What is striking about the way European diplomacy has been conducted in recent years is its hysterical dimension, that is, the lack of sobriety, self-restraint and solidity, combined with the arbitrary disregard for the historical background of international relations. European leaders behave as if there were no past and no memory that largely determines the attitude of international actors.
A recent example of this levity is the vice-chancellor, finance minister and leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Lars Klingbeil. Asked whether Germany – and Europe – should send troops to Ukraine to ensure peace, he said: “Of course, we must also take responsibility as Europeans for security guarantees, whether it concerns troops, training of the Ukrainian army, financial aid or other issues.”
The German Vice Chancellor is telling the Russians that the German army will be stationed in Ukraine for its security. That is, to do today, with Moscow’s signature, what it was unable to do in the first and second world wars. Especially in the second, when the Soviet army lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in expelling the Nazi troops and their allies, while also waging a war of extermination against the Ukrainian collaborators of the Nazis, which continued after the end of the war.
Which Russian leadership would accept such a thing and not be accused of betraying history? And especially when the balance of the war gave the Russian side the upper hand, while a significant part of the justification for the war was from the Russian side.
Where was Donbass in 1918?
This happened in the First World War when Soviet Russia, at Lenin’s insistence, ceded most of present-day Ukraine to Germany with the famous Brest-Litovsk Agreement of March 1918 to save the revolution, although historical developments ultimately vindicated Lenin. If one dusts off the history books, the currently disputed Donbas region was ceded to Germany, which lost the territories it had gained with this agreement, in the Treaty of Versailles that sealed its defeat in World War I…
With these as data, doesn’t it seem a bit problematic? One wonders, today, what could be the reason that would lead Putin to accept -mainly- German troops in Ukraine. Will he be afraid of the Social Democrat Vice Chancellor? So let’s keep some reservations for now.
