Atlantic Rift

The friendship between the U.S. and Europe is not what it appears to be.

Who would have thought, after the savagery of World War ii, that America and Germany would become allies? Yet, soon after the smoke from that massive conflict cleared, Washington and Bonn laid the foundation for close partnership. The United States established the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, especially Germany, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was launched, binding Europe and North America into a military alliance.

Biblical prophecy shows that this union was destined, from the beginning, to end in ruin. The fraying of the transatlantic relationship we see today is the advancement of this inevitable ruin.

Herbert W. Armstrong was well acquainted with the Bible scriptures elucidating that truth. Under his guidance, the Plain Truth understood that the transatlantic alliance would eventually rupture. “Economic recovery masks deep divisions that must eventually rip asunder the Atlantic alliance,” the Plain Truth wrote in September 1983.

In the decades since that article was written, the prophecy has greatly accelerated toward its fulfillment.

‘Can We Purchase Love With Money?’

In early 1952, as America began allowing Germany to rearm, Mr. Armstrong’s Good News magazine explained why the decision was misguided:

“The question … is causing careful observers to tremble! Does America dare arm Germany?

“Can we unite Europe and guide the colossal military machine we envision there by 1955? … Our leading generals in Europe adamantly warn that Germany is a calculated risk. What will a Germany, armed with American help, think of her new power? … Why will the diplomats think that today the hearts of the people in Germany are different from yesterday? Every one of those undemocratic nations when once armed has turned upon us. We are the hated ‘have’ nations, the ‘capitalist’ nations, the ‘imperialistic’ nations.

“The heart of the German people … has not been converted to our way of life. If they really would have come to love us since their defeat, would they now be trying to bargain for domination in Europe, and threatening to withhold support from the cause of democracy against Russia? Is that the way love is manifested? Can we purchase love with money?” (Good News, April 1952; emphasis added).

That was written over six decades ago! Even back in 1952, Germany was fighting for domination of Europe—and America didn’t understand what it meant or chose not to understand. That has been Germany’s goal from the beginning.

Notice, though, how that article pinpointed the problem of America trying to buy Germany’s “love.” Prophecy reveals that this specific tendency, which has grown considerably stronger in the decades since, was doomed from the start.

The Plain Truth wrote this in February 1956: “America seems wedded to the idea that it can buy friends and allies around the world with ready American cash. We intend to hold friendly nations to us by generously supplying money and arms. But it isn’t working!”

The veracity of that statement is undeniable today. Consider the billions of dollars Washington has spent to try to buy allies such as Pakistan, Egypt and Afghanistan—nations that march toward radicalism regardless. American money has been pumped into numerous causes in South America, Asia and several other arenas. But none of this largesse has increased support for American policies or earned a jot of respect. The money isn’t talking. Now America is out of cash and has actually become desperate for foreign money to support its broken economy. These humanitarian efforts are a trap.

But biblical prophecy points in particular to the danger of America seeking an alliance with Germany. You can read about the specific scriptures containing these Bible prophecies in our booklets Nahum: An End-Time Prophecy for Germany and Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet. (All of our literature is free upon request.)

Scripture reveals that America would first try to strengthen this ill-fated relationship by pumping dollars into it, as the Plain Truth article quoted above said. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this impulse led America—under the auspices of nato—to act as a willing lackey of Germany in the terrible Balkan Wars. The U.S.’s desire to please Germany in those wars ended up breaking the Yugoslav Republic into pieces, and transforming the former Yugoslav states into virtual colonies of the rising German-led EU empire.

On December 1, 2009, America’s ambassador to Germany publicly declared that Germany is “Washington’s most important ally.” He said, “We need strong partners—and nowhere are there better or more committed partners than in Europe. And Germany is the centerpiece of the European Union.”

On February 2, 2013, Vice President Joe Biden echoed these sentiments in his keynote address to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference: “Simply put, President Obama and I continue to believe that Europe is the cornerstone of our engagement with the rest of the world, and is the catalyst for our global cooperation. It’s that basic.”

“A strong and capable Europe is profoundly in America’s interest, and I might add, presumptuously, the world’s interest,” Biden said. “Europe remains America’s indispensable partner of first resort,” he continued.

America no longer looks to Britain and its commonwealth for support. Instead U.S. leaders are trying to build up Europe. Even President Barack Obama urges Europeans to assume “the burdens of global leadership.” America thoroughly trusts Europe and sees the relationship as mutually beneficial. Europe, however, has a different view.

‘A More Balanced Relationship’

When Europe’s commissioner for external affairs said, upon President Obama’s inauguration, that he anticipated a “more balanced relationship” between Europe and America, he meant balanced in favor of more power for Europe and less for America.

And as Mr. Armstrong predicted would happen, the EU’s antipathy toward America became more evident in the shadow of the global economic downturn that occurred in 2008. Europe blames the Anglo-American economic model for the crisis. It has taken draconian steps to smother New York’s and London’s financial leadership and to shift the global financial center to Brussels/Berlin. It has seized the lead as the world’s number one financial regulator, and has exacted harsh penalties on giant American companies including Intel, Google and Microsoft, forcing these firms to play by European rules. As a direct consequence of the economic crash, all G-20 nations have agreed to permit the EU-controlled Financial Stability Board to influence their economies.

The year 2013 began with the EU and U.S. announcing that they would begin talks to build a transatlantic trade agreement—something that has often been called “an economic nato.” The negotiations will be laborious, but if successful, will bind the economies of America and Europe together. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said at a February 13, 2013, press conference that “this negotiation will set the standard—not only for our future bilateral trade and investment, including regulatory issues, but also for the development of global trade rules.”

At first glance this may appear to be a mutually beneficial development, but such a deal could prove fatal for America’s economic sovereignty. Proposals say the laws regulating this new transatlantic trade would be prepared by a joint council of senior-level representatives from “the EU Commission’s Secretariat General and the U.S. Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs.” This would effectively transfer some level of U.S. sovereignty to a Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation Council. This could be a huge development. Once America and the EU establish a standard, it would effectively become the world standard because other nations would have to comply if they wanted to trade with the U.S./EU. And if Europe gains the upper hand in negotiations—and Europe is expert at gaining the upper hand—then the EU will become the global pacesetter.

America has already subjected itself to Europe’s economic rule. It has placed enormous faith in Europe’s beneficence and sense of fair play.

Where is this leading? Again let’s turn to the prophetically guided forecasting of Mr. Armstrong’s Plain Truth for the startling answer!

A Turbulent Undercurrent

The March 1974 Plain Truth said, “European antagonism toward the United States and its policies is now in the open. The next few years will bring forth more misunderstanding, conflicts of interest and, at times, outright hostility between the United States and Europe. Europe—including [then] West Germany—will have to build its own unified armed forces, including nuclear weapons. Religious as well as political forces will play a key role in the future.”

The trend that began with the Balkan wars—of Europe co-opting American power via nato in order to serve its own interests—continues. Europe’s machinations have radically mutated nato from its original role as a protector and defender of the democracies of the U.S., Britain, Canada and Western Europe. Now it is becoming ever more linked with the EU in pursuing that empire’s underlying Romish/Teutonic objectives.

The U.S. has so far lent its power to such causes without much objection. And now German military goals are increasingly intertwined into nato’s new “strategic concept.”

The surface of the U.S.-German relationship often appears placid. But the undercurrent of what Mr. Armstrong called “conflicts of interest” and “outright hostility” is becoming ever more turbulent.

The turbulence has become especially stark since 2013 when revelations emerged that the U.S. National Security Agency (nsa) extensively spies on Germany, including wiretapping the phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and collecting mountains of digital data from Germans. Some dismissed these revelations as insignificant. But it caused the greatest crisis of confidence in relations between Germany and the U.S. in decades.

German society—which is highly sensitive to the matter of data protection—reacted strongly to news of the nsa surveillance. A July 2013 ard survey of the German public showed that its trust in the U.S. had plummeted from 76 percent in November 2009 to 49 percent. By that November, the number of Germans who believed America is a reliable partner for Germany stood at only 35 percent. More than 60 percent of Germans view Edward Snowden—the man who illegally exposed America’s spying on Germany—as a hero. So far, since U.S. intelligence services have a technological advantage, the German government has continued cooperation with Washington. But Berlin is now making concerted efforts to change the legal basis of this cooperation.

The nsa revelation was hardly the beginning of the rift in German-U.S. relations, but it greatly deepened it.

A Nuclear Power?

Consider this additional grave concern: Under the auspices of nato, the U.S. has hundreds of B-61 nuclear gravity bombs stored in European countries. “The U.S. has supplied some 480 B-61 thermonuclear bombs to five so-called ‘non-nuclear states,’ including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey,” Global Research wrote in February 2010.

As Europe cannibalizes nato, we should not be surprised if it devours these nuclear weapons as well. The air forces of each of these nato nations have personnel trained in arming and delivering this hardware. The increasing merger of the defense goals shared by nato and the EU has added to the rapid drawdown of U.S. forces from Europe. This removes obstacles for Europe to deploy a nuclear-armed international force.

What did Mr. Armstrong say about this prospect? He spoke boldly about the weapons of mass destruction America has stored in Europe.

“You may be sure the West European leaders are conferring hurriedly and secretly about how and how soon they may unite and provide a united European military force so they can defend themselves!” Mr. Armstrong wrote in the April 1980 Plain Truth. “And so they will no longer have to give in meekly to Russia! And who will they blame for their humiliation and their necessity now to have a united Europe, with a united government, a common currency, and a common military force as great or greater than either the ussr or the U.S.A.? They will blame the United States! And when they are strong enough to assert themselves, [they] will first attack Britain for standing firm with the United States, and then they will return a lot of hydrogen bombs the U.S. has stored now in Europe!”

That, shockingly, is the ultimate fate of the American-European relationship!

Modern Europe is rapidly growing independent of the U.S. and is strengthening its position as a world power, just as the Plain Truth prophesied. The growing rift between the U.S. and the EU is tipping the power balance decisively in Europe’s—particularly Germany’s—favor. This should stir the deepest alarm within America’s leaders, if they only knew where it was leading! They ignore Mr. Armstrong’s warnings at their peril.