what will happen with Germany, when it is lectured by the French, insulted by its debtor dependencies in southern Europe, and starting to become angry that only its own work ethic and productivity—not some grandiose platitudes about the EU—keep Europe going?
Very soon German workers are going to grasp that all the financial reserves they piled away the last two decades from not doing what a Spain or Italy did are essentially gone. Someone in Munich worked 40 hours a week until age 67 for someone in Athens not to—and for someone in Athens to demand that someone in Munich do so or else. The idea that nations like Greece, both overtly and implicitly, insult nations like Germany has no basis in historical terms.
He says Germans are getting ticked off. Maybe they need a tea party?
NATO is an alliance mostly in name. Germany is angry. So far all the traditional restraints upon its pique—allied military rivals on its two borders, a divided country, fear of a nuclear Soviet Union, incorporation within the EU and NATO—are either nonexistent or increasingly problematic.
If it should choose, Germany could go nuclear in six months, its arsenal reflective of a country that makes Mercedes and BMWs. That is not so wild an idea in an age when unstable nations like Iran and North Korea boast of their arsenals and their aggression, while others such as Turkey and Brazil flaunt U.S. faculty-lounge sermons on non-proliferation.
If Iran should go nuclear—and I think it will within a year or two—we should imagine that a Brazil, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria would too. As the European Union collapses, as third-rate nations become nuclear, and as the United States abdicates its postwar role in ensuring the safety and security of the West, why would Germany continue to subsidize southern Europe while receiving mostly blame for its efforts, while its airspace would be in theory vulnerable to the likes of a theocratic Iran?
