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Europe, Choosing to Stand on Its Own Two Feet?
From a report on Yahoo on remarks that German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivered earlier this weekend:
“The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany.
“We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she added.
Europe, ceasing to behave like a free rider? The Chancellor herself may view her speech as an act of defiance, but doesn’t it actually validate the Trump administration’s European policy?
Published in General
You do know how to ask questions, sir.
It does, and it’s about time someone forced the issue. I was an exchange student in Germany in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and I was there to see and hear the disdain expressed toward candidate and President Reagan. Ever since that time, I’ve been a big proponent of letting Europeans pull their own weight. I grew up in the southern Appalachians, and the site of the Germans I saw – who by every standard appeared wealthier and lavished with far more social benefits than my neighbors back home – deriding not just the American president but Americans themselves, turned me forever against providing for their defense. The same hatred they had for Reagan now is targeted at Trump.
They view climate change as a more important issue than defense. Fine, let them pay for both and let us decide for ourselves what our priorities are.
Well, yes it does. That is exactly what Trump and, for that matter, every President for the last 30 years has been asking of Europe. The difference is Trump is the only one they believe. So threaten away Ms Merkel, I wish you the best. However, if you do not get your immigration policy under control, there will be no Europe left to defend.
Other European opinions may vary:
“We have not opened Europe for refugees — Ms. Merkel has. And it is Ms. Merkel and Germany that have to bear the consequences, not Poland.”
When you have to brag about paying your own bills, that’s a pretty low bar of achievement. And let’s note that she hasn’t actually paid anything yet. Right now, it’s just so much rally-chatter.
Well said.
Just to add to my post above …
Due primarily to gas-fired electricity generation provided by fracking and continued reliance on nuclear, we’ve lowered our CO2 emissions, while at the same time the Germans have been shutting down their nuclear program post-Fukushima and attempting to rely on wind and solar. But, to augment those, they’re also on a coal-fired-power plant building spree and burning the dirty lignite coal they have in abundance. Some of their plants are among the largest point-sources of CO2 emissions in the world.
If they truly are serious about CO2 emissions, they should be building nuclear plants, not shutting them down. Until then, Trump should not take them seriously about climate change and he should ignore their climate treaties, which are more designed to hobble US industry than solve any perceived problem.
https://twitter.com/jkirchick/status/868946897502863362
Somebody’s going to have a lot of Photoshop fun with that pose and the “Munich beer hall” reference.
On the other hand, there’s this:
Europe as we know it may not have any feet to stand on in the future. As George Weigel writes, “Catholic Lite” is contributing to Europe’s demographic suicide. I was stunned when I read that all the European leaders of the G7 are childless (Germany’s Angela Merkel, Great Britain’s Theresa May, Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni, and France’s Emmanuel Macron, as well as Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and the prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel). They have taken their fate into their own hands and they have given up. Without children, they have no hope. As Douglas Murray said on the most recent Delingpole podcast, Europe has a desire to not know what the problem is.
The Church in Europe, led by Pope Francis and his progressives buddies Kaspar, Marx, Daneels, etc., etc. are helping this destruction. The disastrous Amoris Laetitia and it’s talk of a false sense of mercy is so much rubbish. The progressives are winning in the Church in Europe, and like progressives everywhere, they will destroy all that is good.
At Fatima in 1917, Our Lady prophesied (at Guadalupe and Lourdes she exhorted), and one of her prophecies as related by Sister Lucia, was that the final battle between Satan and the Church would be over marriage and the family. This is playing out in Europe today.
Bill Kristol is rendering himself more irrelevant by the day.
How long will it be before Merkel is dunning her fellow EU members to cough up their 2%?
The problem of Bill Kristol’s commentary in the last 6 months is that it is merely “if Trump did it, it is bad”.
Shadi Hamid (who I’d recommend having on the podcast sometime) had this to say:
Seems like this mess comments are geared towards a stronger more autonomous Europe – be careful what you wish for in other words Brexiters.
I sometimes wonder which universe Bill Kristol lives in. If anyone else had said it, he would have cheered. It’s so disappointing how he persists in dissing Trump, even when he does the right thing.
I don’t know how true this is. Remember that Bill is one of the foremost neoconservatives around – the projection of American power abroad really is one of his core issues. He could see this as America taking a step back in world affairs.
Based on things that Kristol has said for several months, and you know I’m not a big Trump fan, I see little indication that he is trying to be the least bit objective about anything Trump does.
No doubt, but I don’t think he would be cheering this development had another President been behind it. A Europe which goes it alone with less American influence is just antithetical to his beliefs.
The question is, will we be willing to spend blood and treasure to bail Europe out a third time?
I don’t think Trump was asking them to go it alone, and I don’t think Merkel was really suggesting that. I think that we are all partners, and we still have a lot of influence. It’s time they started acting like partners.
Yes. Yes. And YES.
I usually read the entire thread here before commenting,
But I believe you have encapsulated my views entirely.
Here and forever.
If not, then I plead wine-abled.
Oh my God, man (or woman), give it a rest,
You are so ‘old school’.
Please, please stop using logic.
That will not do.
That will not do at all.
Logic has no place in this ‘modern’ world.
Wow. That is truly stunning. What you just wrote would have been headlines in the ‘New York Times’ of old. You know, the ‘Paper Of Record’, who was out for news, instead of forsaking news to publish what the ‘New York Elite’ want you to follow. Like ‘Big Brother’ in 1984. (Please read that novel again.)
Imagine how cool it is to be on the good side. And have no doubt that you are right. But, at the same time, to have no skin in the game.
That is the European elite.
Every one of my family who is leftist (do not use liberal, as a friend here has said) have no children. (One of them had and could have had Martin Short’s niece, but enough said there.) And every conservative in my family, has a stable family and their kid’s are on to a great life.
If I didn’t have kids myself then honestly who cares what’s going on from now on. My boy and girl mean the world to me. It’s why I vote the way I do. I want them better than I had.
In fact, only people who have kids should be able to vote.
What the heck do the other people care about the future?
Angela Merkel “completely depends” on Russian gas. That is a disgrace that maybe the likes of Bill Kristol could deign to notice.
Because we’re pulling out of a climate deal that Obama agreed to without securing Congressional approval?
I think Trump is generally running an incompetent presidency but I heartily applaud his stance on European freeloaders.
Food for thought:
“Only in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in eastern Ukraine, did NATO leaders meeting in Wales agree to the 2 percent standard, and even then they urged members to “move toward” that goal by 2024, still seven years away.
Gary J. Schmitt, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Trump was putting it in layman’s terms and “doesn’t care whether it’s technically accurate.”
But Mr. Schmitt identified two problems: “One, because it’s not technically correct, it is too easily dismissed by the very folks he wants to put pressure on. Two, and more important, it tends to bury the point that we’re invested in European security for our own strategic reasons.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/world/europe/nato-trump-spending.html?_r=1
Also – and I believe I heard this on a Ricochet podcast (maybe Ricochet or Need to Know, possibly Commentary – someone help me out): There are other reasons why many European countries don’t hit that 2%. Some of it has to do with how much we pay for long-term costs of healthcare for veterans going back to Vietnam and after having ramped up for two recent wars. Some of those Euro countries don’t count their healthcare costs in military spending. And, for a multitude of reasons, we spend a boatload on capital projects/R&D etc, and Europe offers troops. Comparative advantage of sorts.
Russia is our ally now and Putin is a strong leader.
I feel like strong leaders wouldn’t need to have political opponents jailed or murdered. See: Everything Nordlinger has written or discussed on Putin.
A smaller and poorer Germany fielded a modern military force of almost 500,000 men in the 1970s and 80s. Many of their weapons, Leo II tanks, Tornado fighters, multiple rocket launchers were equal to or better than their American equivalents.
Since 1985, German GDP has increased by $2.5 trillion. Population by 5 million. Defense spending has fallen from 2.5% of GDP to 1.2%.
Accounting identities are a red herring. One third of the German helo fleet is grounded for lack of parts. It takes an effort by the entire Bundeswehr to field one brigade sized unit in Afghanistan. The Germans made a choice to live off the fat of the land and now the bill is coming due.