The Duran Podcast - US missiles in Germany

Episode Date: July 14, 2024

US missiles in Germany

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Germany and the news that U.S. medium, and I believe long range as well, missiles are going to be stationed in Germany. This is big news that not many outlets in the collective West are talking about. What do you make of this announcement of missiles being stationed in Germany, medium and long range? this is ominous ominous news the Tomahawk I believe the Tomahawk cruise missiles it's ominous news and it's also

astonishing that it's happening without anybody apparently noticing or talking about it or being concerned about it now I am old enough to remember how in the late 1970s early 1980s there was a plan by NATO by the United States

to install Tomahawk and Pershing missiles in Germany and I believe the Netherlands and Britain. And there was an enormous outcry about this. There were huge protests against these deployments in Germany, led by the Green Party, which in those days was a very, very different party from the one it has become. There were huge protests in Britain. There was a peace camp made up mainly of women outside the, Air Base of Greenham Common, where the Tomahawk cruise missiles were going to be located.

It became for a time the single biggest political subject in Western Europe. And it undermined ultimately the ability of the Western powers to proceed with this, because there was so much opposition to these cruise missiles. and Persian missile deployments that very grudgingly and against the wishes of the Pentagon, the then-President Ronald Reagan proposed what was called the zero option, whereby NATO would scrap these weapons if the Russians scrapped analogous medium-range weapons of their own, the so-called SS-20s. and somewhat to the dismay of the Pentagon,

the Soviet Union, led at that time by Gorbachev, eventually came round and accepted Reagan's zero-option proposal. And the Tomahawk and cruise missiles were done away with. And the treaty that came in was the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which basically prohibited the deployment of these weapons. Now, the Pentagon has never been happy with this outcome. It's always wanted to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe

where they can strike targets in Russia, deep inside Russia, because it believes that that gives it an advantage over the Russians in a potential nuclear exchange. And some years ago, back in 2019, they scrapped the INF Treaty. And now they moved forward and against the backdrop of all the anger and hysteria and panic over the war in Ukraine.

They're now coming back and they're saying that they're going to start deploying to Omaha cruise missiles, the same cruise missiles that they sought to deploy in the 1980s, that they're going to bring the back Germany again and other weapons as well, anti-aircraft missiles, but also it seems eventually hypersonic missiles when they also appear. And this time, it looks like they'll be able to do it because in the fevered atmosphere we have today, it doesn't look as if we're going

to get the kind of peace movements that we had then. And of course, the Green Party today is a completely different animal from the one it was back in the 70s and 80s. Yeah, absolutely. I don't see Annalina Berbach protesting. Looking for a peaceful solution to Project Ukraine. That's not going to happen. Is this Germany's future? Yes.

They've been de-industrialized, hollowed out by the sanctions, by the blowing up of Nord Stream, cut off from Russian energy. Is this what Germany is going to become? Just a militarized, one big militarized U.S. ace. Yeah. Yes. Well, it looks like it, unless there's a fundamental change in Germany,

unless the political situation that ignites again, which having been to Germany recently, I think it might potentially do. I mean, I spoke to, I mean, you know, small, not very representative group of people, young people in Germany, in particular. And I can say straight away that to the extent that they know about this, they would certainly oppose it. They do not want to be drawn into this kind of confrontation.

They probably do not, no more want to see nuclear weapons located on German territory within range of Russia today than the young people in Germany did in the 1980s and 1970s. So there might be eventually a backlash against this. I don't think one should discount it. But for the moment, the trajectory of travel is that this is exactly what Germany is going to become. Deindustrialized with a dysfunctioning economy

political system and with Pentagon bases equipped with missiles targeting Russia and with those bases of course targeted by Russian missiles in return. Now can I just say another thing that this is also this plan shows the stagnation in the Pentagon's own strategic thinking because whilst I think that back in the 1980s deploying cruise missiles and Pershing ballistic missiles in Germany did indeed give the Pentagon

or would have given the Pentagon a genuine strategic advantage over the Soviet Union in a nuclear exchange. Today, in the very, very different technological environment that we have with hypersonic missiles, with submarine launched, you know, nuclear-powered torpedoes with megerton-powered, you know, warheads,

with nuclear-powered cruise missiles that the Russians are also in the process of reducing. I don't think these advantages exist anymore. what this is going to do is it's going to provoke another response from the Russians of further military arms race which the United States realistically cannot afford given that it's already also locked simultaneously in an arms race with China which also feels that these American medium range systems are, potentially a threat to itself if they start to be based in the Asia-Pacific region. So I do think it's going to give the Pentagon the advantage that he presumably thinks it is.

On the contrary, it's going to create a dangerous deterioration in the strategic environment, which is going to work to the disadvantage ultimately of the United States itself. Is that the plan that the Pentagon has? is to get into an arms race with Russia, like what we had in the days of the Soviet Union, with the thinking being that eventually this would bankrupt Russia? I mean, are they just going back to the Soviet Union times, and that's why they're doing this, or is there something more to...

Well, there may be some people who think this. I mean, bear in mind, however, that the U.S. to date adds a trillion dollars of debt, every three months, Russia does not. Russia's budget deficit at the moment is running at 0.5 of GDP. I mean, it's on the face of it, in a better position to sustain an arms race, at least financially, than the United States is. And the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that the Russians do have a very significant industrial capacity. And they have been more successful, much more successful, in building ballistic missiles and hypersonic missiles than the United States, to speak, in recent years.

But, all right, let's put aside the Russians, because, of course, Russia is a much smaller economy still than the US is. So, in theory, you might say to yourself, well, for all our economic problems, if we engage the Russians in an arms race, they won't be able to sustain it, and it will bankrupt them. an arms race against Russia is an arms race also simultaneously against China, not because China and Russia are de facto allies, though they are, but because any capability that the United States acquires against Russia is a capability that the United States also automatically acquires against China. And that's going to cause the Chinese to take countermeasures as well. And of course, the Chinese economy is in much better financial shape than the American.

And they have a vastly bigger industrial base than the United States does. So, yes, the United States might want an arms race with Russia. But of course, putting aside the risks inherent in that, it could also very easily find itself at that point in an arms race in China, with China, which it absolutely cannot win. And I think that is, again, if this is the thinking, it is obsolete thinking left over from the Cold War, which hasn't been. updated or rethought properly. Final question. What does Germany gain out of this? What do you think the thinking is from the German political class in allowing all of this? They think that by hosting American missiles, they are keeping the United States in Europe

because they're worried that the U.S. is losing interest in Europe and might wander off to the Asia Pacific to focus on China instead. And since Germany can never take on Russia by itself, even if it acquires nuclear weapons for itself, I mean, Russia's a far bigger, far more powerful country, the Germans may calculate that keeping the Americans in Germany, makes them more secure. I don't think it makes them more secure.

I think it makes them less secure. I think it means the Germany is now at serious risk of becoming hostage to an American-Russian crisis over which it has no ultimate control. And of course, as you rightly say, the price that Germany is paying for this alliance with the UK, United States is growing economically all the time with de-industrialization, with all of the other

many, many problems the Germany is facing, whereas its best interests overwhelmingly were to seek peace in Europe, which means ultimately peace with Russia. So this is a huge mistake the Germany is making, but it is one in a sequence of mistakes. the Germany has been making now for, well, ever since the new government, it's no longer new, the government of Olaf Schultz took over back in 2021. I agree with you there. All right, we will end the video there. The durand.com.

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