Despite a massive investigation there have never been any proven links between Trump and Russia. What’s more, Trump maintained sanctions against Russia and provided military aid to Ukraine.
I can’t speak as much to the situation in Europe aside from the obvious conflicts of interest for former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Aside from him, I don’t know where to attribute Germany’s fecklessness: it could just as easily be the same weak-kneed pacifism that led Germany to disarm themselves. (Also, I’d point out that, contra your narrative, both Scholtz and Schroeder are members of the center-left SPD and not any far right party.)
Germans know very well, that Schröder was corrupt. They still support the Energiewende. But Trump bullying Germany to stop buying Russian gas, so the US can sell its more expensive fracking gas to Europe isn't a perfect signal of sincerity either.
Germany is currently going through with NordStream 2, a plan that gives billions to Russia. Simultaneously, the US is expected to spend billions protecting Germany and the EU from Russia via NATO. If Russia is really a threat why is Germany helping to subsidize their military and government?
Who is unreliable here? Why isn't Germany getting their natural gas from the US?
Of course the EU doesn't like Trump. If somebody has been giving you free money for decades and all of a sudden somebody wants to put a stop to it or at least get something in return, of course they aren't going to like the new guy
This is all about German politicians who've been bought out by Russian interests trying to protect their pet project(s). Speaking as a German, the fact that Germany would rather deal with and be reliant on a country like Russia is, frankly, insane and incredibly shameful. It's as if Ukraine didn't happen, nor Russian interference of elections across the Western world. For all the bad that the US does, at least they don't invade and annex European countries, and try to undermine European politics.
Germany is very, very corrupt and extremely risk-averse at the higher levels of politics. Russia is very good at buying and enabling the right people to further their interests (point in case: ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder). That's pretty much all there really is to that. It's one of those cases where the root really is malicious intent, not stupidity.
Those articles are lying by omission, and so are you.
Trump was certainly looking at getting out of NATO, which he saw as an arrangement where the US increasingly foots the bill for protecting other members. He openly criticised European dependence on Russian oil and gas, and Germany in particular for not paying their fair share towards defence.
There's a fantastically awkward video [1] of him explaining all of this directly to NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg. Germany announced this week that it will do exactly what Trump said it should: massively increase military spending [2] and decrease its dependence on Russia for energy [3].
Who is more useful to Putin? Trump, who told Europe to get its ass in gear and treat Russia as a threat, or the stooges you support, whose selfishness and complacency emboldened Russia to carry out this invasion?
As far as I'm concerned, the Germans are about as trustworthy as Russia. They are currently closing the investigation around the Breitscheidplatz[1] terror attack, which has uncovered massive tampering with evidence and more open questions than answers. And let's not forget their history of false flag attacks.[2]
Most of you will likely disagree, based on their current public image vs. Russia's, but ask yourselves what the known facts are.
Germany has been lacking a coherent security strategy. They neglected the Bundeswehr for decades and in recent years doubled down on their dependency on Russian fossil fuel (one could argue this was a mutual interdependency as German companies were crucial for the Russian arms industry).
Apart from the far right/left everyone in Germany (that I know) is thankful for America's support in Eastern Europe. Most of these people had no goodwill towards the US military before this war - mainly due to the shameful campaigns in Afghanistan/Iraq. But they also realized that the German/Western European security 'strategy' regarding Russia was a big failure.
Germany has historically been very pro-Russia. Both as a form of peace work and because of scepticism towards the US. It has also been very pacifist, refusing to supply (also indirectly) any country involved in a war with arms - even Ukraine until Saturday. This war has changed everything about German foreign politics. Germany is now supplying an active war participant with weapons. It is increasing its military budget and buying drones. Energy security, including nuclear(!), is back on the agenda. In short, Russia's invasion has (temporarily?) ended pacifist rhetoric and policy in Germany.
My country is Germany, the party I voted for is in the government and I’m pretty happy with our current foreign policy and the person responsible for it. I fully support the ban on shipping military hardware to the zones of conflict and focus on diplomatic effort.
That said, there is no evidence that this military buildup will result in anything and all those parrot talks about invasion or false flag operations are based only on mind guessing and wild assumptions of Putin’s insanity. There is more plausible explanation of what is going on. To understand it, it is necessary to look at the Russian military doctrine, its history of diplomatic interactions with NATO and the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Something that most of American and British media are apparently too lazy to do (German media are trying hard to understand what’s really happening and to present a nuanced picture).
Not vouching for him, but Trump did alert the Germans about the risk of over relying on Russian energy [1]. He wanted Europe to become independent of Putin years before this crisis. He did not say these things in the most appropriate way, like everything he says, but it didn't seem like he wanted to weaken Europe before Russia, quite the opposite.
Trump warned them, and the German delegation laughed in his face. He claims he gave a gift of a white flag to Merkel to waive in surrender to the Russians after negotiations to block the Nord pipeline fell through.
But, Trump wasn't alone in thinking this way. In the 2012 election, Romney called Russia the USA's number 1 geopolitical foe, and Obama laughed it off.
Meanwhile, several high profile poisonings, siding with Assad in Syria, behind the scenes antagonising in Iran, etc. all made one thing abundantly clear: Putin is no friend of "Western liberal economic order", and the uneasy truce was not in any way guaranteed to last. If nothing else, putting all of your eggs in one basket and hoping he played nicely with your natural gas supply was the sort of foolishness that shouldn't be given positions of power.
And what about Crimea and previous Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 when Merkel was in power?
Calling this a “left” thing is really asinine when that’s just who happens to be in power at the time. Do I get to blame terrorism, record debt, and COVID-19 on the U.S. and European “right”?
I’m constantly surprised at the lack of critical reasoning skills when it comes to government or world events. Otherwise intelligent people just absolutely turn off their brain when it comes to this stuff.
You are probably correct that the war would not have happened. Merkel’s Germany would have stood by and refused even more adamantly the right of Ukraine to exist as a sovereign country. Likely it would just be part of Russia now with no war at all. In fact, that’s what Russia counted on while Putin has for years cozied up to Germany and convinced them to strategically rely on Russia to supply them with natural gas, so then they could hang a sword over the head of Germany while they start snapping up the territory and lives of other people.
Sadly you're correct, unfortunately too many European countries are run by people who have a personal vested interest in Russia. It's alarming how many German (ex)politicians have business relations and this isn't just confined to Germany. The German response to Russia is laughable, we are not going to certify a pipeline that was not certified and lets shut down more reactors so we can become more dependent on Russian gas which makes us politicians who work for Gazprom and other Russian companies richer. Don't think I am not including the USA, Wall St is sweating bullets hoping this all goes away so they can get back to licking Russia's balls.
It's easy to spot which governments are in Russia's pocket. They don't even try to hide it. Today the world can openly see who stands with freedom/Ukraine and who is in Russia's pocket.
It’s correct trump was very critical of Germany for their gas deals, but trump had a record of attacking Europe and nato at any chance he got. But He simultaneously praised and fawned over Putin and deferred to him so much that even trump’s own top advisers considered they may have dirt on him. The criticisms of Germany really seemed to stem out of his antipathy to Germany, just one of about 29countries in nato.
It doesn’t make sense to refer to that guy on Russia/nato when the only time he was right was when it happened to give him a way to criticize a country he hated, while turning around and fawning over the Russian leader when not talking about Germany.
It doesn’t make sense to bring up trump here unless one simply can’t get over trump. There’s plenty of others who are far more appropriate like romney who got made fun of for being right on Russia, not someone who showed open appreciation of Russia hacking their political opponents and regularly showed admiration and deference to Putin.
I don’t understand why Germany wasn’t livid when their leader literally went to work for Russian oil interests [1]. That seems like blatant corruption, doesn’t it?
If you want to bash german politicians for current situation, 100% guilt falls on Angela Merkel. Making
1) Germany ultra weak militarily, you really can't let intellectuals drive whole nations since they have 0 clue about realpolitik, warfare and all those ugly aspects of it, and currently bundeswehr is a pathetic underfunded joke with rotting helmets that even current russian army would roll over without breaking a sweat.
2) a massive push for critical fuel dependency on russia
3) never standing up to that murderer in any way, even as he was killing and invading Georgia and Ukraine
He played her and similar to her very efficiently. Of course its nothing compared to masterclass he pulled/will yet pull on Trump.
As somebody coming from cca eastern Europe, being enslaved by russian troops after their bloody invasion, western Europe is... to keep things ultra polite - ultra pussies. You simply don't grok how depraved and hardened to cruelty russian mind is, things like fair game are an insult. Also their incredible durability to withstand absolutely horrible treatment, just buckle up and continue. Western sanctions my ass, just make sure any good chips don't work for them somehow because they don't care for the rest.
This is the case when you are dealing with mobsters who kill and know only rule of stronger, and you come with your polite smile and handshakes and expect things like keeping their word or contracts. I don't even have such a problem with EU dumb naivety in the past, but what is shocking that they didn't wake up right after invasion and starting putting 10% of GDP into army, to see some effects in 5 years just in time when real stuff starts happening. Every single post-soviet country keeps issuing very strong warnings due to previous horrible expereiences with russian terror, but these are completely ignored on EU level. This is a major long term weakness that will not get unpunished.
Yeah, when SHTF its very easy to be ashamed to be from Europe, for quite a few generations.
I can’t speak as much to the situation in Europe aside from the obvious conflicts of interest for former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Aside from him, I don’t know where to attribute Germany’s fecklessness: it could just as easily be the same weak-kneed pacifism that led Germany to disarm themselves. (Also, I’d point out that, contra your narrative, both Scholtz and Schroeder are members of the center-left SPD and not any far right party.)
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