JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: GERMAN FOREIGN POLICY AND ITS LACK OF INDEPENDENCE FROM AMERICA - AN ODDITY FOR A STATE OF SUCH HISTORIC IMPORTANCE AND ONE PROVIDING TODAY THE EU'S MAIN DRIVING ENGINE - SOME OF CHANCELLOR MERKEL'S LIMITED INDEPENDENT ACTS - GERMANY'S POSITION IN POSTWAR EUROPE - LIKE BRITAIN OR FRANCE ITS POLITICS AND PRESS ARE THOROUGHLY PENETRATED BY AMERICAN INTERESTS AND IT IS OBLIGED TO SUPPORT AMERICA'S OFTEN DESTRUCTIVE POLICIES ABROAD

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY AIDEN O’BRIEN IN RUSSIA INSIDER

"German Foreign Policy Is a CIA Front, It Has Been Since WWII"


Just a brief survey of Germany's postwar activity in the world, right up to the present, shows no real independence in word or act.

It is an odd situation for a state which has been so powerful in the past and remains the central engine of the EU.

I've read that Germany after WWII agreed to certain secret American protocols and limits on its future freedom of action.

I don't know, but it is quite plausible.

Much of the German press is as captive to American interests, too, as the British press is. Quite servile. Der Spiegel, for example, runs a lot of stuff that seems almost CIA-approved. One former German journalist, Udo Ulfkoette, wrote a controversial book about the way German journalists were paid and told what to write by the CIA and others.

Our entire understanding of the modern “Western World” is pretty much an elaborate illusion, having little to do with what really takes place. It is certainly no different inside the United States with regard to its major press and politicians.

Ms. Merkel’s great political blunder of a few years back, briefly opening the country’s doors to large numbers of refugees, was I believe an independent act, one which almost certainly had its origin in her humanity and regret over having supported America’s godawful Neocon Wars which killed millions in the Middle East and generated many millions of hopeless refugees, refugees America just ignored and often regarded with contempt.

Germany has not been quite as deeply entangled in those bloody, pointless wars as Britain and France who gleefully bombed in several countries, but it has been involved and it has given its public support to America’s Mideast “killing fields.” Ms. Merkel would have had little choice but to publicly support a major American policy.

But she saw what she thought was an opportunity to do some good with the refugees American bombing had created, and she took it. America didn’t care, but the politics of her own country and the EU exploded in her face over so much sudden ethnic and linguistic and religious change. That act and her standing up for Russian gas pipelines needed for the future of German industry, pipelines America has actively opposed for decades, are the only kind of independent policies she has attempted.

It was reported how dismayed she was about five years ago to learn that America’s NSA tapped even her personal telephone, a phone she uses a great deal, but she made no public show or demands.

I am sure she gets quite sick of America’s pushiness and blundering, especially now with the grotesque Trump fronting for the empire’s establishment. Just listening to him and watching him can be pretty stomach-churning for anyone with some intelligence and culture.

She is a highly intelligent woman – one reason she and Putin get on well - so I don’t think much gets by her. But her latitude to act is small, and she is not a boisterous, pushy type.

Besides, German society has always been pretty conservative in nature. Conservative in the context of Europe after WWII meant supporting America’s occupation and direction of affairs.