European militarism hides behind supposed Trump "isolationism"

The blogster waited several weeks to see how European public discourse, aka. the main media narrative, would settle around the outlook for Europe.

The findings, in short: advocates of European military expansion are having a blast.

As a candidate for president, Donald Trump's statement that NATO was obsolete set off a flurry of  NATO propaganda along two lines: imploring the candidates to back NATO and calling for more European military spending. The political figurehead of NATO, the Secretary General, was a busy man in the final months of 2016.

The blogster only commented in a couple of tweets, one of which said "O ye of little faith in the military industrial complex", another reading "The taming of the Trump (foreign policy only)".

It was simply inconceivable that schmoozing up to Russia and ditching NATO would be the new president's actual policy. This is a very strong statement, but it is based on experience. The blogster has an envelope full of commendations* to prove it.

Mr. Trump's nominations for several security posts confirmed the blogster's expectations. By now, the world even has a statement by the man himself that he fully backs NATO.

With NATO backing confirmed, a naive observer might have expected the calls for more European military spending to subside.

That's not how it works, of course, despite the main alleged reason for the increase gone. The German mainstream media, to the last reporter typing, simply changed tack to invoke a wider American "isolationism", derived from the catchy "America First" inauguration slogan.

Prior to the inauguration, they worked with "populism" and "nationalism", which have mostly been relegated to smaller publications by now, for example the journalism blog.

Using the concept "isolationism" is better suited to the agenda of European militarism because it is less well defined, requiring fewer facts. No one in the main European media bothers much to explain how "isolationism" is expressed by a country that has more than 700 military bases around the globe and continues to bomb six or seven countries without interruption as the government changes in Washington.

The apparent ease of changing the arguments for increased military buildup in Europe may well be part of a simple calculation: the validity of individual arguments does not matter any longer because the direction was established years ago.

The blogster wrote a fairly harsh assessment in the post German 2016 Munich Security Conference coverage like early 80s Soviet papers.

What still stands in the way of an unbridled European war machine is, of course, German history. But they are working on that.

The German government is also taking measures to boost recruitment.

* A commendation is kind of fancy military thank you letter.