I am sure Trump is taking very seriously any rumours that you can take out the leader of the opposition with nerve agents and get away with it.
Trump on Navalny poisoning: 'We haven’t had any proof yet,' also focus on China not Russia and Putin
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Paywalled. If there is any point in this piece, is it in the headline already?
This. Or even, what decent human wants to be Putin’s best friend?
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A Russian politician was poisioned in Russia with a Russian nerve agent.
Trump: “Why are you asking me about Russia? If Hillary were president we’d be at war with North Korea.”
All he has to say is, “This is a very serious charge and we’re looking into it. If it’s true there will be serious consequences, believe me,” and then do nothing. But he can’t because he his both terrified of Putin and desperate for his approval.
If civilization survives, I expect my (currently nonexistent) grandchildren to be able to take a college course called “Donald Trump: The Abnormal Psychology of an American President”
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Ever heard the term das Primat der Politik?
Seriously: nothing is ever to complex to get revoked or cancelled. That’s the power of politics.
It is quite outstanding that the German chancellor (and not the Charité) issued the first official confirmation of a poisoning with a chemical weapon. As you might will know, there is a deeply ingrained horror in regard to chemical warfare in still alive in Germany, and I assume in other European countries as well which dates back to the experience of the first world war.
I would not be surprised to see the gas pipeline being cancelled, on the highest level. Remember what happened after Fukushima.
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Sorry, but I completely disagree with that assessment. Sure, there might be some posturing but politics in Germany has been attached to NS2 for quite a long time. I don’t really see the connection to Fukushima. That made Merkel, or the dominant factions in the CDU/CSU, change their minds about their delaying of a policy that was already in effect from the previous government. That’s not the same as stopping an infrastructure project they have doggedly pursued for decades. Quite a lot of foreign policy political capital is also invested in this project, with Germany going against both the US’ and Poland’s wishes pretty publicly.
And I wouldn’t say that there is any more horror about chemical warfare in the German public consciousness than in any other western country. Nuclear weapons (and power), yes, but not chemical ones.
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Gotta point out I’m not assessing the situation, I’m mentioning possibilities.
My assessment would be different than yours, but I still would think the pipeline would go ahead.
Re: Fukushima, the party and it’s leadership publicly and personally vouched for extending the lifespan of nuclear power, and this policy decision was equally publicly shot down in an instant against strong opposition within the party. And it was quite an expensive move, too. I just use this as an example of a policy which was reversed quickly, and for the reason of a public mood swing. Similarly, Nordstream 2 could be shot down - expensively. The strained relationship to the US and Poland, in this case, would be rather an argument for, not against shutting the project down.
This is a possibility, and not the wildest one. It is unlikely, but a possibility.
Well, we disagree on that. Chemicals in general, and chemical weapons in particular, play a weird special role in the public (sub)conscious. Names like mustard gas and Green Cross carry a particular horror in Germany (and, as far as I am aware, in the UK). The 1988 gas warfare in the Middle East, but also Bophal, and the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin attack resonated strongly in Germany. Much stronger than in Switzerland and Austria, for example, but as I recall also stronger than in France and the UK. One thing I often heard mentioned in relation to chemical warfare was that (paraphrased) even Hitler would not have the Nazis use gas in the war. Sometimes this was with with as subtext ignoring the Shoa and Zyklon B, and sometimes the gas chambers were used as an example of the horror the Nazis unleashed on the Jewish people but not ‘in the war’.
I think the taboo lessened in the last two and a half decades, for some reason. But it is still there, and from all I experienced, it is still stronger in Germany than in most other societies I have experience with.
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Not so the latter (I had not heard of it), the former is often used to cover all gases. If more accuracy is required, chlorine and phosgene are used to describe the Green Cross gases.
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Coming back to this, I’m not the only one noticing an apparent similarity.
“Should” is not “will”, of course. I see your point, I just don’t see it happening in the future.
We agree on that.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to be surprised once again. It that sentence makes any sense…
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