Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
The political dynamics even of a parliamentary democracy don't necessarily yield the correct actions. They even don't necessarily follow the people's will.
True of course, though I'd suggest the latter is probably generally a good thing; people can be unduly selfish -- and fickle.
The German government's stance to Afghanistan is consistently against a majority of the Germans population, for example.
Which may be a case of good leadership overcoming a little selfishness...
Back to the dynamics; the German military ops "out-of-area" (outside of NATO territory) have not benefited the nation visibly.
I don't think benefit to Germany is why you have troops in Afghanistan. It certainly is of little to no benefit to the US to have troops there or in Iraq. Maybe there's another reason? Maybe they think it's necessary for the good of Afghanistan...
The appearance (and the speak) of our responsible politicians hints very much into the direction that they PLAY with the Bundeswehr, as an asset to use in foreign policy games just like we used money in earlier times.
I think that's why most nations have forces larger than necessary for a mobilization base in times of apparent peace.
Inf act, our military missions overseas have degraded our national security by adding foes and have cost a lot of money and military readiness.
Isn't that a shame -- try to do good and suffer for it. We know the feeling, we hate it when that happens -- but we've gotten used to it. You probably will also. Don't lose too much sleep over the foes; we've got tons of 'em.
And then there's the small detail that I assume to have a better general and military history knowledge than most if not all the top 20 politicians who define that policy (some of which were never in armed forces, none of them has officially studied history afaik - so they have no professional background superiority concerning this, just briefings).
Does your alleged superiority in this regard extend to all their advisers? Do those briefings tell them things you aren't privy to? Do they make decisions based on different criteria than you would use?
France has a history of small expeditions and many befriended African nations that depend on this kind of assistance to keep their defense expenditure bearable. They have the expeditionary capability and there's no real need to expand that imho.
True, and the British have a colonial legacy to worry about and deploy for. OTOH, you'd think the Danes and the Swedes have been out of the colonial business long enough not to bother but they're into it also. And the Dutch -- the Poles; the list goes on...