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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
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2 Apr, 4 tweets, 1 min read
A Hans-Georg Maaßen candidacy for the CDU in Thüringen would be an electoral gift to the Greens that they will gratefully use in their campaign messaging
Maaßen has, probably deliberately, generated a situation where the CDU either rejects him and pushes some national conservative voters to the AfD or it accepts him and pushes a lot more moderate liberal voters to the Greens.
This is what happens when you appoint someone to the head of your country's domestic intelligence service primarily because he had a reputation for being tough on migration and diaspora communities.
You get the impression now that Angela Merkel managed to leave just in time before an accumulation of unresolved internal problems in the CDU that her own personal reputation managed to distract from begin to overwhelm the party.

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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
2 Apr
Last I checked Britain, Germany and Italy have universal healthcare systems and restrict the ability purchase guns.

Maybe under Biden the US is going to catch up with the EU?
The remarkable success the US has seen in vaccine rollout is a case where citizens can see how action by the state can lead to positive outcomes. That has the potential to lead to a US social consensus closer to that in the EU on many issues than has been the case in the past
This all looks a bit...European
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
1 Feb
What exactly will UK media debate shift to when German vaccination efforts speed up?
Because the German healthcare system is messing up the setting up of vaccination structures, but they will eventually get there.
And quite a few other EU countries are starting to get it together. Trying to build a narrative of national renewal out of what is a genuine yet time-limited success is not going to help long term once all the states around you figure it out and wrap it up a few weeks later.
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
1 Feb
If you want to get a sense of where German politics might be heading you need to keep an eye on the wildly polarising as much as the stodgily respectable.

That means keeping an eye on how Bild and those around it try to shape debate.
Germany is perfectly capable of generating its own world-beating vicious media grudges, partisan brawlers and cynical infighting
Don Alphonso as cultural artefact
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
31 Jan
This is the crux of the difference between the German and UK healthcare systems. The UK government did not need a "vaccine summit" between national, regional, local and institutional stakeholders. It already had a centralised system it could move quickly
sueddeutsche.de/politik/impfen…
The decentralised distribution of power in Germay mixed with established civil defence that was an advantage in managing COVID19 slows efforts to vaccinate against it. Contrast that with Romania where a less resourced system simply handed process to military and central agencies
Yes the EU Commission got some things wrong on the pace of vaccine procurement, but the speed of vaccination has as much if not more to do with wider systems EU member states have at hand to manage a complex and resource-heavy process.
Read 6 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
31 Jan
When examining the extent of leverage and influence a state from outside of the Indo-Pacific area can build in that area, first ask whether anyone in that area has any existential need for assistance from that state.
No European state, not even the EU plays a role of fundamental importance in the Indo-Pacific. Russia is not in a strong position there either. The only state from outside that carries decisive weight there is the US.
A bit of realism about the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific area in the UK would mean the UK would be taken more seriously there.
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
30 Jan
Good video from @derspiegel outlining how the vaccine purchases are only one part of a whole range of structural and logistical problems facing German policymakers in rolling out mass vaccination programmes.

spiegel.de/politik/deutsc…
Making grand geopolitical and economic predictions based on differences in vaccination rollout of 5-8 weeks will look less salient once programmes wrap up over the course of the summer of 2021. By that time other economic and geopolitical crises as the aftershocks of COVID19 loom
I'm old enough to remember when test, track and trace was supposed to be what decided the fate of states.
Read 4 tweets

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