РУССКИЙ
10:35 03.03.2023 •
She condemned the conflict in Ukraine as a NATO “proxy war” against Russia, warning that the leaders of the European Union are acting as Washington’s “vassals”.
“A massive shift is taking place in favor of the United States, which is attacking Europe as a center of industry, with its multi-billion-dollar program of industrial subsidies”, Dağdelen explained.
“So we need Germany actually to be emancipated at last and Europe finally to assert itself, ending the nonsensical economic war, and launching a European diplomatic initiative to end the war in Ukraine”, the German lawmaker urged.
Referencing a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States and NATO member Norway destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, Dağdelen lamented, “The German government’s refusal to get to the bottom of the terrorist attacks on the German-Russian Nord Stream pipelines is the highlight so far of Germany’s vassalage to the United States”.
- One cannot avoid getting the impression, at least what was the approval of war credits in the First World War is today the approval of the delivery of arms, battle tanks, and everything else as weapon deliveries. So also, as far as the justification of ever greater participation in the war is concerned, 100 years only seem like a day, sometimes. What was then the alleged “defense of war against the barbarism of the Russian czar” is today the “victory over the oligarch capitalist system of the Russian President Vladimir Putin”.
- And this is a little bit funny because the oligarch system is not a genius Russian system. I mean, we do have oligarchs in Ukraine. We do have an oligarchic capitalist system in the United States also. But it is frightening to see how well this war propaganda is working. In 1914, even parts of the left wing of social democracy had campaigned for the World War, since it was supposedly against a “despot”, like the Russian czar.
- And in 2023, even parts of the left and the Left Party are calling for the delivery of German battle tanks, and openly risking German participation in the war, attracted by the argument that Ukraine is about a war against an “autocracy”, an “authoritarian regime” like in Russia. But it seems that parts of the left have forgotten to take into account the geopolitical realities.
- The West’s strategy of sending more and heavier arms and weaponry to Ukraine will not end the war, but rather bears the risk of further escalation, even nuclear escalation with Russia. So the historical task of the left and the peace movement in Europe, as well as in the United States, is to counter this war propaganda. Since the beginning of the war, the West has been trying to enlist these countries’ support to isolate and weaken Russia, in order to preserve its absolute global predominance, led by the United States.
- But this strategy has failed completely, as the numbers you mentioned demonstrate. On the contrary, large countries like China and India are currently intensifying their economic relations with Russia. And the West is further isolating itself and losing its credibility even more. So the failure to make Russia a pariah state shows the limits of the Western drive for hegemony in an increasingly multipolar world. So it makes perfect sense that the countries of the Global South do not want to be dragged onto the side of the West in the proxy war in Ukraine.
- Populations in both the West and the Global South are suffering, massively, from the effects of the war and Western economic sanctions, with high, skyrocketing prices, food prices, energy prices. In the last year, I’ve been in many countries in the Global South, especially in Africa, but also in Asia. And most counterparts, they told me, “We are trying to survive. We do not want to be on one side. We we want to survive here, in this situation. We are also affected by the sanctions of the West”.
- But the sanctions, the energy sanctions through the Western countries like the United States and the European Union, they are affecting them, and they are causing these skyrocketing prices in energy and food. So this is the reason why they say, “We want to survive. We have our own battles. And we do not want to be in the middle of this war of the West versus Russia”. Understandably, they point to the West’s double standards policy as well, and the innumerable illegal wars of aggression waged by the U.S. and its allies, which did not lead to similar responses.
- They always say, “We don’t forget the invasion of Iraq. We don’t forget the invasion of Libya. We don’t forget the invasion of Afghanistan, and all the crimes done by the Western countries, with no response at all, and no responsibilities taken by these countries”.
- With its economic war against Russia, the West is holding the countries of the Global South hostage, since they are suffering because of the rising food and energy prices, the spread of hunger and poverty.
- In Germany, there is a vast difference between public and published opinion. Large sections of the mainstream media have given themselves over to entirely uncritical and US compliant war propaganda, and in politics and in the media, the tone is set by hawks, who in their mania demand ever more weapons and more heavy weapon deliveries, and horrifically defame anyone who calls for diplomacy and negotiation. And despite its hesitation and a certain rhetorical restraint in the case of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the German government is de facto submitting to the U.S. its declared war goal of counting on a military victory for Ukraine against Russia.
- The new German defense minister, for example, Boris Pistorius, has now, in Munich at the Munich Security Conference, even stated quite openly at the conference that he also shares the line of the United States for the goal of counting on a military victory for Ukraine against Russia.
- I really share the assessment of U.S. General Chief of Staff Mark Milley and, for example, the very conservative RAND Corporation, that this strategy is very unrealistic and dangerous, as it would imply, to protect it, a costly war of attrition, and would carry the real danger of an expansion of the war to the point of nuclear escalation.
- Those who, like the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock, make a complete withdrawal of Russian troops a condition obviously have no interest in ending the war, because this is not a serious condition, because it’s very unrealistic. A quick ceasefire must have top priority now. And this requires negotiations without precondition.
- I think we do need a coordination and networking of freedom- and peace-loving people worldwide. My impression – not only my impression, it’s my observation as well, and experience – the warmongers in trans-Atlantic relations, in trans-Atlantic think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Atlantic Bridge, and some others, they are very much and very, very strongly bonded and are in networks, and we do need an alternative to them.
- We do left trans-Atlanticism, with the peace-loving people in the United States, together with the peace-loving people in Europe, to show an alternative to the relation between the U.S. administration and the German government, which is a relation which is not founded on respect and cooperation, which has a disbalance, where you have hegemony like the United States, and vessel states, like the German government.
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