On February 8th, the NATO-supporting Atlantik-Bruecke, or Atlantic Bridge, issued their poll, “Vertrauen in der Krise” or “Trust During the Crisis”, and it finds, from scientifically sampling 2,500 Germans, that there is very little trust or confidence in US leadership, and that there is less dis-trust both of Russian and of Chinese leadership than of American.
Atlantic Bridge was founded by NATO and the Council on Foreign Relations in 1952 in order to make Germans hostile toward the Soviet Union, and favorable toward the United States. It was the prototype for America’s Atlantic Council, which became founded in 1961 — the same year as Eisenhower’s Farewell Address warning against the rise of the “military-industrial complex.” It was created in order to propagandize for higher US military spending to strengthen NATO. When the Cold War ended on the Russian side in 1991 with the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of communism and the end of the Warsaw Pact military alliance that had been set up by the USSR in 1955 to defend the communist bloc against NATO, US President George Herbert Walker Bush secretly instructed America’s vassal nations on the night of 24 February 1990 to continue secretly the war against Russia and any nation that isn’t hostile against Russia, and so NATO has swallowed up all of the Warsaw Pact nations, right up to Russia’s borders, and is now trying to merge into NATO a former part of the Soviet Union itself, Ukraine, after a US coup in Ukraine in February 2014 installed a racist-fascist, ideologically nazi, anti-Russian regime at Russia’s doorstep.
Here are the new German poll’s main findings:
More than four-fifths of the respondents (84.6 percent) rate the German-American relationship as negative or very negative. Only 10.4 percent find it very positive or rather positive. A clear majority (57.6 percent) argues for a greater distance between Germany and the United States. Only 13.1 percent want a closer approach; 26 percent want to keep the current arrangement. …
Almost half of respondents (42.3 percent) consider China a better partner for Germany than the US. Conversely, only 23.1 percent believe that the US is a more reliable partner than China. …
[Concerning Germany’s current foreign policies,] only 18.6 percent see a positive impact, 34 percent a negative. …
Asked about the currently most dangerous global trouble spots, only 1.9 percent of the respondents named the expansion of the Russian zone of influence. The growing influence of China is seen by 2.2 percent as the biggest threat. …
Neoconservatives (that is to say, supporters of expanding the US empire) are quoted as being alarmed by these findings:
Professor Burkhard Schwenker, Chairman, Roland Berger Advisory Council, Head of the Atlantic Bridge Working Group Foreign and Security Policy and Vice-Chairman: “In view of the great loss of confidence in the United States, we must engage more than ever in our discussions with and about America. and across the Atlantic, at all levels. That’s why the Atlantic Bridge is increasingly devoting itself to this exchange.”
Dr. David Deißner , Managing Director of Atlantik-Brücke, adds: “The current dissonances and the mood in Germany show that the common values and interests between the transatlantic partners have to be discussed openly, without fear of controversy.” …
Dr. Michael Werz , Senior Fellow, [US Democratic Party] Center for American Progress, Member of the Board of Atlantik-Brücke, commented: “Germans must leave the comfort of neutrality behind and, despite all legitimate criticism of the current US administration [since he propagandizes for Democratic Party billionaires instead of for Republican Party billionaires who donate to the current US President], not of anti American resentment, make clear the dangers posed by the authoritarian systems in Russia and China.”…
Dr. Norbert Röttgen , MdB (CDU / CSU), Chairman, Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag, Member of the Board of Atlantik-Brücke: “The survey shows that we need to convince the citizens of the strategic needs of a German engagement in a radically changing world. Without the backing of the population, foreign policy cannot be pursued.”
Clearly, this poll’s stark findings shocked these propagandists for increased German purchases of weaponry from firms such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.
This poll shows that today’s German Government does not represent the German public — at least not on these central issues of German foreign and national-security policies. One may say the same thing about the US: that its Government does not represent its public (on practically everything, actually).
The continuing ability of the US regime to justify its many foreign invasions and coups as being humanitarian instead of what they always have been, which is raw grabs for extending the US empire, is severely jeopardized when the approval of US leadership declines among the publics in the lands that are ruled by aristocracies that (like Germany) are allied with and subordinate to America’s aristocracy — the 585 US billionaires. This is especially the case in Germany, which is currently occupied by thirty-two thousand US troops.
On 2 July 2018, the US ‘Defense’ Department’s newspaper, Stars and Stripes, headlined “Former Army Europe boss: Pulling US troops from Germany would be a big win for Russia” as if Russia instead of America were doing “regime change” everywhere it can, and it opened: “A large military drawdown in Germany would be a ‘colossal mistake,’ says the former top Army commander in Europe about a possible scaling back of the US presence on the Continent, at a time when Russia has become more assertive.” The article went on to say:
There are now about 32,000 permanently stationed American troops in Germany, which hosted the majority of the 300,000 troops stationed in Europe during the Cold War.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Pentagon is analyzing the cost and effects of returning some or all troops in Germany to the US and possibly sending some to Poland instead. The review began after President Donald Trump, who is at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a range of issues, expressed interest in withdrawing US forces.
So, the question naturally arises as to whether the German public support the US President regarding this matter. The present writer has web-searched the combination “Rückzug der US-Truppen aus Deutschland” and “umfrage” (or “withdrawal of US troops from Germany” and “poll”) and failed to find any polling of Germans on that question. For some reason, this question — which should have been repeatedly and heavily and constantly polled among the German public — isn’t showing up as having been polled, at all, ever. What could possibly explain that mysterious situation? Why wasn’t the question included in the Atlantik Bruecke’s latest poll? Could it be that Germany’s master, the US regime, simply hasn’t permitted that question to be polled in Germany? Or is there an alternative hypothesis that’s likelier? If so, what would that possibly be?
Cover photo: German Carnival floats show Trump no mercy (Düsseldorf parade)
