ConWatch SPECIAL EDITION: Week 1,812
Does Germany have a constitution yet?
About ConWatch: World history has had the pleasure of getting to know many Germanys in its long lifetime. There was the Holy Roman one, the failed Frankfurt one, the Prussian-dominated one that never really went away, the Great one that came included with a Kaiser, the one that was so efficient it got 1,000 years’ worth of stuff done in just 12; and the postwar Germany that was so nice it was made twice — a West version and an East version. When those two came together in an orgasm of liberal triumphalism in 1990, creating the cuddly Germany we know and love today as well as a catchy Spice Girls hit, it was supposed to make good on a promise to replace West Germany’s “temporary” Basic Law with a genuine, bona fide constitution for a united Germany.
It never did. Instead, the West German pseudo-constitution just became the West German pseudo-constitution. That’s why, until otherwise notified, The Bupkes will keep a vigilant eye out — and anticipatory light on — for an actual constitution.
A constitution of semi-constitutional thoughts
Who does the “drecksarbeit” for the drecksarbeiters?
And if “never again is now” shouldn’t you know that drecksarbeit macht frei?
The first rule of Western politics: In any negotiation, never be the Chamberlain.
But if you are the Chamberlain, then who is the other guy?
(Fuck.)
Fact: Nuclear-armed states avoid attacking nuclear-armed states. Fortunately, there are still non-nuclear-armed states out there (dummies!). The longer they’ve been alleged to be on the cusp of changing that, the bigger the threat they pose. Obviously.
Conclusion: This is why The Bupkes has decided we have no choice but to get ourselves a nuclear weapon asap. And since we don’t have a state to store it in, no bunker buster can get us.
Check. Mate.
If you can send someone indefinitely to Gitmo by calling them an “unlawful enemy combatant,” just imagine what you can do by going to war not against a country, but a “program.”
Speaking of international law, here are some above-average constitutional thoughts by international law scholars, courtesy of Verfassungsblog.
“The mood is bleak, the world is falling apart, and international law seems to be effective only where it causes damage.”
What is labelled as a ‘crisis of international law’ is, in truth, a crisis of a world unable to bear its objections.
If the German government were not shielding Israel’s serious violations of international law, there might be room for open discussion – without the sharp rise in repression we have seen as a result.
Friedrich Merz speaks of the ‘dirty work’ that Israel is supposedly doing on our behalf. The end justifies the means; and none of this has anything left to do with international law. With which credibility can we invoke international law against Russia, then? Anyone who seeks to justify this – as well as the ongoing violations of international law in Gaza – should at least be honest and admit: international law no longer matters.
What seems new to us – the possibility that countries like the United States or even Germany are distancing themselves or could distance themselves from the rules-based international order – is neither unprecedented nor unique.
The special protection granted by Article 5(3) of the German Basic Law applies to us as scholars, not as activists.
‘Double standards’ and the relativisation of international legal obligations have been a defining feature of past decades – and of German foreign policy, too. The rules of the so-called ‘rules-based order’ have always applied more strictly to some than to others. What may be new, perhaps, is that today’s political actors often no longer even bother to conceal these ‘double standards.’
Taking all this into consideration, a final semi-constitutional thought on the constitution of Germany’s “constitution”:
If Germany’s constitution is grounded in international law, and international law has become an arbitrary buffet to be picked over at will, then there isn’t much of a constitution left to Germany’s “constitution.”