Europe needs peace – no new US troops

^{From a German perspective}

by Willy Wimmer

It is unbelievable what you hear from Washington these days. First a completely unknown civilian executive from the US Air Force is allowed to blare about. A little later, you can hear the designated Chief of Staff of the US Armed Forces with his testimony before the US Congress. According to his opinion, the Russian Federation is the worst possible opponent for the United States. You must really rub your eyes, but wild times seem to approach or it seems that we are stuck deeper in the alliance mess than we have suspected.
Washington is gearing up for a fight, and more than that. By now we in Europe have had our respective experience with the leading power of the alliance to which we after all belong. It is true that we once took up the task of common defense; but today, we do nothing but waging war and bringing misery to many parts of the world. And now we wonder why the desperate people in their plight are fleeing the very war zones that we created and are coming over to us. They come to us and realise that in the very place, in which this unfortunate policy was instigated, in the United States, the gates remain hermetically sealed.
Russia can speak for itself when it is fired at by such tirades in the US Congress. But we have had our own experience of more than twenty years with our great eastern neighbor. This experience is by no means determined by what is now publicly said in Washington. During talks in our country, high American officials are reported to have called for “allegiance” referring to our relations with the Russian Federation. This is carrying things too far, indeed. The Pope warned against the next World War during his trip to the Balkans, only a few weeks ago. About the same time, our German Mr President was celebrated on a big event, although he propagates military operations in a way that none of his predecessors ever did. The methods prove effective.
These statements in America will carry us away like a flood, because those who would actually have to contribute to an independent opinion in our country and determine our national interests in their true sense, have not fulfilled this central national task for a long time. Government and Parliament have become rather toothless in this area; instead the overt and covert bodies that have no legitimacy by the voters, are ruling by interfering with state politics. To a large extent, the German policy evokes the impression that under the eyes of  all of us, the epicenter of German politics has moved from Berlin to an East Westphalian major city. For the media, which in the times of Bonn fought fierce battles over the best way, the question is merely, who will play the role of the “cheerleader” for the “mainstream”. What is said in Washington on a fairly high state level unfolds such an incredibly binding effect through the alliance and its contractual mechanisms that we can only call it a mailstream.  This is true precisely for what this General voices publicly, because he is used as a mouthpiece by his President.
Who in Berlin wants to oppose the General’s statements with an own assessment of the situation? At the end of the first Cold War one could look on admiringly, how the assessment of the alleged Soviet threat was quickly subjected to appropriateness in Washington. While all of Western Europe feared an attack from the East, German visitors in Washington were presented a brand new worldview. In total abandonment of what had been preached for decades, the Red Army with its shock wedges into Central Europe had suddenly become a purely defensive organisation that pursued the goal of drawing the logical military consequences from Napoleon and Hitler: Mother Russia’s defense against the constant threat of evil and infinitive devastation coming from the West.
In case that this had been nothing but tactical maneouvre in Washington we must begin to consider the idea – in  the 25th jubilee year of reunification and given the actual economic situation of the vast country – that the United States with their closest allies for some reason have sunk their fangs into Russia since the First World War and that they now want to defeat it once and for all. We would also have become familiar with the idea that Moscow with its approval of the reunification had thrown off ballast, which in Washington and especially in London and Paris initially no one really could believe, not to mention Tel Aviv. Dr. Frank Elb, one of the closest collaborators of the last important German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, pointed out in an extensive interview with the Russian media company sputnik a few weeks ago, that the Washington operators of the anti-Russia policy all had a family background in Russia that was reaching back into the times of the World War. What are the old accounts that are to be squared now, and what is the name of the game being played  at our expense?
All of us have realised in the context of the Kiev coup in the spring of 2014 how far the united West is able to go. Never before has the West, which we definitely and primarily feel connected with, betrayed its values as much as in the massacre on the Maidan Square or the fire victims in Odessa or the sordid instrumentalisation of the plane crash victims over Ukraine. Again the end is justifying the means, which is revolting, because once before we experienced a time of great suffering  that was kicked off just in the same way.
We are running a deadly risk; that can be perceived not only through the maneuvers by NATO naval forces on the doorstep of the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Black Sea, but also through US nuclear bombers in the airspace of Ukraine or through “spearhead” operations with German participation directly at the Russian border. The positive change in the European general political climate and  the absence of war on the western frontier which Moscow had hoped for by furthering the German national unity, was purposefully turned into its opposite by the entire West.
Why should not those forces be flushed up in Moscow, who are similarly gifted in spirit as the designated American Chief of Staff? If only one of the bomber pilots in Western and Russian aircraft who now meet under martial aspects, makes a mistake, we will all of us no longer exist. A debate over the question who committed the crucial error, cannot take place simply for that reason. Do we in Europe actually want to allow Washington, together with those forces in Europe that are inclined to war, to establish conditions similar to those on the Korean peninsula with its impertinent US-South Korean maneuvers, which can turn into an illimitable war any time? The actual behavior of the United States on our territory for years now as well as on other European countries’ territory has washed the foundations of the NATO Treaty away, as well as those of  the deployment of American troops in Europe. The foundation for these troops’ existence has been the common defense. This has been agreed upon by all nations. At no time, the parliaments have approved of  a joint attack via the alliance, neither did they approve of the collective destruction, but this destruction is now propagated in Washington. Even and especially in the US Congress as well as by this Marine Infantry General.     •
(Translation Current Concerns)