There is always something volatile about a handicapped Great Power when a whole new intensity appears in political, economic and historical circumstances, writes M.K. Bhadrakumar.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and U.S. Ambassador to Germany Amy Gutmann, right, greeting U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin outside the German Defense Ministry in Berlin on Jan. 19. (DoD, Jack Sanders)
By M.K. Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
The hypothesis that the Anglo-Saxon axis is pivotal to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is only partly true. Germany is actually Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier, after the United States.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged a new arms package worth €700 million, including additional tanks, munitions and Patriot air defense systems at the NATO summit in Vilnius, putting Berlin, as he said, at the very forefront of military support for Ukraine.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stressed, “By doing this, we’re making a significant contribution to strengthening Ukraine’s staying power.” However, the pantomime playing out may have multiple motives.
Fundamentally, Germany’s motivation is traceable to the crushing defeat by the Red Army and has little to do with Ukraine as such.
The Ukraine crisis has provided the context for accelerating Germany’s militarization. Meanwhile, revanchist feelings are rearing their head and there is a “bipartisan consensus” among Germany’s leading centrist parties — CDU, SPD and Green Party — in this regard.
In an interview last weekend, the CDU’s leading foreign and defense expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should consider cutting off “Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.”
Roderich Kiesewetter in 2022. (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Berlin is still smarting under the surrender of the ancient Prussian city of Königsberg [now Kaliningrad] in April 1945.
Stalin ordered 1.5 million Soviet troops supported by several thousand tanks and aircraft to attack the crack Nazi Panzer divisions deeply entrenched in Königsberg. The capture of the heavily fortified stronghold of Königsberg by the Soviet army was celebrated in Moscow with an artillery salvo by 324 cannons firing 24 shells each.
Nothing Forgotten in Berlin
Evidently, Kiesewetter’s remarks show that nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after eight decades. Thus, Germany is the Biden administration’s closest ally in the war against Russia.
The German government has stated its understanding for the Biden administration’s controversial decision to supply Ukraine with cluster ammunition. The government spokesman commented in Berlin, “We are certain that our US friends did not make their decision lightly, to deliver this sort of munition.”
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier remarked, “In the current situation, one should not obstruct the USA.” Indeed, the top CDU figure, Kiesewetter, suggested in an interview with the Green Party-affiliated daily taz that Ukraine should be given “guarantees, and if necessary, even provided with nuclear assistance, as an intermediary step to NATO membership.”
Coinciding with the NATO summit in Vilnius on Tuesday and Wednesday, Rheinmetall, the great 135-year-old German arms manufacturing company, has disclosed that it is opening an armored vehicle plant in western Ukraine at an undisclosed location in the next 12 weeks.
To begin with, German Fuchs armored personnel carriers will be built and repaired while there are plans afoot to manufacture ammunition and possibly even air defense systems and tanks.
Rheinmetall’s CEO told CNN on Monday that like other Ukrainian arms factories, the new plant could be protected from Russian air attack. Germany has more than doubled the 2022 allocation of €2 billion for upgrading Ukraine’s armed forces. It now touches around €5.4 billion with further plans to increase to €10.5 billion.
Contending with Poland
Now, is this all about Russia? Germany cannot be unaware that Ukraine has simply no hope on earth to defeat Russia militarily. Germany is playing the long game. It is creating equity in western Ukraine where it is not Russia but Poland that is its contender.
Ever since the Tsarist army advanced into Galicia in 1914, Russia has had a difficult history with Ukrainian nationalists. If the current war in Ukraine spreads to western Ukraine, that cannot be Russia’s choice but out of some necessity forced upon it.
The Soviet victory in Ukraine in October 1944, the Red Army’s occupation of Eastern Europe and Allied diplomacy resulted in a redrawing of Poland’s western frontiers with Germany and Ukraine’s with Poland.
Simply put, with compensation of German territories in the west, Poland agreed to the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine; a mutual population exchange created for the first time in centuries a clear ethnic, as well as political, Polish-Ukrainian border.
German Reich lands lost to Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II, in yellow and orange. Since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., these are now part of Poland and Russia. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
It is entirely conceivable that the ongoing Ukraine war will radically change the territorial boundaries of Ukraine in the east and south. Possibly, it can re-open the post-World War II settlement with regard to western Ukraine as well.
Russia has repeatedly warned that Poland aims to reverse the cession of Volhynia and Galicia in western Ukraine. Such a turn of events will most certainly bring to the fore the issue of the German territories that are part of Poland today.
Perhaps, it was in anticipation of turbulence ahead that last October, eight months after the Russian intervention began in February 2022, that Warsaw demanded WWII reparations from Berlin — an issue which Germany says was settled in 1990 — to the tune of €1.3 trillion.
Under the Potsdam Conference of 1945, the “former eastern territories of Germany” comprising nearly one quarter (23.8 percent) of the Weimar Republic with the majority was ceded to Poland. The remainder, consisting of northern East Prussia including the German city of Königsberg (renamed Kaliningrad), was allocated to the Soviet Union.
Königsberg — current day Kaliningrad — in 1938. (HerkusMonte, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Make no mistake about the importance of the eastern border for German culture and politics. Indeed, there is always something volatile about a “handicapped” Great Power when a whole new intensity appears in political, economic and historical circumstances, which prompts those in power to turn ideas into reality, and revanchist and imperialistic discourses that were quietly but steadily streaming below the surface of the carefully considered diplomatic efforts begin to probe pan-nationalist expansion.
In retrospect, Germany’s — in particular, then foreign minister and current President Steinmeier’s — diabolical role to align Germany with the neo-Nazi elements during the regime change in Kiev in 2014 and the subsequent German perfidy in the implementation of the Minsk Agreement (“Steinmeier formula”), as admitted as recently in February by former Chancellor Angela Merkel should not be forgotten.
Feb. 12, 2015: Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, Germany’s Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at the Normandy format talks in Minsk, Belarus. (Kremlin)
Suffice it to say, even as Russia is winning the Ukraine war, the concern of the German foreign policy makers once again faces the need to redefine what was German.
Thus, the war in Ukraine is only the means to an end. Recent reports suggest that Berlin may be moving, finally, toward meeting Ukraine’s pending demand for Taurus cruise missiles with a range exceeding 500 kms and unique “multi-effect war head” that can be a game changer in the combat dynamics on the battlefield and create the prerequisites for victory.
Equally, German soldiers already comprise about half of the NATO battlegroup already present in Lithuania. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said two weeks ago while on a visit to Vilnius that Germany is preparing the infrastructure to permanently base 4,000 soldiers (“a robust brigade”) to Lithuania so as to have the capability to maintain military flexibility at the eastern flank. The decision has support from both Germany’s governing coalition and its main opposition.
The CDU foreign policy expert and member of the Bundestag, Kiesewetter called the idea of establishing a German base in the Baltics a “decision of reason and reliability.”
Indeed, there have been past attempts, historically speaking, to create German rule in the Baltics based on revisionist claims towards the new states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania where German colonists had settled as far back as in the 12th and 13th centuries.
M.K. Bhadrakumar is a former diplomat. He was India’s ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkey. Views are personal.
This article originally appeared on Indian Punchline.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Providing more weapons to Ukraine fits nicely into Russia’s grand plan of demilitarizing NATO, not just Ukraine itself. Whatever weaponry NATO nations bring to the battlefield will be destroyed in short order by Russia’s superior weaponry and soldiers. Also, there is an inconsistency in the notion that Germany can re-militarize at a time when its economy is being de-industrialized. It would be extremely difficult for any nation to develop and build the weapons of war in the absence of robust heavy industry, which, in the case of Germany, is steadily departing from the fatherland in favor of places where energy is plentiful and cheap?
As an aside, It should surprise no one that capitalists are not very patriotic. Their primary loyalty is to money.
I get the line that those who ignore history get bit in the ass but just the history in these comments made me realize that history is maybe not all it’s cracked up to be.
It seems a lot of people need to do a lot more forgetting. Forgiving is just too hard, especially when there’s no agreement on what people remember.
“…nothing is forgotten or forgiven in Berlin even after eight decades.”
The US/UK never apologized for Dresden. Prolly convinced the Germans that Hitler did it by now. If they ever find out who blew up their pipelines/economy the US would do well to get pot legalized there.
The Poles just love to rumble. Poland and Ukraine: burying the Anti-Russian hatchet.
The recent anti-Russian denouement between Polish and Ukrainian leaders (Zelensky and Duda) which took place earlier in this year April 2023, seems a little strange. Looking back at the massacres of Poles in Ukraine (Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Polish: rze? wo?y?ska, literally: Volhynian slaughter; Ukrainian: ????????? ????????, Volyn tragedy) were part of an ethnic cleansing operation carried out in Nazi German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)’s North Command in the regions of Volhynia (Reichskommissariat Ukraine) and their South Command in Eastern Galicia (General Government) beginning in March 1943 and lasting until the end of 1944.
The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. Most of the victims were women and children and UPA’s methods were particularly savage and resulted in 35,000–60,000 Polish deaths in Volhynia and 25,000–40,000 in Eastern Galicia, for the total of between 76,000 and 106,000 casualties/deaths.
These killings were directly linked with the policies of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its military arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) led by Roman Shukhevych, whose goal as specified at the Second Conference of the OUN-B on 17–23 February 1943 (or March 1943 according to other sources) was to purge all non-Ukrainians from the future Ukrainian state. Not limiting their activities to the purging of Polish civilians, UPA also wanted to erase all traces of the Polish presence in the area. The violence was endorsed by a considerable number of the Ukrainian Orthodox clergy who supported UPA’s nationalist cause. The massacres led to a civil conflict between Polish and Ukrainian forces in the German-occupied territories, with the Polish Home Army in Volhynia responding to the Ukrainian attacks.
It was a generation of mass murder. It seems that given the recent past the Poles don’t seem to be particularly aggrieved. But one wonders if they and the Ukrainians ever overcame their past misunderstandings – Who knows? Who cares?
Interesting statistics. Do you think the number of Poles who were killed, taken prisoner, forced from their homes or were deported is more or less than what resulted from the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 which was secretly agreed to and orchestrated along with Nazi Germany? How about the number of Poles deported in the years following WWII?
More than any other nation, the Poles have taken in and assisted Ukrainians. A total of 11 million Ukrainians have been driven into internal or external exile. When individuals react with such an outpouring of empathy and generosity, there is usually a reason. Perhaps, just perhaps, Poland does not perceive Ukraine as a threat.
Nobody in the mainstream public of Germany has ever heard of Roderich Kiesewetter and saying that he is “the CDU’s leading foreign and defense expert” and “the top CDU figure” speaks of a person writing this article who has literally zero understanding of German politics. Nobody in the mainstream parties has any intention of revisising eastern borders.
Thought-provoking article, but like some of the commenters I don’t think the German mainstream politicians or other powerful interests in this country wish to reclaim lost territories beyond the Oder-Neisse line.
The ethnic cleansing and replacement of virtually the entire population of these territories (shown on the article’s map) in any century but the 20th would have been considered a heinous crime which would have been rectified at the earliest opportunity. But given the fresh memories of the murders of countless millions by Nazi Germany, few felt much sympathy for the Germans. And the Germans themselves, out of feelings of guilt or simply being cowed, buried the topic. In any event, the impoverished expellees had (and have) little political or economic power, which fell into the hands of the Westerners, who didn’t care much about these territories. Even if collective guilt were to be accepted (it shouldn’t be) the result was unjust, as the main “hotbed” of Nazism was Bavaria and Austria, not Prussia – which in fact had been governed by Socialists during the two decades before Hitler took power.
According to some sources, the Soviets offered to give the Kaliningrad exclave back to Germany as part of the reunification deal – and the German negotiators rejected this proposal. NATO would be mighty pleased today if this piece of land were German, not Russian.
In any event, the thesis of the article that “anti-Russian” sentiments of the German political class are based on an irredentist wish to get these territories back is belied by the fact that the only parties that would harbor such wishes tend also to be pro-Russian (or at least not Russophobic) – like the AFD in Germany or the FPÖ in Austria.
The German political class and mainstream intelligentsia have been successfully defanged and gelded. Germany is now another happy poodle of the USA – I guess the UK is a standard poodle, and Germany is the miniature variety.
Poland is another story. In Poland, nationalism is alive and well. Poles I know speak nostalgically about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (including most of today’s Ukraine) and would like to implement the Intermarium. And Poland is becoming ever more important militarily, building up its army and taking over the frontline role in NATO that Germany formerly played. While Germany is deindustrializing, Poland is becoming stronger by the day. Perhaps having incorporated the old Prussian territories, Poland has also succeeded to the vigor of the old Prussia.
I don’t think however that there will be changes in borders, other than those being drawn now through the war in Eastern Ukraine. For better or worse, the “sanctity of borders” – even those drawn by colonial or other imperialist powers taking into account neither populations nor history – will be respected.
“… Rheinmetall, the great 135-year-old German arms manufacturing company, has disclosed that it is opening an armored vehicle plant in western Ukraine at an undisclosed location in the next 12 weeks.”
Putin: *cracks knuckles* “Thanks for the heads up” :)
The Brits too:
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed negotiations with British defense giant BAE Systems to establish a weapons production facility in the country.
The factory will facilitate the local manufacture of arms and equipment to build Ukraine’s military arsenal to resist Russian forces.
According to Zelensky, the potential venture would help address the continuing need for a wide range of weapons, such as tanks and artillery systems, amid heavy fighting in some strategic locations in Ukraine.”
June 2nd 2023
(Another heads up, but i think the Brits got there first.)
These authors do a good job of covering the concept of the intermarian which I and they believe is the bottom line on all of this warfare and capitulation.
Recruiting Nazis Covert Action Quarterly
After the Russian Revolution, the West backed first a military invasion and then the White armies against the new Soviet state. When these efforts failed, the West then backed Polish leader Joseph Pilsudsky and Ukrainian nationalist Simon Petlyura’s Russo-Polish war based on the dual concepts of Intermarium and the Prometheus project.
Once again, now led by the U.S., rightwing anti-Russia forces are looking to Poland and its ultra-anti-Russian allies to lead an increasingly aggressive front against Russia.
The U.S. has been pouring weapons into Eastern Europe, backed up by an aggressive program of military training and military exercises. An aggressive system of bilateral military agreements between the U.S. and its East European allies threaten to pull Western Europe into a multilateral conflict with Russia via Article 5 of the NATO charter.
The authors trace these historical developments as a resurrection of the Intermarium—a geopolitical concept that envisaged an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as a alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.
Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is an Associate Director and Research Professor at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs. Ellen Rivera is an independent researcher specialized in the post-war German far-right, with a particular focus on post-war anti-communist organizations. – Editors]
hxxps://covertactionmagazine.com/author/marleneellen/
This new usage of the Intermarium concept has been revived by Stratfor, a private intelligence think tank whose customers include large corporations as well as government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marines, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The earliest Stratfor email mentioning the notion of Intermarium dates from 2009 and advanced the concept in the context of Poland’s solidarity with Georgia following the August 2008 war with Russia.[86]
hxxps://covertactionmagazine.com/2019/03/23/imagined-geographies-of-central-and-eastern-europe-the-concept-of-intermarium/
“I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie…
For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold.
In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.”
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), p.275
He would say the same of the German bourgeoise as well.
Pitiful.
But remember many ex-Nazis, such as Reinhard Ghelen, were put back in power in Germany.
Read Billionaire Nazis, the book, and you can see how the fortunes of let us say, Mercedes Benz, were paswsed down to the children of Nazis.
Same with Volkswagan.
Fascism never left Germany.
And we imported it with the help of the Dulles Brothers and the Vatican.
Herr Bhadrakumar hinterlässt bei mir den Eindruck eines bei den Briten geschulten elitären Empire-Mitglieds.
Die zentrale Rolle der Briten in diesem Krieg soll durch eine Hass schürende Darstellung der Deutschen und deren Politik, die falsch eingeordnet wird, ersetzt werden.
Dieser Artikel hat mit der Realität in
Deutschland, in wessen Auftrag, Politik gemacht wird, nichts zu tun. Der Verfasser verkennt vollkommen die Lage Deutschlands als immer noch besetztes Land. Deutschland hat nach der Wiedervereinigung den Polen die deutschen Ostgebiete überlassen. Es gab und gibt keine revangistischen und imperialistischen Diskurse, auch nicht im Untergrund wegen des Sieges der Russen gegen Nazi-Deutschland oder um ein früheres Großreich wiederherzustellen. Die deutsche Aussenpolitik wir von der WEF geschulten Aussenministerin, die ukrainische Interessen über die Interessen der deutschen Wähler stellt,vertreten . Die zunächst zögerliche Waffenlieferung für die Ukraine wurde massiv von USA und den russlandfeindlichen baltischen Staaten, Polen und Briten kritisiert. Sogar die Zerstörung unserer Infrastruktur wurde bejubelt und keiner aus der deutschen Regierungspartei kritisiert das oder fordert hier Aufklärung. Die Deutschen mussten Russland sanktionieren, obwohl damit der Wirtschaft und Bevölkerung Deutschlands immensen Schaden zugefügt wird. Die teuflische Treiberin des mit investierten 5Mrd.$ unterstützten Putsches auf dem Maidan war Frau Victoria Nuland. Frau Merkel spielte eine unrühmliche Rolle, als sie zusammen mit Hollande und Selenskyj die Minsk2-Verträge sabotierte, um die Ukraine militärisch aufzurüsten. Diese ganzen russlandfeindlichen Handlungen sollten sicher auch Deutschland und die EU schädigen. Denn der Ausblick Putins von 2001, eine gemeinsame Wirtschaftszone von Lissabon bis Wladiwostok zu erschaffen, hat sicherlich dem Hegemon USA
und den Briten nicht gefallen.
I don’t think Herr Bhadrakumar’s and your positions are that far apart. He is not blaming the German people but the German (so called) politicians and maybe even German deep state.
I just came back from a three weeks private trip in Germany. I traveled widely in the southern, eastern and northeastern regions, together with German friends. I visited Stuttgart, Weimar, Leipzig, Wismar, Schwerin, several small towns and villages. I was stunned by the absence of any public demonstration of discontent! I am proficient in German and have had many conversations not only with friends. There is a lot of discontent but surprisingly little public expression of that.
It is up to the German people to force their politicians to change direction – hopefully before it is too late.
“Surprisingly little public expression”
Maybe because of things like this:
“Nationwide crackdown on “Last Generation” climate activists in Germany”
Ulrich Rippert
15 December 2022 WSWS dot org
“1,000 anti-fascist demonstrators detained in Leipzig, Germany police kettle for hours”
Marianne Arens
6 June 2023 WSWS dot org
I was in Weimar on June 6, and had travelled to Leipzig on June 7. I was well aware of the event in Leipzig and had several conversations with locals about it while still in Weimar – one of them being a local school teacher. He was somewhat nonchalant about the event – suggesting that these were local, antifa issues. I didn’t explore further.
The reason I had initiated these conversations was the observation of police cars patrolling the Weimar city center. My interlocutors had suggested that this might have to do with the Leipzig event the next day. They are former East Germans, and are not very supportive of the current government. But their lack of vigor in expressing dissatisfaction is NOT because of their reluctance to discuss this with a visitor. I say that because I have had very open conversations on all sorts of controversial topics with them including about AfD, Covid, NS2, refugees, etc. BTW, these conversations were civil – something that I don’t think I could do here at home!
We went to Leipzig the day after and stayed at the city center for 4 nights. There was nothing to be noticed about the event. I even spoke about it with the bar tender and didn’t notice any excitement.
I attribute this surprising lack of public expression of discontent to three things. The German mainstream media are much worse than here. The sources of alternative media are limited. As a result, many Germans are not well informed. Add to that the state’s vigorous suppression of opinions. The last reason is that Germany is still a very rich country and the government has been spending a huge amount of money to linder the pain (coming as a result of its policies).
But, I believe it’s just a question of time before the discontent becomes visible. There is always such a lag.
I should qualify my observations by limiting them only to the places I have visited. Interestingly, they were spread relatively widely and mostly in eastern parts of the country. Things might look different in Berlin. I didn’t go there.
How did the U.S. and Europe come to be led by such a collection of absolute morons? Can we not do better than Von der Leyen, Rutte, Macron, Sunak/Johnson. Baerbock and Scholz make Hitler and Goehring look like the sensible ones. The biggest flop worldwide of course is Biden. We will all be lucky to dodge WW3 after hiring the absolute least competent American as President of the past 100 or so years. God help us.
Und der immense Schaden wird Deutschland mit voller Absicht von den Verbuendeten zugefuegt. Der dritte Weltkrieg koennte endlich Deutschland total vernichten.
German military capability (without NATO infrastructure and support) is something of a laughingstock. Germany will have to increase military spending massively, as well as motivate/indoctrinate its young people if it wants to become a military power again. Otherwise, Germany will still be a vassal of the US empire still under US military occupation. At the end of the day, the BRD must do as they are told by the imperial overlords.
Dear Insane European Nations, and that means you too USA Biden:
Perhaps you have missed what is happening around the world with the planet heating up? Perhaps you have not connected WAR with imploded water, and land and air which is now compromised for ALL the people of all those nations that seem to want to begin WW 3!
Riddle me this! Why are so many world leaders and nations so focused on imploding the Earth? —
Do the insanity nations act without realizing that what is done to one part of Earth, and then another part and another part and on and on definitely degrades the air, land and water from those military attacks—At a certain point there is a point of collapse with so many humans and plants and animals being destroyed in wars?——And by the way, what will we eat, drink and live like–and yes even breathe in a future when a few bad men want to blow up so much?
I am both mystified and horrified at the stupidity of human kind. : (
There is a saying in German…’koennen den Rachen nicht voll kriegen’ ie haven’t had enough yet. Did Germany learn anything??? after two world wars??? I reside in Europe and often have the scary feeling that US/UK/NATO are like a lightning rod – not diverting disaster but attracting it.
Vera, you said it. US society is not social it is very individualistic everyone is in his own society. The wealthiest people never have enough because their goal and all they know is to compete to be the richest of them all. It appears to be the only motivation they have.
That is the people who meet in Davos every year in January.
I find it hard to believe that any sane German would want to revive “Drang nach Osten”. That said, I will wait and see if a de-industrializing Germany will be capable of building a 21st century Wehrmacht much less convincing German voters to go along. Even the bat-sh!t crazy war-monger wing of Poland would probably think twice about wanting to step into western Ukraine. Given that the Banderites hate Poles almost as much as Jews and Russians, they would find their hands full!
NATO was supposedly established, “To keep America in, to keep Russia out and to keep Germany down.” We may now be seeing the spectacular failure of that final aim.
More importantly the overall goal of US policy is to recreate WWII in some form with Europeans (especially Germany) fighting Russia and Japan once again fighting China. The result in WWII was to leave all other industrial powers in ruins and leave the US unscarred and on top as the dominant world power.
We are witnessing that once again apparently. Whether the US will succeed again remains to be seen. But as everyone knows, a very dangerous scenario is being created given the possession of nuclear weapons by the US, Russia and China.
The only way to end this is to stop the US drive for world hegemony. Unfortunately the American political classes are on board with all this, with the exception of the so-called MAGA Republicans who oppose the proxy war in Ukraine. The guns for butter Dems are all on board for both wars – and so is the majority of the American populace.
The main drivers toward WW3 are the elite Globalist Financiers based in the US. Presidents, Prime Ministers etc are the second layer of this totally corrupt entity, the intelligence services are the enforcers and controllers of the 99%, and US/ NATO and all the vassal states ( like UK, Australia ) are the ones who are thrown under the train to fight the endless wars for the Empire. Money and political fast-tracking is the oil that enables the Empire to function whilst staying mostly invisible to the hoi polloi.
Germany and the rest of Western Europe are sure losers as long as they perpetuate this war and grievances from previous wars.
Provoking this war has been an unforgivable blunder on the part of NATO and the sooner peace and reconciliation begin the better for all.
Europe should be focused on building its own future and not existing as a pitiful satrap to a declining empire.
Its time to embrace the 21st century and the actual realities we must attend.
Seeing the world in terms of endless war and tyranny are the death knell of the planet and all parties must wake up to the obvious.
Who on earth thinks that Germany is not a part of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Axis’?
First, a quibble, “Saxony” is the 10th largest of the 18 German states.
But, mainly, since I presume you are referring to the Saxons of England (aka Robin Hood) who were conquered by the French Duke of Normandy in 1066, thus leading to the split class-bound society of upper class Normans (the full name of the recent prime minister is “Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson”) and lower class Saxons as “Anglo-Saxon”, and then lumping in the ‘melting pot’ of America into this because ever since they took British money as foreign investment in the 19th century they’ve essentially been a part of the “Anglo-Saxon” powers — then surely you are aware that these same Anglo-Saxon powers occupied 2 of the sections of ‘West Berlin’ for decades and that Germany was only unified under their permission and assured control.
Since 1945, Germany has been an occupied territory of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ powers as you call them. Since Germany has just had its leaders voluntarily neuter their industrial economy in service of America, it is not at all surprising to find them as the leading ‘Anglo-Saxon’ front-person in supplying Ukraine with tools of death and destruction.
A rightwing, militaristic re-emergence is not particularly surprising because the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ powers kept the same German elites in power after the world war, because in their mind the big danger was the leftists who had just fought an anti-fascist resistance and they were the people who must be denied any power or say in their ‘free’ nations. The record of American interference in foreign elections goes back at least this far in history. And that was the cleanest of their dirty tricks from that era.
The Germans elites, like the other European elites, dream of recalling past glories and the days when they could kill with wanton abandon. But, that does not mean they are in any way independent. If in their dreams they bark too loudly, Uncle Sam will yank their chain.
In ‘the West’, everything is ‘for show’. Everything. Nothing is real. This includes leaders of subservient nations making grandiose claims as to regaining lost power and making themselves ‘great again’, all as a cover story to their sacrificing their own people to austerity, poverty and wartime in the service of their liege.
A good overview of how dearly we respect borders and sovereignty until we don’t. How we work for peace, until we don’t.
I agree with the premise of this piece about Germany playing the waiting game over land lost and land to gain. What I can’t quite get my head around is the Polish government unfettered support for the Ukrainian ultranationalists, do they suffer a collective amnesia with regards to Galicia and how the still celebrated OUN-B massacred hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in WWII? It’s embarrassing.
They also lost fertile land as far as Lwow, land much more agriculturally productive than the Silesian land gained from Germany.
I read on Telegram today that Putin will travel to
South Africa for the BRICS summit, I find this worrying as there are plenty of budding Gavrilo Princip‘s out there to assassinate him.
First, I like your comment, about how Ukraine now is in bed with Germany, but it may be because there is a resurgence of Nazism in Ukraine, which has been propelled by US underground for many yrs through secret organizations leadership by group of Stepan Bandera.
Just as politics makes for strange bedfellows, the Polish governments unfettered support for the Ukrainian nationalists tells us that the bedfellow thing applies to war also. Strange to me also.
I don’t see Russia giving up Kaliningrad [former Konigsburg] nor do I see Belarus allowing any of its territory to go “back” to Poland.
What is possibly in play is former parts of Poland in western Ukraine actually going back to Poland and maybe some small sections of the former Galicia to Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Whether a deal could be struck between P0land and Germany to return parts of Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Lower and Upper Silesia to Germany in exchange for Poland receiving its former holdings in western Ukraine, I cannot know. I do know that Russia does not want western Ukraine around Lvov and what was Polish in the 1920’s and 1930’s. I believe
that Russia might have a rump Ukraine around Kiev whose government would be neutral and kept that way by Russia. Whether Russia
wants to push further and make Kharkov, Mycolayev, and Odessa part of Russia again, connecting Russia all the way to Transnistria
near Moldova is hidden in the future. Who can know what is in the future? Also, I don’t know what the Russian government is thinking in the Kremlin. However, I am sure the map is going to change as some governments are going to change, I hope, without a nuclear war or a prolonged conventional or guerilla war.
How about nobody returns anything and countries whose armies have ventured outside their UN-accepted borders return home? That would appear to be the simplest situation.,
If the war mongers arm Ukraine with missiles with range 500 Km then Russia must create a DMZ of 501 Km. If missiles can fly 1000 Km then Russia must force a DMZ of 1001 Km. If the war mongers can fire missiles from the English Channel or Narvik then Russia must clear an area to the Atlantic coast. It is a simple formula that eludes war mongers. They have forgotten the experience of war. When this stops being an SMO and becomes a war they may remember to their regret. Krakov for Kharkov. Berlin for Bakhmut. London for Lviv. Tears of blood.