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:
- To maintain US dominance over Europe
- To keep Russian influence OUT of Europe
- To control Germany and prevent it from becoming a competitive imperialist power again
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:
- NATO is the imperialist alliance to maintain the neoliberal US empire. It provides markets for the US military industrial complex and brings “legitimacy” to US imperialism by joining in illegal invasions of sovereign global south countries led by the US.
- How? Well, bombing the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was one way to keep Germany down and maintain its dependence on the US for its energy needs.
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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.
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.
How would Europe naturally gravitate towards Russia in that case? Is it because of Russia’s size and access to natural resources?
Because it is less than a day away by rail instead of on the opposite side of an ocean
Because to paraphrase Michael Parenti, “capitalists don’t want a lot of things, THEY WANT EVERYTHING”. There were still a few state assets the US/ Europe backed oligarchs and expats weren’t able to grab for pennies on the dollar after Soviet collapse and it keeps them up at night.
The Russians capitalist offered a hand, and the US wanted the whole arm
Simple, Russia was never seen as an equal. The plan was to take Russia apart and exploit it the way Latin America, Africa, and other Global South nations have been. The west was going to put in a puppet regime that would sell off all the resources to western corps, and then use cheap domestic labour to mine these resources and send them to the west.
And this was working pretty well under Yeltsin, but then Putin got in power and put a stop to all that and the west never forgave the fact that Russia managed to retain sovereignty.
My guess is because they wanted to balkanise Russia even more. Just the vast amount of resources and especially fossil fuels Russia has even after USSR’s dissolution makes them an obstruction to the US’ intention to be the sole arbiter of international trade. NATO’s mission plan to destroy the USSR was adapted after 1991 to do the same to Russia. Having Russia in NATO would impede the organisation’s ability to carry out this plan.
In addition to what other comrades said, USA did not considered China a threat. I don’t know why, maybe they fell to their own propaganda constantly predicting China’s “imminent fall”. You can see from the rapid development of events around 2018+ that they just woken up on that back then.
But i don’t think it would changed anything. Russia allied with Europe is much more dangerous to the USA than Russia allied with China, because that first alliance would inevitably restrict USA influence to just Americas and Pacific, while that second one just means new Cold War.
It’s a good point that US would prefer facing China-Russia rather than losing influence in Europe. It also important to note that the US never predicted Russia would turn to China. They thought Russia was more scared of China than of the US. It’s obviously foolish today, but you can understand the logic when you hear liberals sometimes still claim that China will backstab Russia. Perhaps this is partly due to projection.
Another point on US misperceiving China, the US has done so throughout its history. A good book on this is the China Mirage by James Bradley.
While Secretary General, Ismay is also credited as having been the first person to say that the purpose of NATO was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,”[2] a saying that has since become a common way to describe the dynamics of NATO.[3][4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings_Ismay,_1st_Baron_Ismay
That idiom notwithstanding, I agree it’s odd that NATO still exists after Yeltsin was “elected.”
As others have pointed out, Soviet became Russian, American always wanted in, and NATO is definitely keeping Germany down
Something about turning Russia into a giant neocolonial puppet state for resource and cheap labor exploitation, balkanized or not. Also something regarding not wanting Russia having influence over the western parts of Europe (mainly because between US and Russia, two large countries, pragmatically, you choose the large country closer to you, Russia in this case).
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I agree, I genuinely think if US would have let them join NATO China would have never been able to take the left turn it has since Xi has been in power. US would simply have them surrounded with missiles and they would have total dominance over their economy. The USSR I’d argue was fairly unique in being able to survive in the way it did and with such a degree of self-sufficiency. They had about all they needed- tons of fertile land, endless energy, etc. I don’t think even China or a more advanced India could do this, China needs allies to pose any threat or gain any true independence from the western economic system.
After god died all man had was hedonism and nihilism. Communism will be the heavenly tomorrow we may dedicate our lives to today. 🦾
Reading thus spoke Zarathustra got me on my philosophical shit my bad gang
The dialectic forgives you fam
In addition with the other reasons here already stated, I think NATO maintained it’s anti-Russia stance largely to bring countries like Poland and the Baltics states quickly into the fold.
