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Comment by throwaway123199 | Hacker News Reader

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Once Azerbaijan starts up their wars again though, all the pipelines are presumably going away, so even though the Ukrainians have obviously screwed you, it's far from certain they'll really gain that much.

Germany really should have anticipated this sort of thing happening sooner or later, but German politicians chose instead to bury their heads in the sand by buying into the whole "end of history" narrative. Making their economy so dependent on buying energy from Russia is only one manifestation of this. Another has been allowing their military to atrophy, to the point where they can no longer pull their own weight in NATO to present a credible deterrence to Russian aggression. Germany is lucky to be friendly with so many other nations that aren't run by such foolish people; Poland, Sweden, etc. At the same time, Germany is now in an uncomfortable position with America because of Germany's own poor planning.

Isn't that the whole point of nato? Keeping germany down and russia out?

The last time someone messed with them so hard, they elected that austrian painter dude, who then killed hitler in the end... and now EU is wondering, why the germans are turning towards AfD.

No, the point of NATO was/is to keep the Soviets/Russians from trying to invade. Remilitarization of West Germany happened very quickly after the end of WWII and only after the fall of the Soviet Union and German Reunification did Germany seem to conclude that history was over and lost their vigilance.

This was literally a quote by a nato secretary general

https://www.nato.int/acad/conf/future95/rodman.htm

> Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reportedly observed that the purpose of the Alliance was to keep the Americans in Europe, the Russians out, and the Germans down.

Ah, the habit of reducing geopolitics to one-liners. Germany has, of course, benefitted massively from NATO both before and after reunification.

Worth noting that the quote must have predated the EU and all its predecessors, as well as the Euro.

At the same time, one of the main concerns of at least US foreign policy has been to keep a truce between Germany and Russia from happening, because that would be one of the few constellations that could upset the European power balance.

And yes, that seems absurd, and no, I don't want this nor can I see it succeed in any way, but I also think it would definitely be an upset.

> At the same time, one of the main concerns of at least US foreign policy has been to keep a truce between Germany and Russia from happening, because that would be one of the few constellations that could upset the European power balance.

Well yeah... german industry + russian raw materials and energy sources would mean a big problem to american industry... so yeah... to turn it back into a one liner, they managed to keep germany down and russia out.

And now, more and more germans feel betrayed and are looking at an alternative (could be written in uppercase too).

I said the European power balance, not the global one. You misunderstood again.

I also wouldn't say that Germans feel betrayed. Quite the opposite, they instead think it's beneficial to betray their allies. Playing both sides, much like Hungary and Turkey.

so... thank you, NATO?

That was his observation, i.e. his opinion and not the official policy, 70 years ago.

I imagine it might have been part of the strategic thinking at that time, but that has apparently changed quite quickly. By the 1970s, Bundeswehr was the strongest western European army, West German economy living its golden years. (it's quite astonishing, but towards the end of the Cold War, West German economy was bigger than that of Soviet Union with 1/6th of the population)

In my opinion statements like that are mostly a sop to the French and other formerly Nazi-occupied peoples, who were not happy that the de-Nazification process was largely abandoned after only a few years and most war-time German military and civilian officials were given blanket amnesties and used to rapidly rebuild the new West German state and military.

It's a fact that West Germany was rearmed after WWII at about the same time denazification policies were revoked, maintained considerable military power through the Cold War, and effectively disarmed itself through its own political processes following Reunification.

that hurts

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