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Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Oldenburg attending a training session for Ukrainian soldiers who are being trained on the Gepard anti-aircraft tank (25 August 2022)
Photo: REUTERS
Hooray, arms deliveries are finally being discussed again in Germany!
If you follow the debate over the past few days, you could almost get the impression that Ukraine would have won the war against Russia long ago if the stubborn, hesitant German government hadn't refused to support the tormented country.
What a crap!
Ukraine a few days ago managed to win back land in the east of the country as well as interest from the west after drifting in the summer on gas prices and heating bills.
Now there is talk of a turning point, of optimism that Ukraine could win the war after all.
Ukraine needs that optimism and hope, especially now, ahead of winter and ahead of the important UN General Assembly next week, to ensure the support of Western allies.
Now would be a good time to talk about what the terrain gains mean.
Is the end of the war getting closer?
Or is the situation as precarious as ever?
What's next?
One could develop scenarios of how to end the war, how to find a way to negotiate, even if that still seems utopian at the moment.
Instead, everyone in Germany stands in their positions on the center line, like before the kick-off of a soccer game.
The same game was performed as before the summer: more guns?
No weapons?
The discussion in Germany seems to have narrowed down to this single question.
The participants were also the same: on the one hand, the FDP defense politician Marie Strack-Zimmermann, the Green Anton Hofreiter and Michael Roth (SPD), who repeated their well-known demands on all channels that Germany must deliver more.
"The time of hesitation, of waiting is over," said the chairwoman of the defense committee, Marie Strack-Zimmermann, in a "Welt" interview.
Germany must now also lead a bit, she added.
To lead?
Whom?
The EU?
NATO?
Where?
After that it is not asked.
The main thing is to lead, because we Germans have a historical advantage in terms of competence.
The thesis of the gun lobby, if I may call it that affectionately and polemically, is: the more guns, the faster peace.
Its protagonists hope that Ukraine's land gains will increase the pressure on Moscow, that domestic political pressure on Putin will become so great that he sees no other option but to withdraw.
One or the other seems to be waiting for a coup, a fall or the magical disappearance of the dictator.
They reject the idea that one has to come to terms with Putin in any way.
On the other side of the line are SPD politicians such as Secretary General Kevin Kühnert, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht and Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
They repeat the sentences that Germany will not go it alone and that the other western allies have not supplied any heavy weapons either.
They point to the danger of an escalation if larger, heavier German-made tanks were delivered.
It could encourage Russia to act irrationally.
With chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction, for example.
But the dispute is superfluous, misleading and narrows the view.
It is obvious that both are needed: continued support with weapons in close coordination with the allies, as the federal government has been doing for a long time and will continue to do so - and the search for diplomatic solutions.
Both are not opposites, but must be considered together.
Instead, an absurd debate is developed as to whether Germany is on a special path or even on the wrong track.
However, it is incomprehensible why Defense Minister Lambrecht remains so defensive and does not do more to counter the impression that Germany is not doing anything for Ukraine.
Germany has been supplying arms for months, and not in short supply, as you can read about on the Defense Ministry's constantly updated website.
The equipment supplied also includes 24 Gepard tanks, 500 Stinger anti-tank missiles, ten 2000 self-propelled howitzers and almost 15,000 anti-tank mines.
In total, the armaments exported between January and September 2022 amount to around 733 million euros.
According to the New York Times, all NATO partners together deliver weapons worth a billion dollars to Ukraine every week.
Per week!
And that's just the military expenses,
the war-ravaged Ukrainian economy is also kept going by the West.
By the end of the year, the Western allies will have transferred $27 billion to pay state employees and soldiers, according to the Financial Times.
The longer the war goes on, the more people die, on both sides.
This should be mentioned without diminishing the respect and sadness for the inhuman suffering of Ukrainians.
The death toll: around 5,000 Ukrainian civilians, 9,000 Ukrainian soldiers.
More than seven million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have left the country – it is unclear whether they will ever return.
More than 45,000 soldiers are said to have died on the Russian side.
The numbers need to be viewed with caution because they are unverifiable, but they do provide some clues.
What a waste of life!
Everything must be done so that we don't get used to the war, so that it ends.
And this "everything" can't just be tanks.
The German arms deliveries "obviously help very clearly to save human lives," said the Foreign Minister in an interview with the "FAZ".
That's unbelievable, given the number of dead!
I expect a foreign minister to come up with diplomatic proposals and ideas.
If one believes the supporters of the "More weapons immediately" camp, then the worst of the war is over.
"Russia has already lost this war," says Strack-Zimmermann in the above-mentioned interview.
Yet Russia still occupies a fifth of Ukraine while waging a brutal economic war against Ukraine, against the European Union.
I don't think the fear that Russia, as a nationalist, dictatorial state could escalate the war given the losses, is unfounded.
What do we do then, how do we deal with it?
What consequences will this have for Germany, where many are already panicking, although nobody is freezing in their homes yet?
Why is nobody talking about this?
Incidentally, the supporters cannot really justify their thesis that more weapons automatically lead to faster peace.
“Russia will only be willing to negotiate when ending the war is more worthwhile for the Putin regime than continuing,” says Hofreiter.
But from what is known about Putin, it's hard to imagine him admitting defeat and capitulating.
Admit a humiliation in front of the whole world.
At the same time, the Ukrainians have also made it clear that they intend to keep fighting until they have reclaimed more territory.
Those who call for a diplomatic solution to the war have been laughed at or ridiculed.
Because Putin does not give in immediately after three phone calls with Scholz, talks are now generally condemned.
They say Putin doesn't want to talk.
But isn't diplomacy also about getting people to talk who don't really want to talk?
And it's not true either.
One could negotiate with Putin about the grain deal.
Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan initiated it.
Erdoğan of all people, another dictator.
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The dispute over the supply of arms conceals a deeper, more ideological dispute in the federal government: the arms demanders - Greens, FDP - are among those who believe they are in a defensive battle like in the Second World War (that's why the defense of 'our' freedom of speech), whose aim is the surrender of Russia and the complete defeat of Putin.
This attitude is summarized in the speech by EU Council President Ursula von der Leyen, in which she said last Wednesday: "Europe will win".
But the human costs have so far been borne by the Ukrainians and their army, not the Europeans.
Von der Leyen knows that, of course, hence the heroic pathos.
The other side - above all the SPD - has not lost hope for a compromise and sees Putin as someone with whom you have to come to terms if necessary.
Balance of power, as they used to say.
These are two opposing, conflicting positions in one government.
Difficult.
And the longer the war lasts, these positions gain a dynamic of their own.
Everything must be done to avoid an escalation.
"Zeit" editor Jochen Bittner wrote on Twitter: "This Panzer Mikado, this 'We won't move until the USA moves', calling yourself a 'leading power' without assuming responsibility for the initiative for European security is as German special inertia, of course, also a German special path.«
I have to say: After two German wars, which cost millions of lives, devastated Europe beyond recognition and with their psychological and mental consequences that are still having an impact in the 21st century, I am very grateful for the so-called inertia.
You could also call it something else: prudence, prudence.
