Russia's attack destroyed Europe's sense of security

Probably nothing in recent decades has challenged German and European diplomats as much as Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Germany, along with other Western countries, has provided extensive military assistance, but still, almost two years later, Ukraine has made little progress in recapturing Russian-occupied territories.

The willingness to provide military assistance to Ukraine is now eroding in Western countries, even in the United States, by far its most important ally.

As the West grows weary of war, politicians are now under pressure to think about ending the war at the negotiating table. Political scientist Johannes Varwick from the University of Halle believes this is inevitable anyway.

"After a cease-fire, I think come difficult diplomatic negotiations over territorial changes in Ukraine, and over Ukraine's neutrality — all of which should be on the table," Varwick told DW.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a Bundestag member with the center-right opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), believes that all talk of negotiating a solution is dangerous and that a military victory in Ukraine is possible.

"It is the West that has hampered the liberation campaign because too little has been supplied too late," he recently wrote to DW. The strategy, he said, must be: "Supply everything [in arms] as quickly as possible."

China increasingly seen as a threat

Much has changed in relations between China and Germany since Angela Merkel was chancellor from 2005 to 2021. In contrast to Merkel's delicate handling of the Chinese government in the interest of trade policy, the strategy paper issued this summer by the current governing center-left coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) called China a "partner, competitor and systemic rival" for Germany and the EU. But recently, Berlin has increasingly emphasized the rivalry.

The German government is concerned about China's saber-rattling toward Taiwan, which China regards as a secessionist province, and about China's close relationship with Russia despite its war on Ukraine.

Yet China has been Germany's most important trading partner since 2016. This is why the German government's China strategy does not focus on disentangling the two economies, as this would cause too much damage in Germany, but rather on efforts to reduce its one-sided economic dependencies on China.

Values vs. business interests? 

The limits of a foreign policy based on values, as advocated by Baerbock, are particularly evident in the case of China. In April, the then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang responded to Baerbock's plea for greater respect of human rights: "What China needs least of all is a schoolmaster from the West."

"In a world in which the liberal West is coming under pressure, enemies are easy to make if you constantly insist on values," wrote journalist Morten Freidel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on November 30. "That doesn't mean that values are dispensable. It just means that they shouldn't be constantly bandied about." Freidel said Germany should "rather formulate interests."

 

Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations, on the other hand, takes a more positive view of the German government's foreign policy. "If we completely ignore values, as we did with Russia, then this will have catastrophic consequences, and we are seeing this in Ukraine," he told DW.

 Searching for allies

The war in Ukraine has taught the German government a hard lesson: In the global search for allies willing to support sanctions against Russia, numerous developing and emerging countries have turned their backs — intent on continuing trade with Moscow.

Countries that are normally aligned with the West, such as India and Brazil, "are finding new leeway in this changing world order by exercising their freedom not to take sides," said Hoff. The Scholz government has, however, been reaching out to these countries and trying to engage with them on an equal footing. This is "an active extension of Germany's foreign policy so far, and on the whole, I think Berlin is on the right track," said Hoff.

Germans becoming weary of intervention

Germany, Europe's strongest and the world's fourth-largest economy, is expected to play a more active role on the global stage, not least by the US and the EU.

However, this does not seem to be very popular with most Germans. That is, at least, according to a survey conducted by the nonprofit Körber Foundation in September, in which 54% of respondents said that Germany should be more restrained when it comes to international crises. Only 38% wanted to see greater involvement — the lowest figure since the surveys began in 2017, when it stood at 52%.

In addition, a whopping 71% of respondents were against Germany taking a leading military role in Europe. It seems Germans want one thing above all else: Respite from the turbulence of world politics.

This article was originally written in German.

https://www.dw.com/en/in-2024-germanys-foreign-policy-will-work-in-crisis-mode/a-67753422

 

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GO FOR PEACE... TAIWAN BELONGS TO CHINA IN A ONE-CHINA POLICY... THERE WILL BE REUNIFICATION AND THIS SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED... MEANWHILE IN UKRAINE.... LIKE IN IRELAND 1922....

 

 

The amazing thing about the neocons is that they plan all their evil schemes out in the open. They don't make secretes out of them. They just channel the ideas through their think tanks and magazine outlets and some of them will become reality. So here is the wet dream of the current neocon middle-brass, conjuring up how to centralise power and decision making, while undermining democracy and enhance warmaking power. Evil in the making.

Total Global Domination Through NATO Already Planned

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvKfRBtLDtU

 

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Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has claimed that there was no justification for Ankara to prevent a fellow bloc member from donating its warships to Ukraine.

The Turkish government said on Tuesday that it will not allow minesweeping vessels that the UK has pledged to Ukraine to pass through Bosphorus. Ankara, which controls the straits linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, shut down access to foreign warships when the conflict in Ukraine began in 2022.

However, Stavridis claimed that “there is sufficient discretion” under the 1936 Montreux Convention, and Ankara should have used a loophole to allow the passage of “purely defensive” warships.

“This is the clear NATO position, agreed by Turkey as part of its role in NATO,” the retired US admiral told Politico. He went on to claim that Ankara “should fully lean into its role as a NATO member,” instead of “trying too hard to strike a balance” with its relations with Moscow and the West.

In accordance with the Montreux Convention, Türkiye, a NATO member, closed access to the Black Sea through the straits of Bosphorus and Dardanelles shortly after Russia launched its military operation almost two years ago. While the decision forbade Western powers from sending warships to Ukraine, it also blocked Russia from reinforcing its Black Sea fleet, which is based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.

A former Turkish naval chief, Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that Ankara did not breach the convention “even during the bloodiest period of WWII.”

“The US hates the Montreux Convention, to which it is not a party. Because they cannot bring warships into the Black Sea as they wish,” Gurdeniz argued.

Gurdeniz also blasted Stavridis as “the neocons' favorite Admiral” who “played a leading role in the 2011 intervention in Libya.”

“The Admiral, who is currently a board member of the Rockefeller Foundation and the global investment group Carlyle, clearly wants Turkey to be the warring party in the Black Sea and to shed Turkish blood in the war,” Gurdeniz said. “If the Ukraine crisis had happened during his NATO command, we would probably be at war in the Black Sea on behalf of the USA and NATO.”

Although Türkiye is a member of NATO, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the country’s position on the Ukraine conflict as “balanced.” In addition to hosting peace talks in 2022, Türkiye brokered the now-defunct Black Sea Grain Initiative, while Ankara has refused to sanction Russia, and has strengthened its trade links with Moscow.

https://www.rt.com/news/590209-anakara-british-warships-ukraine/

 

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Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has suggested that the US-led military bloc’s members should “neutralize”Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Moscow seriously endangers the security of Baltic states.

Kaliningrad (formerly Konigsberg) belonged to Germany until the end of World War II, when it was handed over to the USSR under the Potsdam Agreement. It remained part of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, after several consecutive waves of NATO expansion, found itself completely surrounded by the bloc’s members.

In an op-ed for Bloomberg, published on Thursday just as Russia was celebrating the 79th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, Stavridis outlined his views on Kaliningrad as the last remaining nuisance that prevents the Baltic Sea from turning into a “NATO lake.”

“A glance at a map shows that is largely (but not completely) true – the coastline has a couple of slivers of Russian territory. The rest of the coastal littoral is in NATO hands: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark,” the retired US Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO wrote.

Stavridis praised last year’s Baltic Operations exercise as a demonstration of “how NATO could use its Baltic Sea forces across the spectrum of naval activity” to send an “ominous signal” to Russia.

“Look for NATO to use its Baltic lake to put pressure on tiny Kaliningrad, which acts as a geographic wedge between NATO’s Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and the rest of the alliance,”Stavridis wrote. “In the event of war, Kaliningrad will need to be neutralized so Russian land forces – likely operating through Moscow’s vassal state Belarus – cannot take control of the critical Suwalki Gap.”

The Suwalki Gap is a narrow strip of land between Moscow’s ally Belarus and Kaliningrad that runs along the Lithuania-Poland border. In the wake of the Ukraine conflict, NATO’s Baltic members have limited overland traffic between the Russian mainland and Kaliningrad under an EU embargo. However, they stopped short of imposing a full-on blockade as some analysts have suggested blocking Russia’s access to its own territory could, to some extent, be considered a ‘casus belli’ – a cause for the declaration of war.

Amid the standoff between Russia and NATO, Warsaw and Vilnius recently staged military exercises in the strategic area, as Western media outlets and officials speculated that Russia could target this area in the event of a full-scale conflict. 

Russia has repeatedly denied having any plans to attack the alliance, with President Vladimir Putin stressing that Moscow “has no interest… geopolitically, economically or militarily” in doing so.

“Russia will do everything to prevent a global conflict, but at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us,” Putin stated in his address to the Victory Day military parade in Moscow.

https://www.rt.com/news/597325-nato-baltic-neutralize-kaliningrad/

 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

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