re: #252 HappyWarrior

This may make it harder to get Europe to go against Russia though, if past history is any indication. Let’s remember this issue with Bosnia:

In his book The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President from 2009, historian and author Taylor Branch, a long-time friend of former United States president Bill Clinton, made public more than 70 recorded sessions with the president during his presidency from 1993 through 2001.[54][55] According to a session taped on 14 October 1993, it is stated that:

Clinton said U.S. allies in Europe blocked proposals to adjust or remove the embargo. They justified their opposition on plausible humanitarian grounds, arguing that more arms would only fuel the bloodshed, but privately, said the president, key allies objected that an independent Bosnia would be “unnatural” as the only Muslim nation in Europe. He said they favored the embargo precisely because it locked in Bosnia’s disadvantage. [..] When I expressed shock at such cynicism, reminiscent of the blind-eye diplomacy regarding the plight of Europe’s Jews during World War II, President Clinton only shrugged. He said President Franois Mitterrand of France had been especially blunt in saying that Bosnia did not belong, and that British officials also spoke of a painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe. Against Britain and France, he said, German chancellor Helmut Kohl among others had supported moves to reconsider the United Nations arms embargo, failing in part because Germany did not hold a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Difference here is that, unlike Kohl, Merkel doesn’t give a damn about Muslims.