Europe’s complacency on a vital matter of its own security is damnable. The situation over Ukraine is becoming increasingly combustible, and yet the European Union is doing nothing to avert the danger. Indeed, it can be said the bloc is compounding the danger of confrontation and war.

Geopolitical tensions on the continent are being heightened by a border crisis with Belarus and Poland, which the European Union has exacerbated for cynical political reasons. These tensions are adding to instability over Ukraine and the Black Sea region.

Russia’s foreign and defense ministers are meeting their French counterparts in Paris on Friday for “2 plus 2” talks under the auspices of the Russian-French Cooperation Council. Topping the agenda will be the challenges to regional security stemming from the Ukraine conflict.

Ahead of the meeting, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked both France and Germany for “undermining” the prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Russia, France and Germany are guarantors of the 2015 Minsk Agreements which set out a roadmap for a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Ukraine. That war erupted in 2014 when the United States and the EU backed a coup d’état in Kiev the same year. The then newly installed Kiev regime launched a war against the Donbas region in Southeast Ukraine because the ethnic Russian population there did not recognize the new government.

Under the Minsk accords, the Kiev regime is mandated to observe a ceasefire and to accede to political autonomy for the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. This has not been implemented despite the election of Vladimir Zelensky as Ukrainian president in 2019 and his vow to prioritize the pursuit of a peaceful, political settlement. The former TV comedian’s election vows have turned out to be a cruel joke.

Not only has the Minsk mandate been ignored, but the Zelensky regime has also done everything to belittle the accord. The Ukrainian Armed Forces under his command have continually violated supposed ceasefire commitments on the contact line with the Donbas region. According to the monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Kiev regime’s military has breached the purported ceasefire on a daily basis with thousands of incidents over recent weeks. Also, the Kiev forces have reportedly reintroduced heavy-caliber weapons near the contact line in blatant repudiation of ceasefire terms.

The stark truth is that France and Germany have turned a blind eye to these multiple and systematic violations of the Minsk accords by the Kiev regime. Furthermore, this complacency and abdication of commitments as guarantors of the peace deal have served to embolden the Kiev regime to harbor ambitions of pursuing a military solution to the eight-year-old civil war. In short, the European powers are fueling more conflict on their own continent.

Let’s be clear, the prospect of a wider war is daunting. The Kiev regime is being heavily armed with lethal weaponry by the United States. The U.S. and its NATO allies are also building up military forces in the Black Sea with warships, fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft. This week, American and British recon planes of the type used in coordinating offensive operations were buzzing Russian borders at an unprecedented level. Moscow is warning that its national security is coming under increasing threat and that any miscalculation is only a slip away.

The absurdity of the American government is also part of the offensive. This week, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning in which he claimed that Russian military forces were amassing (on their own territory, mind you!) and they were planning to “invade Ukraine”. Blinken said: “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook.” The discombobulated contradiction is laughable, if not reckless provocation.

President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call this week that the United States and NATO are stoking instability and dangerous tensions over Ukraine and the adjacent Black Sea. It is glaringly obvious who is escalating the risk of war. But where are the European voices calling for sanity and for an urgent de-escalation?

The prevailing incendiary dynamic from the inordinate buildup of U.S. and NATO forces on Russia’s doorstep is only incentivizing the Kiev regime to further ignore the path for peace in Ukraine. There is a very real danger that the conflict in the country will explode into a full war. In that case, the United States and Russia will be dragged into the morass. And once again, Europe will be a battlefield with disastrous consequences.

The last century has seen two world wars erupting in Europe. A major factor in those conflagrations was criminal complacency among European leaders to prevent catastrophe.

Today, there is a disturbing echo of similar complacency among German and French authorities with regard to their obligations for upholding peace in Ukraine. Instead, they are indulging a reactionary regime in Kiev and ludicrous provocations by the United States.

European leaders are not merely sleepwalking towards the abyss. They have eyes wide open but simply are too cowardly to see and act. Shame on them!

But the other ‘moving parts’ to this bid are very much in motion, too: Firstly, Germany’s ploy is contingent on their hopes for a Biden win, which may, or may not, occur. And then, too, President Macron seeks for himself, and for France, the leadership of Europe – with this latter – to an extent – being contingent on a ‘no deal’ Brexit taking place at the end of the year, that would further weaken a dis-animated and fading Merkel. France rather, plots the ‘Great Reset’ of Europe: A regulatory and values enforced ‘space’, underpinned by a common fiscal and debt regime that would rebuild France’s economic infrastructure.

All this raises many questions: Should Trump win, he can be expected to puncture any German (or French) aspiration to drain away some of America’s power, however nicely the German FM wraps it, as the U.S. not so much losing power, but as gaining “a strong partner on equal terms”. Huh!

The idea that Europe can leverage this partnership through sweet-talking Germany’s commitment “to the West as a system of values”, which is “at risk in its entirety”, and which, only Germany and the U.S. together can keep strong – does seem a bit of a daydream. Even when sugar-wrapped with “defending against the unmistakable Russian thirst for power, and Chinese ambitions for global supremacy”. Firstly, there is still Trump, and secondly —

China and Russia clearly see the game. Yet European leaders seem to expect that the former will continue as if nothing is awry. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer seems to think so (she is both Defence Minister, and Chair of the CDU, Merkel’s own party). In terms of containing “China’s aggressively controlled state capitalism”, she suggests creating a European trade sphere that is open only to those who want to strengthen and support the liberal, rules-based order – and to which other states must ‘submit’ (Macron’s words). These are the bones to how Brussels proposes to achieve ‘strategic autonomy’ (Charles Michel’s term).

Here are some extracts of Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s ‘deal’ given in a 23 October speech:

“… Most of all, America has given us what we call ‘Westbindung’ … Westbindung, to me, is and remains, a clear rejection of the historic temptation of equidistance. Westbindung anchors us firmly in NATO and the EU and ties us closely to Washington, Brussels, Paris and London. It clearly and rightly positions us against a romantic fixation on Russia – and also against an illiberal corporative state that rejects parties and parliaments [i.e. China] … Westbindung is the answer to the famous “German question”, the question of what Germany stands for … Only America and Europe together can keep the West strong, defending it against the unmistakable Russian thirst for power and Chinese ambitions for global supremacy … To be the giver [in a process of ‘give and take with the U.S.] would require us to take a firm power-political stance. To ambitiously play the geopolitical game. But even looking at all this, there are still some Americans who are not convinced that they need NATO. I understand that. Because there is one thing still missing: That is for the Europeans to take powerful action themselves, when push comes to shove. So that the United States can see Europe as a strong partner on equal terms, not as a damsel in distress. As you can see: the German dilemma is a European dilemma as well. We stay dependent [on the U.S.], but at the same time, we must come into our own. In strengthening Europe like this, Germany must play a key role … enabling it to operate more independently of, and more closely with, the United States at the same time …”.

Three major geo-political issues here are intersecting: Firstly, Germany is metamorphosing politically, in a way that holds disturbing parallels with its transition in the pre-WW1, European setting. In short, the ‘German Question’ is surfacing again (but not in AKK’s way): When the Berlin Wall fell, Russia supported the reunification of Germany and pinned hopes on Germany being a partner for the wider unification project: the construction of a ‘Greater Europe’.

It proved to be a chimaera: Germany, far from supporting Russia’s inclusion, instead, favoured the expansion of Europe and NATO to Russia’s borders. The EU – under U.S. pressure – was forming a Greater Europe that would eventually include all the states of Europe, except Russia.

But in so doing, West Europe absorbed into the EU the tumour of East European neuralgia on Russia. Berlin, all the while, has played on America’s visceral hostility towards Russia – more as a tool to build out its European space up to the Russian border. Germany thus has prioritised assuaging Eastern European ancient antipathies, above any real attempt at a relationship with Russia. Now Germany wants to ‘play it again’: In a July interview, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said that the Russian leadership must be “confronted with a clear position: We are well-fortified, and in case of doubt, ready to defend ourselves. We see what Russia is doing, and we will not let the Russian leadership get away with it”.

Well: Fool me once … but fool me twice …? The Navalny episode was the last straw. It was a blatant lie. Merkel and Macron knew it to be a lie. And they knew that Moscow knew it, too. Yet they both preferred to toss the Russophobes another ‘bone’. Moscow gave up with them.

The real puzzle is why Moscow put up with this play for so long. The answer perhaps, lies with the Russian two-headed eagle, whose heads face in opposite directions: one toward Europe, and the other toward Asia. Merkel’s obvious deceit is stretching and testing social trust in Russia, just too far. The Russian élites may lean towards Europe, but their base looks East. Navalny was the humiliating straw that broke the camel’s back

Now Macron – still energised, but himself politically weakened – hopes to drain further Merkel’s strength (in mercantilist terms), through engineering a UK no-deal Brexit that would damage Germany’s huge trade surplus with Britain, at the very moment that Germany is losing markets in Russia (and now possibly in China); and when America, if Trump is re-elected, would likely embark on a trade war with Europe.

Weakening Merkel’s hand – that is – in opposing an European joint debt instrument, together with a common fiscal policies, is the aim, so that France might draw down on German fiscal resources placed within a ‘common pot’, and then deployed to revamp the French economy.

The Brussels plan for a ‘Great Reset’ – transforming the European economy, and the social sphere – through automation and technology is, as Tom Luongo has noted delusional: “[W]hat’s been pretty clear to me is Europe’s delusions that it can subjugate the world under its rubric, forcing its rules and standards on the rest of us, including China, [whilst] again allowing the U.S. to act as its proxy – [as Europe] tries to maintain its [‘power-political’] standing is delusional”.

Why?

‘Delusional’, as although China may be an “aggressively controlled state capitalism” in Euro-speak, it is also a major ‘civilisational state’, with its own distinct values. Brussels may call their regulatory space ‘open’, but it is clearly exclusionary, and not multilateral. The action of this politics is only pushing the world towards a separation of distinct regulatory spheres – and toward deeper recession.

On the practical plane, whereas first phase Covid tended to provide support to Europe’s incumbent governments, this present infection spike is shredding support for incumbents. Protests and riots are increasingly taking place across Europe. Episodes of violence have been met with horror by the authorities, which suspect that organized crime and radical groups are at work to spark a political wildfire. And that potential is very much there.

To the structural unemployment already incurred in phase one, now must be added another wave of possibly irreversible unemployment, (again) in the services sector. For small businesses and the self-employed, it is a nightmare. Not surprisingly, the anger grows as those losing their means of living observe that civil servants and the middle classes more generally, are passing through this episode, virtually unscathed.

European governments have been caught off-guard. There is absolute confusion as governments try to square keeping the economy alive, with containing the infected from overwhelming hospitals – achieving neither. This represents the cost of the ‘summer opening’ to save the tourist season. No one is on their balcony these evenings banging cooking pots in communal solidarity. Today, protests and riots have taken their place.

Into this mounting anger is inserted dark suspicion. Some may view Covid as pure conspiracy; others will not. Yet it is not ‘conspiracy’ to believe that European governments may knowingly have used the pandemic to increase their tools of social control, (despite ‘distancing’ being a genuine medical containment strategy). Was this concerted in anticipation of the changes implicit to the ‘Great Reset’? We do not know. Yet, from the outset, western governments couched their measures as ‘war’ – and as war that required war-time state-directed economics, and war-time public compliance.

Rightly or wrongly, it is becoming a culture war. Overtones of the anger on U.S. streets. Again, dark suspicions that cultural life is being closed down in order to prepare Europeans for the drowning of their cultural identities into a big Brussels-made, melting-pot. These fears may be misplaced, but they are ‘out there’, and viral.

It is Europe’s political fabric and societal cohesion that is in play – and its leaders are not just confused: They fear.

It would indeed be hubristic delusion then, were European leaders to proceed with the automation ‘Great Reset’, and add yet more structural unemployment to a pile, already threatening to topple, under its growing weight (into mass protest). Do they want revolution?

They can be grueling affairs with games going into triple and quadruple overtime, with players playing the equivalent of more than two full games without any rest. So, the recent European summit where the Coronavirus rescue package went into triple overtime, with an agreement reached on a ‘rescue’ package after five days of negotiations versus the planned two days must have felt like a game 7 for the architects of it.

Because absent this agreement, the future of the European Union would have been in serious doubt.

But, that said, the main difference between this summit and a Stanley Cup playoff game is that the outcome was known beforehand. This was simply an exercise in endurance to ensure the ‘right’ outcome.

Because from the moment this summit started the fundamental structure of the package which mattered the most, grants and loans to member states issued through the European Commission, had already been agreed upon in principle.

All they did for the next five days was haggle over price.

Those grants and loans create the predicate on which the fiscal integration of Europe will be built.

The final version of the package varied from the original proposal promoted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron in a couple of important ways. But those changes were nothing more than face saving measures granted to the so-called “Frugal Four” countries – Austria, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark – to allow their leaders to go back and say, “We resisted and won some much needed concessions,” while caving the entire time, purposefully missing the net, as it were.

In other words, this was politics as usual.

Via Zerohedge, Erik-Jan van Harn of Rabobank gave us the best rundown of what those changes were. While the devil is normally in the details, I don’t think it is here. The devil is right in front, grants and loans totaling €750 billion but only €390 billion in grants rather than the original €500 billion, in a total package worth just over €1.07 trillion.

It’s not like Europe has this money, which means the European Commission, led by globalist puppets like Ursula Von der Leyen and Charles Michel, will have the ability to tax and redistribute wealth like a real government body.

At the same time the Visegrads, led by Poland and Hungary, needed appeasing on matters of national sovereignty, allowing for some restraints on how disbursement will be handled and ratified. The rule of law questions were separated to their satisfaction, as it now rests with the European Council, made up of the heads of state of the EU27, who require unanimity.

But again, these are all rearguards, almost Pyrrhic victories and it tells you how weak the negotiating hand of the opposition was that that is all they won when Merkel and Macron got nearly everything they wanted.

Because the European Union, in its current form, cannot survive. It needs a currency, the euro, properly structured if it is to survive and the EU to continue. Otherwise the mess that it is now, continues in perpetuity until Brexit is replicated by others like Italy and Denmark.

The acceptance of grants and loans administered by the European Commission by the council is the first major step towards fiscal integration. And ultimately, that was the blackmail in front of the Frugal Four and the Visegrads.

Hungary is too small to resist western Europe and the Poles too Russophobic to shift policy east.

Now the commission has taxing authority. It now has debt issuance authority to disburse funds. This is why the euro rallied on the news and why the markets are reacting like Europe’s problems are solved and the U.S.’s just beginning.

This is, of course, patent nonsense. Not a euro of these funds will reach the countries most severely affected by COVID-19 and the subsequent gutting of the world economy until 2022. By then the people the funds are supposed to help will be well beyond it.

So, this summit was never about helping the people of Europe recover.

And a lot can and will happen between now and then.

This is all about the long-term and setting the precedent to completely remake the finances of the European Union further eroding national sovereignty under the auspice of helping the people impoverished by their ruinous policies in the first place.

Remember that just a few months ago Merkel was on her last legs politically, the European Council meeting in February to discuss the upcoming budget talks ended with leaders so angry at her that it was good she’d quarantined herself.

Now she’s the Queen of Europe again, all thanks to a virus which has completely upended western society as the people with the most to gain from it, embattled politicians like Merkel, advocating the most draconian measures on their people.

The episode reminds me of the quote by the great Harry Browne, former Libertarian presidential candidate and author, who said that government was only adept at breaking your legs and then giving you a crutch and saying without it you wouldn’t be able to walk.

It also reminds me of another major difference between politics and the Stanley Cup playoffs. The players play the game for the love of it, their pride and future as well as the tradition of it. They can’t win it all without everyone pulling for each other. It is one of the great spectacles of human perseverance I can think of.

What Merkel and company have planned for the future of Europe, which they have taken the first steps to secure, will unfortunately be another, but not because the people wanted it but because she demanded it.

Just as the corrupt U.S. Government is bailing out owners of U.S. corporations while the American public experiences a recession that is heading into a depression, the corrupt German Government likewise is bailing out investors. It’s not illegal for the Government to do that — not even when the corporation that they might bail out next is the nation’s flag-carrying airline, which already receives unfair advantages in competing against other airlines in that country.

The German Government has offered to bail out even the wealthy investors who control the already governmentally favored but privately investor-owned airline Lufthansa, but those super-rich investors demand that it be an unconditional bailout, and negotiations are continuing. On May 5th, the “Flight Global” site bannered “Lufthansa reluctant to accept state aid with conditions attached”, and reported that “Lufthansa Group is holding ‘intensive talks’ with governments in Germany, Austria and Belgium about the provision of state aid.”

The very idea that the general public, the nation’s taxpayers, should ever absorb any losses of any private stock-investors, constitutes the very essence of “socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everybody else.” That is the essential core of fascism, or as Benito Mussolini sometimes called his economic and political system, “corporationism” (control of the government by the owners of corporations), but it is antithetical to any democracy, which is ruled only by its public, not by only the richest of them, who, in any country, own almost all of the corporate stock.

Any corporation that (like Lufthansa is now doing) threatens the government with going out of business or otherwise laying off employees en-masse during what has become a general financial collapse, should instead be promptly and automatically nationalized — taken over completely, at its then-prevailing stock-value — and the stock in it subsequently become sold by the government after the crisis is over, but, at first, then, made available only to its employees (and with low-interest loans being made available to them by the government, in order to enable any and all of them to participate in owning the corporation that employs them), and only subsequently made available to the general public, as a mere investment-gamble.

The only justification for anyone’s owning corporate stock, ever, is that the stockholders agree to take on all of the financial risk that the corporation’s bondholders have not taken on. (Bondholders get paid interest before stockholders get paid dividends.) If, instead, the general public, including all of the taxpayers, are taking on this financial risk, then it is only fair that the public (as represented by the government) will also be appointing, during the economic crisis, all of the corporation’s directors: the corporation will be promptly nationalized. After the economic emergency is over, the corporation will then be re-privatized, first to its employees, and then to the public. No corporation ever should be bailed-out by the government, on any other terms than to nationalize it, on this temporary basis. Either a corporation’s stockholders will fulfill the function that stockholders are supposed to fulfill (as being a sump for the corporation’s financial losses), or else their corporation will be promptly but temporarily nationalized, on this basis. Then, the stockholders will get paid fair market value for their stock, which is far more than they will receive if the corporation simply goes bankrupt — declares itself unable to fulfill its contractual obligations to its bondholders.

That is the way things would function in any democracy.

On April 9th, the Zero Hedge financial site explained in detail why even bailing out the airlines would hurt the economy more than help the economy. It quoted an extraordinarily honest investor, Chalmath Palihaptiya,

“This is a lie that’s been propagated by Wall Street. When a company fails, it does not fire its employees…it goes through a packaged bankruptcy…if anything, what happens is the employees end up owning more of the company. The people who get wiped out are the people who own the unsecured debt and the equity…but the employees don’t get wiped out and the pensions don’t get wiped out.”

[…]

“And if a bunch of hedge funds get wiped out — what’s the big deal? Let them fail. So they don’t get the summer in the Hamptons — who cares.”

But do we have a democracy?

Bailing out the public (workers and consumers) so that they can afford to continue living — and buying, and working — is the right thing to do in an economic crash, but not bailing out investors. What do investors get their incomes from? It’s not from their work, it’s only from the investment risks that they take on, the financial risks that they have agreed to accept. If the government transfers any of those risks onto the public, then the government must nationalize the corporation, because the ONLY value that investors provide in the economy is as a sump for financial risks. That’s it, and that’s all.

Any nation which transfers any of those risks onto the public is criminal — it is taking from the poor and middle class in order to keep the rich rich. It is retroactively dictating to the public: Here is now the deal: heads the investors win, tails you the public lose. That wasn’t supposed to have been the deal. If it retroactively becomes the deal when investors overall are losing money instead of making money, then the government is simply crooked; it is just a bunch of con-artists.

Apparently, the German Government (like many others) is corrupt — it’s transferring risks off of investors and onto consumers and workers. That’s Robin Hood in reverse — exactly the type of situation that governments are supposed to outlaw, and to label as being “theft.” Is it not “theft” when the richest do it? It is transferring onto workers and consumers the ONLY value-added, the only real service, that investors are supposed to be supplying, which is their serving as a sump for risks. If any of that risk-burden is removed from investors and transferred onto the public, then all of their property should automatically become property of the state. No decent government bails out investors — ever. Only criminal ones do, such as the U.S. Government.

If a government legalizes what is authentically (one might even say “in natural law”) criminal to do — such as to take from workers and consumers and give that to investors (and this is what is now commonly but deceptively called ‘democracy’) — then the ultimate criminal has become the state itself, and a revolution is needed. That’s practically the definition of what a revolution is for. Things are that bad in the United States, but in how many other countries is it likewise the case?

Perhaps we are about to find out.

theduran.com

Thanks to Merkel holding the line on debt mutualization and EU fiscal integration, which is very unpopular in Germany, her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is now polling at levels it hasn’t enjoyed since before the last general election in 2017.

According to Europe Elects, the latest polling out of Germany has the CDU commanding around 35-37% of German voters. This is a party that was in shambles not two months ago after Merkel heir apparent Annagret Kramp-Karrenbauer stepped down as CDU leader, prompting a new leadership vote, which, conveniently for Merkel, has now been postponed indefinitely thanks to the COVID-19 crisis.

Germany, INSA poll:

CDU/CSU-EPP: 37.5% (-0.5)
GRÜNE-G/EFA: 16% (-2)
SPD-S&D: 16%
AfD-ID: 10.5% (+0.5)
LINKE-LEFT: 7.5% (+0.5)
FDP-RE: 7% (+1.5)

+/- vs. 3-6 Apr.

Fieldwork: 9-14 Apr. ’20
Sample size: 2,108
➤ https://t.co/obOCVirbpF pic.twitter.com/VBIblbijEh

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) April 14, 2020

Some of that is the normal “rally around the current leader” that occurs during any crisis. President Trump’s numbers in the U.S. have been strong despite the twin crises here. Even marginal leaders like Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in Italy have seen their numbers rise.

But a 15-point bump for Merkel is tremendous and it only happens in conjunction with her refusing to cave on Germany being seen bailing out southern Europe. It may win her support domestically, but it sets up a disastrous future for the European Union.

As COVID-19 rages across Europe the two major factions within the EU have been fighting a desperate battle for its future with the issue of debt mutualization being the fulcrum. Now, I believe wholly that the use of lock downs and draconian measures to fight the disease have been more political than practical. Using a public health care crisis to advance a political agenda is the height of cynicism and megalomania.

On the one side we have the Euro-integrationists, led by French President Emmanuel Macron. On the other are the fiscal conservatives led by Merkel, who has given way to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to be the point man for Macron’s derision.

Trapped in the middle is the real human tragedy in northern Italy where thousands of people have died from the toxic mix of a lack of medical infrastructure, high concentration of high-risk people and lack of knowledge of how to fight the disease.

Worse than that, the government in Italy was put together to spearhead this fight for Eurobonds since Conte was kept in power to ensure Lega’s Matteo Salvini didn’t and fight Macron and Merkel by threatening to leave the euro-zone.

Whether you believe the EU’s response, or, more accurately, lack thereof, to Italy’s plight was motivated by malice or incompetence the result is the same. Thousands of Italians died and weakened already weak bonds between Italy and the rest of the EU technocracy.

As I said in an article back on March 14th:

So in the midst of this mess comes COVID-19 and the uncoordinated and inept response to it from the political center of Europe to date. Only now are they coming to the conclusion they need to restrict travel, after sitting on their hands for a few weeks while Italians died by the hundreds.

And do you think that’s engendering waves of love and affection among Italians towards Germans?

If you do then you don’t know Italians… at all.

And this is your signal that this is the beginning of the real crisis. Because while COVID-19 may have been the catalyst for the breakdown of capital markets, capital markets were simply waiting for that spark to occur.

Honestly I wasn’t harsh enough in my assessment of what was happening back then, but it was clear that this crisis was being used to push forward EU integrationist plans of Macron and ECB President Christine Lagarde trying to strongarm the Germans and the Dutch into their position.

By the meeting on March 26th that plan failed. Rutte, Merkel, Austrian Chancellor Sebastain Kurz and Norway all held their ground and the meeting would have ended in a fistfight had it not been held using social distancing rules via teleconference.

That meeting set up last week’s which saw Italy cave to German and Dutch intransigence. Macron and Lagarde lost, securing just $500 billion in new loans but no ECB bond issuance. And the issue now is whether Conte will partake of the program or not.

His failure to act as Macron’s Agent of Shame to secure the EU’s future now puts the whole European project in jeopardy because Conte’s government is in serious trouble in Italy. Moreover, this failure was likely unexpected because now even the hardest-core EU integrationists in Italy’s government are wondering why they are part of the EU.

Meanwhile the polls in Italy haven’t really budged with Salvini’s Lega holding onto around 30% of the electorate with the Brothers of Italy holding onto recent gains in the mid-teens.

Italy, Termometro Politico poll:

LEGA-ID: 31%
PD-S&D: 22%
M5S-NI: 14%
FdI-ECR: 13%
FI-EPP: 6%
IV-RE: 4% (+1)
Azione-S&D: 3%
LS-LEFT: 2%
EV-G/EFA: 2%
+E-RE: 1% (-1)
PC-NI: 1%

+/- vs. 1-2 Apr. ’20

Fieldwork: 8-9 April 2020
Sample size: 2,200 pic.twitter.com/QTCcUpCffP

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) April 11, 2020

Moreover, now the question of EU membership in Italy is a coin flip. Two different polls (here and here) have it well within the margin of error.

Lastly, and most importantly, Conte’s coalition government is split on whether to avail itself of the newly-approved loans. Reuters reported that the divisions within the Italian coalition are rising and portend a split. In a show of political spine not seen in over a year senior partner Five Star Movement (M5S) is opposed while the Eurocentric Democrats are all for it since, as of right now, there are no strings attached to the money.

Conte will have to settle the dispute before a video conference among European leaders on April 23 when Italy will be expected to make its position clear.

He tried to defuse the quarrel on Wednesday, warning in a Facebook post that the ESM “risks dividing the whole of Italy,” and adding that more information was needed on the terms of any credit lines before a final decision could be taken.

Until these details are clear, discussing whether an ESM loan is in Italy’s interests is “a merely abstract and schematic debate,” Conte said.

But we all know there will be strings in the end. If you doubt that assertion, I suggest you ask Greece how about this. So, Conte has his work cut out for himself. There is real urgency now in the EU to get even token Eurobonds approved before Germany takes over the Presidency of the European Commission in July, where it will set the agenda on the EU’s next seven-year budget.

After years of kicking the can down the road to avoid a messy political upheaval, which is Merkel’s trademark move, nothing has changed in the EU when it comes to fixing its untenable structure. And for this reason, as long as Angela Merkel is on the stage, there will be no European dream.

All Merkel ever does is manipulate events back to the previous status quo. She has no capacity or stomach to face the German voters nor will she allow anyone else to fully express themselves. Her handling of Brexit negotiations was a fiasco for the EU, thankfully, and her handling of Italy today is just as inept.

With Salvini waiting in the wings, the people ready to revolt over Germany’s handling of the crisis and a weak coalition government put in place by Merkel to hold things together, the probability of Italeave occurring rises daily.

So, while Merkel may have won this latest battle in the end she may lose the war for the EU. And, in the ultimate irony, the people of Europe may have her to thank for their deliverance from its dysfunction.

A majority in Thuringia, ruled by the CDU since the early 1990’s until 2014 when Die Linke took over with the Social Democrats and the Greens, just voted against the centrist, Merkelist, grand coalition of standing for nothing but globalism and tighter EU integration.

Die Linke and Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured more than 54% of the total vote. Die Linke, the remnant of the East German Communist Party, and AfD, the new face of anti-immigration and fiscally responsible Germans, took first and second place ahead of Merkel’s CDU.

(source Wikipedia via  Thüringer Landesamt für Statistik)

Whereas in 2014, Die Linke could form a government with the SPD and the Greens, today they cannot, falling 4 seats short of a majority, and the Greens barely beat the 5% threshold for representation.  Had they not the coalition calculus would be unsolvable.

It is just as bad for Merkel and the CDU as they categorically refuse to ally with AfD in any capacity.  So, there is no easy path to a government in Thuringia. The path is just as bad in Brandenburg which voted in September.

In both cases massive cartel-style coalitions will be needed, four parties, to cobble together a majority because all have refused to entreat with AfD.  Lower Saxony will likely retain its current coalition between Merkel’s CDU, the SPD and the Greens after their election last month.

These results all highlight where things are headed in Germany, namely against making promises to everyone and eventually reneging on them, which is Merkel’s legacy.  As Alexander Mercouris at The Duran pointed out the other day, Merkel’s operating principle is one of holding the line on the status quo regardless of the real changes happening around her.

That has created a meta-stable environment which looks like it never loses on the surface but is teetering on collapse with every new development.

She’s done this with every major policy decision of the past five years, trying desperately to keep the European project on the narrow path forward.  But in trying to keep things as they are, she’s let things go to hell back home.

And it may finally be time for Angela Merkel to leave the political stage.

The state elections this fall in Germany have been nothing short of a disaster for Merkel.  Think back to the fall of 2017 and how hard it was for her to put a coalition together.  I prematurely called for the end of Merkelism.  The problems she’s facing now were just as acute then. but she chose to paper them over with yet another disastrous coalition with the Social Democrats.

The one thing I got right back then was their collapse.  They were in free fall then and this has continued to today where they took just 8% of the vote in Thuringia.  They lost their majority in the stronghold of Rhineland-Westphalia in 2017 and that was your harbinger of bad news at the national level later that year.

What’s clear is that political opinions about the future of Germany are hardening away from what Merkel has been selling and it will come to a head in the near future.

The SPD has a party congress in December and with these election results along with the national level polling seeing the Greens rise dramatically, Merkel presides over a zombie Bundestag that no more accurately represents the popular opinion in Germany than the parliaments in Italy and the United Kingdom do.

And in the U.K. it took herculean efforts by Boris Johnson to finally get a general election through the miasma of suck that is the British and European political classes, which no more want to see a real Brexit than decent people want to see Hillary Clinton as U.S. President.

The SPD didn’t want to join another coalition with Merkel in 2017 and after Thuringia there is every expectation that they will finally end the association with her once and for all.  And a general election  can’t be far behind.  The problem with this line of thinking, unfortunately, is that there is no appetite for new elections in Germany.

They are simply not used to this kind of political turmoil.

Moreover, no one in the Eurocratic class wants to see Merkel exit the stage in abject defeat.  So, immense pressure will be placed on SPD leadership to hang with Merkel, just like it was applied to them in late 2017 to form the coalition.

But with Germany entering recession Merkel has already signaled that if she has to go back to the polls she’s ready to make a deal with the Greens with her recent concessions on renewable energy projects and more sops to them.

Current polling has the Greens, however, on the downside of their popularity, having peaked during the European elections at 25% and are now polling down at 22%.  And, again, they, like AfD, are more regionally powerful than they are at the national level.

Meanwhile the SPD, nationally, is in a horse race with AfD at around 14%.  The longer the SPD stays below the magic 16% level the more likely they are to sink into complete irrelevance as they have in Thuringia.

So, if the SPD pulls the plug on the coalition the results of any election in early 2020 won’t likely be any more conclusive than the last one.  More likely than an election, Merkel will simply step down as leader of the CDU and the coalition will try to limp along until 2021.

But the reality is that the global financial system is teetering on the edge of an abyss.  Central Banks like the Fed and the ECB are panicking into major liquidity moves before any real threats have made it into the headlines.

And why is that, unless things are truly far worse than anyone is willing to admit.  How long are we until a Deutsche Bank collapse?

All we’re waiting for right now is a catalyst.  The EU needs to manage their change in power smoothly to keep markets reassured.  But the signs of a major problem are everywhere.  All it takes is a spark.

Because all three of these state elections highlight the huge split between what were West and East Germanies during the Cold War.  And that functional split in political thinking is only going to get worse until it is expressed by the ruling government.

And if Merkel continues to stand in the way of that at some point she’s going to get run over by the force of history.

Both Die Linke and AfD share important fundamental criticisms of the EU as well as with Merkel’s foreign policy.  Both are backed by voters who heavily support withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country.  And both are opposed broadly to Merkel’s disenfranchising voters via her mass immigration policy.

Moreover, both want normalization of relations with Russia.  And with the completion of the Nordstream 2 pipeline and Ukraine’s acceptance of the “Steinmeyer Formula” for resolving conflict in the Donbass, political pressure is mounting for an end to EU sanctions as Merkel has been the person most committed to keeping them until these conditions were met.

To save herself in the near term look for her to promise lifting the sanctions to stave off her final demise.  The stage is now set for this sometime in 2020.

And while we’ll never see the kind of Euroskeptic alliance between AfD and Die Linke like we saw in Italy last year, as economic conditions in Germany deteriorate and Merkel is blamed for it, rightfully so, these areas of policy agreement set the stage for a ripping apart at the seams of the German political fabric.

But, in doing so, she opened herself up to attack from the Left. The combined results for the ruling coalition in Germany was only 45% with the Social Democrats (SPD) under-performing even their recent bad polling data, garnering just 15.8% of the vote.

It was the loss for the SPD in Bremen which voted for both the EU parliament but its own, however, that was most disturbing as the SPD lost to the Merkel’s CDU by a point. This was the first loss in any state-wide election for the SPD in Bremen in 73 years.

That prompted two big moves in the wake of the results. Merkel supposedly ‘un-retired’ as head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and, more importantly, Andrea Nehles stepped down as the leader of the Social Democrats.

This has now thrown the future of the current Grand Coalition into doubt.

And the question now is whether it can survive until the next election in 2021. The recent spate of speculation on this after Nehles’ resignation lead me to believe there may be something pushing for this behind the scenes.

The Greens have surged to more than 20% and what looked early on as a protest vote over another four years of the SPD rubber-stamping Merkel’s EU-first policies has taken on greater significance. These EU election results imply that the SPD may be, like the Tories in the U.K., in terminal decline.

Greens in Germany are of the most hawkish variety. They are the most militant about bringing about societal change through Progressive politics and the SPD have played footsie, in their eyes, with Merkel for too long. These results will only make them more strident.

And it will have knock-on effects in the EU as well.

So, like I said in my last article, the center isn’t holding in Europe. And the days of centrist politicians like Merkel are numbered. Grand coalitions that stand for nothing except care-taking the advancement of the European project were the big losers last month from both sides of the political aisle.

The political radicals will now have a far greater say and influence over the course of Europe. And it starts with the rise of the Greens in Germany. They have held above the 16% level now for months and just came through a major election above that critical level.

This is now a social movement in Germany, not a protest vote. And that could easily bring down the Merkel government.

The problem, however, is that there is now no workable coalition possible unless the Greens surge to 35% percent, wiping out the SPD entirely.

The Greens were the main reason Merkel had such a difficult time putting a coalition together after 2017’s election. Either she will have to jump harder-left, alienating her already tenuous relationship with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) or consider a coalition with AfD, which is anathema to everyone.

Merkel spent so much political capital over the past eighteen months pushing back against the rise of AfD over her disastrous immigration policy that it has now put her in a real bind if the coalition falls apart.

I’m sure this is why she has ‘un-retired’ as head of the CDU, to help keep the SPD on side for now. But there are three big state elections in eastern Germany later this year — Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia.

All of these are AfD strongholds now. AfD won Brandenburg and Saxony and nearly won in Thuringia. This is setting up a strong East/West divide in Germany which Merkel is doing nothing to improve.

Looking ahead, Brandenburg and Saxony go to the polls on September 1^st. Strong showings by AfD there should give them coattails six weeks later when Thuringia goes to the polls. Brandenburg, in particular is key for them given that the Greens are now the dominant party in Berlin.

The path for Merkel to hold onto power in Germany just got more twisted. Her policies have radicalized the right against her while dissatisfying the hard left. That trend will only continue as time goes on.

The big problem for both of these younger parties is learning how to govern. It’s easy to be a force for change when you are a vessel for people’s anger and frustration. You can influence the major parties into adopting your positions, which is part of what has stabilized the CDU’s numbers, having Merkel embrace stronger immigration controls.

It is quite another, especially in Germany’s murky parliamentary system, when you have to make deals to provide stable leadership.

That’s where AfD’s leadership to this point has fallen down. They didn’t move off of their signature platform point quick enough to outflank Merkel and she blunted their growth nationwide. Now they have to build on their regional influence through good governance, if they can leverage their leads into governing coalitions, and being respectable members of the Bundestag.

For both the Greens and AfD the good news is that Merkel is vulnerable on the economy. The rapidly slowing German economy coupled with Merkel’s strained relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump will work against her holding her coalition together.

This is where AfD can bridge the gap with voters and shore up their majorities in the eastern states, emphasizing that the current mess is Merkel’s fault and have a plan as to how to fix things. They can start with demanding sanctions be lifted against Russia over Crimea. Merkel is vulnerable here.

She’s trying to do this while saving face and not angering Trump. That’s not possible, so she continues to not lead and leave the status quo in place while the German economy suffers from lack of business opportunities for key industries.

Trade with Russia has rebounded to pre-sanctions levels but it is still way down in the important state of Bavaria, where even the Greens are making strides.

But, for now, it seems to me that it will be difficult to take down the current government because current polling precludes any viable coalition forming that could command a stable majority. The instability of Germany’s political situation will continue to build just below the headlines until Merkel finally meets her end.

Uncorroborated? Sure. Most likely true. Of course.

The European Union doesn’t want Brexit to happen. And if it were to happen it would only be acceptable to them if it looks like the deal Mrs. May put before the House of Commons twice only to be rebuked by historic margins.

This was not a version of Brexit anyone had in mind. Not the softest-minded Labour voter and especially not the sovereignty-minded Leave voter of the Nigel Farage persuasion.

It was, in short, a betrayal of all things fundamentally nationalist.

For the past week I’ve been watching a lot of British Parliament as it debates, and I use that word very loosely, the situation Mrs. May and the MP’s themselves have put the country in. And, in a word, it is shameful.

May and Merkel both miscalculated terribly on what the British people would accept. It’s obvious that both only thought in terms of the kind of political leverage they could bring to bear on the House of Commons which would eventually force them to cave to supposed horror-show of a ‘No-Deal’ Brexit.

Make no mistake, the horror show would mostly fall on Germany – whose banking system, already teetering on collapse thanks to other rifts forming within the currency bloc – and export-driven economy would suffer from the Brits having more control over the exchange rate of the pound versus the euro.

A lower pound would be the first result of a no-deal Brexit. Good for long-suffering British manufacturing and bad for Germany’s, since the UK is Germany’s biggest export market.

Economically and philosophically, no-deal is the best deal for the UK But don’t tell that to the MP’s who are scared to death of it.

But what’s most important about all of this is that it is all just a symptom of a much deeper problem, the unwieldy nature of the European Union itself.

Germany and the elites who have pushed this project, the unelected financiers I like to call The Davos Crowd, are dead set against anything that obstructs its completion.

The wave of nationalist political fervor racing across the continent is, however, a consequence of their trying to form a political and fiscal union that far exceeds the original mandate sold to voters when they joined.

And that is threatening to tear Mrs. Merkel’s union to pieces. This is why she and her posse in Brussels are so committed to screwing the British people. They have to send the right message to Italy and Hungary. It’s why they want $39 billion.

It’s why they are using the non-issue of the Irish border to tie the UK into the customs union and single market forever. But, make no mistake, just like Merkel’s horrific treatment of Greece was seen as unconscionable by people across Europe in 2015 they are looking at how the Brits are being treated and are equally as appalled.

Merkel, Juncker et.al. all saw the divisions within the Labour and Conservative parties that have resulted from their planning and thought them to be assets. But they aren’t. Maybe in the short-run it will get them what they want, another moment to kick the can down the road a little bit further.

But in the long-run all it is doing is setting up for another round of Brexit in the future with a much less plastic set of circumstances. Because, as I said earlier, they have miscalculated. The British people are fed up with them and with their own government.

The Labour party is squealing out of both sides of its mouth trying to get themselves out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into. Because they can read the polls. And what was a solid Labour lead in the winter has become a solid Tory lead in the Spring.

Because as split as the Tories are, voters understand that there are more of them trying to implement their will than there are Labour MP’s. And that counts for something.

Mrs. May has made a mess of things thinking she could shoe horn a terrible deal through parliament that would satisfy the EU while blowing up the traditional two-party system in the House of Commons.

And this is why I say to hardened cynics who think these people are all-powerful that they aren’t. They are smart but they aren’t clever. They do the same thing that has worked before and run the same playbook. Brexit looks exactly like the Greek debt talks.

Merkel didn’t update her playbook for 2018. It wasn’t a short-term negotiation. It was a three-year process that tried the patience of 66 million Brits. And they have seen the real face of the EU and many more of them want no part of it.

Merkel and Juncker are trying to hold onto their manufactured leverage over the Brits to, in turn, hold onto a Union that is in the process of failing. May and her cabinet are trying to hold onto a relationship with the EU while the UK itself is now in danger of failing.

The Scots are pushing for independence to stay in the EU. Wales is beginning to consider it. Northern Ireland doesn’t like being anyone’s Trojan Horse.

They have thoroughly underestimated the will of the people and it will cost them what little cache they have left with voters. Remember, confidence lost in the institutions of government begets a loss of confidence in the money and their ability to manage it.

If you want a catalyst for a European sovereign debt crisis, look no further than Brexit now or the downstream effects of a delayed Brexit later.

If an extension is approved by the EU and given to the Brits, Euroskeptics will go from commanding a projected 32-33% of a 705 seat European Parliament to possibly 35-36% of a larger one that includes the Brits.

Because if Brexit is delayed and betrayed do you think Remainers will be elected en masse? Or do you think Farage et.al. will not storm into Brussels mad as hell?

Merkel and May may have won this battle using their useful idiots like Anna Soubry and Ian Blackford but they will lose the war as the rest of Europe comes to terms with being frog-marched towards a future they neither want, signed up for or are willing to pay for anymore.

No wonder the Yellow Vests keep showing up every weekend.

Merkel has been in power for more than 13 years and is old enough to be Macron’s mother. Macron is a neophyte of less than two years in power, though with an inflated sense of self-regard as ridiculous as the comic character of Mr. Toad in the British children’s book, “The Wind in the Willows.”

Merkel and Macron share the same assumptions, were raised up by the same forces and are endless feted and fraudulently praised by the same worthless pundits.

Both are arrogant elitist intellectuals. Both believe in stripping and shrinking the social functions and responsibilities of the state towards the weak and the poor. Both agree that the state should help and protect large national corporations and that ordinarily people rate a poor second to this: In fact they do not rate at all.

Both believe that they and their regimes represent the absolute perfections of human achievement and therefore must be replicated around the world, instantly if possible. Merkel looks to advance regime change to the east, across all of Eurasia. Macron in his faux-Mussolini style dreams of being the neo-Napoleonic wise leader of the Mediterranean, orchestrating the remaking of the Maghreb across North Africa and of the Arab Middle East.

Both leaders see themselves selfless, visionary internationalists and regard Presidents Donald Trump in the United States and Vladimir Putin in Russia with fastidious distaste because they presume to put the interests of their own peoples first.

Both Merkel and Macron have condescending contempt for their own peoples and believe the native populations of their countries need injections of millions of immigrants from around the world as quickly as possible. Neither of them cares a fig for the values of the Christian civilizations that built and embodied their nations for more than a millennium. Instead, they openly despise those who take their national heritage seriously.

Yet there is also a strange, even creepy mutual attraction between the aging German chancellor and the (supposedly) young and dynamic French president.

Neither of them ever had any children. Merkel likes to play the wise and experienced stateswoman to younger, callow world leaders who share her superficial fashionable assumptions. Barack Obama of the United States filled that role for her and Obama, whose ignorance of affairs outside the borders of the US was proverbial, eagerly appreciated her condescension.

As Obama left office, he memorably praised Merkel as his closest friend among world leaders. This comment, farcically, stunned British Prime Minister David Cameron whose spin machine had for six years pumped out the reassuring fairy tale that Cameron was the closest confidant to Obama and his trusted sidekick on the world scene.

Macron has always gravitated to older women. His wife is 24 years older than he is and they met when she was his teacher in high school.

In the United States and Britain, this kind of misalliance would have been fodder for the tabloid newspapers. The National Enquirer and the Daily Mail could have run with prurient speculations on the nature of their relationship for years. In France, where no human proclivity surprises people they take this kind of thing in their stride.

Still, for Macron the progression from his wife to Merkel is as consistent as Merkel replacing Obama with Macron as her admiring young disciple and/or favorite nephew.

However, the most enduring image that the strange Merkel-Macron pairing conjures up is an older one. Before World War II, the most enduring popular romantic movie of all time was made in Hollywood – “Gone with The Wind,” a tear-jerking melodrama of passionate love between privileged white racists in the Antebellum South before the US Civil War.

It is not at all too much of a stretch of the imagination to see Macron farcically replacing the chiseled features of Clark Gable as unscrupulous, rather fraudulent but always dashing gambler Rhett Butler and the imperious Kaiserin (Lady Empress) Merkel instead of British fiery, imperious beauty Vivien Leigh as the movie’s riveting pain-in-the-neck heroine Scarlett O’Hara. Like Kaiserin Angela, Scarlett, always, always had to have her own way.

In “Gone with the Wind” the tempestuous, virtually insane passion between Rhett and Scarlett survives as the entire society of the racist Southern Confederate Slave State crashes to ruins around them. In the end, the city of Atlanta burns, but the fiery passion of Rhett and Scarlett survives, even when they are apart.

The cities of France and Germany may well be burning soon as testament to the disastrous policies of “Rhett” Macron and “Scarlett” O’Merkel. But it is a safe bet that they will be even more oblivious to the consequences of their own actions. In the words of Rhett Butler that end the movie, neither Merkel nor Macron really gives a damn.

Photo: Flickr

And that’s putting it mildly.

Trump’s pressuring Germany over the Nordstream 2 pipeline, withdrawing from the JCPOA and increasing NATO funding all have a common theme which even for an EU-firster like Merkel is a non-starter.

Trump is trying to make Germany’s economy uncompetitive by raising the cost of imported energy.

This is obvious when we look at the US’s opposition to Nordstream 2. Trump has made no bones about his distaste for the pipeline because he’d rather Germany, his ally, buy beautiful, clean LNG from Cheniere in Louisiana rather than from dirty, nasty gas from Russia, his enemy.

The other two issues, however, are just as energy-focused for Trump, or at least, economically-focused. Let’s start with Iran.

The JCPOA was signed in 2015 when it looked like the Operation to Blow Apart Syria for Fun and Profit was on the verge of victory. Giving Iran a lifeline to begin selling oil on the open market again was Europe’s ‘get’ in that war.

Turkey would ‘get’ Idlib, Aleppo, Afrin and Manbij. The Saudis and Qataris would ‘get’ gas pipelines into Europe. Israel breaks up the Shia Crescent with the newly-independent Kurdish territory and ‘get’ a US/Israeli campaign to undermine Iran’s government while leaving a hotbed of terrorism to export around the region.

Elijah Magnier called this creating a ‘Syrian jungle.’ I just call it vile.

But it didn’t work because of Putin, Hezbollah and the IRGC with China playing silent partner.

So, Trump comes to power in late 2016 with a chip on his shoulder about this deal because Israel didn’t like it. It gave Iran and Europe too much while the US was still paying for everything, according to Trump. And that had to be reversed.

Ending US involvement in the JCPOA was meant to destroy the agreement and end all European investment in Iran’s energy sector, thereby stopping a steady flow of relatively cheap Iranian oil to Europe through its oil majors like Total (France) and Eni (Italy).

The same can really be said for Trump holding Europe’s feet to the fire on NATO funding. I think Trump sees NATO as an anachronism but there is no way to get rid of it at this point thanks to US and U.K. policy inertia. And, to him, if NATO then he’s going to use it as leverage any way he can.

He knows that the US is essentially an occupying force in Europe, still. And gets benefits that far outweigh NATO’s cost in terms of leveraging its political pressure. He’s not stupid. But he is amoral and so it doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not.

He will demand it because he can. The benefit is that Germany, in particular, would have to raise defense spending to such a degree that it would be unsustainable for them to maintain their current government funding in other areas.

This will pull capital out of the productive part of German society and lower their competitiveness vis a vis US producers. This is why Trump is obsessed with German car imports. He knows it’s a sore spot for Germany and the US car industry is non-competitive.

But, really that’s not NATO’s fault. That’s a domestic issue Trump won’t tackle. He’d rather do the politically easy and expedient thing by raising tariffs and blaming the other guy.

It’s unfortunately an easy sell on the American Right.

All of this, again, is another facet of Trump’s Energy Dominance policy that is designed around his ‘America First’ ideology. Control the flow of energy, raise costs on competitors, punish them if necessary and do so because that will help the American people who have been the victims of globalists like Merkel.

In many ways, I agree with him about that last bit. What I disagree with is the extent to which he absolves the US of its responsibility of creating this mess in the first place. And he’s done nothing but hire the most belligerent group of psychopaths to occupy the White House since Bush the Lesser’s first term.

These guys – John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, in particular – adhere to the Makinder “Heartland” theory about controlling Asia and that means doing everything possible to stop the natural alliance between German engineering and industrial prowess and Russia’s scientific community and its abundant natural resources.

And that leaves Germany right where it always is during times of geopolitical crisis, between warring major powers looking to control her.

So, Merkel is right to strike out against Trump’s calls to help him go to war with Iran for Israel, stand up for the Nordstream 2 pipeline and try to keep the JCPOA functional.

At the same time, however, she is always trying to appease the US by mouthing the right words about Russian sanctions and building an LNG import terminal, for example.

Let’s not forget, however, that Merkel is loyal to the European Union first and in all of this she is trying to extricate the EU from the US’s foreign policy direction and forge an independent path.

That’s what these dissentions are all about. And it is why everyone is so worried about the NordStream 2 pipeline. The US knows that once the gas is flowing an inseverable artery to German factories is in place for the foreseeable future. It’s a link that is stronger than any amount of bullying by Trump through sanctions and tariffs.

And it destroys further the Trump talking point about European energy security. As Merkel rightly pointed out, all throughout the cold war Russian gas flowed through pipelines regardless of how poor relations with the West were.

Why wouldn’t that continue today? The implication, of course, is that the Russians have always kept their word while the US, under Trump, has no words only the stick.

Thanks to John Bolton’s psychosis Trump has left Europe unsafe thanks to his exiting the INF treaty against the deployment of ground-based intermediate range missiles, creating an even bigger climate of frustration, resentment and fear.

And that’s the irony in all of this. Trump is ensuring, in the long run, that Germany learns the lesson that its future lies east, not west; that Russia is its natural partner.

Moreover, given the failure of the EU and Merkel to protect Southstream and instrumental in creating the mess that is Ukraine, Vladimir Putin knows that he can and will develop Russia’s business east and leave Germany twisting in the wind if Nordstream 2 fails to be completed through US legerdemain.

This is Merkel’s last chance to prove herself capable of leaving Germany in a strong position well after she exits the stage. And that’s why she was cheered in Munich.