Don't count Germany out. Merkel has preserved German strength at the cost of South Europe's pain. The Euro is managed to protect Northern economies, not mitigate the Southern pains. "Bailouts" and rescue plans are heavily biased towards preserving the North's separation from the fallout. All of this strengthens Germany and the northern countries at the expense of the EU as a whole.

As the worldwide balance of power continues to shift over the next decade or two, I believe Merkel's Germany is poised to be extremely relevant, even if it is so at the cost of the cohesion of the EU.

It also reaffirms to me why the UK seems to have very little interest joining the party like their neighbors. Why compete for first fiddle against a self-serving Merkel?

It'll be interesting times but I don't think it's as simple as Europe being relegated to America's extended states.

I counted Germany out the moment the boundless informant information revealed the number of NSA intercepts in Germany was on the order of the number in China (despite the massive population difference and presumable difference in the number of linguists NSA employees for each country). One of the few plausible explanations for this is that the NSA was doing this surveillance minimally with the cooperation of the German government and likely at the behest of the BND/German government.

With probably no place in Germany that's more than 250km away from an US/UK military base, and the "extraordinary rendition" program in mind, I'd also refuse asylum in Germany to someone who wants to flee the US.

Especially in a high profile case like Snowden's.

I guess a plane ticket to a non-NATO country through back channels might be better help for people seeking protection from the US than granting refugee status.

> With probably no place in Germany that's more than 250km away from an US/UK military base, and the "extraordinary rendition" program in mind

To which several European governments, mostly the UK, but also Italy, happily cooperated. The other ones have been lucky enough not to be caught red-handed but I have little doubt that they knew perfectly what was going on (at best) or were actively providing support.

It also happened on German soil (Ramstein Air Base is said to be involved) and to at least one German citizen (but not with Germany as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri) - even if the German government wasn't actively involved, at least it wasn't able or willing to prevent that from happening here.

Preventing the issue on formal grounds was probably the easiest way to avoid having to protect someone in Germany from the USA - which is obviously futile.

As far as I remember they said that Germany can't consider asylum request from Snowden if he isn't on German soil, according to the law, and if he gets there and files an asylum request they'll consider it.

I don't remember Merkel, or anyone else, saying that they won't even accept asylum request or that they'll refuse the request if it's made according to the law.