German army 'plans for break up of the European Union' in war game scenario

Military planners in Berlin played out a scenario in which a growing number of countries follow Britain in leaving the EU, resulting in an "increasingly disorderly" world, Der Spiegel reported.

"The EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, more states have left the bloc," strategists wrote in a study cited by the magazine.

"The increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflictual world has dramatically changed the security policy environment for Germany and Europe."

Der Speigel said the study could inform German armaments programs in the next several years.

The scenario was one of six examined in a study of security challenges German generals believe could unfold over the next 23 years.

Other scenarios envisaged European countries embracing "state capitalism" and a halt to globalization.

A spokesman for the German Defence Ministry said the study, called Strategic Perspective 2040, made "robust predictions" but did not attach probabilities to them.

"State capitalism" is what Lenin called his New Economic Policy of 1922 once the "pure" Marxian model he'd attempted to implement fell flat on its face and nearly broke the country. Lenin actually used the rather contradictory phrase "free market regulated by the state". IIRC there were several problems with Marx's economic model early on: the managerial class did prove to be necessary and the country wasn't going to get by on factories governed by workers' soviets, and the development of new industry needed not only capital that was no longer provided by private sources, but some guidance as to where that capital was to be invested that now had to come from the State.

The problem with the latter was that state bureaucrats were not experts in the respective industries and were motivated not by profit, but by personal and institutional political power. The resulting industries were fantastically wasteful and inefficient, the planning rigid, and the results faked.

This may not be what the two-word phrase in the article actually means, though, coupled as it is with a reference to withdrawal from "globalism". It may simply refer to economies no longer regulated from Brussels and regulated from the sundry national capitals. That isn't necessarily chaotic at all; in fact, before the EU came along it was how the world worked. Why that should present a security concern is something that isn't explained in the article.

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