Ukraine War: Biden to join NATO leaders in Brussels and attend European Council summit next week amid Ukraine war

President Joe Biden will travel to Europe next week to meet with world leaders and discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. The President will travel to Brussels, Belgium, to participate in a NATO summit on March 24 and will also join a European Council meeting, Psaki told reporters at a White House briefing.

The trip, which will be one of the most closely watched visits to Europe by an American president in decades, comes weeks after Russia launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Biden will "discuss ongoing deterrence and defense efforts," during the NATO summit and reaffirm the US' commitment to its NATO allies, Psaki said.

"He will also join a scheduled European Council summit to discuss our shared concerns about Ukraine, including trans-Atlantic efforts to impose economic costs on Russia, provide humanitarian support to those affected by the violence and address other challenges related to the conflict," she said.

Note EU-Digest: It is high time for the West to give Putin an ultimatum to stop the agression against Ukraine, or that they will establish a no-fly zone. It is also important that Russia realizes that if they use nuclear weapons, Russia itself will become a nuclear wasteland. US, NATO, EU and all its allies, please stop acting like "sissies", being pushed around by this bully !

Read more at: https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/biden-travel-to-europe/index.html

NATO allies put forces on standby as tensions rise over Ukraine crisis - by Eliza Mackintosh

NATO announced on Monday that some member countries are putting forces on standby and sending additional ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe as the United Kingdom and the United States ordered diplomats' families to withdraw from Ukraine amid concerns of a Russian invasion.

The developments underscore growing fears of a possible Russian incursion, following months of military maneuvering by Moscow that has set off a tit-for-tat series of escalations with NATO, a military alliance of Western powers.

Read more at: NATO allies put forces on standby as tensions rise over Ukraine crisis - CNN

NATO: has Jens Stoltenberg gone mad ? : NATO’S strategy 2030 to confront China's security challenges -"instead why not seek peaceful cooperation?"

The United States of America is leading the way in anticipating the NATO countries in Brussels to meet the “security challenges of 2030”, placing the “first priority on China” and then Russia as its ally. Therefore, the White House issued a statement to express the issue, affirming:

“The countries of NATO and the United States of America will jointly launch a set of “ambitious” initiatives to ensure the preservation of the security of the alliance until 2030 and beyond, with full focus on the upcoming threats from Russia and China, as they are the most important challenges facing the countries of the alliance in the coming years” The most prominent is the unanimity of the thirty members of NATO led by the United States of America, during the “Brussels” summit of the NATO leaders’ meeting in mid-June 2021, and their agreement in the statement of the NATO summit in June 2021, on: “The necessity of reviewing “NATO’s strategic concept”, which will “guide its approach in an evolving strategic environment”, to include: the hostile policies and behaviors of both Russia and China and the security challenges that China poses to our security and prosperity” Perhaps what is new in the “NATO” summit meeting in June 2021” is that explicit text issued in a clear public statement by the White House on China, and it is understood from it that “NATO and its members have become a security tool in Washington’s hands in order to move a proactive initiative expected by NATO against China and Russia”, which may represent a major shift in the path of the alliance and its strategic and defense objectives towards China, and we understand this by analyzing the approach of “NATO and its thirty members” in the recent period, as follows:

The declaration of the Secretary-General of NATO, “Jens Stoltenberg”, at the “NATO summit meeting in June 2021”, and his call by the leaders of the alliance countries during their summit in “Brussels”, the need to “establish a stronger common policy to counter the growing dominance of China”.

Secretary-General of NATO, “Stoltenberg” declared publicly and without substantiating his words with evidence, in echoing the same American security agenda towards China, by saying:

Read more at: NATO’S strategy 2030 to confront China's security challenges - Modern Diplomacy

Europe Doesn’t Want to Fight America’s Battles Anymore -by Christopher Caldwell

To listen to the debate in Europe over the chaotic retreat of United States troops from Afghanistan is to be struck by what a huge vocabulary Europeans have developed over the centuries for describing military calamities. What we just witnessed has already been described as a débâcle, a débandade, a dégringolade and a déroute, not to mention a “rout,” a “fiasco” and a “humiliation.”

The question at the heart of these discussions is whether the botched withdrawal is a failure serious enough to merit a rethinking of European-American defense arrangements. The Afghan war was a NATO operation, involving the core of the trans-Atlantic alliance system that dates from the Cold War. American fecklessness has left European leaders infuriated. In Germany, Armin Laschet, who is running to replace his Christian Democratic colleague Angela Merkel as chancellor in national elections this month, speaks of “the greatest debacle NATO has suffered since its founding.”

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/03/opinion/afghanistan-europe-nato.html

Afghanistan: Most European troops exit Afghanistan quietly after 20 years - time to leave NATO ?

Another failed NATO (US) campaign ends for EU member states in Afghanistan. It is high time for EU member states to stop wasting their young men and womens lives, and their citizens taxpayers money, by being part of the outdated NATO. It would be far better to focus instead on more lucrative activities, like global trade, medical science, global warming, space, and a variety of other more peaceful actvities.

Read more at: Most European troops exit Afghanistan quietly after 20 years

Afghanistan: What now to avoid disaster? - by Mohammad Ismail

Lets face it: NATO (US and its Atlantic Alliance partners) have lost their 20 year war against the Taliban, just like the Russians did before them. Apart from the tragic loss of lives during this time span, of not only US soldiers, but also many from the NATO European partner Nations, this disastrous war also wasted billions of Euros and US dollars of taxpayers money. Hopefully this military catastrophe will not be shovelled under the mat, and result in thorough investigations by the political establishments of the US and all NATO country member nations. Indeed the Afghanistan NATO mission has turned into another NATO disaster.

Read more at: Afghanistan: What now to avoid disaster? - Atlantic Council

NATO: What is NATO for? – by Mary Kaldor

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a geopolitical alliance. It was constructed during the cold war to counter a potential Soviet threat. NATO forces in western Europe, nuclear and conventional, anticipated and planned for a conventional Soviet attack—a Blitzkrieg across the German plains—on the model of World War II.

NATO could be transformed into an organisation for reducing and damping down conflict within the framework of the United Nations. It could represent the transatlantic contribution to peacekeeping. It would mean a focus on crisis management—reducing violence in the context of armed conflicts, massive violations of human rights or genocide.

Read more at: What is NATO for? – Mary Kaldor

EU-US Relations: EU ‘troublemakers’ back Trump over Biden in US election

ivergences on the managing of the rise of China or Europe’s need to do more for its own security are likely to remain, whoever is the next man in the White House. What would change is the tone as Biden, a convinced transatlanticist, believes the US can only play this role in dialogue with its partners.

Under Trump, Washington and Europe clashed on a number of issues, ranging from foreign policy or trade to environment, digital, and agriculture. Washington and Brussels even disagreed over how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EU is waiting for the results of the elections to impose $4 billion in compensatory tariffs on US exports, in response to Washington subsidies to Boeing. Brussels wants to try to find a negotiated solution and cancel US tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of European products, an option that could be on the cards if Biden is the winner.

Tensions, however, are expected to continue if Trump remains in the White House. The new EU Trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, expressed his willingness to find a fresh start with his administration when he took over in October. But he also warned that there is no room for more piecemeal agreements like the lobster deal to facilitate the bilateral trade.

Read more at: EU ‘troublemakers’ back Trump over Biden in US election – EURACTIV.com

EU-Turkish Relations: Rising EU-Turkey tensions take center stage with Borrell visit to Ankara

Tasked with addressing a growing list of grievances between European Union member states and Turkey, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell wrapped up a two-day visit to Ankara Tuesday.

From migration to the Libyan war and conflicting resource claims in the eastern Mediterranean, Borrell sought to mediate rising EU-Turkey tensions on multiple fronts as some European leaders have criticized Ankara for taking increasingly unilateral actions at the bloc’s expense.

Read more at
Rising EU-Turkey tensions take center stage with Borrell visit to Ankara

NATO: France and Turkey fracture Nato on Libya - "as Erdogan plays a dangerous game he could lose"- by Andrew Rettman

"Who cares about the EU or NATO ? Trump  agrees with me"

Nato is to investigate French allegations that Turkish warships targeted a French one in a confrontation over the Libya conflict, which has divided allies.

"The incident in the Mediterranean [Sea] was addressed in the meeting by several allies", Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said after Nato defence ministers held video-talks on Thursday (18 June).

"We have made sure that Nato military authorities are investigating the incident to bring full clarity to what happened," he said.

Turkish warships locked their weapons systems on to a French frigate called the Courbet, which was part of a Nato monitoring mission called Sea Guardian, on 10 June, according to France.

And they did it in order to slip through yet another illegal shipment of arms to Turkey's ally in the Libya civil war, the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), France said.

Note EU-Digest:  Curious - Whenever, or each time we put the President of Turkey's name ,Erdogan into the "Labels" column of our blog (EU-Digest), we were posting, the blog reported an error, and we had to go back and re-post the entire content of the blog, and rewrite the "labels"  removing Erdogan's name for it to work. Does this mean censorship by either some internal or external "source", or is it a real technical error? This is not the first time it happened when other sensitive issues were published.

Read more at:
France and Turkey fracture Nato on Libya

NATO's Jens Stoltenberg has a wet dream : "NATO must become more political and global", says alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg

NATO needs to become politically stronger in order to face the challenges of the next decade, the head of the alliance said on Monday, highlighting that the rise of China is "fundamentally shifting the global balance of power".

Note EU-Digest: Yes indeed this is a wet dream, specially given the derogatory comments  President Trump of the US has made about European members of the NATO

Read more at:
NATO must become more political and global, says alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg | Euronews

EU-US Relations: Trump claims EU was formed so member states could treat U.S. 'badly'

While addressing the nation's governors at the White House on Monday, President Trump took a shot at the European Union and NATO.

NATO, he said, was "going down like a rocket ship" before he came in and saved the day by convincing other member states to contribute more money.

But he seemed generally pleased with the direction things are going. That's not the case for the EU, which Trump claimed is treating the United States "very badly."

Trump even argued one of the "primary reasons" the EU was formed was so its member states could pick on the U.S, which is a claim that doesn't really have much going for it historically. The EU is the final stage of a progression of a continent-wide economic community that was first implemented in the aftermath of World War II. Seeking to avoid a third conflict on such a scale, European leaders at the time sought to create a cooperative system in which countries could trade with little hindrance.

Eventually, that morphed into the current EU, which has expanded beyond just economic unity.

Trump with this statement is talking out of his lower body part. The supranational organization obviously hasn't always seen eye to eye with the U.S. on all matters, but it's a reach to say those disagreements were the reason it was formed in the first place.

EU-Digest

NATO: Macron spars with US and Turkey over Nato - by Nikolaj Nielsen

EU Defense Force: Europe needs to control it's own destiny

The presidents of France, Turkey and the United States sparred over Nato as the 29 leaders of the 70-year old alliance gathered in London.

In a late night tweet on Tuesday (3 December), French president Emmanuel Macron entrenched his views on the future of the fraying alliance.

"We can't put money and pay the cost of our soldiers' lives without being clear on the fundamentals of what Nato should be," he said.

The position follows his earlier comments describing Nato as "brain dead", given Turkey's October invasion into north-east Syria, displacing tens of thousands of people.

After US president Donald Trump abandoned the Kurdish militias, who had fought alongside US and French troops in the struggle against the Islamic State, Turkey moved in.

Note EU-Digest: Macron is right on this one. US President Trump pulled out of Syria without consulting any of his NATO partners, except possibly Turkey, and created a chaos at the border between Syria and Turkey. It is high time the EU gets off the lap of the US and creates its own military defense force, which focuses on the interests of Europe.

Read more at: Macron spars with US and Turkey over Nato

The Netherlands: Dutch PM, member of secretive conservative Bilderberg group, supports Trump's critical remarks re: NATO - EU members defense spending for NATO, and UN activites in general

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

Read more at: 

https://nltimes.nl/2019/10/04/dutch-pm-calls-trumps-eu-defense-spending-un-criticism-ju

The Netherlands: Nato assembly document confirms US nuclear bombs are in NL

One of the worst kept Dutch military secrets, that US nuclear weapons are being stored at the Dutch airbase in Volkel, has been been confirmed in a draft report to the Nato parliament.

The information is contained in a document drawn up for discussion in the Nato parliamentary assembly on June 1, entitled ‘A new era for nuclear deterrence? Modernisation, arms control and allied nuclear forces.’

The report was written by a member of the Nato parliamentary assembly’s defense committee and is not an official Nato document, the organisation told DutchNews.nl.

‘Nato PA reports are public documents based soley on open source information,’ the Nato PA press service said. The report’s compiler discovered the slip and has removed the sentence in a new version of the report which was published on July 11.

The original document states that the US forward deploys 150 nuclear weapons for use by US and allied aircraft.

These, it says, are stored at six US and European bases, including Volkel in the Netherlands and Kleine Brogel in Belgium as well as bases in Germany, Italy and Turkey.

Note EU-Digest: This will make Europe an immediate target for any attack from a foreign aggressive military source. As someone suggested: "lnstead of storing these weapons in Europe, why not keep them in the basement of the White House in the US"

Read more at:
Nato assembly document confirms US nuclear bombs are in NL - DutchNews.nl

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EU-France: Macron Wants to Create a European Army—But First He's Reviving French Military Might - by David Brennan

French President Emmanuel Macron has long wished for greater European military cooperation. This week, he continued the drive, suggesting the bloc can no longer rely on American military support to protect members against outside threats.

In a speech to relaunch his political agenda Monday, the president explained, “It is up to us to guarantee European security” and said he would “launch an exhaustive review” of security relations with “all Europe's partners, which includes Russia.”

After decades of underinvestment, Macron is spearheading a push to revamp France’s military, returning it to its historical position as one of the most well-funded and potent forces in the world.

With Europe facing an emboldened Russia and the Western allies battling Islamist threats across Africa and the Middle East, France needs its bite back.

President Donald Trump’s residency in the White House has presented a challenge for European nations. For decades, NATO stood united and firm against the threat of the Soviet Union and later the new Russia.

In recent years, Russian foreign policy has become more bellicose, and relations have deteriorated as Moscow's military tendrils reached into countries such as Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, to name but a few.

But Trump’s disdain for nearly every multinational alliance or agreement apparently includes NATO. The president incorrectly believes that European nations are not paying their fair share toward the shared military budget, and reportedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of the bloc unless its allies took on a greater part of the burden.

Read more: Macron Wants to Create a European Army—But First He's Reviving French Military Might

Turkey: No question, Erdogan is a ruthless dictator, who has bled his country's economy dry, and the EU must not look the other way - by Ahmet Ardani

Turkey: If this is not a dictatorship, what is it?

One publication in the EU recently noted in a report about Turkey's Erdogan: "The man in the big palace is not only a crook. but also a full fledged dictator ".

This should also reinforce the doubts that every intelligent person had about whether it was a real coup attempt at all two years ago in Turkey, or just a staged one. There are plenty of people who thought it was put on by the government of Erdogan, for the sake of purging and jailing its opponents.

We need not do more than to listen to Erdogan’s own declarations. He openly called that “coup” an opportunity for purging his enemies, and just as soon as he defeated the alleged coup attempt, he had a very long list of thousands of enemies to eliminate.

His forces moved immediately to arrest these folks. For most of them, their only failing was that they don’t blindly follow Erdogan.

Ruling in an ever more totalitarian fashion, Erdogan has taken control over all public institutions – the media and the schools, the courts and the police, the civil bureaucracy and the armed forces.

At least 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 purged. His Islamist party, AKP, has used these methods to consolidate control in practically all of the structures of Turkish life.

There’s even a detailed report of the Stockholm Center for Freedom, which found evidence from four days before the ostensible coup that a plan was circulated, with Erdogan’s approval, in the Armed Forces to make it look like there was a coup attempt.

It’s sad that most of the EU press, eager-to-please their governments have become quite lazy about this. They have developed a habit of calling it a “coup attempt,” when they do not in fact know that it was any such thing.

It’s high time to stop being complicit in playing Erdogan´s PR game and start being honest to the public. From all we know for sure, it’s just an alleged coup attempt.

The Erdogan regime, however, is profiting from it enormously, to pseudo-legitimize its totalitarian turn and to conduct purges from top to bottom.

We need not do more than to listen to Erdogan’s own declarations. He openly called that “coup” an opportunity for purging his enemies. Just as soon as he defeated the alleged coup attempt, he had a very long list of thousands of enemies ready to arrest.

His forces moved immediately to arrest these folks. For most of them, their only failing it is that they don’t blindly follow Erdogan.

Erdogan was also immediately ready to organize a mass mobilization against the alleged coup, and to synchronize the mosques for this. These are steps that required lots of advanced preparation.

This has even gone on at an accelerated pace after he won his recent Presidential "bogus" snap election 

Ruling in an ever more totalitarian fashion, Erdogan has taken control over all public institutions – the media and the schools, the courts and the police, the civil bureaucracy and the armed forces.

At least 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 purged. His Islamist party, AKP, has used these methods to consolidate control in practically all of the structures of Turkish life.

Previously, Gülen was Erdogan´s most important domestic ally. He led the Islamist religious movement, while Erdogan led the Islamist political party.

Very much with the support of Erdogan’s party, Gülen had built up a state within the state. But then Erdogan decided that, to consolidate his power, the imprint that Gülen left on public life in Turkey needed to be removed completely.

Let´s also remember that the real reason for the fallout between the two was that Gülen´s forces, strongly represented in the body of public prosecutors, were closing in on the massive acts of corruption that Erdogan and his immediate family systematically organized.

It was also only logical that Erdogan demanded the extradition of Gülen and Gülenists from the US, because he is familiar with all of Erdogan's plans and corrupt swindles that have bled the country dry.

Not that the Gülenists are anything but squeaky clean. But Germany, Britain, the United States and many others have all found that Erdogan had produced no convincing evidence to justify his extradition demands.

They want no part of Erdogan´s witch hunt, to the contrary. He is considered vindictive and untrustworthy.

Erdogan responded to this refusal with demagogic attacks on Western countries. Even calling some European countries Nazis, when they were not wiling to have his "disciples" speak to Turkish immigrants in Europe, during his "bogus" referendum campaign, on a new Turkish Constitution.

The EU must definitely not cozy up to the Erdogan regime, just because of Donald Trump's tirades against him, who has been trying to get his Evangelical Pastor back to the US, so he can win the Mid-Term US election.

It has nothing to do about Trump in this particular case, but all about Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Trump and Erdogan might have similar characters, but their issues with the EU are different

Europe must start calling a spade a spade - and make the long term survival extremely difficult for Erdogan, who is not only a ruthless dictator who can not be trusted, but also a danger to the European Union's democracy and security.

EU-Digest 

Turkey: The pastor, the banker, and the irresistible drama in Turkish-US relations

US President Donald Trump once looked to be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest fan, uttering at a recent NATO summit: “I like him, I like him.” No longer.

This week, the US Treasury announced sanctions on two Turkish ministers over the case of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who has been in jail for 21 months and who has been the subject of months of secret negotiations between Ankara and Washington.

Although the move is symbolic – given the plethora of bilateral disputes between the sides and Turkey’s drift away from liberal Western norms – the Trump administration’s decision could become a historic milestone for Turkey’s position in the West.

Nonetheless, in the unpredictable global environment we live in and with volatile leaders on both sides, it is also possible that this will end up being a detour in relations between the two long-time allies. As happened with Russia after the Turkish air force downed a Russian fighter jet in 2015, and with Germany following the Turkish authorities’ arrest of two dozen German citizens last summer, this crisis might blow over in seven or eight months, leading first to a thaw and then to normalisation.

Still, the events of this week are momentous – the first serious fissure between Ankara and Washington since the 1975 US arms embargo on Turkey following the Turkish incursion into Cyprus.

Using the Magnitsky Act, the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Turkish Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gül and Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, designating them “leaders of Turkish government organizations responsible for implementing Turkey’s serious human rights abuses” – and, as such, accountable for the decision to persecute Brunson on trumped-up charges.

Brunson has been living in Turkey for 23 years, running a small protestant church in Izmir. He was caught up in Turkey’s massive dragnet after the coup attempt, accused of “supporting terrorism” – as most foreign nationals detained during that period were – by way of his alleged links with both the Gülen movement and Kurdish separatists. It took more than a year for the authorities to produce an indictment – which turned out to be a jumble of espionage charges, secret testimonies, allegations of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and local Gülenists, and an insidious plot to create an independent “Kurdistan” through the Christianisation of Syrian-Kurdish immigrants. A pro-government newspaper even claimed that, had the coup attempt been successful, Brunson would have been appointed as director of the CIA
.

It is troubling, if not unusual, for Turkish prosecutors to come up with wild accusations against foreign detainees. The practice reflects, above all, the emergence of a deeply paranoid security state that senses a threat from, as opposed to camaraderie with, Turkey’s traditional Western allies. German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel and human rights activist Peter Steudtner were similarly accused of “aiding an armed terrorist group”. The perception that the American “deep state” is behind the coup attempt and is harbouring Fethullah Gülen – a US-based cleric whose supporters played a leading role in the event – has now become the standard view in the Turkish bureaucracy. Turkey’s new national security ideology casts suspicion on foreigners, human rights activists, journalists, and liberal-leaning non-governmental organisations for knowingly or unknowingly participating in an effort to weaken or destroy Turkey.

But Brunson’s case is unique because his name has emerged as a rallying cry for the evangelical community in the United States – ultimately making the fate of the Presbyterian pastor a key issue in the strained Turkish-US relationship. When Erdogan held his first official meeting with Trump in Washington in May 2016, the White House organised a prayer vigil calling for Brunson’s release. 

Trump brought up the case three times during a luncheon with Erdogan that day and during subsequent phone conversations with Erdogan. Meanwhile, Congress has held hearings on the case and referred to Brunson in various legislative bills on Turkey. Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Trump supporters such as Jay Sekulow – an attorney on the president’s legal team who leads the American Center for Law and Justice – have all been involved in the Brunson saga. In this way, demands for Brunson’s release have become a permanent fixture in Turkey’s messy alliance with Washington.

Of course, the alliance is no less steady than a tired marriage mired in bickering and a litany of mutual grievances. Ankara has never quite forgiven Washington for not handing over Gülen. Turkey also objects to US support for Syrian Kurds affiliated with the PKK in the fight against the Islamic State group (ISIS). On top of this, the Turkish president has lashed out at the prosecution of Halkbank executive Hakan Atilla in a New York court case concerning the evasion of US sanctions on Iran. As Halkbank is one of Turkey’s largest state banks, Ankara fears that a US Treasury fine on the institution would trigger a domino effect in the Turkish financial system, at a time when the economy is experiencing a serious downturn.

In Trump, Ankara once had a sympathetic ear. From the get-go, the US president seemed eager to build a good relationship with Turkey’s strongman leader. This accorded with the prevailing view of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, which continues to believe that it is important to keep Turkey anchored to the West. However, Erdogan’s anti-Western rhetoric, poor human rights record, and decision to purchase Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems have all made it harder for American friends of Turkey to make the case for improved relations. US officials have publicly warned that Turkey’s purchase of S-400s would jeopardise NATO’s defences and could result in US sanctions.

Meanwhile, Congress has introduced legislation that threatens to block the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and also discusses the case of Brunson and Turkey’s imprisonment of US citizens and consular employees. (Several other US citizens, and two Turkish citizens who are US consular employees, remain in custody in Turkey; a third remains under house arrest.)

 One of the most dispiriting aspects of all this is that Turkey’s hostage diplomacy sometimes works. Ankara’s decision to return Yücel to Germany has led to the normalization of relations with Berlin and ended an unofficial German embargo on arms sales to Turkey.

 

Last week, the Turkish courts released Brunson from jail and put him under house arrest at his home in Izmir. But Washington saw this as a half-measure. Both Trump and Pence took to Twitter to threaten sanctions if Brunson was not released. US officials continued quietly looking into the possibility of using the Magnitsky Act to penalise Ankara

.

This drama even includes an Israeli sideshow. In expectation of Brunson’s release, Trump reached out to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to ask for the release of Turkish activist Ebru Ozkan, who Israel jailed for allegedly aiding Hamas. The 27-year-old was released on 11 June, the day after Trump’s call. 

Erdogan has recently acknowledged as much, but said this week that Turkey never entertained the idea of a direct swap for Brunson. In a meeting this week, Turkey’s National Security Council said that “threatening” rhetoric against Turkey was “unacceptable.” 

 

Even in difficult marriages, divorce is not an easy choice. In the case of Turkish-US relations, there have always been considerations and strategic imperatives that prevented harsh measures against Ankara – such as Washington’s reliance on Incirlik Air Base, and goals of keeping Turkey out of Russia’s arms and maintaining an important NATO alliance in the Middle East.

But the mood in Washington seemed to change very fast this week. Following Trump’s threat of “large sanctions” on Turkey, Turkish officials attempted a quiet diplomacy with the US, offering to release Brunson at his next hearing in October. However, they appear to have misjudged Washington’s patience with the matter, as the sanctions announced this week suggest.

It is hard to predict how long this saga will continue but, as one US official noted, “this is just the beginning [of US measures]. Brunson must be released in the end.” Meanwhile, the knotty set of problems in the Turkey-US relationship – from S-400s to Syrian Kurds, F-35s, and the Halkbank fine – have all somehow become intertwined, with Brunson at the centre of it all.

Note EU-Digest: Again the dirty game of power politics. Also, what is quite interesting to note is that the US government leaders in the past and present have never been able to give some clear picture on the status of the Gülen movement in the US. What kind of a deal has the US with him, and why are they so tight-lipped about why he was allowed "to set up shop" in the US?

Read more: The pastor, the banker, and the irresistible drama in Turkish-US relations | European Council on Foreign Relations

EU, US relations sinking further after divisive Trump tour - by Raf Casert

After a week of the worst barrage of insults yet from U.S. President Donald Trump, the European Union is looking westward toward the White House less and less.

Making it worse, Trump spent Monday cozying up to EU adversary Vladimir Putin in an extraordinary chummy summit with the Russian leader in Helsinki.

Never mind. In an age when Trump has made political optics all-important, on Tuesday the EU struck back. Key EU leaders were in the far east in Japan and China looking for the trust, friendship and cooperation they could no longer get from a century-old ally.

Trump's embrace of Putin and the EU's Asian outreach highlight the yawning rift, widening more by the day, in a trans-Atlantic unity that has been the bedrock of international politics for the better part of a century, as countless graves of U.S. soldiers buried in European soil bear witness to.

Trump's abrasiveness and "America First" insistence had been a given even before he became president. Europe's increasing resignation to letting go of the cherished link to the White House is much more recent.

After last week's brutal NATO summit where Trump derided Europeans as freeloaders, EU chief Donald Tusk spoke on Tuesday of "the increasing darkness of international politics."

"This Helsinki summit is above all another wake-up call for Europe," said Manfred Weber, the German leader of the EPP center-right group in the European Parliament, the legislature's biggest.

"We Europeans must take our fate in our own hands."

It was a startling sentiment coming from someone who hails from the same German Christian Democrat stock as Angela Merkel, Helmut Kohl and Konrad Adenauer, staunch supporters of the trans-Atlantic link over the past three-quarters century.

There have been other signs of the growing European detachment from the White House, especially after Trump pulled out of the global climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal the EU brokered.

"With friends like that, who needs enemies?" Tusk asked two months ago.

Soon, Trump had also piled on economic punishment with punitive tariffs on European steel and aluminum.

Then came the NATO summit. Already viewed with apprehension, reality turned out to be worse.

First, Trump called Germany, the powerhouse of the European Union, "captive" to Russia. Then he suggested that Britain should "sue" the EU over Brexit terms. Finally, he finished off by calling the 28-nation bloc a trade "foe."

"For Trump, the categories of friend, ally, partner, opponent, enemy don't exist. For him there is only his own ego," said the head of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, Norbert Roettgen.

So little wonder the EU has turned for friends elsewhere — and found one Tuesday in Japan, where the bloc said it put in place "the largest bilateral trade deal ever."

Up to two years ago, that was supposed to be the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, trade deal between the EU and the United States. But Trump quickly let it be known that such an international agreement would not happen on his watch.

"This is an act of enormous strategic importance for the rules-based international order, at a time when some are questioning this order," Tusk said at a joint news conference in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

"We are sending a clear message that we stand together against protectionism."

Despite it all, until last week there had remained hope that on the most critical of geopolitical security issues, Trump would remain true to American ideals. Instead, he unleashed unprecedented criticism at the NATO summit.
 
Fully extracting itself from the United States, though, is a daunting challenge for Europe.

Militarily, with the exceptions of France and Britain, the European allies have lived under the nuclear umbrella of the United States since World War II. Defense cooperation outside of U.S-dominated NATO is only now taking off and the blocked Brexit negotiations make such a prospect fraught with uncertainty.

That military dimension, and the bond between Europe and the United States, have a special resonance in nations like Poland and the Baltic states, which had long been under the thumb of Moscow before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Hence, Monday's Helsinki summit was seen with apprehension that Trump might make dramatic concessions to Putin and leave parts of Europe with too little protection. In Poland, the 1945 Yalta Conference is seen as a symbol of political treason because, without Poland's participation and against Poland's will, it put the country under Soviet control for decades, until 1989.

Read: EU, US relations sinking further after divisive Trump tour

EU: Trump presses falsehoods about NATO, Germany- by David Rising, Robert Burnand Zeke Miller

Unleashing in-your-face rhetoric at the NATO summit, President Donald Trump pressed the falsehood Wednesday that members of the alliance owe money to the U.S. and took sole credit for higher military spending by NATO partners — a decision that preceded his presidency.

Trump also misrepresented Germany's energy picture, asserting coal and nuclear power are gone from the mix. Coal remains a bedrock energy source for Germany despite its hope to wean itself from that mineral and nuclear plants have several years of life before they are to be phased out.
Here's a look at some statements from the summit in Brussels:

TRUMP: "Frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years back, where they're delinquent, as far as I'm concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them. So if you go back 10 or 20 years, you'll just add it all up. It's massive amounts of money is owed." — comments at meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. In a tweet Tuesday, he said: "Will they reimburse the U.S.?"

THE FACTS: There is no such debt to the U.S. or to NATO. Therefore, no delinquency or question of reimbursement.

He is referring to how much each NATO country spends on its own defense and pressing them to spend more. Doing so would relieve some pressure on U.S. military spending. But there are no IOUs to collect from past years.

Read more: AP FACT CHECK: Trump presses falsehoods about NATO, Germany