Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined calls for the US to deploy German warships around the Crimean Peninsula in a direct effort to provoke Russia, according to officials familiar with the situation.
During February 16th’s Munich Security Conference, Vice President Mike
Pence pushed Merkel on the matter, saying he thought they should send
several German warships through the Kerch Strait between Crimea and the
mainland to “show Russia.”
This was somewhat following a naval confrontation between Ukraine and
Russia in the Kerch Strait, when Ukrainian boats entered Russian waters
and were captured. The US was keen to send NATO warships into the same
area to spite Russia.
This is a common naval tactic for US officials in recent years.
Officials have been fond of sending the US Navy on “freedom of
navigation” trips to areas claimed by rival powers. The big difference
here was that they figured on sending German boats instead of American
ones, which Merkel wasn’t keen on.
Apparently Merkel proposed sending a German ship and a French ship
through the strait one time, but Ukraine’s President Poroshenko objected
that this wouldn’t “solve his problem,” and that NATO needed to
permanently keep the strait open. France didn’t even want to do the one
trip, so the idea was dropped entirely.
American hawks have lost the EU and the rest of NATO. The hawks are nuts, and it has been obvious in constant failure, so that the others are just rebelling.
Germany needs to tell the US to go to hell.
Leaking the refusal is a big step in that direction.
Who/where was the refusal leaked…??
If I were a German politician, I’d simply say, “We’ll be glad to sacrifice our navy for US objectives, but first – Give us time to get our military budgets up to 2% of our GDP, per your first demand”.
And here I thought the Don wanted to get along with Russia.
This would be a violation of the straights treaty.