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| Europe |
| German official dubs US a police state |
| 2003-05-06 |
| EFL looks like the Iranians had a scoop as reported yesterday, based on actual anti-Americanism in Germany; note the lack of scare quotes THE strained relations between Germany and the United States took a turn for the worse yesterday after a senior Berlin diplomat was reported to have told Foreign Ministry colleagues that America was turning into a ?police state?. The comments of JÌrgen Chrobog, the State Secretary, reported in the German Focus magazine, threatened to disrupt intense diplomatic efforts to repair the relationship between Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, and President Bush. Herr Chrobog is said to have given a blistering critique of the US-German relationship during the annual meeting of German ambassadors... [The Times] |
| Posted by:Kalle (kafir forever) |
| #10 Yugoslavia may have been heading for breakup anyway - the usual criticism of German recognition is how that it accelerated matters, and didnt give time to prepare for how to deal with Bosnia. It would be hard to argue that Slovenia didnt have the full right to self-determination. Croatian independence on the other hand presented a real dilemna in terms of the serb minority. And it was quite predictable that with Slovenia and Croatia gone, Bosnia could not stay in a Serb dominated rump Yugoslavia. It was equally clear that Bosnian independence meant civil war. The only defense of German action therefore is that Slovenia and particularly Croatia would have gone anyway. The article TGA cites indicates that war in Croatia was well underway when Germany recognized on Jan. 15. It does NOT make clear if such was the case on Dec. 15, when Germany promised to recognize UNILATERALLY. Will need to look this up. If anyone else here has the chronology though, that would be appreciated. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2003-05-07 09:08:12 |
| #9 BY is correct the people of the Balkans have been killing each other since the fall of the roman Empire. |
| Posted by: raptor 2003-05-07 06:58:21 |
| #8 "I'd have split Germany into a bunch of small countries and never allowed reunification" This is pretty much in line with what Morgenthau proposed if I remember it well? In what position are you to propose such a thing? I don't throw his name around like you say "people usually do". If you knew my biography you wouldn't doubt that. And you should also know that there was no German opposition to the "liberation of Iraq". There was German opposition to the war against Iraq. How about that "peaceful transition" in Iraq you claim for Yugoslavia? Just in case you forgot... Milosevic is charged with genocide in The Hague. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-05-06 19:34:34 |
| #7 "Is that the same Lawrence Eagleburger who warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.?" The last time I saw Eagleburger on TV (CNN'c Crossfire) he said going into Iraq is the right thing to do: "I happen to believe it is the right thing to do. And we could have stood on our head in Lafayette Park and sung "The Star Spangled Banner" or whatever, and we weren't going to convince them. Why? Because we are now the only superpower in this world, and the rest of the world was doubtful that we were going to be too tough. So while Brent is right, in the sense that we did not conduct a particularly good campaign, diplomatic campaign, to try to convince people, I'm telling you now, no matter what we did, we were not going to be able to convince most of the rest of the world that we were right, and particularly not when we had the French out there playing the games they were playing." source |
| Posted by: RW 2003-05-06 19:17:32 |
| #6 Interesting... does the associative reference to Morgenthau mean that you consider me a sort of "Jewish murderer" who wants to "enslave Germany"? (since that's usually how people throw his name around) I'm all for freedom and peace for the people of Europe, and indeed German abuse of power and interference has been the root problem for a long time. The German opposition to the liberation of Iraq, and hence the support for Saddam's dictatorship, brought some rather bad memories. Your little history of the Balkans omits the delivery of German weapons to Croatians _before_ they started to break away. Given how atrocious the whole thing has been, it is entirely legitimate to question the German attitude and ponder whether a peaceful transition might not have been possible --as happened in various other ex-communist dictatorships that did not suffer German interference. |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2003-05-06 19:08:48 |
| #5 Wrt US-German relations at the top, the Steiner-Chrobog affair didn't help either, did it? |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2003-05-06 18:39:08 |
| #4 "Former U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleberger has laid the blame for the civil war in former Yugoslavia squarely on the shoulders of Germany. Speaking on American PBS-TV in December 1994, Eagleberger declared that Germany bears "full responsibility" for the bloody conflict because of its "insistence on recognising Slovenia and Croatia at all costs" in November 1991. As predicted by the UN, the U.S. State Department and the European Community, the German action led to a wildfire escalation of the conflict to Bosnia, he said." I'd have split Germany into a bunch of small countries and never allowed reunification. |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2003-05-06 18:02:50 |
| #3 Mmmm - Fight! Fight! (This was a snoozer of an artilce but Kalle's got TGA pretty riled up!) |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2003-05-06 17:59:00 |
| #2 At that time Chrobog was serving as the German ambassador to the United States. I don't see how he could have messed up the Balkans that much from Washington D.C. A criticism of the Bush government does not have to be anti-American. You can hear and read much of the same in the UK or elsewhere. |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-05-06 17:34:44 |
| #1 TGA? that Chrobog still is an acquaintance of yours? |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2003-05-06 16:44:48 |