EUROPE QUIETLY RESISTS US BULLYING

Vince Dhimos answered a question at Quora.
 
Before we get into the question and answer, note the utter naïveté of this questioner, apparently an American. He has been reading and hearing in the msm about the US campaign to destroy China’s economy and apparently firmly believes that President Trump has supreme power over all the countries in the world to bring down China or do whatever else he wants. This indoctrinated Westerner is so ethnocentrically oriented that he or she apparently has no idea of the massive push-back in the rest of the world to the US attempt to dominate world opinion and world trade and politics. If America wakes up before November from this opiate slumber that we are witnessing here at Quora, and realizes that Trump has had almost zero influence on people outside the US, or has in fact had the opposite influence to that desired, a surprise may await it. Trump is keenly aware of his constituents’ mentality and to their hopes and desires and he gives the little dears what they want. But he seems to be blissfully oblivious to how people elsewhere think and how they perceive his policies. This was evidenced by the administration’s belief that killing Gen Soleimani would help turn the Iranians against their own government. Instead, as any person with half a brain might have expected, it rallied the Iranians – even many fence sitters who may have sympathized with the West – around their government, as the world learned when multimillions turned out in Teheran to mourn their beloved general cut down in his prime by a senseless and illegal strike in Iraq. What the West failed to understand is that Iranians, even those opposed to the Ayatollahs, did not see Soleimani as part of their flawed government. They saw him as a hero. America killed the wrong guy.
 
https://www.quora.com/Will-Europe-join-forces-with-America-against-China/answer/Vince-Dhimos
 
Q: WILL EUROPE JOIN FORCES WITH AMERICA AGAINST CHINA?
 
The response of the UK to US threats is indicative of how things will play out. The UK decided, against US wishes, to go ahead and let Huawei help with the 5G rollout but pared down the Chinese role a bit to please the Empire. There will be similar somewhat timid but nonetheless defiant reactions around Europe to the unprecedented US bullying they have been subjected to since 2016.
 
For example, Germany has resisted US demands and obstinately refused to back down from its purchase of Russian gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline once it is completed, and Italy is openly cooperating with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a project that is anathema to the xenophobic US administration. Ex US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell wore out his welcome in Germany warning and threatening the Germans not to buy Russian gas, insisting this was a threat to its “energy security,” but the Europeans correctly assessed that the US was just shamelessly trying to use unfair methods to sell its overpriced gas there. Finally, in view of Grenell’s failure to successfully bully Germany, Trump kicked Grenell upstairs, naming him the new Director of National Intelligence. Funny how people working in “intelligence” have so little of it.
 
While Europe pretends to sort of comply with Washington’s demands, down underneath it is seething with anger at the US tyrant and chafing to free itself from Washington’s unfair trade restrictions and attempts to kill European industry (Airbus, which Washington wants to ban altogether, is the best example). BTW, it ought to be clear by now that we are dealing not just with Trump’s restrictions and trade wars. The US Establishment, including the Democrat Party top brass, is generally with Trump on this policy. Contrary to popular US opinion, there is really no major Deep State-vs-Trump divide on issues of vital interest to the Establishment – only on piddling issues like the “Russian meddling” myth.
 
In another example of European push back, France and China agreed to a joint cooperation action plan for strengthening French ties with China, including promoting dialogue and mutual trust; bilateral agreements on the environment; interconnectivity, including cooperation between the EU’s Europe-Asia connectivity strategy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Trump is vehemently opposed to this concept and wants to kill the BRI in a frantic – downright racist-looking — effort to strangle the Chinese economy. The Establishment is not opposed to Trump on this); protection of bilateral trade and cross-investment; and others.
 
European leaders are now talking about building strong multilateralism. The use of that word in a recent joint statement (EU and China want to build) between China on the one hand and French President Macon, German Chancellor Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, on the other, is brazen because multilateralism is nothing but a variant of multipolarity, the concept popularized by Russian President Putin in his famous 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference . Putin was referring to the emerging concept of a multipolar world to counter the influence of the monopolar (or unipolar) world dominated by the US. The use of the word multilateralism in a statement co-drafted by European leaders is a clear sign that Europe is quietly declaring its independence of Washington and moving toward Russia’s (and also China’s) multipolar world where the sovereignties of nations are respected. Quite unlike the current US Neo-colonial mentality. And quite the opposite of “taking the oil” in Syria or keeping troops in Iraq against the will of the Iraqis. By the US’s actions – trying to strong-arm Europe to stop dealing with Iran, to pull out of the Iran Deal, to refuse Russian gas in favour of US LNG, to halt the laying of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, and cut China out of the UK’s 5G rollout, etc – Washington has inadvertently rallied Europe in its efforts to free itself from the US yoke. Thus the US is unwittingly acting in the interests of those it is trying in vain to dominate and is inadvertently ushering in Putin and Xi’s multipolar (or multilateral) world.