Yet again, this seems to confirm that whatever problems the US has, as bad as those seem, are worse overseas even in Western countries. Higher inflation, more unrest, higher unemployment, weaker growth, worse stock market returns, etc.
Even if inflation or unemployment get worse, it's a whole different deal for the average citizen to deal with those when you have socialized healthcare or unemployment benefits.
There was a big to do among our NATO allies about ramping up their own spending in response to the previous President threatening to pull out of NATO. They want those troops there, under NATO command and especially lately.
The IRA and NS2 sabotage were really bad for Germany. But what are they gonna do about it?
https://www.politico.eu/article/france-and-germany-find-grou...
And what's that about US troops preventing a nationalist coup? That sounds like an insane conspiracy theory.
We're not an occupied nation. There are 35,000 US troops in Germany. Compare that with 180,000-250,000 German troops (depending on how you count them).
And the NS2 sabotage is pretty much irrelevant. No gas has ever flown through that pipe, and it was exceedingly unlikely to ever happen after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I'm genuinely curious since you seem to know a lot about German national governance.
There is one event, if you believe the reports. And that was Germany allegedly making US deliveries of main battle tanks a requirements to agree to Leopard 2 deliveries to Ukraine. That was not something the US wanted to do at that point, though obviously it also wasn't something they disagreed with entirely.
And we haven't even brought up FM Baerbock and where her allegiance lies (the Washington-based Atlantic Council said she was "in lockstep" with them).
Regarding the German tanks, it says everything that even the Scholz-Baerbock regime was reluctant to send them. If it was truly in Germany's national security interest, it would be a no-brainer. But it's not about national security, it's about politics and Washington's interests in the region.
So there's clearly a strong case for Germany not really being sovereign. When I ask you to make the opposing argument, you evade.
You are making a very extreme and frankly just plain insulting statement here by disputing our sovereignty.
I thoight you people moved on from blaming her to blame Habeck for everything by now...
Also nice, that everyone ignores the fact NATO is an alliance, and having one country moving alone woupd be really bad in a time showing strength and unity is paramount.
We don't know if the German government knows who did this. So I don't think we can draw any conclusions from the lack of action here, we simply do not have enough information.
What are you talking about? Western companies literally own half of NS2.
>no gas ever has flown through it and none would have almost certainly even if it were still fully intact (one strand is undamaged)
I wonder if intentionally delayed certification of the pipeline by Germany has anything to do with "no gas ever has flown". The point is: NS1 + NS2 was a constant temptation for Germany and blowing it has removed the "wrong" incentive.
By the way, nobody wanted NS2 by the time it was technologocally ready. Funny enough, if Trump wouldn't have been president a deal for CNG anf LNG would have been had a lot easier and earlier.
I call BS. Not only have they invested a significant amount of money into it, they also sell gas to Europe through Ukraine even today. I think they would like to have working pipelines which do not cross any intermediate states, even in offline state.
I’m not saying it doesn’t put us in an advantageous position if it came down to war with Germany or France, but it does matter that we handle trade disputes and NATO as separate matters, and it isn’t as if EU has exactly been kind to American tech companies lately given with each passing year they pass new onerous legislation that mostly affects foreign tech companies more than it affects their own domestic industry because their own home grown tech industry wasn’t worth much before we took any protectionist measures.
Right now we are guests in the country with our shields and spears pointed in the direction of the East because we have overlapping interests in defending their nations with their present governments as they are against the threat of Russia. The reality on the ground now outweighs an incidental hypothetical that would be a repeat of a hundred years ago. If our presence dissuades a second rise of Nazism, that’s probably as much to Germany’s benefit as it is ours, but the market disputes are between the EU and USA, not European NATO and North American NATO and while we’re there as guests and not belligerents, we’re there to defend Germany, not impugn its sovereignty.
That even includes ensuring they have the freedom to pass screwball legislation that screws with our tech companies and moves the needle closer to re-evaluating their European operations as a priority.
I'm not hearing any Europeans outside of Russia chime in to say they would in fact prefer the opposite outcome or an inverse set of priorities where we give them better access to American steel, aluminum, aircraft and food markets but dissolve NATO and pull out of their respective countries. It's a complicated series of military, trade, diplomatic and personal relationships with both profits and losses on both sides of the Atlantic, but on balance is still beneficial for Americans and Europeans.
In case that someone is genuinely confused: Poland put quite significant effort into using far-away and much more reasonable and friendly USA to decrease risk of invasion of nearby, brutal and evil Russia.
Main leverage that USA has in Poland is risk of *withdrawing* military support.
Because getting invaded by Russia is extremely bad, war worse than average invasion results.
Also do you think US would not remove their troops if the host countries actually wanted to?
The biggest actual difference isn’t US troops stationed in NATO countries but rather the extent of the US as a global reserve currency and the power of the petrodollar. The concerns over these are well-founded as the powers that be have willingly traded the latter in exchange for upping the US’ position in the current brinksmanship with Russia, when Russia was never the economic juggernaut to be reckoned with and certainly not worth giving up those cards for.
[0] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/.INX:INDEXSP?window=5Y