Lieutenant General Christian Freuding fears the longstanding military partnership between the two allies is unravelling under President Trump’s administration

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/39664905

Lieutenant General Christian Freuding fears the longstanding military partnership between the two allies is unravelling under President Trump’s administration

The Pentagon has “cut off contact” between American defence officials and their German counterparts, according to the head of Germany’s army.

The United States has traditionally treated Germany as one of its most important European allies. It is thought to have about 35,000 soldiers stationed at German bases such as Ramstein and Stuttgart, which serve as staging posts for American operations across Africa and the Middle East.

Since President Trump’s return to power in January, the relationship between the countries has become markedly cooler.

  • verdi@feddit.orgEnglish
    151·
    2 days ago

    Trump is planning a pincer attack on Europe, Putin to the East and US to the West.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      1 day ago

      Trump is planning a pincer attack on Europe

      Dude’s got half the Navy off the coast of Venezuela just arbitrarily killing anyone in a boat. If he’s planning to re-Normandy Europe by way of Greenland (presumably between island hoping off Taiwan into mainland China and sending ground troops to stamp out the Houthis in Yemen) he’s coming at it with surprising subtlety.

    • NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      1 day ago

      As much as I understand the worry from Europe,

      1. this would be deeply unpopular across the political spectrum in the US. Even MAGA would hate this. Who’s I do think Trump is a Russian stoog, he hasn’t yet (can’t?) consolidate enough power to do this unilaterally.
      2. all of Trump’s actions seem to primarily revolve around what will benefit him personally, through his corruption of the Justice and financial systems. This would devastate markets across the world.

      This strikes me as in line with the Trump administration firing/ ignoring any and all types of oversight.

      • jj4211@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        1 day ago

        Broadly, I agree.

        I would still worry as while they might not actively attack, they may happily just nope on out of helping any NATO allies. NATO allies are more self-sufficient than before, but NATO without US forces and equipment would be much weaker than an active US.

        However, he might just go and pick up Greenland if things pop off. If NATO were chewing on a fight with Russia, I think it would be a safe bet that europe would barely spare the time to shake their head disapprovingly if US just went and occupied Greenland. I don’t think they’d actually do a hot war with western european nations, but could easily see them just ‘declaring’ ownership of Greenland and no one stopping them.

      • Jhex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        1 day ago

        this would be deeply unpopular across the political spectrum in the US

        more or less unpopular than having a pedophile as president?

        • NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          Having a pedophile is pretty unpopular… It’s starting to rend MAGA apart. Ongoing open warfare would be much harder to hide than child abuse from 10-20 years ago though, so it would be harder for the MAGA faithful to deny.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Absolutely These people don’t care about kids that they don’t know being abused. Their own children dying on the battlefield though, that’s a different matter

          • Jhex@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 day ago

            While I see your point, I had to travel a lot for work a few years back… and I got tired of seeing moms, dads and girlfriends making a show at the airport about how their sons/boyfriends/husbands were going to war to DEFEND the USA and PROTECT xyz

            I think the brain washing has been thorough enough that they’ll have enough meat for the grinder.

            If the people of the USA did not revolt after the WMD fiasco and the American lives lost there, I doubt another war for profit would be any different

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        Just need a bit of propaganda. If half of Americans were convinces trump is a good president (the best even!), they can be convinced that invading Europe is a great idea.

        Just tell them that wokeness has invaded Europe and they need being saved by the US.

    • IndustryStandard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      Germany should build up a massive army to pre-emptively invade Russia. But first they should unite the rest of Europe. It is very pressing so there is no way to do this except by toppling their corrupt regimes. In fact lets start with Poland.