Excitement about Westerwelle travel companion and the defeat of Airbus in the United States. Excitement reigns in parliaments and in the press; the events seem fundamentally different: Guido Westerwelle is again this time to his administration as Secretary of State – hard in the criticism. The selection of his travel companions abroad seems heavily of personal and party friendships. At least many old acquaintances, and including not only his life partner are piled, members of the business delegations usual on such occasions. At the same time it was other European capitals accusations in the wake of the EADS decision to withdraw from the bid battle the order”armor of the century” in the United States from Paris, Berlin and – in rare bipartisan agreement -. The selection process to the re-equipment of the army with tanker aircraft, which now already for the third time over the award of the contract should be decided, was apparently (with hindsight!) strongly been tailored to the offer of the American manufacturer Boeing. The heavy guns, which are now operated on are “Abuse of authority” on the one side, “Protectionism” on the other side. But what have the two cases – except for the heated comments – to do with each other? Well, except for the fact that aircraft here in a way constitute the “corpora delicti”, the Zankapfel, like there, it comes to the special relationship that combines politics and economy in the foreign trade.
Also the World Trade Organization (WTO), free trade zones (such as the NAFTA of North America) and even the European single market, in which the economic link of the Member States has reached a very high degree, in this area nothing fundamental changed: as soon as the economy of a nation operates across their borders, the nation-State in a sense sees itself as a business Agency and represents the interests of the own economy first and foremost. This is true all over the world, and usually deals with the State attention to the interests of big economic actors. That Foreign Minister Westerwelle seems slightly less calm than its predecessor takes people of own “network” on business trips, and one of those people that is also his life partner, you can call politically insensitive, and at some point, you must also criticize it. But – as well as in the case of the accompanying journalists – the Chancellor’s Office or the Foreign Ministry different make together delegations depending on the “Color” of the respective heads, is, however, so banal as anything in politics. When SPD General Secretary Nahles so speaks of business delegations as a “matter of course”, on the other hand the “mixing” economic with the interests of State warns, this is nothing more than a logical nonsense. Excited – and foolish still – sound the rants about us “protectionism” in the face of the tanker competition and the withdrawal of Airbus/EADS. Because there is no sector of the economy in which national calculus played a bigger role than just the arms industry. The almost incredible waste of taxpayers of European citizens in the cases of the “Eurofighter” combat aircraft or the troop transporter Airbus “A 400 M” – equivalent offerings could have been bought elsewhere just finished at a fraction of the total – were, if anything, never otherwise politically to justify. We had seen the parliaments in Berlin or Paris, as the mass acquisition of Russian “MIG 29” or “Antonov 147” (the much more powerful counterpart to “Eurofighter” and “A 400 M”) decide. Everyone have a good flight. Andreas Kellner news /…
| November 22nd, 2015 | Posted in General |