Good afternoon! The sun is shining and the cool breeze blows a quietly foreboding, ill wind through our house and soon to be, every American home.
Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told the German people, they can no longer depend on the United States as a participating ally in NATO's Article 5 Common Defense Provision. Pres. Trump had his chance to re-affirm America's commitment to unite with the other world leaders, to uphold a coalition for the good of mankind. Pres. Trump also refused to re-affirm America's commitment to the Paris climate change agreement.
German Chancellor Merkel, further tells the European people that it is time for Europe to understand they must become self-reliant. Effectively, Chancellor Merkel has announced Europe's divorce from America. This divorce is a result of America abandoning our marriage to our G7 friends. This should be a sobering moment in the minds and hearts, of all intelligent Americans, to understand that Pres. Trump has taken America away from our time-tested friends and partners of Europe. America cannot go forward to fight ISIS, adversarial regimes and multiple wars on multiple continents, ALONE.
Then there's the issue of global trade. The far-reaching implications of a break up with our marriage partners, in the global trade of imports/exports will be staggering over time. Why does Pres. Trump want to turn our old friends into new enemies?
The issue of environmental climate change, is enormous, all by itself. Pres. Trump does not care about our environment and seems hell-bent on destroying every prior enacted mechanism to protect and save our environment from global climate change. Pres. Trump denies climate change. Pres. Trump acts like he is the embodiment of Satan and his ultimate mission, is the hastening of the Apocalypse.
There are many intelligent Americans, who are afraid, but quietly ponder asking the mass of Trump supporters, "What is wrong with Pres. Trump and why would you support a man who works against your own best interests?" Now Europe asks, "What is wrong with America, that it lets a mad man lead them down the road to perdition?"
The quiet symbol of Christians is the fish symbol. Today is Sunday and Granny Annie's Politic Cafe is going to be serving up deep fried catfish fillets and creamy mashed potatoes and green beans cooked in chopped and sauteed Vidalia onions, flavored with bacon drippings. Hot honey-buttered biscuits and tall glasses of home brewed Lipton tea over ice. Fresh baked apple pie for dessert. Ya' all come and sit a spell and discuss the worries of this world.
"Boner Appertite!"
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Thanks to Trump, Germany says it can’t rely on the United States. What does that mean?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a crowd Sunday in Munich, Germany that Europe can no longer rely on foreign partners.
Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with President Trump last week, saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”
Offering a tough review in the wake of Trump’s trip to visit E.U., NATO and Group of Seven leaders last week, Merkel told a packed Bavarian beer hall rally that the days when Europe could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”
This is an enormous change in political rhetoric. While the public is more familiar with the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, the German-U.S. relationship has arguably been more important. One of the key purposes of NATO was to embed Germany in an international framework that would prevent it from becoming a threat to European peace as it had been in World War I and World War II. In the words of NATO’s first secretary general, NATO was supposed “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Now, Merkel is suggesting that the Americans aren’t really in, and, by extension, Germany and Europe are likely to take on a much more substantial and independent role than they have in the past 70 years.
Merkel’s comment about what she has experienced in the past few days is a clear reference to President Trump’s disastrous European tour. Her belief that the United States is no longer a reliable partner is a direct result of Trump’s words and actions. The keystone of NATO is Article 5, which has typically been read as a commitment that in the event that one member of the alliance is attacked, all other members will come to its aid. When Trump visited NATO, he dedicated a plaque to the one time that Article 5 has been invoked — when all members of NATO promised to come to the United States’ support after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. However, Trump did not express his commitment to Article 5 in his speech to NATO, instead lambasting other NATO members for not spending enough money on their militaries. When Trump went on to the Group of Seven meeting in Italy, he declined to recommit to the Paris agreementon climate change, leaving the other six nations to issue a separate statement.
This cements the impression of the United States as an unreliable partner. Trump has ostentatiously refused to express his commitment to an agreement that has been the bulwark of Europe-U.S. security relations over the past three generations. He also has declined to say that the United States will work within the previously agreed framework on global warming. While many authoritarian states are cheered by Trump’s election and actions, since he is unlikely to press them on human rights and other sore points, traditional U.S. allies are enormously disheartened.
Merkel’s rhetoric is clearly intended to imply that as the transatlantic relationship grows weaker, the European Union will grow stronger. When she links Britain’s departure from the European Union with U.S. unreliability, she suggests that now that Britain is gone, it will be possible for the E.U. to concentrate on getting its own affairs in order, propelled by a stronger relationship between Germany and France. Britain always wanted to keep transatlantic security institutions, such as NATO, strong, which sometimes meant pushing back against giving the E.U. a new security role. Now that Britain is no longer going to be part of the E.U., it will no longer have veto power.
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