In a historic decision after defeat in World War II, Germany sets up a special fund to rebuild its military. 100 billion euros of investments, including drones, fighter planes, are on the agenda. Military spending will be raised above 2% of GDP permanently, far exceeding France or the UK.

Whichever way US-Russian tensions play out – or drag on – Germany hopes to be the big winner.

At first glance, it might seem that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s inexperience with global politics was on display in his first appearance at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, when he dismissed a remark by the Russian leader earlier in the week at a joint press conference with him in Moscow that the events unfolding in the eastern regions of Ukraine amounted to “genocide”.

Scholz said mockingly: “Putin comes to claim that there is something like genocide in Donbass, which is really ridiculous, to be very clear on that.” What prompted Scholz to walk on this minefield that he knows only. There was deliberation in his performance.

Maybe Scholz thought he had done excellent politics in front of all those powerful American politicians in the Munich audience to publicly distance himself from Russia at a time when the American media is ridiculing that Germany is no longer an ally. western.

Surely Scholz would know that there is a taboo about the word “genocide” falling from the lips of a German politician. It is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Overall, the great genocides perpetrated by the Nazis alone totaled 16,315,000 victims. Germany is the world champion in this bloody chapter of human history, which will probably never be surpassed.

Scholz’s blunder will not stop there. It fits overnight into the current crisis between Russia and the West. Ironically, Scholz may have unwittingly drawn attention to Moscow’s concerns about a brewing humanitarian disaster in the Donbass, where millions of Russians live. Moscow will present Scholz with full documentary evidence of the genocide Putin referred to.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday: “My message to the counterparts in the German Foreign Ministry is: in connection with Chancellor Scholz’s statements, we will present evidence regarding mass graves. in this region for German leaders to study closely.

Zakharova revealed that these documents had already been shared with Washington, but Moscow intentionally kept them out of the public domain because their content is “unbearable”. Granted, Scholz has a tough week ahead.

Why is all this happening? To begin with, Germany’s involvement in the Ukrainian issue itself is highly controversial. Germany actively promoted unrest in Ukraine in late 2013 to push then-President Viktor Yanukovych to fast-track his country’s EU membership. German intelligence encouraged street protests in Kyiv while Berlin twisted its arms, eventually forcing Yanukovych to agree to hold midterm elections to test the will of the people.

Germany, France and Russia supported such an approach as the best way out of the impasse. However, within 48 hours of this agreement, protests turned violent in Kiev’s main square and agents provocateurs working for Western intelligence deployed snipers to vantage points to attack security forces.

In short, the Ukrainian security apparatus collapsed, Yanukovych fled the country, and an anti-Russian leadership emerged in Kyiv with the street power of extreme nationalist forces led by neo-Nazi elements.

The bottom line is that Germany helped destabilize Ukraine. Events in Ukraine expose the propaganda lie that its foreign policy offensive serves the interests of democracy and freedom. In reality, the government in Berlin is working with an opposition movement whose leaders include Oleh Tyahnybok of the neo-fascist All-Ukrainian Union, or “Svoboda”. (Tyahnybok recently said that Russia should be “dismembered” and divided into “20 nation states”!)

Germany played a similar dubious role in brokering the Minsk agreements. The Steinmeier formula proposing a special status for the breakaway region is a compromise path named after the current German president, but Berlin later recanted its obligation to navigate the Kiev regime to implement the ‘OK. It is possible that Germany took American wishes into account.

This being the sordid backdrop, the big question is: what is Germany really doing?

The crux of the matter is that Germany is back on the path to militarization for the third time in the last century. Searing German ambition is resurfacing, first voiced by Foreign Minister and current President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a speech to the Bundestag – and in a speech to the Munich Security Conference – in late January-early February 2014 to the effect that Germany was “too big and too important” to limit itself any longer “to commenting on world politics from behind the scenes”.

Steinmeier said that because of its economic power and geographic location at the center of Europe, Germany bears a special responsibility when it comes to global affairs, adding: “We recognize our responsibility” and, while Germany would serve as a catalyst for a common European foreign and security policy and the use of military force was only a last resort, it could no longer be ruled out!

This was the moment of truth in German history. Germany was bidding farewell to the self-diminishment of its foreign and security policy after World War II. Interestingly, the German Defense Minister at the time was none other than Ursula von der Leyen, the current staunchly pro-American – and notoriously anti-Russian – President of the European Commission.

German militarization is simply not possible without tacit US encouragement stemming from geopolitical considerations – Washington’s containment strategy against Russia. As in the past with Nazi Germany at the outset, American corporations participated in German rearmament, supplying German companies with everything from raw materials to technology and patent knowledge. This happens through a complex web of business interests, joint ventures, cooperative agreements and cross-ownership between US and German companies and their subsidiaries.

In the American reckoning, Germany is an economic power and the only credible European power today that can potentially defeat Russia in terms of history, geography and geostrategy. Unsurprisingly, interference in Russian-German relations has always been Washington’s approach.

Germany plays a brilliant cover game. It is heavily dependent on Russia for its vast market, huge natural resources and energy supplies and therefore adopts a “win-win” attitude in bilateral relations. However, Germany also cannot and will not jeopardize its transatlantic ties. Atlanticism remains at the heart of German strategies.

The Bundeswehr is at the forefront of NATO’s aggressive buildup against Russia. German Minister Christine Lambrecht told Spiegel last week that a rapid and massive increase in defense spending was needed to prepare the German armed forces for a possible war against Russia. A further €37.6 billion would be planned as defense spending to prepare the German military to fight large-scale wars.

Whichever way US-Russian tensions play out – or drag on – Germany hopes to be the big winner. It may seem like a bold hope, but it’s a realistic expectation. The Ukrainian crisis marks Germany’s return to the center of European security as a superpower. France, UK, Italy, etc. are very diminished and belong to a junior league. Germany feels that its hour of reckoning is near. The United States once again encourages Germany as its main European partner.

If Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, were alive today, he might revise his famous remark from 1949 that the alliance’s purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans to enter and the Germans to stay”. Instead, he could say, looking to the future, that NATO would aim to “keep the Russians out, the Americans out, and the Germans out.”

This article was originally featured by the Russian Strategic Culture Foundation website on February 23, 2022 titled Germany can no longer be suppressed.

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