When the colonies became too expensive or difficult to manage, the European powers "chose" to give those colonies independence on a case by case basis. The colonial powers cut up their properties and built artificial countries that split up major tribes and almost guaranteed ethnic warfare and instability for years to come. Congratulating Europe on its focus on diplomacy and international development is self deception if not outright sarcasm. The US is certainly no better, but it is surprising to think this guy could laud the European approach with a straight face.
Germany, completely demilitarized and destroyed and being occupied by the USSR, France, UK and US decided to "choose" a peaceful approach. Quite funny actually.
Ostpolitik was not generally accepted by the German population though and Brandt was considered a traitor by the conservatives for apologizing to Poland. If you view maps from the 1950s and 1960s, western provinces of Poland are still described as "Germany, under Polish administration" and Adenauer's refusal to accept the Oder-Neisse borders was a showstopper in re-unification discussions in the 1950s.
Current relations with Poland are terrible as the press has generated hostile caricatures of the Polish Prez while Erika Steinbach
en.wikipedia.org
has compared the Polish Prez and PM philosophy to neo-nazi parties (NPD) in Germany without a strong, substantial condemnation by her party or its leader (Merkel). This behavior is far more offensive than Rumsfeld's infamous "Old Europe" remark, but absolutely acceptable in a country where people born 20 years after WWII refuse to use Polish names like Wroclaw, Poznan, and Gdandk and "correct" their usage with Breslau, Posen, an Danzig.
As to energy security of Europe, I think I understand the issues reasonably well but do not agree with you. I worked in the energy industry in the ME and in the U.S. for quite some time. As I mentioned in my prior post, there are other ways to secure energy supplies...
Please do tell. My read on the situation is that control (or denying others) the oil reserves of Iraq and the battle for control and distribution of energy from the Caspian Sea area are at the heart of the GWOT. |
