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Trump at NATO: “Germany Is a Captive of Russia”
President Donald Trump, in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, blasted Germany for making a pipeline deal with Russia for energy, saying, “we’re going to have to do something because we’re not going to put up with it. We can’t put up with it. And it’s inappropriate. So, we have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that being paid to the country that we’re supposed to be protecting you against.”
Published in General
We do if the Uniparty has anything to say about it.
Virtue signaling is much more fun when it’s paid for by OPM.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2017&locations=DE-US-FR-GB&start=1960
Interesting that Trump exaggerates about Germany as “captive” I’m sure that will appall them and there will be much discussion. Had he said “ might be influenced” would not have resonated.
Further, we get to consider how much a country might really be influenced by Russia.
He’s also calling out the hypocrisy. Russia is supposed to be such a threat, but Germany while not paying up, is dealing with Russia and even worse, deliberately becoming dependent on them. I love that he referenced tax payers!
Also, he’s flooding the zone for the media. They can’t multitask and craft narratives simultaneously. They don’t have time. So less time to demonize Kavanaugh etc.
Its not for nothing when I made my game V4: The Coming War in Europe, the assumption is that Germany declares Neutrality as Russia invades western Europe.
They lost their minds after Fukushima. Last time I was in Germany I was appalled at all the stupid windmills. They’re worthless and ugly as hell.
Jens Stoltenberg, full of Euroblather didn’t come off too well. This reminded me of an old show, I was half-expecting the last words to be “Jens, you’re a nice man, but you’re fired”
Also Jens should steer clear of using Hillary’s campaign slogan, “stronger together”.
There is PSH (a non-CoC compatible Kim DuToit coinage) about Trump scheming to abolish NATO. NATO is at its core, a military alliance.
If Germany (looking at its spending on its own military and its arrears to NATO) were to put its mouth where its money is, Germany would be regarded as having long voted to abolish NATO.
Here’s a discussion of NATO and its reach:
https://audioboom.com/posts/6927789-tales-of-the-new-cold-war-nato-s-fears-1-of-2-on-the-eve-of-the-trump-putin-summit-stephen-f-cohen-nyu-princeton-eastwestaccord-com
NATO may be a military alliance, but it’s also a very large corporation and what you’re reading is PR put out by NATO to keep its market share.
Why? He’s in bed with her (politically and economically only. I hope. All the perfumes of Arabia won’t sweeten her little hand.)
It’s a wealth transfer pure and simple, and thanks DJT for highlighting this issue. If Germany is going to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to invade, they are already undermining NATO horribly. Trump hasn’t gone there yet, but he doesn’t have to.
I have this issue regarding my daughter. Already we are paying part of her tuition and all of her rent in NYC. Her roommate comes from a well-to-do family and the visiting parent took our daughter out to nice dinners several times. Then the roommate ( a lovely girl) visits us and the wife makes reservations at the most expensive restaurant in Princeton. Why are we going there, I ask? That’s when I discover this is a kind of reciprocation. But the daughter is living the high life as a result and our bank account suffers.
If you watch the live feed on you tube, there’s a camera at the cocktail party. Fascinating. Trump is chatting with Merkle now and Melania is involved in the confab too.
Keep a Ricochet post thread on topic? Hahahahahaha!
I’ve tried, it doesn’t work . . .
What’s happening to Germany today was foreshadowed in the Norwegian TV series Okkupert (Occupied) in which a Green Norwegian government that has rejected fossil fuels in place of renewables. The EU allows the Norwegian government to be gradually taken over by Russia to solve their energy problem. The recently-energy-independent US withdraws from NATO.
Russia was not happy about the series. The truth hurts, eh? Now, just substitute Germany for Norway and you’re good to go. Life imitates art. Occupied (the Norwegian TV series, not the German reality) is streaming on Netflix. There are those who recommend watching it. They might be on to something.
N.B.: This series was produced in 2015, well before Mr. Trump arrived on the scene.
Germany dumps nuclear power, doesn’t meet its NATO defense obligation, opens its borders to an army of Muslim rapists . . . yeah, let Germany defend itself – if it can.
< devil’s advocate mode = on >
During the Cold War, lots of countries did business with the Soviet Union. Canada, for example, sold a whack-load of wheat to the USSR. Was that also a betrayal of the NATO treaty?
One of the best ways to prevent a country from attacking you is to engage in honest trade with that country.
< devil’s advocate mode = off >
That being said, President Trump still has a point about Germany’s failure to pony up when it comes to defense spending. Just because you trade with a country it doesn’t necessarily follow that you shouldn’t also be prepared to defend yourself militarily against that country.
The US funds NATO. NATO defends the EU. Germany runs the EU. Will Russia run Germany? And by extension the EU.
Due in large part to the collectivization of agriculture, the wheat was existentially necessary to the USSR; without it people would have starved. The sale was economically beneficial to Canada. Had there been a reliable Communist source, I have no doubt that the USSR would have purchased the wheat there.
Due to its green energy debacle, buying natural gas is now existentially necessary for Germany. I think the green energy policy was adopted much more enthusiastically by Germans than collectivization was by Russians. Haven’t the Russians have been major backers of green energy activists in the US? Germany, too I bet.
Yes, but two differences. We were selling to them, so they were dependent. And as Trump says, energy is a special case.
You should probably watch the video. This point comes up and the president answers it.
This is another issue where I agree with the president’s general principle if not the rhetoric. Russia is more than willing to use it’s leverage over other nations with it’s energy output. Especially products that require lots of infrastructure to transport (pipelines) that cannot be easily replaced by a competing source can put Germany at Russia’s mercy. Eight percent of a nation’s energy supply (Russia’s 75% share of the 11% piece of energy pie from natural gas), seems like a big enough share to do some damage.
I don’t know though if getting Europe to boost it’s military is really in our long-term national interests. Sure it isn’t *fair*, but maybe having a bunch of European standing armies isn’t what is needed to face the threats we have today. Nations that have immediate need of defense against threats will increase spending to their military. Ask Ukraine. We want Germany, who is willing to put itself under Kremlin influence, to ALSO build up it’s military?
No disrespect to anyone, but I’ve been getting more and more bothered by our culture of expecting or being satisfied with summaries or reports.
My daughter looks at her Instagram account during a family movie. I said to her, “people cut these films down to bare minimum of time and carefully design shots so we can see reactions or an object in the foreground or background, etc, and you can’t possibly be getting the message, even looking away for a few seconds”.
In sports, people enter a room and ask “ who’s winning?” As though that knowledge suffices for something.
But worst is news. We think it’s too much time to watch a press conference a speech or an 8 minute clip like this and instead rely on some newsreader and his 26 year-old producer chick to cut out a few seconds of it and tell us what occurred along with their analysis.
Since I’m off watching the MSM and watching raw news like the clip above instead, I haven’t been spending that much more time anyway, and I have seen the event as is, untainted.
This surrendering has resulted in the great divide regarding Trump especially.
Amen. Not to mention we now get our history just as we accept our news. Recent discussions about Clinton-Lewinsky and WWII internment camps here had me similarly “bothered.”
It’s not clear to me that Trump understands how energy markets work.
Natural gas is undeniably more expensive to transport than petroleum and the pipeline drastically reduces those transportation costs to parts of Western Europe, but absent the pipeline, Russia would simply liquefy and sell “liquefied natural gas” (LNG) on the world market instead of through its pipeline where it would still be getting “billions” from Western Europe. In fact, since LNG sells for much more than uncompressed gas, Russia would actually get more money if it sold its natural gas as LNG versus putting it in a pipeline.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-lng/russia-to-boost-presence-on-global-lng-market-helped-by-lower-costs-idUSKCN1IX4FI
It seems to me that Trump is making the same mistake that lefties in North America made over Keystone pipeline, i.e., assuming that absent a pipeline, the hydrocarbons will just sit there rather than simply being transported to market via a different method.
(Full Disclosure, for a while in the early 2000s, I worked tangentially on the privatization of Slovak gas pipeline company.)
I’ve thought the same thing in many instances. For a supposed super negotiator he doesn’t use that ploy. On the other hand who fears our Congress? So he’s got to be the bad cop and send others out but then there’s no spot light or headline. On the other hand he uses those spot lights effectively. OK, I admit I don’t under stand the guy, but it’s working. If our establishment doesn’t know what to make of him, think of poor EU. Go Trump!
All good points A-Squared. Trump often overemphasizes the money aspects of things, and even with my limited knowledge I knew Russia would get those billions elsewhere.
But the dependency problem remains, and the very idea that we are supposed to be defending Germany from this “threat” while Germany is making massive energy trade deals ( after they’ve hollowed out as virtuous greenies – lecturing us )with this “threat”, and stiffing us with the defense bill, is a bit much. All this while they’ve erected trade barriers for themselves, opened their borders, and trashed the USA continually.
This is inconvenient for them because they’ve over-promised and over-committed their resources and will have to deal with another reality point.
Other than having nukes, I don’t think Russia is such a threat and I’m beginning to believe the deep state have their own game they are playing making Russia into some monster boogeyman for purposes of manipulation and leverage.
Foreign dictators might not be the only ones who need their people to focus on evil outsiders. The way the media has been going on about Russia makes me quite suspicious.
It’s not clear to me that NATO’s primary current role is to protect Germany against Russia. It would be a massive stretch to say that modern Russia is a military threat to Western Europe and it’s worth pointing out that the only time in the history of NATO that the mutual self-defense clause was invoked in September 2001, after America was attacked.
It is all well and good to say that Germany should live up to its treaty obligation under NATO, but if I had to guess, I would say that in the last 15 years, Germany has spent more money assisting in America’s defense in places like Afghanistan and Iraq than America has spent assisting in Germany’s defense. I would be very curious to see the numbers.
As usual, I’m not a fan of the rhetoric here but the actual point he’s trying to make is sound. If his intent is to get Germany to spend more on defense then I applaud his efforts. Having watched the video though, I can’t figure out how attacking the pipeline achieves that. Germany needs the gas, Russia is the biggest supplier in Europe, the gas will get to Germany somehow. Making it cheaper seems to be a good thing for all involved and might make it easier to Germany to spend more on its defense obligations.
Is this a case of Trump being correct overall but aiming at the wrong target?
Shhh…do not tell Claire about this thread
Shamelessly stolen from Ace of Spades home page:
Germany’s Air Force Is Dying a Slow Death
My recommendation? Poland should invade, and get the Czechs to join them.
I didn’t take his primary point to be that Germany should spend more on defense, especially since he seemed to fly off the handle after being told they were doing just that. He seemed to be attacking buying gas from Russia.
To what end though? What is his goal at this summit? He was in a huff during the G7 because Russia wasn’t included and now he’s angry at Germany because they buy natural gas from the continents biggest producer. Does he want to isolate Russia or welcome them into the community of nations? Does he want to shore up NATO or blow it up? I applaud him if this is directed at getting partners to live up to their treaty obligations, but if this is directed at something else then I either can’t see it or am at a loss as to why he brings it up now.