Good news! I am totally perplexed when reading in my local newspaper: "German submarines out of duty" Disarmament in Germany? A long nourished dream of the German peace movement is operationalized now - 30 years after our anti-military prostests?
And it is no dream. What disarmament specialist (like me) have found as overdue but never has been a political option is now on the agenda of our young Defense Minister. With no fuss 60% of the German submarine is no longer on duty.
Though many people in Germany have asked, which contributions those arch-gadgets of the German navy give for the securtity of our country, but so far each criticism against them was taboo. But now - horribly - the navy fans cannot inspect submarines at the Kiel marine exhibition any longer. And Germany is ranked now only on the shameful rank of only No 6 - lower than the bankrupt Greece - what a tragedy.
It would be nice, if that is only the start of a much more comprehensive de-militarization in Germany. I am pretty sure: if one checks the German military with enough disarmament phantacy, you will find beside those - obviously totally irrelevant - submarines a lot of other military obsolete gadgets, with which our troops are still playing for a long time.
What about our battle tanks? Almost 400 of them are cruising every year in our country, spending expensive gas, using expensive ammunition and keep our GIs busy. And nobody is asking: why?
But it is unresponsible that Germany decreases the social welfare payments and simultaneously the German military did not make any contributions for the state savings program for years. But with our new Defense Minister we may see a new start of the disarmament debate and our navy becomes the lead figure of the German disarmament movement. Congratulations!
