This is all about German politicians who've been bought out by Russian interests trying to protect their pet project(s). Speaking as a German, the fact that Germany would rather deal with and be reliant on a country like Russia is, frankly, insane and incredibly shameful. It's as if Ukraine didn't happen, nor Russian interference of elections across the Western world. For all the bad that the US does, at least they don't invade and annex European countries, and try to undermine European politics.
It is beyond me for the German state to call for "EU unity" because of a project that is essentially a huge "fuck you" to Eastern Europe. If anything the EU should back the US sanctions to protect unity, as weird as it sounds.
This particular case is pretty bad for getting EU to unite.<p>Nordstream is contentious within EU
too - it's basically a way for Russia to threaten Poland with the gas cutoff without endangering their business with Germany.
Full article at Reddit: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/egorb9/comment/fc82ydj" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/egorb9/comment/fc82...</a>
Openly calling for cooperation with Russia and China, of all places, should be political suicide. But it seems like the message of 'let's protect ourselves from /insert boogeyman/' still works well enough to muddy public opinion.<p>The sanctions are there for a reason and saying that you need protection against them is like saying 'well, they did a bad thing and got a slap on the wrist, the obvious conclusion is to keep doing bad things but fend off the slaps'.
Since US is starting to be a supplier of gas to Central European counties such as Poland via the gas carrying vessels and some countries trying to gain energy independence from Russia it becomes an interest of US not to lose the newly acquired buyers of their gas. Then it is problematic for countries like Germany that they can't boost the import because of US interference
The disrespect that Germany is showing the US is mind boggling. The US being part of NATO is the greatest deal the other countries have ever signed/received. The US spends nearly $700 Billion per year compared to Germany’s nearly $56 Billion per year on its military.<p>The US needs to start sending ultimatums - you are either part of NATO and therefore don’t enrich Russia by buying their resources and pay your fair share (2%) at the very least or we’re going to pull out of NATO and have a treaty with just Estonia, Greece, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Britain who all meet the treaty conditions of 2% and don’t whine.<p>If NATO ended and Germany had to build up and army capable of defending itself against Russia it would cost way more than 2% per year.<p>All Europeans need to understand the financial burden US tax payers meet to keep us safe. I think the Brits realise how important it is and the Poles and the Baltic’s do because they know what it’s like to live under Russian military fear.
It turns out that Germany has been adversarial toward the US throughout its history. This"German call for European unity against the US" is almost identical to their opposition in the Spanish-American War.
When tariffs are used as a mechanism to create unfair advantages for US entities over foreign states’ instead of even pretending it’s under the veil of US freedom policy not even your old pals will put up with it.
We need the US to step in for Eastern Europe. We need a reliable partner that is at least very direct and honest about its interests unlike Germany that is all about german interests while preaching european unity and values. Seriously Germany has been destroying my part of Europe for way too long! No more!<p>I would rather deal with the american way of life than being forced to live the german way.