Mutti's Big Adventure

It's a good title for what can be described for Chancellor Merkel, President Trump, the G-7 meeting results, and the next twelve months.

The G-7 insiders wrote up the mandated talking points for this meeting.  Climate change.  Refugee distribution. Global economy.  Foreign policy.  All you had to do was attend discuss things, and just agree to the scripted points.

President Trump looked at the climate change talk and he wasn't prepared to sign anything, and various things were up for further study.  The refugee distribution thing....he wasn't going to touch. He went off into a direction of non-agreement.

It's a curious thing about G-7 meetings, if you go and drag history professor or long-time journalist into a discussion about the benefits of the meetings.  Basically, nothing of any value ever occurs at these meetings.  It's just have photo-ops and chit-chat.  You go back and have some points with your news media over meeting with world leaders.  So, in some ways, this was your normal average G-7 meeting, with minimal results.

For Mutti...Chancellor Merkel....it's a doomed failure and her chance to chat up the new world order....basically Germany and France must lead Europe in the dark days ahead.  The US and UK....are outsiders and not going to be helpful for the Europeans.

Typically in a German election period, if there is a Republican sitting President....the SPD Party candidate goes full-blast against US policy, NATO, nukes, or some military affair.  It's been that way for forty-odd years.  In this case, Merkel converted herself and the CDU over into this anti-US group and took over the SPD-theme.  I'm guessing that the SPD is sitting there now (at least the top thirty members), and sipping off a couple of beers....shaking their heads because Merkel stole their theme song.

My observations of this little adventure developing:

1.  There's been talk for ten days over this sensitive BND (German CIA) report that BILD got ahold of and indicates that 6-million refugees are going to make way from Libya to open seas in the Med starting in early June and run through the end of August.  It sounds bogus from the sheer number suggested....but you just have to wonder.

Here's the thing....the charity ships, Italian and French Navy in the region....would not have the capability to pick up the thousands of rafts that would be dumped with 6-million refugees.  Nor would they have the organizational talents to pick-up and dump them at various Italian ports.  Who does?  The US Navy.  My guess is that part of this G-7 discussion over refugees likely touched on this scenario of the 6-million....getting the US to agree to take some of the folks, and to help in the 'rescue'.  Since the US is out, the chance of any successful 'rescue' is marginal at best.

2.  Once Chancellor Merkel said the magic phrase that she and France's Macron would lead Europe through the darkness....I'm guessing that at least ten European countries sat there and laughed.  Greece especially.  A French-German tugboat dragging the rest of Europe?  It' not on a wish-list for European countries.  It may sound good to Merkel, but it's mostly a joke.

3.  In some ways, this G-7 meeting simply moved the NATO future to the next level.  The two-percent of GDP rule (which has an open period for another five or six years to reach the agreed levels) is a problem for the Trump administration.  My guess is that by the end of 2017.....some troop movements or reductions will occur.

My humble guess is that some Army units might end up in Poland, or the UK, and the rest go back to the US.  The Air Force might keep Ramstein around to a lesser degree, but move some operations into UK bases.  The footprint by 2021 would be greatly reduced.  The UK might be the only country in Europe with a fair amount of US basing.

I don't necessarily see this as a negative.  The Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and it's a waste to continue the amount of spending.

For Russia?  They don't spend near the amount that they did in the 1980s and it's not the threat that one would imagine from the Soviet Union days.

4.  For the 2020 election?  Germans have to be sitting there in absolute belief that a replacement for Trump will occur.  Just run the clock out and wait for January of 2021.  Well....unless Trump runs again, or we get another Trump-like character (The Rock says he might run for President).

5.  So we come to this odd piece of 2017....the six-million refugees and potentially having Erdogan release a million refugees from Turkey into Greece.  As much as Chancellor Merkel seems to be on top of the world right now.....there's this refugee problem sitting there.  If someone were to suggest two to three million refugees coming into Germany before the end of 2017.....you'd start to notice at least 50-percent of the German public in some fit of anger.

Merkel has been able to use the table agreement with Erdogan to control the sensitive topic for roughly 15 months.    The German public is relieved.

As much as this G-7 end looks great for Merkel.....it's simply short period of relief because of the potential refugee mess that could be arriving shortly.

Not to wish something bad upon anyone but this is a pretty big pit to fall into if the refugee issue starts to occur.  All of this anti-Trump talk won't matter in this case.