Posted on 02/08/2003 9:42:15 PM PST by pepsionice
BERLIN: Washington is tightening the economic screws on Berlin over a looming conflict with Iraq, threatening to clamp down on both the government and private companies in staunchly anti-war Germany, according to Press reports.
The US has decided to freeze all but the bare minimum of its planned multi-million investments in its German military bases "because of the political situation," the weekly Welt am Sonntag reports today.
A letter from the office of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announcing the decision has been sent to the US command in Germany, according to the weekly.
Washington is also threatening to clamp down on German companies who maintain their trade ties to Iraq, the newspaper Die Welt said in its edition yesterday.
The administration of US President George W Bush, in a letter to Berlin's economy ministry, said companies that do business with Baghdad would compromise their ties to their US trade partners, according to the daily.
Germany-Iraq trade ties are worth some $ 364million yearly, according to German government statistics.
Blocking US military investment across Germany could mean a major loss of capital, as it would shelve a100 -million-euro US Air Force investment in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Renovation at the US military airport at Ramstein, in the same state, could also be affected by the plan, the paper said.
Germany has more US military bases than any other European country.
Berlin, a traditional US ally, has come out strongly against waging war on Iraq, saying it will not participate in military operations and will not vote in the Security Council in favour of the use of force.
Pentagon chief Rumsfeld has lashed out several times at Germany, recently lumping it together with Libya and Cuba - Washington's sworn enemies - as countries who would not participate at all in a US-led coalition against Iraq.
When I was stationed in Germany in the early 70's, it was my sense that the "over-50" Germans seemed to like us Americans. They would stop and talk to us on the street, etc.
The middle-aged Germans (that are in power now) hated our guts. They would make under-the-breath comments about Auslanders, thinking we were to dumb to understand that was the equivalent of "nigger" here in the states. They would charge us twice the going rate for rent, or anything else they could get away with.
The Germans who were our age or younger seemed to tolerate us OK, too. Mostly, they just wanted us to buy booze and cigarettes for them at the PX.
Some very basic facts presented by First_Salute....the kind of facts always overlooked in the stampede of the sheeples and the bewildered.
Yet the bottom linne opinion has to be to follow our leaders who are the only ones with the daily pipeline of intelligence information the rest of all lack and who, in turn, we elected to lead.
Alan Bloom's thesis in "the Closing of the American Mind" is that pretty much the same thing happened in U.S. academic institutions. He argues that German academics, refugees from Hitler, invaded our academic institutions and did a pretty good job of brainwashing a generation of Americans.
BUT after ...pull out lock stock and barrel, it will do a BIG number on their economy.
On the one hand, because of Russian military presence; and Europe is not as peaceful as it seems.
On the other hand, because "liberals" fear a withdrawal "to isolationism." With American troops everywhere, there is greater opportunity for "liberals" to incite a riot.
If Berlin and Munich had been attacked as were we, on Sept. 11th, the Germans would have done everything that you have wished we would have by now, and more, to build the logistics trains required to get the bad guys; and that would have engaged many Germans, probably all of Germany, in that pursuit ... in contrast to our off-the-shelf container-wars that look so neat and work on the accumlated Pentagon papers (mostly written over at Brookings and Rand by "liberals" whose income comes from the "foundations" supporting The Party, P.B.S., and Hillary Clinton & Charles Schumer Nationalizing Socialist Facilitators, Inc.).
The Germans' manner of fighting is more pure than most; they are very big on committment. Yet President Bush, who makes a good speech about committment, is quite obviously committed to our defense; rather, he is more committed to implementing a top-down management style by which change will come about, and he ranks that higher than the urgent requirements of immediate national defense.
The Germans have a lot of experience with border patrol and are most efficient, committed to it; and therefore, they have a hard time trying to make Mr. Bush's math add up ... because it doesn't figure.
The news media make France and Germany appear to be united against President Bush's adventure into Iraq, but Germany's reasons are not France's. The Germans must see committment to sound principles of defense which still are not coming forth from the Americans.
The Germans know that a surprise flank attack is very possible, and they wonder what will President Bush do about it, if it comes from Saudi Arabia? There is way too much protection, issued by President Bush, for the very people he knows well, are behind Worldwide Fascist Islamism.
A thousand points of Islamic light may exist ... but they do not have the lead, anywhere that you can see them. They must be very low in intensity, so as to not get their heads cut off in the night. The people who believe in a loving Allah --- the Islamic Protestants --- are on the run from their political mentors who have no faith in religious freedom.
It's a great idea, that we support such Islamic Protestants, because we are now, like it or not, allies in their theological revolution against centuries of fascist, militant, politico-Islamism.
While the Fascist Islamics and nationlizing socialists of various flavors, foreign and domestic, are allied against us.
That makes Germany a country torn; philosophically they are allied with us; yet they are largely committed to compassionate nationalizing socialism because they do not believe there is room for expansive free enterprise except outside their frontiers.
There is, however, a most important codicle (sp?) in their social contract, that discovery and industry shall be permitted growth --- something which is antagonistic toward committed socialists, who unfortunately, now control much of Germany's economic means. It is they who are bringing the German economy to its knees by insisting on their contract being all Germans', notwithstanding the realities of the marketplace.
The Germans are in a real bind, and this is a bad time to deliver ultimatums to them, because they will first and foremost find unity in committment to external threats.
Such threats should not be coming from U.S.
The Guardian / U.K.
Staff and agencies Tuesday September 25, 2001
After offering his broad support for American military action last night, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today met German leaders who will seek to solidify Russian support for an international coalition against terrorism.
Mr Putin was received by the German president, Johannes Rau, in Berlin on the first day of his three-day visit to the west. Both leaders stood at attention as a military band played national anthems outside the president's Bellevue palace.
The German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, was meeting Mr Putin later today to lobby him for Russian support against terrorism in the aftermath of the devastating attacks on New York and Washington. Mr Putin, who speaks fluent German from his time as a KGB agent in East Germany, was due to give a speech in the German parliament today, a rare honour for a foreign head of state. His speech will be the first by a Russian leader to the united Germany's parliament.
Though the two leaders have established a close relationship, past meetings have often raised disputes such as Moscow's foreign debt. Now, Russia's experience in combating Islamic extremism, its knowledge of Afghanistan and influence over neighbouring central Asia give it new political leverage.
Given the unwillingness of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to allow the US military to launch attacks from their soil, Russia's cooperation is critical to the success of a US military campaign in the region. US and British forces hope to use former Soviet bases in central Asia for retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan.
"Russia has a very important role in the international fight against terrorism," said a German government official who spoke about the visit yesterday on condition of anonymity. "What's important is that we all stand together closely."
Mr Putin promised last night to open Russian airspace to humanitarian flights and to arm opposition forces fighting Afghanistan's Taliban government. In a speech on national television, Mr Putin also said that Moscow would be ready to help in search and rescue operations.
For Mr Putin, the visit to Germany is a chance to work on the "strategic partnership" with Moscow that Europe, and especially Germany, have been eager to promote since the end of the cold war.
Mr Putin's rapport with Germany has been helped by his command of the language. In four previous summits, images of Mr Putin and Mr Schroeder riding a Russian sled or chatting with each other's wives in the Reichstag also conveyed a sense of German-Russian camaraderie.
Even the debt issue won't ruffle relations this time because Russia has kept to its repayment schedule this year, the German official said. Germany holds nearly half of the about $48bn (£30bn) that Russia owes to the Paris Club of creditor nations, more than any other country.
Russia: Analysis From Washington -- Old Lines And New Ones On Map Of Europe
By Paul Goble
Washington, 30 August 2001 (RFE/RL) -- Seven years ago today Moscow formally ended its nearly half-century military presence in the former East Germany and two Baltic countries, a Russian withdrawal that changed the geopolitical map of Europe in ways many in Russia continue to find difficult to accept.
On 30 August 1994, Moscow formally renounced its post-World War II occupation rights in what had been the German Democratic Republic and simultaneously pulled out of Estonia and Latvia. Troops had been withdrawn from Lithuania a year earlier.
The Russian withdrawal from German soil was the subject of high-level talks between Russia and the Soviet Union's former wartime allies, which also had enjoyed occupation rights. The withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonia and Latvia was largely the result of negotiations between Moscow and the governments of these two countries.
Many at the time viewed both of these decisions as representing the end of the lines that divided Europe during the Cold War. And some optimistically asserted that this Russian withdrawal marked the end of a divided Europe.
But even as many celebrated, some on each side took actions that the other perceived as drawing new lines that could keep the continent divided. In part this was a simple logical necessity: any geopolitical arrangement short of the most universal requires distinguishing between those who are inside it and those who are not.
More importantly, these new lines reflected the desire of countries that had been found on one side of the line during the Cold War never to be situated there again. Virtually all the countries of Eastern Europe have sought to join the European Union and NATO primarily because they view membership in these Western organizations as a guarantee that they will remain on a different side of a line than they were in the past.
Most Western governments support these aspirations, seeing them as the gradual spreading eastward of the values of liberal democracy and free-market economics that the West defended during the Cold War. And as a result, most in the West have argued that the extension of these institutions eastward transcends old lines rather than draws new ones.
Not surprisingly, some in Russia and many the West view the expansion of these Western institutions as moving the line between Russia and the West eastward -- and thus threatening areas that many in Moscow continue to view as being within its traditional zone of influence.
While some had expected that Russian attitudes on this point would soften, two reports in the Russian press this week suggest that this may not be the case.
On 28 August, an article in Moscow's "Komsomolskaya Pravda" argued that the Baltic countries soon and Ukraine later are likely to become members of NATO and other Western institutions. Moscow, the paper suggested, cannot stop this process, but it pointed out that it can render it relatively innocuous to Russian interests.
Indeed, the article said, President Vladimir Putin's talk about possible Russian membership in NATO is intended to make the alliance "absurd." If Russia is inside the Western alliance, the paper argued, the alliance would be transformed and by implication neutered as an institution that could threaten Russia's national interests or geopolitical concerns.
And on the same day, another Moscow newspaper, "Nezavisimaya gazeta," reported on an ongoing exercise by the Russian military and some members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. The paper said that the exercise posits conflicts between three fictional entities: "Northland," "Westland," and "Southland." But standing behind these names are real forces and real countries, the paper said. And these reflect current Russian military thinking.
"Northland" includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. "Westland" includes the United States and NATO. And "Southland" includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajik guerilla forces. For purposes of this military game, the Russia-led "Northland" is the defender and NATO's "Westland" and the Islamic "Southland" are the threats, the paper said.
The paper suggested that this maneuver, which was designed by Russian military planners, represents "a quixotic mix of anachronisms from the Cold War and elements of a Brave New World." In short, it reflects the vision of some Russians that the old lines on the map have not so much been eliminated as obscured for a time.
But the paper noted that in one respect there has been progress: the maneuver scenarios realistically call for Russia to defend itself. Soviet-era scenarios had always required the military to defeat NATO and march across Western Europe to the shores of the English Channel.
Seven years after Moscow pulled its forces from German and Baltic soil, people on both sides of the old line are still struggling with that line and new ones that are being drawn in the post-Cold War era.
Amen...U.S. Troops to Poland, Spain and Italy!
I don't recall anything entangling involved in that alliance.
Since when is "the safeguarding of our allies" unconstitutional?
Since the Constitution was written! Its too bad Woody Wilson did not understand this.
The German people AND their government have spoken -- it is THEY who've made the decision for the U.S. that our services are no longer required.
And anyway, isn't it time for German taxpayers to fund their own defense instead of you and I?
And the Chinese play Go. It looks like we have more and more disconnected groups.
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