A Quote by Mo Ibrahim
The Security Council represents the situation from 1945 - you had the Allies who won the war who occupied that. The defeated guys - the Germans and Japan - were out. The occupied countries had no voice. That was fine in '45, but today, Germany rules Europe, frankly. They are driving Europe but have no voice.
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Nationalism in Norway was very strong in 1905, that we must be free of Sweden. But I must say, I'm not 100 percent sure that was a wise decision. We had the war; we were occupied by Germans from 1940 to '45. And if there had been one Scandinavian country, then it would not have been so very easy probably to go ahead with the occupation.
We British and Americans have never been conquered and occupied by the Germans, or forced to make the choice between defiance and collaboration, or haunted by the choices, evasions and moral ambiguities that only a defeated and occupied country can feel.
In 2003, at the time I made my "Old Europe" comment, the center of gravity in NATO and Europe had long since shifted to the East. With the former Warsaw Pact countries joining NATO, the alliance has a different mix today. Some people were sensitive about my comment because they thought it was a pejorative way of highlighting demographic realities. Apparently they felt it pointed a white light at a weakness in Europe - an aging population. Europe has come some distance since World War II in becoming Europe.
We all need Europe, not just those of us in Europe. And we Germans need Europe more than the others. Germany is the country with the longest border, the most neighbours, and is, by population and economic strength, the number one in Europe.
If I were a German today, I would be proud, proud but also worried. I would be proud of the magnificent achievement of rebuilding my country, entrenching democracy and assuming the undoubtedly preponderant position in Europe. But a united Germany can't and won't subordinate its national interests in economic or in foreign policy to those of the Community indefinitely. Germany's new pre-eminence is a fact - and its power is a problem - as much for Germans as for the rest of Europe.
Germany will always do the minimum to preserve the euro. Doing the minimum, though, will perpetuate the situation where the debtor countries in Europe have to pay tremendous premiums to refinance their debt. The result will be a Europe in which Germany is seen as an imperial power that will not be loved and admired by the rest of Europe - but hated and resisted, because it will perceived as an oppressive power.
At 8 o'clock in the morning a dense throng of workers - almost 10,000 - assembled in the square, which the police had already occupied well ahead of time. Karl Liebknecht's voice then rang out: 'Down with the War! Down with the Government!' The police immediately rushed at him. For the first time since the beginning of the war open resistance to it had appeared on the streets of the capital. The ice was broken.
Europe's budget plans are better designed: countries from France to Greece are raising retirement ages; others, from Britain to Germany, have created new organisations and rules to encourage fiscal probity. But Europe risks overkill.
Norway was occupied by the Germans in the Second World War, and I've met a lot of people who had to live through that occupation in varying degrees.
Germany is Europe's heart. But bitterness is widespread. Currently the Germans hate the Greeks and the Greeks hate the Germans. The demonization of the country has to stop if we want a strong Europe. So I am setting a positive example.
Germany, which has lately united 80 million Germans, has submitted certain neighboring countries to her supremacy and gained military strength in many aspects, and thus has become, as clearly can be seen, a dangerous rival to principal imperialistic powers in Europe - England and France. That is why they declared war on Germany on a pretext of fulfilling the obligations given to Poland. It is now clearer than ever, how remote the real aims of the cabinets in these countries were from the interests of defending the now disintegrated Poland or Czechoslovakia.
And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.
The US tactical nuclear weapons are in Europe, let us not forget this. Does it mean that the US has occupied Germany or that the US never stopped the occupation after World War II and only transformed the occupation troops into the NATO forces?
What happened in Kosovo was the exact reversal of what happened in 'Fortress Europe' in 1943-45. Let me explain. Air Marshall 'Bomber' Harris used to say that 'Fortress Europe' was a fortress without a roof, since the Allies had air supremacy. Now, if we look at the Kosovo War, what do we see? We see a fortress without walls but with a roof! Isn't that disappearance extraordinary?!
Germany has become the economic heart of Europe because our leaders are weak. But Germany should never forget that France is Europe's political heart. What is happening here today foreshadows what will happen in the rest of Europe in the coming years: the great return of the nation-state, which they wanted to obliterate.
Behind Trump's promise to 'make America great again' lie many fallacies. The most important fallacy is that America's place in the world can be restored to the one it occupied after World War II, when Europe was still recovering from vast devastation and most developing countries were still European colonies. It can't be.
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