Russia Out, America In, Germany Down

NATO Russians Out, Americans In, Germans Down: Updated, Reversed | National Review:

The title is the famous assessment by Lord Ismay of Britain as to the purpose of NATO after WWII. Churchill and Ismay understood that "peoples" tend to have a character. (Churchill called them "races" as in the English race, the German race, etc)

In Ismay’s time, such aggression was different from lesser Fascist movements in Italy and Spain, largely because of the central geographic position of a unified young German nation-state, its sizable population, its national wealth, and what we reluctantly in today’s politically correct landscape might call “German character.” That stereotype originates from the time of Caesar and Tacitus: the ability of the German people to create economic, military, and cultural influence well beyond what one might expect from the actual size of even an impressive German population or geography. And such dynamism is often expressed by eyeing neighbors’ spiritual or concrete territory.

In science, if a "stereotype", like "temperatuire getting warmer" holds from say 1865 to like 2K (150 years), it tends to be called "a fact". Since the "stereotype has held since the time of Tacitus (100 AD), or basically 2000 thousand years ... ???

Recent Pew international polls reveal that Germany of all the countries of the European Union is by far the most anti-American, with scarcely 52 percent expressing a positive appraisal of the United States — well before Donald Trump ran for office. Media polls show that the German press ran the most negative appraisals of Trump of all global news (98 percent of all coverage was critical). A fair summary of current German views of the United States would be not much different from the stereotypes of the 1930s: undisciplined, prone to wild swings in policy, a bastardized and commercialized culture of poorly informed and highly indebted consumers.

Germany has tended to have a pretty low opinion of the US for ages. I tend to generally agree with their opinion of current Americans, the big question is if push comes to shove, will that opinion be wrong 3 our of 3 times, or only 2 out of three since the WWI and WWII opinions fell on hard times relative to military prowess.

No one quite knows the strange driving force behind Angela Merkel’s demand that the European Union open its borders to millions of mostly young men from the war-torn Middle East and the chaotic lands of North Africa. Cynics might suggest that a shrinking Germany wants young, cheap manual laborers. Post-war guilt may play a role as Germany’s cure for its past becomes nearly as obsessive as the behavior that led to the disease in the first place.

I think the developed world elite is of the opinion that Islam will fall to western decadence just as Christianity largely has -- they assume that those young male imports will indeed be cheap manual laborers, and they will suffer along in stagnation -- as have blacks in the US and increasingly the abandoned red state lower class whites. Maybe.

Could also be that they are look at the US miltary being currently 40% minority with the percentage rising, remember that a lot of Germany's WWII army was conscripted from conqured countries, and dream of a largely Muslim force under the command of "real Germans". 

As the column closes we are reminded that those who fail to study history often get to repeat it. 

He would warn about what happens when NATO withers on the vine: Russian is a bit in, America is somewhat out, and Germany more up than down — as Ismay feared when he helped offer the remedy of NATO at its creation.

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