Outlaw,
I am well aware of the Western Allies’ efforts to de-militarize the occupied Germans through education and to instill a sense of collective responsibility, in addition to a desire for liberal democracy and civic - rather than ethnic - nationalism. Yet the story is more complicated as Cold War exigencies quickly derailed social reconstruction in all of occupied Germany, with brown replaced overnight with red in the east, and unreconstructed National Socialists allowed back into power in the west.
Much of the contemporary German opposition to militarism is derived more from the student protest movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which itself was a reaction to the unfinished work of de-Nazification. Given those intellectual origins and the fact that the Bundeswehr was hollowed out relatively recently and after reunification (East Germans were hardly under U.S. influence for 45 years), it is rather disingenuous to blame the U.S. for German reluctance to fulfil German military obligations today.
As for polling…
- From 2009 to 2015, the number of Germans having a favorable view of NATO fell from 73% to 55%
- Most Germans are opposed to using military force to defend other NATO members (53% in Q1 2017)
- Germans are the least supportive of defending other NATO members against Russia (only 40% in Q1 2017)
- On the Ukrainian issue, more Germans tended to blame the West (12%) and not blame Russia (29%) than other NATO members
- Most Germans also opposed Ukraine joining NATO or the EU, as well as NATO arming Ukraine
- For all the German angst over Trump, most Germans believe that U.S. military support for NATO is unchanged from 2015 through 2017, and have more confidence in the U.S. (65%) than in France or Poland
Sources: Pew Q1 2015, Pew Q1 2017
This fiscal irresponsibility in southern Europe keeps the Euro low and aids German exports to China and the United States. Moreover, German banks were more than happy to extend credit prior to the Great Recession.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Outlaw, your mental contortions here make me feel guilty for forcing you to defend the indefensible. Merkel is a mere caretaker who only reacts to events and flails in the dark. Her nuclear phase-out was an ill-advised response to Fukushima much as her welcome for migrants was a response to media of dead children washing up on Greek and Turkish beaches. Yet her nuclear initiative made Germany more dependent upon Russian energy imports and she has quietly rolled up her welcome mat. Now, she is using the Trump presidency as a means to showboat in advance of key elections. Yawn.
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