I do follow German news as I live in Europe. The AFD won’t be running the country any time soon, they do not have the numbers for that and all of the other parties have said they will not go into coalition with them. A few high profile wins in the former east Germany who have long had grievance with the former west is not the rise of the next Nazis.

The current US administration has far more in common with the rise of the Nazis than the AFD anyway if you have been paying attention. The capture of the state and judiciary, their own Gestapo in ICE. There are great lists online of all of the parallels with the rise of the Nazis in Germany you can see for yourself. Americans should be afraid and fighting back but they are all too distracted by the next crazy thing trump does or says.

The USA is reliant on the rest of the world buying their debt, as soon as this stops as we are seeing now the USA will be in big trouble. Couple this with the inevitable bursting of the crazy AI bubble and a divided population while your biggest rival in China capitalises on every mistake. The USA has clearly peaked and the question now is will the decline be fast or slow.

Why do you think Germany teaching kids about the horrors they committed during ww2 hasn’t been working? I haven’t noticed a 4th Reich rising!

We do not need to get into the difficulties in holding other nations to account for crimes permitted in a different nation and the lack of laws at the time to prosecute most of the 2nd and 3rd tier Nazis or the underlying antisemitism that was not limited to Nazi Germany in Europe at the time as that is a different conversation.

I agree with you when you speak of people’s short memories when it comes to making money in a cynical business sense over the long term. The USA’s danger at the moment is all in the short term, the trust they have lost will take decades of good foreign policy and reliability which I can’t see happening with the current divide in American politics. Any olive branches offered by the democrats will likely be undone by the republicans and it is this unreliability that will be the death of the American economy. The USA has been the most reliable and trusted trading partner for the last century. The uncertainty is what has the rest of the world decoupling from the USA right when they are starting to feel the burden of their national debt that used to be bought up by the rest of the world.

The bond market is now showing cracks, the USA’s financial dominance over the last 35 years has been built primarily on the tech boom they have experienced. They went all in on AI and are now doubling down like a gambler as China offers free open source alternatives making an AI dominance look unlikely. China is now the most interesting tech innovator in robotics and manufacturing. I can’t see how things go back to normal for the states after this, only a long period of decline and loss of relevance on the world stage. I do not take joy from this, my own country’s current financial boom is overly reliant on these American companies.

Germany as a nation teaches its children about all their dark history and acknowledges the atrocities committed. Their leaders were held to account at Nuremberg while the country was under allied occupation, I accept your point that it was not Germany themselves holding them to account but the country as a whole accepts responsibility for their crimes in a way the USA couldn’t even imagine.

The USA on the other hand has never accepted formal responsibility for the genocide of the native American population.

The subversions of justice you mentioned by the allied powers, I fail to see the point you are making mentioning this.

Your view that it will be business as usual after the current American regime is what I think is rose tinted. The USA used to get away with the atrocities they committed using a combination of plausible deniability and soft power. This is no longer an option post the current trump regime, this is the point. This loss of soft power with their former allies will only hasten the USA’s downfall and it is hard to see them maintaining their current dominant position going forward. The USA’s current prosperity is borrowed not earned and is in part financed by their allies. The current bond market is an indicator of what is to come.

Sounds perfect, 3 months will be a good start anyway!

In fairness to Germany we had the Nuremberg trials where the top Nazis were held accountable for their crimes and hanged. You could argue that the current American administrations crimes are not on a par with Nazi Germany’s, which I would agree with but accountability is not in the Americans vocabulary. Trump and his team have suffered no consequences from the Jan 6th insurrection, I don’t think anyone will face any consequences for supporting Israel’s genocide both at the UN and in supplying the weapons to keep it going. I can’t see anyone being punished for the war crimes committed in Iran, worst of all bombing a little girls school killing 120 children.

America’s biggest loss under trump has been in the soft power they have spent the last 100 years building. The mask has fully slipped with no plausible deniability about what America is and where they are headed. We in Europe will still cynically do business with you, the USA remains the global military and financial hegemon but the public support is gone for a generation at least.

If you enjoy automation, tower defense, survival/building games Rimworld might be of interest to you. Enjoying committing war crimes is optional but a nice bonus!

Loser talk buddy, absolutely irrelevant to the conversation. Almost as bad as your stutter line…

The crank writing this article should be dismissed as soon as he says,

“Finally, as I explained in January 2025, NATO is a now military shadow of its former self and could not win a conventional war against Russia”

If you read the article all the way to the end it also states that the article was originally drafted in March 2025 but was “thought to be too radical”.

A whole lot has changed since March 2025, the EU has not collapsed as he predicted. Russia’s economy on the other hand is at deaths door, oil refineries and warehouses burn as Russians que for hours at petrol stations.

The writer of the article called for complete, immediate and total capitulation to every Russian demand and questions NATO’s very post cold war existence all while the very country NATO was set up to deter is waging a land war in Europe. This myopic viewpoint is not a serious analysis of geopolitics yet you lap up the drivel because of your own confirmation bias.

That’s the curse of the internet, we can all find articles that support our own views and biases. I hope you are comfortable living in your echo chamber as Russia falls apart because some crackpot dissenter supports what you support.

Did I fucking stutter? Read what I wrote, not what you want to think I wrote.

Wow, you flipped from a concern troll to an angry teenager very quickly, it usually takes more than that with your lot. It seems the more precarious Russia’s position gets the touchier you guys get too. I also don’t know why you are talking about stuttering when we are communicating via text, it probably sounded cooler in your head!

Anyway if Trump orders a tactical nuclear strike on Iran, it depends on how the world reacts.

If if if, bla bla bla. You are living in dreamland here talking about the most unlikely of scenarios, why waste our time? Even in your dreamland Russia is reactionary and not in control of the narrative.

You are correct when you say Russia has been constrained in their negligible response the Europe spending billions to kill Russian boys on the front lines. Russia has done nothing and will continue to do nothing because Russia is a yappy little dog, all bark and no bite. Russia only knows how to bully countries weaker than theirs but made a mistake in thinking Ukraine was in this category. Russia will continue to do nothing because they have nothing they can do. The only language Russia understands is violence and they are getting it.

You think Russia is bleeding the west? Delusions of grandeur buddy. If you haven’t been paying attention, Putin has loaded the war debt onto Russian banks that are currently creaking. Russian people are withdrawing their savings from banks at increasing rates month on month as fears on a Russian banking collapse intensify. If anyone knows what a banking and state collapse looks like, it is the Russian people. Russia is on the clock here big time.

And all that is before actual military retaliation against infrastructure in Europe.

The only way we see this is when Putin knows all is lost and wants to goad NATO into the fight so he can pretend he lost to NATO instead of the embarrassing reality.

To be fair, the EU is currently sending billions to support the Ukrainians in their fight against Russia. The EU is open about this support, it is no secret that there is a proxy war going on with Russia.

The Russian response against the EU has been pathetically weak, attacking undersea cables in secret provides a minor inconvenience, this camera business in the article is also quite pathetic compared to what the EU is doing to Russia.

In terms of going up the escalation ladder, Russia has barely gotten to step one because they can’t even handle Ukraine, why do you think they can open up a second front against NATO when they are down to Ladas and donkeys fighting Ukraine?

You also clearly do not understand the concept of mutually assured destruction, Europe has more than enough nukes to flatten Russia, the moment Russia even thinks about launching a nuke this will happen. If Russia takes out European decision making centres, British subs activate their protocol and destroy Russia. You are insane if you truly believe Russia will destroy itself over a tiny slice of Ukraine.

No, you are being down voted for being a whiney turd trying to both sides this conflict in the mistaken belief that two wrongs somehow make a right.

Was it Mrs. Doubtfire?

I don’t need to rage, Spain won. Just calling out the lame Argentine cry babies.

Look at you going around defending the Argentinian thugs who just produced what has been described by many as the worst world cup final performance by a team ever. Another accolade for Messi to win at the tail end of his career as one of the best players of all time.

Argentina were pathetic in the final and even worse after the final whistle. It was absolutely men against entitled little boys out there and the rest of the planet is delighted Spain and football won on the night. I only wish I could get that 2 1/2 hours of my life back. Dirty, cheating Argentine losers stole it from me like they tried to steal the world cup.

Disagree VARgentina, you’ve gotten away with a lot of hate the last few years because of Messi’s fanboys. Once he retires people will remember that Argentina are and always have been dirty cheats. At least you are the best in the world at something, chin up lad!

Only one team came to the final to play football, Spain had 20 shots 12 on target, Argentina had 2 shots with none on target in 120 mins of football. Argentina came to spoil the game and hoped to steal it on penalties. If I was an Argentina fan I would be embarrassed by the team and even more so by their petelent display at the end physically assaulting the Spanish players. The Argentinians had no right to be that upset, they were never in the game.

Football was the real winner.

Voldesoft, get 'em Harry!

They love pulling the ladder up after themselves once they get their “white” card, just like Rafael “Ted” Cruz.

Back in the 1840s a great Irishman named Daniel O’Connell addressed the Irish people going to New York asking them to abandon support for slavery and see their black brothers in the slums with them as their equals.

The Irish did not listen and were handed their whiteness by the ruling WASPs to be their enforcers, the New York police force. The Irish Americans abandoned and turned on the black community to enforce the status quo.

Good on Rubio and Cruz for keeping this long-standing tradition alive!

You would have a point if it was sanctions alone that Russia was facing.

It is fortunate in this case that Russia is also up against a well motivated Ukrainian army whose attacks have been increasing in sophistication as the war has progressed. Russia on the other hand has been on the back foot recently, they have appeared unable to adjust to Ukraine’s drone strikes on logistics behind the front lines and have had a net loss in square km gained the last 4 months in a row.

We’ve been hearing the same idiots saying “sanctions didn’t work immediately therefore they don’t work” since 2022. Those of us with higher than room temperature IQs realised that Russia planned for the war and sanctions to the tune of a $600 billion savings fund.

I still find it hilarious that Russia left about half of this in hostile countries that confiscated it immediately. Imagine Russia had that extra cash? They probably would have had a chance of winning this war without that blunder.