Yet Trump does have a sterling point when, stressing that "Germany is a rich country," he wants to know why America should "protect you against Russia" when energy deals are on the table. "Explain that! It can't be explained!" as he reportedly said to NATO Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday.
In the end, of course, it's all about business. What Trump is really aiming at is for Germany to import US shale gas, three times more expensive than pipeline-delivered Russian gas.
The energy angle is directly linked to the never-ending 2% defense spending soap opera. Germany currently spends 1.2% of GDP on NATO. by 2024, it's supposed to reach at best 1.5%. And that's it. The majority of German voters, in fact, want US troops out.
So Trump's demand for 4% of GDP on defense spending for all NATO members will never fly. The sales pitch should be seen for what it is: a tentative "invitation" for an increased EU and NATO shopping spree on US military hardware.
In a nutshell, the key factor remains that Trump's Brussels blitzkrieg did make his case. Russia cannot be a "threat" and a reliable energy partner at the same time. As much as NATO poodles may be terrified of "Russian aggression," the facts spell out they won't put their money where their rhetorical hysteria is.
"Russian aggression" should be one of the top items discussed in Helsinki. In the -- remote -- possibility that Trump will strike a deal with Putin, NATO's absurd raison d'etre would be even more exposed.Are you listening now?That's not the US "deep-state" agenda, of course, thus the 24/7 demonization of the summit even before it happens. Moreover, for Trump, the transactional gambling man's Make-America-Great-Again point of view, the ideal outcome would always be to get even more European weapons deals for the US industrial-military-intelligence complex.
Terrified by Trump, diplomats in Brussels over these past few days have conveyed to Asia Times fears about the end of NATO, the end of the World Trade Organization, even the end of the EU. But the fact remains that Europe is absolutely peripheral to the Big Picture.
In Losing Military Supremacy, his latest, groundbreaking book, crack Russian military-naval analyst Andrei Martyanov deconstructs in detail how, "the United States faces two nuclear and industrial superpowers, one of which fields a world-class armed forces. If the military-political, as opposed to merely economic, alliance between Russia and China is ever formalized -- this will spell the final doom for the United States as a global power."
The US deep state (its influential bureaucrats) may be wallowing in perpetual denial, but Trump -- after many a closed-door meeting with Henry Kissinger -- may have understood the suicidal "strategy" of Washington simultaneously antagonizing Russia and China.
Putin's landmark March 1 speech, as Martyanov stresses, was an effort to "coerce America's elites, if not into peace, at least into some form of sanity, given that they are currently completely detached from the geopolitical, military and economic realities of the newly emerging power configurations of the world." These elites may not be listening, but Trump seems to indicate he is.
As for the NATO poodles, all they can do is watch.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
7
5
3
