Angela Merkel apparently went behind NATO's back to make a deal with Russia for the natural gas pipeline Nord Stream II, paying for which will drive Germany's contribution to NATO defense spending below the 2% of GDP that was agreed on in 2014.  Germany, with one of the world's wealthiest economies, is far in arrears on her NATO obligations, has been for years, and has no acceptable excuse for it.

America has been open for years now to selling liquid natural gas (LNG) to Europe at rates below those the Russians can provide with a pipeline.  It actually looks as if Merkel just prefers to do business with the thuggish Eastern oligarchs than with the putatively like-minded free markets of the West.  Germany evidently isn't as like-minded as we might have imagined.

Merkel casts it as a choice between foreign aid and an obligation of lesser importance.  After all, why would Germany worry about Eastern military adventurism when she's buying Russian LNG?  It isn't a clash of priorities, but stubborn refusal to meet a commitment.  As if Germany didn't owe America some consideration for the years we rebuilt her shattered WWII economy and then stood by her through decades of Russian bullying and threats.  Now Merkel makes nice with those same Russians while thumbing her nose at America.

It remains to be seen how President Trump will respond, but one hopes tariffs on German goods go through the ceiling and that the American market for anything Deutsch screeches to a halt.  Ingratitude is among the more infuriating human failings, and Angela Merkel has many of us on this side of the pond good and riled.

Germans may want to think about shunting this old girl aside.  We who have shouldered their defense load for seventy years rightly consider her duplicitous.  That thought should be sobering in view of whom they've chosen to partner with instead.