Germany – understand-culture

Leaked German military documents

The Guardian. 2017. A leaked defence document has revealed the country’s worries about the breakup of the global order – a scenario with serious consequences for post-Brexit Britain.

The German defence ministry set out its worst-case scenario for the year 2040 in a secret document that was leaked to Der Spiegel last week: “EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, and more states have left the community … the increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone, world has dramatically changed the security environment.”

The 120-page-long paper, entitled Strategic Perspective 2040, is a federal government policy document – and the scenarios it imagines are grimly realistic: an east-west conflict in which some EU states join the Russian side or a “multipolar” Europe, where some states adopt the Russian economic and political model in defiance of the Lisbon treaty.

Contingency Planning with proxies

In Germany, proxies are used for contingency planning, especially general proxies (Generalvollmachten) and precautionary proxies (Vorsorgevollmachten).

The general proxy entitles the authorised representative to take decisions for the principal in a large number of cases. The precautionary proxy focuses on decisions which have to be taken if the principal is no longer able to take care of his financial or personal matters, e.g. due to an illness.

“Firms will go bust”

The Guardian. April 2022. Firms will go bust’: Germany prepares for a future without Russian gas.

In Germany, they call it “Day X”. Businesses up and down the land are making contingency plans for what is seen as a growing likelihood that Russian gas will stop flowing into Europe’s biggest economy.

“It would be a disaster – one which would have seemed almost unthinkable just two months ago, but which right now feels like a very realistic prospect,” the owner of a hi-tech mechanical engineering company in western Germany said. The firm produces everything from battery cases for electric cars to train clutch systems.

The speaker did not want to be named, or for his company to be identified, in part for fear, he said, of appearing to support Russia’s war by making the case that if the gas is turned off, his century-old business “will likely not survive”.

But he says he is in a deep quandary and feeling very vulnerable, as he is not only heavily reliant on gas – the cost of which has already soared – but also on metals such as nickel and aluminium, much of which comes from Russia.

Contingency

Because Germans believe in discipline – in sticking to a plan – they plan for less unforeseen circumstances. Instead, they build in room for quick adjustments based on the situation on the ground.