GERMANY - Germany will be watching keenly when the mercurial US president meets his Russian counterpart on Monday. Germans are concerned on three counts: NATO, Crimea and the Nord Stream gas pipelines. The German government's commissioner on Russian affairs, Dirk Wiese, isn't commenting on Donald Trump's meeting on Monday in Helsinki with Russia's Vladimir Putin. But he and many other German leaders will be carefully, perhaps nervously, monitoring the talks between the two presidents. Trump has made it something of a habit of late to single out Germany for criticism and any signs of agreement between him and Putin would further fray nerves in Berlin. Germany is particularly concerned about three issues.
The future of NATO
The cornerstone of German defense policy is its membership in NATO, so Berlin has been very disconcerted by Trump's occasional denigrating remarks about the trans-Atlantic alliance and his criticism of what he says is Germany's unfairly low military spending. "The big question is how reliable the American president will be and whether he will make promises to Putin that aren't agreed in advance with his NATO partners."
The status of Crimea
A litmus test of how far Trump hews to the NATO line or cozies up to Putin will be Crimea. Germany has left no doubt of its condemnation of Russia's annexation of the peninsula… Should Trump make concessions to Putin on this score, Germany and the EU would interpret it as an act of betrayal. "If President Trump… recognizes Crimea as Russian, he will be selling out not only the rights of Ukraine but also the security and sovereignty of states in Europe," Harms said.
The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has turned into a bone of contention
Germans also have a very vested interest in Trump and Putin's discussions concerning the two Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. Trump has been very critical of the project, claiming that it will leave Germany unacceptably dependent on the Kremlin.
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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