Some world events can look different to those of us on this side of the Atlantic, also, more precisely, in Berlin. God knows, here too I’m frightened at what Trump, Vance and Musk are doing and planning. Nor do I love Putin. But what I hate above all else is war, which is looks – and is closer over here. I’m not a total pacifist, I see the need to fight back against Francos and against Hitlers. And yet I must always rejoice whenever slaughter and destruction can be stopped! Right now that means that I am hoping – yes, damn near praying – for a ceasefire and a negotiated end to the Ukraine war.
I can well understand the feelings of many patriotic Ukrainians on fighting back. And I can empathize with Americans and all the others who were appalled at the conduct of that dangerous clown Trump and his sidekick at their meeting with Zelenskyy, a meeting which looked carefully prepared.
Yes, one could certainly feel scorn for Trump at that moment and sympathize with poor Zelenskyy. And yet, such sympathy has limits. I can neither forget nor forgive him for leading the cheers for old Yaroslav Hunka in the Canadian Parliament in September 2023. Few Canadians may have known it, but Zelenskyy knew full well that Hunka had once volunteered for the Ukrainian Division of the Nazi SS in World War II. At the same time American and Canadian troops were fighting on Normandy beaches in 1944 their Red Army allies, in a huge, bitter battle in Ukrainian Brody, were defeating a major Nazi army which included Hunka’s unit, with its mass killers of Russian, Polish and especially Jewish civilians. I have never heard a word of regret from such veterans, or from Hunka. Or Zelenskyy.
Nor can I forget how Andrij Melnyk, then Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, when presented by a journalist with a wartime leaflet of Ukraine’s legendary hero Stepan Bandera, saying “Moscovites, Poles, Hungarians and Jews are your enemies. Destroy them!” first tried vainly to deny the validity of the leaflet but then snapped back, “I will not say today that I distance myself from it. And that’s that!”
That was too embarrassing; Melnyk had to be withdrawn from Berlin. After a brief stay out of the limelight as ambassador to Brazil he is now due to become Ukraine’s UN ambassador!
It is absurd to call Zelenskyy a fascist. But what about all too many of those around him?
This same Melnyk also mixed directly in German politics – like Elon Musk. “Personally I trust Friedrich Merz, whom I know well,” he said. “Merz could advance an ambitious European defense program if he can find coalition partners who support the same plans.”
Merz found them – and will soon be Germany’s new chancellor. Dictatorial, widely unpopular, some refer to him as “Dr. Blackrock”. While his moderate nemesis Angela Merkel led his party (and the government) he took a break from direct politics, became a millionaire lobbyist and, from 2016 to 2020, headed the German section of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, which holds key financial assets in Lockheed Martin ($9.7 bl), Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman and holds second place financially in Germany’s main arms company, Rheinmetall. Even a hint of peace in any conflict zone is followed by a slump in those companies’ shares values. When Merz stated “Freedom is more important for us than peace. You can find peace in every graveyard” it is easy to understand what he, or Blackrock, mean with “freedom”!
Merz often expresses such principles: “We must do everything to support the Ukraine in its struggle against the Russian aggressor…in order to defend its freedom but also our own. Because their commitment is part of the commitment of all of us for a world of freedom and justice.” He also extends such longings elsewhere: “A government led by me will strengthen our relations with Israel.“
The new government now shaping up in Berlin will be based on all such commitments. The ill-starred Greens, most bellicose of all parties, cannot become junior partners of Merz’s CDU-CSU; they lost too many Bundestag seats to be useful. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which won a frightening second place, is still taboo (for now). Only the Social Democrats remain. Their election results were the worst in their entire history but still supply just enough deputy seats to permit a joint government – after they hastily eliminated the few courageous but weak voices in their ranks who had spoken up for peace, including Olaf Scholz, who had see-sawed on such issues, opposed giving giant Taurus missiles to Kyiv and was not a gung-ho vanguard crusader. In his stead, the Social Democrat most likely to keep his job as Minister of Defense is Boris Pistorius, loudest of all in demanding more and more billions for Ukraine and “to defend” Germany from that imminent danger he is constantly warning about. Russia, of course, although the two countries have no mutual borders, any Russian idea of attacking Germany, or any NATO member, would amount to total insanity – and would be a total reversal of over 200 years of historic invasions.
Few Americans can have an idea of the current militarist build-up in Germany, based on the mass media’s constant attempts to spread fear. Test alarms, talk of air-raid cellars, growing pressure for conscription, male and female, and a military expense account zooming down like a typhoon, more and more hundreds of billions, to the joy of giants like Rheinmetall and the fears of those low on the economic ladder, for it is they who will pay for it. Echoes of past hubris grow ever louder; the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm, of Adolf Hitler, of Konrad Adenauer, the constant talk of “defense,” a thin camouflage for growing projects of eastward expansion, already encompassing German troops stationed in Lithuania, naval bases in the Baltic and war games in Poland, strengthening those rail lines, highways and ports which are suitable for heavy clanking tanks and artillery, and more swift aircraft for carrying Hiroshima10 bombs – plus calls for a German share in atomic weapon decisions. With Trump seeming to back away from Europe, hitherto less open calls for a strong European army, led by its strongest member, Germany, are now loud and frequent; we can almost hear the clicking of military heels and shouts of “Achtung”!
As for freedom, its defense always seemed to require a diabolic Beelzebub to arouse popular rage, if possible an easy target for media caricaturists. No matter whether he was truly evil, truly good, or some mixture, for anyone in the way the spiked tail and horns were ready at hand: Stalin, Fidel, Gaddafi, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Assad – and since about 2000 “Vlad.”
How many know that Putin and his diplomats had warned since 2008 that, in spite of US and German promises that “if Germany is united NATO will not move an one inch eastward” NATO did advance more than inches; it was country by country right up to the Russian borders. Disarmament agreements were abandoned (always blaming Russia), Russian pleas for negotiations to avoid confrontation were rejected in December 2021 as “no-starters.” As for the promising peace agreement at Minsk, ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel later revealed (in “Die Zeit”) that it had been a NATO ruse, “an attempt to buy time for the Ukraine to build up military strength.” In Istanbul, a cease-fire and agreement to negotiate were almost ready for signing when UK’s Boris Johnson flew in to stymie them.
The whole tragedy can best be understood by reading the confidential State Department cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” sent in 2008 to Washington from Moscow by then US Ambassador William Burns (who later became CIA boss). Here is an official summary:
“Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine’s intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan at the Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the Russian experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia’s defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally. In Georgia, the Russian government fears continued instability and “provocative acts” in the separatist regions.” (MFA: NATO Enlargement “Potential Military Threat to Russia” )
And that is exactly what happened. As Putin saw it, “Nobody planned to live up to these Minsk agreements… They lied to us, and the only reason for these processes was to pump Ukraine up with weapons and get it ready for military action.”
These facts do not exculpate Putin from the tank invasion of February 2022, nor of the shelling and bombing in the terrible months since then. But they might balance the picture presented by US and German media and politicians. The destruction and death of civilians in the Ukraine hardly compares with the nearly total destruction of housing and calculated killing of 70,000, perhaps far more civilians, the destruction of schools, universities, hospitals and mosques in Gaza. But any condemnation of that is denounced as “anti-Semitic” and can cost one’s job.
As for the abduction of Ukrainian children; the Russians say these were mostly orphans, lost or abandoned children. True or not, should one forget the ten thousands of Native American children forcibly abducted until the 1960s to schools where they were miserably treated, sexually abused, robbed of their language and often allowed to die and be buried in unmarked graves?
Should we forget three million Koreans killed by American bombers, two to three million Vietnamese, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan Indios and Iraqis, thousands in all of Central America? Or the CIA’s ”black sites,“ from Afghanistan and Poland to Thailand and Guantanamo, where “enhanced interrogation techniques” were described in a US Senate report as “a euphemism for torture, including such abuses as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners in small boxes for up to 18 hours, stress positions, forced nudity, sexual threats, and so-called “rectal rehydration.” Have any US presidents ever been called to accounts for those crimes?
For me the demand to protect freedom and democracy, so often repeated when alluding to Ukraine, seems pure hypocrisy when I think of US and German support for apartheid, for Saudi boss Mohammed bin Salman, for 32 years with kleptomaniac dictator Mobutu in Congo, Papa and Baby Doc in Haiti, Scheich Hamad in Bahrein, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Pinochet in Chile and so many others. And the stress on Putin’s scorn for international law regarding borders and national sovereignty in Crimea or Donbas raises questions on double standards when recalling Croatian and Slovenian breakaway from Yugoslavia, Kosovo’s break away from Serbia, (or, further back, the seizure of half of Mexico, of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Hawai’i. Or the illegal blockade of Cuba, despite the condemnation of all UN members except for USA and Israel. Or the seizure of all of Jerusalem and all of Palestine despite repeated UN resolutions. Few idealistic words seem to hold water these days.
Is it possible that Putin recalled the fates of any leaders who rejected US hegemony? Allende, in his bombed residential palace, Lumumba, tortured, dismembered and dissolved in acid, Saddam Hussein hanged, Ghaddafi, sodomized with a bayonet, Mohammad Najibullah, castrated and dragged by a truck through the streets of Kabul, Osama bin Laden, shot down in his home and thrown into the ocean. (But despite countless attempts, Fidel escaped such a fate.)
The man in the White House represents a giant danger to all Americans except for the wealthiest at the top, now often at his side (even literally). But even at the rude Oval Room bullying session, one question stuck out, despite the rubbish: Trump’s words to Zelenskyy: “You’re gambling with World War III!”
Aside from all questions as to who bears the most blame, those who did the provoking or the side which felt provoked and sent in the tanks – like a cornered bear, surrounded by a narrowing circle of snarling dogs, being the first to slash out first a heavy-clawed paw. I see a continuation of the war as only bringing misery to all those affected and a course which can lead only to more deaths – and explosion. In Germany it has already led to almost total rule of the “Deutschland über alles” crusaders, with France and Britain rivaling for second place. They all want to regain past strength and glory, and stay in office. In Bibi’s related war against Palestine even more is at stake: Keep on killing or “go directly to jail.”
Marco Rubio added later: “I think both sides must come to an understanding; there can be no military solution …The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it will be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable period to force the Russians all the way back to where they were in 2014.”
Indeed, the only remaining routes I can see are either more weapons, more countries involved, more death and destruction, leading almost unavoidably to escalation and all too possibly to annihilation! Or the other route: No more weapons! Cease fire combined with negotiation! Peace!
Why has Trump opened a door to peace? I don’t know. Maybe to get at those mineral riches. Maybe to clear things with Russia so as to move on to China, after splitting the two adversaries. Maybe this guy, in his twisted thinking (and seemingly total ignorance of the world outside his golden towers), actually prefers peace to war. Anything is possible with him. All of it bad, indeed evil – with that one possible exception! Every day the scene changes, the odds seem to roller-coaster – even with news just heard a few hours ago? Will Putin meet Trump? Will Russia agree to a cease fire? Is it – this time – a meaningful offer? Will they move towards peace? Both sides are unpredictable. But hope remains – for good people everywhere! And the need for popular pressure!
At least one thing was clear. The prospect of possible peace scared the daylights out of war-lovers on both sides of the Atlantic, especially the bosses of Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin and their like, who rejoice at shoveling in billions but salivate for more! Assisting them are those crusading pundits who roundly condemn all of Trump’s sins but never forget to include his alleged kowtowing to Putin. They often dig up “appeasement,” misusing the story of Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich in 1938 to accelerate their rush to get more armament billions approved before peace negotiations can undermine their phony alarm calls. 600 billion may soon get the OK of the new government, plus the Greens. (At Munich in 1938 Britain and France willingly agreed to let Hitler move German regiments closer to Russian borders. They knew why! Are there perhaps current analogies after all?)
So the politicians and pundits debate on how the Ukraine can be kept fighting, no matter what it costs, with Honor and Freedom their words of choice! And some quite good folks, also old friends, still support the war and denigrate anyone calling for peace. Some are even within the LINKE party, which was always proud to be the “Peace Party.” Luckily their positions do not go unchallenged.
But for US Americans a major dilemma arises: it is vitally necessary to fight back against Trump’s terrible threats in every field: union rights, defense of immigrants, schools, environment, science, racism, LGBTQ rights, even Greenland and Panama. But with one exception, at least for now. Any potential move to achieve peace, no matter how motivated, must not be attacked – but supported! War or peace; this remains, by far, the most crucial question of all in today’s threatened world.
