Europe
Germany announced its first permanent foreign military deployment since World War ii on Dec. 18, 2023. A Bundeswehr brigade of 5,000 men, including tank and artillery battalions, will deploy to nato ally Lithuania starting in 2025. Germany is also discussing sending a military mission to the Red Sea to defend shipping against attacks from Iran-backed Islamist Houthi rebels. This comes after Germany deployed special forces to Cyprus and stated a willingness to land German troops on Israeli soil if necessary to deter further radical Islamist attacks there. Learn more about this in “Why the Trumpet Watches Europe’s Push Toward a Unified Military.”
Another indication of this shift comes from former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who on December 3 called for the European Union to arm itself and even acquire its own nuclear weapons. “[W]e as Europe urgently need an effective air defense,” he said. “We have to do this together.” German and other European forces participated in nato nuclear-strike military exercises near Cyprus in October, and Germany has a contract for dozens of U.S. F-35 nuclear-capable stealth warplanes. Many still overlook it, but Germany’s military attitude is changing.
Meanwhile, a secret German plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war won the support of the United States, according to a Nov. 24, 2023, report in Germany’s Bild newspaper. The idea is to gradually reduce weapons sales to Ukraine, reaching the point where Ukraine can defend itself but not regain lost territory. This would presumably pressure Ukraine into negotiating with Russia.
“I believe that Germany’s leaders may have already agreed to a deal with Russia,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in 2008, “a modern Hitler-Stalin pact where Germany and Russia divide countries and assets between themselves.” Germany appears to be complying with that pact, having used its position within the western camp to deny and delay assistance to Ukraine throughout the invasion, and now pressuring the invaded to capitulate to its invader.
Germany’s government finally agreed on a budget on Dec. 13, 2023, but only after a major constitutional struggle. The German constitution strictly limits its borrowing outside of emergencies. In 2020, the German government declared a coronavirus emergency and borrowed billions. The current government then took about $66 billion in unused funds and redirected it to a “climate and transformation fund.” The constitutional court struck down the move, resulting in a huge budgetary struggle and 200 hours of negotiations and all-night discussions. The governing coalition has already been struggling, and the budgetary mess shows its fundamental inability to swiftly deal with hard problems. This is one reason German leadership will be open to takeover by a coming strongman.
Asia
Russia and China are increasingly working together to push against the global order.
The two nations coordinated operations against Finland “as a rehearsal for potentially larger-scale [coordinated] operations,” geostrategist Peter Zeihan said in a Dec. 8, 2023, briefing. First Russia weaponized illegal immigration, pushing large numbers of migrants from North African and Middle Eastern nations across their border into Finland, in an effort to overwhelm Finland’s immigration system and deepen the nation’s political divisions. Around the same time, a Chinese vessel dropped anchor in the Gulf of Finland and dragged it dozens of miles, rupturing a gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable in Finnish waters. Authorities said it could take six months to repair the damaged pipeline, leaving it inoperable during winter months when it is badly needed. “This could be practice for the Russians and the Chinese, who have historically not cooperated or coordinated their actions,” Zeihan said. “Doing so in different regions but against the same country, which recently joined nato, serves as a rehearsal for potentially larger-scale operations, possibly aiming to force the [United States] to focus on multiple fronts simultaneously.”
On Dec. 15, 2023, Chinese and Russian strategic bombers conducted long-range air patrols partly in South Korea’s air defense identification zone and near enough to Japan’s territory to prompt Tokyo to scramble jets. The joint operation included Russian Tu-95 and Chinese H-6 nuclear-capable bombers, and was, according to East Asian security expert Aadil Brar, “a pointed display at the U.S. and its Asian allies.”
Three days later, a U.S. intelligence assessment was declassified showing that Russia and China dispatched armies of Internet trolls back in 2022 in an effort to influence America’s congressional elections. These are hundreds of thousands of employees whose full-time job is to post, comment, like and argue on news sites and platforms like Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, TikTok, VKontakte, X, YouTube, and even Tinder. These trolls often claim to be American voters and work around the clock fomenting hatred and distrust, deepening political division, and lionizing candidates perceived as sympathetic to Russian designs on Ukraine and China’s hegemonic ambitions. Hundreds of thousands of bots are also used to extend the shadow of the trolls, and evidence shows that they have remained active in the months since.
The Bible prophesied that Russia and China would forge an alliance in the modern era, and the scriptures show that they will soon attack the global order in far more disruptive ways. To learn more about this Bible forecast, which is already in the early phases of fulfillment, order your free copy of Russia and China in Prophecy.
Middle East
On Dec. 6, 2023, during the Israel-Hamas conflict, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter. The provision that his office “may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security” hasn’t been invoked for any crisis over the last 34 years, and Guterres invoked it not against Hamas but against Israel.
It was part of the international attempt to prevent Israel from completely destroying Iran-backed Hamas’s power in Gaza, despite the fact that it is a radical terrorist group, unrecognized as a legitimate government, that terrorizes its own people, murders its rivals, steals humanitarian resources to fire rockets at civilians and enrich itself, uses human shields, and slaughters Israeli families, most infamously on October 7.
The irrational, murderous hatred showed itself to the world in southern Israel in October. And much of the world, including the UN leadership, reacted with brief horror, then returned to the status quo of irrational, deep-seated, long-standing hatred for Israel and the Jewish people. The actions of the UN and other powers to protect terrorists immediately after they perpetrated horrific human carnage is further proof that evil, and its spiritual source, exists in a powerful and active form here and now.
Hezbollah, a major proxy of Iran, skirmished with Israel Defense Forces at the Lebanese border, violating the UN demilitarized zone. Israel’s politicians threatened to reestablish the zone by force. War cabinet member Benny Gantz stated on Dec. 15, 2023, “If the world doesn’t get Hezbollah away from the border, Israel will do it.”
Psalm 83:1-8 is a prophecy of an end-time coalition formed between Germany (“Assur”) and various Middle Eastern peoples. Included in this list is Tyre, the ancestral civilization of modern Lebanon. Hezbollah-led Lebanon today is an ally of Iran; for Lebanon to switch allegiance to Germany, Hezbollah may be forced out of power. An Israeli invasion of Lebanon could serve that purpose. To learn more, read our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches an Alliance Between Arab Nations and Europe.”
Anglo-America
Social media in America is state media. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee’s “Weaponization of the Federal Government” hearing on Nov. 30, 2023, investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger added to what is known about government agencies working with technology companies to censor what you watch and read.
“A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance,” Taibbi and Shellenberger wrote on November 28. “They describe the activities of an ‘anti-disinformation’ group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or ctil, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The whistleblower alleged that a ctil leader was “in the room” at the Obama White House in January 2017, just prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump, when she received instructions to stop a “repeat of 2016.” Twitter began in 2006, became popular in 2007, was famously used in the successful 2008 Obama campaign, had become a powerful censorship tool by 2017, and by 2022 was subservient to “deep state” agencies, as Twitter Files revelations have shown. When did the government begin giving Twitter marching orders? It had to be, as the whistleblower indicates, during the presidency of Barack Obama.
A shocking poll was published on Dec. 12, 2023, by Rasmussen Reports and the Heartland Institute. It surveyed 1,085 likely 2024 voters, 30 percent of whom said they voted using an absentee or mail-in ballot in 2020. Of these, 300 (21 percent) admitted to having illegally filled out a ballot on behalf of someone else; 19 percent said someone else filled out their ballot with or without their permission; 17 percent said they cast a ballot in a state they no longer resided in; and 17 percent said they signed a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of someone else, with or without their permission. This means more than 1 in 5 voters polled were likely involved in some kind of election fraud.
The U.S. government now adds $1 trillion to its national debt every 100 days. Yet the Biden administration is doing nothing to scale back spending. A report released on Nov. 13, 2023, by the House Committee on Homeland Security found that $451 billion is being lost in healthcare, law enforcement, education, housing and other sectors due to an influx of illegal aliens. Democrats condemned Trump’s proposed $20 billion border wall as “immoral, ineffective and expensive,” then turned around and started spending 25 times that amount on record numbers of illegal immigrants.