Germany follows Washington’s Ramstein war program
Sevim Dağdelen,
junge Welt, 27.4.2022
Translated by John
Catalinotto
It is no time to be duped by war propaganda. The new militarism challenges our resistance.
The war in Ukraine is now all about weapons, weapons, weapons. More weapons and heavier weapons. Every taboo of the post-war period is falling. Diplomacy has been written off.
A new German militarism in the wake of U.S. militarism is the benchmark of this German government. While UN Secretary General António Guterres is in Moscow promoting a quick ceasefire and an end to the war, NATO members are pushing for the military pact to wage war against Russia.
The Ukrainian soldiers are only a means to an end. Meanwhile, the goal has become taking the war to Russia.
Ramstein is the big U.S. Air
Force Base in southwestern Germany
Ramstein means war
NATO is concerned with victory and nothing else. To this end, Washington has convened a special meeting of weapons representatives at the U.S. airbase in Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Instead of supporting Guterres and regarding the U.S. war council on German soil as a calculated political affront to [Germany’s] democratic sovereignty, the SPD/Green government has sent Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht to participate and has announced that it is going full-steam ahead: The government of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP is now delivering German tanks to the East, as demanded. Until victory. There must be no negotiated peace.
The Ukrainian ambassador and neo-Nazi activist Andrij Melnyk has finally asserted himself at Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet table. There is no doubt that German weapons end up going to right-wing extremist battalions integrated into the National Guard and Ukrainian army, and no one in the German government shows any concern.
“Cheetah,” “Marten,” “Puma,” “Fox,” “Boxer,” “Leopard” - what reads like the harmless listing in “Grzimek’s Animal Life” encyclopedia threatens to become the program for expanding the Ukraine conflict into a third world war against the nuclear power Russia. By supplying heavy weapons, Germany and NATO are making themselves a direct party to the war.
Militarism challenges our resistance
The situation is red-hot. And the U.S. administration is throwing gasoline on the fire, by which the German government then warms itself. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin announced in Ramstein that Washington will move “heaven and earth” to arm Ukraine for further war. And British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey tells Kiev that it is legitimate to attack Russia with British weapons and carry out strikes on its territory.
Lambrecht contributes the German tanks that will be used to win the war of attrition. Ramstein is the symbol of a NATO war program. The winners have already been determined: the arms manufacturers. It is carried out on the backs of the populations in Europe. It is no time to be duped by war propaganda. The new militarism challenges our resistance.
Sevim Dağdelen,
junge Welt, 29.4.2022
Translated by John
Catalinotto
On April 28, 2022, the Bundestag [German parliament] decided that Germany would de facto enter into war with Russia. With a motion, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democrats (SDP), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens constituted themselves as a war coalition.
The objections that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had raised only 72 hours earlier in opposition to the delivery of heavy weapons, that they increased the danger of a third world war, were blown away. In the motion of the war coalition, the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine is virtually invoked as a cure-all.
In addition to the commitment to the rearmament fund of 100 billion euros, the additional commitment to a further annual increase in the military budget to more than 70 billion euros was fixed.
In speeches, numerous members of this Alliance for the Ukraine War, led by the chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Friedrich Merz, promoted the goal of a military victory for Ukraine, which they said Germany must support unconditionally.
This break with all the military taboos that grew out of the defeat of German fascism in 1945, and its dangerous consequences, were somewhat alarming to the deputies. In a kind of defensive magic spell, the proposal states right at the beginning that “neither Germany nor NATO will become a party to the war.”
But the delivery of ever more and ever heavier weapons and the call for a victorious peace against Russia make these incantations seem extremely questionable. These people remind us of someone who draws a square, but writes in the accompanying text to the drawing that the viewer should see a circle here. Surreal and dangerous.
In addition to the de facto entry into the war via the delivery of heavy weapons and training of Ukrainian soldiers to use them, they have put in the foreground the unconditional will of a total economic war against Russia. In the process, the battle zone is being increasingly expanded. China is openly threatened with being caught in the West’s crosshairs if Beijing tries to undermine Western sanctions against Russia.
Language can be treacherous in this regard. In neo-colonial fashion, the motion says the German government must “emphatically communicate to the People’s Republic of China the expectations of Germany and the European Union.”
Respect for the UN Charter - all gone. The war coalition is openly threatening. Its language is one of violence and threats. Russia is to be pushed to the wall, even if this means a world economic war even against China.
The problem of this new German militarism remains the recalcitrance of the German population, the majority of which rejects the delivery of heavy weapons and, according to a survey in The Spiegel, the majority of which has no desire to starve and freeze for war. This attitude must be expanded to fight the war coalition’s entry into the war.
Heavy weapons for Ukraine, by Kostas Koufogiorgos
Ampel= Traffic light coalition (Social-democrats, liberals and Greens); 100% climate-neutral delivery
2 commentaires:
A slight mistake in this article: The present British secretary of state for defence is Ben Wallace. James Stephen Heappey's exact title is "Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces". That doesn't make him a better person.
Thanks!
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