Donald Trump is on a mission. His
goal? Destroy the post-WWII institutional order that has outlived its
usefulness.
And
there have been a number of major moves that fundamentally tear at the fabric
of that order. In a span of a day we’ve had the following things occur in
quick succession.
- French President Emmanuel Macron holds a press
conference calling for a new “strategic relationship with
Russia and Turkey.”
- At
the same time he softened the EU’s stance on Russia’s reunification with
Crimea, saying Russian – EU relations needed “to be brought up to date.”
- On
the trade and tariff war with Trump, Germany called Trump’s bluff about
free trade on cars by offering to scrap all import tariffs on theirs in
exchange for the U.S. lifting them on light trucks and pickups, which
Trump promptly rejected.
- Trump
then called the EU “Worse than China” and threatened to pull the U.S. out
of the World Trade Organization.
- Ayatollah
Khamenei put pressure on the EU to stand up to Trump over the JCPOA,
clearly threatening a return of their nuclear program.
Just last week German Foreign
Minister Heiko Maas, clearly frustrated with Trump’s endless dollar
belligerence called for the EU to develop, like Russia and China, it’s own
electronic interbank payment system to skirt U.S. sanctions.
So in
one week we’ve had the Germans threaten SWIFT, the French question the validity
of NATO and Trump threaten to leave the WTO.
All
against the backdrop of the end of the Syrian Civil War and the potential
withdrawal of U.S. troops from there while the Taliban arrive in Moscow to
discuss peace terms with the Afghan government.
Is it
just me or are things about to look very different very soon.
If we
take Trump at his word hen we were supposed to believe Trump wanted peace and
free trade with the EU. In this case his word was this tweet from July
24th where he said:
The European Union is coming to Washington tomorrow to
negotiate a deal on Trade. I have an idea for them. Both the U.S. and the E.U.
drop all Tariffs, Barriers and Subsidies! That would finally be called
Free Market and Fair Trade! Hope they do it, we are ready – but they won’t!
—
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2018
Oops,
Donald. They were. And as I said above, his big bluff on this was
called. Trump doesn’t want free trade with Germany. He rejected the
offer to scrap all automobile tariffs because “their consumer culture doesn’t
buy our cars.”
Yes,
because our cars suck, frankly. And they’ve sucked for a long time.
And you can’t mandate they buy them.
But,
I digress.
This sequence of events
highlights exactly what I said about Trump last week, that he is
purposefully driving a wedge between Europe and the U.S. to end NATO, among
other things.
By driving a wedge between
Germany and the U.S. over NATO and attacking the foundations of the German
economy Trump is ensuring the current rapprochement between Germany and Russia?
Merkel, for her part, has
been so terminally weakened by her immigration policy and strong-armed approach
to dissent that this whirlwind weekender by Putin was as much for her benefit,
politically, as his.
The implication being that if
Merkel wants to stay in power with her weakening coalition and poll numbers
it’s time for her to reverse course. And if that means cozying up to Russia
then so be it.
Merkel
will continue to talk a good game about Crimea and Ukraine while Putin will
speak directly to the German people about ending the humanitarian crisis in
Syria as a proxy for ending the threat of further immigration.
He knows most of the people
who are behind the opposition to his Presidency are the same people driving the
globalist bus, those I call The Davos Crowd.
He knows that Merkel and
Macron both work for them. And The Davos Crowd are
hell-bent on destroying the multiplicity of cultures that make Europe what it
is.
So, Trump
doesn’t want a solution to this trade spat. He wants to inflict maximum
pain on them to force a radical realignment while extricating the U.S. from
subsidizing their march towards centralized tyranny from Brussels.
At the
same time this gives Macron and Merkel all the breathing room they need to
patch things up with Russia while the Brits fume over not being able to destroy
both Trump and Putin, since MI6 and the British Deep State are the ones doing
the dirty work to undermine Trump and Putin at every turn.
Macron’s
statement about Crimea was the first made by a major European leader that
didn’t explicitly mention the Minsk II agreement as a prerequisite for
normalizing relations with Russia.
Trump has
pushed the EU into a corner, essentially saying, if you want to choose Russia,
China and Iran over us, you’ll do so without our money and our banks.
Trump has
all the subtlety of a wolverine in rut, but he’s pretty clear about what his
intentions are if you are listening.
Reprinted with permission
from Gold
Goats ‘n Guns.
Publisher
of the Gold Goats n Guns. Ruminations on Geopolitics, Markets and Goats.
Copyright © 2018 Thomas Luongo
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/09/thomas-luongo/trump-doesnt-want-peace-with-the-eu/