Author: Cozmin Gușă
In the images rolled on a loop yesterday on EURONEWS and CNN, we saw Chancellor Scholz at the White House, face to face with Biden, saying something like this: “(…) the countries of the Euro-Atlantic Club are stronger and more united than ever before , and this could only happen under your leadership, Mr. President Biden.”
I think the prouder Germans were tempted to throw their TV out the window, but many Europeans, fed up with Germany’s sufficiency, greed and impositions of the past decades, laughed their heads off and thought that God doesn’t punish. And how can you not have such reactions when, after a year in which Europe and Germany have declined so drastically in terms of economic potential and diplomatic prestige under the “wise” leadership of the Biden administration, the German political leader bows down humbly before the hegemon, instead of demanding an account and compensation from the Americans for the shortcomings created by such a poorly coordinated war?! The broadcast images reinforce the effect of the words, because you can see the attitude and gesture of the German, the leader of a country abused “big time”, which country is also the de facto leader of the EU, as he issues in front of the US president, a head of state with a lost look, who didn’t even seem to understand what Scholz was saying, even though he was using cursive English.
Much of the commentary in the German press is condescending to Scholz, as their chancellor is believed to have actually gone begging to get Germany a share of the arms orders for Ukraine, paid for with American and European money. I don’t know yet if Scholz achieved what he set out to do, but it is certain that with this meeting filmed from the White House, Germany’s prestige, as much as it remained, went down the drain on Saturday.
The effects will be immediate in the context of international relations, all the wise understood that if they have something to negotiate in the future with the government in Berlin, it will be more useful to turn to Washington, because otherwise they risk wasting their time.
You will say that the situation is not really new, because Germany was also somehow abused by Russia in the last decades, and the Russians have had a good time from an economic-financial point of view. It was so, only that exactly the geopolitical game at two ends on the Washington-Moscow axis allowed the Germans to develop and profit, with the benefit for Germany of the EU leadership seat.
This stage has now also visibly ended, and the American strategists who imposed this visit on Scholz, with the accompanying humble and shameful attitude, got exactly what they were looking for, an event through which it would become indubitable that the period of German hegemony in Europe has ended. So, the scene of the German falling in front of a decrepit and grumpy leader like Biden was well calculated, so that there would be no doubts about how irrelevant Germany has become today. And so that there are no more doubts about the fact that the US now leads the EU, just before the meeting with Scholz, the Americans also summoned the German Ursula von der Leyen to Washington, who performed the overture of the event of bowing in front of Biden.
So the imposing anthem of Germany, “Deutschland Über Alles” (Germany above all), will henceforth be regarded rather as a bitter irony, that is only if the Americans do not decide to rid the Germans of these ironies, changing even their anthem. It could be composed and performed even by Biden’s favorite, Lady Gaga, her name fits well with the state of the two leaders who met at the White House, thus marking a historic moment.
