I feel like I’m missing something here. US doing that would have made them much stronger against China. I mean just imagine how much more robust the European economy would be if all the gas going to China was going right to Europe.
Though in typing that out I may have answered my own question. Is it really just because US wanted to European market to themselves? This seems incredibly short sighted.
NATO in the post-Soviet era has mainly three purposes:
If Russia were brought into NATO, Europe would eventually gravitate towards it over time instead of the US. So yes, you answered your own question.
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To answer your second two questions:
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While I can’t answer your primary question of can Germany leave NATO (in fact other than France under de Gaulle no nation has, and de Gaulle was a special kind of statesman), I can maybe speak a bit to Germany being aware of their situation. Dare I say it would be impossible for Germany to leave NATO seeing as they are militarily occupied by the US (including nuclear weapons). To take that to its logical conclusion, is any country under military occupation sovereign?
Are Germans at least somewhat aware that the USA is the cause of their problems? Not really. The politicians almost certainly know, and don’t give a fuck. Germany’s current (and more than likely past) crop of top politicians are generally in America’s pocket. Those who aren’t are in the pocket of German industry, and those industries are in turn ultimately beholden to if not controlled by American capital. Foreign Minister Baerbock has said it herself on multiple occasions, she doesn’t particularly care what her German constituents want. In terms of the general population, I get the impression that they’re too uninformed and misinformed to realize that it’s the USA fucking them over and not Putin personally. Anti-war demonstrations of any kind are met with contempt, derision, and lies in the media. Even moderate criticisms of German foreign policy are shouted down with calls of Russian misinformation. The news is one sided to say the least, but we’re told it’s independent so how dare you question it.
Maybe I spend too much time with particularly clueless people but that’s my reading of the general place Germans are at right now.
It’s my impression too. The only good thing here is that the offical lines are pushed so heavy handed and oppressive that many people get weirded out by it. But those people are also kept atomized and thus have no influence. Which also is why some mass media is already calling Sarah Wagenknecht “the biggest threat to Germany”, because she resonates withmany of the people not being on board with this and that part of the offical line.
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Big industrial powerhouse with lots of oil and natural resources that’s connected via land, not across a whole ass ocean.
Because it is less than a day away by rail instead of on the opposite side of an ocean