WorldWatch
Europe
Germany’s military rise and the void left by America’s retreat is reshaping NATO. On June 17, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed that European members will fill the gap left by U.S. withdrawals, with Germany—already the Continent’s top military spender at $114 billion last year, projected to reach $185 billion by 2029—positioned to assume most of that role. A leaked list published by German outlet Bild on June 5 showed that the Trump administration plans to move fighter aircraft, drones, and a carrier strike group away from Europe.
The shift was visible on the ground at Berlin’s International Aerospace Exhibition, held June 10–14, which drew a record 110,000 attendees amid what Deutsche Welle called a “gold rush atmosphere” for defense investment. On June 15, Luftwaffe chief Holger Neumann declared his forces ready to “fight tonight” against Russia. Russia is taking notice. On May 27, its UN representative warned that Germany has become a leading global arms exporter: “A country that twice initiated world wars has now become one of the leading donors to armed conflicts, inter alia [among other things], by supplying weapons for use in territories where its army was deployed twice in the 20th century alone,” he said.
“How Europe Learnt to Love the Bomb” was a dramatic headline in the Telegraph on May 26. France is developing new nuclear missiles and submarines and has signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Germany, Poland, and the UK, with Belgium, the Czech Republic, Sweden and other nations expressing interest. The next day, Günter Sautter, security adviser to the German chancellor, went to Paris for a first round of talks to come under France’s nuclear protection.
America is clearly worried: The Financial Times revealed on June 3 that the Trump administration is offering more EU nations nuclear bombs and jets that can carry them. Poland and the Baltic states are reportedly interested. The move seems designed to tempt nations away from France’s initiative, and keep them reliant on the U.S. for nuclear defense.
“[T]hou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom,” God says in Ezekiel 16:33. “Could this apply better to any nation other than the modern United States?” the Trumpet wrote during President Trump’s first term. “America has given away some of the most powerful weapons ever created. Despite all the gifts, these powers are turning against the U.S.” (“Europe and America: They’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”).
Political turbulence is rattling both Germany and the transatlantic alliance. A YouGov poll published June 17 showed Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland surging to 29 percent support, a 9-point lead over the mainstream Christian Democrats, and polling above 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt ahead of September elections. Mainstream parties may soon be forced to govern alongside either the AfD or the hard-left “Left” party, since the two together are expected to win more than half the vote.
Nazi-sympathetic parties used to be shunned in German politics. Yet prominent AfD leaders routinely praise the “achievements” of German troops in World War II and call for an overhaul of how Germany views its history and for the rehabilitation of Nazi slogans. Germans want solutions—and parties like the AfD promise radical change. Though neo-Nazi views would have once stigmatized the AfD, Germans are ready to embrace something they used to reject.
“The rise of this extreme party is just one sign of a German society in trouble,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in August 2024. The appetite for installing a strongman is growing. “The rise of the Nazi spirit in Europe is sobering,” he wrote. “It certainly shows how the climate is ripe for the rise of this strongman” (“Nazism Rises Again in Germany”).
Middle East
Police raided the headquarters of the Republican People’s Party in Ankara, Turkey, on May 26 to subdue supporters of party leader Özgür Özel. The secular, social-democratic party is Turkey’s main political opposition. A Turkish court judged that Özel’s election as party leader was illegitimate, and the raid further indicates that Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is turning Turkey into a dictatorship.
The book of Obadiah prophesies that Turkey, referred to by its biblical name Edom, will have a pivotal, dangerous role in end-time events. Learn about it in the chapter “Reviving the Ottoman Empire” in our free booklet He Was Right.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October, which left Israel in control of just over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip. But in the last few months, Israel has dramatically increased the extent of its control. On May 28, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was “fully in control of 60 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip.” Less than a month later, the Jerusalem Post reported on June 23 that Israel controlled approximately 70 percent of the territory. Israel is carrying out successful strikes against Hamas, Hamas has a limited ability to counterattack, and the United States has apparently given its tacit blessing to Israel’s offensive. Hamas has refused to surrender territory or weapons to the “Board of Peace,” the institution U.S. President Donald Trump created to govern post-Hamas Gaza, and the board is struggling with funding.
Gaza under Hamas was a proxy of Iran, the prophetic “king of the south” of Daniel 11:40, which prophesies that Iran and its allies would push against “the king of the north,” which is Europe, led by Germany. A related prophecy in Psalm 83 mentions Germany under its ancient name “Assyria” or “Assur,” along with countries that would be allied with it, implying that they oppose Iran. Verse 7 mentions “the Philistines,” or the territory of modern Gaza. For this prophecy to be fulfilled, Iran must lose control of Gaza. Israel’s offensive is paving the way for this to happen. Mr. Flurry writes in The King of the South, “whatever unexpected developments affect Gaza, Germany, one way or another, will become Gaza’s new master.”
Asia
Russian President Vladimir Putin tightened his hold over Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia on June 16 with the appointment of Kremlin bureaucrat Marat Kambolov as the territory’s prime minister.
After a five-day war against Georgia back in 2008, Putin recognized both South Ossetia and Georgia’s other pro-Russia breakaway province, Abkhazia, as independent states. He entrenched a long-term military presence in both to assert de facto Russian control over them. But with the installation of Russian-born Kambolov, Putin may be pushing for more than de facto control. He may be on the verge of making it official.
“[T]he installation of a Moscow bureaucrat looks to eliminate whatever plausible political distance may have remained between [South Ossetia] and Moscow,” the Moscow Times wrote. To understand Putin’s ruthless drive to reassert control over former Soviet nations such as Georgia and Ukraine, read The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’
Officials in Japan unveiled a plan on June 4 to downgrade the “Nanjing Massacre” in one of the nation’s most important museums to the “Nanjing Incident.” The plan for the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum is highly controversial in and outside Japan because the Nanjing Massacre was not only one of the greatest horrors of World War II but one of the darkest stains on the record of human civilization. During the six-week massacre, Imperial Japan’s troops killed as many as 300,000 unarmed soldiers and Chinese civilians, including children, pregnant women and the elderly—often in unspeakable ways. This is the latest effort by Japanese nationalists to sanitize and whitewash the nation’s gut-wrenching wartime savagery as they work to prepare the public for future conflicts.
Russia has learned how to hijack Ukraine’s attack drones midflight and turn them against European nations, the Telegraph wrote on May 26. The Russians accomplish this high-tech deceit by first sending out a powerful electronic noise to overwhelm a drone’s GPS receiver and effectively deafen it. The drone then enters search mode, seeking new guidance signals, at which time the Russians feed it false positioning data. The data makes a drone in Ukrainian skies interpret its position as being in Russian-held territory, and prompts it to turn west and north—back toward the area where it thinks the line of contact lies. But since it was actually already far west of Russia-held territory, the false data prompts it to fly out of Ukraine altogether and deep into NATO skies.
Since March, Russia has used this tactic to violate the territory of Estonia, where one drone crashed and NATO jets were scrambled to destroy another; Latvia, where a drone damaged an oil facility; and Lithuania, where the president was among thousands of people who were forced to shelter in a bunker in the nation’s capital. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has warned for years that Russian aggression would terrify the peoples of Europe and catalyze their unification and militarization.
Anglo-America
As the United States celebrated its 250th anniversary, many Americans are experiencing a national identity crisis. A Public Religion Research Institute American Identity Survey released on June 17 shows that U.S. citizens are less proud of their country, less religiously unified and less likely to believe the American dream is still alive. Of the 5,469 adults polled, only 51 percent said they are extremely or very proud of being American, down from 82 percent in 2013. This included 83 percent of Republicans, but only 31 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Independents.
The Democratic Socialists of America are doubling down in their efforts to radicalize the Democratic Party. This group endorsed dozens of political candidates nationwide, including Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic nomination for U.S. representative in New York’s 13th congressional district on June 23. A CNN investigative review of more than 3,600 archived posts and reposts from Chevalier’s deleted social media accounts revealed radical views including abolishing borders, abolishing police, abolishing private property, and abolishing the State of Israel.
Demonstrators clashed with United States marshals at a courthouse in St. Paul, Minnesota, on June 16, after 15 activists were charged with conspiring to “violently oppose immigration law enforcement.” The defendants had worked with Direct Action Minnesota, which is tied to the Antifa movement, a designated domestic terrorist organization.
Groups like Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America want to use illegal immigration to fundamentally transform American culture. By fighting against border enforcement, they are opening the door to tremendous violence in the United States. A prophecy in Ezekiel 5:12 reveals that one third of the population of “Israel” will die from “pestilence.” This is not referring to an ancient destruction of Israel, which occurred prior to Ezekiel writing his book: This is for the U.S. today. Read about it in Gerald Flurry’s free book Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet.
Leftists in Mexico are also resisting and undermining America. Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused President Donald Trump on June 3 of employing “interventionist and unscrupulous practices” to bolster Mexico’s conservative opposition and weaken López Obrador’s leftist movement. The comments followed the U.S. Justice Department’s indictment of 10 Mexican officials, most of them Morena politicians, over alleged drug-trafficking ties with the Sinaloa cartel. López Obrador and President Claudia Sheinbaum accused the U.S. of disproportionately targeting Morena politicians. Yet, like the Communist Party of Cuba and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the Morena movement in Mexico regards its nation’s drug cartels as tools for profit at home and weapons of war abroad
