РУССКИЙ
9:04 20.10.2024 •
When you listen to the debate in Germany or the US about support for Ukraine, you might get the impression that it is the West that is running out of money. This is not true either. But we are running out of a willingness to spend it, ‘The New Statesman’ notes.
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe has been teetering on the brink of recession. Europe was dependent on Russian gas and on industrial supply routes that cut through the country. If the West was really serious about helping Ukraine defeat Russia, it would have to follow Putin’s lead and switch to a war economy: shift money from other parts of its budgets towards higher defence spending, and specifically for weapons for Ukraine. None of the large Western countries are ready to do this. Germany is fast moving in the opposite direction, cutting all of the aid budget it has not yet allocated to Ukraine.
If the West was serious about defeating Putin, we too would double our defence spending, as Russia has done. We would first need to agree how this would be financed: higher taxes, or cuts in pensions and welfare payments? Even less investment in our crumbling public infrastructure? Maybe more debt? Germany, not Russia, is struggling with its defence budgets. And if anyone will come to recognise that continued war is futile, it is less likely to be Putin than Ukraine’s tired Western supporters.
The West’s Ukraine war narratives are mainly informed by wishful thinking – about Russia running out of money, about the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy, about our own political appetite to support Ukraine after the initial period of pro-Ukraine euphoria ended. The Western alliance is clear only about its red line – that it does not want to engage in a war with Russia directly.
This is not a prediction, but a warning that the West urgently needs to adopt a more realistic war strategy, rather than funding an open-ended conflict that Ukraine has no chance of winning. US support for Ukraine is still holding up, but at a lower level. The foreign policy priority for the US right now is the Middle East. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election next month, the West’s entire Ukraine policy will be upended.
Whatever happens, the Europeans are not going to fill any gaps left by the US. Michel Barnier, the new French prime minister, has just announced a €40bn austerity budget for next year. Austerity has also returned to Italy. But it is Germany where the support for Ukraine dwindling the most.
Scholz now says he wants to resume a dialogue with Putin, after two years of not speaking to him. The German chancellor desperately needs this war to end before next year’s federal elections.
Germany will have to find some €30bn (£25bn) a year just to meet the Nato defence spending target of 2 per cent of GDP. It would need to spend a lot more to provide Ukraine with its share of the funds needed to defeat Russia. Germany is already one of the world’s highest taxed countries. There are no political majorities for raising them. Nor for spending cuts or higher debt. Its coalition is not ready to do whatever it takes to support Ukraine.
Scholz is now talking about diplomatic solutions to end the war. His diplomacy falls into the hopeless category: peace talk is cheap. Scholz called for Russia to participate in what was hailed as a peace conference in Switzerland in June, but Russia has already said it is not interested in a meeting heavily biased towards Ukraine’s supporters.
Scholz’s futile diplomacy is a reminder that the West has reached a dead end in its Ukraine strategy. The original idea was to isolate Russia, which led to it deepening its alliances with China, Iran and North Korea. Russia and China, for example, are strengthening their commercial and military ties. A notable area for bilateral Russian-Chinese cooperation is the Arctic, a weak spot of Western security. Russia has built up its military capacities in the Kola Peninsula, its border region with northern Finland. Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy firm Rosatom and China’s Hainan Yangpu NewNew Shipping company have created a joint venture to build infrastructure and ice-class container vessels to operate a year-round Arctic route.
The West underestimated China and Russia at every turn, and overestimated its ability to draw other countries into the Western alliance. India, Brazil and South Africa all said no. Europe, meanwhile, is hopelessly divided.
We should start thinking about endgames, not restating mantras and maximalist positions.
If we continue on the current path, there is a serious possibility that the West will lose the staring contest.
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