Wow... there's actual documentary evidence of this... they have officially [on paper] crossed the line where they instead of just being perceived to being the bully are actually officially bullying nations into doing their bidding. This is... I'm officially speechless. Are they trying to pen themselves into a corner where the entire world ends up standing against them? After I heard yesterday about Russia's plans for their nuclear program and now this...
...did I fall asleep and wake up in an alternate universe. This behaviour is ridiculous. The U.S. got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and they're threatening other countries with huge diplomatic consequences because they're willing to stand up and protect the guy who embarrassed them?
How about they just say, "Hey, yeah, we fucked up, we'll fix it. Sorry guys" and be done with it. They're walking down a very bad diplomatic path. If you want to win the war on terror, try making friends instead of enemies; your current path is not leading in that direction.
I'm actually astonished given Germany's strength in Europe that they didn't just say GFY! We're not going to be seen to be bullied by you in front of all of Europe. You don't make the rules here and if you want to play that game, it goes both ways. You already have a significant portion of the middle east unhappy with you - we stood by you on that; you have Russia against you - we stood by you on that too; do you really want to turn Europe, your only remaining ally against you too? Because that's where this path is leading. As mighty as your military is, it would not stand against the rest of the world if you keep up this idiotic behaviour.
For "officially bullying", see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States - invade Nicaragua, be ruled against by the UN, block payment of reparations and then glare at Nicaragua for a decade until they agree to just drop it. The US has long believed that might makes right and they're not going to submit to anyone else's idea of justice. There's a long list of such instances.
As for Europe, sadly Ukraine is reminding us all that the choice is between being American client states or Russian client states. At least as American client states we get rock and roll and blue jeans, right comrades?
>I'm actually astonished given Germany's strength in Europe that they didn't just say GFY!
Consequences are playing out in other arenas, weakly evidenced by Germany (and other close US allies)[1] joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)[2] which is an organization similar to the World Bank or IMF spearheaded by China.
> I'm actually astonished given Germany's strength in Europe that they didn't just say GFY! We're not going to be seen to be bullied by you in front of all of Europe.
Even more astonishing is they're openly admitting it (and thereby admitting weakness). My guess is they have ulterior reasons for admitting it now - perhaps to gain sympathy or be seen less as bullies during negotiations with Greece (http://www.businessinsider.com/germany-poll-kick-greece-out-...)
> I'm actually astonished given Germany's strength in Europe that they didn't just say GFY!
Germany isn't a sovereign country. Having foreign (US) troops on your soil makes you dependable on the policies of that foreign country. There are many other reasons why Germany cannot (and doesn't want) to "say GFY" to the US.
And yet you will continue to see people, invariably Americans, argue that the Germans do not want to see US bases close, because they are dependent on the jobs. The 1960's called and they want their economic argument back.
If the German economy was capable of taking on re-unification costs, Germany could easily handle greater autonomy w.r.t. the US.
I'm actually german and I'll take the bait. Ramstein, one of the largest US Airbases in Europe is in a pretty desolate area of Germany. A lot of american troops pass through there (to and from Iraq and Afghanistan). The soldiers bring money and jobs - it would be political suicide for the local politics to demand a withdrawal. Heidelberg and Würzburg have large deployments as well.
It's not like we could not shoulder the economic impact, in terms of the gross domestic product that's a tiny amount, it's rather that in terms of how the political landscape looks like we don't want to. (It would probably also require to sift more budget to the military etc.).
However, I doubt that the US military would give up its Airbases in Ramstein and Frankfurt over Snowden. They're far to important in the current conflicts in the middle east.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Army_inst...) US has 35 existing bases in Germany and has closed 207 (!) bases in the past. Some of the most important (strategic importance and size) are in Germany. To think that such a huge military presence has "exactly zero to do" with how freely German government can make decisions which would be contrary to the US interests is an illusion.
Its a financial risk. Germany could today tell the US to be out of the country by a set date and what could the US do? Likely at most point to contracts and treaty agreements and request negotiation. Does anyone really think the US could say no and get away with it?
Germany wants the money the bases bring and likely the perceived protection they present. If they didn't see the latter then the money point is key. How much does the US spend to maintain those bases and do they pay fees beyond that to have them?
As a Libertarian I would be more than happy seeing us out of every country that is peaceful. We have no real need to be there in this day and age with the ease at which power can be projected. I won't go into the question of being in certain other countries because of disagreements which led to war, declared or not.
West Germany is still occupied by US troops. The 2+4 treaty is !NOT! a peace treaty. Russians just withdraw their troops from east Germany. Take a look in the 2+4 contract, neither US troops nor US atom rockets are allowed in east Germany.
Each Chancellor has to sign a paper called Kanzlerakte, that he agrees, to give up sovereignty at lot of cases, e.e. intelligence, military.
There were plenty of shenanigans going on between the U.S. and German politicians in the early BRD days. But the scanned document everyone's been passing around purporting to refer to the so-called Kanzlerakte is obviously a fake.
I don't comment on the Kanzlerakte, it's obvious fake.
US barracks are not extraterritoriality zones, please cite your claim.
"US soldiers are not under German jurisdiction", this is only partly true. It's part of the "NATO-Truppenstatut". With Art. 19 Abs. 3 Satz 1 ZA (Zusatzabkommen) the foreign soldiers are part of German jurisdiction.
As to 'Putin-Versteher' and RT shill Udo Ulfkotte:
I've written about the "journalist" Udo Ulfkotte over the years and was pleased that he seemed to have faded from view, disappearing into the pages of the 9/11 Truther Site of Kopp Verlag. Ulfkotte distinguished himself as a racist and anti-Islam hatemonger, demanding that all Muslims be deported from Germany in order to create more Lebensraum for ethnic Germans. For years he has been publishing articles and books that distort the truth, or are outright lies. A few examples: Ulfkotte claimed that Muslims were waging a "fecal Jihad" against Germans"because Turkish women were allegedly defecating in fields of strawberries that were exported to Germany. He warned Germans to stay away from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, since black African "savages" were planning to rape and murder European visitors. Of course, President Obama is one those black African savages - or at least a 'half-breed" - whom he hates. He lied that Obama was persecuting Christians in the United States, and had given orders to burn Bibles. I could go on and on. Actually, I cannot identify any examples where the "journalist" Udo Ulfkotte reported truthfully about anything.
It's fairly easy to a smear campaign someone that does not fit into your narative.
All you have to do is put some labels on him, take things of out context, attribute things not said or done to the said person, and pretend to debunk him.
This way you never have to make the counterargument to the argument made by that person. You just dismiss him in whole.
I don't know if that's the case here, but considering the name-calling from the start, the typical labeling (racist, homophobe, islamophobe, Nazi, RT-shill), I'd say it fits.
My Russian friends would probably laugh at what you're saying. You have to be very, very naive about what's happening in Russia these days to have that impression.
And MY Russian friends would laugh at what you're saying too.
It's a kind of selection bias: the kind of Russian friends that laugh at RT are the kind of friends a westerner would make (especially if they are involved in entrepreneurship and IT or social media etc).
They are the kind of people with little experience of modern history and a strong western bias that westerners find everywhere (e.g. even in places like the Middle East, and make general examples out of them). They are not representative of the majority of Russian population, though, who predominantly voted for Putin.
Kind of like liberal lefties reading Counterpunch and the like are not representative of the majority of the US population.
That may be the case, but if you cut off America's access to oil, food and other things they're a net importer of, you'd pretty soon restrict their military abilities regardless of their military spending - they can't let their non-military population starve and go homeless. A huge expensive military with billions of dollars worth of machinery isn't going to run very long without food/water for its personnel, supplies and fuel - even if they have almost half of the global military spending. The first rule of a fight is never fight someone at their own game. They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. At some point you have to say "Hey, enough of this bullshit. You may think you run this planet, but you're one country of 196. The rest of us are tired of your shit, we all deserve to be treated with respect. If you want to be part of the team, step up and be part of the team, but you're not going to dictate to the rest of us how you want it to be."
I believe that the US is a net exporter of food and could probably be self sufficient in oil too if need be. Also, with that huge military the US could pretty much take whatever we want from whomever we want. It reminds me of a scene from the Rome TV series when Caesar is in Alexandria trying to collect the money owed to Rome (Pompey the Great). He is explaining his calculations to the Egyptians when the minister of Egypt protests that is based on Roman law, and Caesar replies "Is there any other?"
It hasn't failed. If you disrupt the balance of power in a tribal state, you're going to have a lot of contingencies making power plays. The U.S. accomplished its short-term goals at least in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Changing hearts and minds" is good propaganda but everyone knows it's eminently unrealistic, and not why we invade countries.
if we suddenly stopped caring about human rights and political consequences (I.e., we're starving), it's a different approach completely. It's not like we unleashed the full force of our military (our came anywhere near).
Of course, your entire premise is flawed as we could support ourselves Not sure where you got your numbers from, but they're wrong.
I was sort of hoping that the forcing down of Evo Morales' plane would be a turning point in terms of trust and good relations with the US. That was such an outrageous step based on the merest suspicion, it's almost hard to believe it actually happened.
Trade is important. Some level of cooperation is good. But these are independent, powerful countries (especially Germany), and they ought to act like it.
I think the take-away from all of this is that the civilised world needs to take a stand against the US, and collectively go "you know what, shove your intelligence, and your 'friendship'".
Friendship from the the US is like that friend who comes by, puts his muddy boots on your desk, tells you to fix his computer, stubs a cigarette out on the carpet, and on his way out punches a neighbour for looking at him funny. Once in a while he'll turn up with some guy he beat up, and tell you that this is evidence of his benevolent protection... and you'd better keep on my good side, bro. You wouldn't like me when I'm mad.
This act alone, if done publicly and loudly, would quite likely decrease any variety of terroristic threat to cooperating nations, merely through the act of disassociation with the USA, thus making their threats utterly toothless.
As it is, however, through TTIP and TPP the world is further embroiling themselves in the affairs of this embattled state, and matters can only worsen.
Europe is heavily subsidized by American security blanket. You guys get more out of the friendship than you realize and those two bit caricature type squabbles, I will excuse it as European snobbery.
>Europe is heavily subsidized by American security blanket.
LOL. There's no "security blanket" and no real security threats. The US and Europe are bigger security threats to the rest of the world than the inverse. You have to believe tons of propaganda to believe there's actually a danger to Western Europe or the US from outside. That's basically BS to justify control of key natural resources, trade routes, etc regions, like Iraq and the like.
The basic reason Europe doesn't say "fuck you" to the US is that for one, European and US elites are mostly working together, and second the US is a 100.000 pound gorilla, where Western European countries, post 1940 are not what they used to be. If France or the UK were the empires they were in the colonial times you'd see much more tension with the US to pursue their particular interests. But as it is, they are toothless, and it's an US world they have to live in.
The United States is an impediment to the projected unified world government. Rest assured influential Americans are very much on board with this program and this vilification is par per course. After all, we see more than the old glory hoisted up in foreign nations subjected to the "international community" dictates.
> Europe is heavily subsidized by American security blanket.
There are three countries in Europe that, by themselves, have a larger GDP than Russia. The Soviet Union and Red Army are gone. As bellicose as Putin is, he is militarily bogged down in Ukraine. Europe has no need of a US "security blanket."
Putin a threat to Europe? Americans make fun of Fox News, but concerning world affairs, their other sources of information, up to the New York Times, are not that better quality wise.
This is the same BS cold-war narratives in order to justify pressure on Russia, as if Russia will attempt to take over Europe or something, which is laughable. At least in the cold war era USSR was indeed more powerful, and had control over Eastern Europe.
The whole game is about replacing Russian leadership with some friendly Yeltsin like lackey figure, so foreign powers can pillage on Russian natural resources, contracts etc. They could not give a rats arse about "human rights" and the like, they just want to create the same devastation they created elsewhere already.
Europe could elect politicians that cut ties with the US but they don't. As long as they don't the status quo will remain. Maybe they are too scared, who knows, they certainly complain a lot but that doesn't change anything.
Democracy is a very, very low resolution way of making decisions. Politicians virtually never run on a platform of foreign policy. It's always domestic issues. Once they get elected on domestic issues they then implement whatever foreign policy they personally feel like.
Personally, that was the exact moment when I first felt ashamed of the EU and Germany in particular. To put it bluntly, that incident and the absolute lack of outrage from the governments involved (especially in face of Snowden's disclosures preceding it) clarified "we're the US's bitch and we know our place".
Or, you know, it could be that the EU thought "Jesus, if someone pulls a Snowden on us, we'd like the US to help us grab them, so lets help the US grab Snowden".
I'm pretty sure the EU intelligence community is crapping themselves at the thought of a huge leak happening to them.
The problem with that is that if it happens anywhere outside of France, everyone will just roll their eyes, agree that of course they suspected this was happening, the leak just confirms it and life will carry on as normal...
Meanwhile, in France there would be riots in the streets, ports would be blocked by truckers and the wheels would fall off everything - which is par for the course when anyone upsets the French :P
Ironically, the Snowden leaks revealed that EU countries do spy on their citizens, just like the NSA. And yes, that includes Germany and its BND.
It's always struck me as bizarre that, at least in discussion forums like HN, the US is regarded as an unusually bad actor when it's simply the leader of the gang.
There is still much good about the U.S. The only thing that people regularly seem to complain about is that they want to act however they choose, ignore how that affects the rest of the world and then when someone stands up and says, no that's bullshit, they act like a spoiled brat about it. [Clarification: I'm not speaking about the U.S. as a whole, just the government agencies that regularly reach beyond their legal authority to achieve illegal objectives]
They do. The BND had DE-CIX tapped for years (and shared freely with the NSA), for example.
Compared to the US, the scale might be rather tame, but that has more to do with the bloated US intelligence budget than with any "respect" for privacy on the part of the european intelligence services.
As a German, I have suspected for a while that something like this had happened behind the scenes. I am surprised, though, that Sigmar Gabriel would admit it this openly on the record.
One the one hand, I am quite disappointed at the German government's lack of courage to stand up to the US.
On the other hand, if I was Snowden, I would not go to Germany even if the government was on their knees begging me to come here, given the number of US soldiers and intelligence operatives stationed in Germany. So the whole question if Germany should offer asylum to Snowden seems kind of hypothetical to me.
> but they probably don't really have an army, and I'm sure US has still quite a few military bases there. After all, they've only been a country for 25 years.
"Probably"? "I'm sure"? How about not making bald-faced assertions based on wild-ass guesses that are spectacularly wrong?
Germany has been a country since 1949, It has had an army since 1955, which is currently considered the 7th or 8th most powerful in the world. And the USA has military bases all over the world; by that standard, the UK is not independant either.
The USA has military bases all over the world, correct. But how many countries have military bases in the US? That's the real indicator of power.
The UK's independence from the US has been weak since Suez. It's not entirely clear whether we can independently launch our nukes, for example. And the bases have been locally controversial (e.g. Greenham Common).
The last independent military action the UK took without US approval was the Falklands War. I'm not sure we'd be capable of winning it again, although there was a lot of good and bad luck involved the first time.
I'd be very doubtful if the Falklands were overrun tomorrow (though that's probably less likely with the base there[1]). Lack of aircraft carriers surely must eliminate any realistic chance of air superiority, and there are no bombers remaining (the closest thing being the Tornado GR4, whose range is pitiful in comparison to the Vulcan's, and that was a logistical challenge itself[2]).
Did you actually watch the entire 55 seconds of the video and understand what Schäuble meant? Namely that the traditional meaning of sovereignty, "we can do whatever the heck we want without asking for anyone's approval" is something not worth having that Europe as a whole has abandoned, because it led to two world wars.
As for the notion that German intelligence services are "run by the CIA" - nosense, it's of course directly run by the Illuminati, just like the CIA!
> Nonetheless, one of two things is true:
>
> 1) the U.S. actually threatened Germany that it would refrain from notifying them of terrorist plots against German citizens and thus deliberately leave them vulnerable to violent attacks, or
>
> 2) some combination of high officials from the U.S. and/or German governments are invoking such fictitious threats in order to manipulate and scare the German public into believing that asylum for Snowden will endanger their lives.
>
I'm sure it's the second one. A scared public accepts reforms that strengthen government power and budget shifts to allow more surveillance and less privacy.
Makes sense. Couldn't Germany/E.U also claim to deny sharing information with the U.S?
Yes, the U.S has the best intelligence agency in the world, but Europe is closer to most hostile nations in the world. If EU said 'no sharing info with the US', wouldn't that be a much larger problem than the other way around?
Yeah, France shared information about Moussaoui, Russia shared information about Tsarnaev, so it's hard to imagine U.S. withholding similar kind of information in similar situations, so it was probably a bluff.
Did I miss the part where the US took their case to the German public to "manipulate and scare"? Pretty sure the link mentions that these "threats" were done in private to German officials.
Scott's fundamental assertion is that the news is a waste of time because it can't possibly influence his actions (apart from politically, but he's happy to vote off of voter information brochures provided with the ballot, a kind of news proxy).
The actors in this particular Snowden story are heads of state: Obama/Kerry/Hillary on the US side, and Merckel/Gabriel on the German side. At it's heart is the revelation by Gabriel to Greenwald (the author of the piece) that the US threatened Germany over Snowden.
We already know that the USG over-whelminging considers Snowden a criminal and a traitor. (And one of his precious few supporters in the Senate, Mark Udall(D-NM) lost his re-election campaign.
We already know that the USG has no moral scruples against taking any action it deems in it's interest. It has tortured and killed innocent people, lied to justify invading foreign countries, invaded the personal privacy of allied heads of state, and invaded the privacy of everyone in the world, including private US citizens and corporations.
We already know that the US public, the final arbiter of what is right and wrong, isn't outraged by any of this enough to make a serious difference at the polls.
What good does it do me to learn about one more way in which my government works against my interests and moral sensibilities?
I won't give anyone I know the excuse of ignorance when and if they vote for congressmen openly supporting the criminal actions of our government. And your theory is based on the idea that things will never change, and I do not feel like giving up on the idea of limits on government just yet.
The crux of what USG is saying 'Helping a person who exposed our spying programs shows that you must not want the benefits of them'. Please detach yourself and look at it from their perspective - does this really seem unreasonable?
The vice chancellor's statement is phrased to be as incendiary as possible, to throw USG under the bus and make it sound like the German government and USG are two separate entities with some high level information sharing. But given the USG military/listening outputs in Germany, how could anyone possibly think this is the case? The people in both sides' intelligence services are trying to protect against similar "threats" and their perspectives are more alike than different. We've seen specifics with FVEY, and it's prudent to assume that all USG allies are in similar conspiracies, with the countries' relative power just determining how many bargaining chips they have. Make no mistake - The German government is benefiting greatly from this information exchange and would never want to lose access.
Now, please don't peg me as defending this state of affairs. I'd love to see justice be served through political means, and I'd really love to see USG get taken down a few pegs to prevent the otherwise inevitable catastrophic collapse of the US. But justice isn't the driving force here - power is. And power tends to coalesce. If you find yourself thinking of a distinction between strategic information (wouldn't be shared with Russia) and protecting against terrorists threats (should be shared freely), you've entered their operating paradigm wherein governments protect each other by monitoring all individuals for threats.
NSA isn't the only entity doing full takes; it's just a (now prominent) nucleation point. Even if they disbanded tomorrow, many others will still be tapping those cables. The only way to protect against black hats, especially well coordinated global ones, is to secure the communications themselves.
I cant see how this threat would be effective. The U.S. would simply be forcing Germany - the most powerful member of the E.U and it's defacto leader - to strike up alliances elsewhere. It would possibly force the E.U. to bolster it's own intelligence gathering outfits to mitigate the dependance on U.S intelligence.
Either that, or Germany would just shrug it's shoulders and resign itself to the fact that it wasn't going to get any of the "good" intel anymore... which seems unlikely to me.
So I think we're safe to assume that the "threat" was for the sake of keeping up appearances.
In my opinion, the US is slowly forcing Europe to rethink its overall alliance with them, especially under a President who is maybe the worst foreign politician, even after Bush, because he manages to show basically every ally or partner that they can kiss their ass goodbye.
And Europe is reacting. France is strengthening its ties to the Maghreb and north African states again, Germany plans on increasing it's defense spending the first time since 1990, and from Top-Tier politicians the Idea of combined armed European Forces is voiced more and more.
Additionally, The EU is actively charming the non-NATO-members like Finland into participation, and with its East-Europe policy adds more strategic debt and more economic powerhouses in waiting to their territory
Ironically, the Russian actions in Ukraine force Europe to stand closer together, and may as well lead to even tighter integration.
Additionally, if you take the military capability of France, GB, Germany, Italy and Finland, The necessity for an American "Proctection" is scarecely needed.
If you add the extremely capable european defence industry, which in big parts was crippled by the "Standardization" enforced through the NATO leading members to buy US defence technology, and the well-educated "Mittelstand", an increasing US-Isolationism would only hurt in the short run.
As much as I would like it to be different, we are still at least one or two decades away from an effective European deterrent against Russian aggression. If only because of our inability to coordinate decisive responses and our unwillingness to pool military resources in a European army, rather than split them into national militaries with incredibly amounts of redundancy and ineffectiveness.
Yes, but these hurdles to overcome are political, not technological or financial. And for that period, the biggest deterrent against Russia is Russia itself, because they are militarily, as a former german Chancellor once said "The Republic of Upper Volta with nuclear Warheads"
Between a violent Russia and an arrogant US we might actually get a strong united Europe. As a European I can't help but feel that this is a very good thing.
Don't hope for that. Europe is deeply divided. Everyone hates and blames "the others" for their own mistakes and problems, most of which were caused by political and economic (big business) elites in those countries. Not to forget, both US and Russia have their minions in Europe.
Of course there is a divide between European countries but should the divide between Europe and Russia and the US become larger, the former will quickly lose significance.
"That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans..."
Have there been any? From what I've heard, all this snooping has been good for post-facto analysis, but useless as prior information.
That's the problem, you're not going to hear about how this intelligence worked, or didn't. This leaves the public (and media) to speculate endlessly, and less informed debaters to claim there "is no evidence" of the information stopping an attack.
This little behind the curtain threat, basically reveals (or insinuates) that when the "rubber hits the road" the information is in fact very valuable.
"Our investigation found that bulk collection of American phone metadata"
Also, using "arrests" or case arrests as the sole evidence or set of data is also quite limited. I would imagine, foiled plots don't always result in an arrest.
Details matter, and by the time reports like this hit the media, they get boiled down in to attention grabbing headlines divorced from the original conclusions.
It is interesting that Vice Chancellor tells us this now.
Germany has been forced by the US to make war to Ukraine and Russia and they don't want to follow this path farther.
Europe just wants to preserve the status quo, preserve peace and commerce relationships with Russia that benefit both sides.
US is desperate to break further Euro-Asian integration because it means the facto end to American hegemony in the world, including the petrodollar.
The US does not care about war in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine because it is so far from home, but it is the Europeans who are suffering from avalanches of refugees and instability by war.
So finally they are saying "enough is enough" and showing a little common sense.
"That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans by withholding that information from their government."
Nope. The irony (maybe the wrong word) is that despite all the "public outrage" when it came down to a decision on whether or not to have the data - German officials (seemingly) chose to have the information. It shows a disconnect from what those are saying publicly about Snowden and the NSA and what actions are actually taking place.
Being "cut off" from American intelligence should be a no-brainer (as the shout from the attendee showed) for any country that finds the NSA's actions and data sharing to be unlawful or unhelpful.
What the German government should do is to refuse intelligence gathered using criminal methods (and push for an international prosecution of the American officials involved in such actions), and request information sharing gathered by legal means, as expected from any ally.
I understand that for any you-are-with-us-or-against-us mentality this is difficult to swallow.
Looks like the US is inching it's way closer to the top of most "disgusting country on the planet". Germans should sever the ties IMO and stop allowing their bulling tactics and double-faced dealings. Country of "freedom" my ass. Can't understand why some people from European countries still consider to migrate there. But you're not allowed to say anything alas it's immediately labelled "hate-speech", so self-censorship (especially among Americans) remains strong.
The US was just not ready to be a Super Power, I don't think. It's not "grown up" enough to act responsibly. It lacks a lot of subtlety and tact, it's like a fat, loud obnoxious 12-year old bullying all other kids on the playground.
It's a shame, too, because it can be a true leader that is followed out of respect and not fear. It just chooses the other path, time and time again, since it's easier.
This is an absurdly broad comment. The US has been a super power for over half a century. You've distilled decades of complex foreign policy involving every nation on earth down to a five sentence blanket condemnation.
> They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters
What does "other intelligence matters" mean ? Also historically, what are the cases where this intelligence was useful ? Being more specific would probably help determine if it's even useful.
So what? Fuck the US then. US intelligence has had free reign in Germany anyway. Most terrorist plots stopped in Germany didn't actually target Germany anyway and it's not like the US would just pull out and ignore whatever happens in Germany.
The total armed forces of the countries in the EU are actually pretty large - the one thing they don't have is any sense of unity, which pretty much negates their effectiveness:
...did I fall asleep and wake up in an alternate universe. This behaviour is ridiculous. The U.S. got caught with their hands in the cookie jar and they're threatening other countries with huge diplomatic consequences because they're willing to stand up and protect the guy who embarrassed them?
How about they just say, "Hey, yeah, we fucked up, we'll fix it. Sorry guys" and be done with it. They're walking down a very bad diplomatic path. If you want to win the war on terror, try making friends instead of enemies; your current path is not leading in that direction.
I'm actually astonished given Germany's strength in Europe that they didn't just say GFY! We're not going to be seen to be bullied by you in front of all of Europe. You don't make the rules here and if you want to play that game, it goes both ways. You already have a significant portion of the middle east unhappy with you - we stood by you on that; you have Russia against you - we stood by you on that too; do you really want to turn Europe, your only remaining ally against you too? Because that's where this path is leading. As mighty as your military is, it would not stand against the rest of the world if you keep up this idiotic behaviour.