The split between Berlin and Washington is becoming more pronounced by the week, as German patience seems to be running out for the war-hungry and belligerent US. This is leading to NATO becoming more fragmented, as many in Europe now see certain factions in the US as impeding any chance of reaching an enduring peace deal in Eastern Ukraine.
The latest episode in this deteriorating relationship was when the four-star General in the US Air Force and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Philip Breedlove, stunned German leaders by giving a ludicrous and inaccurate statement claiming that Russia had “upped the ante” in Eastern Ukraine. Breedlove’s comments were viewed by many in the German Chancellery as “dangerous propaganda”, as he frequently exaggerates the number of Russian troops and tanks close to the Ukrainian border in a bid to increase tension between East and West.
Straight from the Western propagandist’s songbook, hyperbole and hyping the threat of “Russian aggression” is the song that Breedlove is signing along with many other Western military leaders and politicians. Total demonization of the Russian Federation is the order of the day in the West; as facts play an increasingly limited role in public discourse regarding Moscow.
Individuals in the top echelons of the German government and intelligence services are repeatedly seeing their attempts at diplomatically reaching a peaceful solution in Ukraine torpedoed by “hawks in Washington”, hawks that Breedlove seems to represent. As Sputnik reported in an article titled, Washington’s War Agenda Toward Russia Unnerves German Leaders:
“Hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s [diplomatic] approach” over the Ukraine conflict, reported German media. The German government feels that Americans are trying to undermine its recent efforts to arbitrate a political solution to the Ukrainian conflict, which has caused at least 6,000 deaths. Germany also expressed discontent that the violence between the ultranationalist regime in Kiev and the independence supporters in the east is threatening to spill over into a wider war that could involve Russia and the rest of Europe. Berlin has also lately expressed the view that General Breedlove and US State Department official Victoria Nuland are working together to destabilize the Minsk ceasefire.”
Many in Europe are growing increasingly tired of Washington’s obsessive desire for global hegemony and their attempted subjugation of the Russian state. The sooner European states turn their back on US pressure, the safer the world will become. Crazed neocon hawks have been directing US foreign policy for far too long, in what US four-star General and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark calls a “policy coup”.
Berlin has taken a more rational stance than the more extreme factions in the West in respect to the situation in Eastern Ukraine. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, stated at the beginning of February that she was opposed to NATO countries supplying the Ukrainian government with lethal military aid, despite many in Washington pushing for such an escalation in the crisis. Other nations in the West perhaps didn’t heed her sound advice however, as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said after a meeting in Hungary that Western nations are already supplying weapons to Kiev. German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also spoke out at the end of last year against Ukraine joining NATO, although he did believe a partnership was possible. Steinmeier told Der Spiegel “that it is possible for NATO to have a partnership with Ukraine, but not membership.”
Cohesion and consensus on policy among member states is essential to any alliance; and the deepening split between the US and Germany illustrates the growing fractures within NATO. Europe should emancipate itself from US pressure and pursue independent foreign policies devoid of imperial aspirations. Disbanding NATO is a key step towards this, and one that is long overdue!
Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.