GERMANY HAS HAD IT, CONSIDERS SANCTIONS AGAINST USA

A few days ago I blogged about a suspicion I've long entertained, namely, that there appears to be some sort of covert war taking place between Washington and Berlin, and that this covert war has been going on for a while, most recently entering an "economic warfare" guise. I've also advanced the hypothesis that American "rebasing" efforts in Eastern Europe were part of a very old geopolitical game, first played by King Edward VII, then by Clemenceau, Chamberlain and Daladier. Edward, of course, helped engineer the Triple Entente, the alliance of France, Russia, and Britain that was, of course, directed against Germany and eventually "lay siege" to the Central Powers for four years during World War One. Edward's ploy, of course, was also to prevent the "geopolitically unthinkable": an alliance of Russia and Germany, long the bug-a-boo of geopolitical thinking. After World War One, the formal alliance system was replaced by the idea of the cordon sanitaire, the "buffer zone" of small states created from the nationalities within the old Russian Empire: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became the "sanitary cordon" between Russia and Germany to prevent an alliance.

Of course, the Treaty of Rapallo side-stepped all of this. Then came the strengthening of that idea with the military guarantees given by Daladier and Chamberlain to Poland...

... an idea that didn't work out too well for Poland, France, the UK, or ultimately, Germany.

The most recent version of this game has been the "let's launch a coup in the Ukraine, and, just to keep Merkel out of it, launch sanctions on Russia (for its aggression in the affair, of course), which sanctions will keep Germany and Russia from building all those pipelines and cementing other lucrative deals). Part and parcel of my hypothesis about this covert warfare also deals with the war of fines and sanctions against German banks (Deutsche Bank) and German auto manufacturers.

Well, it's beginning to look more and more like this hypothesis might have some traction, for the gloves are increasingly coming off. The most recent round of anti-Russia sanctions, I wrote a few days ago, was as much directed against Germany as they were against Russia.

And now Kanzlerin Merkel is making no bones about it, and pulling no punches: Germany is considering economic sanctions on the USA, this time, against imports of American energy, according to this Sputnik article shared by Ms. K.M.:

The Final Straw: Germany Mulling Over Sanctions… This Time Against the US

There are some important considerations and paragraphs here to note:

In a joint statement, Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria's Chancellor Christian Kern slammed the decision by the US Senate to impose new sanctions on Moscow over its alleged interference in the US presidential election as well as the ongoing situations in Ukraine and Syria.

"Threatening German, Austrian and other European enterprises with penalties on the US market only because they take part in the gas supply projects such as the Nord Stream 2 together with Russia or finance them, is adding an absolutely new and highly negative aspect in relations between the US and Europe," the joint statement reads.

For his part, the leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), Martin Schulz, lambasted US senators' move and called upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel to oppose it.

"We have seen that the US is pursuing a course in energy policy that is dangerous and is directed against Germany," Schulz told the Federal Association of German Industry (BDI). (Emphasis added)

Now, in my previous blog on this subject, I only suggested that the perception of the new sanctions regime would backfire and be seen as sanctions against Germany (which I also argued was the real additional, though hidden, target of the sanctions). Here, the leader of the opposition party in Germany, Herr Schulz, is now saying openly what only a few days ago was mere suspicion. To put it country simple: the situation is deteriorating quickly.

But there's more:

Germany and Austria suspect that Senate's anti-Russian bill is an attempt to "occupy" the European energy market on the part of US corporations.

"Germany and Austria went one step further, too — accusing the US of looking to promote the role of US LNG in Europe at the expense of Russian gas," the S&P Global Platts writer underscored, adding that the US apparently wants to kill two birds with one stone by exerting sanctions on Nord Stream 2: to "punish" Moscow and promote US LNG supplies in Europe, "which would have the knock-on effect of supporting domestic US gas industry."

In this context, Danilov wrote, it is most likely that potential anti-American sanctions would be aimed not at inflicting any economic damage on the US but at sabotaging Washington's attempts to seize the European energy market.

"A ban on the import of American LNG into the EU countries could have become a very effective tool to prevent America's attempts to influence the European market," Danilov assumed adding that this measure could potentially attract wide public support. (Emphasis added)

This, too, is a new admission in the growing and widening gulf between Berlin and Washington, and like it or not, where Berlin goes on this issue, Europe goes. That means we are fast approaching the point when Europe will have to choose between the USA and Russia, a choice that has been delayed for some decades, but which, now, with the USSA playing "world cop," crawling into bed with radical Islamic terrorist organizations, and interfering in the internal policies of several nations, in the long term, I suspect that the choice will not be favorable to Washington, regardless what Europe does in the short term.

The reason: Washington has proven its growing instability and psychopathy since 9/11. The last sentence of the article reminds us of this point: "It appears that the US political elite have completely forgotten that the interest of its European partners should be taken into account, Danilov concluded."

Precisely, the unipolar paradigm reigns in Washington, in the dominant party, and the fake opposition party. And that unipolar paradigm has, since 9/11, seen the following things be accomplished: (1) Japanese rearmament, (2) Growing Russo-Japanese cooperation, (3) A fed-up Philippines, (4) more bi-lateral currency-trade deals bypassing the US dollar, (5) an insane, banana-republic political culture in Washington, (6) arms sales to the (out)House of Saud, a prime contributor to Islamic terrorism, (7) growing radicalism in Indonesia, and now, (8) the growing estrangement between Washington and our most powerful ally in Europe.

Washington has repeatedly asked its European "allies" to step up to the plate and do more for its own defense. But I have to wonder, if that happened, and Europe then demanded removal of ALL American bases in Europe because they're sick and tired of being under Washington's thumb, what the response would be.

I suspect we all know.

In any case, I suspect we'll find out, after a few years of Japanese rearmament, when they once again ask us to get rid of our bases there.

So, if we want our allies to continue to be allies, then we need to stop treating them as vassals and satraps, and we'd better do so quickly. The trouble is, the idiots in Washington have not existed in a multi-polar world since the beginning of World War Two. They no longer know how.

They're stupid.

And because they're stupid, everyone is in trouble.

See you on the flip side...