Ex-US commander urged EU not to react to Trump's statements

The former commander of the US Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, said that the European Union (EU) should not react to everything that President-elect Donald Trump says. The Bild newspaper stated on January 12.

"You don't have to react every time Trump says something," Hodges advised.

In his opinion, European countries should be confident in their capabilities. The retired general noted that the United States needs Europe for economic and security purposes.

In addition, Hodges said that Germany should take a leadership position in opposing Trump. The former commander explains this by saying that the FRG is Europe's largest economy and has a strong democracy.

"If the U.S. president says that Europe must rely on the nuclear shield of France and England, Russia will immediately see how vulnerable Europe is without a U.S. nuclear deterrent," Hodges reports.

The retired commander warned that Germans should not quarrel with Trump: if the president-elect of the United States withdraws nuclear weapons, the situation will become dangerous.

"The amount of EU losses from the sanctions standoff with Russia is already huge"

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Earlier in the day, Bundestag deputy from the faction "Alternative for Germany" (AdG) Rainer Rothfuss said that the undermining of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream-2 gas pipelines had damaged relations between Germany and the United States. He specified that the coming to power of the elected American President Donald Trump could affect the situation.

Then it also became known that the Chancellor of the FRG Olaf Scholz strengthens criticism of the expansionist rhetoric of the elected US President Donald Trump. Thus the Chancellor is trying to gain support as his party is failing ahead of the federal elections next month.

Prior to that, on January 8, Scholz said that European Union leaders were incomprehensible to President-elect Trump's idea of annexing Canada to the United States because "borders cannot be moved."