why the political establishment moves right

Submitted by myth (Germany), Dec 1, 2015 at 01:07

The political establishment has been invested in multi-national organisations. In Europe the EU is that organisation. The EU aims at common rules for all, centralised policies and the like. Any move of an establishment party to the right would create conflicts between member states, thus damage the EU. One may say moving to the right is actually a move to the outside. Moving left is actually a move to the center of the multinational organisation. Moving left increases power within the organisation. The commitment to multinational organisations stands out as the only long-term strategic goal one can embrace which does not force any state to do anything in particular. That's the beauty of it - if one is a politician. Put differently: the establishment depends on their commitment to the EU to stay in power. That's why they lean left.

Inside the EU Germany drives this move left, move to the center, the establishment of centralised EU-control. Germany is the only EU-country in which a politician's visible profile on the EU stage wins her or him domestic elections. That's why Merkel is still in office. Turn this around and Merkel's reputation and power inside the EU follows from her long presence in office. If Germany's government were to move right, not only would Germany lose power inside the EU, the German government would lose the elections.

The left-leaning policies point to substantial internal conflicts. The establishment parties externalise their internal conflicts about security policies. External means, that an organisation-wide, say EU-wide policy is outside of domestic or intra-state discussions. Once it is on paper it's an abstraction and no longer attached to any particular state, thus immune to multilateral conflict. In the Paris case the potential conflict between France and Belgium on how to fight border-crossing terrorists in Paris and Brussels was successfully externalised literally to Syrian territory.

To me the true question is why Europe prefers the EU over NATO as the important multinational organisation even on matters of security. Why does the US prefer any sort of organisation and alliance over NATO when military interventions are considered? The US should put pressure on Erdogan as a NATO ally rather than messing with the Russians, Syrian rebels and and and.

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