Photo by DAVID HOLT | CC BY 2.0
To some on the geopolitical stage, “stability” is something like a sacred word.
Of course, the devil is in the details. For decades, the word was used by successive US governments in a sense which did not preclude a certain number of wars – as long as those wars, whether officially declared or merely approved by an American President under the terms of some special Congressional authorization such as the one which is behind most current US military activity, were begun and carried out on American terms.
“Stability” was and remains the justification employed in defending United States support for some truly nasty governments, kings and dictators. Their professed opposition to communism or terrorism – as defined by the US government, of course – has been the primary qualification for that support. Although there was often talk of democracy, cosmetic moves purported to lead in that direction would usually suffice to sell the relationship to Congress, and in more than a few cases even the cosmetic mask is absent: it is simply asserted that the nation in question is a crucial strategic domino, the fall of which would put the entire world in jeopardy, and our noble principles must needs be temporarily suspended. Some of these temporary suspensions have lasted for decades now.
The dreaded scourge of instability, however, has now reached the heart of the empire.
In Germany (Western Europe’s biggest economy, as a result of massive American efforts to rebuild it as a protegee bulwark against the Soviet Union after World War II), preliminary negotiations designed to enable the formation of a new governing coalition broke down this week.
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