Posted on 03/26/2021 3:34:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
During a joint interview with Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary-general of NATO, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, fresh from his bout with the Chinese in Anchorage, took on Angela Merkel and the Germans.
Issue: Nord Stream 2, the Baltic Sea pipeline Vladimir Putin is building to complement his Nord Stream 1 and carry more natural gas from Russia to Germany, and from there to other NATO nations.
The original Nord Stream pipeline, also consisting of two strands of pipe along the Baltic Sea floor, was completed in 2011.
In his meeting with Stoltenberg in Brussels, Blinken warned that Western companies participating in building Nord Stream 2, which is 90% complete, would face sanctions mandated by Congress:
"President Biden has been very clear in saying that he believes the pipeline is a bad idea; it's bad for Europe, bad for the United States," said Blinken, adding, U.S. law "requires us to sanction companies participating in the efforts to complete the pipeline."
What is behind American opposition to Russian natural gas going to Germany, and from there to NATO Europe?
First, the pipelines bypass Ukraine and Poland, cutting those countries out of the transit revenue. Second, we want NATO Germany to buy our own shale-produced natural gas.
Third, we object to a pivotal NATO ally increasing its present dependency for energy on the very nation against which the United States has defended that ally for 70 years.
Why are you Germans buying Russian gas when we are protecting you from Russian aggression, the Americans ask. It's a fair question.
Last summer, an exasperated President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw 12,000 troops from Germany in what was described as a "strategic" repositioning of U.S. forces in Europe.
Trump said the move was in response to Germany's failure to meet national NATO targets on defense spending of at least 2% of GDP.
"We don't want to be the suckers anymore," said Trump "We're reducing the force because they're not paying their bills; it's very simple."
Merkel ignored Trump's threat. The U.S. troops are still there.
This week, Blinken met with German foreign minister Heiko Maas to restate the U.S. concern over Nord Stream 2, while hastily adding that Germany is a vital NATO ally and the pipeline is "an irritant in a rock-solid alliance."
One gets the impression that Merkel and the Germans will prevail, the pipeline will be completed, and the gas will begin to flow to Germany.
And that the Americans will accept it, rather than exacerbate the issue.
Yet, what does Germany's willing and deepening dependence on Russian gas for its energy, as it moves off coal and nuclear power, tell us?
And what does Germany's chronic refusal to meet the standard of NATO nations to contribute 2% of GDP to the common defense tell us?
Quite obviously, the Germans do not see Putin's Russia as the military threat it was in the Cold War. And Berlin has come to believe that, even if it falls short of its commitments to spend more on defense, the Americans are bluffing. They are not going to leave Europe or NATO.
Why are the Germans not wrong to conclude this?
Because being the "last superpower," "the leader of the free world," the "indispensable nation," the architect of the "rules-based international order" created by the World War II generation of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, George Marshall and the rest, is how we define ourselves and our mission to mankind.
We can't let go, because this is who we are and what we do.
Without this mission, what could justify the mammoth amounts we invest annually on NATO, national defense, foreign aid, the Indo-Pacific, the CIA and the Armed Forces of the United States?
Consider. Between 1989 and 1991, the Soviet Empire collapsed and disintegrated. The Berlin Wall came down. All the Red Army divisions went home from Europe. Communism ceased to be the ideology of the Soviet Union, which itself split apart into 15 separate nations.
Russia was no longer the largest captive nation of communism but a nation reaching out in friendship to the United States.
And what did we do in response?
We doubled the number of nations in NATO we are sworn to defend, moved the alliance deep into Eastern Europe and adopted a policy of containment of a shrunken Russia.
Having won the Cold War, and unable to find a new mission, we started a second Cold War to contain the new Russia -- this time at the borders of Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia, as we had once contained the old USSR at the River Elbe.
Why does Angela Merkel not take seriously U.S. threats to pull our troops out of Germany, if the Germans won't cancel Nord Stream 2 or pony up more for defense?
Because Merkel thinks the Americans are bluffing about going home from Europe, and thinks the Russia of Vladimir Putin is not the Russia she knew in the days of the GDR.
Is she wrong?
1) I don’t think Russia is a threat to Western Europe.
2) I really don’t care if Russia is a threat to Western Europe.
3) I don’t think we should have any military commitments or deployments in Western Europe.
Ironically, many western European states have done nothing but increasingly socialize their economies, incrementally inching towards soviet economics, while simultaneously welcoming islamo-nazis with open arms.
I do have sympathies for many in eastern Europe who value freedom and still have memories of what life was like under the Warsaw Pact, but I'm not sure we're in the position to offer them moral leadership like we once were.
If Putin wants to crush Germany, he doesn’t need to send a single tank — all he has to do is turn off the tap! There is no need for a single U.S. dollar to be spent “defending” Germany.
Not sure if I fully agree with you, as the Russian government is evil.
But they are less evil than China and the Middle East powers, they are not filled with racial hatred, and don’t hate Western civilization.
That’s makes them a step up from the USAs own Democrats.
How much falsehood can be packed into one sentence?
I’d argue that the EU is just as evil as the Russian government.
Not as deadly, but every bit as evil.
waaaay past time for NATO to fold up and go home...
And became the ideology of the American Deep State
They want Europeans to have to pay much more for energy and Americans to LOSE money, all to spite Russia. We should be selling our natural gas elsewhere.
Pure evil? As opposed to who? Our friends the Chinese?
I think you are stuck in the 80s.
Can’t say I blame Germany. Even as bad as it is there with their ‘refugees’, the US is now in terminal-decline, and with it, there’s a good chance that our ability to even export natural gas will be ending. Russia is far more stable, and pipeline or not, they’ll soon being the dominant political force in Europe, as our collapse results in our withdraw from the world.
NATO wasn’t established to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. It was established to protect Western Europe from the Germans.
“ NATO wasn’t established to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. It was established to protect Western Europe from the Germans.”
A bit of an oversimplification, but not far off the mark.
L
Why is this any of our bleeping business?
Russia is freer today than the US, there I said it. Not that it’s really saying much.
I think you need to learn how to read.
I think the U.S. response should not be what Germany thinks we would eventually do - which is that we’d either do nothing or leave NATO.
Instead I think the U.S. has a third option, showing Germany we will not just do nothing, nor abandon NATO.
That third option is to move to Poland everything the U.S. has in Germany - EVERYTHING.
I think that Germany thinks it is buying insurance against possible future aggression from Russia - like when a mobster is paid protection to leave the merchant alone. And Russia wants 100% of the cut, with no middle man - so it has gone around Poland and Ukraine to get to Germany; cutting their transit revenue and raising gas import prices to them as well.
Over the very long term I think Germany is wrong. It confuses the behavior of the Soviets as something it thinks was just Soviet, not “Russian” behavior. My view is that the Soviet behavior was 100% Russian and 100% for Russia, with the Soviets fulfilling ambitions of the Russian Imperial Czars that they were never able to do. I do not think THAT Russia has changed, it is still deeply imbedded in the political DNA of Russian culture, among a majority of Russians.
Russia is hoping the energy projects WILL divide the U.S. from NATO and lead to the U.S. leaving NATO.
If Russia can achieve that, then Germany will start to learn the full price for being energy dependent on Russia; it will be a political price.
So, I say again, we do not have to do anything that Germany or Russia expect us to do, Just move 100% of U.S. military presence from Germany to Poland: making Poland the home of U.S. European contribution to NATO. (We do have other assets not stationed in Europe which have assignments to contribute to NATO when called to.)
Right you are.
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