At the Council for European Policy Analysis Oxana Schmies begins by characterizing German foreign policy as “a mess” before declaiming:
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “turn of the times†(Zeitenwende) speech of February 27 called things by their proper names – the war of aggression, the change of epoch, Putin and his sidekicks an “oppressive regime,†seeking to resurrect the Russian empire and fundamentally reorder Europe to the detriment of free peoples and the benefit of corrupt elites.
It named the challenges and Germany’s self-obligations and promised that: “What is needed to secure peace in Europe will be done.†Among other things, Scholz promised to deliver weapons “to defend the country†because “there could be no other answer to Putin’s aggression.â€
Sweeping and at times grandiloquent, the speech sounded like the route map towards a new era. Germany was poised to act.
Except that it wasn’t.
She goes on by saying what Germany is doing and what it isn’t doing, using words like “high-minded”, “ambivalent”, and “half-hearted”. I think she’s sugar-coating matters.
The war is taking place as close to Germany as Chicago is to Pittsburgh, Nashville, or Kansas City. The Germans, unwilling to do anything that might hurt Germany, are attempting to straddle the matter but in effect between them Germany and China are financing the Russians’ war against Ukraine.
