„Das ist Militärkeynesianismus“

german-foreign-policy.com: The German arms industry doesn’t have those huge and internationally very well known arms companies like Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems or Dassault. Nevertheless, Germany has been one of the top five arms exporters worldwide for many years. How would you describe the global importance of the German arms industry?

Andrew Feinstein: The German arms industry is important for two primary reasons. The first is that some companies are significant producers. Rheinmetall, ThyssenKrupp – they are big players in the global arms trade. There is no doubt about that. The second reason is obviously Germany’s role in Europe. Germany is such a dominant force in the EU that its approach to the military, to the arms trade, to defence spending is extremely important for the EU as a whole and for the position the EU is going to take.

In addition to this it is important to understand the way in which the arms trade has evolved after the Second World War. Obviously, the United States has been the biggest producer in the world. The US has what we call an economies of scale advantage over European companies because any American company, Lockheed Martin or others, know that the Pentagon is going to buy the vast majority of whatever they produce. So, their foreign sales are incidental and over and above what is the biggest purchaser of weaponry on the planet: the Pentagon. Whereas through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, even the early 80s to an extent, the Americans would be corrupt in the arms trade, that stopped with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Trump now has done away with it; it will certainly be interesting to see what impact that has.

gfp.com: European arms manufacturers are in a different position…

Feinstein: Indeed. Because the Europeans have not had the same quality of equipment as the Americans and because they have not had the economies of scale advantages the Americans had, European manufacturers have been prone to bribery and corruption. The German arms industry is really indicative of that. Even in my own country, South Africa, German companies were involved in a hugely corrupt deal. That was the point at which our young democracy was corrupted. German manufacturers have for a variety of reasons been key suppliers for Israel. Arms deals with Israel don’t happen without corruption. Saudi Arabia, another huge customer which demands massive bribes on arms transactions, is a big customer of Rheinmetall. Rheinmetall has even gone a step further than most other companies in that they have been helping the Saudis and in particular SAMI, the Saudi Arabian Military Industries, to build factories so that they can produce arms themselves. This means that Germany has effectively been helping countries like Saudi Arabia which has been involved in the war in Yemen for many years to bypass any sort of export control regulations. This has made the trade of weapons more and more lawless.

gfp.com: If you look at the arms build-up the EU is currently planning, or if you look at the fact that Germany wants to transform the Bundeswehr into the strongest conventional armed forces in Europe – what does that mean for the German arms industry?

Feinstein: It’s a huge boon for the German arms industry. The whole thing of militarisation – let’s start at the beginning. Me and my colleagues have published a book with the title “Indefensible”. If you read it you will see: 1. Higher defence spending doesn’t make us safer. In fact, it can have exactly the opposite impact. 2. Higher defence spending is a drag on our economies – not only on growth but also on job creation because it’s such an incredibly expensive way to create relatively few jobs. So, the impact of this rearmament or militarisation is going to be negative economically.

In terms of our national security and defence the current militarisation is not going to make much difference as well. Why do I say that? Well, let’s look at just one example, the F-35 jet, the most expensive weapons system ever built. The American tax payer has spent over three trillion dollars on producing this ridiculous plane. According to aerospace design engineers, according to the Inspector General of the Department of Defence in the US, it’s a bad plane. So, we’re spending billions and billions of our new defence expenditure on equipment like the F-35 which is actually making us less safe because the equipment is so bad. I think that this whole militarisation is happening because our Western governments have no idea how to grow our economies anymore. Our economies are in terminal decline. I would argue that is because neoliberal capitalism is based on false assumptions and now useless. What Western governments are now trying to grow our economies is effectively Military Keynesianism.

gfp.com: So you don’t believe fear of Russia is the real reason?

Feinstein: Look, the question is how to create the environment for rearmament. You have got to build up an enemy. Of course, Putin was very accommodating in that regard with the illegal invasion of Ukraine. But this notion that Putin is a threat to Europe now – we had a very senior former general in Britain saying in the media the other day that in five years Russia would try and invade Britain and therefore we need to be prepared for it. On any sort of geopolitical, of strategic analysis that is nonsense. Why? Because Ukraine has been a disaster for Putin. He has lost far more soldiers than he had expected to lose. It cost him far more than he had ever expected. The Russian economy is in the doldrums. Putin’s political popularity has taken a massive hit. Russia doesn’t have the economic resources, it doesn’t have the military resources, and Putin doesn’t have the political capital to launch another attack. To think Russia is going to invade Germany or Britain or any other country doesn’t stand up at all to scrutiny. It’s based on myths. That’s the first thing.

The second thing that is really important to understand: The economics of militarism, the economics of the arms trade as such benefit our politicians and our political systems. If you look at cases that I deal with in my book “The Shadow World”, Helmut Kohl might be the most obvious. He and Franz Josef Strauß effectively funded their political parties through a combination of legal and illegal arms deals. Why do I say illegal arms deals? Sometimes, when a country urgently needs weapons you can charge an extremely high premium price. And if you charge a premium price, what goes up? The percentage and quantum of the bribes that are being paid. There was an arms dealer called Karlheinz Schreiber who had to flee Germany and lived in Canada for many years. Eventually, he went back to Germany and was found guilty on various tax evasion charges. But this doesn’t happen often in Germany although there are constant and many corrupt arms deals.

gfp.com: So, German political parties benefit from bribery in arms deals?

Feinstein: As I wrote in “The Shadow World”, Schreiber provided money not only to the CDU and its Bavarian cousin, Strauss’ party CSU, but also to the two politicians personally. That’s why Kohl two days before he died was railing at the world that if anyone accused him of corruption he was going to sue them. In fact, he couldn’t sue anybody because there was so much evidence of his profound corruption. And the extraordinary thing is, this corruption is absolutely central to Germany’s political system – just as it is in the UK and in many other parts of Europe. Angela Merkel did it a lot cleverer like she did everything more cleverly than Kohl. During her term in office, arms companies donated smaller amounts of money below the official level of corruption. Unlike Kohl and Strauss I don’t believe Merkel took money personally. I’ve seen no evidence of that. But big arms deals actually feed our political systems in the West. The phrase of Greg Palast, the American journalist, applies: “We have the best democracy money can buy”. To keep that system going you’ve got to have constant remilitarisation. We had it after 9/11. There has to be some excuse for it, and so, Ukraine has been used as an excuse, too.

The reality is if you take into account the appalling role Germany has been playing in the genocide in Gaza – the reality is that if anything, spending on arms in Germany should be decreasing, and it should be decreasing rapidly. Because Germany has covered itself in shame, like many other Western countries, in its active participation in the world’s first live streamed genocide. That should affect our attitude to militarism and how much money is being spent on the German military.

gfp.com: Speaking of Gaza – how dependent is Israel on arms imports in general and on arms imports from Germany in particular?

Feinstein: Of course Israel is heavily dependent on arms imports. Take, for example, the F-35 coalition in which, among other countries, Britain and Germany take part. Britain produces 15 percent of every F-35. The reality is: If you stop producing a part for a jet that is already in service you immediately create a problem for the use of that jet because, obviously, parts have to be replaced, they have to be serviced. When an arms deal is done, say, for some of those parts, the supplier is taking responsibility for the maintenance of the system on which he is a subcontractor. If a country stops delivering that part it can stymie the whole system.

Also, the argument that whatever Germany produces for Israel, Israel could get it elsewhere is nonsense. Let me explain to you why. If the West decided tomorrow that it would impose an arms embargo on Israel, Israel had to get its military equipment from elsewhere. There are not too many options – Russia, China maybe. Let’s just say for want of argument Israel’s focus turned to Russia and China. The problem is: Israel has got an entire military infrastructure that is built on inputs from America and from Western Europe and the UK. You can’t take Chinese and Russian components and fit them onto whatever Western equipment you have. You can’t replace the ordinance, the missiles, the bombs that are being used with Western-made jets like the F-35, the F-15 or F-16 by, say, Russian missiles and bombs. You would have to start all over again and rebuild your hardware and your infrastructure. That takes decades. So this notion that if we stopped arms exports to Israel it wouldn’t have any impact is wrong. The US and Western Europe could stop the genocide tomorrow.

gfp.com: But they just don’t do it.

Feinstein: Unfortunately, there is no political will to do so. The more than 60,000 people who have been slaughtered by Israel are as much the responsibility of the US, the UK, Germany and other European countries as they are of the Israeli military. You know, for me, this is at least Germany’s third genocide. You would think a country would learn something from its history. Germany seems incapable of doing that. The way in which I feel Germany has most openly displayed how incapable it is of it, is the way it has treated jews in Germany who are opposed to the genocide in Gaza. Which, I must tell you, as a jew, as a son of a Holocaust survivor, I find absolutely repulsive. It shocks me to see jews getting beaten up by police in Germany because of their opposition to what Israel is doing in Gaza. Germany has this completely deranged view that somehow it can atone for its last genocide, the Holocaust, by supporting another genocide by some of the perceived victims of that earlier genocide. Which is a contorsion of logic and rationality.

To come back to the question: If Germany or any significant arms provider imposed an arms embargo on Israel, its effects for Israel would be immediate and devastating. And that’s why they should do it.

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