By Theodore Shoebat
Donald Trump recently announced the prospect of a deepening of commercial ties with the UK in light of Britain leaving the EU and severing itself from the European open market. As we read from a report from the Guardian:
World leaders led by Donald Trump have congratulated Boris Johnson on his election victory, with the US president reiterating his belief that Britain and the US would now be free to strike a “massive” trade deal after Brexit.
“Congratulations to Boris Johnson on his great WIN!” Trump tweeted. “This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the EU. Celebrate Boris!”
Trump and the British prime minister have stressed the importance of sealing a rapid US-UK free trade agreement as soon as possible after Brexit and the issue of the status of the NHS in any such deal became a significant theme of the election campaign.
If Britain severs itself from the EU, she will deepen commercial ties with the US because at that point she would be out of the EU open market and economically isolated. Back in 2016, we predicated the UK will get closer to the US economically:
Germany is completely dependent on exports. With the drying of their markets they will look towards Turkey while the U.K will look towards the U.S.
…
Germany will make a pact with the Turks while Britain will make a pact with the U.S. after its loss with Germany and the E.U.
Great Britain was the biggest obstacle to Germany starting an EU military force, and now that Britain is leaving and Germany is starting to carry out this plan, it looks like the British fell for the trap, and that the Germans got what they wanted.
The British people overwhelmingly voted in favor for Boris Johnson and his ilk, with the thought that they are rebelling against the EU elites and German domination over Europe, but what they failed to see is that their decision is actually what the Germans want. In a document from the 2018 Munich Security Conference, entitled, Present at the Erosion: International Order, there is a telling statement on how Brexit could have “the welcome effect” against the Anglo-Saxon (American and British) world order:
Again, Trump is the most important symptom of a broader trend – but not the only one. A new nationalism is on the rise in many parts of the world. However, “America first” and Brexit may have the welcome effect that other stakeholders in the liberal order try to make up for less internationalist Anglo-Saxons. But how quickly can they do so even if they wanted to? Canada, Germany, France, or Japan – often seen as the remaining middle-powers with a clear commitment to and major stakes in a rules-based international order – all lack both the material capabilities and ambition to step in. The European Union as a whole could play a stabilizing role for the liberal international order
If Britain leaves, the Germans will use the situation as a pretext by which to just their own pursuit towards militarist independence from the United States. Expect to hear more talk from the Germans about how they can’t trust the British and Americans to defend Europe and how Germany must lead Europe in defense, which will mean really just Germanic militarism dominating Europe.
The Germans are only going to take Pence’s words and use them to further green light themselves to justify more military buildup.
The United States, with its push for European countries — especially Germany — to ‘pay their fair share’ in defense, in enabling the Germans to significantly boost their spending for their military. The United States is facilitating the creation of a new German military industrial complex. Brexit was to the glee of the Germans, since with the British leaving the EU it means an end to the UK’s veto which has acted as an impediment to the German aspiration for a big Euro army. In a report last year published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, written by Amélie Lohmann and Claudia Major, it reads:
“The signs for closer cooperation are there: With Britain’s exit from the EU, a traditional veto for further European cooperation will disappear. U.S. President Trump is raising doubts about American security guarantees and is signaling to Europeans that they need to pull their own weight. Furthermore, EU member states cannot hide from the difficult security challenges within and around Europe.”
Annegret Bendiek, writing last year for the same major German think-tank — in an article entitled, The New ‘Europe of Security’, affirms that Brexit and Trump’s rhetoric is what has been motivating the sudden enthusiasm for European militarism:
“The imminent departure of the UK from the EU and Donald Trump’s unpredictability as President of the United States are the main motives for the EU to seriously address its discussed but undefined goal of ‘strategic autonomy’ in the EUGS from July 2016.”
The Germans, while acknowledging NATO, have been arguing for a pan-European defense force, for the security of Europe itself. As the Japanese have been pushing for military independence from the United States, so the Germans have been pushing for military independence from NATO. Just recently, Germany’s defense minister, Urusula van der Leyen, in an interview in the Munich Defense Conference, spoke of the European Defense Fund, a military command for a pan-European military force, and the need for EU troops to be in Africa:
“What is important for me is its no competition to NATO, its complementary. NATO will always be collective defense. But there are other tasks, if I just look at Africa for example. There are other tasks where Europe is needed. And up to a few months, Europe wasn’t able to act at all because we didn’t have neither the procedures nor the structures. Now we are establishing those with a military command, with a European Defense Fund, just to name some examples, so that we are able to act for our own security too.”
Notice what van der Leyen says in the beginning of the video: Germany’s military advancements is about sending a message “across the Atlantic,” meaning to the United States. In the 2018 Munich Security Conference, Ursula van der Leyen sentanother message to the US, stating that Europe (that is to say, Germany) must have more military might, and must be “more European”:
“Last year I was able to open this conference with my colleague Jim Mattis . Today I open with my French colleague, Florence Parly. Both are expressions of German politics: We want to remain transatlantic – and at the same time become more European. It is about a Europe that can also throw more weight militarily in the military. … The beginning is made: we have launched the European Defense Union. We have set out politically to create an ‘army of Europeans’! … And we need a common strategic culture of Europe. A common European understanding of our interests, our goals and our instruments of external action. Only then will Europe gain the necessary weight.”
Trump’s push for European countries to reach the spending requirement of “2% GDP” for defense, is being seen as a great blow against European free loaders by an American nationalist president. However, while some German politicians express outrage against Trump for the press, the militarists of Germany are in glee that America is giving them the green light to boost the momentum for military spending, military activity, and military technology.
In a report produced in November of 2017 by the Munich Security Conference and McKinsey & Company, we find that the Germans are taking Trump’s call for a 2% GDP spending plan for defense, and want to increase it to 3%. The conference and McKinsey produced a report entitled, More European, More Connected, More Capable: Building the European Armed Forces of the Future, which states:
“Wolfgang Ischinger [the chairman of the Munich Security Conference] has proposed to broaden the 2-percent goal, advancing a 3-percent goal for contributions to international security.”
The presentation by Peter E. Uhde also talks about a military plan for Hungary that is set to be in full materialization by 2026:
“by 2026, the ‘two percent target’ of GDP, which is set at the NATO summit on 4-5. September 2014 in Wales has been agreed. “Zrínyi 2026” is the name of a ten-year defense and military development program. This includes a voluntary reserve system for territorial protection, ie homeland security.”
In 2017, a Major General of the German air force, Servatius Maeßen, wrote that the 2% rule should be applied to not just combat terrorism, but migration as well. Again, it shows how the German government is using the migration crises as a reason to start militarism, as a means to a militarist end. As Servatius wrote:
“It is high time we reviewed and expanded the discussion about the 2% increase in safety precaution. If there is a broad consensus that the following factors threaten our security, namely,
– Military violence,
– Proliferation,
– Terrorism,
– Migration,
– International crime,
then it would be appropriate to combine activities and investments to protect against these risks across departments and federal / state governments and to set the costs in relation to GDP.”
People within the German government, and in the think-tanks that work in conjunction with the state, are talking about making the Germany militarily stronger, all under the pretense that the United States cannot be relied upon for security. Ulrike Merten, the president of Germany’s Society for Security Policy, just recently stated in a defense conference that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the conflict in Yugoslavia (in which Germany was very involved), “in the long run Europe could not trust that the Americans would get them out of the fire permanently on their own continent.”
Merten went on to say that the reason why Germany’s military is too small, and not efficient enough, is because it is currently made for “reactive” situations like peace-keeping missions, such as the ones in Mali or Afghanistan. But, she said, this has begun to change since the Ukraine conflict in 2014, after which military spending increased, and, she hopes, this will lead to more recruitment into the military:
“Only the Ukraine Crisis 2014 led to a rethinking and the admission that it is not the best with the Bundeswehr.… The most visible sign is certainly the significant increase in the defense budget by 8 percent in 2016. This should be started as a development that increases the number of combat vehicles again, the readiness of the material improves through better maintenance, through the ‘agenda attractiveness’ recruitment and staffing be relieved.”
Both the Munich Security Conference of 2017 and the major financial consultant, McKinsey & Company, produced a document in 2017 called, More European, More Connected, More Capable: Building the European Armed Forces of the Future. In this report, interestingly enough, World War Two is brought up, in the sense that Germany, as it says, is going to have to arm itself more now than ever since that great and bloody conflict:
“The picture has changed dramatically. In just the last five years, threats have multiplied and shifted, and Europe as a whole is now arguably being called upon to do more for its own security than at any point since World War II.”
The report also quotes Merkel, who was present in the Munich Security Conference, when she said that Europe can no longer rely on America (after Trump’s comments that Germany should pay its fair share) and must direct its own “destiny” in military developments:
“The era in which we could fully rely on others is over to some extent. […] We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.”
McKinsey Deutschland is very close to Germany’s military industrial complex. It is not coincidental that in 2014, Germany’s Defense Minister, Ursula van der Leyen, appointed as State Secretary Katrin Suder, who was then the head of McKinsey Deutschland’s Berlin office. In 2014, right after the Russians invaded Crimea, this same Suder commissioned the German defense ministry to write up a report entitled, “Strategic forecast 2040,” in which was written a number of future scenarios that could take place in the 2040s.
The document “depicts a crumbling EU and a former leading power, the USA, trying in vain to stem an erosion of the world order. … There are signs of the economic downfall and a backsliding of world politics. ‘A “cycle of retreat” develops,’ which ‘lets worldwide crises escalate.’” In other words, the report describes a world conflagration, a world war.
The German politician, Andreas Nick of the Christian Democrats said that he wanted to increase defense spending to 3% of German GDP. But Trump is giving the Germans more than this, saying that they should spend 4%. Germany is in glee knowing that the Americans are pushing them towards military independence. Turkey and Germany are both receiving the green light to make their plowshares into swords.
And if you think that Pence is against Turkey because of Russian weapons purchase, think again. Pence acted the sycophant towards Turkey:
Now, lets say Germany increases their military spending, what happens when they sever ties with the US? You will no longer have a reinvigorated German military for NATO, but for another Reich.
Brexit has not angered the Germans; it has emboldened them because it removed an obstacle. In 2014, a Kersten Lahl, a major contributor and voice in the Society for Security Policy — a German militarist think tank — actually said tha a united European Union is the root of problems: “The united Europe and the general globalization are beneficial on the one hand, but on the other hand, the root of new problems, for example currently related to the Ukraine.” These words confirm what we at shoebat.com have been saying for a while now: that elites in the European Union want the fragmentation of Europe.
Its like what happened back in 1992 when the British left the European Monetary System: the Germans not only wanted it to happened, they engineered it to happen.The Germans did this by sending messages to the press predicting that the pound was going to diminish, and thereby ruining optimism for the British currency. For example, an official from the Bundesbank, who spoke anonymously, told the press that “the devaluation of sterling was inevitable.” This spilt blood on the water for the ravenous noses of the financial sharks in the hedge funds like George Soros to borrow and sell tremendous amounts of pounds and crash the British economy. The reason? Because the Germans did not want the British pound to dominate the mark in the Monetary system.
Its the same thing with the European Union, only this time it is about more than just financial domination, it is about tribal domination, with the Germans wanting to remove the British so as to begin for the creation of a domineering Germany military leading its European auxiliaries. Germany wants to create a military force not only with German citizen troops, but with troops of other European countries. As one report from Reuters says:
“Germany’s long-understaffed army has a new plan to boost recruitment: allowing foreigners from other European Union countries to serve in the unified armed forces (Bundeswehr). The defense ministry confirmed on Saturday that it was seriously considering the idea.”
There are lobbyists in Germany also pushing for a German world order that would eclipse the United States in Europe. Barbara Kunz, writing for the German Marshall Fund, wrote in the think-tank’s 2018 publication: “It is about time to envision a world in which the United States no longer upholds the liberal international order. In both France and Germany, this idea is part of official discourses.” Brexit and Trump’s rhetoric have become key pretexts for Germany’s plans of becoming the military power of Europe eclipsing the oversight of the United States. In a report last year published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, written by Amélie Lohmann and Claudia Major, it reads:
“The signs for closer cooperation are there: With Britain’s exit from the EU, a traditional veto for further European cooperation will disappear. U.S. President Trump is raising doubts about American security guarantees and is signaling to Europeans that they need to pull their own weight. Furthermore, EU member states cannot hide from the difficult security challenges within and around Europe.”
Notice what these authors wrote here: “a traditional veto for further European cooperation will disappear” — they are saying that with the British veto gone, Germany now has the green light to pursue its militarist ends (cloaked under the word of “security”). Annegret Bendiek, writing last year for the same major German think-tank — in an article entitled, The New ‘Europe of Security’, affirms that Brexit and Trump’s rhetoric is what has been motivating the sudden enthusiasm for European militarism:
“The imminent departure of the UK from the EU and Donald Trump’s unpredictability as President of the United States are the main motives for the EU to seriously address its discussed but undefined goal of ‘strategic autonomy’ in the EUGS from July 2016.”
The idea of a pan-European military force led by Germany is being marketed as “Framework Nation Concept” (FNC). Retired German Lieutenant General Rainer Glatz, and Martin Zapfe, a German researcher and an infantry captain in the German army reserve, wrote a whole report for the leading lobbyist organization that has the ears of the German parliament, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, in which they write on Germany’s formation of a military force integrated with units from other European countries. As they write of the FNC: “it will need continuous German leadership to fully realize the potential of the FNC and current Bundeswehr [Germany army] planning.”
Brexiters believed voting for a British severing from the EU would be a defeat against the EU. The reality is that they simply made the government that rules the European Union — Germany — more powerful. And lets not forget about the Turks.
Boris Johnson, one of the biggest voices behind Brexit, has now been lobbying for Turkey to join the European Union, and for the creation of an EU military force. When Boris was advocating for Brexit, he was telling people that if Britain did not leave the EU, then Turkey would join the EU and flood Britain with Muslims. The use of Counter-jihad propaganda was very effective, rallying up the masses to favor Brexit. But now Johnson is pushing for a Turkish entry into the European Union, as we read in one report from the Telegraph:
“Boris Johnson has announced that Britain will support Turkey’s bid to join the EU despite putting warnings about the prospect at the heart of the Brexit campaign in the run up to the referendum. During the EU referendum Mr Johnson warned that the accession of Turkey would give millions of migrants the right to live and work in the UK. The claim was one of the most controversial of the referendum campaign and led to accusations by senior Remain campaigners that Mr Johnson had lied. But yesterday, during his first official visit to Turkey, Mr Johnson said that Britain will “help Turkey in any way” now that it is leaving the EU.”
Its not just Turkey that Boris Johnson wants joining the EU, but also the Balkan countries, including Bosnia and Albania, the biggest ally of Turkey in the Balkans. In July of 2018, there was a meeting in London that was initiated by Germany called the Berlin Process. According to a report from the Economist:
“Britain was holding a meeting aimed at helping countries join the European Union, which it is leaving. … The “Western Balkans Summit” was not an EU meeting but part of a German initiative called the Berlin Process. The London meeting, bringing together various EU leaders plus those from Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania, was decided upon before Britain voted to leave the EU.”
The meeting was initiated by Boris Johnson in conjunction with officials in Brussels. One European report states that Johnson “has announced London will host a major West Balkans conference this summer in conjunction with Brussels. Jean-Claude Juncker, who began his five-year term in office as EU Commission president in 2014 by saying there would no new enlargement has now said that some of the West Balkan nations – Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia – should aim for EU membership in 2025.”
Congratulations, Brexiters. You got scammed by people making you think you were defeating “the elites” when you were only helping them. Enjoy your tea.
Remember the warnings of Christ: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” (Matthew 24:7) How can a nation rise against another without the presence of nationalism? The surge of nationalism is another sign of war. When nations kill each other, each group will praise themselves as the heroes and protectors of their people. It makes for a very effective recruitment strategy as we see in all wars.