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August 31, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
schloss on August 17. She was accused of “warm- ing” to Russia, but her forte is finding workable compromises amongst groups of arguing nations and she talks to Putin more than any other foreign leader does.
The Meseberg summit was a nuts and bolts meet- ing where the two leaders tried to find common ground on a range of hot button issues, but also covered more pragmatic subjects like the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and joint investment projects that are still going on.
Another item on the agenda was the meltdown on the Turkish lira, which is another good example of where Europe and Washington clash.
With a large Turkish expat population and Merkel under fire for her liberal refugee policy, Germany fears a mass exodus from Turkey if the Turkish economy collapses, so Merkel is doing what she can to shore up Ankara’s position. Trump, on the other hand, poured oil on the fire by imposing painful sanctions on Turkish metal exports in the midst of the crisis. Merkel has turned to Putin, as an increasingly close ally of Ankara, to help ease the pressure and try and talk some sense into the increasingly unhinged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Merkel has already started to dial down the anti-
Russian rhetoric. In the week following Mese- berg she toured the Caucuses to show solidarity with the small republics that are all in Russia’s shadow. However, she disappointed Georgians, who were commemorating their war with Russia exactly ten years ago, by failing to affirm Tbilisi’s Nato accession aspirations or even use the word “occupied” in reference to the territories Georgia lost to Russia in the 2008 war.
“I don’t see Georgia becoming a Nato member any time soon,” the chancellor told an audience
of students at Tbilisi State University on August 24. “Given the situation with [breakaway] Abkhazia and South Ossetia, we can’t talk about the swift integration of Georgia into Nato,” she said as cited by Eurasianet.org. “At least this is Germany’s po- sition and it will remain as such.”
Nato will change in the new order. Maas has ex- plicitly called for Europe to play a more assertive role in the military alliance that has traditionally been a US proxy as well as creation of a dedicat- ed EU military force.
“It is in our own interest to strengthen the Eu- ropean part of the North Atlantic Alliance. Not because Donald Trump is always setting new percentage targets, but because we can no longer rely on Washington to the same extent,” Maas wrote.