The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Eric Zuesse
On July 26th, Germany’s Die Welt (The World) Sunday newspaper headlined “USA threatens German Nord Stream 2 contractors” and reported that, “The construction of the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline has long been a thorn in the US’s side. Now they are increasing the pressure on German and European companies involved in the project — and announce sanctions. German politicians are outraged.”
The U.S. regime is demanding that Germany cut pipelined gas from Russia and replace it with far costlier gas from U.S. fracking companies, which are facing hard economic times and are desperate to increase their exports. The news-report said:
The United States had previously legally enforced the implementing provisions of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act ( CAATSA ) [which started] on July 15. The companies and their banks are threatened if they continue to participate in the pipeline’s construction. The sanctions include complete exclusion from the US market and entry bans for employees. At a press conference in Washington, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo summarized the aim of the measure for the companies concerned as follows: “Get out now or bear the consequences.” …
When asked by WELT AM SONNTAG, the German energy company Uniper “regretted that with the announced revision of the CAATSA guidelines, the US is still trying to undermine an important infrastructure project that we believe is important for Europe’s energy security.” “A clear encroachment on European sovereignty”. …
For the parliamentary director of the CDU/CSU group in the European Parliament, Markus Pieper (CDU), the American threat of sanctions is “a clear violation of everything we understand by commercial law”. Pieper criticized the recent expansion of the CAATSA sanctions law of 2017 “German companies are now on par with Iran”. “The fun is slowly coming to an end.” Germany and Europe “urgently need to develop a counter-strategy”.
For the very first time, the U.S. regime is so desperate to crush Russia, as to endanger America’s continued alliance with Europe and especially with Germany. This is unprecedented, and must be marked as a turning-point in post-World-War-II history, because if the U.S. empire ends up losing Germany, then it will cause the end of America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO, and maybe even the end of America’s anti-Russia diplomatic and economic alliance, the EU. (The Cold War was against Russia, not actually against communism.)
On June 30th, Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper had bannered “Former Chancellor Schröder: USA Ending Transatlantic Partnership” (“Altkanzler Schröder: USA kündigen transatlantische Partnerschaft auf”) and reported that “Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has condemned possible new US sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline as ‘deliberate termination of the transatlantic partnership’.” Schröder was from Germany’s mainstream non-conservative Party, the Social Democrats. But now Germany’s mainstream — and ruling — conservative Party, the CDU/CSU, is rejecting the U.S. regime for its imposing “a clear violation of everything we understand by commercial law,” and German industry is more bluntly asserting the broader reality, that the U.S. regime’s demand is “a clear encroachment on European sovereignty.” That last phrase includes “a clear encroachment on German sovereignty” but goes even further because it presumes (correctly) that to violate Germany’s sovereignty is simultaneously to violate Europe’s sovereignty, because Germany is part of Europe. The statement is, by its underlying truthful assumption, an assertion that today’s Germany is a state in the nation of Europe, and that THEREFORE any violation of German sovereignty is a violation also of European sovereignty. That speaker captured the full significance of what is actually at stake here.
Reluctantly, Germany’s conservative mainstream Party (which happens to be the Party that was in power when the U.S. regime ordered Germany in 1991 that the Cold War against communism would secretly continue as being a war against Russia) finds itself forced finally by German public opinion to join Germany’s non-conservative mainstream Party (Schröder’s Social Democrats), in rejecting the demand by the U.S. imperial regime — its demand to terminate participation in the new pipeline to bring into the EU gas from Russia.
If the Trump administration of the U.S. regime will continue, instead of abandon, its demand that Europe replace Russian gas by American gas (and other non-Russian gas), then The Atlantic Alliance (Europe’s participation in America’s permanent war against Russia and against any Government — such as Iran — that is on friendly terms with Russia) will consequently end.
However, if the Trump Administration will abandon its demand, then the U.S. President will find himself at war against his own country’s legislative branch, because both houses of it, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, voted over 90% for this demand, and Trump personally signed it into law. Therefore, in order for him to abandon the demand now would be for him to violate a U.S. law, which expresses the virtually unanimous will of the U.S. aristocracy (the billionnaires who funded the careers of those members of Congress). He would be like a King who has become abandoned by his own aristocracy. No monarch can stay in power who violates the will of his own aristocracy. This would virtually guarantee his political opponent’s, Joe Biden’s, win in America’s upcoming Presidential election: Biden would be the almost unanimous choice of America’s billionaires, both Republican and Democratic Party billionaires.
Consequently, Trump now faces a difficult choice: Either he will break up and end The Atlantic Alliance, or else he will continue it and lose the Presidency to his domestic opponent, Biden and the Democratic Party. It’s his choice. If he opts to continue The Atlantic Alliance, he will hand the White House to his domestic opponent, who is likely to win it in any case. However, by Trump’s backing down and accepting Germany’s new-found insistence upon its and the EU’s independence from the U.S. regime, Mr. Biden would be inheriting an empire that is, and will continue to be, inevitably in decline. A turning-point in world history has been reached, and there will be no turning back from it.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
in the Prohibition era in the USA, Mafia organisations controlled the distribution of booze to “retailers”. How would the Mafias control an errant retailer who began thinking for herself? … this is the clue to USA’s next steps.
ps .. this isn’t really about crushing the single entity of Russia. It’s about perpetuating the US economic/political control of Europe and ensuring the synergistic natural bonding of Europe and Russia fails to occur.
Empire USA is ending, all because it cannot achieve control over Europe by destroying the Russian economy?
What about the fact that such a brutal and imperial Empire has a war based capitalism that no longer fools investors into thinking that the U.S. dollar is good as gold?
Imperial hubris, greed and over reach. Ends in darkened empires, sure as the setting sun…
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3332/mideastblog083007/
Trump is a player too. Its his own idiot Secretary of State Pompeo making the threats.
Quite the reverse, for while Pompeo only makes threats; trump threatened to send legalized killers into Portland and then does it; Trump threatened to tear thousands of little totters from the bosom of their mother and does it. And when Trump fully warned us that he intended to do nothing about Covid 19, which he considers a fake plague, our cold hearted and indifferent society did nothing to stop him.
Big deal. When he starts imitating Democrats and shooting them down in cold blood by foreign proxy, then we can talk.
Oh, I forgot – he’s already done that imitation.
He says God has mandated him. Be careful what you say or lightning might strike, or even worse – a foul wind.
BASIC INCOME
Everyone given enough for a comfortable life.
Above idea would establish the minimum we need to enjoy happiness, but what about the maximum we could have without destroying all happiness?
For wealth is the excess property we own above what is needed for a comfortable life, surely wealth is the rightful property of the poor. And so, from the rich to the poor, we all need an attitude adjustment to effect the solution.
A turning point in history sooo much needed.
It is actually quite interesting to watch how the downfall of this particular empire is happening in slow motion and nothing ,nothing can be done to reverse the trajectory of it
all .It is almost as if it was decreed .
As the root cause is the mostly white and more educated upper-half of society so in love with the power and glory of wealth that they now hoard all the land and wealth, surely the solution is simple, stop enriching themselves upon the misery of those with less education, less wealth or less whiteness of skin.
BINGO
While all Americans are sheltering in place, most neither earning nor spending, and so cash-strapped that by September most will be among the homeless or on the verge, the corporate rich have ordered their paid actor politicians to give them another $4 trillion so that they can buy up all the small business and real estate about to be sold for $.10 on the dollar.
LIGHT — FORCES ALL DARKNESS TO GIVE WAY
A. Primary duty of a government is to riot against the rich when they turn fascist.
B. Yellow Vest and Black Lives Matter protesters, are they not all of the 50% working-poor?
C. “Mainstream media supports Black Lives Matter.” What satanic stupidity.
D. 50% working poor in USA never vote, 25% rich win all elections and politics is nothing more than entertainment for the gullible.
E. As the 50% working-poor in society will by November be the 70% no-work poor, protests could be biggest issue in the election. — F. Latest polls show that Joe Biden is 8% to 15% ahead of Trump. — G. Ask any protester in support of Black Lives Matter movement, they hate far-Right Joe Biden almost as much as fascist Trump. — H. Never in U.S. history has any President sent Federal employees to a state to control a riot, without permission of the state authorities. — I. As crime in USA is to steal land or wealth, as the mostly white and more educated… Read more »
https://fort-russ.com/2020/07/what-lies-ahead/
Chilling.
Very interesting, though somewhat disturbing points made! However, could we please dispense with allusions to American “aristocracy” and the American “elite”? Both words imply quality and nobility which is precisely what the American ‘Deep State’ lacks.
.
Than again, the words aristocratic rich, elite ruling-class and rich nobility, they describe the most corrupt segment of society, the 25% most wealthy who have plundered 75% of all land and wealth, plus 100% of Wall Street.
Whatever has been witnessed as taking place on the world stage in the last century (or two, some would say) has been nothing other than the Great Game playing out, a game defined by the globalists, using different players they control on the game board. It is hardly the “U.S. Empire” that is coming to an end — but rather, the globalists’ empire. These rulers were always a much bigger school of fish that leftists like Chomsky refused to recognize. Myopic vision only sees the “U.S. Empire” but not the real villains. It might almost make one think leftists are… Read more »
What difference does it make how the corruption and misery is being orchestrated? All we need to know is the root cause for then the solution becomes most self-evident.
In short, no facts make your post a worthless time-killer.
“Facts” are the endless labyrinth that guarantee useless argumentation, which will relentlessly use up your life, but not mine. Wisdom will always be greater than knowledge. Thus, those with an entirely worldly orientation will always be wrong, since their limited intelligence carries forward a fundamental defect common to many who refuse to see: that human problems are first and foremost spiritual in nature, not political or economical.
If you have the humility to realize that you deserve less than others, than facts known to be true will transport your mind to unknown things equally true. On the other hand, if you are so full of pride as to think that you deserve more than others, than with such a false concept of reality, you will have no ability to tell fact from fiction. Wisdom is not knowledge, it is the ability to know knowledge. Human problems are the evil physical things we humans do to each other. For evil is death, and sin is the harm we… Read more »
Tom Luongo seems to take a rather different view: Trump’s pretending to condemn the pipeline is a message to the EU: ‘…so you’re fine with buying gas from the country you supposedly want the US to protect you from ? I call B.S. You’re not worried in the least about a Russian invasion. NATO is nothing but a fraud and a scheme to shake down the American and European working class alike – the hundreds of billions in loot going to the defense oligarchs. NATO, SCHMATO ! We’re done here. The US is withdrawing from NATO and cutting off funds… Read more »
Well said. Thank you. I found this post beyond disturbing but couldn’t put my finger on it. I am surprised that The Duran posted it. You hit the proverbial on the head…
Angry domestic protests, not foreign policy,
is why your Empire is about to expire in a convolution,
BLACKOUT ON REAL ISSUE
You the white upper-half of society, you who hoard all the land, wealth, healthcare, political power and enslave blacks and Latinos by poverty,
I wonder why you want us to focus on NATO?
It’s all so stupid. If they shut Nord Stream down tomorrow, they’d just keep pumping the same Russian gas to Europe through Ukraine, which Pompino seems fine with.
So, this ‘dependency’ argument is just another crock, as usual. How stupid do they think the Europeans are? (I’d include Americans but well, you know……they missed that boat ages ago).
It is being done for Israel, Trump knows it is not feasible to make the U.S. an LNG supplier to Europe. This is another Pompeo(Bolton), Netanyahu shenanigan, seeing that their Strait of Hormuz false flag against Iran backfired and pipeline through Syria dreams vanished… Listen: Oct 5, 2019 Pompeo gets the US to sign a defense protection agreement with Greece. Dec 18, 2019 Bibi asked: Please sanction the Nordstream Pipeline for me pretty please… Jan 2, 2020 Greece, Israel, Cyprus sign gas pipeline deal, angering Turkey big time… Jan 3, 2020 After fake beamed intelligence…Bibi asked: Now please Kill Suleimani… Read more »
You greed driven bigots who comprise the white upper-half of society in Empire USA, you hate filled creatures who enslave by poverty all Afro-Americans and Latinos, you who hoard all the land, wealth and healthcare in America, go grab your assault rifles and get yourself killed trying to stop protests that will soon be joined by 30 million who just lost unemployment benefits. and the 22 million about to join the homeless.
For you who live by the sword, you will surely die by the sword.
Empires don’t end, they mutate…America was planned, to create the conditions necessary for their NEW WORLD order agenda, we see today.
We’ve been fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.
What wolf? I’ve always been taught to fear the offensive entity, not the defensive one. You figure out who’s on first. I already know and it has stars & stripes pajamas. Very kitch.
Empires come and Empires go. It’s usually when they run out of dough.
PRESS TV IRAN
Zarif: Post-coronavirus modern world order will not be western type
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/07/27/630538/Zarif-Instagram-world-order-US-military-cost-coronavirus
The US Empire is ending…Thank goodness!!!