Posted on 06/23/2021 4:08:20 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
BERLIN - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Germany as the Biden administration presses ahead with a diplomatic charm offensive designed to woo back wary Western European allies after four years of turbulent relations under former President Donald Trump. That’s despite some lingering differences with key allies over energy and defense priorities.
Biden is determined to assure Europe that Trump’s transactional approach to transatlantic ties is a thing of the past despite some significant lingering differences with core NATO allies. Those include a major dispute with Germany over the impending completion of a Russian gas pipeline and defense spending, both of which are holdover issues from the Trump years.
U.S.-Germany relations were particularly strained during Trump’s term in office, notably over trade, military budgets, troop deployments and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project from Russia. Many say the pipeline will compromise European energy security and hurt eastern and central Europe by bypassing Ukraine and Poland.
Merkel, however, strongly favors the project, which has been one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key initiatives to increase Russia’s energy revenue.
After Germany, Blinken will visit France and Italy as part of his weeklong tour, his first trips to all three nations as secretary of state.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
America First is over.
America Last is here.
Any deal is a good deal as long as we give a lot and get nothing out of the transaction.
Where are Winkin and Nod???
Umm - hey Pravda - Sleepy already failed to shutdown Nord2 or get more NATO funding or even to get Europe to fully endorse his ironic (for him) let’s-pretend-to-hate-anti-China policy. This all happened like last week at the G7?? So what exactly is this article trying to accomplish??
The proper title of this piece is actually:
The AP Brings it’s Biden Charm Offensive To Its Readers
It reads as if it were written by Biden’s WH public relations staff.
In keys areas it errors on history.
It’s claim that: “Those include a major dispute with Germany over the impending completion of a Russian gas pipeline and defense spending, both of which are holdover issues from the Trump years.” ignores that Germany’s energy agreements with Russia and its defense spending have been contentious issues with the every U.S. administration going back to Reagan.
Then the rest of the article is just diplomatic gibberish from the Biden administration trying to explain away its removal of sanctions against the Germany-Russia energy project.
Is that why Emmanuel Macron’s party got CRUSHED by right wing parties in the elections right after Macron’s meeting with Dementia Joe?
The time window from the end of WWII to now saw the largest expansion of economic development in human history. That’s because America forced the world to move from the empire economic model of protected markets and sources to global markets and sources. Anyone could go anywhere, buy resources and return them home, metabolize them into goods and send them anywhere. This was guaranteed by the American navy. As a bonus, America threw open its markets to our allies so they could export themselves back to prosperity. All they had to do was be on our side against the Soviets.
When the Soviet union fell the reason for all this American largess dissolved. Now our “allies” are taking advantage of America by subsidizing their products and services so that American products and services appear more costly. This harms the American worker. Trump called them out on it. Now Biden, probably for a bit of under table wealth for “the big guy,” is reestablishing an economic model America no longer needs.
All of this is so that liberals can feel good about themselves as “not Trump.” But their good feelings come at someone else’s expense. Like all their other feel good polices have also damaged ordinary people who work for a living and compete in the real world.
And an open checkbook.
Biden is many things; crass, dishonest, and senile come to mind instantly. And he is most certainly capable of being offensive. Charm, however, is not in his repertoire...
Antony Blinken has all the charm of stale bread.
The Yurps are most definitely not our friends nor our allies. Anything that they like is bad for America. Almost anything they hate is good for America. Any patriotic American should only be happy with our foreign policy if the Yurps are unhappy with it. They just want free goodies and for America to hobble itself at every turn.
Exactly. Couldn’t have put it better myself. The Yurps have been freeloading since the end of WWII. It made perfect sense when they were smashed and on their knees up until the mid 1960s. Though it made less sense from the mid 60s until the end of the Cold War you could at least make an argument for American largesse in trade and subsidies to European Defense.
Once the Cold War ended however, there was no longer any need for a large American defense commitment to Europe and even less of a case for giveaway trade treaties - or for America to be providing such a grossly disproportionate share of UN funding. Yet these policies which were clearly outdated by the early 1990s have carried on for 30 more years. Its ridiculous.
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