Recently Germany decided to eliminate tuition fees entirely.
That is a great move, which will cause students here in the US very envious.
The debt that our students carry is staggering and restricts them from
accessing education. Granting free higher education will, in an ideal situation,
make the nation more educated and prosperous.
Of course, while this is free to students, it will cost
government lots of money to make the program viable. Germany has made a choice.
According to some one who lives in Germany, this shows that “some governments
believe in spending money on education while ‘others’ choose to spend money on
military”. There is no doubt that he is referring to US as the “other” country
in that statement promoting the superior choice by the Germans.
Yes, we in the US have chosen to spend money on defense and
less so on education. It does to some extent reflect the psyche of the American
people, many of who would like to take pride in the fact that we are the
strongest in the world. Then there is
the good old military industrial complex, which benefits enormously from our defense
spending and that of many others it supports. The whole political structure is
designed to keep it that way.
However, I would argue that there are some factors that make
this enormous spending on defense not just a matter of choice. We are the prime
target of every wacko organization in the world. Terrorists killed more than
3000 Americans a few years ago not Germans. From ISIS to Iran to North Korea,
they all consider US as their prime enemy and want to cause us harm.
Also, we end up being world’s policeman. Some may say it is
because we like to take that role as doing so furthers our cause. They argue
that we intervene because we benefit, say, by taking an oil producing country
away from a despot, or opening up a new market for our goods. The others may
say that we do it from the goodness of our heart…to promote our idealized
version of the world, even if it means we have to use force.
No matter what the reason is, we are and the world expects us to be the policeman. Any
crisis in the world, whether it is in Ukraine, Syria or Iraq, the country which
is expected to provide leadership is US, not Germany. Probably, there is no
other choice; we are the most powerful nation on earth. However, there is also a factor that the world
trusts us with exercising power more than it trusts other powerful countries.
How confortable will everyone be if China takes over that role?
Coming back the full circle, Germany does not spend too much
money on defense because they are restricted from doing so. Where did that
restriction come from? Well, the last time they were a military power, things
did not go too well for the world. They managed to cause a conflagration that cost
over 50 million lives.
So, Germany can afford to spend money on education, while we
cannot. To conclude that this choice somehow reflects superior values of their
society as compared to ours is a bit simplistic, to say the least.
