I do not deny that Serbs became victims in the Yugoslavian Wars, but not because “the West” started the mess to harm Serbians. Blame Serbian nationalists and Kroatian nationalists not “the West” (exept Dr. Helmut Kohl for supporting Tudjman, he deserves that).
Germany is still under the occupation. It is not sovereign nation. It can’t defend its infrastructure, choose who to do business with, choose not to be spied on. It has to do as it is told by the overlords.
Part of the Germany was lucky to to be occupied by a country that profiteered from the war the most. Other part was occupied by a country that suffered and was devastated the most. It’s not reasonable to expect that both sides could enjoy similar treatment.
The other option is that Yugoslavia was a bad example in ideological battle that was going on - it was a successful example of socialism and “dictatorship”. Didn’t fit in the “end of history” narrative that liberal democracy is the only way forward.
At the critical moment, in May 1990, US has adopted its H.R.5114 - Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1991 that among the other things deny any support for Yugoslav Federal Government and provides support for individual republics if they are assessed as having had free and fair and elections (meaning not Socialists in power):
Prohibits, six months after this Act’s enactment, the expenditure of funds made available pursuant to this Act to provide assistance to Yugoslavia. Directs the Secretary of the Treasury to instruct the U.S. executive directors to international financial institutions to oppose any assistance to Yugoslavia. Exempts from such prohibition assistance to support democratic parties or movements and emergency and humanitarian assistance. Makes such prohibition inapplicable if: (1) all the individual republics of Yugoslavia have held free and fair elections and are not engaged in a pattern of human rights violations; or (2) the Secretary of State certifies that Yugoslavia is making significant strides toward complying with the Helsinki Accords and is encouraging any republic which has not held free and fair elections to do so.*
Federal government of a Croat Ante Markovic couldn’t conduct economic reforms without aid from international organizations. Obviously federation has collapsed and two “democratic” republic have separated and been recognized as independent by the West same as Donbass has been recognized by Russia.
That is what broke Yugoslavia.
No, nationalism broke the already struggling Yugoslavia. But thanks for the video, I spent two summervacations in the real Yugoslavia in the late 1980th. I had a Yugoslavian landlord and liked Yugoslavian restaurants in Germany. And Yugoslavia was not on the right of Italy but south of Klagenfurt. The video is an advertisement made for Americans, not for Germans like me. Unless you are a US “Serb” you should know better then throwing nonsense about Yugoslavia in my direction. There are a lot of “Yugoslavian” Germans who became Germans because they have not been “Ustace” or Tschetnik" enough.
But:
Greetings from the British Occupation Zone.
Nationalism was there from the very start. Nationalism existed (and still does) in other federal states - US, Belgium, USSR, Spain, France, India, China, even EU. It is always a balance between federal powers and individual states/nations. West has clearly chosen to undermine Federal side in Yugoslavia.
It was tourist advertisement aimed at educating Americans and everyone else with black-and-white image of Yugoslavia. It has presented facts. Life was good in socialist Yugoslavia under “dictatorship”. That was very dangerous to those selling liberal democracy as the only way.
Interestingly, similar idiotic black-and-white simplifications on Russia, China, India and the rest of the world are prevalent even here on this forum.
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Belgium is Belgium (very federal, but working on the state thing).
France is very unfederal.
The EU is not a state, and IMHO should never be one.
If Germany is under occupation, presumably by the USA, then pls explain
- why it maintains such deep ties to China expressly against the wishes of the USA?
- why it maintained such deep ties with Russia expressly against the wishes of the USA?
- why it failed an continues to fail to contribute sufficiently to the joint NATO defence budget against the expressed wishes of the USA?
- why the Biden administration did in the end follow the German demand to send Abrahams tanks to Ukraine in January, even though their unwillingness has been confirmed by members of the administration?
- why the USA feels the need to fight a trade war with the EU, including Germany, if it actually occupies Germany?
The list of questions goes on…
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I am sure, 99% of the readers are knowledgeable about to identify the nonsense about the “genocide in the Donbas” and for those wishing to dive deeper, I will leave the following here:
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Deep ties?:
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The German defence budget is 100% NATO and (some) UN. The US military spending is worldwide.
In case of the NATO defence budget:
Cost share arrangements for civil budget, military budget and NATO Security Investment Programme (2021-2024)
Nation Adjusted cost share further to accession of North Macedonia
“at 30”
Applicable as from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2024
Albania 0.0908
Belgium 2.1043
Bulgaria 0.3656
Canada 6.8789
Croatia 0.2995
Czechia 1.0558
Denmark 1.3116
Estonia 0.1248
France 10.4913
Germany 16.3444
Greece 1.0573
Hungary 0.7595
Iceland 0.0642
Italy 8.7812
Latvia 0.1595
Lithuania 0.2566
Luxembourg 0.1693
Montenegro 0.0291
Netherlands 3.4506
North Macedonia 0.0778
Norway 1.7771
Poland 2.9861
Portugal 1.0491
Romania 1.2279
Slovakia 0.516
Slovenia 0.2276
Spain 5.9908
Türkiye 4.7266
United Kingdom 11.2823
United States 16.3444
TOTAL NATO 100.0000
Only the same as the US.
From:
That the US is spending money because the Europeans are not so is a US media story. The EU (has been) is outspending Russia. After a year, Putin has lost, but Ukraine is far away from winning.
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Ok to be fair here, yes Germany spends a lot of money on their military but not really. NATO agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on military budgets. Germany is I believe the 3rd of 4th largest economy in the world. 2% of their GDP is a lot of money compared to the much smaller economies around them. But do they reach 2%? If they have, I have not heard it.
Germany also is doing a great job to support the refugee and humanitarian problems around this current war and the migrant crisis in general. You do a good job of leading even when you are very sensitive to over leading. But if you spent the whole 2% everybody agreed to, the cupboard would have a lot more equipment on the shelves. This is what the US and Trump in particular largely pointed out. I don’t think you need a bigger military just a better equipped one.
Now you point out that Germany pays as much as the US, I have no doubt this is true. The US spends around 3.5% of a large GDP on defense but we do have world wide concerns true. We also buy big ticket items like Nuclear carriers and nuclear weapons that you don’t have. But the spending that’s not part of NATO would be shifted as needed. We can move hardware around as needed and flood the problem area essentially. But everyone knows that including our enemies.
I don’t criticize any member of NATO easily. Germany is well aware they have the empty cupboard and that if they had an extra 1000 or 2000 tanks maybe life would be easier but that would also make certain countries uncomfortable. You walk a fine line and I think you are making great strides to improve. It’s hard leading. We have done it for 70 years and I think we have had as many failures as successes. But NATO is still here, it has redefined itself and seems very healthy.
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In the moment the “great strides” are looking like small steps to most people. When Putin used Nord Stream 1 to blackmail Germany it became very expensive for us, we paid the price but nobody recognized that wealthy Germany had becomme less wealthy.
The future of the German military is at the moment not with more money improvable, because:
- In my opinion anything of military production is earmarked to go to Ukraine first.
- What are the conclusions of the of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine for the composition and organisation of the Bundeswehr?
- For Europe, how to deal with Hungary and Turkiye?
In negative nostalgia a year old video from an expert on Germany:
It was not Germany alone who missed the 2%, if you take the EU transfer of funds in account some nations have had a nearly 0% spending of local money (meanwhile the donator nations in the EU missed the 2%). If you compare the military eq of the Baltic nations, Lithuania has the most modern eq, because they have Dutch/German and friends as tourists.
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Totally agree. Most NATO members did not put 2% in. I don’t mean to single Germany out. Also accounting games are played by everyone and I am only looking at the published figures and I’m not sure they are always right just the ones politicians quote.
I do disagree that the Bundeswehr should come second. I have watched the videos you post. The German military has a clear plan of how many brigades they need. They need to have the equipment and training to support their mission. Without this you cannot fulfill your NATO roles. We don’t need massive armies of multiple divisions, we need small but state of the art troops and gear. If the need arises for mass armies then we have the economy and population to get here. But a brigade here a division there and as a whole our capabilities overmatch Russias. We can’t take Moscow and drive to the Volga but that is not our mission. Defending our member nations from outside aggression is.
Hungary and Turkey are political issues. I don’t think the NATO charter has means to address them. I hope Democracy can thrive there but ultimately they get to choose the government they want. Patience is all I can have because I don’t know what the answers are. NATO is 30 countries and getting 30 countries to agree is difficult at best. The good news is that NATO’s security doesn’t overly depend on them.
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Canada is a prime example. They have a modern military which is well trained and for the most part well equipped but they have issues. One being successive governments ignoring the military until they have to deal with it and Canadas procurement for big ticket items is full of political interference.
Secondly Canada is short of full time soldiers with 16,000 unfilled positions. It’s so bad that recruitment has been opened to permanent residents which was not allowed before. Add to that many Canucks want to view the military as a peace keeping force not a military force.
Thirdly Canada has no anti air capabilities other than on ships and relies heavily on partner countries to provide that air cover. With that being said Canada is fast tracking several anti air systems now.
Fourth Canada has not met the threshold of the 2% but has increased the budget to 1.7% but again politics plays a major role in this and the military pays the price for this. Even though Canada has the worlds 8th largest economy ATM at 1.9 trillion dollars it only puts about 24 billion into its military budget and needs to put at least 28 billion in to meet the threshold but again it comes down to politics.
The russo-Ukraine war has opened a lot of eyes and politicians are somewhat cooperative right now but that will only last for so long.
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Q&A: Training Ukrainian soldiers:
The automatic translation of the not automatc generated German subtitles works very good.
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NATOs forward presence:
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Total 9641 men forward deployed. Yes no doubt NATO is really provoking Russia there. Basically it’s says there are the troops we use as a tripwire. Kill these and the next wave will be 100 times the size.
I guess it’s really more about team building. That’s a good thing.
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Interesting video. I would suspect the Ukrainians are very motivated. They will be sent into the hottest point when their training is done.
The question on what we can learn from Ukraine is interesting. Does anyone think we don’t have observers in Ukraine?
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