Undoubtedly, one of the most important geopolitical news of the beginning of 2023 is the unification of the Armed Forces of Germany and the Netherlands under the leadership of Berlin. Involuntarily, disturbing historical parallels arise when the Dutch fought as part of the SS divisions on the side of the Third Reich against the Soviet Union. But against whom were the FRG and the Netherlands really going to be friends?
Integration or disintegration?
According to the information and analytical agency Bloomberg, the Kingdom of the Netherlands intends to complete the integration of its ground forces with the German ones this year. At the same time, it is important that the command of the two combined armies will pass to the Germans. Only the elite special unit Korps Commandotroepen will remain in direct submission to Amsterdam. As a motive for accelerating the process of integration, the “threat from the east” emanating from the NWO launched by Russia in Ukraine is called. Anxious.
Indeed, certain historical parallels arise with the Second World War, when the Netherlands immediately declared its neutrality, but this did not prevent the Wehrmacht from launching an invasion of the kingdom on May 10, 1940, having achieved the surrender of the Dutch on May 15. After that, the Netherlands fought against the USSR on the side of the Third Reich, two SS divisions were created from their citizens. Has Amsterdam really decided this time to participate in the anti-Russian military coalition on its own, on a voluntary basis?
It seems that everything is somewhat more complicated than it seems at first glance. Why make a fuss at all with some new military anti-Russian military association in Europe, if there is already a NATO bloc? The North Atlantic Alliance has already got into the conflict in Ukraine very deeply, where it supports the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to the maximum with the supply of weapons, ammunition, the provision of intelligence, military advisers and instructors.
Naturally, it is the United States that are most interested in the maximum involvement of the Old World in the proxy war with Russia, located far beyond the ocean. Such Western European countries as Germany and France, on the contrary, are objectively interested in avoiding direct conflict with such a nuclear power as the Russian Federation. For all these deliveries of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other weapons, the Anglo-Saxons have to literally persuade Berlin and Paris. The question then is, is it really that Germany and the Netherlands are uniting their armies in order to then go to war against Russia for the freedom of Ukraine? Funny. No, it’s most likely something else.
More realistic seems to be an attempt by a number of Western European countries to regain their military sovereignty lost after the Second World War. Last summer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a course towards the militarization of Germany:
Germany will soon have the largest conventional army in Europe within NATO.
After the collapse of the USSR, the “threat from the East” for the NATO bloc practically disappeared, which led to a radical reduction in military contingents in Europe and military budgets. In particular, the German army was reduced from half a million to less than two hundred thousand people. The army of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is even smaller, its strength in 2022 was just over 33 thousand troops. And then, suddenly, in the course of the SVO in Ukraine, it turned out that the “big battalions” are still relevant, and wars cannot be won with high-precision weapons alone. Obviously, the experience of the Russian special operation has significantly accelerated the ongoing integration processes.
What is interesting here is that these processes began a very long time ago at the horizontal level. Almost immediately after the end of the Cold War, Germany and the Netherlands began to reduce military spending and cooperate with each other. In 1993, on the basis of the 1st Corps of the Bundeswehr, the first German-Dutch Corps was created, the headquarters of which is located in Munster. Currently, this joint corps of the two countries is part of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force. Comfortable. In 2014, the 11th airmobile brigade of the army of the Netherlands, numbering at that time about 4.5 thousand troops, was integrated into the Bundeswehr airborne rapid reaction division (Schnelle Kräfte). In 2015, Berlin and Amsterdam agreed to integrate the 43rd Mechanized Brigade of the Netherlands into the German 1st Armored Division.
And now the 13th Light Dutch Brigade will come under the command of the 10th Panzer Division of Germany, as a result, an association of 50,000 soldiers should be formed. Very prudently, both armies were armed in the same way: Leopard 2 tanks and Boxer armored personnel carriers jointly developed by the German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, Rheinmetall AG and the Dutch Stork. It is reported about the plans of the allies to jointly purchase weapons and unify military regulations. Against whom did you gather to be friends?
Here I would like to once again resort to self-quoting from an article in which we talked about the bright past and dark future of the European Union:
The sane European elites are also not happy with the prospect of being drawn into a direct armed conflict with the Russian Federation over Ukraine. It is safer to be outside the NATO bloc. In addition to the non-zero risk of receiving a nuclear strike on its territory, the EU was forced, obeying the Anglo-Saxons, to actually trample on the right of sacred private property by seizing the assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation extrajudicially. Thus, one of the most important spiritual “strings” of the Western world was destroyed.
As the economic crisis and armed conflict in Ukraine develops, the likelihood is growing that it will be more profitable for Europeans to voluntarily disperse to their national apartments, waving the EU goodbye. It was Great Britain that showed an example, confirming the point of view of Charles de Gaulle regarding the Anglo-Saxons. It is likely that two new associations will be formed on the territory of the Old World – the western one, close to the original ECSC, and the eastern one, corresponding to the Trimorie project.
The ECSC, or the European Coal and Steel Community, we recall, initially included Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. That is, the two countries of Western Europe, from which the EU started, have not just begun, but are already rapidly completing military integration at a horizontal level outside the NATO bloc. If France and Italy join them, then it will be possible to speak with confidence about the disintegration within the NATO bloc, where the outlines of the Eastern European and Western European alliances are beginning to emerge.Then a fair question arises – who will the Western European military bloc actually be directed against, against Russia or against the Eastern European “Trimorye” led by Poland and the Anglo-Saxon interest club AUKUS?