Berlin – When war breaks out, the hour of symbolic politics strikes. What to do against the aggressor from Russia? Against dictator Vladimir Putin? Against the man with the bomb? The words cannot be drastic enough. And the deeds? The football club Schalke 04 separated from its Russian sponsor Gazprom. Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig announced that she would dissolve the Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian Foundation for Climate and Environmental Protection, which is linked to the Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who, as a Gazprom and Nord Stream lobbyist and Putin friend, combines every conceivable evil in himself, is now supposed to be chased out of the SPD after all, or at least lose his expensive privileges, an office and a driver from taxpayers’ money, or his honorary citizenship in Hanover.
We are still financing the war against Ukraine
Can you do and demand anything. Just as one can only discuss Nord Stream 2 very extensively – as if there were no Nord Stream 1 and all the other energy deals with Russia. Against this background, the new line of the federal government that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has now announced must be welcomed: full harshness against Putin and the other war criminals in the Kremlin! This includes, among other things, 100 billion euros for upgrading the Bundeswehr, defense spending to more than two percent of gross domestic product … It all sounds very determined, until we finally get to the crucial point, namely the question of the extent to which Russian banks Communication system Swift and thus be excluded from international payment transactions.
Only then will we know whether Germany, Europe, the USA and the rest of the world will finally stop financing the Russian war through their businesses. Anything else would not help either in a timely manner or in the long term. One of the seriousness of the situation is that people in Ukraine are apparently willing to die for their fatherland – above all their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That may seem like an archaic leftover from a heroic, especially male and un-woken epoch to us in Germany. But before we in Germany lose ourselves in discussions about whether sanctions against Russia can harm us and whether solidarity with the threatened democracy in Ukraine can cost us something, we should get used to the idea that we have made other very different sacrifices Need to become.
The return of the martial boom of war
The post-heroic times seem over for now. We will not be able to defend our freedom with just a little good will or money. That is the really disturbing perspective on this war in the middle of Europe, just a few hundred kilometers from Germany. Concepts that have vanished from the public consciousness, such as service, duty, sacrifice, homeland, death and dying for freedom, fatherland… They will return under these or other names. Because even if there are good reasons why nobody wants to hear this martial roar again, a value-based foreign policy, as propagated by Annalena Baerbock, is heading towards naming the costs of “our values” for the sake of its own credibility: the price of our freedom. In the fight for it, no one will remain innocent.
Germany is entering a new era, which, like the government, may be somewhat solemnly called the “turn of the era”. A first test will now be how we deal with the people who have fled from the Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of them are leaving their homes, mostly women and children, while the able-bodied men have to stay in the country. By exclaiming “We can do it” all too quickly and stealthily selling indulgences with autocratic Turkey, we cheated our way past the so-called refugee crisis from 2015 onwards. Now Europeans are standing in front of our doors – they are our neighbors. Every evasion, every lie will hit us to the core and continue to undermine our self-image as a democratic, free and constitutional community. In the long run, the fleeing Ukrainians will need more than shelter and something to eat. Are we ready?
We will not be able to denounce them as economic refugees, as we carelessly and selflessly do with the other refugees. You belong to us. Helping you unreservedly will have been the least of our sacrifices.