Germans don't get the idea of mutal defense

[TimothyC]

http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/06/10/1-n ... n-ukraine/

While some in NATO are reluctant to help aid others attacked by Russia, a median of 68% of the NATO member countries surveyed believe that the U.S. would use military force to defend an ally. The Canadians (72%), Spanish (70%), Germans (68%) and Italians (68%) are the most confident that the U.S. would send military aid. In many countries, young Europeans express the strongest faith in the U.S. to help defend allied countries. The Poles, citizens of the most front-line nation in the survey, have their doubts: 49% think Washington would fulfill its Article 5 obligation, 31% don’t think it would and 20% aren’t sure.

Yeah.

At best 16% of the German population thinks that they shouldn't have to abide by the Article 5 text while being sure that the US will.

Might help if Germany at least tried to meet their treaty obligations. Reoccupying might also work.

[salm]

Yeah, this is pretty annoying.

[Thanas]

I have criticized public opinion in the past on this board already, so this is both disappointing and not that surprising.

That being said, why does OP single out Germany? Same thing is happening in France and Italy and more than a third of the Brits believe the same. So it seems like this

Reoccupying might also work.

"If we just occupy nations they will magically come round to our way of thinking". How's that working out for you so far?

Besides, it is not as if the US could even afford a war with Germany.

[Mr Bean]

"If we just occupy nations they will magically come round to our way of thinking". How's that working out for you so far?

Besides, it is not as if the US could even afford a war with Germany.

Please Thanas your country has a first rate military with defined borders, established bases, clear lines of logistics and excellent foresight in both outpost placement and armament dispersal.

Your exactly who we can fight and on the cheap since we don't have to invent anything new and can rely on good old fashion overwhelming American airpower. And heck every plane you shot down is one slated for replacement so for budget reasons it's a win/win except for the poor pilots. But that assumes a theoretical America VS Germany while France and Great Britian line up on their respective borders with placard's and lawn chairs rather than intervene on one side or another. Anything larger would be a very cheap war because it would be nuclear.

*Edit
That does also count the fact that we helped you build a good 90% of what is in Germany today so we have exact military plans to the inch of where everything is. If we were doing testing for Tomahalks they call the firing planes rigged by neutral observes we have everything dialed in so well (Mostly so you know we don't accidentally shoot population centers or military outposts while we did sixty years of join military exercises)

In fact I wager we know German targets a great deal better than theoretical American targets since after all we did not spend fifty years thinking the American military would have to stop hordes of rampaging Canadian crossing the Canadian Gap.

[Thanas]

"If we just occupy nations they will magically come round to our way of thinking". How's that working out for you so far?

Besides, it is not as if the US could even afford a war with Germany.

Please Thanas your country has a first rate military with defined borders, established bases, clear lines of logistics and excellent foresight in both outpost placement and armament dispersal.

Nobody denies the US can defeat Germany.

But they cannot afford such a war and subsequent occupation. The economy will tank and that is not even counting the domino effect of the US pissing off every country in Europe who have just wondered why the US has become a fascist dictatorship, plus facing an insurgency supported by the neighbours who will wonder why the US has just gone batshit insane. The US certainly does not have the manpower to occupy all of Germany either.

So this is pretty much just dick-waving.

[madd0ct0r]

in other words, the closer a country is to russia, the more seriously they consider this question

[K. A. Pital]

Has it occured to people that Germany perhaps does not want to be dragged into a war that starts due the fault of the US? I mean, the US has made so many enemies in the world with their recent actions, especially in the Middle East. Maybe Germany just does not want to fight in some shitholystan because the US decides that it was attacked by this particular country?

Maybe Germany should not abide by NATO treaties and France should not, likewise.

Maybe the people have the opinion that NATO is more of a danger and liability than something useful.

It may surprise TimothyC and others from the US, but people in Europe actually have an opinion that is sometimes seriously opposed to the government positions. That is because these treaties were made in a different age by different people, different governments.

Reoccupation? I get that this is a joke, but it is an offensive one, considering that the US tends to occupy and bomb to shit countries far more often than the avowedly non-militaristic Germany and Japan. It is only natural that Western Europeans are more wary of war, because Dickmerica is not the one that will get ravaged, just like in WWII the US escaped damage and losses, while most of Europe was turned to rubble.

[Channel72]

Has it occured to people that Germany perhaps does not want to be dragged into a war that starts due the fault of the US? I mean, the US has made so many enemies in the world with their recent actions, especially in the Middle East. Maybe Germany just does not want to fight in some shitholystan because the US decides that it was attacked by this particular country?

How does that follow? Yeah the US has been stomping around being a dick, mostly - but this is about potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which has pretty much nothing to do with US misadventures in the Mideast.

[Purple]

How does that follow? Yeah the US has been stomping around being a dick, mostly - but this is about potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which has pretty much nothing to do with US misadventures in the Mideast.

My guess is that a lot of these people simply don't want to get involved in a war over countries they don't much care about. Like, what does a person in Britain or France have to gain by going to war with a nuclear superpower in order to protect say one of the Baltic countries? Last time Europe went that way France ended up occupied and most of Europe ended up flattened. Better leave the Russians well enough alone as long as they don't come after anything you actually care about.

That's the reasoning. Or at least my best guess at it.

[Welf]

How does that follow? Yeah the US has been stomping around being a dick, mostly - but this is about potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which has pretty much nothing to do with US misadventures in the Mideast.

Maybe it has to do with pattern recognition? The US already invoked article 5 back in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, it was confirmed a few weeks later and has been in charge ever since. Germany and other European countries provided troops and material for the Afghanistan invasion like a good ally would do. And within 1 year the defence alliance was turned into an offensive alliance against the completely unrelated Iraq and used to permanently diminish civil rights. People learn from these things.
Plus there is the east/west divide within Germany; west Germans show similar opinions as other western Europeans, while east Germans are more sceptic of NATO and more positive about Putin.

[The Romulan Republic]

Considering that fighting a war with Russia essentially means accepting that your country will get nuked into rubble and that generations of people at this point have been taught that nuclear war=extinction of the human race or at best complete destruction of civilization, I can't say I blame anyone for wishing to avoid the prospect. You can argue weather they're theoretically right or not, but I understand why people would feel that way.

Edit: Of course, I see the other side as well. An alliance isn't worth much of the members won't commit to fighting to defend each other.

[Zaune]

Maybe we've just gone three-quarters of a century without an all out, no quarter, continent-spanning war that kills millions of people and don't want to ruin it now? Especially when there's a non-negligible risk of WMDs getting thrown around.

[Flagg]

This may be one of the single most offensive, obvious flame-baity, and apparently vendetta serving threads I have ever seen on this site. It's too bad that if Thanas were to lock and move it to the HoS the usual suspects would shout bias until their cum lubricated throats finally got sore. Which is the whole point of this thread, to trap Thanas into fulfilling his duties as a mod, and then say he wasn't doing that, he was "abusing his powers" which despite site rules likely wouldn't result in any bannings.

I feel for you Thanas. You put up with way too much of this shit. I'd have quit months ago, so you're a fucking trooper.

[Patroklos]

How does that follow? Yeah the US has been stomping around being a dick, mostly - but this is about potential Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, which has pretty much nothing to do with US misadventures in the Mideast.

Maybe it has to do with pattern recognition? The US already invoked article 5 back in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, it was confirmed a few weeks later and has been in charge ever since. Germany and other European countries provided troops and material for the Afghanistan invasion like a good ally would do. And within 1 year the defence alliance was turned into an offensive alliance against the completely unrelated Iraq and used to permanently diminish civil rights. People learn from these things.
Plus there is the east/west divide within Germany; west Germans show similar opinions as other western Europeans, while east Germans are more sceptic of NATO and more positive about Putin.

NATO treaty obligations were never applied to Iraq and NATO forces never served Ther. The fact that nations who were engaged in NATO activities in Afghanistan chose to also participate in Iraq does not equal NATO being involved in Iraq. In fact several significant NATO members participated in one but not the other.

[Voyager989]

This may be one of the single most offensive, obvious flame-baity, and apparently vendetta serving threads I have ever seen on this site. It's too bad that if Thanas were to lock and move it to the HoS the usual suspects would shout bias until their cum lubricated throats finally got sore. Which is the whole point of this thread, to trap Thanas into fulfilling his duties as a mod, and then say he wasn't doing that, he was "abusing his powers" which despite site rules likely wouldn't result in any bannings.

I feel for you Thanas. You put up with way too much of this shit. I'd have quit months ago, so you're a fucking trooper.

... I could have sworn this thread was in Testing this morning.

[TimothyC]

First of all, for everyone in this thread, I originally posted this in Testing, not in N&P. I did this so I could be snarky and because I didn't really see it as worthy of a full news post.

I have criticized public opinion in the past on this board already, so this is both disappointing and not that surprising.

Yes, you have. You are however in the minority in your nation. I see plenty of derision pointed at US members all of the time, so I thought I would have a little fun. And no, it's not surprising at all.

That being said, why does OP single out Germany? Same thing is happening in France and Italy and more than a third of the Brits believe the same.

More than a third of the US says we shouldn't intervene. I don't make comments about France and Italy because they at least fund their military forces.

Reoccupying might also work.

"If we just occupy nations they will magically come round to our way of thinking". How's that working out for you so far?

Besides, it is not as if the US could even afford a war with Germany.

This was intended as a joke. A better joke might have been "Maybe letting the Russians reoccupy part of Germany might work [to fix the problem]."

[K. A. Pital]

A better joke might have been "Maybe letting the Russians reoccupy part of Germany might work [to fix the problem]."

That would also be a tasteless and lame joke. The fact that Germans are not happy, in general, about being dragged into a NATO war, be it European or not, does not mean it is a problem.

It is only a problem for the US and NATO, perhaps, and the entire "problem" exists only if one values the US or NATO as allies/structures somewhat. If it does not value neither NATO nor the US, then what? It is simply an opinion the citizens hold. Like it or not, but it's like that. After many decades of US troops stationed in Germany, it turned out people don't like the US that much. Boo hoo.

Maybe they get the idea of mutual defence, they just don't want to do it with the US.

[Flagg]

Well if this was in testing, then I take back my criticisms and apologize, as according to a mod "No one gives a shit about testing". So I assume my warning for making a pedophile joke at TimothyC's expense (which was not cool, and I apologized freely at the time, and do so again for bringing it up, I just don't want that warning when official policy according to a moderator says "no one gives a shit" what you say there, and someone "said/asked/insulted" me in probably the most vile way I've ever seen and I was acting cool with it simply because I figured something so FAR over the line as to Spoiler

imply/ask if I raped my father

would be dealt with in the proper manner as opposed to being ignored. But at the time I was unaware that "No one gives a shit about testing", so can I has warning for testing antics between me and TimC (again apologies, my joke, and it was a joke, but it was still inexcusable, went over the line) removed? Thanks.

[Thanas]

That being said, why does OP single out Germany? Same thing is happening in France and Italy and more than a third of the Brits believe the same.

More than a third of the US says we shouldn't intervene. I don't make comments about France and Italy because they at least fund their military forces.

Germany spends 1.2%,
Italy spends 1.27%.
But the Italian figure also includes funding 100k carabineri, who are counted as part of the military. Subtract them and you get a lower level of GDP expenditure than Germany.

So I guess you shouldn't make comments about Germany because by your standards, they do fund their military forces. Probably better than Italy too.

[Purple]

Well if this was in testing, then I take back my criticisms and apologize, as according to a mod "No one gives a shit about testing".

Testing isn't a shit-giving free zone. It's just a place where the tolerance level is really high so it's easier to use that metaphor. There are some things which are frankly so distasteful that testing starts giving a shit. And that was one of them.

[Welf]

NATO treaty obligations were never applied to Iraq and NATO forces never served Ther. The fact that nations who were engaged in NATO activities in Afghanistan chose to also participate in Iraq does not equal NATO being involved in Iraq. In fact several significant NATO members participated in one but not the other.

In the end, yes. But that was not how it was presented back then. The war on Iraq was supposed to be continuation of the war on terror, with the US administration construction early the "axis of evil", and implying that Saddam was supporting terrorism. And in Europe a huge argument for joining the Iraq war was to not split the NATO countries and not create a security policy outside of it. In the end public resistance was too huge in most of Europe and the USA had to settle for the coalition of the willing. But this attempt to retool NATO hasn't been forgotten and has weakened the bonds.

[Channel72]

A better joke might have been "Maybe letting the Russians reoccupy part of Germany might work [to fix the problem]."

That would also be a tasteless and lame joke. The fact that Germans are not happy, in general, about being dragged into a NATO war, be it European or not, does not mean it is a problem.

It is only a problem for the US and NATO, perhaps, and the entire "problem" exists only if one values the US or NATO as allies/structures somewhat. If it does not value neither NATO nor the US, then what? It is simply an opinion the citizens hold. Like it or not, but it's like that. After many decades of US troops stationed in Germany, it turned out people don't like the US that much. Boo hoo.

Maybe they get the idea of mutual defence, they just don't want to do it with the US.

Perhaps - I mean NATO is something of a Cold-War relic, and the Warsaw Pact doesn't even exist anymore. Perhaps NATO has outlived it's usefulness.

Still, Russia is being demonstrably belligerent with it's neighbors. NATO at least has some semblance of purpose in terms of balancing power between Russia and the West. Although in practice it's sort of useless, because any actual armed conflict between multiple nuclear powers is a game not worth playing. Indeed, one might argue NATO is actually counter-productive, much like the fragile network of pre-WW1 European alliances which spiraled out of control into a trans-continental war that redefined the meaning of "casualty count".

The reality is that if Putin blatantly invades some country like Poland or whatever, there's little anyone could really do about it other than bitch a lot in front of the UN, plus more economic sanctions blah blah. Anyway, Putin should take a cue from the US and invade countries that nobody cares about, like Kazakhstan or something. Nobody would give a shit and no NATO problems would ensue, plus he takes back one more piece of the former USSR, so everyone wins! (Except Kazakhstan.)

Seriously though, any acts of Russian aggression will inevitably have to be countered via more subtler strategies, like funding the opposition insurgents, or whatever.

[Flagg]

Well if this was in testing, then I take back my criticisms and apologize, as according to a mod "No one gives a shit about testing".

Testing isn't a shit-giving free zone. It's just a place where the tolerance level is really high so it's easier to use that metaphor. There are some things which are frankly so distasteful that testing starts giving a shit. And that was one of them.

I have the transcripts to prove you wrong, my friend.

Oh wait, I hate you, you're not my friend, now I must sacrifice a goat and bathe in it's blood to purify myself. That's such a pain in the ass.

[Adam Reynolds]

Still, Russia is being demonstrably belligerent with it's neighbors. NATO at least has some semblance of purpose in terms of balancing power between Russia and the West. Although in practice it's sort of useless, because any actual armed conflict between multiple nuclear powers is a game not worth playing. Indeed, one might argue NATO is actually counter-productive, much like the fragile network of pre-WW1 European alliances which spiraled out of control into a trans-continental war that redefined the meaning of "casualty count".

I've often wondered if America's similar policies in the Pacific with SEATO(Southeast Asian) might similarly backfire at some point in the future.

[TimothyC]

That being said, why does OP single out Germany? Same thing is happening in France and Italy and more than a third of the Brits believe the same.

More than a third of the US says we shouldn't intervene. I don't make comments about France and Italy because they at least fund their military forces.

Germany spends 1.2%,
Italy spends 1.27%.
But the Italian figure also includes funding 100k carabineri, who are counted as part of the military. Subtract them and you get a lower level of GDP expenditure than Germany.

So I guess you shouldn't make comments about Germany because by your standards, they do fund their military forces. Probably better than Italy too.

I stand corrected on Italian military funding. They still don't have the same degree of lack of support for NATO,.