Posted on 07/22/2016 9:17:26 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Germany on Friday stressed its promise to protect its NATO allies after White House hopeful Donald Trump called the commitment into question.
“The German government is fundamentally committed to Article Five of the NATO treaty. That is the central promise of solidarity within the alliance,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters when asked about Trump’s remarks.
“Collective defense according to Article Five is and remains the main duty of NATO,” Seibert added, noting that the pledge had once again been renewed at a NATO summit this month in Warsaw. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
What’s your distinction? What’s to keep Putin from “restoring” [snort] those portions of Latvia and Estonia that are “Russian?” Because they suffered “more” than the Georgians and Ukrainians?
It is useful to note that NATO was not formed at our initiative, but at the urgent pleadings of post war Western European countries. They were facing hundreds of divisions of the Red Army salivating at the thought of racing to the western coast and absorbing the rest of flattened fortress Europa. The set up was a famous "long telegram " from ambassador George Kennan in Moscow who advocated for the policy of containment of the Soviet Union in 1946. NATO was singed into law in 1949 by the western democracies.
With the collapse of international soviet communism, and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact, the reason for NATO's existence vanished. It exists now only because of the natural law that says all bureaucracies find a way to perpetuate themselves.
There is no reason why this 70 year old institution should not be re-examined in light of major changes in the world at large. After all, NATO is not a church. It can be replaced by some updated alternative.
The Europeans are big boys and can take care of themselves if they so choose. EU has three to four times the population of Russia, and is far more wealthy. France and Germany love to throw their weight around in the EU-- let them muscle up and take on their own defense along with their neighbors.
This does not mean we shouldn't have a mutual alliance with the EU, but it doesn't have to be the old NATO framework, which in truth mostly meant the US military on European soil.
Liberal stupidity is widespread.
That is probably why NATO and EU are wooing the Baltics, as another place to send the migrants.
All of the reasons given by the EU elites (who would have control of it) are strictly to protect their socialistic expansionist interests. So, no.
There may be some good reasons for an EU Army
That is the liberal propaganda line. Internationalist communism continued after the USSR “fell” (how does a totalitarian regime vote itself out of existence? Answer: it does not), upheld by Red China and of course the other Marxist countries around the world that the liberal media (per the UN’s direction) calls “developing nations”, Red China included. The New Economic Policy writ large across the globe is still planned as the transitional stage to full global socialism.
With the collapse of international soviet communism, and the dissolution of the Warsaw pact, the reason for NATO’s existence vanished
Well, at least Trump forced Germany to be the one declaring their NATO commitment. Let them be the saber rattlers for a change.
Muslims would just run away. Czech Republic recently took a bunch of Iraq Christians and gave them asylum and even rent free flats. After a week they were caught on a bus to Germany.
One can rework the framework, but it is silly to claim the Cold War is over when the Russians themselves admit it is not.
I think Trump was misquoted anyway in this recent thing. Saying that treaties don’t hold would be very bad IMHO. I think what happened is that Trump took a question and then answered a question close to it that he wanted to answer - showing his displeasure about some NATO countries slacking. He probably meant Canada or Germany, but the press connected it falsely to the Baltics.
Not our circus, not our monkeys.
Not ONE DAMNED CENT for anything outside of DEFENSE OF OUR BORDERS until every last honorably discharged vet has all the healthcare and education they need, every school is fully funded and every road perfect.
Until every Citizen is taken care of to at least the standard of any other country on earth the rest of the world’s population is not worth one cent or one drop of blood.
So you are for socialistic funding of the road network? as well as healthcare (in general) and education?
Estonia is one of my favorite countries in the world. Safe, orderly and almost muslim-free, since they have not hosted huge migration/”refugee” invasions like the insane bigger and richer countries of W. Europe.
Tiny Estonia’s misfortune of course is to be located next to the thug state Russia.
If we are going to spend tax money, better to spend it on Americans. If it’s going to be tax and spend then roads and education and healthcare for Citizens before sending one bullet or dollar anywhere outside of the borders.
Personally I think those things up to the states, except perhaps the Interstate.
Fritzie needs to put more cash in the NATO pot, as does Pierre and John Bull.
Article 4 Section 4 of the US Constitution guarantees to the states “a republican form of government”, which makes a socialistic form of government something that must be prevented by the same Constitution and not among the rights reserved to the states or the people by the Tenth Amendment. I believe it is a false dilemma to regard our continuing in socialist behavior a foregone conclusion to be submitted to. It’s also a false dilemma between “tax and spend” versus “borrow and spend” when both are designed to grow government.
Of course, a reversal of what is being done to the military is always welcome, although that comes with the caveat of being wary of a standing military.
My main point is this:
Not one damned cent for anybody, anywhere else until we do any and everything we should (the definition of ‘should’ being an entire other discussion, one you make cogent and interesting points regarding) for our citizens. In PARTICULAR any and everything promised to those who served when they signed up.
To paraphrase Bismark, the entirety of the Middle East is not worth the bones or blood of one American Private.
So guven today’s events, what is Germany doing to keep their own folks safe?
that is their problem. Let’s worry about keeping OUR folks safe.
Germany can't even protect its own people from the RAPING, MURDERING, Muslim-terrorist hords within their midst that Merkel has INTENTIONALLY imported by the hundreds of thousands. So how can they be expected to protect the Baltic States from Putin and the Russians?
Neither was Nazi Germany until they declared war on us. The entire Middle Eastern “Islamic World” (as they see themselves; not as individual nations) declared war on us long ago and we did not respond to them how we responded to the Axis Powers. A lot happened to us after that war, and not very much good.
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