Germany and Japan’s “wariness of America has resurfaced,” the New York Times wrote on Sunday. It added that the two are “strengthening ties” and “rushing to rebuild their militaries” as China rises and Russia continues its aggression.

• The last time these two nations were wary of the U.S. and building their militaries, the worst war in history erupted. Their return to militarism and growing “wariness of America” is a sign of America’s soon-coming fall.

Though Germany and Japan seem peace-loving, democratic American allies, as the article noted, the peaceful sentiment that prevailed after World War ii has “waned in recent years.”

• Japan today has the world’s 10th-largest military budget, despite its constitutional obligation not to maintain a military and to renounce war forever.
• Germany has the fourth-largest military budget, despite having triggered the worst war in history, which killed 70 million people, and despite Allied leaders resolving in 1945 to “destroy German militarism” for all time.

The Plain Truth, the Trumpet’s predecessor magazine, consistently warned of this reversion to militarism and aggression. Its April 1968 issue said:

Despite popular belief, Japan is not permanently committed to a pro-Western position. America has foolishly followed the policy of assuming that … Germany and Japan can be converted to the virtues of democracy in less than a generation. … Both Japanese and Germans are willing, for the present, to put up with their so-called democratic form of government—until some serious internal crisis is precipitated.

The Times presented German and Japanese militarization and partnership as a “defensive posture” necessitated by the Trump administration’s “threats to abandon security commitments in Europe” and “eagerness to strike a trade deal with” China.

• It quoted German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, visiting a Japanese naval base in March, saying that nations “who still stand by the rules-based international order, must move even closer together and make clear what we stand for.”

What do they stand for? Increasingly, it’s not peace or democracy—it’s resentment toward the United States.

Bible prophecy shows where this “wariness of America” is leading. Germany will work together with an Asian power bloc, likely including Japan, to economically besiege the U.S. That siege will not only bring the U.S. to its knees, but also lead to the worst suffering ever in human history and an even more devastating world war.