The CDU will lose those anyway, so that's not really a factor.
Really? I have never seen a political party "surrender".
Ofcourse the elections and general political standings of CDU and the liberal party is on the mind of Merkel and I can tell you that in many EU countries the "180 degrees" CDU have made on nuclear power as well as the withdrawel from Med. Nato forces is seen as nothing more than electional positioning.
Electional positioning is fair and OK, but the problem with Merkel is that she exports it to the EU via her faithfull, newborn-nuclear-scepticist Oettinger. And the NATO thing has caused Germany's NATO credibility to take a dent, as far as I can see.
Now this won't be the first a EU nation does this, but germany isn't Belgium, Luxemburg, Sweden or Denmark but Europes largest, by far, country and economy, and I think Germany needs to face that responsibility.
However, what you don't address is the fact that Libya (Gaddafi) has been a consistent good trade and security partner for Germany in the past 40 years. Other than that little mishap with La Belle, relations have been good. We're talking billions of investments, we're talking long-time cooperation in training libyan police and army, we're talking Wintershall being the largest foreign oil company in Libya (the Italians are mostly buying, not drilling).
Well isn't that shamefull? Though I am sure that Germany isn't the only European country that have dealt with Ghadafi, who amoung many dirty deeds counts a Pan-Am and likely a UTA airline bombing.
And to get a little bit back to topic, the war in Libya is likely the result of a total breakdown of a rotten, amoral and shamefull western policy towards the greater middle east, in which "we" have surported, befriended and kept our hand under some of the most dispicable dictators and despots in this world.
What the current state is is that Germany is increasingly moving away from French positions owing to Sarkozy's rather ambivalent, unpredictable behaviour. This - including the realignment of security positions - isn't really anything new either, and has been going on for the past five to ten years, just like the slow warming between Russia and Germany.
Agree. Though I don't think it's "Sarko" it's partly a general trend; the center of mass in Europe has shifted east since the fall of the wall, Germany has risen in importance while France and especially Italy has declined but also that a new generation of Germans leads a more national oriented policy than the post-war periode's more altruistic policy.
"The election factor is really coming down in France"
Agree, I am not saying France should be a rolemodel for anyone.
Regarding the nuclear plants, I have absolute faith in the german plants.
But I am also one of those that thinks that the Fukushima I crisis, underlines the high security and relative harmlessness of Nuclear energy.
F.eks. the media is going berserk because there is a "25 times the limit value of Cs-130 in sea water (absolutely not a problem)" that two workers got less than the eqvivalent of 200 mSv radiation dosis etc.
The problem is that few in the public have any idea what 200mSv is. For comparison an average dane get's about 4mSv a year in natural background and induced radiation. I have never heard anybody think that's a problem or is a significant reason for cancer etc.
Another comparison is that 1 CT Scan is equal to about 1mSv.
The two workers have got something like 50 times the yearly natural dosis of a dane, that's probably not healthy, neither is smoking cigarrettes, inhale exhaust, eat lead polluted fish etc.
The old rule of thumb: 1mSv ~ 10 hours of your life, would suggest that our japaneese workers have lost less than 2000 hours or 83 days.
