On Sunday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in the German Bundestag that the Bundeswehr would be equipped with a special fund of 100 billion euros and that the military budget would in future amount to more than two percent of gross national product. This mark had never been reached before. What did the deputies do? They rose from their chairs and applauded for a long time. Yes, the Chancellor’s words were lost in applause. It was spooky. The German parliamentarians celebrated the largest rearmament that there has ever been in German history since the Second World War. Silence and quiet seriousness would have been appropriate. Instead, it was as if the Bundestag had its August experience on this day in February. In the Reichstag building, the deputies praised the 100 billion as their predecessors had approved the war credits in the summer of 1914: enthusiastically and with a clear conscience.
Annalena Baerbock has said that the morning after the attack on Ukraine we “woke up in a different world”. Is that so? Don’t the big, and willingly big, countries everywhere reserve the right to intervene militarily? Rarely are the reasons good – Bosnia – mostly bad – Falklands, Afghanistan, Libya – sometimes none – Iraq. Even today, war is a common means of politics. Does one really need to be reminded of this, less than a year after the Bundeswehr returned from a war that lasted twenty years?
The war in Ukraine is a crime. But he’s not the paradigm shift the public is treating him as. A paradigm shift, on the other hand, is the German answer. Vladimir Putin is responsible for turning the long-simmering conflict over Ukraine into a war in Europe. But Olaf Scholz is responsible for our reaction. Putin’s war is wrong. And our departure from the policy of military restraint and departure from the previous Russia policy are also wrong.
Will a new peace movement emerge as a reaction to rearmament?
In the Bundestag, Olaf Scholz gave his government a far-reaching mandate: “We have to ask ourselves: what skills does Putin’s Russia have, and what skills do we need to counter this threat, today and in the future?” Scholz wanted to prove that he can also rattle the saber? That would be bad enough. But maybe it’s even worse and Scholz was serious. So that the Bundeswehr should actually be put in a position to meet Russia’s “abilities” on an equal footing, so to speak. What would you be talking about then? Tanks and howitzers from Flensburg to Garmisch? No. The fact that “we” will one day hold a candle to the Russians conventionally cannot be bought with billions. This can only be about Germany as a nuclear power. the HE DOES exultantly understood it like this: the nuclear question is part of the “long overdue turnaround” in security and defense policy, “even if it is particularly difficult for the Germans”.
Shall we learn to love the bomb now? It’s hard to believe that MPs realized this madness as they applauded standing up. On the other hand, one does not want to believe that “we” are now delivering weapons to a war zone. The green vice-chancellor Robert Habeck, as an expert on dizzy ontology, said that this decision was correct, but “no one knows today whether it is good”. He’s wrong: you know that pretty well. There are few instances in history where the “make peace with more and more guns” recipe has worked. We can be sure: this will not be such a case. On the contrary. The West is prolonging the war with its arms deliveries. As soon as our weapons are used there, it’s no longer just Putin’s dead, it’s ours too.
Did the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets of Berlin over the weekend, driven by their horror at the war in Ukraine, know this? These people were moved by one feeling: We cannot stand idly by and watch the suffering of the people in Ukraine! We have to do something! You’re right. Help for the people in Ukraine is needed. The weapons of the West, however, prolong the suffering of the war and will not change anything about its outcome. Whoever increases the costs for the Russian aggressor also increases them for the Ukrainian victims. Our demonstrators should be careful that their good indignation is not channeled into the federal government’s own mills in order to pursue wrong and pernicious policies.
Once the billions Scholz talked about have become new weapons, it will be seen whether the young people will stick to the streets in front of the Bundeswehr depots in protest, just as they do on the autobahn to protest against climate change. So whether a new peace movement will also emerge with the new armament. There are always those who do the business of war. We have now experienced that again. Hopefully someone will then take care of the business of peace.
Ukraine not yet ready to join the European Union
But maybe a turning point actually took place. Perhaps the metamorphosis of the Greens – from dove to hawk – is representative of a development that has affected society as a whole: In 1999, the Greens still had to struggle – literally – to get their approval for the first military deployment of German soldiers since the Second World War admit. Now they said yes to the largest German armaments package of all time. Incidentally, one can actually feel a bit sorry for the Greens: they have only been involved in the federal government twice and both times they were confronted with the question of war and peace immediately after taking office. On the other hand, you can only ever fail because of your own demands – not because of those of others.
It remains to be seen whether the tradition of peace in West German society has come to an end and whether it has simply been replaced by the Instagramisation of political protest: thumbs down for Putin, a big like for Ukraine. In any case, one gets the impression that the media and politicians are becoming less and less able to escape the waves of emotion that are sweeping through the country. And then not only does the political analysis quickly get mixed up, the conditions in general erode. Absurd example from Munich: The local mayor demanded that the Russian conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra distance himself “clearly and unequivocally” from Putin’s war: “If Valeri Gergiev has not clearly positioned himself here by Monday, he can no longer remain chief conductor of our Philharmonic Orchestra.” And then he actually threw him out on Tuesday. So once solidarity has been imposed, you can’t laugh without proof of your attitude, it’s no different in Munich than in Moscow.
It is a pity that the roots of the conflict cannot be approached in this way. They lie deep in the past, they have grown and branched out historically – it will take time, skill and patience to get to them. Who of those involved is willing to raise that at the moment? At least not those who have the most to gain and lose: the Ukrainians themselves. Their President Volodymyr Zelenskyj is vehemently demanding that his country’s admission to the European Union be accelerated. It would have been better if Selenskyj had been told the truth: the Russian threat alone does not make Ukraine fit for the EU. Instead, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spurred on the hopes of the Ukrainians: “You are one of us and we want you in.” It is with such sentences, as you remember, that the whole mess started. “Ukrainian people! This is your moment! The free world is with you! America is with you!” US Senator John McCain called out on the Maidan in December 2014, and people believed him. When will the West stop promising Ukraine more than it can deliver?
Note: The members of the German Bundestag have not (yet) “approved” the 100 billion euros, as originally stated in the text. This has been corrected.