How Schroeder Learned to Love the Bomb

By Ray D.

It seems that Germany's "peace" Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, is spreading good will in China this holiday season at a pace that would make Santa Claus jealous. Schroeder, who won the 2002 German national elections on an anti-war, pacifist platform, just reached an agreement approving the sale of plutonium and arms to Communist China on his visit there this week. The German leader further delighted his hosts by announcing his staunch support of a "One China" policy, an interesting political statement from someone whose own party did not even support a "One Germany" policy little more than a decade ago.

Now the German media is reporting further revelations surrounding the deal. Apparently the arms/plutonium trade with China also received the secret blessing of Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. For those not familiar with German politics, Fischer is the most prominent member of Germany's environmentalist Greens, a party that ironically first came to power by dogmatically rejecting the use of nuclear power or materials in any capacity.

To top it all off, even far-left members of Germany's media like SPIEGEL agree that the plutonium offered the Chinese is clearly not suited for peaceful purposes alone. It remains to be seen how Fischer plans to justify the nuke deal to his own party. A major political crisis is now brewing placing the entire German government under massive pressure.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the entire story is the deafening silence coming from Germany's "peace" movement. You'd think the sale of plutonium and arms to a Communist dictatorship with a human rights abuse wrap sheet longer than the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall put together would have every pacifist from Munich to Hamburg jumping up and down and demonstrating angrily in the streets. The silence only seems to confirm that the so-called "peace" movement was really never about the principles of peace, but about tearing-down the USA and President Bush.

For the past 2 years, members of Schroeder's Socialist-Green coalition government have incessantly criticized the US for its military campaigns and alleged human rights abuses in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. Then they turn around and make these types of deals with China because they are lucrative for German industry... do I smell hypocrisy here?

Comments

[Gabi]

http://www.siemens-boykott.de/standard.php?i=aktuell

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[Erik Eisel]

Great post, Raymond! Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Germany is North Korea's biggest lender, propping up a government that is, in some ways, worse than the Third Reich. The sale of plutonium to China is only the latest outrage.

[Colin MacLeod]

Unbelievable. What purpose does the German left think it serves these days? It seems totally incoherent. It's not clear to me that even its anti-Americanism is consistent. Is there anything that keeps it going other than fear of the conservatives?