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"After all, it's the US who's providing security to most of the western world."

If I do what the bully tells me to do, he leaves me alone and attacks other people. That's not security, that's abuse.

Right, because if Germany decides to cut off ties with the US, the CIC is going to start a nice little tour in Europe, just like how the US blew up France after De Gaulle came to power.

Most of the western world and the US have extremely aligned interests when it comes to security. And most of it revolves around making sure that trade routes stay open, and also making sure that instability doesn't end up messing with trade.

If you work hard enough you can make anyone appear to be a victim, but that is not productive work.

> It's the US who's providing security to most of the western world. Who's supposed to protect us from Putin? The NATO?

Are you sure Europe couldn't manage its security by itself?

I mean, while keeping strong relations and cooperation directly with the US and inside NATO I don't understand why European countries wouldn't be able to defend themselves especially if we started thinking about a stronger cooperation between our defence systems or even a unique European army instead of keeping one for every country.

http://media.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2011/05/14...

Europe isn't financially situated, nor does it seem to have the social stomach for it.

Of course, Europe has a GDP that's greater than the US.

We just don't spend it on an imperial posture and wars of aggression.

No doubt. Your freedom to avoid doing so rests (arguably) on the fact that US picks up the tab for all that posturing on your behalf.

A common misconception.

There are no European security interests in invading mid-eastern or latin-american countries, propping up dictators and toppling democratic governments in these regions and creating/financing the next wave of "terrorists", so that tab is all yours.

Furthermore, there is no "on your behalf" for the troops stationed in Europe. While some would argue that these are occupying forces in all but name, it's really in many cases just a convenient staging area for operations in the middle east.

In addition, and this tends to be forgotten, the nuclear shield is not a sign of generosity, but simply a tool to maintain US nuclear supremacy, by trading protection under the shield for a guarantee that those nuclear-capable countries under the shield don't, in fact, go nuclear.

US troops are stationed in those countries as assurance, human shields so to speak: if those countries are hit with nuclear strikes, US troops will die, ensuring a US retaliatory response.

>After all, USA is the biggest partner of the EU/Germany.

The US is not just Germanys' biggest partner - it controls Germanys' sovereignty. The German intelligence services are all run from Washington. When Merkel says 'it does not matter', its because its really not relevant that America is spying on Germany: its allowed to. Germany lost WW2, and has not had a restoration of the sovereignty of its intelligence services in its constitution. That part is still held by the occupying power.

Didn't the 4+2 treaties restore full sovereignty?

On paper. But the 2+4 treaty is mostly Soviets leave, NATO stays and expands.

So what you are actually saying is, yes, Germany has full sovereignty.

Please don’t spread this bullshit. There is (mostly) mutually beneficial strong cooperation with a power-differential. That’s all. Stop spinning your dumb conspiracy theories.

How about you stop raging about things I didn't say?

Germany does not have full sovereignty and won't, ever, until a Peace Treaty is signed and ratified. America won't allow that to happen because then it'd have to pull out all of its troops - and in case you didn't know, Germany is full of American troops and other military-industrial resources.

Germany is, at most, a puppet state - a model for what America had hoped to pull off in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on ..

My question is: If Germany is still occupied, what is it that it can not do?

Stand up to the shit the NSA is doing. Eject those fucking bastards who operate the NSA listening posts in Germany.

Seriously, everyone who works for the NSA has lost all my respect. You're undermining civil rights for everyone including yourself.

You do understand the difference between power differentials combined with different priorities and coercion by force?

Similar to the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force_in_the...) and a long list of other countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military...).

Not fully valid until a Peace Treaty is signed (thus ending the war). The US is intentionally not allowing Germany to pursue such things so that it can maintain its bases on Germany without fuss. Also, I reiterate: the US runs Germanys' intelligence services.

How do I recognize a Peace Treaty when I see one?

wondering why your comment is down-voted. The reaction of German politicians (CDU and SPD) underlines your point: Since the Snowden leaks they keep quite and hope it passes, because they know they cannot do anything against it (they are in the same boat) ... If Germany were a partner to US, it would make a fuzz about it.

Another hint about the sovereignty: there are still army bases on German ground, from which drones are controlled and people are killed ...

As a German I'm really glad about that. Germany is still not capable to act on its own. We're lucky the US are willing to hold us up while taking all the PR flak.

The Americentrism on Hacker news is just insane. Europe doesn't need America to protect Europe from Russia. The reason why Europeans dislike the USA has pretty much stayed the same since long: The aggressive foreign politic and parts of the culture (you'll find a translation of american conditions as a set expression in almost all languages here). Nothing much changed.

The Baltic States would like to disagree with you. France is selling Mistral warships to Russia, and a large part of Europe depends on Russia's natural gas. The local population on the border with Russia, including Poland, does not feel that Europe alone can protect them.

  After all, USA is the biggest partner of the EU/Germany. 
  Germany can't afford a dent in the relationship with the 
  US.

The problem with "They're assholes but we'll let them do what they like because we need them" is America isn't the only country Germany needs. Germany also imports a lot of oil and natural gas from Russia, for example. And lots of electronics and manufactured goods from China.

The thing is that Russia and China are not heavily spying on Germany, despite the fact, that they don't even have such close relationships as US and Germany [before]

Lol. Of course they are, but German people are not very smart. They're upset their allies spy on them for their own protection, but if their enemies do that it's normal and not even a reason to cool relationships!

Despite? :) Americans can freely spy in Germany because of the close relationship. In fact, thanks to our close relationship, we hand our data over for free in many cases (SWIFT, zomg!).

If it not "hurt" anybody, where is than the problem that they spy the US-Citizens too?

Sorry, I meant /this/ spying incident. The minster of the interior already said that the documents didn't really have anything important in it. The guys received ~$25k for the documents. It's not a huge deal actually. It was very very stupid of the American to do this and if I were Obama I'd be mad at the NSA. Why? Because the risk was big but the reward was tiny. You didn't gain much from the documents, yet you now have another huge dent in your relations (again!) and it's starting to piss of German politians & Germans.

America doesn't realize it fully yet, but it's making itself very unpopular in the last 5 years and this will be a huge problem in the future when all that's left is UK, Mexico & Canada (Maybe India) as your friends.

How much time you wasted reading spiegel... i can't imagine. You go back to the cold war era as if nothing happend the last 20 years and blather about meaningless surveys and feel gooderies. Very long message without any content.

She could use the situation as a leverage to push on privacy issues with US companies. Which may be obsolete with TTIP in future. So it wouldn't be a huge loss.

> America: Watch out how far you take the bullying

America has enough power and influence to shut down any possible discontent - both within the country and of their minion states in Europe. It's been ruling over EU for many decades now and knows well how to handle "unpopular opinions".