Eurasia Press & News
“After 78 years, it is now time for U.S. soldiers to go home. All other allies left Germany a long time ago”, said Die Linke MP Sevim Dağdelen on the floor of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag.
“The US nuclear weapons must go”, she added, in a March 31 parliamentary event on the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.
Berlin must break with the existing “relationship of extreme subservience” to the U.S. and its foreign policies “marked by breaches of international law,” Sevim Dagdelen, the deputy head of the Left Party’s faction in the Bundestag, said (https://twitter.com/i/status/1641816862349484033 and https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/03/31/germany-us-soldiers-nuclear-weapons/) on Friday.
Germany must demand that U.S. forces stationed on its territory be withdrawn, along with America’s nuclear weapons, the MP insisted.
“After 78 years, it is now time for the U.S. soldiers to go home,” Dagdelen said at a parliamentary event marking the 75th anniversary of the Marshall Plan.
The U.S. military bases act “like extraterrestrial zones where the German constitution does not apply,” the MP, who is also a member of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said.
Washington uses its bases on German soil to wage wars abroad and launch “lethal drone strikes,” Dagdelen said, adding that some of these actions are “in breach of international law.”
Dağdelen urged for “breaking with the existing relationship of extreme subservience by Germany on matters of US foreign policy, one that is marked by war, breaches of international law, and support of coups”.
She also criticized the regular NATO meetings at the U.S. Ramstein base in Germany, where military aid to Kiev is discussed. Washington hosts these conferences “as if the Occupation Statute were still in force,” the MP said, adding that Berlin also allowed the U.S. to put it “in the line of fire” with the German-made Leopard tank deliveries to Ukraine.
The German lawmakers took a decision on the withdrawal of America’s nuclear weapons from the nation’s territory as early as 2010, but these arms are still in place, Dagdelen said. “We stand by our position: The U.S. nuclear weapons must go,” she added.
Dağdelen noted that “there once was a time when the Bundestag had more courage”, recalling that, in 2010, the German parliament voted overwhelmingly to withdraw US nuclear weapons. But she lamented that that resolution was not implemented.
“Now, Germany’s federal government allows itself to be pushed directly into the line of fire by the USA, with supplies of Leopard battle tanks”, she continued, referencing the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
“Now the federal government is refusing to support an international investigative commission into the terror attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines”, Dağdelen added. “I say, terror attacks among friends simply cannot be tolerated”.
She called for Berlin to defend its “democratic sovereignty”, asking, “Why is the federal government refusing, even after 20 years, to condemn the US war of aggression in Iraq as a violation of international law?”
She also addressed Germany’s foreign minister: “Why are you, Ms. [Annalena] Baerbock, not lobbying for the release of Julian Assange, who faces 175 years in prison in the USA for making US war crimes public? Why did you not offer asylum to the dissident Edward Snowden?”
Dağdelen did thank the United States for its support in the battle against the Nazi regime, but she noted that “the main burden in the fight against German fascism was shouldered by the Soviet Union”, which lost more than 26 million people in World War II, compared to 400,000 North Americans.
“The U.S. administration gives the impression that they do not want allies, just loyal vassals,” the MP said, pointing to America’s negligence toward its partners’ interests and demands.
According to Dagdelen, “fewer and fewer countries around the world are prepared to accept this. And that is good news.”
A true “friendship” should be based on mutual respect for human rights and international law, the MP added.
Germany hosts by far the largest number of U.S. military personnel out of all European nations. Over 35,000 American troops were stationed on its soil as of 2022. Italy, which hosts the second-largest number of American soldiers, trails far behind, as some 12,000 US military personnel were stationed there at the same time.
In an interview with Geopolitical Economy Report in February, Dağdelen condemned the conflict in Ukraine as a NATO proxy war against Russia, lamenting that EU member states have been acting as U.S. “vassals” and sacrificing their own economic interests on behalf of U.S. corporations.
