The war, Germany and The Left

The war, Germany and The Left

Contested positions on the war in Ukraine – its origins and
contributing factors – have led to divisions in Die Linke, writes 

VICTOR GROSSMAN

IN 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local
bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby
to salute it.

William Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple
from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure,
the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to
some symbol. Or else!

In current media, every mention of the war in Ukraine must start with
a denunciation of that monster Vladimir Putin. Or else! What epithet
is more withering than “Putin-lover!”

I, too, am not a Putin-lover. And I have a great hatred of war,
especially war rained from the skies or aimed from a distance.

Waging war, against civilians, even against young uniformed
“adversaries,” is inherently wrong. But I will not bow my head to this
modern “Gessler’s hat,” no matter what epithets I may be pelted with
(crossbows are rarely available).

Despite my horror at the death, destruction and misery I see daily on
TV, my entire background demands a careful analysis of a conflagration
which may yet fling flames across more borders and can all too easily
kindle atomic annihilation.

Why did Russia send an army into Ukraine? Was it pure imperialism? A
terrible miscalculation? Did Putin see it as a dire necessity? Or was
it a baited trap?

To start with, I cannot forget, deny or ignore what I have seen happen
since 1945 — how the Pentagon, White House, Congress and those behind
them sought the defeat of one pro-socialist effort after another.

They failed in Cuba and Vietnam, they succeeded in Ghana, Grenada,
Chile — and, most important, in Europe. By utilising every weakness,
blunder, even offence, and exerting every form of pressure, Poland was
won by a team led by Ronald Reagan, “Polish Pope” John Paul II, the
CIA and a few experts in the AFL-CIO.

In 1989-90 it was the GDR’s turn, with help from US ambassador to Bonn
Vernon Walters, a former CIA deputy director who had played a major
role in Poland.

In 1991 came the glorious victory over the USSR, where Boris Yeltsin,
an alcoholic marionette, opened the gates to 10 years of chaos,
desolation and sell-out to new Russian oligarchs and not-so-new US
corporations.

That’s when Putin stepped in, just in time to save Russia from total
collapse, using his own set of oligarchs, crossing himself piously as
he knelt in church but keeping a tight state hold on banks and basic
resources.

This was not at all what US businessmen and politicians wanted.

So the US-led military pact Nato, breaking its promise of 1990 not to
move an inch eastwards, advanced, one regime-changed ally after the
other, towards complete encirclement of Russia: in 1999 Poland,
Hungary, the Czech Republic, in 2004 Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; then the hinterland in fragmented, bombed
ex-Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia.

But most important was Ukraine, which could block Russia from the
Black Sea and reached to within 400 miles of Moscow.

The elected president of that huge gem, unwilling to become part of
the encircling noose, sought a more neutral position. “Not enough!”
said Nato and sent in Nuland.

Victoria Nuland, deputy in Hillary Clinton’s State Department (and
wife of a top cold war strategist), went to Kiev, dealt out at least
$5 billion and even tasty cookies to a largely right-wing,
anti-Russian crowd, and maybe a few to the mysterious snipers who
forced the president to flee for his life.

In a famous hacked phone call, she personally chose the next Ukrainian
ruler, banker-politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a man supported by the
“Freedom Party” (Svoboda) of Oleh Tyahnybok, who had denounced a
“Jewish-Russian Mafia” and praised Ukraine’s new hero Stepan Bandera,
who led in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in 1941.

One of the new rulers’ first measures discriminated against the many
Russian-speakers, limiting the use of all but Ukrainian, making them
second-class citizens and in Crimea angry enough to vote, with a big
majority, to break with Ukraine and rejoin with Russia (to which they
had belonged until 1954) and in eastern Donbass to form two separate
republics, much as Albanian-speaking people in Kosovo broke away from
Serbia in 2008.

In such decisions national pride, or self-defence, superseded complex
international rules. Military operations against Donbass were soon
launched, using the fascistic “Azov” militia units.

With Ukraine now a new segment in the ring around Russia, US-Nato
built up its strength there, first with “non-lethal” arms and
trainers, letting allies like Lithuania pass on bigger stuff.

Then came a series of military manoeuvres. Defender-Europe 20 was
hindered by Covid-19 but, in 2021, Sea Breeze was conducted in the Sea
of Azov and the Black Sea with more than 30 warships and 40 planes
from 32 countries not far from the Russians’ southern naval base of
Sevastopol.

In September 2021 it was Rapid Trident 21 — “To increase combat
readiness, defense capabilities and interoperability, the exercise
features joint jumps of Ukrainian and US paratroopers and, for the
first time, service members will conduct battalion tactical exercises
of a multinational battalion with combat shooting in a single combat
order … The purpose is to prepare for joint actions as part of a
multinational force during coalition operations.”

Joining the US and Ukraine were Bulgaria, Canada, Georgia, Germany,
Italy, Jordan, Lithuania, Moldova, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Turkey
and Britain.

Such activities were allegedly for peace, defending Ukraine against
“authoritarianism.” But Russia viewed the threat of cutting it off in
the Baltic and Black Sea, plus 700 or 800 big or small US bases on six
continents, in a very different way.

Washington was a safe 7,800 miles away; St Petersburg and Moscow were
under the noses of those missile launchers, warplanes and warships,
and the US alone had a 13-1 preponderance over Russia in military
spending.

Bipartisan US politicians were outdoing themselves in reviling Russia,
nor could the Maidan events with Victoria Nuland be forgotten.

As for Putin, like him or hate him, it is hardly surprising that he
was alarmed, perhaps even for personal reasons in view of the fates of
other leaders disliked by Washington: Allende, dead in his bombed
residence, Lumumba, tortured and murdered, Saddam Hussein, hanged,
Muammar Gadaffi, fatally sodomised, the Afghani Najibullah, castrated
and strung up, Osama Bin Laden, shot in his rooms and dumped into the
ocean, Slobodan Milosevic, mysteriously dying in a prison cell. (Fidel
Castro was luckier, surviving over a hundred bungled CIA assassination
attempts.)

In a 14-page historical summary, Putin wrote: “We respect the
Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect Ukrainians’ desire to
see their country free, safe and prosperous.” … “Russia is open to
dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues.
But it is important for us to understand that our Ukrainian partner
defend its national interests not by serving someone else’s, that it
not be a tool in someone else’s hands to fight against us.”

That was in July 2021. How sincere were such words? What did they mean
in February 2022? Daring to ignore the “Gessler hat,” I think basic
Russian policy must be seen not as expansionist but as defensive.

In 2015 Russia agreed to the Minsk II agreement to avoid further
warfare in Donbass and resolve the conflict with negotiations and
compromises.

Kiev ignored, indeed undermined Minsk II; Germany and France, its
co-sponsors, abandoned it. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made
proposals to discuss a neutral Ukraine.

At first Volodymyr Zelensky seemed interested — until pressure from
Washington and London to “stay tough” prevailed; Lavrov’s further
requests to negotiate differences, above all to remove Nato troops and
manoeuvres from Russian borders, were rejected in December 2021 by
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as “very obvious non-starters.”

Was that rejection Putin’s “red line”? Who knows? I only wish they had
been “starters” instead — for the White House and Pentagon. That could
have saved the Ukrainians immense suffering and exile, although it
might have meant fewer billions for Northrup-Grumman or Raytheon.

And on February 24? Did Putin perhaps march into an elaborate trap —
as Russia had once done in Afghanistan? Did he consider a big
impending Ukrainian offensive against the Donbass republics and their
Russian-speaking population, where 14,000 had died in 10 years of
battle, as an immediate danger to Russia?

Did the many US-Ukrainian biological laboratories — admitted to by
Nuland in a US Senate committee hearing — seem an immediate threat? I
cannot know.

Putin defended the invasion of Ukraine with the following words:
“Today we are told that we started a war in Donbass, in Ukraine. No,
it was unleashed by this same collective West which organised and
supported the unconstitutional armed coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014,
then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbass …

“The West is fighting Russia with all the tools that are also used in
a war: weapons, sanctions, money, media, diplomacy. The only thing
that slows the West down from intervening with its own soldiers is the
danger of nuclear war.

“Ukraine is only the unfortunate sacrificial pawn of the West, which
had been prepared for this role since 2014 and with which the West has
provoked Russia (with the Maidan coup in 2014, arms deliveries,
construction of Nato bases, etc) until Russia saw no choice but to
take military action to protect its own security interests. 

“At the beginning of February 2022, the West rejected the security
guarantees proposed by Russia in December 2021 and even refused to
talk about them.”

That is Putin’s position. True or not, and for whatever reason,
invasion was a tragic choice. Aside from the misery in Ukraine, it has
led to a dangerously explosive polarisation, painfully splitting the
world’s weak left-wing forces for peace and progress.

And in Germany? For years the unified country was torn between two
forces. Some economic groups, like gas importers and exporters of
manufactured and agricultural goods, wanted to get along with Russia
(and even more with China), a policy symbolised by Angela Merkel and
the Baltic pipelines.

This was angrily opposed by men along the Potomac, in Charles Koch’s
Wichita HQ and similar locations, who wanted both to export fracked
gas and to head off even limited German-Russian reconciliation.

They were aiming at the eventual defeat of Russia, then China, as
major barriers to their plans for world hegemony, prudently labelled
“the rule of order,” democracy, liberty (and free markets!) as against
“authoritarianism.”

Closely beholden to them was that force in Germany, the Atlanticists,
whether because of ideology, intertwining corporate and financial
interests, or perhaps even personal career hopes.

After February 24, inside and outside the governing coalition, the
Atlanticists won full victory, filling the media with angry
denunciation of everything Russian, working to permanently break off
all commercial ties with Moscow, starting with the Baltic oil
pipelines, even though this may well cause industrial shutdowns and
maybe very chilly house temperatures. 

Christian Democrats, Free Democrats, and first and foremost, the Green
Party joined the attack, with the young Green Foreign Minister
Annalena Baerbock demanding that as many and as heavy weapons possible
to be sent to Kiev, with her cherished goal the “ruin of Russia.”

The Social Democrats were not so clear, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz
hesitant about sending heavy weapons to Kiev and getting deeply
involved in what could become an open war, Nato v Russia.

But media attacks grew fiercer, and Scholz bowed to that “Gessler
hat,” siding with Nato and Washington, stationing more German troops
in Lithuania and demanding an unprecedented sum of €100 billion for
more armaments to “protect German security.”

The competition in denouncing Russia grew strong enough to revive
half-forgotten tones from the 1930s, like when Lars Klingbeil, a
leading Social Democrat, claimed that “Germany’s allies have great
expectations and Germany must fulfil them … It is time for it to exit
the end-of-history mode and become a leading power on the world stage
after almost 80 years of holding back.”

Frightening words! Even more frightening were those of top air corps
General Ingo Gerhartz: “For a credible deterrent, we need both the
means and the political will, if necessary, to implement nuclear
deterrence.” The “old guard” in the established parties were beginning
to summon up past glories.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is all-out for those past
glories but, like some other far-righters in Europe, did not join the
verbal attacks on Russia and opposed armaments for Ukraine.

Its main mission in nearly all matters is opposition — above all to
the European Union. But as dyed-in-the-wool nationalists, they also
support a big German military build-up, a renewed draft and/or
compulsory civil service for young men (as also recommended by
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier).

The Left — Die Linke — has always stood out as the one party of peace,
opposing deployment in Serbia, Afghanistan, Mali or anywhere outside
German borders.

Now it was split, with the main bone of contention the Ukraine war.
Actually, disagreement on related issues was by no means new, though
rarely so emotional as at the party congress session in late June.

It was a disastrous year for Die Linke. In the September elections the
party received only 4.9 per cent, down from 6.9 per cent four years
earlier.

Its caucus in the Bundestag was only just saved by a special rule — if
three or more delegates were elected directly in their districts the
caucus was saved, even without 5 per cent.

Exactly three scraped through, but proportional representation now
gave it 39 deputies, not its previous 69 — no longer the strongest
opposition party, it had become the weakest.

The urgent party reassessment and changes called for by this disaster
failed to materialise and the party lost bitterly in three state
elections: Saarland — from 12.8 per cent to 2.6 per cent,
Schleswig-Holstein, 3.8 to 1.7 per cent and in the key industrial
North Rhine-Westfalia from 4.9 to 2.7 per cent.

In the main dispute the so-called reformers weakened the party’s basic
opposition to Nato in hopes of being accepted in a government
coalition with the pro-Nato Greens and Social Democrats.

Such dubious hopes were rendered fully impossible by Die Linke’s poor
election results. But the reformers still tended to play down or
absolve Nato’s current role, giving Russia and Putin the entire blame
for the Ukrainian tragedy while the militant wing of the party viewed
Nato, especially the US, as provocateurs, whose expansionist policy of
deploying armaments and manoeuvres along Russian borders was clearly
looking for trouble — and, sadly, getting it.

The quarrel reflected a deeper rift — between those who called for
improvements in child care, pensions, minimum wages but saw socialism
only as a future goal in vague cliches while basically accepting a
systemic status quo in which they strove to become accepted, despite
the growing menace of the billionaires.

The militants, while not calling for revolution tomorrow (like some
ultra-leftists), nevertheless saw a rejection of the capitalist system
as vital — and basic opposition a necessity.

The one group accepted Nato, the other opposed it. Their differences
coloured often hot but very brief Congress debates, which were
dominated by the reformers, who won out in the end with about a 60-30
ratio — and managed to slip some very ardent pro-Nato advocates into
leading positions.

Some on the left deplored the Congress results. Others were glad there
had been no split, some political positions had been rescued, a
threatened stress on “gender issues,” even in grammar and punctuation,
had been averted and a shaky compromise arrived at.

It remains to be seen whether Die Linke can regain roots among working
people for the many hardships and big menaces now looming.

And much may yet depend on its position regarding Gessler’s hat. A
side note: In the famous play by Friedrich Schiller, the events
involved led to the Swiss rebellion against Habsburg tyranny.

Source:

<https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/war-germany-and-left>