{"id":273943,"date":"2024-09-16T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=273943"},"modified":"2024-09-16T05:19:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T04:19:15","slug":"germanys-olaf-scholz-has-a-sudden-moment-of-clarity-about-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/09\/germanys-olaf-scholz-has-a-sudden-moment-of-clarity-about-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Olaf Scholz Has a Sudden Moment of Clarity about Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

FILE PHOTO. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
\u00a9 Sean Gallup\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The lame-duck chancellor appears to have had a moment of lucidity about engaging in diplomacy with Russia.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

12 Sep 2024 <\/em>– Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has caused a stir. Not<\/em> by some kind of success, in, for instance, elections, the economy, or foreign and domestic policy. Scholz does not do that kind of thing. For a man with his ratings, crowd pleasing is not even an option.<\/p>\n

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Even though they may indeed mean Scholz\u2019s days are numbered, as the British Telegraph surmises<\/a>, the devastating defeats his Social-Democratic party and its ‘traffic-light’ coalition partners \u2013 the Greens and the market-liberal Free Democrats \u2013 have just suffered in regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony are just the tip of the iceberg, as polls consistently show: A whopping 77%<\/a>\u00a0of Germans consider their current leader \u201cf\u00fchrungsschwach\u201d<\/em> (weak at, well, leading); his personal \u201cpopularity\u201d<\/em> \u2013 really, unpopularity \u2013 rating has just collapsed from a dismal 14th to a comically catastrophic 18th place. Only 23%<\/a>\u00a0want him to even try to run for office again, and even in his own party the majority is against the idea.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just him alone but his team as well: 71% of Germans<\/a> think his government is doing a bad job. A difficult \u2013 and foul \u2013 2025 budget compromise achieved in July within Scholz\u2019s fractious coalition did not inspire hope<\/a>: Only 7% of voters believed that the coalition \u201cpartners\u201d<\/em> would work together more effectively now, 10% thought things would only get worse, and 79% that they\u2019d stay just as dire as they were. While Scholz\u2019s government had promised that the new budget would finally jolt the ailing German economy back to life, 75% of Germans didn\u2019t believe in that promise. And who can blame them? The German economy, hobbled by both self-imposed budgetary constraints that rule out stimulus politics and then the insane abandonment of inexpensive Russian energy, has been stagnating since 2018<\/a>; as of now it has entered a\u00a0\u201ctechnical recession.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That was the mood at the end of July. By now, it\u2019s bound to be much worse: The coalition\u2019s rickety budget compromise is under heavy fire from, among others, Professor Hanno Kube, \u201cone of the most respected constitutional jurists\u201d<\/em> of Germany, according to leading news magazine Der Spiegel<\/a>. Kube, one should recall, has helped bring down Berlin\u2019s shady accounting practices once before, triggering a deep and reverberating political crisis that the traffic-light accomplices have never fully overcome.<\/p>\n

And Volkswagen, nothing less than a national symbol and by far Germany\u2019s biggest employer in the country\u2019s vital yet badly declining car-making sector, has ended its job guarantee<\/a> and is preparing<\/a>\u00a0the ground for plant closures and mass layoffs in Germany for the first time in the company\u2019s history. It\u2019s hard to convey what a psychological blow that is. As a German, let me put it like this: Imagine losing World War I and a football world championship at the same time. Exaggeration? Guilty as charged. But not by much.<\/p>\n

We could prolong the painful litany of Berlin\u2019s failures at home, but the gist should be clear already: Scholz\u2019s profile as a German leader is that of a dourly resolute, unrelenting loser. Even his much touted \u201cZeitenwende\u201d<\/em> (‘epochal change’), that is, a policy of Russophobia and rearming, is stuck like a German truck somewhere west of Moscow in November 1941.<\/p>\n

The Russophobia is doing alright, but then, that\u2019s the cheap part. The rearming \u2013 not so much: The authoritative Kiel Institute for the World Economy has just found<\/a>\u00a0that \u2013 surprise, surprise \u2013 Russia\u2019s arms industry is highly efficient, while Germany is lame on both feet. Take tanks, historically a bit of a German specialty, for instance: In 2004, Germany still had 2,389 of them; by 2021, 339 were left. To reach the numbers of 2004 again will take, at the current \u201cZeitenwende\u201d<\/em> pace, until 2066. With basic artillery \u2013 no kidding \u2013 we are talking a hundred years<\/em> to get back to what was there 20 years ago. But then, how to arm yourself quickly if you also let your masters in Washington and the Green crazies in your own cabinet ruin your economy?<\/p>\n

And yet Scholz has managed to grab some national and international attention, namely by stating that the time has come for peace negotiations to end the Ukraine war. And, most sensationally, he has uttered the breathtakingly innovative idea \u2013 in the West at least \u2013 that Russia, one of the parties to the conflict, should actually be in the room!<\/p>\n

It almost sounds like a bashful rediscovery of that ancient art so long forgotten in the \u201cvalue-\u201d<\/em> and \u201crules-based\u201d<\/em> West: diplomacy. According to leak-based but not implausible reports<\/a>, the German chancellor\u2019s office is even working on a specific plan for peace \u2013 already dubbed \u201cMinsk III\u201d<\/em> that includes Ukraine officially ceding territory to Russia. In other words, if such a plan is really in the works, it includes accepting that Ukraine has lost the war, and so has the West, very much including Germany, the largest single-country supporter<\/a> of Ukraine after the US.<\/p>\n

Scholz is, of course, denying it, but his statement would mark a clear change of course, if<\/em> it were serious (about which more below). While he has refused to deliver the famous and much over-rated Taurus missiles to Kiev, this issue has overshadowed his massive and \u2013 up until now, at least \u2013 rigid commitment to the hopeless yet obstinate Western strategy of open-ended support for Ukraine without any serious attempts to negotiate with Moscow and compel Ukraine to be realistic. It would be tempting to speculate that the recent \u201crevelations\u201d<\/em> about Ukraine\u2019s participation in the Nord Stream terror attacks on Germany must play a role in Scholz striking a new tone, if ever so faintly. But that would be a mistake. Being offended by a brutal, highly damaging, and utterly humiliating assault on Germany \u2013 that is just not this chancellor\u2019s style.<\/p>\n

Instead, with federal elections only a year away, the reason for his seeming turn of almost \u2013 to apply the strikingly original geometry of Annalena Baerbock, Germany\u2019s trampolining foreign minister \u2013 360 degrees is embarrassingly obvious. Probably the single most important factor in Scholz\u2019s fiasco in Thuringia and Saxony, which is about to be repeated in Brandenburg in less than two weeks. Many voters have had enough of both the costs and the risks of marching in lockstep with the US into proxy war defeat in Ukraine. In that respect, Scholz\u2019s sudden rediscovery of diplomacy is simple, kneejerk opportunism, just like his interior minister Nancy Faeser<\/a>\u2019s sudden flipflopping on increasing border controls<\/a> and making migration harder in general.<\/p>\n

In short: In German politics, there\u2019s blood in the water, namely that of Scholz\u2019s badly bruised government. No wonder the sharks are circling, and Scholz\u2019s short \u2013 if somewhat convoluted \u2013 statement about trying to make peace by negotiations has only whetted their appetite. Predictably, there have been denunciations that, in essence, amount to the neo-McCarthyite charge of \u201cbetraying Ukraine.\u201d<\/em> For instance, Roderich Kiesewetter, a foreign policy mouthpiece of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), reliably politically extreme and intellectually basic, in February called for \u201ctaking the war to Russia<\/a>\u201d<\/em> by destroying military installations, as well as ministries in Moscow. While his wildest dreams have not come true, with its Kursk kamikaze operation Kiev has recently done its worst to follow Kiesewetter\u2019s advice. The result: a bloody, self-defeating fiasco, accelerating Ukraine\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n

But Kiesewetter would not be Kiesewetter if he were capable of learning from experience. Mightily irritated by Scholz\u2019s very shy display of reason, he is accusing<\/a> the chancellor of trying to impose a \u201cpseudo peace\u201d<\/em> on Kiev and weakening Germany\u2019s and Europe\u2019s security. In general, the CDU, in the opposition but doing well, is making the best of Scholz\u2019s inconsistency by recycling deadly tired Western talking points<\/a> about \u201cdoing Putin a favor\u201d<\/em> and \u201crewarding the aggressor.\u201d<\/em> Frankly: Blah blah blah, while Ukrainians die in droves in an already lost war.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Scholz\u2019s coalition \u201cpartner,\u201d<\/em> the Free Democrats, make the same noises as the CDU. On the other side, the right\/far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), the left-conservative BSW of Sarah Wagenknecht (the two big winners of the Thuringia and Saxony elections) and the Die Linke party are much more in favor of making peace with Russia than Scholz. But they, correctly, won\u2019t offer him any brownie points either because he\u2019s said too little far too late.<\/p>\n

Moreover, it is already clear that words are all that Scholz\u2019s sally will ever amount to, for two reasons: Moscow has already signaled it cannot take it seriously, because, first, Washington is silent<\/a>, and it is the US that is calling the shots in the West; and, second, no negotiations<\/a>\u00a0are possible before Ukraine\u2019s Kursk incursion is over. In the old days, when Berlin was not as totally subservient to Washington as it has become under Scholz \u2013 the man with the accommodating smile who doesn\u2019t really mind a blown-up pipeline or two \u2013 Russia\u2019s answer may very well have been different. But selling out the remains of its \u201cagency\u201d<\/em> \u2013 as we say in the case of Ukraine \u2013 has had consequences for Germany.<\/p>\n

The other reason why reasonable people can only consider Scholz\u2019s talk empty is that the German chancellor himself has, predictably, already gotten cold feet and backpedaled. Now he has added warnings that Russia must not expect \u201ceven more of Ukrainian territory\u201d<\/em> \u2013 by the way, \u201ceven more\u201d<\/em> than what exactly? \u2013 and a demand, implicit but clear, that Russia would have had to agree to a ceasefire first. Scholz must know that is a perfect non-starter, as Moscow has ruled out such a step. In effect, the chancellor has already buried his own imitation of an initiative.<\/p>\n

It is a sad, quick, and predictable end to what now already appears as nothing more than a little loose talk emanating from a man who is both a very lame duck at home and a non-entity abroad. But, say what you will, it is in his style.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Tarik Cyril Amar, from Germany, works at Ko\u00e7 University, Istanbul. He is a historian on Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – rt.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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