations. The issue has since been added to the agenda of next week's African Union meeting in Ivory Coast, to take place on November 29 and 30.

The issue has made waves in the Ivory Coast itself — 155 Ivorian refugees, including 89 women and underage migrants, were returned from Libya to the Ivory Coast earlier this week as part of a reintegration initiative launched by the European Union. Representatives of the Ivorian government, however, said that the health of those migrants returned from Libya was in a "deplorable state."

As part of the coalition agreement among the CDU, SPD and CSU that at this writing may or may not result in a new Grand Coalition government headed bgy Merkel sets an annual "upper limit" of 220,000 per year on the number of refugees Germany will accept.

Dirk Kurbjuweit is very disappointed by this policy. "Sie ist Ausdruck einer scharfen Kurve in der Flüchtlingspolitik, von den offenen Grenzen zur harschen Abwehr." ("It is the expression of a sharp turn in refugee policy, from open borders to harsh rejection.")

That's true so far as it goes. But, as shown above, there were plenty of reasons prior to this to regard Merkel's refugee policy as more hard political calculation with a preference for extend-and-pretend measures than the vision of the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter ludicrously constructed by Merkel's admirers in 2015. Still, Kurbjuweit seems to be quite disturbed by this latest position:

Nun zeigt Deutschland ein grimmiges Gesicht, und die Bundeskanzlerin hat kein Land mehr. Das stört sie jedoch nicht. Sie sieht das alles inzwischen ohnehin ganz anders. [Now Germany is showing a grim face, and the Chancellor no longer has a country. Now she sees everything very differently anyway.]

He sounds downright heartbroken! "The Chancellor" that he admired as the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter has been abandoned by her unworthy country. And (sob!) even she sees things differently now! Heartbreak is sad.

He's also noticed that the family-values parties have gaps in their family values:

Ausgerechnet der Familiennachzug wird begrenzt, von den Oberfamilienparteien CDU und CSU, obwohl allen klar sein muss, dass Männer die besten Chancen auf eine Integration haben, wenn sie hier mit ihren Familien zusammenleben. [Precisely the family unification {for some immigrants} will be restricted by the supreme family parties CDU and CSU, even though it must be clear to everyone that men have the being chance of being integated if they are living together with their families here.]

I hope nobody tells Dirk Kurbjuweit that Donald Trump is a foul-mouthed, woman-hating racist. He might be shocked at that revelation, too. Golly, it never occurred to him that xenophobes don't actually give a s*** about their "family values" pretensions when it comes to immigrants they regard as subhuman enemies of good German white folks!

Snark aside, he actually has a good point when he observes that Merkel's embrace of the xenophobic agenda is actually a slap in the face to voters and especially to all the volunteers in Germany who stepped up to compensate for the inadequancies of Germany's and the EU's insufficient emergency preparedness in the 2015 situation:

Nicht nur Politiker haben die Flüchtlingspolitik des Jahres 2015 getragen. Das waren auch viele, viele Bürger. Sie haben dem Staat, der nicht gut vorbereitet war, geholfen, haben Flüchtlinge willkommen geheißen, unterstützt, bei sich zu Hause aufgenommen. Sie waren Akteure der Politik, und viele sind es immer noch, weil sie dabei helfen, Flüchtlinge in diese Gesellschaft zu integrieren.

[It was not only politicians who supported the refugee policy of the year 2015. There were also many, many citizens. They helped the government that was not well prepared, they called the refugees welcome, supported them by taking them into their homes. They were political actors {in doing so}, and there are still many, because they still are there to help refugees to integrate into this society.]

Kurbjuweit also recognizes that Merkel is helping xenophobes in the AfD (rightwing Alternative for Germany) party in promoting nationalist hatreds by not only adopting their framing of the refugee issue but also adopting policies in line with theirs:

An deren Land baut Merkel gerade mit, für deren Sicht auf die Lage macht sie Politik. Natürlich gab und gibt es enorme Probleme mit Flüchtlingen. Aber es gibt auch eine hysterische Sicht darauf, die wenig mit der Realität zu tun hat. Silvester 2015/16 in Köln war fürchterlich, doch die Jahre danach haben bewiesen, dass man solche Probleme in den Griff bekommen kann. Jede Vergewaltigung ist eine zu viel, aber Recherchen des SPIEGEL (Heft 2/2018) haben gezeigt, dass interessierte Kreise dazu falsch informieren, um Flüchtlinge zu diffamieren.

Merkel is building on their land with them {the AfD}, she is making policy with an eye on them. Of course, there are enormous problems with refugees. But there is also a hysterical view of them that has little to do with reality. New Year's Eve 2015-16 in Cologne {sexual assaults on women by foreigners} was horrible, but the years since have shown that such problems can be handled. Every rape is one too many, but research by SPIEGEL (issue 2:2018) has shown that interested circles provide false information on that in order to defame refugees.] (my emphasis)

Defining the Other as a criminal, dangerous, threatening collective is standard procedure for bigots and demagogues of all sorts. Anyone familiar with the history of lynch murder in the United States will know how big a role false accusations and hysteria over sexual assault played in the murder of so many African-Americans. Sadly, the example can be multiplied many times in other countries, as well.

It's worth noting that there have been reports in the mainstream press about Russian cyber-operations using rape propaganda in exactly that way in western Europe.

As we know from long experience, countering such propaganda, from Russia or from homegrown agitators or wherever, isn't easy. Many countries, maybe all of them, have a hard core of authoritarians who are eager to believe and spread such hysteria, whether they actually believe it or not. In one way or another, advocates of democracy and decency always have to struggle with that problem at some level of intensity.

Kurbjuweit may have been starry-eyed about how the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter has been handling the refugee crisis and immigration issues. He may not have noticed in 2015. But a highly skilled politician like Merkel surely knew that whatever genuine humantiarian motives she may have had for taking on such a large number of refugees into Germany in 2015, it also had the practical advantage of giving her international image a big boost after the throttling of Greece that year. And it did, she was right about that. It also gave her a potential tool to force other EU countries to take on quotas of refugees and institute a de facto allocation formula. But that didn't work out that way.

Those of us who never bought into the exaggerated Mother Angela image of 2015 are not nearly as surprised as Dirk Kurbjuweit at the recent turn of events. As his Spiegel colleague Peter Müller recognized even then, the EU wasn't even beginning to grapple with the real dimensions of the refugee issue. With politicians all over the EU posturing with cheap nationalism and promising the "secure the borders," that is still true in 2018. And if Turkey decides for its own political reasons to send its refugees on to Europe, how illusionary the close-the-borders blather is will become very apparent once again.

Zygmunt Bauman on the European refugee crisis

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman passed away this past January at age 91. In an obituary appreciation (Adieu, Zygmunt Bauman! Aljazeera 01/13/2017) Irfan Ahmad observed:

In Wasted Lives (2004), Bauman took up the issue of transformation of humans as surplus - a process only accentuated under neo-liberalism. Refugees, unwanted immigrants, prisoners and other groups exemplify "waste" as the excess, the redundant.

Bauman's argument in this important book was as follows: As an order-building and social-engineering project modernity creates the category of the outcast only to secure its riddance.

Until the end of his life, Bauman remained engaged with the issues he cared about. Including the European refugee crisis. Why the world fears refugees (Narrated by Zygmunt Bauman) Al Jazeera English 10/13/2016:

In The Migration Panic And Its (Mis)Uses Social Europe 12/17/2016, he wrote:

Massive migration is by no means a novel phenomenon; it accompanied the modern era from its very beginning (though time and again modifying, and occasionally reversing, its directions) – as our “modern way of life” includes the production of “redundant people” (locally “inutile” – excessive and unemployable – owing to economic progress, or locally intolerable – rejected in the effect of unrest, conflicts and strife caused by social/political transformations and subsequent power struggles). On top of that, however, we now bear the consequences of the profound, and seemingly prospectless destabilization of the Middle-Eastern area in the aftermath of miscalculated, foolishly myopic and admittedly abortive policies and military ventures of Western powers.

This is a critical fact about the refugee crisis in Europe right now, the military conflicts in the Middle East. And this is something over which the US and the EU nations do have some real power. The is a definite trade-off involved in that new interventions and escalations of current interventions and arms sales from the NATO nations can be reliably expected to generate new waves of refugees to Europe:

All in all, as things stand now and promise to be for a long time to come, mass migration is unlikely to grind to a halt; neither for the lack of prompting nor for the rising ingenuity of attempts to stop it. As Robert Winder wittily remarked in the preface to the second edition of his book Bloody Foreigners – “We can park our chair on the beach as often as we please, and cry at the oncoming waves, but the tide will not listen, nor the sea retreat”. Building walls in order to stop migrants short of “our own backyards” comes ridiculously close to the story of the ancient philosopher Diogenes rolling to and from the barrel in which he lived over the streets of his native Sinope. Asked for the reasons for his strange behaviour, he answered that seeing his neighbours being busy barricading their doors and sharpening their swords, he also wished to contribute to the defence of the city against being conquered by the Macedonian troops of Alexander.

What has however happened most recently, in the last few years, is an enormous leap in the numbers added by refugees and asylum seekers to the total volume of migrants knocking on the doors of Europe; that leap was caused by the rising number of “failing” or rather failed states or – for all intents and purposes – stateless and thus also lawless territories, stages for interminable tribal and sectarian wars, mass murders and round-the-clock banditry. To a large extent, this is the collateral damage done by the fatally misjudged, ill-starred and calamitous military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq, ending in the replacing of dictatorial regimes with the open-all-hours theatre of unruliness and frenzy of violence, aided and abetted by the global arms trade, unleashed from any control and beefed up by the profit-greedy weapons industry with the tacit (though all too often proudly displayed in public at international arms fairs) support of governments greedy for increased GNP. The flood of the refugees pushed by the rule of arbitrary violence to abandon their homes and cherished possessions, of people seeking shelter from the killing fields, topped the steady flow of the so called “economic migrants”, pulled by the all too human wish to move from barren soil to where the grass is green: from impoverished lands of no prospects, to dreamlands rich in opportunities. Of that steady stream of people seeking condition of decent living standards (a stream flowing steadily since the beginning of humanity, and only accelerated by the modern industry of redundant people and wasted lives) ... [my emphasis]

Baumann is looking at the major contours of the problem, particularly in reference to the current refugee crisis in Europe.

He describes the social dynamics by which even disadvantaged groups can be set against each other:

And there is another exceptional (that is, reaching beyond the “normal”, extemporal distrust of strangers) reason to be resentful of the massive inflow of refugees and asylum seekers; reason appealing mostly to a different sector of society – to the emergent “precariat”: to people afraid of losing their cherished and enviable achievements, possessions and social standing, rather than those human equivalents of Aesop’s hares, sunk in despair fed by having lost them already or never having been given a chance of attaining them.

One cannot but notice that the massive and sudden appearance of strangers on our streets has neither been caused by us nor is it under our control. No one consulted us, no one asked our agreement. No wonder that the successive tides of fresh immigrants are resented (to recall Bertold Brecht) as “harbingers of bad news”. They are embodiments of the collapse of order (whatever we consider as an “order”: a state of affairs in which the relations between causes and effects are stable and so graspable and predictable, allowing those inside to know how to proceed) that is no longer binding: a sort of “sandwich man” carrying the announcement “the end of the world as we know it is nigh”. They, in a poignant expression of Jonathan Rutherford (see here), “transport the bad news from a far corner of the world onto our doorsteps.” They make us aware and keep reminding us of what we would dearly like to forget or better still to wish away: of some global, distant, sometimes heard about but unseen, intangible, obscure and mysterious forces powerful enough to interfere also with our lives while neglecting and ignoring our own preferences. The “collateral victims” of those forces tend to be, by some vitiated logic, perceived as those forces’ avant-garde troops – now setting up garrisons in our midst. Those nomads – not by choice but by the verdict of a heartless fate – remind us, irritatingly and infuriatingly, of the (incurable?) vulnerability of our own position and fragility of our hard-own well-being – and it is a human, all too human habit to blame and punish the messengers for the hateful contents of the message they carry ...

At the end he quotes from Pope Francis' homily on his visit to the Lampedusa refugee camp in Italy of 07/08/2017. Here are the full two paragraphs in the Vatican transcript which Bauman quotes in part:

"Where is your brother?" His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. I recently listened to one of these brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others, people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have suffered! Some of them never made it here.

"Where is your brother?" Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: "Who killed the governor?", they all reply: "Fuente Ovejuna, sir". Everybody and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: "Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?" Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul ...!", and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business! [my emphasis]

Robert Skidelsky on European refugee crisis

Robert Skidelsky looks at the European immigration crisis in The Failure of Free Migration Project Syndicate 07/18/2016:

In recent years, refugees have mainly been fleeing either persecution or extreme insecurity following state disintegration. We saw this in the Balkans in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa in the 2000s. The five million Syrians now in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan are the latest and most dramatic example of this pattern.

For this class of migrant, push factors are by far the most important. But the line between refugees and economic migrants blurs over time. History indicates that most refugees do not return to their country of origin. It takes too long for the feeling of extreme insecurity to subside; and, meanwhile, the lure of a better life takes hold.

He also makes this important observation:

... anti-immigrant sentiment is not based only on prejudice, ignorance, or political opportunism. Anti-immigrant language is not just socially constructed. Words are not mirrors of things “out there,” but they have some relation to such things. You cannot manipulate something unless there is something to manipulate. We have little chance of changing the words unless we alter the realities to which they refer. [my emphasis]

Varoufakis on the problems of the EU and the eurozone

Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis recently did an interview with Globo TV in Brazil. And he provides a transcript on his blog (Our movement to democratise Europe & developments in Latin America and China – Interview with Brazil’s GLOBO TV 01/19/2016). It includes various interesting and provocative observations, such as this one on France and Germany:

[French] President [François] Hollande never speaks against [German] Chancellor [Angela] Merkel when she speaks about the Eurozone, even when he disagrees. Remember he was elected in other to counter her perspective of what should happen in the Eurozone. The day he was elected he stopped speaking about it. Now, why is that?

There is a reason. If the Eurozone breaks up, and France and Germany go back to their own currencies, the French franc and the Deutsch mark, what will happen? There will be an exodus of money from France to Germany. Why? Because everybody will anticipate, correctly, that going back to their own currencies means that the Deutsch mark will go up and the French franc will go down.

Yes, but France and Germany are the axis of the EU. So, François Hollande – or whoever happens to be the President, Sarkozy, Hollande, this is not a personal issue – knows that if euro breaks up then France will be destroyed, and there will be a flood of money towards Germany. So he is scared of any disagreement because it may end up destroying his country. ...

Germany doesn’t have this fear, as a euro break up would lead to a flood of money to Frankfurt. Of course, German industry will be injured by the rise of the new German currency but its financial system will not collapse – as France’s would. This asymmetrical fear guarantees that whenever the Chancellor of Germany says something the President of France does not respond. Now, this is an immense power in the hands of the German Chancellor. She knows that if we make our Eurozone absolutely indivisible, impossible to break up – which is what we have to do to fix it – then the office of Chancellor will lose with asymmetric power, because the French president, whoever the French President might be, will no longer fear the break up and will start to speak his mind. So, the immense political power that the German Chancellor has comes from the fact that we are not fixing the euro. So, there is the political incentive for not fixing the euro. [my emphasis]

He also makes an important observation about the intertwining of the euro crisis and the refugee crisis:

If you look at the way Europe has been fragmented in the last 6 years, 7 years, since the 2008 great financial crisis in the United States, Europe and the world; if you look at the way we have failed to deal with that crisis consistently, and during this process of sequential failures, and the denial of the structural aspects of this crisis, our nations in Europe have been pulled apart. Turned against one another.

The events in the Middle East are absolutely independent of the structure of the Eurozone. Even if we had designed the Eurozone well, we would still have had the Americans invading Iraq, creating a rapture between Sunnis and Shiites, the Iranian and Iraqi war before that would have precipitated the whole thing, the collapse of the structural rigidity of Iraq would have spilled over into Syria, independently what Europe did.

But what we did within Europe, our failure to deal with the euro crisis, fragmented us, so when the refugee crisis came, we were not capable of dealing with it in a rational European fashion. We could not deal with a common problem in a systematic, common manner. So, there is a connection. [italics in original]

EU:intersecting crises

Wolfgang Münchau continues to chronicle the tangle of crises in which the EU and the eurozone find themselves (Europe needs a sense of strategic direction to survive Financial Times 11/29/2015):

... there are too many crises occurring simultaneously for which the EU is unprepared: refugees, terrorism, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, eurozone sovereign debt, Britain’s future in the EU, Greece’s future in the eurozone, the Portuguese constitutional crisis, Catalonian independence, Italian banks, Volkswagen. We will soon need a crisis database to keep track.

And he discusses how the refugee crisis has exposed the limits of Merkel's extend-and-pretend crisis management style in a much broader way than the euro crisis had previously:

Ms Merkel committed a significant error in the way she opened the doors to refugees. She did not consult other political leaders nor even her own party. She underestimated the impact and failed to make logistical preparations. Are we really surprised that some EU countries refuse to accept even the modest quotas proposed? ...

The EU is überfordert — overwhelmed — by global and regional military conflicts, the co-ordination of macroeconomic policy and humanitarian emergencies. ...

At present the EU response to all these crises is to fudge forward. As we saw in the euro crisis, this can work for a time. But, while you can play tricks of smoke and mirrors with debt, it is hard to make this work with refugees. If the external border is not sufficiently well controlled, countries will ultimately have no choice but to impose their own domestic controls. And so they should. [my emphasis in bold]

Snowballing crises for Merkel and the EU

The euro crisis began in 2009 and has become a chronic condition, with periodic acute phases.

The refugee crisis has also been going on for years, entering an acute phase in 2015.

The Paris terrorist attack of November 13 was understood in the EU as a new crisis, interpreted especially by the French government as a reason to escalate military operations against ISIS in the complicated situation in Syria. And this week the Syrian situation got even more complicated with Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter under circumstances that are disputed, as one would expect in such a case. (Robert Perry flags a notable discrepancy in Turkey's account in Turkey Provokes Russia with Shoot-down Consortium News 11/24/2015.)

Now the crises are converging in a way that highlights the serious flaws in the EU, the construction of the eurozone and especially in the leadership of Angela Merkel and her fondness for extend-and-pretend short-term fixes instead of substantive solutions.

Dan McLaughlin reports (Refugees in Balkan limbo as crisis deepens EU divisions Aljazeera America 11/27/2015):

The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris transformed a huge political, economic and humanitarian challenge into an acute security crisis and widened already major divisions between European Union states over how to handle an influx of refugees that the onset of winter has failed to halt.

The suspicion that one of the Paris attackers was a Syrian who came to Europe among refugees deepened distrust of the new arrivals and turned more EU states against German-led efforts to welcome people fleeing the world’s war zones.

In the week after the carnage in the French capital, which left 130 dead, several countries on the so-called Balkan route into Europe closed their borders to all refugees other than Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, who have the best chance of receiving asylum in the EU.

McLaughlin also notes, "Not for the first time in this crisis, however, states took drastic action without warning or coordination with each other; they left thousands of people stranded on remote frontiers with inadequate facilities, no idea of what to do next and a rising sense of panic as the first snow of winter fell."

In that context, this story is as interesting as it is odd, Flüchtlingspolitik: SPD tadelt Juso-Chefin für Merkel-Lob Spiegel Online 27.11.2015. Johanna Uekermann, the head of the Young Socialists (Jusos) group of the SPD, made a public comment defending Angela Merkel on the refugee crisis, "In dieser Frage muss man echt sagen, dass sie zum allerersten Mal in ihrer zehnjährigen Kanzlerschaft so etwas wie Rückgrat zeigt" ("In this matter, one must really say that finally in her 10-year Chancellorship, she has shown something like a backbone.")

It's not unusual that an SPD leader would endorse Merkel's position on the refugees. That's part of the larger political Kabuki Merkel and her CDU/CSU have been playing on the refugee crisis: some party leaders bitch and moan about the scary foreigners, Merkel plays the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter, and the SPD presents itself as supporting their Chancellor on the refugee problem against the cold-hearted Christian Democrats. No one who has been following the course of the SPD over the last several years should be surprised that they are more eager to appear as Angie-bots than Angie's own party. Cartoonist Klaus Stuttman saw this development in full swing when the SPD fell all over themselves after the 2013 election to become junior partners yet again to Merkel's CDU/CSU in a Grand Coalition, aka, GroKo:

But to make it weirder, several prominent figures in the SPD blasted Uekermann instead! Hubertus Heil, the deputy leader of the SPD Bundestag parliamentary caucus (Fraktion) was pretty harsh: "Juso-Bundesvorsitzende geht CDU-Vorsitzender auf den Leim und fällt eigener Partei in den Rücken. Unlogisch, unsolidarisch, unklug." ("The national Juso chairperson is out of line with the CDU Chairperson {Merkel} and hurting her own party. Unlogical, unsolidarish, not clever.") The head of the SPD Fraktion joined in the criticism along the same lines.

But, wait, you may say, wasn't Uekermann praising the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter?

Spiegel Online quotes the SPD General Secretary, Yasmin Fahimi, from the Rheinische Zeitung, Viel Ärger für Juso-Chefin Johanna Uekermann 27.11.2015. It's a bit confusing. Spiegel is apparently quoting verbatim and indirect quote from the RZ, without clearly identifying it as such. Anyway, the indirect quote in question is:

Sie lobten damit die Frau, die die Transitzonen von CSU-Chef Horst Seehofer unterstützt habe, die den Familiennachzug für Syrer nicht wolle und die schwangeren, minderjährigen und behinderten Flüchtlingen keine angemessene medizinische Versorgung geben wolle.

[Thereby she {Uekermann} is praising the woman {Merkel} who supported the transit zone of CSU head Horst Seehofer, who doen't want family unification for Syrians and don't want to provide pregnant, underage and disabled refugees proper medical treatment.]

Here it sounds like the leadership is criticizing Uekermann for not being critical enough of the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter!

Johanna Uekermann, Chairperson of the Young Socialists (SPD)

We have to allow for the fact that being in the mouth of the crocodile can lead to some confusion. Here's my best guess how to read this particular burst of criticism against the Juso Chair.

First, it's Uekermann has been a critic of the SPD Angie-bot course since late 2013, when he was first elected Juso chair. As I wrote at the time (The SPD and a possible new Grand Coalition government in Germany 12/08/2013):

The Jusos formally voted against the coalition agreement and elected as their new leader a Bavarian social democrat, Johanna Uekermann, who is vocally opposed to a new Grand Coalition. ...

The Jusos' opposition is scarcely decisive. But it's also significant. Opposing a key national national policy of the SPD leadership like this is no small thing for ambitious young SPD politicians. (Wolfgang Wittl has a biographical sketch of Uekermann, Adams Zankapfel Süddeutsche Zeitung 25.10.2013) And Christoph Hickmann writes, "Die Jusos sind der harte Kern des sozialdemokratischen Widerstands gegen die große Koalition." ("The Jusos are the hardcore of the Social Democratic resistance to the Grand Coalition.") (Im Herzen des Widerstands SZ 07.12.2013)

In a Juso Blog post, Andro Scholl warns, "Europe is going kaput and the Grand Coalition will do nothing about it!" (Stell Dir vor Europa geht kaputt und die Große Koalition ändert nichts dran! 25.11.2013)

So the Angie-bot leadership has never much liked Uekermann in her current role. I'm thinking the criticism from two sides - she criticized the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter! She didn't criticize the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter enough! - is also political Kabuki. The main irritation is that the SPD leadership is so subservient to Merkel that they wanted to take a whack at Uekermann and snivel to the Compassionate Pastor's Daughter in response to Uekermann's clearly backhanded comment. "In this matter, one must really say that finally in her 10-year Chancellorship, she has shown something like a backbone" clearly assumes that it's obvious that she hasn't shown any backbone before, which is really the core of Merkel's EU critics more generally. Her extend-and-pretend approach to critical problems has involved avoided describing them as they are and backing away from confronting the nationalist element in her own party over European unity. We've seen that clearly in the euro crisis, in the refugee crisis, and now in the latest military escalation in Syria.

I'll give Uekermann credit for some perceptive political theater of her own. Her comment the SPD honchos singled out for attack pinpoints the key flaw in Merkel's leadership that may already have doomed the EU to more weakness or even disintegration. But it's not as though Merkel has failed to show "backbone" against her enemies, as her ruthless position against the elected Greek government in the first half of the year showed dramatically.

Yasmin Fahimi's criticism of Uekermann's statement quoted above is actually correct. But the SPD has been more supportive of Angie than the CDU/CSU on the subject, so phrasing her comment that way may well have been designed to put the SPD leadership on the spot over their defense of Merkel. It looks to me like it had that effect, anyway.

Timo Lokoschat responds to the anti-Uekermann criticism in Blanke Nerven Abendzeitung 27.11.2015; Uekermann herself retweeted it. So the attribution in the Abendzeitung may be an error, although it speaks of Uekermann in the third person. He uses the term "Genossen," the SPD word for "comrade," which they use on official occasions:

Es gehört zu den Forderungen jeder ordentlichen Sonntagsrede, dass in Krisenzeiten „Parteipolitik“ außen vor gelassen werden solle. Wie weit hier Anspruch und Wirklichkeit auseinanderklaffen, zeigen gerade wieder die unverhältnismäßig harten Attacken auf die Juso-Vorsitzende, die es gewagt hat, der Kanzlerin „Rückgrat“ zu bescheinigen.

Rückgrat! Liest man die hysterischen Reaktionen von Fahimi, Oppermann und Co., könnte man glatt denken, sie habe gefordert, der deutschen Sozialdemokratie selbiges zu brechen.

Der bizarre Streit zeigt vor allem eines: wie blank die Nerven bei den Genossen liegen. Seit Monaten dümpeln sie abgeschlagen und ohne Machtperspektive hinter der Union – und das, obwohl durchaus Akzente in der Großen Koalition gesetzt wurden. Trotzdem können viele Wähler den „Markenkern“ der Partei nicht mehr erkennen, beklagen ein gefühltes Desinteresse an ihrer Lebenswirklichkeit.

Das kann man ändern – aber sicher nicht durch Desavouierung der eigenen, immer etwas rebellischen Jugend.

[One of the requirements for every proper Sunday speech that in times of crisis, "partisan politics" should be left out. How far the demand and reality differ has just been shown again in the disproportionally harsh attacks on the Juso Chairperson {Uekermann}, who has dared to acknowledge the "backbone" of the Chancellor.

Backbone! Reading the hysterical reactions of Fahimi, Opperman & Co., one could easily think that she had called for the breakup of the German Social Democracy itself.

The bizarre conflict show one thing above all: how raw the nerves of the comrades are. For months, they bob around as though beheaded and without a perspective for power behind the Union {CDU/CSU} - and doing it, even though it clearly establishes accents in the Grand Coalition {i.e, provides visibility for the SPD}. Nivertheless, many voters can no longer recognize the "core branding" of the Party, {and} complain about a perceived disinterest {by the SPD} in their real lives.

One can change that - but certainly not be disavowing their own, always somewhat rebellious youth.]

In other words, Uekermann's criticism and the confused backlash from the leadership it provoked has illustrated the fecklessness of the current party leadership. They are comfortable being in the mouth of the crocodile, so comfortable that they freak out at straightforward criticism of the crocodile's disastrous failures.

Martin Schultz is a German SPD leader, President of the EU Parliament, and a shameless Angie-bot. So when he sounds like he's criticizing the GroKo, it's worth looking at his words closely. (EU-Parlamentspräsident: Schulz gibt Schäuble Mitschuld an Spaltung Europas Spiegel Online 27.11.2015) Schultz has gone so far as to publicly acknowledge the obvious, that Germany's domineering, nationalist handling of the euro crisis has damaged trust among EU partner nations, which has massively contributed to the lack of cooperation in the 2015 phase of the refugee crisis. "Es mag zynisch sein, aber es ist gerade Payback-Time in Brüssel," he says. ("It may sound cynical, but it's finally payback time in Brussels.")

Yes, it's too good to be true. Because Angie-bot Schultz doesn't blame Merkel's disastrous Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity economics. Or her nationalist posturing over it. And certainly not the SPD's disgraceful backing of those policies to the hilt. No, it turns out that Angie's Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is the problem! Despite his being the Finance Minister, Schäuble was one of Merkel's political mentors who she cheerfully stabbed in the back as soon as she got the chance. Lately, he's been a pain in the rear to Merkel over the refugee crisis, even though his positioning has fitted well into the CDU/CSU's political Kabuki play over it. So Schultz' criticism of Schultz is just a continuation of the SPD's subservience to Merkel.

Another word on the euro crisis. Wolfgang Münchau continues his Cassandra warning to Germany and its leaders Währungsunion: Deutschland zahlt - oder das System explodiert 27.11.2015 that unless they abandon the spectacularly failed Hoover/Brüning policies, the eurozone's problems will continue to worsen. And he again points to the stagnation of Italy since the beginning of the eurozone as as major possibility to bring the next acute phase of the crisis. He worries "that it won't take much longer until Italy has a tangible interest in leaving the euro area" ("dass es nicht mehr lange dauert, bis Italien ein handfestes ökonomisches Interesse daran hat, den Euroraum zu verlassen").

He also recites basic facts about the euro currency zone that most of the German leadership and mainstream press seemed to have been strenuously attempting to avoid since forever. Including:

Deutschland hatte enorme Vorteile von der Währungsunion. Ohne sie wäre der deutsche Wechselkurs deutlich höher und die Warenausfuhren geringer. Ohne eine Währungsunion hätte Deutschland nie nahezu Vollbeschäftigung erreicht. Die Hartz-Reform hätte es möglicherweise gar nicht gegeben, denn die gesteigerte Wettbewerbsfähigkeit wäre wahrscheinlich durch einen höheren Wechselkurs wieder ausgeglichen worden.

Germany had enormous advantages from the currency union. Without it, the German exchange rate would have been distinctly higher and export of goods smaller. Without the currency union, Germany would never have reached near-full employment. The {neoliberal, anti-labor} Hartz-IV reform would possibly never have been, because the rising competitiveness {of Germay} would probably have been balanced by a higher exchange rate.]

Heck of a job, Angie, heck of a job!

Euro crisis and its twin, the refugee crisis

Wolfgang Münchau is writing aboput Gemeinsame Währung: Die wahre Krise (Common Currency: The True Crisis) Spiegel Online 13.11.2015. His column is an early postmortum on the euro:

Die Flüchtlingskrise ist politisch wichtig, aber nicht wirklich ökonomisch. Sie wirkt kurzfristig wie ein leichtes Konjunkturprogramm und wird langfristig die deutsche Demographie etwas verbessern. Ich halte den Effekt für positiv, aber viel mehr ist dazu nicht zu sagen.

Die Eurokrise hingegen ist weder ausgestanden noch bewältigt. Sie wirkt weiter, jeden Tag. Sie wirkt ökonomisch auf Europa wie die Flüchtlingskrise politisch. Jeden Tag wird es schlimmer, weil man nicht das Problem löst, sondern weil man damit beschäftigt ist, irgendwelche Feuer zu löschen, die man durch die eigene Inkompetenz entfacht hat.

[The refugee crisis is politically important but not really economically. It has the short-term effect of a mild stimulus program and in the long run with improve German demography a bit. I see the effect as positive, but there's not a lot more to say about it.

The euro crisis, on the other hand, has been neither survived nor overcome. It's still going on, every day. It acts economically on Europe like the refugee crisis politically. Every day it gets worse, because the problem has not been solved, but we are rather busy putting out some fire or other that our own incompetence started.]

He actually uses the indeterminate "one (man)" where I translate "we." But I'm pretty sure the main "one" he means is Angela Merkel.

He also sees the growing German trade surplus as a problem in itself.

In a separate column, Münchau warns that Italy could soon find itself in the position where it finds the political and/or economic advantages of leaving the euro immediately compelling. (Italy’s economic recovery is not what it seems Financial Times 11/15/2015) He praises social-democratic Prime Minister Matteo Renzi for his important though relatively modest departures from Angela Merkel's austerity regime. "But," he writes, "what worries me is that the Italian government is not ready for when the impact of the slowdown in China and emerging markets hits Europe." And he observes, "Friday’s preliminary figures for eurozone gross domestic product show that the slowdown has started."

Andreas Schnauder calls attention to the connections between the euro crisis and the refugee crisis in Zwei Krisen, ein Versagen Der Standard 12.11.2015:

In Griechenland wird wieder großflächig gestreikt. Dadurch werden Erinnerungen wach, dass das Land vor nur vier Monaten noch am Abgrund stand und mehr als nur Spekulationen über einen Austritt aus der Eurozone die Runde machten. Inzwischen hat sich die Lage dank umfassender Hilfszusagen wieder beruhigt, doch gelöst wurden die Probleme nicht. Vielmehr hat sich die europäische Aufmerksamkeit zum Thema Flüchtlinge verlagert. Beide Krisen haben eines gemein: Sie waren lange vorhersehbar, ohne dass die EU rechtzeitig und richtig reagiert hätte.

[In Greece, there are again widespread strikes. Thereby memories are kept alive, the the country just four months ago stood on the abyss and not merely speculation was making the rounds about an exit from the eurozone. Since then things have calmed down, thanks to comprehensive promises of assistance, but the problems are certainly not solved. The attention of Europe has fastened much more on the refugee theme. Both crises have something in common: they were foreseeable long ago, with the EU reacting in a timely and correct way.]

Deutsche Welle English reports, Paris attacks stoke fears amongst refugees 11/17/2015:

Lisa Caspari in Der Anfang vom Ende Die Zeit 11.11.2015 takes note of how Merkel's attempt to create a short-term fix for this year's acute phase of the refugee problem is already looking like a failure.

Caspari takes the dissent withing the CDU/CSU against Merkel's refugee policies more seriously than I would. They look to me like the kind of political Kabuki on xenophobia that the CDU/CSU has used in the past, trying to have it both ways by having the leaders argue to respect law and human rights while dissenters argue for anti-immigrant, xenophobic position to protect their right flank politically. An ENSA poll commissioned by the sensationalist tabloid Bild-Zeitung is showing the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as the third most popular party in Germany, after Merkel's coalition parties, the CDU/CSU and the SPD. But (CDU/CSU stoppen Umfrage-Absturz Bild-Zeitung 17.11.2015)

Yiannis Baboulias also describes the political tensions within the EU, even before last Friday's terrorist killings (The refugee crisis is tearing Europe apart Aljazeera America 11/05/2015. He also points to the cheap nationalist spirit Merkel and her CDU/CSU/SPD government promoted over the euro crisis:

The political divisions between the EU’s richer and poorer members are also growing. Treaties are being thrown out the window, as country after country is building walls and reinstating passport controls even for EU citizens. Activists took to the streets last weekend near Greece’s land border with Turkey, demanding to open the fence that was built there three years ago. They were met with riot police and tear gas. Opening the border is not a decision the Greek government can make alone; if they do so unilaterally, it’s almost certain every border north of Greece will be sealed. Greece would become a purgatory for hundreds of thousands of people who don’t want to be there. There is virtually zero chance European leaders will ever allow for this safe pathway to open.

As with the battle over austerity, the refugee crisis has turned into a class issue and a cultural divide. In northern Europe, the scorn facing “refugees” and “economic migrants” mirrors that facing “lazy, profligate southerners” in countries such as Greece and Spain. [my emphasis]

EU refugee crisis, 2015 acute phase

Srecko Horvat has been writing for years about the European refugee crisis. In The roots of this refugee crisis go back even further than the Arab spring Guardian 09/24/2015, he writes:

This will be remembered as the year when Europe experienced the biggest displacement of people since the second world war. As the latest report (published last Friday) by the International Organisation for Migration shows, a record 473,887 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2015, including at least 182,000 Syrians – almost 40% of the total.

He makes the point that is critical to understanding why the refugee crisis is a sign of such massive failure within the EU and why it is intertwined with the euro crisis:

It began years ago. What countries such as Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia or Hungary are experiencing now is something that has been present for years in Greece, Macedonia and Italy, especially Lampedusa. The only reason the refugee crisis is now in the spotlight lies in a banal but brutal fact: it has penetrated from the periphery of Europe to the heart of the European Union.

Furthermore, the real causes go back much earlier than the war in Syria. Although it is being presented as a “natural disaster”, this is a result of very concrete politics that can be traced back to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

(A significant number of refugees into Europe also come from Africa.

This crisis displays the same attitude of dominance by the "core" countries over the "periphery" that we see in the euro crisis. It is the same extend-and-pretend approach of creating short-term mitigation solutions that actually deepen the underlying crisis and make it more intractable. It's the same attitude of nationalist particularism that we see in the euro crisis exercised by the "core" countries against the "periphery."

The Merkel-friendly German President (head of state), Joachim Gauck, made a public intervention to criticize the language used by some of Merkel's CDU officials, notably Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Gauck warned against using "horror scenarios" and inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric. Schäuble, pandering to xenophobic sentiment, recently compared the inflkux of refugees to an avalanche into a valley. (Florian Gathmann und Philipp Wittrock, Schäubles Lawinen-Vergleich: Der Polarisierer Spiegel Online 12.11.2015)

After getting favorable and gullible press coverage for her announcement in September that refugees were welcome in German and playing the "compassionate pastor's daughter" (mitfühlende Pastorentochter), Merkel's government has now agreed to attempt to go back to the "Dublin III" approach, in which refugees would be contained in the EU countries in which they first arrived. Germany could then play the high-minded, compassionate power while the refugees were stuffed into inadequate processing centers which the receiving countries like Greece don't have the resources to manage properly. (Jürgen Klöckner, Warum die Regierung den heimlichen Kurswechsel in der Flüchtlingskrise kleinredet Huffington Post Deutschland 11/11/2015)

The SPD leadership is perfectly happy with this arrangement and are faithfully supporting the mitfühlende Pastorentochter as she panders to xenophobes with that policy. Meanwhile, her own party (CDU/CSU) gets to demand harsher measures against the refugees. Klöckner writes, "In diesen Tagen scheint es, als habe die Kanzlerin mehr Unterstützer in der SPD als in den eigenen Reihen." ("These days, it seems as though the Chancellor [Merkel] has more supporters in the SPD than in her own ranks.") Can the SPD get any more pitiful? Sadly, they probably can.

Martin Scultz is a German Social Democrat who is currently the President of the European Parliament. He is also a shameless Angie-bot. He echoes Merkel's demand for other countries to take on more refugees, a reasonable demand in itself: "Das größte Problem, das wir zur Zeit haben, ist, dass viel versprochen und wenig eingehalten wird", he says. ("The biggest problem we have right now is that a lot is promised but little carried out.") (EU-Parlamentspräsident zur Flüchtlingskrise: "Viel versprochen und wenig eingehalten" Spiegel Online 11.11.2015)

It's worth repeating that Merkel's September announcement was a typical Merkel extend-and-pretend move. It made her look like a generous and responsible leader to people who weren't paying close attention to the years-long refugee crisis. But it wasn't well thought out. And it was a substitute for the failure of the EU leadership, especially the EU's dominant power Germany, to address the problem in a sufficient way. And now her government is already trying to go back to the previous failed system of control.

The idea of confining them to refugee camps for extended periods isn't a good one. The camps now are often overcrowded and dangerous. (Peter Maxwill, Geschlecht und Asyl: Frauen und Kinder zuletzt Spiegel Online 09.09.2015)

Spiegel Online has a page listing key factual points out the refugee crisis, Asyl und Einwanderung: Fakten zur Flüchtlingskrise - endlich verständlich Spiegel Online; accessed 11/12/2015.

BBC News has some general information and graphics on the crisis: Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in graphics 11/09/2015

EU refugee crisis

The most important common thread connecting the eurozone crisis to the refugee crisis is the prominent role of nationalist appeals and actions by Germany under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The ruinous austerity policies imposed on "periphery" countries like Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have been justified by rhetoric from Merkel, her CDU/CSU party and her coalition partner party the SPD, that emphasized that those countries were under the tutelage of Germany. The fact that "periphery" became a common way to describe the less powerful economies of the eurozone, all of which are developed countries, is telling. That term was previously used to refer to the colonial situation with the colonizing powers called the "metropoles" and the colonized countries the "periphery." (Greece is well on the way to slipping out of the developed category if the austerity continues.) The contempt for their eurozone partners promoted by the two biggest political parties and fueled by bad press coverage (not just from the tabloids either!) made it far more difficult to negotiate half-reasonable economic policies in the Greek crisis earlier this year. And the fear and hostility generated by Merkel's handling of the euro crisis is a major barrier to further integration in the EU or to the kind of policies that would allow the fatally flawed euro to serve long-term.

Regugees from Syria now arriving in Europe have been met with met in Austria and Germany with crass xenophobia from a significant portion of the population. And that hostility has been amplified by "mainstream" politicians seeking to further exploit nationalist fear and hatred. Like the euro crisis, the refugee crisis is discussed as being a problem for the further existence of the EU. With Britain threatening an exit from the EU unless the EU is weakened rather than strengthen, the possible disintegration of the EU is a real near-term possibility. (Nicholas Watt, Cameron vows to 'throw himself headlong' into keeping Britain in a reformed EU Guardian 11/09/2015; Flüchtlingskrise: Luxemburgs Außenminister warnt vor Zerfall der EU Spiegel Online 09.11.2015)

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière suggested publicly that Syrian refugees should be given restricted asylum rights, less than those currently afforded: a more restricted asylum time limit, refusal of family reunification rights now protected. This has caused grumbling and grumping within Merkel's coalition. Some observers interpret the flap as a looming government crisis, i.e., one that would bring down Merkel's coalition and force new elections. For example: Björn Hengst et al, Merkel in der Flüchtlingskrise: Die Vertrauensfrage Spiegel Online 09.11.2015, who points to dissent from Merkel's official position and coalition policy from prominent officials in the CDU and CSU. Including Finance Minister and Scourge of Greece, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), and Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder (CSU). He doesn't specifically mention the far more prominent dissent of CSU head Horst Seehofer. (Stefan Braun und Christoph Hickmann, Seehofer befeuert neuen Asyl-Streit Süddeutsche Zeitung 08.11.2015; Braun und Hickman, CDU-Spitze zwingt Merkel zur Kurskorrektur Süddeutsche Zeitung 09.11.2015)

Left-leaning Jakob Augstein is also on board with the idea of a governmental crisis being in progress: Minister gegen Merkel: Der Putsch Spiegel Online 09.11.2015:

Kontrollverlust. So lautet der Vorwurf, der Angela Merkel in der Flüchtlingskrise gemacht wird. Zu Recht. Eine Kanzlerin ohne Kontrolle ist eine Kanzlerin in der Krise. Aber Merkels Problem sind nicht die Fremden. Sondern ihre Freunde. Niemand sollte von Merkel erwarten, die Flüchtlingsströme im Griff zu haben. Aber man muss von ihr erwarten, dass sie ihre Regierung im Griff hat. Kontrolle über die Flüchtlingsströme ist eine Illusion. Kontrolle über die eigenen Minister eine Notwendigkeit. Wir erleben die Entmachtung einer Kanzlerin. Ist es für ein Machtwort schon zu spät?

[Loss of control. That is the accusation that is being made against Angela Merkel in the refugee crisis. Rightly so. A Chancellor without control is a Chancellor in crisis. But the foreigners are not Merkel's problem. But rather her friends. No one should expect that Merkel will get a handle on the refugee influx. But one would expect from her that she would get a handle on her own government. Control over the stream of refugees is an illusion. Control over her own Ministers a necessity. We are experiencing the disempowerment of a Chancellor. Is it already too late for a definitive solution (Machtwort)?]

The lesson he takes from this situation is, "Die Flüchtlingskrise ist zur Regierungskrise geworden." ("The refugee crisis has become a governmental crisis.")


Jens Berger suspects that what we're seeing instead is some cynical political Kabuki, in which the coalition's agreed policy will continue in force while the CDU/CSU demagogue the issue to pull in some xenophobic votes. (Subsidiärer Theaterdonner – wie die CDU am rechten Rand fischt Nachdenkseiten 09.11.2015

Berger argues that De Maizière as Interior Minister (roughly equivalent to Attorney General in the US) does not have the power to implement the changes in asylum policy that he suggests. It is largely regulated by the 1951 Geneva Refugees Convention, of which Germany is a signatory. An English webpage on the Convention is available on the site of the UN Refugee Commission, UNHCR.

Berger thinks the German politicians like Seehofer and De Maizière are trying to give the public an idea that a change in legal handling would stem the current influx of refugees, though it won't. One change that could be made would be to change the current decision that puts all Syrian refugees on a fast track for asylum to one that treats them all as potential candidates for asylum. But Berger argues that the only thing that would accomplish is to further overburden the asylum courts, which are already overwhelmed. They would have to argue their case for asylum through a longer court process. It won't stop the refugees from coming.

He concludes:

Der Theaterdonner von Thomas de Maizière erfüllt dennoch seinen Zweck. Zwischen den Zeilen liest sich sein unausgegorener Vorstoß nämlich folgendermaßen: Abschieben, kein Nachzug, harte Hand, weniger Flüchtlinge. Das kommt beim rechten Flügel unserer Gesellschaft natürlich gut an. Die Union hat es in den letzten Monaten ohnehin geschafft, beinahe den gesamten gesellschaftlichen Diskurs zum Thema innerhalb ihrer eigenen Reihen aufzunehmen. Für „Helldeutschland“ gibt es Angela Merkel und Peter Altmaier, die an die humanitäre Seite appellieren und aus der Not eine Tugend machen, indem sie sich öffentlich dafür rühmen, dass sie die gegebenen Gesetze befolgen. Und auf der anderen Seite gibt es die Seehofers und de Maizières, die für „Dunkeldeutschland“ eine harte Kante vorspielen und zumindest verbal munter im braunen Sumpf fischen. Außen vor steht die SPD, die sich das Schauspiel anschaut, als sei sie das Kaninchen vor der Schlange. Die Medien sind derweil außer sich vor Freude, dass ihnen ein derartiges Schauspiel geboten wird. Als Teile der CDU 2002 bei der Debatte des Zuwanderungsgesetzes ähnlichen Theaterdonner veranstaltet haben, ließ der damalige saarländische Ministerpräsident Peter Müller das Publikum Monate später wissen. „Die Empörung hatten wir verabredet. Das war Theater, aber legitimes Theater“. Gut möglich, dass sich Thomas de Maizière oder Peter Altmaier in einigen Monaten genau so äußern.

[The theatrical thunder of Thomas de Maizière nevertheless fulfills its goal. Between the lines, one can read his half-baked thrust: deportation, no return, hard line, fewer refugees. Of course, that sounds good to the rightwing of our society. The Union {CDU/CSU} in recent months has managed to take nearly all of the social discourse to become themes within their own ranks. For "Light Germany" {„Helldeutschland“} there are Angela Merkel and Peter Altmeier {her refugee coordinator}, who appeal to the humanitarian side and make a virtue out of the emergency, in which they publicly take responsibility that they follow the given laws. And on the other side, there are the Seehofers and De Maizières, who feign a hard edge for the "Dark Germany" and at least verbally fish jauntily in the brown {neo-Nazi} swamp. The SPDm who is just watching the show, stands ignored, like the rabbit before the snake. When parts of the CDU in 2002 staged similar theatrical thunder in the debate on the immigration debate, the then Governor of Saarland Peter Müller let the public know months later, "We colluded on the outrage. It was theater, but legitimate theater." It's quite possible that Thomas de Maizière or Peter Altmaier will be speaking the same way in a few months.]

But the disagreements among the EU states about taking on refugees, and the wall-building craze that is catching on represent a real failure of the EU to put together a coordinated response to a real crisis. And the resulting nationalist agitation in various countries further complicates the EU process to improve its institutions going forward.

This crisis is not new, it's been going on for years. And, like with the euro crisis, Merkel has been relying on extend-and-pretend stopgap solutions. The fallout from that style has been not only problems going unsolved, but mutual distrust among EU nations that make real problems even harder to solve.

Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn goes even further. Speaking of the refugee crisis and the failure to date to achieve the necessary cooperation among EU nations, he says, "Der Kitt, der uns zusammenhält, ist noch immer die Kultur der humanen Werte. Und dieser falsche Nationalismus kann zu einem richtigen Krieg führen." ("The cement that holds us together is always the culture of humane values. And this false nationalism can lead to a real war.") Asselborn warnt vor Zerfall der EU Die Zeit 09.11.2015.

This Spanish-language video from TV Pública argentina gives an overview of the current stage of the refugee crisis V7inter - Crisis migratoria en Europa 11/07/2015:

Wolfgang Münchau has been a persistent critic of Merkel's disastrous handling of the euro crisis. And he's also unimpressed with her stopgap approach on the refugee crisis either, as he explains in Merkels unmoralische Flüchtlingspolitik Spiegel Online 30.10.2015.

In der praktischen Politik hingegen versteckte und versteckt sie sich aber in beiden Fällen hinter nationalen deutschen Interessen und unternimmt nur das mindeste, um eine Eskalation der Krise zu verhindern. Das hehre Prinzip überlebt - aber nur kosmetisch. Den Euro gibt es natürlich noch, und es wird ihn auch weiterhin geben. Aber ökonomisch ist das Experiment einer europäischen Währungsunion gescheitert. Die Skeptiker unter den Ökonomen hatten recht. Die Politik laviert zwischen einer Scheinwelt, in der wir alle gerettet sind, und einer Realität, in der es allen schlechter geht als zuvor.

Ich stimme somit überhaupt nicht mit dem Konsens über Merkels historische Leistung überein: Euro-Krise schlecht. Flüchtlingskrise gut. Ich sehe stattdessen die Gemeinsamkeiten eines politischen Managements, das kein Problem löst und alles nur vor sich herschiebt.

[In practical policy, however {in contrast to Merkel's good PR internationally on the refugee crisis}, she has hidden herself and is hiding herself behind German national interests and undertakes on the minimum {needed} to prevent an escalation of the crisis. The sublime principle survives - but only cosmetically. The euro, of course, still exists, and will continue to exist. But economically the experiment of a European currency union has failed. The skeptics among the economists were right. Policy maneuvers between a world of appearances in which everyone is saved, and the reality in which things are going worse for everyone than before.

I absolutely disagree with the consensus on Merkel's historic service {which says}: euro crisis bad, refugee crisis good. Instead, I see the commonalities of a political management that solves no problem and only shuffles around everything before it.]

In the crisis, Münchau sees Merkel relying on measures that have to be centrally managed to be effective, but have to be coordinated in a decentralized manner. Berlin can't just order other countries to take a quota of refugees designated by Angie.

He describes her current official approach this way:

Denken Sie jetzt mal die Merkelsche Flüchtlingspolitik bis zu ihrem bitteren Ende. Es werden mehr Flüchtlinge kommen. Und Merkel wird natürlich nicht die Grenze zu machen. Sie wird stattdessen mit den Türken verhandeln. Mit den Griechen. Und mit den Kroaten. Sie wird enorme Summen lockermachen, um dafür zu sorgen, dass die Flüchtlinge nicht weiter in den Westen kommen. So wie die griechische Wirtschaft in einer permanenten Rezession verharrt, so werden die Flüchtlinge in permanenten Aufnahmelagern verharren.

[Now think through the Merkelian refugee policy to its bitter end. More refugees will come. And Merkel will of course not close the border. Instead, she will negotiate with Turkey. With the Greeks. And with the Croats. She will make enormous sums available in order to insure that the refugees don't come farther to the west {i.e., to Germany}. Just as the Greek economy is stuck in a permanent recession, so the refugees will be stuck in permanent receiving centers.]

Heck of a job, Angie, heck of a job! Maybe she could hire Shrub Bush's FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown as an adviser on refugee policy. Shoot, may she already has!

This BBC News piece by Mark Mardell also notices the high-risk nature of Merkel's current policies, Migrant crisis will decide Merkel's future 05.11.2015:

Mutti has applied balm to the wound, and covered it with a sticking plaster. It is what mothers do.

Angela Merkel's nickname {Mutti} captures the sense of a leader of homely, sensible authority and comforting common sense.

The verb "to Merkel" - prevaricate - could soon have a whole new meaning: she who dares, wins. Perhaps.

The sticking plaster could soon peel off, leaving the wound merely less politically visible, although still publicly festering.

She has risked her reputation on a gamble that at first sight seems totally out of character - "reckless" is not a word you would normally apply to her 10 years in power.

One usually loyal German politician told me her decision to open Germany's borders to all refugees from Sudan and Syria was "madness". [my emphasis]

But I would say that Angie's risking "her reputation on a gamble" would seem "totally out of character" only to those who have followed her decision-making approach on the euro crisis. A defining feature of Merkel's political style is to maintain a public image of benevolence and responsibility while actually running a highwire act.