Angela Merkel has served formal notice that she will lead the German wandering away from the American alliance.
.. The Soviet Union offered to withdraw the troops that then occupied eastern Germany and to end its rule over the occupied zone. Germany would be reunited under a constitution that allowed the country freedom to choose its own social system. Germany would even be allowed to rebuild its military, and all Germans except those convicted of war crimes would regain their political rights. In return, the Allied troops in western Germany would also be withdrawn—and reunited Germany would be forbidden to join the new NATO alliance.
.. Again and again through the Cold War they would probe for ways to split Germany from the West, and especially from the United States. They probably came closest in the early 1980s, when millions of Germans marched in the streets against NATO nuclear missile deployments
.. it was the George W. Bush-Gerhard Schroeder split over the Iraq war in 2003 that definitively ended German deference to American leadership.
.. Merkel ignored Obama’s pleas to reflate the German economy after the financial crisis of 2008 and the euro crisis of 2010. The Snowden revelations—including exaggerated claims that the United States had tapped Merkel’s ubiquitous personal cellphone—poisoned the mood even more deeply.
.. Since the war, German politics has been founded on two fundamental commitments: to liberalism at home; to Atlanticism abroad.
.. So long as the Germans most hostile to the U.S. alliance espoused various shades of fascism and communism, then the mighty German middle would cling determinedly to the U.S. alliance as a bulwark of stability and liberalism.
.. Polls show that German confidence in the United States, already lowered under Obama, has collapsed under Trump to a level barely better than Putin’s Russia.
.. Join those words to Trump’s ostentatious refusal to endorse NATO’s famous Article 5, the guarantee of mutual defense, at the NATO summit, and it’s hard to imagine that the messaging of Trump’s first trip could have been more perfect for Vladimir Putin if he’d written the script himself.
e Following Trump’s trip, Merkel says Europe can’t rely on U.S. anymore
saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”
.. Merkel told a packed Bavarian beer hall rally that the days when Europe could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”
.. it was a clear repudiation of Trump’s tough few days with European leaders, even as she held back from mentioning the U.S. president by name. On Thursday, Trump had tough words for German trade behind closed doors. Hours later, he blasted European leaders at NATO for failing to spend enough on defense, while holding back from offering an unconditional guarantee for European security.
.. Trump – who returned from his nine-day international trip on Saturday – had a different take.
“Just returned from Europe. Trip was a great success for America. Hard work but big results!” Trump wrote on Sunday
.. Trump was far more solicitous toward the autocratic king of Saudi Arabia earlier in the week, telling him and other leaders of Muslim-majority countries – many of them not democratically elected – that he was not “here to lecture.” Days later in Brussels he offered a scathing assessment of Washington’s closest allies, saying they were being “unfair” to American taxpayers.
.. “The belief in shared values has been shattered by the Trump administration,” said Stephan Bierling
.. Merkel has expressed willingness to jolt her nation’s military spending upwards, a first step both to answering American criticism that it falls far short of NATO pledges and to lessening its dependence on the U.S. security blanket. Germany hiked its military spending by $2.2 billion this year, to $41 billion, but it remains far from being able to stand on its own militarily.
Shields and Brooks on Trump’s first trip, press bashing in Montana
Brooks: Under Trump, character doesn’t matter. We are nice to Saudi Arabia and mean to Germany and France. Values don’t matter.
Mark Shields: The budget is mean-spirited and dishonest
Brooks: Food Stamps have risen because more people are poor.
It also hurts the young and helps the old.
Shields: Medicaid is being cut by one half. Foodstamps cut by one quarter.
here is not a single house member who regrets voting against it.
Trump set the tone by singling out the press. Joe ___ said “You lie” and then raised $1,000.000
Brooks: In bodyslamming a reporter, at least he apologized. That’s a step up from what we’ve seen.
How Will Germany Respond to Emmanuel Macron?
In recent years the alliance between France and Germany has fallen into disrepair. German policy-makers have ceased to respect the French point of view, because of the weakness of both the French economy and of its outgoing president.
.. Germany wants more fiscal discipline and new mechanisms to make countries like France and Italy engage in painful structural economic reform, while France wants common instruments such as ‘eurobonds’ and steps towards a transfer union.
.. lowering the state’s share of economic output (currently 55 per cent of GDP)
.. Those close to Angela Merkel and finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble doubt that Macron will achieve a great deal in the short term. These Christian Democrats are wary of his Keynesian thinking
.. Yet the conservatism of Germany’s voters and politicians makes it unlikely that Macron will get very far in redesigning eurozone governance, at least in the short term.