To Arm or Not to Arm?

The question of whether or not to send more arms to Ukraine is causing dissension within the ranks of the German Social Democrats, who are part of the ruling coalition.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from N-TV:

Minister of Justice contradicts SPD

Buschmann: Delivery of heavy weapons, no entry into the war

Parts of the SPD resist further arms deliveries to Ukraine; they don’t want to become a party to the war. Nonsense, explains Justice Minister Buschmann from the FDP. It is self-defence, it is a legitimate right.

In the debate about the delivery of tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine, Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann points out that, under international law, this would not mean entering the war against Russia. Ukraine is waging a permitted defensive war against Russia, the FDP politician told Welt am Sonntag. “So if they are exercising their legitimate right to self-defense, supporting them by supplying arms cannot lead to becoming a party to the war.” This is not just his personal view, but that of the federal government.

Within the traffic light coalition [Red=Socialists, Yellow=FDP, Green=Greens], however, only the Greens and the FDP officially support the delivery of heavy weapons, while the SPD is divided. SPD faction leader Rolf Mützenich recently criticized calls for further arms deliveries. “There are no simple answers, not even when it comes to the delivery of heavy military equipment to Ukraine. Anyone who claims that is acting irresponsibly,” said the 62-year-old. Such decisions could “have far-reaching consequences for the security of our country and of NATO.”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not seem convinced about the delivery of heavy weapons, either: he has not publicly committed himself to this question, but only emphasized that the decision would be made in consultation with the alliance partners.

“Chancellor in hiding, isolating us”

In anticipation of the major Russian offensive in the east of the country, Ukraine had asked the German government to deliver heavy weapons. In technical jargon, this means, for example, battle tanks, artillery pieces, warships and combat aircraft.

The hesitant approach prompted severe criticism of the Chancellor. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister-President Hendrik Wüst from the CDU told the editorial network Germany that Germany had never been so isolated and apathetic in an international crisis. “The SPD as a part of the traffic light that is close to Russia and the chancellor who has gone into hiding are isolating us in Europe and worldwide.”

The opposition is not alone in this view. Member of the Bundestag Anton Hofreiter from the Greens had criticized Scholz several times in the past few days. “The chancellor is the problem — not only in Ukraine politics, but also in other questions of European cooperation,” he told Der Spiegel. “Regardless of which European countries I’m traveling to at the moment, I always encounter the question: Where is Germany?” the chairman of the European Committee pointed out.

“No time for excuses”

Unlike the SPD, leading politicians from the Greens and the CDU have clearly spoken out in favor of the delivery of heavy weapons. In view of the “terrible pictures”, “now is no time for excuses, now is the time for creativity and pragmatism,” said Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. Ukraine needs “above all, heavy weapons.”

“More weapons must come,” demanded Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck in an interview with the Funke media group. “We cannot leave Ukraine alone in the war. They are also fighting for us,” he said. However, the economics minister avoided direct criticism of Scholz, and remained somewhat more cautious when it came to heavy weapons. Germany must not become a target itself; this framework “so far does not include large tanks or combat aircraft,” said Habeck.

Baerbock and Habeck are supported by CDU leader Friedrich Merz. He was “completely” in agreement with the foreign minister, “that there are now no more excuses”. One such excuse is that the Ukrainians cannot operate the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, for example. “Then training must take place, also outside of Ukraine,” demanded the opposition leader.

Afterword from the translator:

Didn’t Moscow just recently warn that such arms deliveries could have “unpredictable consequences”? And assuming that the Ukrainian army invades Russian territory with German tanks and German heavy weapons, among other things, and these war machines are used in combat, does the right to self-defense still apply or is this an attack or counterattack?

I definitely have to agree with Martin Armstrong about what he said at the Corona Investigative Committee on Thursday, that our politicians are utterly stupid — and dangerously so. Watch the interview with him — it starts at 2 hours 50 minutes.

14 thoughts on “To Arm or Not to Arm?

  1. The optics of German heavy weapons invading Russian territories or even just being used against Russian soldiers is incredibly bad and would likely provide an easy propaganda victory for the Russian government to use to spur on even higher support for the war amongst the Russian population. Kind of on the same level bad as Saddam threatening to gas jews in Israel with his Scud rockets. You just don’t go there. Certainly the current crop of German politicians is sentient enough to see this, or perhaps they suffer from stereotypical German arrogance and just are too stupid to care how it looks.

    • It is way beyond that now. The fact the bloody allies indoctrinated the Germans for decades and made to feel guilt over the war for generations, the self loathing and self hatred indoctrination for being German was truly effective, hopefully all this chaos will break the average German from this insanity.

  2. This is a WW2 déjà vu — and most probably it is being deliberately induced as part of a WW3 psyop.

  3. Within living memory – the Battle of Berlin, 1945, to be exact – the Red Army leveled Berlin, what few structures remained standing and untouched by round-the-clock strategic bombing from the RAF and USAAF, that is. Was once in the last century not enough? Are the Germans trying for twice?

    They’d be fools to bite the hand that feeds them, i.e., since the Russians sell them much of their fossil fuels. But if the prospect of paying dramatically higher energy prices isn’t enough, then perhaps some elderly Germans who were alive when the Russians last came to town, ought to remind the sabre-rattlers precisely of the danger they are courting.

    NATO is already a dead-man walking. The smarter Germans know that. The alliance has been corrupt and beyond its sell-by date for years now, and the current crisis has only hastened the decay. Europe may indeed need some sort of defensive alliance, but NATO seems less-and-less to be the answer.

    • The west Germans for far to long have made passive by years of indoctrination, the east Germans never had that problem. Bismark’s old adage of never go to war with Russia and always make them your ally fell on deaf ears to Hitler and company thus resulting in the tragedy we see today.

  4. Germany is allied with Russia, just ask Gerhard Schroeder and his mutti.

    Patton was right.

  5. and in the meantime – the average Czech news forum participant envies Germany their “sensible approach”, that their politicians don’t get involved in the Ukraine conflict like our corrupted politicians in the Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, who don’t miss any opportunity to make the Czech Republic even bigger “enemy” of Russia – as they do all that against the interest of the Czech people – IMHO.

    What do Czechs get from our current goverment? We lost business in Russia, a business that the Germans gladly pick up after us. Gas in the Czech Republic is straight on “german prices”, while average Czech makes a quarter of the German pay – and now we, the Czechs, march against a nuclear superpower!

    I doubt there is a Government in Europe now, that is more “our people are docile, they will take it all” – than the Czech goverment.

    They prove their good intentions by sending heavy weapons to Ukraine, making The Czech Republic a legitimate military target for Russia.

    PS: Even though miniscule compared to the Washington Military Industrial Complex – Czechoslovakia has always had a big weapons business. And I don’t even think they have sent the tanks to Ukraine for their beautiful blue eyes, but because it was business for some hard cash. And our politicians love business.

    I personally would not send any weaponry to Ukraine at all. It’s not my war, to be honest.

  6. The war would have been over in a few weeks with minimized loss of life, and everyone better off, were it not for the flooding of Ukraine with arms from outside countries.

  7. Billions of German Euros for Selenski’s War |

    By Willy Wimmer

    https://apolut.net/milliarden-deutsche-euro-fuer-selenskis-krieg-von-willy-wimmer+++/published

    on: April 19, 2022

    Comments
    https://tube4.apolut.net/w/jayeUePnf6vwgWj7C5x1oY
    – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

    This week, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent a formal note to the U.S. State Department on the implications of Western arms assistance to Ukraine under international law.

    Thus, according to the criteria established in this note, any Western aid is Western participation in the war.

    Taking into account the criteria established by the Russian side, the West can no longer claim that it did not intend to participate in the war by providing Western arms.

    Following yesterday’s decision by the German government to make available a total amount of 2 billion euros for Ukraine, among other things, so that Ukraine can acquire the heaviest war equipment, the Russian note states that the West’s will to participate directly in the war must be assumed:

    The circumstances in connection with the cruiser “Moscow” let the question come up topically and dramatically after that, whether in connection with a possible anti-ship missile deployment it could have come to a direct confrontation between the armed forces of the USA and the Russian Federation, regardless of the media representations. This also applies to the deliberate and willful use of such missiles against a possibly nuclear-armed target. This raises the question of the whereabouts of possible nuclear weapons on board the cruiser “Moscow” and the attitude of the international community in the context of disasters of this dimension.

    The explanations given by governments and allies in the Western alliance about the factors that triggered the war in Ukraine are one-sided, erroneous and downright dangerous. These explanations cast the West’s actual and potential arms deliveries in a new light.

    Without the goals of recapturing Donetsk and Lugansk and Crimea published at the instigation of Ukrainian President Selensky in early 2021, the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces beginning on February 24, 2022, would most likely not have occurred via Ukraine’s military action against Donetsk and Lugansk beginning on February 17, 2022.

    The rights of any state under the United Nations Charter in the event of conflict and war depend crucially on the actual course of events and their assessment under international law.

    The billions of dollars in arms deliveries of the heaviest war equipment make it clear that the West is willingly and with the obvious military consequence of military war participation on the side of Ukraine in this war in the sense of the stated goals of Ukraine to recapture Donetsk and Lugansk as well as Crimea.

    With it the question will have to be connected, to what extent the reconquest directives of the Ukrainian president Selenski from the previous year came about by means of influence of the West or by pressure of the West?

  8. So many sacrifices just to satify the neoconservative blood lust. Let us hope this mess will be over soon and decisively in Russia’s favor. The consequences of the State department’s stupidity in instigating this are going to be quite painful for all of us. We should have kept our word to Russia and not enlarged NATO.

  9. I find it amusing that while the Germans politicians debate and bicker, the Germans are sending hundreds of old Leopard 1 tanks fully refurbished, older APC’s and artillery by the trainload to Ukraine.

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