BBerlin, FRG (Weltexpress). Germany is to become “fit for war,” and the Berlin government has allocated astronomical sums for rearmament. This is because Russia allegedly wants to conquer Western Europe after Ukraine, even though there is no evidence of this and Putin has never expressed such intentions. Nevertheless, rearmament is proceeding to such an extent that a third world war can no longer be ruled out. Nevertheless, there is hardly any resistance to this destructive policy, nor to excessive regulation, digitalization, and surveillance, which are leading not only Germany down the path to totalitarianism. But what about German sovereignty? And what consequences will the global shift in the balance of power have now that many countries are withdrawing from US dominance?
Questions to whom the writer and journalist Wolfgang Bittner has an answer. His book Geopolitik im Überblick (Geopolitics at a Glance) will be published on July 28, 2025, by Verlag Hintergrund in the Wissen Kompakt series. Below is an excerpt.
The North Atlantic Treaty
On April 4, 1949, twelve Western states founded NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” is an alliance for mutual military and political support. It now includes 32 European and North American states.
The North Atlantic Treaty, which sets out the rights and obligations of the members, states: “The Parties undertake to settle any international dispute in which they are involved by peaceful means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
NATO has strayed far from these declarations, at the latest with its attack on Yugoslavia, which violated international law. It has developed into an aggressive organization dominated by the US and has spread as far as South America and Asia. In 1998, Argentina was granted the status of a major ally, and Colombia became a “global partner” in 2022. Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore were also added as global partners.
When the Warsaw Pact, the Eastern counterpart, was dissolved in 1991 during a period of détente, NATO remained in place. The establishment of a European defense alliance that would include Russia was thwarted by the US. Instead, contrary to agreements set out in protocols, NATO continued to expand eastward to Russia’s borders. At the same time, intelligence activities and influence on politics and the media were intensified. In addition to the mostly highly criminal activities of the CIA and NSA, the US also resumed its infiltration and indoctrination measures in the early 1990s, using tried and tested organizations for this purpose.
US and NATO-affiliated networks
Since the end of World War II, the US State Department, intelligence agencies, and other interested circles in the US have covered the entire world, and Germany in particular, with a network of think tanks and non-governmental organizations. These include the Atlantic Bridge, the Munich Security Conference, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, the Goldman Sachs Foundation, The American Interest, the Atlantic Council, the German Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the German Marshall Fund (GMF), and the Atlantic Initiative—well over a hundred organizations in total.
Almost all leading German politicians and many journalists are members of such networks, which represent the interests of the US and NATO to the detriment of their own country and a European peace policy. Members of the Atlantic Bridge, whose chairman since 2019 is former Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), include, for example: Friedrich Merz (CDU), Angela Merkel (CDU), Christian Lindner (FDP), Norbert Röttgen (CDU), Annalena Baerbock (Alliance 90/The Greens), Omid Nouripour (Alliance 90/The Greens), Alexander Graf Lambsdorff (FDP), Stefan Liebich (The Left), Kai Diekmann (former editor of the Bild Group), Martin Winterkorn (former CEO of Volkswagen AG), Michael Hüther (director of the Institute of German Economy), Birgit Breuel (former president of the Treuhandanstalt) and Wolfgang Ischinger (former chairman of the Munich Security Conference).[2]
Other members of networks close to the US and NATO include Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), Claus Kleber (former presenter of ZDF-heute-journal), Jens Spahn (CDU), Edmund Stoiber (CSU), Klaus von Dohnanyi (SPD), Joschka Fischer (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Cem Özdemir (Alliance 90/The Greens). They are joined by representatives from business, science and culture.[3]
The situation is similar in the media. The Western mass media are privately owned, the owners and publishers are government-compliant, and the editorial positions are filled with US-friendly journalists who are very often members of various US networks. In this way, influence over the opinion-forming media has been expanded.
Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that reporting has become uniform, often degenerating into propaganda and hate speech. The “next generation” is also being taken care of. The US set up seminars for so-called young leaders at elite universities, thereby cultivating a core group of young, ambitious politicians and journalists. Although this is denied, there is evidence that many leading journalists and top politicians have attended such courses and seminars, where they were indoctrinated into US policy.
Over the years, the following influential figures, for example, have taken part in these training courses organized by the networks: Angela Merkel, Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, Markus Söder, Christian Lindner, Jens Spahn, Cem Özdemir, Omid Nouripour, Annalena Baerbock, Karl-Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg, Kai Diekmann, Claus Kleber, Sandra Maischberger; but also Emmanuel Macron, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Sebastian Kurz, José Manuel Barroso, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, to name but a few.[4]
Every now and then, we see how individuals are deliberately used for propaganda purposes. For example, Alexei Navalny, an influence agent allegedly poisoned by the Kremlin, spent several months at the elite Yale University in Connecticut in 2010 as part of the Yale World Fellows Program, where he was prepared for his role as a global leader (i.e., “regime changer”). Similar training was given to Ukrainian Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Georgian Mikheil Saakashvili, Lithuanian Dalia Grybauskaité, Venezuelan Juan Guaidó, and other US “hopefuls.”[5] But this happens behind the scenes until these previously insignificant people suddenly gain prominence and start promoting US interests.
Influence and goals of the World Economic Forum
Parallel to the indoctrination measures of the US and NATO, the extremely influential World Economic Forum (WEF) launched a program for “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” in 1992, which has been called “Young Global Leaders” since 2004, also for the promotion of suitable future leaders. This has also created a global network in this area of influence, comprising prominent leaders from politics, business, the media, the military, the aristocracy, the arts, culture, and so on, who are committed to the plans of the World Economic Forum.
The WEF, a foundation and globally networked lobby organization, has its headquarters in Switzerland near Geneva and holds annual meetings, mostly in Davos, attended by the world’s elite. It maintains offices in New York, Tokyo, and Beijing. The power of this organization – like that of the “Bilderberg Group”[6] – is often underestimated. This is because it is mostly perceived as a harmless society of dignitaries who meet in the Swiss mountains to chat.
However, the true extent of the WEF’s influence can be seen from the long list of participants. It is a demonstration of economic and political power by the world’s most influential people and around 1,000 companies with an annual turnover of over five billion US dollars. (…)
Comments:
The writer and journalist Dr. jur. Wolfgang Bittner lives in Göttingen. He has published over 80 books, including “Der neue West-Ost-Konflikt. Inszenierung einer Krise” (The New East-West Conflict: Staging a Crisis) (2021), “Deutschland – verraten und verkauft” (Germany – Betrayed and Sold Out) (2021), “Ausnahmezustand. Geopolitische Einsichten und Analysen unter Berücksichtigung des Ukraine-Konflikts” (State of Emergency: Geopolitical Insights and Analyses in Light of the Ukraine Conflict) (2023), and the novel “Die Heimat, der Krieg und der Goldene Westen” (The Homeland, the War, and the Golden West) (2019). The above article is an excerpt from the book “Geopolitik im Überblick. Deutschland-USA—EU—Russland“ (Geopolitics at a Glance. Germany-US-EU-Russia) which will be published on July 28, 2025 by Verlag Hintergrund in the WISSEN KOMPAKT series.
Sources
[1] See Wolfgang Bittner, Der neue West-Ost-Konflikt (The New East-West Conflict), p. 51 ff.
[2] Ibid. with further references. See also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Mitgliedern_der_Atlantik-Brücke [accessed on April 11, 2025]
[3] Bittner, ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[6] The “Bilderbergers” are an informal, extremely influential group that operates globally and whose members are similar to those of the WEF; see Wikipedia entry on “Bilderberg Conference,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Meeting [accessed March 17, 2025]
