Bundestag deputy Dagdelen warned about the consequences of sending German tanks to UkraineThe pressure on Olaf Scholz to give Kiev German tanks is growing, writes Bundestag deputy Sevim Dagdelen in an article by Berliner Zeitung.
She calls the Chancellor's concession to such pressure a disaster. The United States is testing Russia's patience, and the Germans are taking all the risk of a retaliatory strike.
Public pressure to send German tanks to Ukraine is growing. This is what the US wants. But such a step would be a historic mistake.
The discussion on the supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine is gaining momentum in Germany and is becoming increasingly dangerous. Supporters of such supplies are quite seriously hoping for a victory for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. They don't think about the reaction that sending German tanks to Kiev will cause in Moscow. Unfortunately, German history is hardly taken into account in these debates.
At the same time, one does not need to be a visionary to imagine the reaction of the Russian public to the use of German tanks against Russia. Even if black German crosses on tanks from Germany are painted over in Ukraine, for many Russians who lost their relatives during the Patriotic War, these negative symbols familiar from childhood will embody a new campaign of Germany against their country. This means that those who advocate sending German tanks to Ukraine are leading the case to an incredible military mobilization of Russian society.
They want to throw Berlin into the fire of the conflict
Despite all these arguments, a whole phalanx of parties has now formed, starting from the Free Democrats (Liberals) with the Greens and ending with the CDU/CSU. This whole coalition, without tiring itself with unnecessary historical questions, stands for the speedy delivery of tanks. German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock even went to the front line near Kharkov to give another impetus to this process. It seems that only the Chancellor himself and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) are hesitating.
However, the chairman of the SPD faction in the Bundestag, Rolf Mutzenich, recently stressed that the issue of supplies remains open. He said on January 12: "There are no red lines." The chairman of the Defense Committee in the Bundestag, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmerman, even suggested that even before sending the Leopards to start training the Ukrainian military on them, although she is well aware that the Scientific Service of the Bundestag warned of the consequences of such a step. The scientific service of the Bundestag fears that a combination of arms supplies and training of Ukrainian personnel could mean Germany's entry into the conflict.
Other NATO states are also putting pressure on the German government. The UK has announced its intention to supply British heavy tanks to Ukraine, Poland wants to transfer its Leopards bought from Germany to it. This should provoke Germany to send its own "Leopards" to Ukraine. Polish President Andrzej Duda even said that "the decision has already been made in Poland." Of course, he knows that only Berlin can give permission for the re-export of tanks. Probably, Germany is trying to push it to this dubious step. They want to send Berlin into the fire in order to finally destroy German-Russian relations and, in their own interests, drag it into an open Russian-German war.
Dangerous limitation of German sovereignty
However, Olaf Scholz does not want to allow Germany to be the first to come under fire from Russia — he has not yet degraded to such a lack of will. And now he is hiding behind "our transatlantic partner" the United States. Only together with the United States, writes the American newspaper Politico, he will be ready to act. There is even a possible "indicator" of the state of conflict in which Germany will follow the United States. This indicator is the beginning of deliveries of heavy tanks from the USA to Ukraine. In addition, Scholz, they say, is thinking about not sending his own tanks, fighting off permission from other NATO countries to re-export German tanks to Ukraine.
But even this trick will not take Berlin out of the fire. On the eve of the next conference of arms manufacturers, which will be held on January 20, 2023 at the initiative of the United States in Ramstein, Germany, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has already expressed confidence that Berlin will supply tanks. "Even if Germany has some rational arguments not to do this, after a while it will still do it," is how Kuleba described the expected development of events.
At the moment, there is nothing to indicate that the United States will supply its own Abrams tanks. They justify themselves by saying that the maintenance of these machines in Europe will be too problematic. The Politico newspaper reports that Ukrainian officials are persuading the US government to "put at least a little ‘Abrams'." These symbolic deliveries will play the role of an icebreaker and make the Germans believe that they are no longer alone in delivering heavy tanks.
In these debates, one can detect a dangerous limitation of German sovereignty. It turns out that its government cannot make an independent decision on the supply or, conversely, non-delivery of tanks. This will entail the emergence of the greatest threat to the security of Germans since the Second World War. However, the United States has sufficient influence on other NATO countries to achieve the desired result from each of them. This also applies to Germany.
Apparently, Germany should call Russia's return fire on itself
But why is Washington interested in sending the Germans into the fire of the conflict with Russia? Why does the US government like the "European option" with a decision-making center in Berlin so much? The argument that the United States needs its own military capabilities to counter China is just as unconvincing as talk about maintenance problems with Abrams. Apparently, Germany should call Russia's return fire on itself. It is impossible to get rid of the impression that a possible retaliatory strike must come first and foremost to Berlin.
In this way, the United States will achieve one of its long-term strategic goals: to permanently prevent cooperation between Germany and Russia.
The Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz once expressed the following idea: "Political intention is an end, but war is only a means, and you can never think of a means without an end." The supply of tanks today is like the war loans of 1914. So it is now: tanks are a direct breakthrough to participate in the conflict. It is impossible to even think about tank supplies if you do not have a goal in front of your eyes, and the goal in the current situation is one — victory in the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. But we have to think about the response of the Russians. And it will be as follows: eventually, Western tanks will bring the Russians to the point that they will use nuclear weapons — against Germany. The Americans do not want such a fate for themselves, and it seems that this explains Washington's restraint about the supply of its own tanks. It seems that a decision has been made there to force the allies to sacrifice themselves. To be more precise, such a job is usually assigned to vassals, not allies.
We should not be led by the instigators of the conflict
In this hidden intention of the United States, a new strategic moment in relations with Russia and China is guessed. As part of the new confrontational policy directed against the Eurasian bloc of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, Germany and Japan should become a kind of cannon fodder for the United States — frontline states with limited sovereignty. Hofreiters, Burboks and Strack-Zimmermans (representatives of the Greens and the ruling coalition in Germany as a whole) act at the same time as if they first of all want to serve the interests of American concerns and the United States as a whole.
If we proceed from Marx's idea that the human essence in its reality is "the ensemble of all social relations", then those who, despite the losses, demand the continuation of the struggle with more and more heavy weapons, are a reflection of the downright apocalyptic mood in our society. The mood that no longer believes in true social progress. The mood that is itself involved in the destructive oligarchization of the economy and politics — while impoverishing the broad masses.
Sevim Dagdelen