Foreign Policy: The Next Merkel? Not Quite

It’s true that surveys show Kramp-Karrenbauer’s vague policy agenda is highly popular with Social Democrats and Greens (the latter who have benefited in recent years from the SPD’s Merkel-fueled collapse). Greens polled by the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel viewed her even more positively (65 percent) than do CDU members (62 percent). “If the CDU elects a woman, and twice in a row,” a Berlin Green Party member told FP, “it shows that all of the other parties can too, but they’re not doing it. It shows them up.” With such star quality, Kramp-Karrenbauer might even prove able to demobilize the Greens in the same way Merkel did the SPD.

At the same time, many conservatives are hoping she can leverage her Catholic faith to win back far-right voters. Throughout her career, Kramp-Karrenbauer has been an avowed, if mild-mannered, social conservative: She’s on the record against same-sex marriage, and she firmly opposes any loosening of Germany’s relatively restrictive abortion laws; her rhetoric on migration policy—which has included the suggestion of sending refugees back to Syria—has occasionally fallen on the CDU’s far-right wing. Indeed, there’s little reason to believe that she would have initiated any of the openly liberal social policies that Merkel undertook in recent years, such as ending mandatory military conscription and initiating conciliatory dialogue between the government and Germany’s Muslim community.

This, however, is the hitch in the logic of Kramp-Karrenbauer as savior of the party and leader of a more harmonious, united nation. The same surveys that show her fawned over by the left also show her rejected categorically by AfD voters and even seen as somewhat suspect by many traditional conservatives. In fact, only 4 percent of AfD backers in the Spiegel poll see her favorably. (SPD support for her is 10 times greater.) Just 2 percent of the AfD supporters surveyed said they believed that Kramp-Karrenbauer could lure back stray former CDU conservatives now voting AfD. Another poll yielded a similar result: AfD supporters were the least convinced of all the parties that she would unite the CDU. [...]

A political commentator for the conservative daily Die Welt, Susanne Gaschke, summed up the problem concisely: “From the beginning, there was hatred in certain circles for Angela Merkel, which had nothing at all to do with her policies. … The Merkel hatred of the past three years, in my opinion, has at least as much to do with frustrated masculinity as with concrete and legitimate questions about migration.” Just maybe, hopes Gaschke, Kramp-Karrenbauer will catch less of it than Merkel: “Perhaps it is enough that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer has three children and neither Merkel nor East German.” Alas, nothing points in that direction now—on the contrary.

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The New Yorker: How Trump Made War on Angela Merkel and Europe

European leaders now worry that Trump’s illiberal aims go well beyond his insistent demands on Merkel to pay more for nato and stop shipping so many cars to the U.S. “Many European leaders have told me that they are convinced that President Trump is determined to destroy the E.U.,” a former senior U.S. official told me. Trump has begun publicly calling the E.U. a “foe,” and promoting the resurgence of nationalism, which Macron and Merkel see as a direct threat. Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in a recent speech at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, attacked the United Nations, the E.U., the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and derided what he called Europe’s flawed vision of multilateralism as “an end to itself.” [...]

The foreign-policy establishment, in both Washington and Berlin, told Merkel and her advisers that Trump was sometimes unpredictable and volatile, but not an existential threat. He was ignorant, but would be constrained by his staff. He didn’t really mean what he said. One veteran of Republican Administrations recommended “strategic patience,” telling a senior German diplomat to ignore the tweets and focus on policy. Other Europeans received similar advice and came to similar conclusions. Rob Malley, a senior Obama adviser on Europe, who now heads the International Crisis Group, said, of the French, “Their view was that you shouldn’t take irreversible steps as the result of a reversible Presidency.” [...]

Russia figured heavily in the dinner conversation at the Adlon: Trump was threatening to abandon the Ukraine policy and embrace Putin. Obama’s lobbying that night to get Merkel to run for a fourth term was, I’ve been told by German sources, critical in her considerations. “I think the Chancellor listened very carefully to what [Obama] said,” a senior German official told me. As Rhodes recounts in his memoir, “The World as It Is,” when Obama left the country, on November 18th, he thought he saw a tear rolling down Merkel’s face as she said goodbye. Obama turned to Rhodes and said, “Angela, she’s all alone.” Two days later, Merkel announced that, because of “insecure times,” she was running again. However, she cautioned those who hoped that she would be a foil for Trump and the Trump-friendly forces throughout Europe: “No person alone, not even the most experienced, can turn things to good in Germany, Europe, and the world, especially not a Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.” [...]

The irony is that, for all of Trump’s bluster and threats, the Trump Administration’s positions on these issues, aside from the Iran nuclear deal, are consistent with his predecessor’s. Obama also pushed for greater European defense spending, set in motion nato troop increases in Eastern Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and objected to Nord Stream 2. Many German leaders oppose the pipeline project, too, and favor more defense spending. Where Trump is different is in how far he is willing to push his allies to accomplish long-standing American priorities, not to mention his public denunciations, abrupt policy shifts, and willingness to insult his allies. This behavior has thoroughly alienated Germans, who are sharply divided on many issues but united in their dislike of Trump and their resistance to just about anything he champions. The Pew Global Attitudes survey this year found that only ten per cent of Germans had a favorable view of Trump. When Trump “tells the German public on television that you owe me, the German public says, ‘We owe this guy? Don’t pay him a dime,’ ” Wolfgang Ischinger, the former Ambassador, told me. “It makes it harder to agree on anything. It is poisonous for the relationship.”

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PolyMatter: Why 50 Million Chinese Homes are Empty

China’s housing bubble has left 50 million homes empty and put its government between a rock and a hard place.

UnHerd: How Thatcherism produced Corbynism

Ranging far beyond specific policy proposals, the paper argued for a radical reorientation in Conservative thinking. Britain had been in decline since the Second World War, and fundamental change was necessary. The Keynesian state that managed the post-war settlement must be rolled back. Public spending and the money supply had to be reduced, along with taxation, regional subsidies abolished and the power of trade unions curbed. (Boldly, Joseph also floated the possibility of introducing a British Bill of Rights and even decriminalising drugs.) What was needed in this time of national crisis was not the pursuit of consensus, but regime change—a move from one national settlement to another. [...]

Deploying a few simple ideas and policies, Thatcher demolished much of what remained of the post-war settlement. She left the NHS and the welfare state largely intact, and spending on public services increased during her time in office. But by rejecting the belief that government should actively promote full employment, privatising swathes of industry, selling off large parts of the social housing stock and curbing trade unions she altered Britain fundamentally. [...]

In Britain, as elsewhere, the Thatcherite project was self-undermining. While the country Thatcher brought into being was very different from the one she inherited, it was nothing like the country she intended to fashion. Insofar as it ever existed, her Britain was a country of dutiful middle-class families prudently saving for the future. But rather than consolidating and expanding this middle class, she consigned it to the memory hole. More individualist, post-Thatcher Britain is also less bourgeois. [...]

Nearly 30 years after she was toppled from power in November 1990, the insecurities of post-Thatcher Britain have produced Corbynism — a type of Leftism ideally suited to the ambitions and illusions of the penniless bourgeoisie. The idea that Labour has reverted to the far-Left politics of the late Seventies and early Eighties, which has become commonplace on the Right, is at best a half-truth. Like the neo-liberals against whom they constantly rail, Corbynites regard the working class with distaste and disdain as an obstacle to progress. With their retrograde attachment to national identity and borders, the proper role of these remnants of industrial society is to submit to re-education by the party. Otherwise they are useless or dangerous.

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AJ+: The Origins Of Anti-Semitism In America

Anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews, has a long and often violent history in the U.S. It’s also frequently used by white nationalists and others on the right wing to rally against social change.

Jacobin Magazine: A Darkening Horizon

Much of the analysis of Andalusia’s swing to the right has focused on increased nationalist sentiment in the wake of last year’s Catalan independence crisis. During the Andalusian campaign the two major right-wing forces, the Popular Party (PP) and Ciudadanos (C’s, Citizens), not only stressed the ongoing threat to Spanish territorial unity but also sought to equate a vote for the PSOE with backing for regional “separatists.” Indeed, it kicked off with the PP’s new hard-right leader Pablo Casado accusing PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez of being a “golpista” or coup-plotter because of his dependence on Catalan parties for his parliamentary majority.

Such rhetoric played well among conservative voters, and was indicative of an increasingly radicalized Spanish right. Yet probably decisive in securing their electoral majority was a historic abstention among left-wing voters. If the combined support of the right-wing bloc increased by 275,000 votes in comparison with the 2015 elections, this cannot fully account for the 700,000 lost votes between the PSOE and the Podemos–United Left coalition, Adelante Andalucía. As the United Left (IU) leader Alberto Garzón stressed, the reactionary bloc’s electoral weight “would not have been so great except for demobilization in working-class neighborhoods.” [...]

The results in the Andalusian contest also show how this intense competition is reshaping the balance of forces on the Spanish right. Aside from Vox’s historic twelve-seat breakthrough in the regional parliament, Ciudadanos won twenty-one seats — more than doubling its previous total of nine — while the PP lost seven seats even as it finished second overall, behind the PSOE. The viable governing options on the table will either be an unholy trinity of the PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox or a center-right coalition of the PP, PSOE, and Ciudadanos. [...]

This is where Vox comes in. Through some clever marketing – like staging its party conference at Vistalegre, where Podemos held its own famously heated congresses — Vox has effectively worked itself into the space of the “new right” and the “anti-left.” They are the most explicitly anti-independentist, anti-Podemos, anti-left party in Spain, with discourse steeped in openly anti-feminist and anti-LGBT rhetoric. The party did not have any specific program or initiatives for Andalusia as part of its electoral campaign, but it still managed to make the dramatic breakthrough it did.

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Quartz: Archaeologists have unearthed a 4,400-year-old Egyptian tomb in immaculate condition

Despite a flurry of archaeological discoveries in the past year—a pristine sarcophagus; a trove of cat mummies, and the world’s oldest cheese—this was “one of a kind in the last decade” authorities said, due to the tomb’s excellent condition. At nearly nine feet (2.7 meters) tall and 32 feet (9.6 meters) wide, its walls are richly decorated with colorful hieroglyphs, guarded by an army of some 45 statues, depicting various pharaohs, the priest, and his family. [...]

But the snap-happy crowds of yesteryear have faded of late, amid fears of violence triggered by 2011’s uprising against former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. Ongoing political tensions, as well as a spate of terrorist attacks targeting tourist areas, have dissuaded international visitors from making the trip.

Whether this new discovery can allay those concerns, and bring back Egyptian’s foreign vacationers, remains to be seen—though cash-strapped authorities are keeping their fingers crossed. Sign up for the Quartz Obsession email Enter your email Sign me up Stay updated about Quartz products and events.

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Politico: Pennsylvania meltdown triggers Republican alarms

The chaos threatens the president’s chances in a state where there’s no room for error. Trump, the first Republican presidential nominee to carry the state since 1988, won by less than a percentage point.

“He has to win Pennsylvania in order to win the presidency,” said Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, a one-time rising star from the Philadelphia suburbs who is retiring from Congress after just two terms. “And I don’t think he’s the favorite to win against a generic Democrat.”

Since Trump’s stunning 2016 win, Pennsylvania Republicans have gotten almost exclusively bad news. First, Democrats in the Philadelphia suburbs flipped seats in 2017 local elections for the first time in decades — and in some cases, in history. Then came an election year from hell, beginning with Democrat Conor Lamb’s House special election victory smack dab in the middle of western Pennsylvania’s Trump Country. [...]

The Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania only has $94,000 on hand, according to campaign finance reports — almost $1 million less than the party had at the same point four years ago. The party’s headquarters staff has shrunk from between 16 employees in 2014, according to the previous chairman, to seven. DiGiorgio said he prefers "we put money into the field."

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The Guardian: 'I can’t hide my disgust, my disdain’: judge lambasts Michael Flynn

While Mueller’s prosecutors had argued Flynn’s decades of military service warranted a lenient sentence for the three-star general even after he had admitted lying to the FBI, it was Sullivan who, gesturing to the American flag beside him, accused Flynn of selling his country out. Minutes later, he ponderously asked the government’s lawyers whether they had ever considered charging Flynn with treason. (No, they later answered.) [...]

Sullivan also quickly clamped down on any suggestion that Flynn’s admitted crime – lying to federal investigators – had occurred in part because the retired general had been lulled into thinking his interview with the FBI was simply a chat, and not part of a criminal investigation.

Never in his decades on the bench, Sullivan said, had he accepted a guilty plea from a defendant who was not really guilty. “I don’t intend to start today,” Sullivan said, and then had Flynn sworn in. “Any false answers will get you in more trouble,” he added.

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