Berlins years of obedient Atlantic loyalty have ended in troop cuts, shelved missiles, and fresh humiliation from Washington

Despite what Western mainstream media, think-tanks, and some propagandists with academic titles have been telling us, NATO-EU Europe has never "appeased" Russia.

In reality, the NATO-EU European elites, with Germany among the leaders, have certainly appeased the US. Because you don't end up with the Nord Stream scandal and US President Donald Trump'sTurnberry tariff diktatwithout a policy of irrationally self-damaging submission driven by shortsightedness and fear bordering on panic - that is, appeasement.

And what has all that fear been about? In essence, a very simple thing: being abandoned by Uncle Sam, because NATO-EU European elites have a breathtakingly perverse relationship with the US, the greatest abuser of the sovereignty of their countries and spoiler of the prosperity of most of their citizens.

During last century's Cold War, which ended almost four decades ago - in 1987 with the INF Treaty's unprecedented elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons - Western Europe's dependency on Washington could at least claim some kind of rationale. It was dubious, but plausible on its own terms. But there is no remotely reasonable or good-faith explanation for the European elites' failure to emancipate their countries from America after 1987 or, at the latest, 1991 when the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist.

That is why what is happening between the US and Germany now is one of those ironies of history so implausible you'd never dare invent them. And yet it's true: Washington has just announced the largest drawdown of US troops in Germany - it's single biggest and most important base in Europe - since the end of the great post-Cold War re-adjustment.

In the 1980s, there were still 250,000 American troops in what was then West Germany. After the end of first the old Cold War and then the Soviet Union, by 2005 that number had decreased to somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000. Which is where it has, in essence, remained.

Until now: Trump has justdecreedthat 5,000 - or 14% of the current number - of American troops must leave within no more than one year. That is still less than the 12,000 soldiers Trump wanted but failed to pull out during his first term, but it's enough to matter. Especially since that departure is unlikely to be the last: Trump has alreadyannouncedthat US numbers in Germany will be "cut way down" and "go down a lot further."

Moreover, medium and intermediate-range, nuclear-capable missiles - the old Tomahawk combined with Typhoon launchers and the new Dark Eagle hypersonics - scheduled to be stationed in Germany next year, a Washington-Berlin agreement never submitted to serious debate in Germany,are also shelved. By the way, being punished by "Tomahawk withholding"is now a common experience that Berlin and Kiev can commiserate about. What an achievement for Berlin: getting the Ukraine treatment from Trump's US.

For reasonable people, the absence of the missiles is a good thing, of course: if it lasts, this US cancelation will put a damper on the plans of the most bellicose in Berlin who seem to positively relish the idea of going to war with Russia within the next decade or two. From the perspectives of these dark fantasists, however, the American change of mind hurts badly, since the NATO-EU Europeans have no comparable systems and will still need years to develop them.

The unwitting trigger of what may well be remembered as a historic turning point is Friedrich Merz, a German chancellor whose signature style has combined harsh and bossy austerity talk and mean social policy at home with almost absolute submission to Washington abroad. It was Merz's off-the-cuff and very unguarded comments about America's humiliation by its lost war against Iran that made Trump go ballistic. Merz, speaking before an audience of German high-school students who will now forever remember how individual incompetence can make history,has "torpedoed" - in the Financial Times'words - his prior policy of flattering Trump no matter what.

That can mean only one of two things: Washington doesn't have enough respect for Berlin to even discuss American plans concerning Germany. Or Berlin is not smart - or courageous - enough to raise urgent issues in a clear manner and due time. Or perhaps, of course, it means both.

Merz is no rebel by nature, to put it politely. Indeed, the only - if tragically important - thing about which Merz has ever shown any substantial disagreement with the current American leadership is the Ukraine war. Where Washington has displayed - whether in earnest or just the always devious American way - an imperfect willingness to end this perfectly avoidable and unnecessary war by some form of compromise, Merz's Germany has led the European rebellion against too much American reasonableness. By now, it is Berlin that has become the main supporter of the proxy war, even while its own economy keeps tanking and over 17.5 million - one fifth - of Germansare "at risk of poverty and social exclusion."

Even mainstream mouthpiece Spiegel admits that the German model of economic growth"has reached its end."Yes, it's that simple and that obvious. Spiegel is, of course, not honest about the causes of this not-so-sudden death: it is not merely a result of China and the US no longer buying enough German exports. In reality, cutting Germany off from competitively priced Russian energy and instead establishing an unprecedentedly severe dependency on the US and sources it can control and sabotage (as currently, the Persian Gulf suppliers) has been a decisive factor.

But that obvious fact is a taboo of German mainstream discourse because it stands for perhaps the single worst policy failure of post-unification Germany. Whether by treacherous design or criminal stupidity - it is not something its elites will ever allow to be publicly admitted while still in control of the mainstream media.

And if the German economy looks miserable, so does the German government. Merz himself, leader of a coalition so fractious its members can't hide their shouting matches from the media, is abysmally unpopular, raking upthe worst ratingsof any German chancellor since there have been polls. Some 76% of Germansare dissatisfiedwith the government as a whole. Indeed, a majority of Germans (59%)wants fresh elections now. If they were to take place, the winner would be the new-rightAlternative fur Deutschland (AfD), which is outdistancing Merz's CDU.

Merz is the rare leader who has mastered the art of antagonizing literally everyone and at once: his voters, most Germans in general, his coalition "partners," and his overlord in Washington as well. And all for nothing, or at least, nothing worthwhile: Germans cannot stand him for his broken promises, his staggering arrogance and lack of empathy with a nation in considerable pain, while he has not even achieved any major reforms.

His SPD coalition partners defy him despite the fact that he has bent over backwards to accommodate them, so much so that his own party has had enough of his perverse submission to a junior partner.

And Trump hazes and punishes him not because Merz has taken a principled stand against the genocide in Gaza or the war against Iran. On the contrary, in both cases, he has been a willing follower of America's - and Israel's - criminal leadership. What Trump does not like about Merz is that the latter has not been perfect in his submission.

And that is how Merz does represent the worst about the current iteration of Germany's elites. Stuck in an archaic Cold War client mentality that is not even opportunistically advantageous. To paraphrase a great French statesman: Berlin's policies are worse than criminal, they are stupid. But they are also worse than stupid because they can't even avoid being shamefully criminal and immoral.

(RT.com)