The Foreign Minister sees ourselves in a "war with Russia," and the press reports a slip of the tongue. It's a shame that the single deciding element in the potential for escalation is how it is perceived in Moscow, rather than how well-meaning journalists react to it.
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| Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister |
Every evening on Russian state television, Vladimir Solovyov, Moscow's senior propagandist, hosts an extraordinarily low-level political conversation program called " Wetscher ". In a recent issue, he gave the German Foreign Minister Baerbock with an original quotation, which was not alienated in this instance, in which she publicly scolded a journalist that " we are conducting a war against Russia and not against each other ".
Solowjows then addressed Baerbock as "Miss Ribbentropp," after the Nazi foreign minister who was in power when Germany was at war with Russia at the time. Solovyov's long-preached image that Russia had not insidiously invaded Ukraine was perfectly confirmed by Baerbock's comments. No, it is simply defending itself against an aggressive war waged by the West.
Solovyov's overblown NS parallel is not dissimilar to the thinking of more powerful political figures in Moscow. With millions of dead, the German attack on the Soviet Union burnt itself firmly into Russian memory, from which you just need to draw out the adversary image of the "bad German" to keep your own populace in line with your own unpopular war of aggression. Leading Russian thinkers are, of course, more sophisticated when discussing the transfer of German tanks to the enemy in response to Nazi Germany's tank onslaught.
For example, senior foreign policy officer Konstantin Kozachev, who describes the Leopards as "historically German," or security politician Alexej Puschkow, who sees the tank delivery as a "remake of World War II ".
German politicians, academics, and journalists who support every transfer of arms to Ukraine repeat like a litany that Germany will not become a party to the conflict, even if it delivers combat tanks. It is especially crucial to protect this line to avoid a hazardous escalation at a time when Germany is rapidly approaching war participation with new offensive weapons.
The road traveled by the United States from being a permanent armaments supplier to being a WWII participant, for example, was short - on the morally proper side of the front.
It can only be described as mental sleepwalking when the German chief diplomat speaks at a public event into a press microphone about her own war against Russia and thus contradicts the central words of her boss Olaf Scholz: " We always have to be very clear that we do what is necessary and possible to support Ukraine , but at the same time we prevent the war from escalating into a war between NATO and Russia, and we will continue to observe this principle at all times.
No, Annalena Baerbock disregarded it here, causing the battle to escalate into one between NATO and Russia.
There is no mention of an apology for the German foreign minister's reckless comment, and the criticism in the major German media has been quite modest. "International law is clear: Germany supports Ukraine in exercising its individual right of self-defence, entrenched in the UN Charter, against Russia's campaign of aggression, which breaches international law not a party to the conflict," says the Foreign Office in response to a question from Bild.
It's a shame that only how it is perceived in Moscow determines the likelihood of escalation. It is hoped that the Foreign Minister's declaration of war was not a Freudian accident, and that Annalena Baerbock is already persuaded of "our war against Russia ".
Because, no matter how much one denies it, that would appear subliminally in subsequent words that come from a member of the administration. Germany has already strayed into a world war while sleepwalking and unaware of the repercussions of its own actions. That must not happen again. Not on the moral high ground either.
The author Roland Bathon is a journalist and political blogger about Russia and Eastern Europe.