I always understood the ‘German deal’ was to keep the industrial/manufacturing/bmw going. This kept the German volk happy, and not thinking of lands to the east. Against this deal, Shultz looks sensible. It was never going to be Germany that solved Ukraine/Russia. It’s just to the rest of us, it looks weak, supportive of Russia etc.
I beg to differ.
Angela Merkel released her memoirs recently, the BBC did an interview with her about them. What she said about her ideas on Russia is very revealing; I'd recommend the read if you've not seen it already on their website. She claims she always knew that Russia was going to attack and that her denying Ukraine NATO membership in 2008 dissuaded Putin from attacking and bought Kyiv time.
But the truth can be glimpsed from what she didn't say: There's no plan.
And that's even more problematic. Both Merkel and Scholz were like motorists driving through a thick fog, with no plan to ever get anywhere, just reacting to the potholes whenever they finally appeared in the headlights. That's why the upcoming elections will become so contentious, by the way. It'll be a showdown between the motorist in the fog and a dude who actually knows how to use a map.
A global escalation of who to do what? If Russia lost then ‘Russia’ as we know it is gone. If Russia lost China is more unlikely to launch its mostly Russian based tanks, aircraft and presumably tactics against the team that won d-day, Iraq, falklands etc.
Woodward's book claims that Russia was ready to go nuclear in October 2022.
But whether his depiction of events was correct or not, I have to stress – at the risk of repeating myself – the fact that Putin's invasion was the height of folly. He could've achieved his geopolitical goals simply through maintaining the status quo, for a fraction of the cost and without losing hundreds of thousands of Russian lives as well as trillions of Rubles. So, why didn't he do just that?
Well, because he's not bound by the rules of geopolitics anymore. It's not transactional for him. Symbolism and emotions have brushed reasonable calculations aside. It'd be foolish for us to think him incapable of decisions which seem stupid or self-defeating to us. And even a suicide mission can do a whole lot of damage.
And quite frankly, I think you're overestimating the readiness and willingness of all NATO to go to war with Ukraine over Russia.
Popular support in Britain for aiding Ukraine has dropped to 54%, that's just two points above Germany and five points above America. And it's not just the German military that's reeling from the "peace dividend". As a matter of fact, if we go by the numbers Healey recently presented in Westminster, it would seem that the British Army is actually in a worse shape now (quite a remarkable feat for a conservative government). And earlier this year, the Royal Navy had only seven servicable surface combatants.
Except Poland, no major European NATO nation strikes me as ready to fight. And judging by the soundbites coming out of Warsaw, both the government and the PiS opposition don't want to fight either. Which Putin knows.
For sure Russia collapsing will lead to migrants into Europe, China into the east of Russia, chaos in the stans, nukes on ebay, etc. so there is probably an arguement that it is a lesser evil to keep Russia tied down in Ukraine. But morally that sucks.
Well, that sure looks like what Biden was trying to do.
