What must be said

With his poem "What must be said", to be found here [DE], German nobel prize laureat Günter Grass stirred up a heated discussion in Germany. At the core of it: Can Germany, the country that bears responsibility for the Holocaust, criticize Israel? 

Public opinion in Germany seems to answer this question with a yes. Although I cannot find the figures, the majority of Germans looks at Israel's aggressive foreign policy with unease (and shows empathy with Palestinian citizens in the West Bank and the Gaza strip). When Günter Grass now writes that the "atomic power Israel endangers a world peace that is already crumbling" and criticizes the German shipment of a nuclear submarine to Israel, he speaks out what many German citizens have thought for a long time.

In other countries, this would not be a problem. But in Germany, where chancellor Merkel has declared Israel's security a piece of Germany's raison d'état and where a recent study has found "a banalization of antisemitist practices and rants that reaches far into the middle of the society", such a piece of criticism cannot be uttered without being called an antisemitist. German criticism of the state of Israel and of its government is always understood as criticism of the Israeli electorate, the Jewish nation. 

And yet, the state of Israel is evidently in breach of several UN resolutions that deal with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and has repeatedly expressed its desire for a preemptive strike on Iran which would defy the intentions of the UN Charter. You could conveniently argue that every world citizen with an interest in peace should have the right to criticize Israel for its policy, regardless of their nationality.

What Günter Grass therefore advocates in his capacity as a global citizen is to put both the Iranian and the Israeli nuclear programs under the scrutiny of an international authority. If you look at the situation without a Western bias, the question is justified: Why subject the Irani nuclear program to external control and make an exception for Israel, although its attack could endanger Iranian citizens just as much as an Iranian attack would endanger Israelis?

As a German or non-German, what do you think of the question?

Aggressive China? Aggressive America!

The whole western world went abuzz when China recently tested its new stealth fighter jet (more info here). In particular, Americans were put off because the test flight took place at the same time as Defense Minster Robert Gates met with Hu Jintao. A provocation? A demonstration of Chinese power?

In following, military expenditure in the world:

Source: www.globalissues.org

Seeing that the US military is far superior to the Chinese military, lets look at US military deployment in the world:

Countries with a US military presence in 2010

More than 1,000 US personnel

More than 100 US personnel

Use of military facilities

(Source: Wikipedia)

In China's east, South Korea hosts 28,500 military troops (2007 figure) and 38 military installations, while Japan has 32,385 American soldiers or military staff on its soil (2010 figure). In and around Afghanistan, the US has 105,900 troops (2010 figure) that come into Asia through a US travel base in Kyrgistan, China's neighbor in the west. During South Korea's last military exercise, the US deployed an aircraft carrier into the Yellow Sea that separates South Korea from China.

Somehow understandable that China feels a little threatened, isn't it? Everything points to the idea that the US is seeking to contain China. What would happen if China dispatched an aircraft carrier to Cuba in return? I can already hear the US media panic.

Recently, an article from a Peking University resurfaced and caused much discussion in the Chinese blogosphere: "If the United States Attacked China, I Would Surrender". The Chinese believe it is a real threat that the US will use military power to advance its own interests in China.

In Japan, the presence of the US military is already contested. The troops have been involved in 200,000 mostly traffic-related accidents and acts of crime against Japanese in which 1,076 Japanese civilians died since 1952.

Given an increasingly assertive China, the US Military Chief has vowed in early 2011 to put a special focus on Asia. How will China react?


By the way: Chinese president Hu Jintao finished his three-day state visit to the United States successfully. Read more about it here and here.