The National Security Strategy of the Trump Administration is here - Roderich Kiesewetter

A Germany’s expert and MP made clear his opposition to the Geopolitics of Chaos offered by Donald Trump Roderich Kiesewetter

December 8, 2025

German foreign policy and security expert and member of the German parliament Roderich Kiesewetter issued another stark warning, this time regarding the latest US National Security Strategy (NSS) document. This is his statement:

The National Security Strategy of the Trump Administration is here

Anyone who reads the document must understand: The United States has not only bid farewell to its role as the "world policeman," but the upheavals run much deeper.

The United States is no longer interested in Europe. Even more: This administration no longer views Europe - and specifically the EU - as a partner, but rather, in large part, as strategic ballast, as an economic adversary, and as a civilization in decline.

For Trump, it’s "States over Institutions." The EU as a force for order is seen as a hostile construct that stands in the way of U.S. interests. In the economic worldview of this administration, we are not an ally, but a competitor that must be made to pay up.

Trump thinks transactionally and with a deal-making mentality that contradicts Europe’s institutionalized and rules-based approach.

The (military) music is playing exclusively in the Indo-Pacific. The resources we need for protection (air defense, reconnaissance) are heading to Guam and Taiwan to contain China. Nothing will be left for us unless we build it ourselves.

The talk of Europe’s “civilizational decline” in the NSS is a slap in the face. They no longer entrust us with the future. Anyone who writes about partners in this way won’t defend them when it really counts.

What does that mean? The era of the “security guarantee” is over. Washington now treats us more like an annoying client state that’s supposed to pay tribute, or like an economic rival that must be kept in check.

I say this as a committed transatlanticist: Precisely because the United States sees us this way, we must finally stop being supplicants. We should stop blindly hoping and instead build up our own capabilities with maximum efficiency and develop smart power that makes us more independent and resilient.

Because the United States is pulling back, we must support Ukraine more strongly. If Ukraine falls, Russia will be at our border - and Washington won’t come to save us. Integrating Ukraine now as part of European defense and supporting it in such a way that it can push Russia back is part of this necessary efficiency. It will only cost us half of what a Russian success would.“

Out of the Darkness, The Germans, 1942-2022, by Frank Trentmann

Out of the Darkness, by Frank Trentmann (Knopf). Germany’s postwar transformation into Europe’s political conscience is often cast as a triumphant story of moral rehabilitation. This book points to the limitations of that narrative, arguing that, in the past eight decades, German society has been “preoccupied with rebuilding the country and coming to terms with the Nazi past” rather than with confronting its obligations to the broader world. 

Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop.

Artigos da Foreign Affairs sobre o início do nazifascismo na Alemanha

 Dez anos depois de sua criação, a revista Foreign Affairs, do Council on Foreign Relations de NY, refletiu com acuidade os perigos e as dúvidas do início do regime nazista. Ninguém previa os horrores do final da década.

July 24, 2022 | View In Browser  Sponsored by IMF Publications Ginevra Vacalebre  The Nazi Party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, rose to power in a Germany wracked by economic and political crisis. Most Foreign Affairs contributors at the time recognized the dangers of the far-right movement, but they could not foresee how total and how devastating Nazi rule would become. In 1931, Erich Koch-Weser, a prominent German liberal politician, identified the Nazis as the chief threat among the groups exploiting the “political radicalism” of the era — but wrote off a power grab as “extremely doubtful.” In 1932, the journalist Paul Scheffer explored Hitler’s “reckless skill” in playing on Germans’ anxieties, hatreds, and hopes — but remained skeptical that the Nazi movement could “be carried over into practical politics.”   After the party’s success in parliamentary elections, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. From there, the country’s social and political transformation was swift. “One by one continue to fall the last possible citadels of defense against uncontradicted Nazi dictatorship,” Foreign Affairs Editor Hamilton Fish Armstrong wrote later that year. Questions remained about how the Nazis would govern at home and how far they would push their “brash” and “impatient” policies abroad. But in those early months, Armstrong noted, “we cannot pretend that as yet there is any real evidence to cause our fears to diminish.”   Even years later, after World War II had begun, the grip of the Nazi regime on German society—which the journalist Dorothy Thompson described in 1940 as a revolution based on “the psychopathy of Hitler”—was difficult to comprehend. Easier to grasp was the magnitude of the threat Nazi Germany posed. As Thompson put it, “the West confronts the greatest danger in her whole history.” Radical Forces in Germany By Erich Koch-Weser (1931) Hitler: Phenomenon and Portent By Paul Scheffer (1932) Hitler’s Reich The First Phase By Hamilton Fish Armstrong (1933) The Problem Child of Europe By Dorothy Thompson (1940) We’re celebrating 100 years of Foreign Affairswith newsletters, events, a special issue, and more. Learn about our centennial here.

The Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze on the German economy under Hitler and during WWII - WW2TV

The Wages of Destruction

 Part of Reanalysed Week on WW2TV

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_pZtzELV48

Professor Adam Tooze is a British historian who is a Professor at Columbia University and Director of the European Institute. From a start in modern German history with a special focus on the history of economics and economic history his interests have widened to take in a range of themes in political, intellectual and military history, across a canvas stretching from Europe across the Atlantic. 

https://adamtooze.com/ 

In today's show we look at Germany's wartime economy as explored by Adam's in his award winning book The Wages of Destruction. Our talking points will include the fact that after the Germans had failed to defeat Great Britain in 1940, the economic logic of the war drove them to an invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler was constrained do so in 1941 to obtain the natural resources necessary to challenge two economic superpowers: the United States and the British Empire. 

That sealed the fate of the Third Reich because it was resource constraints that made victory against the Soviet Union impossible, especially when it received supplies from the Americans and the British to supplement the resources that remained under Soviet control. We will also talk about Strategic bombing, Albert Speer and also German's pre-WWII rearmament. 

Buy the book: 

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UK https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/978014... 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_pZtzELV48

The Globalist: China among the greatest, by volume, but also by quality

O mais recente boletim de Globalist, traz algumas matérias que confrontam resultados chineses – indicadores econômicos e sociais – com os de países atualmente na vanguarda do desenvolvimento mundial. A China já é a maior economia mundial, a despeito do fato que, em termos per capita, ela ainda vai levar décadas para se equiparar aos países mais avançados.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

China Vs. the US: Just the Facts

China Vs. the US: The GDP Race

Who leads depends on how it’s measured. | By The Globalist

China Vs. the US: Lifespan Gains

A child born in China today can expect to live decades longer than someone born in China in 1950. | By The Globalist

China Vs. Europe: Living Standards and Costs

While much of China remains poor, some cities are now on par with EU levels. | By The Globalist

China Vs. the US: Who Has More Land?

The two countries have very similar land areas for now, but China has extensive additional claims. | By The Globalist

China Vs. The US: The GDP Race

Who leads depends on how it’s measured.

9

By The Globalist, April 13, 2018

Takeaways

• At market prices, China’s GDP is still only about 61.7% the size of the US economy.
  
• China’s economy is also more than three times greater than that of Germany, and four and a half times larger than the economies of France or the United Kingdom.
  

1. At market prices, China’s GDP (the size of its economy) is still only about 61.7% the size of the U.S. economy, according to International Monetary Fund estimates in 2017.

2. China is the second-largest economy in the world in nominal terms (i.e., without adjustment for local purchasing power). 

3. China’s GDP is nearly two-and-a-half times larger than that of third-ranked Japan.

China and the US Compared: A “Just The Facts” Series

China Vs. the US: The GDP Race

China Vs. the US: Lifespan Gains

China Vs. Europe: Living Standards and Costs

China Vs. the US: Who Has More Land?

4. China’s economy is also more than three times greater than that of Germany, and four and a half times larger than the economies of France or the United Kingdom.

5. Only by measuring China’s GDP in international dollars that adjust for local purchasing power does it surpass the United States’ economic size.

6. By this indicator, the U.S. economy is 84% the size of China’s. 

7. China certainly seems destined for economic pre-eminence, if current trends continue. 

8. This would be a return to China’s previous path and position in the global economy. 

9. Back in 1820, two centuries ago, the largest productive economies in the world were China and India. 

10. Together they accounted for half of the aggregate value of the global economy at the time.

Sources: IMF, Maddison Project Historical Statistics, The Globalist Research Center

China's pivot, Brazil's stance: a personal view - Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Invited, at the last minute, to a GIBSA (Germany, India, Brazil, South Africa) conference in Brasilia, to express myself about China's pivot in Asia Pacific and its implications for Brazil, I have chosen to put a few ideas on paper about this important relationship, much more of a mere commercial nature than having greater geopolitical implications. Brazil is not part of the big geopolitical game of the Asia Pacific region, we are just a middle country struggling to recover ourselves from the Great Destruction brought by the criminal government of Worker's Party and its mafia kind of government.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

This is the meeting: 

GIBSA Workshop: Germany, India, Brazil and South Africa:A Strategic Quadrilogue 2016
Geoeconomics and Geopolitics at Play:
The outlook from Europe, South Asia, South America and Africa
Brasilia, September 25 – 27

The GIBSA Quadrilogue was launched in 2007 as a collaboration between four Think Tanks: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, the Centro Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (CEBRI) in Rio de Janeiro, the Institute of Peace & Conflict Studies (IPCS) in New Delhi, and the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria. The forum is supposed to facilitate exchanges of ideas between these countries with regard to their respective perceptions and analyses of international relations.

And this is my paper: 

China’s pivot, Brazil’s stance: a personal view

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

(http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

 [GIBSA meeting, Brasília, September 26, 2016]

Since August, I’m Director of the Brazilian International Relations Research Institute, supposedly a think tank for Itamaraty, today much more a tank than a think. Let’s assume, then, that we are capable of doing some free think work, as we do not have financial resources of our own, or a proper research staff to fill the tank side of this dependent body of the Alexandre de Gusmão Foundation.

Alexandre de Gusmão is said to be the grand-father of the Brazilian diplomacy, as the role of father is reserved to our Grand Priest, Baron of Rio Branco, for once minister in Berlin, before being the most famous Brazilian diplomat, the sole to be reproduced in at least six of our last eight currencies throughout the 20^th century. Gusmão, a Brazilian diplomat on behalf of the Portuguese crown, negotiated the 1750 partition of South America between Spain and Portugal, redrawing the geopolitical map of the region and in fact abolishing the famous Tordesillas treaty (1494), a kind of Yalta partition of the world at the dawn of modern era.

Being currently outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I cannot pretend to speak on behalf of this respectable, traditional and very old institution, older than the corresponding bodies of Germany, India and South Africa. As I cannot speak for the Ministry, and as I cannot either redraw any geopolitical map for today’s international relations of Brazil, I’ll speak for myself, trying to express personal views about, not exactly China’s role in the world, but Brazil’s stance towards the new giant of the 21^st geopolitical scenario. I will try to correct some misperceptions, among our friends from abroad, about Brazil’s stance in relation to the new kids in the block, that is, IBSA and BRICS, the innovations of the 2000s, and about Brazil’s recent partisan diplomacy.

What is important to perceive, at the start, and I stress this for our guests, is that we have to make a very clear distinction between Brazilian traditional, and professional, diplomacy, and that other “diplomacy”, the one that was publicized and practiced by the Worker’s Party governments, both under Lula and Dilma, a diplomacy that was based much more on ideological choices than well reflected decisions, a foreign policy that pursued old beliefs based on a North-South divide, and on an delusional and futile attempt to unite “non-hegemonic” countries in the restructuring of global relations.

(...)

Available at Academia.edu: 

https://www.academia.edu/s/42e5a419f5/3041-chinas-pivot-brazils-stance-a-personal-view-2016

In Twetter: 
Join my feedback session on "3041) China's pivot, Brazil's stance: a personal view (2016)." https://www.academia.edu/s/42e5a419f5/3041-chinas-pivot-brazils-stance-a-personal-view-2016?source=twitter