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Germany and France may lead decoupling from U.S.
Straight Talk
03:18

Editor's note: Some recent global events have attracted world attention. French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europeans must resist pressure to become "followers" of the U.S. and should build its position as another "superpower." Besides, the leak of highly classified Pentagon documents has also aroused heated discussion. CGTN collaborated with American journalist Bradley Blankenship to interview retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who shared his opinions on these topics. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

CGTN: French President Emmanuel Macron told Politico that he thinks that the Europeans should not be America's followers. What's your reaction to what the French president said, and to the general direction it seems Europe is going now?

Wilkerson: I said be careful of what you wish for, as we were talking about Norway, Finland, Sweden, and such, and go on to 32 countries in NATO. This euphoria will not last. We are going to sever the transatlantic link. 

We're gonna see the exact opposite of the euphoria we had with this 32-nation expansion of NATO, and it's gonna be because of what we're doing; because Europeans are understanding that one of the purposes of the U.S.'s support for Ukraine, in addition to making billions of dollars for the defense contractors, is to reestablish our economic and security hegemony over Europe. That's part of the reason the U.S. is doing it. And Germany's gonna lead this pack, I think, maybe France too.

CGTN: Recent data leaks that come out of top U.S. intelligence agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) revealed that the U.S. has been actively spying on and wiretapping its allies like Canada, Israel, and South Korea. What do you take about the U.S. spying on its own allies? 

Wilkerson: It's nothing new, nothing new at all. I mean, during my administration, they spied on Colin Powell. When he found out they had transcripts of his telephone calls with Sergei Lavrov, for example, he essentially called back and said, "This is something you do routinely? You [are] really spying on your own cabinet officers?" "Oh yes, of course."

We even had the bruhaha with the UN. We were listening to the UN Security Council deliberations in secret. In fact, my research shows we've been doing it since at least 1945. As we got more and more sophisticated at the NSA, we did it more. These programs that Edward Snowden revealed are not just used against Americans; we used them against everyone. So that's nothing new.

Second, it's one of the reasons, I think, and this has been building over time. If you look at very sophisticated polling, and some of that's done by my own army because they call it preparation of the battlefield. They wanna sense people's views that their territory might be once or twice or three times contested, and the U.S. Army might have to go out and do something. So they do these sophisticated polls in places like Pakistan, South Korea, you name it. And we're finding that the majority of those populations, sometimes 60, 70 percent of those under 40 think the greatest threat to the future of their lives is the United States of America.

Script editor: Li Yunlong

Video editor: Feng Ran

Cover image designer: Liu Shaozhen

Executive producers: Bi Jianlu, Zhang Peijin, Wang Xinyan

Chief editors: Wang Ying, Ren Yan

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)

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