TBR News January 23, 2017

The Voice of the White House 

Washington, D.C. January 23, 2017: “”The entire American business/politico establishment is outraged that Donald Trump was elected to the presidency.

He is not an insider, involved in the rampant corruption and ideological perversity of years of entrenched government.

He recognizes that due to misfeasance the country is headed into decline and that if the system continued unchecked and unaltered, fiscal and social disaster would most surely follow.

The controlled media, once mighty in forcing public opinion, is howling with rage, on cue, and trying their best to sabotage Trump now that he is in the White House. Furious international bankers, car manufacturers, foreign poodle-like governments who have survived for years on infusion of bribery monies stemming from forced American taxation are terrified because the pot of gold  will soon be emptied and they might have to actually work for a living.

Mexico, totally corrupt and in a state of anarchy, is livid because they can no longer shove their unproductive poor into America where they can get jobs and send money to keep Mexico afloat.

They actually threaten to no longer buy Ford trucks!

Given their present insolvency, it is doubtful if anyone in Mexico but the drug lords could afford a pair of used roller skates.

The public has supported Mr. Trump and if the hysterical oligarchs and their hand puppets are not careful, Mr. Trump will appeal to this public and the results will not be Mr. Trump leaving the White House but box cars full of congressmen, business leaders, bankers and left wing imbeciles heading to readjustment camps in the Mohave Desert.”

 

Descending into Darkness: The Making of a Wartime President

By Brian Harring

www.amazon.com  kindle ebooks $3.99

 

“THE HARRING REPORT IS ANOTHER ‘DEEP THROAT’”

 

Published for the first time ever, Descending Into Darkness shows the actual, as opposed to the propaganda, background to the upheavals in the Middle East and the reasons for the 9/11 attacks. It also includes the complete, as contrasted with the false, official (at the time this book went to press) DoD listings of U.S. Military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Also in Prelude to Disaster:

• Events leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom
• War in Iraq – Russian Military Intelligence Reports & Assessment [March 17-April 8, 2003]
• The “Nazi” Neocons – Who are they?
• The Secret Downing Street Memo – Setting the Stage for 9/11
• Israeli Espionage Against the United States

 

Table of Contents

 

• Trump Against the World
• Trump to begin renegotiating NAFTA pact soon with Mexico, Canada
• The Broken Encirclement Plan: The CIA failures in Eastern Europe
• US debt soars 86% under Obama presidency to nearly $20 trillion
• Donald Trump and the New World Order
• ‘Mein Kampf’: Murphy translation: Part 15

 Trump Against the World

– Even some in his own cabinet

January 23, 2017

by Justin Raimondo,

Anti War

Donald Trump has a problem – he’s virtually alone. It isn’t just that he strays significantly from his own party’s orthodoxy on major foreign policy questions. His conundrum is that even his own cabinet choices very often depart from the Trumpist canon, a fact that may undermine his ability to actually implement his foreign policy vision.

That vision, in my view, involves unpacking the post-WWII international order and updating it to focus on what Trump believes is the twin dangers to US interests: radical Islamic terrorism, as he puts it, and socioeconomic “carnage” on the domestic front. In order to do that, such institutions as NATO – founded when the old Soviet Union was America’s main adversary on the world stage – must be retooled, or, if necessary, abandoned, in favor of new alliances and structures designed to meet new threats. In Trump’s view, we are stuck in the past, fighting yesterday’s wars while our allies drain our resources and our real enemies go about their business undisturbed.

In terms of specifics, what this translates into is a rapprochement with Russia, which will be recruited into a US-led “anti-terrorist” coalition designed, first of all, to fight and destroy ISIS, and perhaps also to contain China short of war.

In an interview with the Times of London and the German newspaper Bild, Trump indicated that he envisions a grand bargain with Vladimir Putin: an end to US sanctions and our aggressive military stance in Europe in exchange for major mutual cuts in our respective nuclear arsenals, perhaps coupled with a Russian guarantee that their “near abroad” is safe from Moscow’s designs. Furthermore, Russia would be transformed from an adversary into a partner in our endless “war on terrorism,” with Trump essentially farming out much of the work involved in subduing and eliminating the ISIS “Caliphate” to Putin and Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. This would eliminate the need for US troops on the ground, reducing our role to air support and perhaps the injection of Special Forces to carry out limited tasks.

The US military and national security bureaucracy is implacably opposed to this: that is the source of the CIA’s open hostility to Trump, and the rather crude effort to tie him and his campaign to the Kremlin. Both parties oppose détente – never mind an alliance – with Russia, for any reason whatsoever, although the Trumpian wing of the GOP is moving toward the President on this issue.

Thus we had the spectacle of Marco Rubio demanding that Rex Tillerson condemn Putin as a “war criminal,” which the would-be Secretary of State pointedly refused to do. However, in response to relentless hammering, Tillerson agreed that the US should have reacted to the Russian reacquisition of Crimea with “a proportional show of force,” arming the Ukrainian coup leaders with “defensive” weapons and otherwise “standing up” to the Russian “menace.” Trump, on the other hand, has denied that Ukraine is a vital US interest, and seems likely to reduce if not eliminate US support for Kiev, which was involved in an active effort to deny him the presidency.

The newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, is even worse. Pressed during the hearings to separate himself from Trump, he readily complied:

“Since Yalta, we have a long list of times we’ve tried to engage positively with Russia. We have a relatively short list of successes in that regard. And I think right now, the most important thing is that we recognize the reality of what we deal with, with Mr. Putin, and we recognize that he is trying to break the North Atlantic alliance, and that we take the steps, the integrated steps, diplomatic, economic and military and the alliance steps, the working with our allies, to defend ourselves where we must.”

The invocation of Yalta underscores just how sclerotic the national security bureaucracy has become: they’re still living in the cold war era. And you’ll note that Mattis never enumerates the “long list” of attempts to come to terms with Russia, although one could recall Ronald Reagan’s historic agreement with Mikhail Gorbachev that partially denuclearized Europe and essentially ended the cold war – which is what Trump hopes to achieve or even surpass.

If Mattis thinks there are “a decreasing number of areas” where US and Russian interests align, then he has the complete opposite view of his boss, who clearly thinks it would be “nice if we could get along with Russia” and considers a good relationship with Putin an “asset.”

Another problem is Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for CIA director, who averred during his confirmation hearings that Russia is “threatening Europe” and is “doing nothing” to eliminate ISIS as a factor in the Middle East. I guess all those bombing raids on radical Islamist fighters are just more fake news.

However, it’s hard to say that Pompeo and the others disagree with Trump’s fundamental deviation from post-WWII US policy, which is that the cold war legacy of seeing Russia as the principal threat is outdated. As the BBC reported, “when asked what was the greatest security threat to the US, [Pompeo] cited terrorism foremost and lumped Russia in behind North Korea and China.” This view, however, is still a far cry from what appears to be Trump’s position, which is that Russia is a potential ally that needs to be integrated into the international order.

Senator Ron Wyden is currently holding up Pompeo’s nomination, on the rather weird grounds that the CIA appointee may want to use information gathered by the Russians against Americans. Yes, that’s how far the anti-Russian hysteria has penetrated into the consciousness of the Democratic “resistance.” One wonders if Sen. Wyden objects to the Russians’ attempt to warn us about the Tsarnaev brothers.

Speaking of anti-Russian hysterics, Pompeo also pledged that he would take pains to support members of the intelligence community who “were afraid there would be political retribution” for the spooks’ brazen efforts to undermine Trump’s presidency, and promised to “have their backs at every single moment. You have my word on that.”

I find this rather hard to believe: will Trump really stand passively by while the “intelligence community” launches a witch-hunt to delegitimize him as a “Russian puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it?

Trump’s inaugural address was a fiery challenge to the Establishment – even as they stood around him, he lambasted them for enriching themselves at the expense of the “forgotten man” and vowed to take on the Powers That Be. Yet those same powers are amply represented in his own cabinet choices – especially Mattis, who represents the old guard in the Pentagon.

I think the divide between Trump and his cabinet is a bit overstated, but that doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. While the President is no doubt a willful man, there’s always the danger that he’ll allow himself to be diverted from his own agenda. He’s pledged to take so much on in so short a time that even someone with so much energy is bound to get bogged down by relentless opposition from every quarter.

I liken Trump to Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution. Convinced that the “bourgeoisie” had infiltrated and taken over the Chinese Communist Party, Mao reached over the heads of the Party and appealed directly to the masses. In a famous wall poster tacked up in Beijing’s Tiannanmen Square, Mao directed his followers to “Bombard the Headquarters!” – that is, the headquarters of the Communist Party, where the “capitalist-roaders” were ensconced.

Trump is attempting the same gambit, using the twenty-first century equivalent of the wall poster – his Twitter account. With every political faction in Washington arrayed against him – from the neocons on the right to the left-wing of the Democratic party – Trump must depend on his own resources, and those of his inner circle, to upend the Establishment and chart a new course for American foreign policy.

Will he be able to do it? I don’t know, but what I do know is this: he is aiming for nothing less than a fundamental shift in the course our foreign policy has taken since 1945. The ship of state is a vast and unwieldy vehicle, one that isn’t turned around in a day – but I, unlike all too many of my anti-interventionist friends and colleagues, give him credit for trying.

A big part of the problem is that the Trump administration is having major problems filling the thousands of jobs in the national security bureaucracy. The reason is because his revolutionary ideas are abhorred and opposed by the “foreign policy community,” which has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Another problem is that many of the anti-interventionist and “realist” scholars and think-tankers who supposedly want to scale down the Empire and bring America home have a personal distaste for the President that overrides their alleged principles.

As Trump would say: Sad! I would say it’s disgraceful

 Trump to begin renegotiating NAFTA pact soon with Mexico, Canada

January 22, 2017

by Ayesha Rascoe

Reuters

WASHINGTON-U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he plans talks soon with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to begin renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“We will be starting negotiations having to do with NAFTA,” Trump said at a swearing-in ceremony for his top White House advisers. “We are going to start renegotiating on NAFTA, on immigration and on security at the border.”

Trump pledged during his presidential campaign that if elected he would renegotiate the NAFTA trade pact to provide more favorable terms to the United States.

NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, and other trade deals became lightning rods for voter anger in the U.S. industrial heartland states that swept Trump to power this month.

Trade experts, academics and government officials say Canada and Mexico will also seek tough concessions and that NAFTA’s zero-tariff rate would be extremely difficult to alter. Any renegotiation would likely take several years, they say.

Trump said he would be meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to begin work on overhauling the deal.

He praised Pena Nieto, who has faced low popularity in Mexico due to corruption scandals and rising inflation.

“The president has been really amazing,” Trump said. “I think we are going to have a very good result for Mexico, and the United States, and everybody involved.”

Critics of Pena Nieto say he lacks a clear plan to counter Trump’s calls to limit trade and deport illegal immigrants.

Trump has said little about what improvements he wants, apart from halting the migration of U.S. factories and jobs to Mexico.

Since winning the Nov. 8 election, Trump has singled out and threatened to impose tariffs on U.S. companies that move any production to Mexico.

He has also intends to build a wall along the U.S. southern border to deter illegal immigration and insisted that Mexico will pay for it.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Jeffrey Benkoe)

 The Broken Encirclement Plan: The CIA failures in Eastern Europe

January 12, 2017

by Harry von Johnston, PhD

The first serious, and successful, U.S. direct interference in Russian leadership policies was in 1953. An ageing Josef Stalin, suffering from arteriosclerosis and becoming increasingly hostile to his subordinates, was poisoned by Laverenti P. Beria, head of his secret police. Beria, a Mingrelian Jew, very ruthless and a man who ordered and often supervised the executions of people Stalin suspected of plotting against him, had fallen out of favor with Stalin and had come to believe that he was on the list of those Stalin wished to remove. With his intelligence connection, Beria was contacted by the American CIA through one of his trusted agents in Helsinki and through this contact, Beria was supplied dosages of Warfarin.

The first drug in the class to be widely commercialized was dicoumarol itself, patented in 1941 and later used as a pharmaceutical potent coumarin-based anticoagulants for use as rodent poisons, resulting in Warfarin in 1948. The name warfarin stems from the acronym WARF, for Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation + the ending -arin indicating its link with coumarin.

Warfarin was first registered for use as a rodenticide in the US in 1948, and was immediately popular; although it was developed by Link, the WARF financially supported the research and was assigned the patent.

Warfarin was used by Lavrenti P. Beria to poison Stalin. Stalin’s cooks and personal bodyguards were all under the direct control of Beria. He acknowledged to other top Soviet leaders that he had poisoned Stalin, according to Molotov’s memoirs. Beria also is known to have had direct contact with American CIA personnel in Helsinki.

Beria admitted to Nikita Khrushchev, and others, to poisoning Soviet leader Joseph Stalin because his increasingly erratic, and violent, behavior threatened all of their lives.

Warfarin is tasteless and colorless, and produces symptoms similar to those that Stalin exhibited. Stalin collapsed during the night after a dinner with Beria and other Soviet leaders, and died four days later on 5 March 1953.

During his death throes, Stalin began bleeding from the mouth. This would be completely impossible in the event of a brain hemorrhage but fully expected for Warfarin poisoning.

Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, in his political memoirs (published posthumously in 1993), claimed that Beria told him that he had poisoned Stalin.

“I took him out,” Beria supposedly boasted.

There is evidence that after Stalin was found unconscious, medical care was not provided for many hours. Other evidence of the murder of Stalin by Beria associates was presented by Edvard Radzinsky in his biography Stalin. It has been suggested that Warfarin was used; it would have produced the symptoms reported.

After the fall of Gorbachev and his replacement by Boris Yeltsin, a known CIA-paid connection, the Russian criminal mob was encouraged by the CIA to move into the potentially highly lucrative Russian natural resource field.

By 1993 almost all banks in Russia were owned by the Russian mafia, and 80% of businesses were paying protection money to them. In that year, 1,400 people were murdered in Moscow. Crime members killed businessmen who would not pay money to them, as well as reporters, politicians, bank owners and others opposed to them. The new criminal class of Russia took on a more Westernized and businesslike approach to organized crime as the more code-of-honor based Vory faded into extinction.

The Izmaylovskaya gang was considered one of the country’s most important and oldest Russian Mafia groups in Moscow and also had a presence in Tel Aviv, Berlin, Paris, Toronto, Miami, Sacramento and New York City. It was founded during the 1980s under the leadership of Oleg Ivanov and was estimated to consist of about 200 active members (according to other data, of 300–500 people).

In principle, the organization was divided into two separate bodies—Izmailovskaya and Gol’yanovskaya which utilized quasi-military ranks and strict internal discipline. It was involved extensively in murder-for-hire, extortions, and infiltration of legitimate businesses.

The gangs were termed the ‘Oligarchy’ and were funded by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Israeli-owned Bank of New York, all with the eager assistance of the American government who were being bribed by Western oil companies eager to get their hands on Russian oil and gas.

The arrival of Vladimir Putin as the new leader of Russia was at first ignored in Washington. A former KGB Lt. Colonel who had been stationed in the DDR, Putin was viewed as “inconsequential, bland and colorless” by the purported Russian ‘experts’ in both the Department of State and the CIA.

Putin, however, proved to be a clever and dangerous opponent who blocked the Oligarchs attempt to control the oil fields, and other assets, eventual control of which had been promised to both American and British oil firms.

The Oligarchs were allowed to leave the country and those remaining behind were forced to follow Putin’s policies. Foreign control over Russian natural resources ceased and as both the CIA, various foreign firms and the American government had spent huge sums greasing the skids, there were now considerable negative feelings in Washington and puppet states towards Putin.

The next serious moves against Russia came with a plan conceived by the CIA and fully approved by President George W. Bush, whose father had once been head of the CIA.

This consisted of ‘Operation Sickle’ which was designed to surround the western and southern borders of Russia with states controlled by the United States through the guise of NATO membership. Included in this encirclement program were the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia and a number of Asiatic states bordering southern Russia.

It was the stated intention of the U.S.-controlled NATO leadership to put military missiles in all these countries. The so-called “Orange Revolution” funded and directed by the CIA, overthrew the pro-Moscow government in the Ukraine, giving the United States theoretical control over the heavy industrialized Donetsk Basin and most importantly, the huge former Soviet naval base at Sevastopol and the enormous and very rich off-shore oil fields located off the coast of the Crimean peninsula

(Putin’s subsequent absorption of the Crimea infuriated both the CIA, official Washington and a number of Western oil companies who had paid for drilling rights there.)”

The Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP) was an American-sponsored 18-month, $64-million program aimed at increasing the capabilities of the Georgian armed forces by training and equipping four 600-man battalions with light weapons, vehicles and communications. The program enabled the US to expedite funding for the Georgian military for Operation Enduring Freedom.

On February 27, 2002, the US media reported that the U.S. would send approximately two hundred United States Army Special Forces soldiers to Georgia to train Georgian troops. The program implemented President Bush’s decision to respond to the Government of Georgia’s request for assistance to enhance its counter-terrorism capabilities and addressed the situation in the Pankisi Gorge.

In fact, there were over 5,000 U.S. military personnel in Georgia and over 245 active CIA agents in the same country.

The program began in May 2002 when American special forces soldiers began training select units of the Georgian Armed Forces, including the 12th Commando Light Infantry Battalion, the 16th Mountain-Infantry Battalion, the 13th “Shavnabada” Light Infantry Battalion, the 11th Light Infantry Battalion, a mechanized company and small numbers of Interior Ministry troops and border guards.

Eventually, responsibility for training Georgian forces was turned over to the US Marine Corps in conjunction with the British Army.

British and American teams worked as part of a joint effort to train each of the four infantry battalion staffs and their organic rifle companies. This training began with the individual soldier and continued through fire team, squad, platoon, company, and battalion level tactics as well as staff planning and organization. Upon completing training, each of the new Georgian infantry battalions began preparing for deployment rotations in support of the Global War on Terrorism

The CIA were instrumental in getting Mikheil Saakashvili, an erratic politician, pro-West, into the presidency of Georgia but although he allowed the country to be flooded with American arms and “military trainers” he was not a man easily controlled and under the completely mistaken belief that American military might supported him, commenced to threaten Moscow.

Two Georgian provinces were heavily populated by Russians and objected to the inclusion in Georgia and against them, Saakashvili began to make threatening moves.

The 2008 South Ossetia War or Russo-Georgian War (in Russia also known as the Five-Day War) was an armed conflict in August 2008 between Georgia on one side, and Russia and separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other.

During the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive against South Ossetia, in an attempt to reclaim the territory.

Georgia claimed that it was “responding to attacks” on its peacekeepers and villages in South Ossetia, and that Russia was moving non-peacekeeping units into the country. The Georgian attack did cause casualties among Russian peacekeepers, who resisted the assault along with Ossetian militia.

Georgia successfully captured most of Tskhinvali within hours.

Russia reacted by deploying units of the Russian 58th Army and Russian Airborne Troops in South Ossetia, and launching airstrikes against Georgian forces in South Ossetia and military and logistical targets in Georgia proper.

Russia claimed these actions were a necessary humanitarian intervention and peace enforcement.

When the Russian incursion was seen by Washington as massive and serious, U.S. president George W. Bush’s statement to Russia was: “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”

The US Embassy in Georgia called the war an “incursion by one of the world’s strongest powers to destroy the democratically elected government of a smaller neighbor”.

Initially the Bush Administration seriously considered a military response to defend Georgia, but such an intervention was ruled out by the Pentagon due to the inevitable conflict it would lead to with Russia. Instead, Bush chose to resort to a softer option by sending “humanitarian supplies” to Georgia by military, rather than civilian, aircraft.

And he ordered the immediate evacuation of all American military units from Georgia.

The huge CIA contingent working in the Georgian capital immediately, and in great panic, fled the country by aircraft and the American troops, mostly U.S. Marines, were ordered quickly to retreat to the Black Sea ports where they were swiftly evacuated by the U.S. Navy.

British and Israeli military units also fled the country and all of them had to leave behind an enormous amount of military equipment to include tanks, light armored vehicles, small arms, radio equipment, and trucks full of very valuable intelligence data they had neither the time nor the forersignt to destroy.

The immediate result of this demarche was the defection of the so-called “NATO Block” eastern Europeans from the Bush/CIA project who saw the United States as a paper tiger that would not, and could not, defend them against the Russians.

In a sense, the Russian incursion into Georgia was a massive political, not a military, victory.

Outraged by this Polish defection, the next step on the part of Russian enemies in Washington was to cause an aircraft filled with the top leadership of Poland to crash on a landing attempt at the airport at Smolensk, killing all of the top Polish diplomats who were arriving at Smolensk to meet with the Russians

The CIA was not happy with the actions of Vladimir Putin, whom they had totally misjudged, and when he subsequently ran for reelection, they poured a great deal of U.S. taxpayer’s money into the hands of Putin’s enemies, hoping to reprise the Ukrainian Orange Revolution but their effort was in vain.

A later CIA-organized and funded putsch in the Ukraine that was engineered to oust a pro-Russian president, resulted in another disaster.

It allowed Russia to destabilize the valuable Donetsk industrial area in eastern Ukraine and keep it out of the hands of the pro-American putsch government in Kiev and, more important, to return to Russian control the Crimea with its huge offshore oil deposits and a large former Soviet naval base at Sevastopol which the Kiev puppet government had already leased to the U.S. Navy.

US debt soars 86% under Obama presidency to nearly $20 trillion

January 20, 2017

RT

The United States national debt will have grown by about $9 trillion to over $19.6 trillion under President Barack Obama, according to the website USdebtclock.org.

The site tracks how much the US debt grows in real time. It shows that when Obama entered the Oval office in 2008, the national debt stood at $10.7 trillion. Thus, the increase is 86 percent.

By the time Donald Trumps is sworn in, the debt will have grown to almost $20 trillion.

The largest budget item is Medicare/Medicaid which has seen over $1.1 trillion added to US debt. Social Security accounted for $900 billion, while $585 billion was spent on defense and war.

With some of the payments attributable to George W. Bush’s bills, many economists say vast spending during the 2008 financial crisis helped the American economy to mitigate its consequences.

However, many are concerned such spending will affect taxpayers. At the moment, every US citizen owes over $205,000 with $7,600 interest, with every American family owing nearly $810,000.

Donald Trump and the New World Order

The inauguration of Donald Trump heralds the arrival of a new world order. The West is weaker than ever before and rising American nationalism poses a threat both to Germany’s economy and the European Union.

January 20, 2017

by Christian Esch, Martin Hesse, Alexander Jung, Peter Müller, Ralf Neukirch, Britta Sandberg, Michael Sauga, Christoph Schult, Holger Stark and Bernhard Zand

Spiegel

When trying to answer the question as to who has the say in the European Union, it’s easy to get confused. The European Council, the European Commission, the member states: Even those who know the EU well don’t often know who has the last word in Brussels disputes. The confusion isn’t new. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger famously wondered: “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?”

Today, a new president is moving into the White House and one thing is already clear: Telephone calls between Washington and Brussels won’t get any easier. “I spoke to the head of the European Union, very fine gentleman called me up,” Donald Trump said this week in a joint interview with the German tabloid Bild and the Times of London. When asked if it was Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, Trump responded: “Yes, ah, to congratulate me on what happened with respect to the election.”

Except, the fine gentleman Mr. Juncker wasn’t the fine gentleman Mr. Juncker. It was Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, the powerful body representing the leaders of the EU member states. A former Polish prime minister, Tusk chatted with the future U.S. president for about 10 minutes, but Trump was apparently able to remember neither his name nor his arguments. The European Union, he said in the interview, is “basically a vehicle for Germany,” adding that “I believe others will leave,” as Britain plans to do.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. has promoted European unity. The country introduced the Marshall Plan, it supported the single European market and backed Europe’s eastward expansion following the collapse of the Iron Curtain. But now, a man is entering the White House who is counting on the disintegration of the EU. He would rather negotiate with each country individually, believing that will be more beneficial for America.

A real estate magnate is now the most powerful man in the world and it looks as though he plans to run his administration as though the U.S. were a vast real estate conglomerate. He is after lucrative deals, and those who can’t keep up in the competition for the most profitable contracts will be left behind.

Concepts like human rights and the protection of minorities are not part of his vocabulary. His only goal is America’s profitability, particularly in global trade, which he sees as a brutal fight for survival and not, as had been normal for his Republican Party, as a peaceful exchange with benefits for both sides. The concept of “win-win” is not one his team adheres to.

The situation could hardly be worse for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Soon, the EU will be forced to make do without the United Kingdom, the bloc’s second-largest economy; right-wing populists are on the advance in Europe; and now Trump is at the helm in the U.S., a man who said in his interview this week that the German chancellor had “made a catastrophic mistake.” It would be difficult to formulate a challenge more directly than that.

Can Merkel’s Europe now hold together? Can she become a worthy adversary to Trump in the approaching conflicts over trade regulations, international agreements and the liberal legal and economic order that has been so important to the United States for the last six decades?

That which had seemed inconceivable just a short time ago now appears to be a foregone conclusion: A new era is beginning, one in which the certainties that have held true for decades are suddenly no longer valued. They are suddenly vulnerable.

For the most part, that is because the 45th president of the United States of America is simply not interested in the world order that has developed since 1945. He is just as disinterested in the trans-Atlantic partnership and the long-cultivated alliances with Western allies.

An Epochal Shift

For Trump, there is no such thing as friendships and alliances. He is not focused on morals; he is not concerned with dividing the world into good and evil; he does not see the use in unselfishly providing protection to allies, as the U.S. has done for decades with it soldiers stationed in Europe.

“America first” is his slogan, one which helped him win the election. It is the same promise British Prime Minister Theresa May has made to her voters: “Britain first.” And Marine Le Pen, head of the French right-wing populist party Front National, is using a similar slogan in that country’s ongoing presidential election campaign: “La France d’abord.” What, though, will the world look like when there are no longer any grand, binding values and goals? A world in which each country is only looking out for itself?

Most dangerous, it seems, is Donald Trump’s deep ignorance of the Western community of values that has developed since World War II. History is not something that concerns him. As such, he feels no obligation to it. NATO? Obsolete. The World Trade Organization? “A disaster.”

The new president feels absolutely no sentimentality when it comes to the alliances that arose out of the rubble of World War II. Like no other president before him, he is prepared to call them into question and even, apparently, to bring them to an end. Plus, Trump has no taboos. On the contrary: He loves to break them, he loves to provoke.´

The result is that Europe finds itself on the eve of an epochal shift of the kind it hasn’t seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Is this the end of the West as we know it, as former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warned a month ago? U.S. historian Anne Applebaum told SPIEGEL in an interview this week that she expects a historical change of course. “The world order that we’ve known since the end of the Cold War has been radically transformed,” she says.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea was the first indication that the global order that we had enjoyed for 25 years was under threat — and the world simply stood by and watched. Apart from a couple of sanctions, U.S. President Barack Obama left the problem to the Europeans. Even then, America was no longer interested in overseas autocrats like Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin.

Europe’s Loss, Russia’s and China’s Gain

The new president will likely continue the process that began under his predecessor: America’s withdrawal from global politics. Just that the incoming president is expected to formulate that withdrawal more clearly than Obama did. Trump has pledged to carry out a relentless fight against Islamic State, but otherwise he is an avowed isolationist, intending to stay out of other global conflicts.

In the fight against terrorism, the new president would seem to be leaning toward a close alliance with Russia. A weak, perhaps disintegrating Europe wedged in between the two great powers U.S.A. and Russia, whose presidents get along better than most of their predecessors: For Europe, such a scenario would be the largest foreign and security policy challenge since World War II. For the last 70 years, Europe could depend on having America at its side. Now, this is no longer a certainty.

The power vacuum that America’s withdrawal is creating is particularly welcome to two countries: China and Russia. For the leadership in Beijing, the collapse of the old world order is akin to an act of God: America, China’s last rival on its path to becoming a superpower, is pulling back. Never before have the prospects been as good for the realization of the “Chinese Dream,” which Xi Jinping has made the slogan of his presidency.Xi spoke of his global vision this week in Davos, at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and financial elite. The rules of international cooperation, he said, must be changed. Beijing isn’t happy with Western dominance of global organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. China, with its population of 1.3 billion and significant economic strength, sees itself as an alternative. Beijing, Xi said, is prepared to take on more responsibility: “History is created by the brave.”

Are we headed for a world in which China — an authoritarian state in which the Communist Party leadership has a firm grip over the economy, controls the media and censors the internet — dominates the new global order? Will the 21st century see the realization of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” or George Orwell’s “1984,” the most dystopian visions of the 20th century?

Might Makes Right

For the moment, that seems farfetched. But from Moscow’s perspective, new commonalities with the U.S. are emerging. Even before his inauguration, Donald Trump presented the Russian leadership with a significant gift: He branded NATO obsolete and called into question the alliance’s principle of collective defense. Things could hardly be going better for Moscow. Maintaining control over Russia’s immediate vicinity is one of the country’s core interests while NATO’s eastward expansion is seen as a traumatic infringement of that claim. Putin has finally found an ally, in Washington of all places, in his battle against a world order that he has long attacked as being unipolar and unjust. Like Trump, Putin would like a world free of the West’s constant moralizing, a world in which might makes right.

The two leaders are also bound by their skepticism of the EU. But there is one significant difference: In contrast to Trump, Moscow would like to keep the United Nations as a foundation of global order. UN headquarters in New York is one of the few places where Russia, thanks to its permanent Security Council seat and accompanying veto, can negotiate at eye level with the West and block important decisions, as it did most recently in the Syrian conflict. Everything else can more or less be negotiated with Donald Trump, from Russia’s interests in Crimea to America’s interests in Syria.

Still, Russia has no illusions: Trump will not determine the direction of U.S. foreign policy on his own. He requires Congressional approval. And Putin’s experience with Trump’s two predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have shown him that initial amicability can soon turn frosty.

As such, the world is left trying to figure out how power will be divvied up in the Trump administration. Will he leave foreign policy to the diplomatic establishment of the Republican Party? Will he be able to count on Congressional support?

A Foreign World

In an effort to find out, emissaries from the government in Berlin began trying to establish initial contacts with the Trump team not long ago. It was like a trip to a foreign world.

Peter Wittig is one of Germany’s most experienced diplomats, having served in the country’s Foreign Ministry for the last 35 years. He has served as Germany’s ambassador in Lebanon and Cyprus and has sat down across from myriad negotiating partners. But the diplomat has seldom experienced the kind of overblown self-confidence that he has seen in recent months.

He has held several meetings with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, both before and after the election. At their first encounter in spring 2015, it was the Germans who wanted to know more about Trump’s plans, with a friendly and reserved Kushner taking careful notes.

But the more often the two met, the more demanding Kushner became, say Berlin diplomatic sources who have read Wittig’s meeting reports. The last meeting in New York in December culminated in Kushner’s curt question: “What can you do for us?”

Government officials in Berlin speak of an “astounding mixture of arrogance and naiveté” when discussing the conversations they have had with counterparts in the incoming administration. Shortly before Christmas, Merkel’s foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen traveled to the U.S. for talks with Michael Flynn, tapped by Trump as national security adviser. Around one year ago, Flynn was a paid speaker at an anniversary party for RT, the Russian propaganda broadcaster.

Heusgen’s first impression of Flynn was sobering. At a conference of conservative parliamentarians in Berlin on Wednesday, Heusgen said that some members of the incoming administration “don’t have an exhaustive understanding” regarding “certain problems facing the EU and their backgrounds.” In other words: The new president’s team doesn’t have a clue about Europe.

Berlin diplomats still hope that the level-headed foreign policy espoused by cabinet appointees such as future defense secretary James Mattis and future secretary of state Rex Tillerson will hold sway. But nobody thinks that Trump will transform into a passionate defender of the Western alliance. In the campaign, the new U.S. president claimed that he was a “fan” of NATO. But at the same time, he warned Germany that European alliance members would have to increase their financial contributions. At Davos this week, Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci said that the postwar world order was no longer suitable for the challenges of the 21st century.

America’s Greatest Adversaries: Japan and West Germany

That is particularly true when it comes to trade policy, which Trump has for decades seen as a conspiracy against America. For the past several weeks, a March 1990 issue of Playboy magazine has been making the rounds in Merkel’s Chancellery. The cover shows a long-haired brunette covered in a black tuxedo jacket next to a slim 40-something: Donald Trump. Inside is a long interview with Trump, in which he talks about what he sees as America’s most dangerous adversaries. He doesn’t mention Russia or Red China, but Japan and West Germany, countries that he said had robbed the U.S. of its self-esteem. “Their products are better because they have so much subsidy,” he said, while America is ensuring that those countries aren’t “wiped off the face of the earth in about 15 minutes.” He concludes his point by saying: “Our ‘allies’ are making billions screwing us.”

Merkel’s staff is convinced that his views haven’t changed. Trump’s newly formed National Trade Council is to be led by economist Peter Navarro, an avowed opponent of Beijing’s “stranglehold” — which he illustrated in his documentary film “Death by China” with an animation of a Chinese knife being stabbed into a map of the United States. Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s designated trade representative, has long been known in Washington circles as a passionate protectionist who misses no opportunity to insist that World Trade Organization rules are “not religious obligations.”

Trump adviser Kushner is likewise consumed by the issue of imports to the U.S. and the consequences for American jobs. In a meeting with the German emissary Wittig, he said that the Trump team looked at statistics showing which countries export more to the U.S. than they import. In first place is China, followed by Japan and then Germany. Kushner’s message was clear: The situation must change.

Merkel’s staff has become certain that conflicts with the new U.S. administration will primarily be focused on two policy areas: foreign trade and relations with Russia. The decisive question is: Can Merkel rely on European backing?

It has been conceived as a huge birthday celebration this March in Rome, replete with an anniversary summit and a celebratory statement. The EU intends to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding treaties with the pathos we have come to expect from the bloc. But the ceremony is also seen as a message to Trump.

After the in-coming president made clear this week that he believes the EU has outlived its usefulness, it wasn’t long before European leaders closed ranks. Europe must “stand together,” intoned German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Europe, French President François Hollande groused earlier this week, “does not need outside advice to tell it what to do.” Meanwhile, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker admonished Trump not to abandon the trans-Atlantic alliance. “Together, we need to tackle climate change and migration together, fight terrorism with united forces and conquer globalization and its social consequences,” he said. But he expects “that it will take a few months until the American president discovers the abundant finer points of Europe.”

There are many, though, who believe that the toasts given in Rome this March could be among the last ones for the EU. The number of skeptics has grown even larger since it became clear that Trump would be moving into the White House.

The incoming U.S. president has always viewed the EU as an alliance aimed at weakening America’s economy. Now he sees an opportunity to get rid of an unwanted competitor. Officials in Brussels are concerned that one of Trump’s foreign policy goals may be that of dividing the EU — in areas like the environment and energy policy, for example, but particularly in its relationship with Russia.

Trump has made clear that he plans to scrap the hardline taken against the Kremlin by his predecessor. He has also placed a question mark over the future of sanctions against Russia imposed by the West in the course of the Ukraine crisis. In his interview with Bild and the Times this week, Trump said of Merkel and Putin: “I start off trusting both, but let’s see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all.”

It is a horrifying statement: Merkel needs Washington’s support in order to maintain her clear position toward Moscow. A number of EU countries would already prefer to lift most of the sanctions. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has outed himself on several occasions as a friend of Russia — and as an admirer of the new U.S. president, as well. “What a wonderful world,” he said following Trump’s election. “This also shows that democracy is creative and innovative.”

A unanimous vote is required to extend the sanctions. So far, Merkel has been able to achieve consensus in large part because she enjoyed the full support of the American government. “If Trump opposes the sanctions, then Europe will no longer hold together on the issue,” says one member of Merkel’s cabinet.

European capitals, led by Italy, Hungary and Austria, are already calling for a loosening of some of the punitive measures. Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz recently told SPIEGEL in an interview that we need to move away from a punitive system and towards one of “incentive.”

A Great Threat to Europe

If Trump sticks with his positions, it is the chancellor’s view that Europe could be facing a great threat. Putin could even see himself emboldened to the point he might try to destabilize the Baltic states, without fear of any resistance from the Americans. “Trump’s messages about NATO could lead to a situation in which Putin says to himself, ‘Let’s give it a shot!'” warns Elmar Brok, a confidant of Merkel’s. Brok is also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the European Parliament.

Moscow is the first trump card Trump has at his disposal to place Brussels under pressure. The second is London. Barack Obama tried to make it clear to the British that they would be placed at the back of the line when it came to any free trade agreement with the United States if they voted in favor of Brexit. Trump, however, has said he wants to expedite negotiations of a trade treaty with Britain.

That has been a boost to London’s self-confidence as it seeks to establish its Brexit negotiating positions. In her speech on Tuesday laying out her roadmap for Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May said her government wouldn’t even strive to remain part of the EU’s single market. The new tune coming from the other side of the English Channel these days is no longer “Brexit means Brexit,” but “Brexit means exit.” “Trump has strengthened the Brits’ negotiating hand,” says Markus Ferber, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU, and of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in European Parliament. “If Clinton had become president, at least we might have got a soft Brexit in the best-case scenario,” says Jo Leinen, a member of the center-left Social Democrats who has long been involved in foreign policy affairs in the European Parliament.

So far, the 27 other EU member states have managed to maintain a unified position over their break-away member. Indeed, one diplomat with Britain’s Foreign Office says that May’s announcement she would not seek a model based on single market memberships like those enjoyed in Switzerland and Norway is a reaction to the tough position taken by the EU. At the same time, it also means that Britain will be removing itself even further from Europe. This coming Monday, EU foreign ministers wanted to back a new Middle East initiative proposed by the French, but British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blocked the text, secure in the knowledge that Trump wasn’t a fan of the proposal either.

There is little doubt that some European politicians will use Trump’s inauguration as an occasion to further drive discord within the EU. Should the bloc continue to pursue an ever-closer union? What are the correct fiscal policies? Right now, there are few policies over which Europe isn’t divided. Speaking in Davos this week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, “too many countries are not doing what was promised — implementing reforms — particularly in the south of Europe they are not doing that. That is creating a fundamental distrust within Europe and particularly between the north and the south.” Fellow panelist Martin Schulz of Germany, who recently left his post as president of the European Parliament, retorted that individual countries needed to stop “giving lessons to other nations” and that pressure should come from the community institutions rather than a handful of countries like Germany or the Netherlands.

‘Too Much Time with Nigel Farage’

People in Brussels are plenty familiar with the tones being struck by the new U.S. president, but they are used to hearing them from a much different person. “Trump has spent too much time drinking coffee with Nigel Farage,” says Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a foreign policy expert with the business-friendly Free Democratic Party in the European Parliament. Farage, the former leader of UKIP, the party that gave birth to the Brexit movement, accompanied Trump at times during the presidential election campaign and the president-elect has repeatedly expressed his admiration for the British politician (“he’s a great guy, very good guy, very supportive. He was one of the earliest people that said Trump was gonna win.”).

As with other European right-wing populists, Farage is rejoicing in Trump’s victory. In March, the Islamophobic Party for Freedom, led by EU-opponent Geert Wilders, could become the biggest force in parliament in the Netherlands. In May, Front National head Marine Le Pen is likely to make it into the second round of voting in the French presidential election. Will Trump jump in to promote the populists with the help of the Russian intelligence agencies’ trolls? “Russia is very stealthily undermining the EU,” says Arne Lietz, an SPD member of the European Parliament who is also on the Foreign Affairs Committee. “But Trump is doing it on Twitter.”

Targeting Europe’s Economy

The campaign against Brussels being waged by the incoming U.S. president is not just focused on politics. Trump’s actual target is Europe’s economy. “I’d throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling into this country and on all Japanese products,” he told Playboy magazine 25 years ago. “And we’d have wonderful allies again.”

Hansa Studios, where David Bowie and U2 recorded legendary albums, is one of the most glamorous event locations in Berlin. A week ago, it was packed with entrepreneurs, executives and industry officials attending the new year’s reception of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations (comprised of leading German business and industry organizations). The hosts served finger foods and sparkling wine and the event featured Markus Kerber, the director-general of the powerful Federation of German Industries (BDI), as its keynote speaker.

Kerber could have dedicated his speech to successes in the German economy, about record exports, full order books or the high level of employment. But instead he bleakly warned of “changing times in international economic policies.” Kerber didn’t mention anybody by name, but everyone knew who he was referring to: Trump and all the anti-globalization politicians who, with their “nationalist industrial policies,” are threatening to trigger a trade war between the U.S. and China. If that were to happen, “considerable declines in economic value creation and employment within a very short period of time” could be expected, particularly in export-driven countries like Germany. “Our prosperity is at risk,” Kerber warned, “more than at any other time in the past 60 years.”

And yet, the markets have been celebrating a Trump-fueled boom for weeks now. After all, international trade is currently in full blossom, not least between Germany and the U.S. American companies are investing more heavily than ever before in Germany, with that volume climbing by a rapid 113 percent in 2015 compared to the previous year. Some of the biggest companies in America are expanding their presences in Germany, including General Electric, Facebook and IBM. Information technology equipment supplier Cisco wants to invest a half-billion dollars in Germany.

German companies, for their part, are even more active in the U.S. German companies conduct more trade with the United States than with any other country. In 2015, the U.S. surpassed France as Germany’s biggest export market. It’s a development that has been fueled by the robust U.S. economy and a euro that has recently been relatively weak to the dollar, making German goods less expensive.

Gaping Trade Imbalance

What frustrates Trump about this state of affairs is that Germany profits far more from this positive development in trans-Atlantic trade than the U.S. does. In 2015, German companies delivered goods valuing close to 114 billion euro across the Atlantic, whereas the Americans only exported goods worth around 60 billion euros to Germany. Even the successes of America’s digital economy are failing to offset this huge imbalance.

The Obama administration had already been eyeing the deficit in trans-Atlantic trade with suspicion, and Trump is likely to actually do something about it. Washington’s new economic policy mantra is that those who want to sell in America also have to manufacture there — otherwise they will face punitive tariffs or special taxes. “Donald Trump is a risk for the German business model,” warns Michael Hüther, head of the influential Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IWK).

In a 2014 report, the consulting giant McKinsey found that no other national economy is as globally interconnected as Germany’s – but also that few others were as dependent on exports. In 2015, German industry exported goods valuing 1.194 trillion euros all around the world. But the country only imported 949 billion euros worth of goods.

Germany has had a surplus in its trade balance for decades now. This is the product of German industrial giants, but even more so of the large number of highly specialized, high-tech small- and medium-sized businesses that are dependent on open markets. They now fear that Trump won’t just be talk when it comes to protectionism and that he will set the country on a new course. They say he has the legal means for doing so.

The U.S. Congress has granted the president trade promotion authority until at least 2018, when it comes up for renewal. That means that Trump has broad freedoms to negotiate free trade agreements. Or to put an end to them. And that end could come quickly: The U.S. must provide only six months advance notice, for example, to back out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which regulates the free trade of good between the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

High on the List

The Trade Act of 1974 is another tool at his disposal. It allows the president to impose tariffs of up to 15 percent for as long as 150 days on countries that accumulate large current account surpluses.

Germany is high on that list, with the country’s over-dependency on exports long having been a source of repeated criticism. And it’s not just that Germany exports more than it imports, it also owns more foreign debt than it borrows from abroad. That money is then used for consumption and investment outside of Germany rather than inside the country.

Many international politicians and academics have called on Germany to reduce these surpluses — and some industries, such as carmakers, have even heeded these calls. Instead of exporting vehicles, they now make them on-site. The industry has been building more vehicles abroad than inside Germany since 2010. Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen have built several factories in the biggest markets of the world, including in China and the U.S. They didn’t want to become dependent on exporting from Germany because of the hurdles presented by potential tariffs or disadvantageous currency fluctuations.

BMW expanded its production facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina while Mercedes-Benz did the same in Tuscaloosa and Volkswagen in Chattanooga. In doing so, the German companies created thousands of jobs in the structurally weak southeastern United States and earned praise from American politicians, including many from the Republican Party.

But then Daimler and the rest fell into the Mexico trap. The country lured them south with low wages and free access to the U.S. market by way of NAFTA. Late last year, Audi moved the production of its Q5 SUV to a newly constructed factory in San José Chiapa. BMW and Daimler have just begun construction of a factory in Mexico and Volkswagen produces more than 450,000 vehicles in Puebla.

An import duty would hit different German manufacturers in different ways. The losses would be especially steep for Volkswagen. The brand exports its Jetta, Beetle and Golf models from its Mexican factory into the U.S. A tariff of 35 percent would make those cars hard to sell.

‘The German Prosperity Model Would Fail’

It is, in short, clear that if Trump does what he indicated he would, Germany and Europe would be especially hard hit. If there are no more “reliable frameworks,” BDI manager Kerber says, “the German prosperity model would fail.”

During her tenure, Angela Merkel has seen a fair number of crises. About 10 years ago, Lehman Brothers collapsed in the US and the global economy was on the verge of collapse. Seven years later, Greek debt brought the European common currency to the brink of disintegration. Then came the refugee crisis, which threatened to cost the chancellor the support of her own party.

This year, she is once again standing for re-election, if she wins, there is reason to believe that the Trump presidency will be her greatest challenge yet. How should she deal with a man who seems unconcerned about the possibility of the EU disintegrating and who threatened the German export industry with tariffs before he even took office? How should she react when Germany’s most important ally questions decades-old relationships?

Merkel being Merkel, her first reaction has been: “Let’s wait and see. One Wednesday, she and her cabinet agreed to react to possible Trump provocations with demonstrative restraint. Afterwards, a stone-faced Merkel went before the press and said the task now was to “find a new understanding” with the American government. She sounded like she was announcing disarmament negotiations with North Korea.

At the same time, though, Chancellery staff hasn’t yet given up hope that Trump could find his way to a halfway moderate position. Stephen Hadley, former security advisor to ex-President George W. Bush, also believes that is a possibility. Hadley is an advisor to Rex Tillerson, the incoming secretary of state. In a conversation with Heusgen on Wednesday, Hadley said that Merkel should come to Washington as soon as possible, adding that Trump would listen to her.

But will he be prepared to receive her soon? Heusgen told Flynn during his visit that the chancellor was ready to travel to Washington on short notice. But so far there hasn’t been an answer from Trump. Chancellery staffers are hoping for a face-to-face between the two leaders in spring at the latest.

Free-Trade Reflexes

Furthermore, hope that the Republican establishment might still rein in the president has not yet entirely disappeared. Many in the Chancellery have reactivated old contacts to Republicans, such as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Merkel is placing her hopes on the skepticism many Congressional Republicans have for Russia and on the party’s free-trade reflexes.

The first opportunity to meet representatives of the new American administration will be in February at the Munich Security Conference. Twenty members of Congress are scheduled to attend, as is James Mattis, Trump’s designated defense secretary. The incoming president’s pick for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is expected to attend the meeting of G-20 foreign ministers in Bonn the day before. He too might come to Munich, as might vice president-elect Mike Pence. Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to support Trump in the election, has also given a firm yes. Chancellor Merkel has not yet indicated whether she will take part.

“My advice would be to stay calm,” says Heusgen. Still, it’s clear that Merkel desperately needs a plan for how she should react to the challenge of Trump’s presidency. In Europe, the time for merely talking about community has passed: It’s time for a plan that combines an unavoidable deepening of foreign and security policies with greater national autonomy in other political areas. The Euro Zone needs a common economic policy, for example, with a budget and finance minister of its own. And Merkel needs to think about what long-term position she should take on trade balance surpluses. Germany’s export strength is a trademark of its economy, but it is also a significant nuisance to the country’s European partners and a target for Trump’s protectionist rhetoric. Demands for Germany to increase domestic demand will only grow.

More than anything, though, Germany needs to try as best it can to stand up for the values that Trump is openly questioning. If Merkel stays strong on those issues, it will become more difficult for the new strongman in the White House to carry out his attacks on the liberal order at home.

Trump is the end of the world as we know it — that much is clear. Or, as the Economist recently wrote: “Things could get much worse.”

‘Mein Kampf’: Murphy translation: Part 15

January 23, 2017

There have been a number of translations of Hitler’s seminal book. Most have been heavily editited so as to promulgate disinformation about Hitler’s views and remove passages that might offend the sensitive.

The Murphy translation is considered to be the most accurate and is being reprinted in toto here.

Our next publication of this work will be the unexpurgated original German edition.

German officialy- approved historians have recently released a highly doctored edition of ‘Mein Kampf’ that is selling very well in Germany.

Perhaps a free copy of the unredacted original work would do better in the same marketplace. Ed

 

VOLUME II: THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST MOVEMENT

 

CHAPTER VIII THE STRONG IS STRONGEST WHEN ALONE

In the preceding chapter I mentioned the existence of a co-operative union between the German patriotic associations. Here I shall deal briefly with this question.

In speaking of a co-operative union we generally mean a group of associations which, for the purpose of facilitating their work, establish mutual relations for collaborating with one another along certain lines, appointing a common directorate with varying powers and thenceforth carrying out a common line of action. The average citizen is pleased and reassured when he hears that these associations, by establishing a co-operative union among one another, have at long last discovered a common platform on which they can stand united and have eliminated all grounds of mutual difference. Therewith a general conviction arises, to the effect that such a union is an immense gain in strength and that small groups which were weak as long as they stood alone have now suddenly become strong. Yet this conviction is for the most part a mistaken one.

It will be interesting and, in my opinion, important for the better understanding of this question if we try to get a clear notion of how it comes about that these associations, unions, etc., are established, when all of them declare that they have the same ends in view. In itself it would be logical to expect that one aim should be fought for by a single association and it would be more reasonable if there were not a number of associations fighting for the same aim. In the beginning there was undoubtedly only one association which had this one fixed aim in view.

One man proclaimed a truth somewhere and, calling for the solution of a definite question, fixed his aim and founded a movement for the purpose of carrying his views into effect.

That is how an association or a party is founded, the scope of whose programme is either the abolition of existing evils or the positive establishment of a certain order of things in the future.

Once such a movement has come into existence it may lay practical claim to certain priority rights. The natural course of things would now be that all those who wish to fight for the same objective as this movement is striving for should identify themselves with it and thus increase its strength, so that the common purpose in view may be all the better served. Especially men of superior intelligence must feel, one and all, that by joining the movement they are establishing precisely those conditions which are necessary for practical success in the common struggle. Accordingly it is reasonable and, in a certain sense, honest–which honesty, as I shall show later, is an element of very great importance–that only one movement should be founded for the purpose of attaining the one aim.

The fact that this does not happen must be attributed to two causes. The first may almost be described as tragic. The second is a matter for pity, because it has its foundation in the weaknesses of human nature.

But, on going to the bottom of things, I see in both causes only facts which give still another ground for strengthening our will, our energy and intensity of purpose; so that finally, through the higher development of the human faculties, the solution of the problem in question may be rendered possible.

The tragic reason why it so often happens that the pursuit of one definite task is not left to one association alone is as follows:

Generally speaking, every action carried out on the grand style in this world is the expression of a desire that has already existed for a long time in millions of human hearts, a longing which may have been nourished in silence. Yes, it may happen that throughout centuries men may have been yearning for the solution of a definite problem, because they have been suffering under an unendurable order of affairs, without seeing on the far horizon the coming fulfilment of the universal longing. Nations which are no longer capable of finding an heroic deliverance from such a sorrowful fate may be looked upon as effete.

But, on the other hand, nothing gives better proof of the vital forces of a people and the consequent guarantee of its right to exist than that one day, through a happy decree of Destiny, a man arises who is capable of liberating his people from some great oppression, or of wiping out some bitter distress, or of calming the national soul which had been tormented through its sense of insecurity, and thus fulfilling what had long been the universal yearning of the people.

An essential characteristic of what are called the great questions of the time is that thousands undertake the task of solving them and that many feel themselves called to this task: yea, even that Destiny itself has proposed many for the choice, so that through the free play of forces the stronger and bolder shall finally be victorious and to him shall be entrusted the task of solving the problem.

Thus it may happen that for centuries many are discontented with the form in which their religious life expresses itself and yearn for a renovation of it; and so it may happen that through this impulse of the soul some dozens of men may arise who believe that, by virtue of their understanding and their knowledge, they are called to solve the religious difficulties of the time and accordingly present themselves as the prophets of a new teaching or at least as declared adversaries of mthe standing beliefs.

Here also it is certain that the natural law will take its course, inasmuch as the strongest will be destined to fulfil the great mission. But usually the others are slow to acknowledge that only one man is called. On the contrary, they all believe that they have an equal right to engage in the solution of the diffculties in question and that they are equally called to that task. Their contemporary world is generally quite unable to decide which of all these possesses the highest gifts and accordingly merits the support of all.

So in the course of centuries, or indeed often within the same epoch, different men establish different movements to struggle towards the same end. At least the end is declared by the founders of the movements to be the same, or may be looked upon as such by the masses of the people. The populace nourishes vague desires and has only general opinions, without having any precise notion of their own ideals and desires or of the question whether and how it is impossible for these ideals and desires to be fulfilled.

The tragedy lies in the fact that many men struggle to reach the same objective by different roads, each one genuinely believing in his ownm mission and holding himself in duty bound to follow his own road withoutm any regard for the others.

These movements, parties, religious groups, etc., originate entirelybindependently of one another out of the general urge of the time, and all with a view to working towards the same goal. It may seem a tragic thing, at least at first sight, that this should be so, because people are too often inclined to think that forces which are dispersed in different directions would attain their ends far more quickly and more surely if they were united in one common effort. But that is not so. For

Nature herself decides according to the rules of her inexorable logic.

She leaves these diverse groups to compete with one another and dispute the palm of victory and thus she chooses the clearest, shortest and surest way along which she leads the movement to its final goal.

How could one decide from outside which is the best way, if the forces at hand were not allowed free play, if the final decision were to rest with the doctrinaire judgment of men who are so infatuated with their own superior knowledge that their minds are not open to accept the indisputable proof presented by manifest success, which in the last analysis always gives the final confirmation of the justice of a course of action.

Hence, though diverse groups march along different routes towards the same objective, as soon as they come to know that analogous efforts are being made around them, they will have to study all the more carefully whether they have chosen the best way and whether a shorter way may not be found and how their efforts can best be employed to reach the objective more quickly.

Through this rivalry each individual protagonist develops his faculties to a still higher pitch of perfection and the human race has frequently owed its progress to the lessons learned from the misfortunes of former attempts which have come to grief. Therefore we may conclude that we come to know the better ways of reaching final results through a state of things which at first sight appeared tragic; namely, the initial dispersion of individual efforts, wherein each group was unconsciously responsible for such dispersion.

In studying the lessons of history with a view to finding a way for the solution of the German problem, the prevailing opinion at one time was that there were two possible paths along which that problem might be solved and that these two paths should have united from the very beginning. The chief representatives and champions of these two paths were Austria and Prussia respectively, Habsburg and Hohenzollern. All the rest, according to this prevalent opinion, ought to have entrusted their united forces to the one or the other party. But at that time the path of the most prominent representative, the Habsburg, would have been taken, though the Austrian policy would never have led to the foundation of a united German REICH.

Finally, a strong and united German REICH arose out of that which many millions of Germans deplored in their hearts as the last and most terrible manifestation of our fratricidal strife. The truth is that the German Imperial Crown was retrieved on the battle field of Königgrätz and not in the fights that were waged before Paris, as was commonly asserted afterwards.

Thus the foundation of the German REICH was not the consequence of any common will working along common lines, but it was much more the outcome of a deliberate struggle for hegemony, though the protagonists were often hardly conscious of this. And from this struggle Prussia finally came out victorious. Anybody who is not so blinded by partisan politics as to deny this truth will have to agree that the so-called wisdom of men would never have come to the same wise decision as the wisdom of Life itself, that is to say, the free play of forces, finally brought to realization. For in the German lands of two hundred years before who would seriously have believed that Hohenzollern Prussia, and not Habsburg, would become the germ cell, the founder and the tutor of the new REICH? And, on the other hand, who would deny to-day that Destiny thus acted wiser than human wisdom. Who could now imagine a German REICH based on the foundations of an effete and degenerate dynasty?

No. The general evolution of things, even though it took a century of struggle, placed the best in the position that it had merited.

And that will always be so. Therefore it is not to be regretted if different men set out to attain the same objective. In this way the strongest and swiftest becomes recognized and turns out to be the victor.

Now there is a second cause for the fact that often in the lives of nations several movements which show the same characteristics strive along different ways to reach what appears to be the same goal. This second cause is not at all tragic, but just something that rightly calls forth pity. It arises from a sad mixture of envy, jealousy, ambition, and the itch for taking what belongs to others. Unfortunately these failings are often found united in single specimens of the human species.

The moment a man arises who profoundly understands the distress of his people and, having diagnosed the evil with perfect accuracy, takes measures to cure it; the moment he fixes his aim and chooses the means to reach it–then paltry and pettifogging people become all attention and eagerly follow the doings of this man who has thus come before the public gaze. Just like sparrows who are apparently indifferent, but in reality are firmly intent on the movements of the fortunate companion with the morsel of bread so that they may snatch it from him if he should momentarily relax his hold on it, so it is also with the human species. All that is needed is that one man should strike out on a new road and then a crowd of poltroons will prick up their ears and begin to sniff for whatever little booty may possibly lie at the end of that road. The moment they think they have discovered where the booty is to be gathered they hurry to find another way which may prove to be quicker in reaching that goal.

As soon as a new movement is founded and has formulated a definite programme, people of that kind come forward and proclaim that they are fighting for the same cause. This does not imply that they are ready honestly to join the ranks of such a movement and thus recognize its right of priority. It implies rather that they intend to steal the programme and found a new party on it. In doing this they are shameless enough to assure the unthinking public that for a long time they had intended to take the same line of action as the other has now taken, and frequently they succeed in thus placing themselves in a favourable light, instead of arousing the general disapprobation which they justly deserve. For it is a piece of gross impudence to take what has already been inscribed on another’s flag and display it on one’s own, to steal the programme of another, and then to form a separate group as if all had been created by the new founder of this group. The impudence of such conduct is particularly demonstrated when the individuals who first caused dispersion and disruption by their new foundation are those who–as experience has shown–are most emphatic in proclaiming the necessity of union and unity the moment they find they cannot catch up with their adversary’s advance.

It is to that kind of conduct that the so-called ‘patriotic disintegration’ is to be attributed.

Certainly in the years 1918–1919 the founding of a multitude of new groups, parties, etc., calling themselves ‘Patriotic,’ was a natural phenomenon of the time, for which the founders were not at all responsible. By 1920 the National Socialist German Labour Party had slowly crystallized from all these parties and had become supreme. There could be no better proof of the sterling honesty of certain individual founders than the fact that many of them decided, in a really admirable manner, to sacrifice their manifestly less successful movements to the stronger movement, by joining it unconditionally and dissolving their own.

This is especially true in regard to Julius Streicher, who was at that time the protagonist of the German Socialist party in Nürnberg. The National Socialist German Labour Party had been founded with similar aims in view, but quite independently of the other. I have already said that Streicher, then a teacher in Nürnberg, was the chief protagonist of the German Socialist Party. He had a sacred conviction of the mission and future of his own movement. As soon, however, as the superior strength and stronger growth of the National Socialist Party became clear and unquestionable to his mind, he gave up his work in the German Socialist Party and called upon his followers to fall into line with the National Socialist German Labour Party, which had come out victorious from the mutual contest, and carry on the fight within its ranks for the common cause. The decision was personally a difficult one for him, but it showed a profound sense of honesty.

When that first period of the movement was over there remained nofurther dispersion of forces: for their honest intentions had led the men of that time to the same honourable, straightforward and just conclusion. What we now call the ‘patriotic disintegration’ owes its existence exclusively to the second of the two causes which I have mentioned. Ambitious men who at first had no ideas of their own, and still less any concept of aims to be pursued, felt themselves ‘called’ exactly at that moment in which the success of the National Socialist German Labour Party became unquestionable.

Suddenly programmes appeared which were mere transcripts of ours. Ideas were proclaimed which had been taken from us. Aims were set up on behalf of which we had been fighting for several years, and ways were mapped out which the National Socialists had for a long time trodden. All kinds of means were resorted to for the purpose of trying to convince the public that, although the National Socialist German Labour Party had now been for a long time in existence, it was found necessary to establish these new parties. But all these phrases were just as insincere as the motives behind them were ignoble.

In reality all this was grounded only on one dominant motive. That motive was the personal ambition of the founders, who wished to play a part in which their own pigmy talents could contribute nothing original except the gross effrontery which they displayed in appropriating the ideas of others, a mode of conduct which in ordinary life is looked upon as thieving.

At that time there was not an idea or concept launched by other people which these political kleptomaniacs did not seize upon at once for the purpose of applying to their own base uses. Those who did all this were the same people who subsequently, with tears in their eyes, profoundly deplored the ‘patriotic disintegration’ and spoke unceasingly about the ‘necessity of unity’. In doing this they nurtured the secret hope that they might be able to cry down the others, who would tire of hearing these loud-mouthed accusations and would end up by abandoning all claim to the ideas that had been stolen from them and would abandon to the thieves not only the task of carrying these ideas into effect but also the task of carrying on the movements of which they themselves were the original founders.

When that did not succeed, and the new enterprises, thanks to the paltry mentality of their promoters, did not show the favourable results which had been promised beforehand, then they became more modest in their pretences and were happy if they could land themselves in one of the so-called ‘co-operative unions’.

At that period everything which could not stand on its own feet joined one of those co-operative unions, believing that eight lame people hanging on to one another could force a gladiator to surrender to them.

But if among all these cripples there was one who was sound of limb he had to use all his strength to sustain the others and thus he himself was practically paralysed.

We ought to look upon the question of joining these working coalitions as a tactical problem, but, in coming to a decision, we must never forget the following fundamental principle:

Through the formation of a working coalition associations which are weak in themselves can never be made strong, whereas it can and does happen not infrequently that a strong association loses its strength by joining in a coalition with weaker ones. It is a mistake to believe that a factor of strength will result from the coalition of weak groups; because experience shows that under all forms and all conditions the majority represents the duffers and poltroons. Hence a multiplicity of mass associations, under a directorate of many heads, elected by these same associations, is abandoned to the control of poltroons and weaklings.

Through such a coalition the free play of forces is paralysed, the struggle for the selection of the best is abolished and therewith the necessary and final victory of the healthier and stronger is impeded.

Coalitions of that kind are inimical to the process of natural development, because for the most part they hinder rather than advance the solution of the problem which is being fought for.

It may happen that, from considerations of a purely tactical kind, the supreme command of a movement whose goal is set in the future will enter into a coalition with such associations for the treatment of special questions and may also stand on a common platform with them, but this can be only for a short and limited period. Such a coalition must not be permanent, if the movement does not wish to renounce its liberating mission. Because if it should become indissolubly tied up in such a combination it would lose the capacity and the right to allow its own forces to work freely in following out a natural development, so as to overcome rivals and attain its own objective triumphantly.

It must never be forgotten that nothing really great in this world hasmever been achieved through coalitions, but that such achievements have always been due to the triumph of the individual. Successes achieved through coalitions, owing to the very nature of their source, carry the germs of future disintegration in them from the very start; so much so that they have already forfeited what has been achieved. The great revolutions which have taken place in human thought and have veritably transformed the aspect of the world would have been inconceivable and impossible to carry out except through titanic struggles waged between individual natures, but never as the enterprises of coalitions.

And, above all things, the People’s State will never be created by the desire for compromise inherent in a patriotic coalition, but only by the iron will of a single movement which has successfully come through in the struggle with all the others.