Forget Germany, But Keep Our GIs There

Long-term readers of The New York Sun will know that our annual nominee for the Nobel Prize in peace is G.I. Joe. America’s soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines have for decades been the greatest force for peace in the world. Yet not a single European, not even the Germans, has ever picked up on this idea, which started in 1993 with an op-ed piece by Neil Kressel in the Jewish Daily Forward.We mention this little lacuna because of the sudden frisson that is rippling through Germany in the wake of President Trump’s plan to bring home 9,000 of the 34,000 GIs in Germany. The plan, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, stuns Germany, according to Mayor Bloomberg’s news service. President Trump and Chancellor Angela Merkel have been at daggers for several years, largely over budget matters.It’s not hard to see why. Despite a 2006 agreement that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would commit to devoting 2% of GDP to defense, Germany lags. It doesn’t expect, the Wall Street Journal notes, to redeem its word until 2031, more than a decade from now and nearly a generation from when Mr. Trump started marking the issue. Mrs. Merkel just seems to take America for granted.No doubt money is but part of the problem. Germany has been a disappointing ally. It has refused to move to Jerusalem its embassy in Israel (one would think it, of all countries, would have been the first to do so). It was an avid participant in the articles of appeasement struck by the Obama administration with Iran — even while both houses of Congress were overwhelmingly against it.Germany has shrugged off American concerns about the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. American conservatives have been warning about dependence on Russia for energy since we were pulling an editorial oar at the Journal in the early 1980s. Back then, as Josef Joffe has noted elsewhere, we based something like 350,000 GIs in Germany. Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have each drawn down more troops than Mr. Trump has.We don’t mind saying that we’ve grown rather indifferent to European griping as the years of kvetching have rolled on. The European Union has emerged as an anti-American bloc. Yet we have our own interests in maintaining troops overseas. The American soldier is not only a force for peace wherever he goes but a peerless envoy for America. Keep the GIs in Europe and keep pressing Germany to pay her commitments.Which brings us back to the Nobel Prize for GI Joe. We understand it’s not going to happen. The Norwegians, who are the custodian of the Nobel in peace, are more condescending to America than the Germans and the French are. Time for America to focus on new alliances with what we call the freedom countries. Post-Brexit, Britain beckons, as do Israel, India, the free Chinese republic on Taiwan, and Japan. That’s the future.

Forget Germany, But Keep Our GIs There

Forget Germany, But Keep Our GIs There

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