The Germans are preparing for war. But at the moment it's being taken for granted that not everyone is going to be in favour of it. In fact it ought to go without saying that Germany is currently the most antiwar country in the whole of the western world. And it has to be said that
that's despite some pretty stiff competition.
The problem of course is that war is inevitable. For all the magical thinking of western elites (including both the Biden and Trump Administrations in America), Putin's conquest of Ukraine is currently continuing largely unimpeded by anything other than his own troops' incompetence.
And so of course there's going to be war at some point whether the demos like it or not. And thus it's interesting to observe, in the face of such an obvious "democratic deficit", the means that a supposedly democratic government will be forced to deploy against its own voters.
As Lisa Haseldine describes exercise Red Storm Bravo (itself a rehearsal for Operation Deutschland) in The Spectator
The first day’s main event was moving a military convoy through the centre of the city after dark. As the sun set over Hamburg’s port, I watched the heavily armed soldiers march towards a fleet of about 70 military vehicles, lined up three abreast. Some were small armoured vehicles, others enormous Rheinmetall-branded trucks, several with machine-gun turrets that would later be manned as the convoy sped through the city. Many soldiers wore balaclavas to prevent them being identified, according to our Bundeswehr escort.
...
At two points along the route, the convoy was stopped by pretend protests: at the first, army reservists in civvies waved banners and chanted at the convoy to ‘turn back’; at the second, ‘protestors’ staged a sit-in, with signs saying ‘glue’ around the necks of some to denote those who would have stuck themselves to the ground. The point was for the riot police to practise removing them. Groups of three took turns: a grab at the protester's head from behind and a knee to the back, one arm twisted around, then the other, allowing the police to peel them off the ground and carry them away.
So far, so German!
The "interesting" question of course is to what extent countries with longer and, er, perhaps "deeper" traditions of "liberal" democracy will follow suit. Can one really imagine English police, let alone the Army, cracking down on "democratic" protesters in London or Marchwood?
We'll wait and see.
