Comment by dleslie

There is a pessimistic take on that too though. What if the next guy gives you all the corruption and cruelty, without the vanity and stupidity?

That sort of corruption is endemic to the American political establishment. They profit from their inside knowledge of congress, wielding their insider knowledge to make themselves wealthy; not all do it, but enough do that it's nigh impossible to pass legislation to deal with it.

What you refer to as vanity I consider vindictiveness, and as evidenced by his continued support is something that appears strongly associated with Trump's supporters. Vindictiveness is the point, and it's what they voted for.

And stupidity, well, PISA performance doesn't bode well for most nations. There's a steady decline witnessed the world over.

Yes and no. West-Germany was not trusted enough to allow them to make nukes or to make a powerful-enough army. For a long time, Germany has pretty much been a vassal state of the US. I cannot see that happening the other way around (given the relative powers of the militaries).

Besides that, living in a neighboring country, the generation of my parents and grandparents had a deeply-rooted aversion towards Germans. They would communicate with Germans politely, but when no German was around, they would often use not-so-nice names or jokes. Luckily that aversion is gone with later generations.

When I was young (early 90ies), we would often go on holiday to Czechoslovakia (before the split) and the Czech Republic. The staff at restaurants and shops would be cold and distant until they discovered that we were not German, then they would be very warm and kind. At some point, we would always start the conversation in English. At the time most staff would only speak German, but we would use it as a signal that we were not from Germany.

This kind of distrust can stretch many decades. I think we have mostly healed as Europeans, but it took a damn long time.

After blasting them to their knees, completely disbanding their society and writing their constitution for them. You up for that?

Yes. After having flattened it and occupied / denazified it for a bunch of years. The Germany after WW I was not trusted.

The EU was meant to pacify Germany. Also a lot of effort was done to denazify the country.

Germany is now allowed to remilitarise again, and that’s going to be interesting. I believe we should never underestimate a remilitarised Germany.

That is a sound point. I don't think your comment should be grey. In practice, I don't think geopolitics is played in the style of "Yurusenai!" that a lot of online commenters make it sound like. The world wasn't in some benevolent kumbaya between the various players involved here.

America perhaps pioneered the mutual-defense agreement as an expansion of de-facto borders. America can attack you if you attack any of its mutual-defense treaty partners - e.g. Japan or NATO. This places an encirclement on other unaligned world powers: Russia and China. Smart, but they picked up on it, which is why mutual-defense agreements with nations near world powers are now fraught with danger.

But Europe is not an innocent led to her subjugation. Europe has always attempted to extract their side of the deal: they will buy American weaponry and host American bases but they will expect America to pick up the defense bill, including for things like access to the Suez Canal which is primarily (though not exclusively) a European risk and concern in that alliance.

Other powers have always used the push and pull of changing demographics and waxing and waning power to jockey for more control or more trade concessions, or lower spending on defense for higher spending on welfare and so on. The reason that Western Europe vacillated on Ukraine isn't that they were unsure who the good guys were. It's that it wasn't clear where the balance of power was and ensuring they were well aligned was their priority. Likewise, the participants who benefited from NS2 going up in bubbles were Ukraine and the US and one or both of them likely did what they needed to.

It is true. Germany did elect Hitler. It is also true that that Germany committed vastly greater crimes than Trump's America has. And it is true that Germany the country is not a civitas non grata (if you will) though one could argue that this was offered at the end of a gun (the persistent US bases). I think this point (delivered tersely and risking Godwin) is actually very strong.

I think Western bloc leaders are well aware of the strength of the Western coalition of Europe and the US. They are also well aware of their waning will to wage war as their population ages. I don't think Trump has a sound head on his shoulders - Americans will probably carry the memory of the danger of aged leaders at least one generation - but it is clear from the texts he has leaked of the other world leaders that they are pragmatic and intend to preserve the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the resulting prosperity it has endowed its constituents with.

Any pressure will immediately be relieved if no actual irreversible damage (e.g. withdrawal from NATO or Anpo) is done and everyone knows it. But to make sure we get there, everyone has to apply just enough pressure to not break the machine. We can only hope they have the skill at diplomacy.

All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan. People were talking about how they pretend to be Canadian and so on. America was supposedly a pariah then, which makes any threat of "you are now a pariah" not particularly meaningful.

So long as Europe benefits from America and America benefits from Europe and both can put in changes that cement such commitment in the future, I think we will return to a powerful Western bloc - which I (personally) think is good for all humanity.