Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Former Obama officials want European nations to expel US diplomats in retaliation for Trump backing out of the Iran nuclear bribe. I hope they do.
I hope Trump responds by announcing that the wise policies put in place by President Truman to rebuild Europe after WW II have succeeded beyond all expectations. European nations have demonstrated they are fully capable of managing their own affairs wherefore we intend to serve notice that we’re withdrawing from NATO. American military commanders will be preparing a timetable for orderly withdrawal of troops and equipment with plans for redeployment along our southern border. We congratulate our European friends and former allies and wish them a bright and prosperous future.
Joe Doakes
There’s a part of me that hopes Trump drops that on the likes of Merkel.
Of course, it’s the likes of Estonia and Poland that’d end up suffering when the pusillanimous central European powers cave in in the face of Russia bullying.
I said when.
It is time for Germany to step out of the shadow of its Nazi past and take its share of responsibility for international security.
With an assertive Russia flexing its muscles to the east, Islamist terrorism bringing death to Europe’s streets, a U.S. president questioning America’s commitment to NATO, and Britain turning its back on the EU, Berlin must bite the bullet and acknowledge the need for a stronger German military.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-eu-defense-nazi-past-should-be-overcome/
The article is kind of funny. The author, Paul Taylor, barely mentions the tendency of Germans to go to war with the world. He even writes “Three generations after Hitler’s armies wreaked terror across Europe, Germans have gained too much economic and political power to continue hiding behind their understandable aversion to all things military.”
The German aversion to all things military is well known to history.
Taylor says the Germans want a “a comprehensive approach to security problems.”
Oh boy!
The Germans want to build heavy tank divisions, but the French would prefer that they stick to “light, rapidly deployable forces, airlift and refueling capabilities for more probable expeditionary operations on Europe’s southern periphery.”
I wonder why.
Soooo, it’s Hate on Germans Day out there in Hawaii? 😉
I am merely suggesting that the Germans are the last people one should count on to safeguard national borders on the European continent.
I am merely suggesting that Americans are the last people who should have to pony up men and money to safeguard national borders on the European continent.
MP
for the germans borders are a relative aspirational concept. There lies in the german soul a revaunchist desire to establish Charlemagne’s map of europe as the one true map. Well that and a burning desire to answer the question “When is Poland ever enough?”
As Tom Lehrer reminded us in ’64:
“Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
but that couldn’t happen again.
We taught them a lesson, in 1918,
and they’ve hardly bothered us since then!”
Be ye Guelph or Ghibeline, MacArthur Wheeler?
Joe Doakes, I can’t be the first one to have noticed that in 2018, Europe has no internal borders, the Germans dominate economically, and the German dream of a nearly Judenfrei Europe is within grasp.
When the French, Belgians, etc. wave a not so fond farewell to the American troops heading back across the Atlantic, they may not like what they see when they turn around.
We have more leverage with the Europeans than they think that we do.
MP
some wars are moveable feasts that migrate from one continent to another over time, often between nations but sometimes civil, however they never really end. Witness our own civil war pitting the same factions against one another, the mercantile North(Guelphs) against the agrarian South (Ghibelines/protestants), it still isn’t over. Europe never really resolved that conflict, hence Washington’s warning and the current “elastic” nature of European borders. Whether its the 30 years war, the french revolution or all the wars Marx spawned its pretty much the same pig in a new dress with fresh lipstick each time.
Mapping morality onto historical conflicts in hindsight is a fools errand so I always side with whoever won according to the current consensus.
I don’t see the U.S. pulling our military out of Europe, especially Germany. Until the Middle East settles down, Rheiinmein Airbase has the closest level one trauma center to there.
That said, I agree with MP. The number of civilians employed on U.S. bases in Europe, will represent a significant loss to their local economies. We’re holding at least a full house to Europe’s pair of deuces.
Wait a second here. Expelling diplomats is, historically speaking, what you do right before you declare war. The former Obama staffers seem bent on crossing the not so subtle line between the Logan Act and outright treason.