Heard in Berlin

I spent a whole hour listening to a Hudson Institute podcast, interviewing a German diplomat. He presented the case of Germany as a non-nuclear industrial country in the middle of Europe, subject to blackmail and living in fear. The Ukraine-Russia war terrorized them, and even more President Trump decision to withdraw from the American treaty to defend Europe. The Germans fervently desire American presence in Europe, and they want America to fulfil the vacuum existing in Syria. Russia has already moved in an established a base in North Syria. The lesson learnt in Berlin during the last elections in the USA is that Germany cannot allow its destiny to be decided by a "bunch of people in Georgia" momentarily impressed by local police violence or something like that. The bunch referred to are the few thousand AfroAmerican votes that inclined the balance toward Biden (good) against Trump (bad, he wanted to bring back the troops and leave poor Germans unprotected).   Pic:: Hermann Kahn, the founder of the Hudson Institute.