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August 31, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
The end of the post WWII world order
on Afghanistan and Syria. The destruction of a delicately built Iranian nuclear sanctions deal. US sanctions imposed on enemies and allies alike. Destabilising the Middle East by inflaming Sunni and Sufi sensibilities. And threats to pull out of a raft of international organisations including Nafta, Nato, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Paris climate accord. All this is a nightmare for countries on the other side of the table, but it has reached a point where those on the same side of the table have decided that the US is as much of a liability as a partner. The US has not become irrelevant. It remains the largest economy in the world and has the most powerful military by a long chalk. But what has changed is the other leading powers are now actively trying to make it as irrelevant as they can.
The turning point came following German Chan- cellor Angela Merkel’s first private meeting with Trump at the G20 summit earlier this year in Munich. A consummate politician with decades
of experience of dealing with some of the most awkward leaders in the world, Merkel was visibly shocked by Trump and called for an end to Eu- rope’s reliance on the US immediately afterwards.
“I have experienced this in the last few days,” she said a few days after Munich without mentioning Trump by name. “And that is why I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands — of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbours wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia.”
Since then Maas has taken up the baton and in the last two months has started to lay out a blue- print for a new world order where Germany steps up to its responsibility as Europe’s leader and openly challenges the US’s predominance.
What is so ironic about this change in mindset is that it will align Germany and its partners with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has made abandoning the “unipolar” model of running
the planet for a “multipolar” version where the emerging markets — led by Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa — in addition to western Europe, play a much larger role. That process has already started as the G20 summit that so shocked Merkel has taken precedence over the smaller and increasingly irrelevant G7 summits. This year’s G7 summit in Canada barely made the press, while the G20 in Munich was marred by massive and violent demonstrations by anti- globalists.
And Germany’s call for a change is not limited to broad brushstrokes. Maas has been drilling into specific details that mirror many Russia initia- tives to remove levers that Washington could use to pressure the Kremlin. Maas wants an inde- pendent European military that would downplay the predominance of Nato, a European payments system that would run in parallel to the US-based SWIFT system, and a proactive EU foreign policy lifted from the nation state level to a formal EU foreign council that can act collectively, amongst other things.
Specifically Maas called for a Franco-German alliance that will in effect take Europe out from under the US security umbrella that has been the guarantor of peace since the start of the Cold War, and for Europe to actively oppose the US if it “crosses the line.”
The widening Atlantic
Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and is flourishing. It currently has record low levels of unemployment, strong economic growth, low levels of external debt and the largest current account surplus in the world. Yet since the end
of WWII Germany has been shy of playing a large role in international politics. Now it has put these qualms aside.
In a string of speeches and articles Maas is pro-