this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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Germany tried to be "friends" aka do business with everyone.
US, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Mexican drug cartels...
But you cannot be neutral, while also being part of one imperial bower bloc (West) and trying to establish your own (economic) power bloc EU, but also take maximum advantage and fuck over the other countries in your power bloc.
Germanys economic egoism has left much of the European integration lacking behind. So the EU countries are weakened and easily divisible. Running after the US instead is equally stupid like not giving limits to Russia.
A great example the head of the Left party gave in a recent interview is how Germany loves giving weapons to Ukraine, but does not like blocking Russias shadow fleet from passing from the Baltic to India, because Germany keeps wanting to buy the Russian oil after it is refined in India. In the same way a lot of German parts still end up in Russian military equipment, while the "Conservatives", and "Liberals" scream about how we should stop demanding companies to document their supply chains.
Finally "never again" is a sham in Germany, like Germanys "learning from history" is largely superficial and fetishized as can been seen by the rise of fascism and supposed progressive or center politics making the exact same "mistakes" like in the 1920s.
Unless we want to create a "great firewall" around Europe and let it soak in internal propaganda from the rising fascists, the only way to secure Europe is by focusing European integration, in particular with Germany to take a step back and genuinely cooperate instead of smacking down their supposed partners economically, while not taking responsibility diplomatically or militarily.
EDIT: i am using Germany as an example, because i am most familiar with it. Obviously the UK with Brexit and France with, whatever the fuck Macron and his other elite crownies are doing, also have significant responsibility in this.
Agreed. Germany wanted to have its cake and eat it too. They wanted all the economic benefits of integration and trade, but had no interest in difficult issues like EU governance, fiscal integration, rule of law (suspending Hungary from EU market access and Schengen for enabling and choosing corruption and criminality).
The seemingly naive approach to russia is another example. It's easy to come up with BS slogans like "freedom through trade", it's to actually do something and take often risky steps to put real pressure on russia.