German President resigns: when are the Germans going to grow up?

President Horst Köhler, the generally well-respected German head of state, has felt compelled to resign, only a year into his second term. In a refreshing contrast to our own shenanigans, it had nothing to do with any dubious personal enrichment strategies, on which the Germans are much tougher than we are. It was a genuine political issue. What Dr Köhler appears to have said was that Germany’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan is motivated by a wish for economic as well as physical security; the security of supply lines, trade routes etc.

Well, derr. How could such a statement of the obvious have caused such a furore? Only in Germany. It’s something you’re not allowed to say, see, unless you’re a lefty activist denouncing warmongering capitalism, in which case you say it all the time. But you can’t say it if you’re the state President. You have to keep parroting the line that NATO is protecting the German people from Afghan-trained terrorists, and is there FOR NO OTHER REASON. Protecting economic interests means that you’re working solely in the interests of the rich (who, as we know, are the only people who need an economy).

But the fact that this sort of issue cannot be discussed in public without causing resignations just shows how infantile the level of debate frequently is in Germany. If they outdo us in personal financial rectitude, they knock spots off us when it comes to political correctness. A chap I knew slightly – the new partner of an old friend – once expressed incredulity when informed that I, a fellow leftie, owned some shares. How could I support capitalism in such a way? Investing in capitalist companies just enabled them to rationalise their operations, which always led to downsizing and people losing their jobs. I admitted that this might happen, but surely it was equally likely that the companies might use the investment to expand their operations and create jobs. He hadn’t thought of that. This was a man around 40 with a university degree and a job of commensurate status.

And when it comes to war the reactions are equal and opposite to what they were in 1939. It’s just bad. It sucks. Which of course is true, but grown-up nations recognise that one does have to prepare for it happening occasionally. All right, you may feel that Afghanistan is one war which doesn’t need fighting; but it can hardly be denied that it began with a clear act of aggression on 11th September 2001. And Germany is a democratic country, with a perfectly good army, bound into a military alliance: surely in principle they ought to be able to fight a war on a reasonably logical basis.

But no. Yes, we will send troops to Afghanistan, they say; but you must put them in a part of Afghanistan where they won’t get shot at, and you mustn’t expect them to kill anyone either. Any involvement of the Bundeswehr in actions in which someone dies, and the Germans hit the roof. On a previous visit to Germany I found the nation caught up in a very ugly media witch-hunt against a senior German officer who had been working with UK/US special forces and got involved in some rather messy stuff.

Yes, the Germans have a better excuse than most for all this. But their position is hopelessly illogical. Either you declare yourselves institutionally pacifist, do a Costa Rica and abolish the armed forces altogether, and rely on others to defend you; or you take your share of defence responsibilities, build an army and try to use it as sensibly as possible. But you have to acknowledge that if war does prove inevitable, people are going to kill and get killed. And that wars are always going to have an economic rationale as well as a political one.

I think you’re well out of that job, Dr. Köhler. You can’t lead people who aren’t prepared to think, and will lynch you if you try to.