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Why does Putin not offer Germany Russia’s security-umbrella?
By Eric Zuesse
https://theduran.com/why-does-putin-not ... -umbrella/
April 24, 2023
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has responded to The West’s aggressive expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders, not by offering any NATO nations a treaty-proposal and guarantees for peace, including mutual weapons-inspections, but instead has responded only by targeting Russia’s missiles against new NATO nations, as-if a newly-hostile (newly NATO) nation cannot quit the anti-Russian military alliance and obtain peace with Russia, increased trade, and other mutual benefits with Russia, by abandoning its new alliance with the world’s most aggressive and invasion-prone nation: the United States. Putin ought to do this. Let’s take Germany as an example of how this might work with a NATO member that isn’t even new, but quite long-established in NATO:
Germany has 231 U.S. military bases on its soil, https://archive.vn/A4eOP#selection-1391.0-1407.13 and consequently cannot even possibly have its own foreign policies as a sovereign nation, but ONLY the foreign policies that America’s President will permit it to have. As a result, Germany has been greatly increasing its Government’s debt in order to subsidize the skyrocketing energy prices its industries and consumers now pay as a result of Germany’s losing the by-far cheapest source of energy to Europe, which was pipelined fuels from Russia.
On 14 December 2022, Bloomberg News headlined
https://archive.is/owPhC and opened:Germany to Issue Record €539 Billion in Federal Debt Next Year
Two days later, Germany’s federal Government promised that this skyrocketing federal debt would be only a temporary problem, https://archive.is/Bjuf9 but they offered no explanation of how Germany would be able to replace its new much costlier sources of energy (such as containerized and then shipped from America), with sources that would be as cheap as the Russian fuels that they’re replacing — such sources weren’t, and aren’t, anywhere on the horizon.Germany’s federal government plans to issue a record volume of debt next year to help fund generous aid for households and companies hit by the energy crisis.
Germany’s annual federal issuance of new debt was €200B in 2019, €400B in 2020, and now is over €500B in 2023. The huge skyrocket to 400B in 2020 was due to covid-19, but that has subsequently declined, as was widely expected to happen with improved understanding and science regarding a pandemic new virus. There have already been decades of promised technological substitutes for fossil fuels, but even today, those are still more than a decade away. From where will those €539 be coming in 2024 and beyond, if NOT from the pockets of German industries, and of German consumers? From Santa Claus?
Russia can offer Germany low fuel-prices that the U.S. and its allied or vassal nations simply cannot. Where are the pipelines that will supply it from elsewhere?
Furthermore, the U.S. Government’s https://archive.is/QKxQ1 (with help from the Norwegian Government, https://archive.is/qcAMl which was the other main beneficiary of) destroying the (partly German-owned) Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany, clearly indicates what it actually means to be a vassal-nation in an empire that is run by hypocritical psychopaths, such as America’s President Joe Biden (and, in that case, assisted by Norway’s king) clearly is.
Already, on 27 September 2022, I had headlined “How America Is Crushing Europe”, https://archive.is/EFGm8 and reported that:
America creates, imposes, and enforces the sanctions against Russia, which are forcing up energy-prices in Europe, and are thereby driving Europe’s corporations to move to America, where taxes, safety-and-environmental regulations, and the rights of labor, are far lower, and so profits will be far higher for the investors. Furthermore, America can supply its own energy. Therefore, supply-chains are less dicey in the U.S. than in Europe. There is less and less reason now for a firm to be doing anything in Europe except selling to Europeans, who are becoming increasingly desperate to get whatever they can afford to buy, now that Russia, which had been providing the lowest-cost energy and other commodities, is being strangled out of European markets, by the sanctions. Money can move even when its owner can’t. The European public will now be left farther and farther behind as Europe’s wealth flees — mainly to America (whose Government had created this capital-flight of Europe’s wealth).
Europe’s leaders have cooperated with America’s leaders, to cause this European decline (by joining, instead of rejecting, America’s sanctions against Russia), but Germany’s companies can also enjoy significant benefits from relocating or expanding in America. Germany’s business daily newspaper, Handlelsblatt, reported, on September 25th,
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... ws_3684670 (Original: “Immer mehr deutsche Unternehmen bauen ihre Standorte in Nordamerika aus: Washington lockt deutsche Firmen mit billiger Energie und niedrigen Steuern. Das gilt vor allem für die Südstaaten. Berlin ist alarmiert – und will gegensteuern.” https://archive.is/29Pea)More and more German companies are expanding their locations in North America: Washington attracts German companies with cheap energy and low taxes. This applies above all to the southern states. Berlin is alarmed – and wants to take countermeasures.
It says that
in offering special inducements for these firms to relocate, or to at least expand, their production in the U.S.Numerous German companies are planning to set up or expand their U.S. locations. … U.S. states such as Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma, show increasing interest
For example, Pat Wilson, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, tells German companies that,
Considering that one of the major reasons why Germany’s Government is squeezing-out Russia’s fuel-supplies (other than to ‘support democracy in Ukraine’, etc.) is that those Russian supplies are fossil fuels, an important benefit by which America can attract European firms (even on the basis of ‘Green’ arguments) is by advertising bigger ‘energy efficiency’ than in Europe — not necessarily in a strictly environmental sense, but definitely in the bottom-line sense, of lowered energy-costs, since America’s regulations are far less strict than in the EU.Our energy costs are low, and the networks are stable. … Companies coming to Georgia [from Germany] are reducing their carbon footprint.
Also on the 25th, the Irish Examiner bannered
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... 68869.htmlEuropean industry buckles under weight of soaring energy prices: Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, warned last week that it could reallocate production out of Germany and eastern Europe if energy prices don’t come down.
Also on the 25th, Oil Price.com headlined
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... tries.htmlEurope Faces An Exodus Of Energy-Intensive Industries,
and mentioned especially that
On September 26th, the New York Times banneredthe U.S. Steel giant ArcelorMittal said https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... 022-09-02/ earlier this month that it would slash by half production at a steel mill in Germany and a unit at another plant, also in Germany. The company said it had based the decision on high gas prices. … ArcelorMittal earlier this year announced it had plans to expand a Texas operation.
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... bound.htmlFactory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s: U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a rebound, with companies adding workers amid high consumer demand for products.
In total,
And this is only the start of America’s re-industrialization and economic recovery, because the hemorrhaging of jobs from Europe has only just begun. These German firms are getting in on the ground floor in America, leaving Europe’s workers behind, to swim or sink on their own (the ones that can).As of August this year, manufacturers had added back about 1.43 million jobs, a net gain of 67,000 workers above prepandemic levels.
Also on September 26th, Thomas Fazi at unherd.com headlined
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... o-anarchy/The EU is sleepwalking into anarchy: Its sanctions are crippling the bloc’s working class,
and documented that this hollowing-out of Europe’s economies is being experienced the most by Europe’s lower economic classes, who are the least capable of dealing with it but are being abandoned by the higher-wealth group, the investors, who are sending their money abroad, like banana-republic oligarchs do, and who might easily relocate themselves there too.
On September 19th, the New York Times headlined
https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... ories.html‘Crippling’ Energy Bills Force Europe’s Factories to Go Dark: Manufacturers are furloughing workers and shutting down lines because they can’t pay the gas and electric charges.
For example, a major employer in northern France, Arc International glass factory, doesn’t know whether they will survive:
The “Green” Parties throughout Europe, such as in the persons of Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, https://archive.is/cYulf and Germany’s Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, https://archive.is/X4ZI3 had led the European movement against importing Russian fuels, and could turn out to have led Europe actually to increase its carbon footprint, if the end result turns out to be to switch to more coal and diesel fuels, as they now are doing.Nicholas Hodler, the chief executive, surveyed the assembly line, shimmering blue with natural gas flames [gas that came from Russia and that now costs ten times as much as just a year ago]. For years, Arc had been powered by cheap energy that helped turn the company into the world’s largest producer of glass tableware. … But the impact of Russia’s abrupt cutoff of gas to Europe [forced by the sanctions] has doused the business with new risks. Energy prices https://archive.is/o/EFGm8/https://web. ... rices.html have climbed so fast that Mr. Hodler has had to rewrite business forecasts six times in two months. Recently, he put a third of Arc’s 4,500 employees on partial furlough to save money. Four of the factory’s nine furnaces will be idled; the others will be switched from natural gas to diesel, a cheaper but more polluting fuel.
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So: what is there to be lost, and what is there to be gained, if Germany, which had been conquered in World War II by Russia but handed by Russia subsequently to America, becomes finally now allied with Russia, if that will be a Russia which is offering to Germans an equal partnership and no involvement in Germany’s domestic affairs, and freedom from the U.S. regime — a regime that DOES INSIST UPON having control over Germany’s domestic affairs (and not ONLY over Germany’s foreign policies)?
Suppose, for example, that that treaty would specifically LIMIT Russia’s control over its international relations ONLY to Russia’s having a right to ban from German foreign policies anything that would endanger Russia’s national security (such as allowing U.S. military bases, and weapons, in Germany).
Why is Putin NOT offering this to Germany?
Why is he NOT offering it also to Finland, which just recently joined NATO in order to protect itself against a then-imaginary danger from Russia, which responded to that threat against itself, by targeting some of its missiles at Finland?
Where is Putin dealing effectively with the U.S. threat by using the full range of diplomatic means, and especially by offering bilateral treaties with each of the nations in NATO?
Why is he not doing this?
Why has he not already done it?
(I am submitting this article also to Russia’s RT News site, in the hope that they will publish it so as to call President Putin’s attention to this obviously very important matter.)
