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How Germany Solves Problems

From the April 2010 Trumpet Print Edition »

By Ron Fraser

History demonstrates that it has been crises, often of the nation’s own making, that have spurred the German people into action to impose very Germanic solutions to those crises.

Our friends at German-Foreign-Policy.com highlighted a recent classic case of this approach to crisis. It involved a couple of high-profile industrial agreements between France and Germany, the two nations that many have touted as underpinning true European unity.

For some time, France had limited Germany’s effort in producing warships by stifling plans for a joint Franco-German effort to create a common European shipbuilding enterprise. The typical (and no doubt strategically motivated) French defiance over this deal led to a crisis. This spurred one of the German companies involved, ThyssenKrupp, to “renounce civilian ship production to concentrate its dockyards solely on arms production. It is entering a ‘strategic partnership’ with the Abu Dhabi Mar Co. from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Their deal seals the military alliance between Germany and the Emirates, possibly creating the opportunity for circumventing German arms exports regulations and ending efforts aimed at forging a German/French ship production …” (Oct. 26, 2009; emphasis mine throughout). As German-Foreign-Policy
.com observed, this just goes to show that “If a German-dominated ‘European solution’ cannot be accomplished, Berlin will do without ‘Europe’ and go it alone.”

There you are! That’s solving the crisis not the “European” way, but the German way! “According to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, this means that the project of a common European maritime shipbuilding industry is ‘as dead as a doornail.’ As a matter of fact, the arms cooperation with the Gulf state was already cleared with the representatives of the Berlin government: ‘We have sounded out all of the ministries and received a very positive prevailing sentiment,’ ThyssenKrupp declared. Cooperation with the Emirates is ‘far more sustainable than a European maritime company,’ according to the German press, which usually never tires of praising ‘Europe’ and ‘European solutions’—of course, only when German predominance in the ‘European’ project can be assured” (ibid.).

Yet another similar instance of Berlin’s “my way or the highway” approach was its support of another German corporation caught in yet another Franco-German crisis. “Siemens recently terminated its nuclear cooperation with France, because Paris refused to give in to German demands for more influence in the nuclear sector, and began cooperation with Russia” (ibid.). Shades of the 1920s?

Both these reactions to similar crises depict Berlin’s reversion to a well-tried strategy. The trend we are seeing in Berlin’s reaction to any crisis facing the EU project is simply to impose the “German solution.”

This reaction has historic overtones. It’s a strategy enacted in cooperation with Berlin’s traditional supporters, the German industrialists. A closer look at the ThyssenKrupp example bears this out.

Back in the War Business

ThyssenKrupp found itself suffering seriously because of the global economic crisis. Its response (having resulted in a €2 billion loss) was to consolidate its shipbuilding enterprises into one centralized operation, converting its whole operation to a war footing.

Berlin has been directly involved in supporting the ThyssenKrupp/Emirates deal. “The political ties between Berlin and the Arab feudal states are also being consolidated by the Gulf states’ investments in the German economy” (ibid.). Financial Times Deutschland reported that, “Most recently, with a large financial transfusion, the Emirate of Qatar bought into Volkswagen, while the Aabar Investment Society of Abu Dhabi bought into the Daimler car producer. Just last June, ThyssenKrupp’s partner, the Abu Dhabi Mar Consortium, bought majority shares in the Nobiskrug Shipyard, which specializes in luxury ships, in Rendsburg, Germany” (ibid.).

This is Germany’s more traditional approach to crisis: imposing the German solution. In each case, the solution has brought Germany closer, much closer, to militarizing its economy—something Germany’s Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has called for.

Berlin’s cooperation with the uae began not long after the Berlin Wall fell and Germany reunited. Five years ago, that cooperation was formalized by the signing of an Agreement of Cooperation in the Military Field. Since then, the Gulf states have increasingly invested in the German economy and strengthened political ties with Berlin. To students of Bible prophecy, such an agreement has powerful overtones of a prophesied alliance (Psalm 83) between Germany and the oil-rich southern Arab states.

“Abu Dhabi’s joining the German maritime shipbuilding industry signals Berlin’s fundamental change of strategy in its long-term efforts to help bring the German arms industry to a position of predominance in Europe” (ibid.).

Germany is reverting to its historical militarized role in global politics. As Baron Guttenberg has declared, the time has come for Germany once again to merge economic policy with military policy. The result of this increasing pace in the militarization of the German economy will pale into stark insignificance the previous two occasions when Berlin adopted such a strategy. •

HERE IS YOUR FUTURE IN AMERICA

SO GOES RUSSIA, SO GOES THE WORLD

How Russia Is About to Change the World

From the March 2010 Trumpet Print Edition »

In a remote corner of the globe, a port bristles with cranes, smokestacks, mammoth ships—and trouble for Europe. By Robert Morley

In January, Russia made a world-changing move. It completed a new oil pipeline and port complex that sets Russia up to become a more powerful oil exporter than Saudi Arabia. The ramifications for Europe and Asia are profound: The shape of the global economy—and the global balance of power—will soon be altered forever.

December 28 was a big day of ceremony in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pushed a button that transformed global oil dynamics. The button released thousands of barrels of Siberian crude into a waiting Russian supertanker and heralded the opening of Russia’s first modern Pacific-based oil export facilities.

The multibillion-dollar, state-of-the-art oil terminal was a “great New Year present for Russia,” Putin said during the inauguration. The strategic terminal, located in the city of Kozmino on the coast of the Sea of Japan, is one of the “biggest projects in contemporary Russia” he said, not only in “modern Russia,” but “the former Soviet Union too.”

Putin has every right to be enthusiastic about his new port. Kozmino will unlock a two-way gate through which Russia’s vast Siberian oilfields will gush into Asia’s energy-hungry economies—and Chinese, Korean and Japanese currency will flow into Russia.

If the seven ships scheduled to berth in January are all filled, the port of Kozmino will instantly become Russia’s third-most important oil outlet. As of January 20, five of the ships had set sail will full cargoes.

In a symbolic move highlighting Russia’s warming relationship with China, Hong Kong received the first shipment.

Kozmino’s importance will exponentially grow over the next year. Currently, all Siberian oil shipments into Kozmino are delivered by train—but that will soon change. Phase one of the East Siberian-Pacific Ocean Pipeline (espo) was also completed during December. Phase two will connect the Siberian fields directly to the new port. When phase two is finished in 2014, total exports could jump from the current rate of 250,000 barrels per day to over 1 million. Kozmino will transform into one of the largest oil centers in the world—capable of handling 14 percent of total Russian oil exports. It will be one of the most strategic geopolitical assets in Russia’s arsenal.

Russia pumped more than 10 million barrels of oil per day during November. With Saudi Arabian production falling, Russia is now the world’s largest oil exporter. Toss in Russia’s natural gas exports, and Russia is the biggest energy superpower in the world by far. That does not even count Russia’s massive uranium resources and nuclear expertise.

But here is why the new port in Kozmino could radically affect the future of both Asia and Europe. For over a century, Russia’s entire energy infrastructure has focused mainly on supplying Europe. That has now changed forever!

Russia’s Energy Weapon

The first and now-complete phase of the espo pipeline, which connects Russia’s Siberian oil fields to within just a few kilometers of China, is already destabilizing global oil dynamics and shifting them in Russia’s direction. “espo is what political strategists might call a ‘game-changer,’” wrote the Telegraph. “It means that Russia will be able to send its oil either east or west—so it can drive a harder bargain when selling crude to Europe” (Dec. 26, 2009; emphasis mine throughout).

Previously, when Russia has had pricing disputes with Europe, Moscow had to play the embargo card with an obvious bluff. It had no alternative outlet for its oil. Without the Europeans, its oil would sit in the Siberian oil fields of Samotlor and Tyanskoye, costing money instead of making it. But now Moscow can turn off the tap to Europe and still pump in the profits by opening the pipe wide to its energy-hungry Asian partners.

But Russia’s stranglehold on Europe is about to get even tighter—much tighter. By 2012, the espo pipeline will be twinned with a pipeline for natural gas exports so Russian gas supplies can also flow east instead of west if necessary.

This development is truly scary to Europeans.

Moscow has already demonstrated that it is unafraid to turn off Europe’s energy supplies when it feels it needs to. In the middle of winter 2006, Russia shut off gas supplies to Germany and several other countries in order to punish Ukraine. Since then, it has used the same method each winter to strong-arm its former Eastern European satellites back into accepting Russian dominance.

The message is clear: Russian oil and gas supplies are a strategic weapon to be used—or not used—to freeze opponents into submission.

Europe’s Only Choice

Europe, in a tenuous relationship with Russia to begin with, desperately needs to secure another energy source. Only one other region in the world can supply the energy to warm and lubricate modern Europe’s homes and industries: the Middle East. Countries like Germany, which imports 90 percent of its oil, are now likely to become much more dependent on one of the most volatile regions of the world for energy supplies.

It is inevitable that Berlin will seek to expand its ties with oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council members: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and especially Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest petroleum producer. Europe has no choice but to become much more intimately involved with the affairs of the Middle East, from where it currently gets 40 percent of its oil.

It is therefore no surprise that Germany, the most dominant nation in Europe, has made sure it has troops on the ground surrounding this Middle Eastern “golden triangle” of energy production (Gulf Cooperation Council members plus Iran and Iraq). On the seas, the European Union’s naval presence is growing too. The European anti-piracy task force operates in both the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Aden. Forty percent of the world’s ocean-borne oil is shipped through the Gulf of Oman.

Europe is critically dependent on imported oil. And Germany knows it must have a strong presence in the world’s most oil-rich region if it is to secure its flow and the country’s future.

The Bible predicts that a major military clash will soon occur in the Middle East—specifically between a European power, led by Germany, and radical Islam, led by Iran.

Daniel 11:40-45 indicate that Iran will continue to push at this European power until it finally responds in “whirlwind,” blitzkrieg-type fashion. As we have explained for almost 20 years—and has been borne out repeatedly in real-world events—the “king of the south” spoken of in these verses is radical Islam under the leadership of Iran. And as Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote as far back as November 1996, a big part of Iran’s push against Europe “is probably going to involve oil.”

Amid an Unstable Climate

The Middle East is a powder keg that could explode at any time. Syria dominates Lebanon and is stirring up trouble there. Iran is about to create a nuclear weapon and has said it wants to wipe Israel off the map; it is test-firing missiles that can strike European capitals. Israel knows that the window to prevent Iran from getting the bomb is closing. Hamas is preparing to violently take East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.

And to top it off, the world is suffering through its worst depression since the 1930s. Oil prices remain above $70 per barrel, and the International Energy Agency has indicated that world oil production will now peak in 2020—10 years sooner than it previously estimated. Some analysts think the world has already reached peak oil production.

In this climate of global instability, Russia’s recent moves on the world’s oil stage will be amplified in dramatic fashion. By unlocking Siberia’s energy reserves, Russia is simultaneously binding Asia together and lighting a fire under Europe.

Watch for the development of an Asian alliance between Russia, China and Japan. And watch for Europe’s next moves toward the Middle East. •

THE NEW GERMANY

How America’s Friendship With Germany Will End

March 10, 2010 | From theTrumpet.com

Remember the Plain Truth’s accurate forecasting.

Who’d have thought, amid the butchery of World War ii, that America and Germany would ever be allies? Yet soon after war’s end, the foundation for an unlikely partnership was laid. The United States established the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, especially Germany, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization launched, binding Europe and North America in a military alliance.

If you understand biblical prophecy, you know that this union, from the beginning, was bound to end in ruin. The fraying of the transatlantic relationship we see today is merely an unfolding of this inevitability.

Under the guidance of Herbert W. Armstrong, the Plain Truth newsmagazine had this understanding. Do you remember the Plain Truth? At the peak of its circulation in the 1980s, 8.4 million copies went out each month—more than Time and Newsweek combined. It is remarkable to review what that unique magazine said about this alliance in light of current events.

“Economic recovery masks deep divisions that must eventually rip asunder the Atlantic alliance,” the Plain Truth wrote nearly three decades ago, in September 1983.

Three decades before that, in April 1952, as America began to lead in allowing Germany to rearm, staff writer Herman Hoeh explained why this effort was so misguided: “The heart of the German people, indoctrinated with Nazism, has not been converted to our way of life. If they really … have come to love us since their defeat, would they now be trying to bargain for domination in Europe …? Is that the way love is manifested? Can we purchase love with money?” (Good News, emphasis mine throughout).

Again, the Plain Truth wrote in February 1956: “America seems wedded to the idea that it can buy friends and allies around the world with ready American cash. We intend to hold friendly nations to us by generously supplying money and arms. But it isn’t working!”

These statements apply more today than ever. The U.S. has spent billions trying to purchase allies such as Pakistan and Egypt—nations that continue their march toward radicalism regardless; American dollars have been pumped into numerous causes in South America, Asia and other arenas. None of this largesse has increased support for American policies or earned a jot of respect. The money isn’t talking. These efforts are a trap.

But biblical prophecy points in particular to the danger in America seeking an alliance with Germany. And America’s tendency to try to buy Germany’s “love” has grown unnaturally strong.

As the Plain Truth alluded to, America is prophesied to try to strengthen this ill-fated relationship. (You can read about these prophecies in our booklets Nahum: An End-Time Prophecy for Germany and Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet). It was this impulse that led America (under the auspices of nato) to act as a willing lackey of Germany (itself under cover of the EU common foreign policy) in the Balkan wars that fragmented the Yugoslav Republic and ended with the former Yugoslavia’s constituent states becoming virtual colonies of the rising European empire.

This forecast again echoed on Dec. 1, 2009, when America’s ambassador to Germany publicly declared that Germany is “Washington’s most important ally.” “We need strong partners—and nowhere are there better or more committed partners than in Europe. And Germany is the centerpiece of the European Union,” he said. Many American leaders have encouraged Europe, particularly Germany, to take a stronger leadership role in the world; even President Barack Obama has urged Europeans to assume “the burdens of global leadership.”

America thoroughly trusts Europe and sees the relationship as mutually beneficial. Europe, however, has a different view.

When the European commissioner for external affairs said, upon President Obama’s inauguration, that he anticipated a “more balanced relationship” between Europe and America, he meant balanced in favor of more European power and less American power.

As the Plain Truth suggested would happen, the EU’s antipathy toward America became plain in the shadow of the global economic meltdown. Europe blames the Anglo-American economic model for the crisis. It has tried to smother New York’s and London’s financial leadership through burdensome regulation so as to shift the world’s financial center to Brussels/Berlin. It has seized the lead as the world’s top financial regulator. It has exacted harsh penalties on giant American companies including Intel, Google and Microsoft, forcing American firms to play by Europe’s rules. As a direct consequence of the economic crash, all G-20 nations have signed up to permit the EU-controlled Financial Stability Board to regulate their economies. America has subjected itself to Europe’s economic rule. It has placed enormous faith in Europe’s beneficence and sense of fair play.

Where is this leading? Again let’s turn to the prophetically guided forecasting of Mr. Armstrong’s Plain Truth for the startling answer.

Read what was published in the March 1974 edition: “European antagonism toward the United States and its policies is now in the open. The next few years will bring forth more misunderstanding, conflicts of interest and, at times, outright hostility between the United States and Europe. Europe—includingthen] West Germany—will have to build its own unified armed forces, including nuclear weapons. Religious as well as political forces will play a key role in the future.” [

Though these “misunderstandings, conflicts of interest and … outright hostility” may at times be obscured by America’s prophesied desperation to become “lovers” with Europe, this is the inescapable underlying reality. This is now happening.

The trend that began with the Balkan wars—where Europe co-opts American power via nato to serve its own interests—also continues. Thanks to European machinations, nato has metamorphosed radically from its form at its creation as a protector and defender of free democracies against the forces of tyranny. It is now ever more linked with the EU, pursuing that empire’s goals. nato is scheduled to draft a new Strategic Concept—a new reason for being—this year. This is certain to reflect a new homogeneity with the strategic military goals of the German High Command under the cloak of the Western European Union.

An additional grave concern is the fact that, under the auspices of nato, the U.S. has about 200 B61 nuclear gravity bombs stored in European countries. As Brad Macdonald recently explained, nato’s new Strategic Concept could place these bombs in the hands of the EU. Mr. Armstrong wrote about this prospect in the April 1980 Plain Truth: “You may be sure the West European leaders are conferring hurriedly and secretly about how and how soon they may unite and provide a united European military force so they can defend themselves! … And when they are strong enough to assert themselves, they will first attack Britain for standing firm with the U.S., and then they will return a lot of hydrogen bombs the U.S. has stored now in Europe!”

That, shockingly, is the ultimate fate of the American-European relationship as prophesied in the Bible. For America to goad Germany into accepting combat roles outside its borders is terribly naive.

The EU is growing more independent of the U.S. and is strengthening its position as a world power, just as the Plain Truth prophesied. The growing rift between the U.S. and the EU is tipping the power balance decisively in Europe’s—particularly Germany’s—favor. This should stir the deepest alarm within America’s leaders, if they only knew where it was leading. They ignore Mr. Armstrong’s warnings at their peril.

If you want to see more on how accurate the Plain Truth’s Bible-based news analysis and forecasting really was, you need a copy of our new booklet He Was Right. Just this week, the Trumpet staff is sending a completely revised and updated copy of this booklet (originally published 10 years ago) to the printer. It chronicles an array of predictions, forecasts and prophecies, printed over a period of five decades by Herbert W. Armstrong and the Plain Truth, that have since come to pass! It is an inspiring vindication of the inerrancy of biblical prophecy. Order a free copy today. •