It is understandable that we English-speaking peoples tend to see world history and especially European history through the lens of the British Isles. That is, to see the conflicts of Europe from the point of view of the British fighting off the Spanish, the Dutch, the French and, of course, the Germans. But there is, of course, another way to see the history of Europe and that is to look at a map and conclude that the Keystone is Germany.
It is not just geography that centers Germany as a fulcrum of history but it is also the resourcefulness of the German people. So the Germans saw themselves threatened from both East and West in 1914 and waged brutal war out of a kind of geographical angst. The Poles might well recognize the symptoms. Hitler sought lebensraum as another way of solving the problem allegedly presented by geography.
Now we see Germany reaping the fruits of their war aims in World War I and World War II simply by virtue of a creature called the European Union. By way of full disclosure, I am a creature who enjoys the fruits of the European Union because it is that entity which permits me to live here in Germany. But the German nation, rising from the ashes of World War II, has achieved nearly all its war aims through the European Union. It now dominates the European Union by the sheer force of its economic power.
The essential fact of modern Germany is that nearly 50% of its GNP is exported!
So if we look at the world as an English-speaking observer and we see the British Empire as a mercantilist enterprise we are on familiar ground but if we look at the European Union as the Empire of the German nation (dare I say Reich?) We see it as an arm of German mercantilism. Angela Merkel exports to Greece while she dominates and distorts Greek democracy.
The irony of Angela Merkel is that she exploits her southern neighbors through the instrument of the European Union for the advantage of the German homeland while at the same time professing a borderless union. She also professes democracy while waging not just mercantilism but political domination against her southern neighbors while evading responsibility behind the veil of the European Union. Ultimately, the Greeks grow resentments against the Germans and start to call them Nazis and the Germans in their turn decry the lazy and slovenly Greeks.
When her southern neighbors inevitably default, she shifts the risk of loss from the bankers who lent the money to the taxpayers who produced the exports. Thus are the elitists in Germany enriched just as the elitists in America on Wall Street and elsewhere are being enriched to the cost of the American middle class worker.
If one looks at the history of Germany in the 20th century, but also in the Napoleonic era, we see its relationship with Russia to be pivotal. When Bismarck's relationship with Russia, balanced against France, broke down under his successor, Kaiser Wilhelm, the road to World War I was paved. When Hitler executed his pact with Stalin in 1939, it immediately precipitated World War II. The essential fact of the Cold War was the creation of NATO and the involvement of America to prevent Russia from sweeping through Germany.
We see this focus on Russia by Germany continuing to play a pivotal role. Angela Merkel is triangulating between Russia and America. She is making her country far more vulnerable to Russia by the importation of natural gas. She is undermining NATO. She causes the Germans to see Russian aggression in Ukraine to be a situation which requires protection of German trade while she negotiates away Ukraine to the Russians.
The very worst scenario is an alliance of some sort between Russia and Germany, coupled with China and also exploiting the jihad movement of the Muslim world. When Angela Merkel plays pattycake with Vladimir Putin she puts the whole civilized world in peril.
Why does on Angela Merkel import millions of unskilled, uneducated, culturally alien, foreign speakers into Germany at a time when everyone knows the future lies with robots and artificial intelligence? The Japanese, by contrast, are not trying to indulge a Ponzi scheme for their aging population by importing unskilled foreigners, the Japanese are turning to robots. Why did she pursue this leftist collectivist "vision of international redistribution of wealth and Balkanization of formally more or less homogeneous populations"? We both agree she is in need of a reality check, but where does the impetus come from? I can only conclude that it is the unmitigated arrogance of the Marxist mind which believes in the infinite power of education to reshape human nature.
In my previous post in this thread, I noted the European, even the German, feeling of superiority towards Americans over race. I should have explicitly stated their frankly stated belief that they could simply educate a seventh century Muslim into a 21st-century German. To be true, the Germans have done wonders with their apprenticeship programs and education system to produce a mercantilist nation but have they produced Renaissance men? Do they want to?
I have been fond of saying, ad nauseam, that all politics is not local but ultimately racial. I believe that Angela Merkel sees herself as one who has risen above the racism of the Nazi world. It is an article of faith of the left that differences in culture, race, religion or philosophy can be overcome by collectivist principles inculcated by collectivist education. To abandon this article of faith is to betray the very essence of the modern leftist. The Japanese are not troubled by these scruples. But Angela Merkel is betting the future of Germany, the European Union, and Western civilization on these shibboleths.
