Furious Trump Threatens To Pull Troops From Germany

0:00A couple of days ago, I discussed the fact that the German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz had spoken simple truth when asked a question, saying that the Iran war had become a humiliation for the United States and that the Iranians were running rings around their counterparts when it came to negotiations. It was a statement of the obvious. Seen as such by many of the leaders of the countries of the world, it's just the sort of obvious that for the last year and a quarter, nobody ever dared to voice in public for fear of how it would land, with the thin-skinned presence in the White House. So it's not a surprise to anyone that it had exactly the effect you would have imagined. Yes, Donald Trump, through a huge, hissy fit, not one, but two furious rants posted on social media going after Mertz big time and more substantively, threatening to withdraw US troops from Germany. Now, most knowledgeable observers are predicting that he's mostly bluff and bluster,

1:00because they point out the United States gets significant benefit from its bases in Germany, not least a great deal of logistical support for the operation currently ongoing in Iran. But do we really think Trump is incapable of ignoring solid advice based on the facts on the ground? I suspect it would be a brave person who did so with, shall we say, total confidence. Here was Trump's first post where he said this, the Chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Mertz, thinks it's okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, not something he's ever said as far as I'm aware. He doesn't know what he's talking about, or indeed not talking about. If Iran had a nuclear weapon, the whole world would be held hostage, just like it is right now, by the straight of hormones being closed, causing a massive energy and soon to be food crisis. But I digress, I am doing something with Iran, right now, that other nations or presidents should have done

2:02longer go. No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both economically and otherwise. Now look, Germany has its problems, but part of the reason it's doing poorly at this precise moment is, therefore, mentioned global energy crisis caused exactly by Trump doing something with Iran right now. Mertz's point of course wasn't that nothing should be done. It was that what has been done was done without a strategy, when negotiations are basically being conducted by clueless idiots. Now he was a little bit more polite than that, but only just a little. It's one of the most tiresome tropes from the Trump supporters, that if you complain about the incompetence around his war, then that means you're saying that Iran should have a nuclear weapon. Rather than saying that the operation to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon should be planned and executed by grownups, people who know what they're doing. Because if it is important, and it is, that makes it over more crucial that it should be done properly.

3:09Such sentiments all very came to revolutionary no doubt. And then earlier today, Trump came back to the theme, clearly still seaving, at Mertz's critique. The Chancellor of Germany should spend more time on ending the war with Russia, Slash Ukraine, where he has been totally ineffective, says for man who boasted he would end the war in a single day, and fixing his broken country, especially immigration and energy, and less time on interfering with those that are getting rid of Iran nuclear threats, thereby making the world, including Germany, a safer place. Speaking an obvious truth, or even just expressing an opinion that could even be wrong if you want to pretend that could be the case here, it hardly constitutes interfering. Demonstrably Trump is furious because he's hurt. Not just because someone's somewhere in the world is bad-mouthing him, but because they're pointing to something he is painfully aware of himself, and he's desperate not to allow to become

4:14the widely understood narrative. Because he went to war with a massively superior force, and he failed dismally because of a failure of strategy, of purpose, of planning, all the things that make the failure his own. Not one of the United States military professionals who had done what they were ordered to do and done it with great skill and effectiveness. What would be involved if he were in the heat of his hissy fit to actually take action on it? The United States has around 36,400 military personnel stationed in Germany, spread across 20 to 40 bases, depending on how you define bases. This includes headquarters in Stuttgart for America's operations across all of Europe and across all of Africa. No problem at all with withdrawing those, of course. If the United States is going all America first and in line with its published national security strategy, which said it should

5:15move all its resources to focus on its own backyard. As the war with Iran demonstrates, it has done no such thing in practice. Projecting American power across the entire world, you might say has rather become Trump's favourite hobby of a moment. For German bases used to be about defence of Western Europe during the Cold War. Since that ended, they've been much more about being staging posts for US military operations in Iraq, in Afghanistan and of course in Iran. So sure, some in the Pentagon will be outlining for Trump, you would think. That such action would hurt America probably more than it would hurt Germany right now. Jeff Rathk of Johns Hopkins University put it like this to the Guardian newspaper. US forces in Europe are not a charitable contribution to ungrateful Europeans. They are an instrument of America's global military reach. You know, from the days when win-win was the concept behind

6:18the deals that were struck in the world. The US helped to defend Europe and Europe provided an infrastructure for America's global operations, red-free. But that's not enough for Trump. He enjoyed his first year, where he could apparently make European leaders jump at his every command. Now they've noticed that doing so gets no benefit or credit whatsoever, and they're increasingly deciding not to play anymore. So yes, Trump turned against Britain's Keir Starmer, with a slight pause in hostilities while bathing in the warm glow of British royalty, but business is usual to be resumed very soon. You just watch. And he turned against his former best ally in Western Europe, Georgia Maloney of Italy, because she wouldn't just toveline on every stupid thing he ever says, even when he's insulting the Italians who died in America's wars, or picking a fight with the Pope for goodness sake. And now we've Chancellor Mertz,

7:22who is one of a few European leaders who did support his war with Iran at the beginning, but who can't blind himself to the reality of how it's all been playing out. Right now, we're hearing that Trump is going to be considering updated military options for Iran, because as previously noted, there is no strategy. They're making it up from day to day, based on whatever the military can give him as options to choose from. Very much compatible, with Mertz's critique in other words. You can add to that the overflow impact on European defence, having insisted that European should boost their defence spending, and having interfered in their ability to actually do that by slapping tariffs on them and creating a global energy crisis that's going to seriously hit their economies. Well, the US is adding the icing on that cake, by diverting US weapons that Europeans have actually bought from them. The US,

8:24you'll remember, that complained that Europe was looking to actively source new weapons from its own manufacturers, rather than from it. It threatened them for even thinking about it. But now you have countries like Estonia. Estonia very much exposed with its proximity to Russia, which had boosted its defence spending to well over 5% of GDP, and it had ordered weapons, specifically ammunition for high mars launchers and javelin anti-tank systems from the United States. Then, 10 days ago, they got told by Manleyman's man Pete Higgsf that the deliveries of those weapons bought and paid for were to be delayed, because the US needed for weapons to go to Iran instead. This is the same United States, which says, no, no, no, no, it's completely fake news by the likes of a failing New York Times that there is any shortage of weapons on the battlefield. Of course, in the real world, we know that weapons have been transferred from Asia to go to the Middle East,

9:29and now weapons bought are not to be delivered for the foreseeable future. Others had similar issues. Switzerland got so fed up that the Patriot missiles were it-ordered with several years late, it stopped paying for them. The United States responded by moving funds at Switzerland already paid for F-35 jets to cover the Patriots. Retired rear Admiral Thomas Engwell told Foreign Policy magazine this, the logical conclusion of the delays is that European countries will need to review their entire defence supply chains. Estonia, for instance, is diversifying defence imports to include places like South Korea, maybe also Turkey. And you just know, and Chancellor Mertz could certainly confirm that when European countries increasingly divert all their defence spending to more reliable sources, with all the complications and problems that will come with that, the United States will

10:33start whining on about how ungrateful they are and how hard done by the United States is by its supposed allies. In his most recent comments after the Trump posts, Chancellor Mertz didn't refer to his blow-up, talking to troops at a military training centre, he just alluded to working shoulder to shoulder for mutual benefit and in deep transatlantic solidarity. I imagine that German translators are having some struggles, finding the words in the authorised Trump dictionary to explain those concepts to him. That is the world as we experience it now. Meanwhile, the world has increasingly come to understand the new reality. One, if you point to any true thing that is not how Donald Trump would wish it to be, you will provoke a furious reaction, and two, increasingly the world is coming to the conclusion, it just doesn't care, because the practical outcomes are no better whichever way you approach it,

11:37but at least you retain your dignity and that of your country by refusing to play stupid games.