From Russia can
nothing good or helpful will come.
It is often no longer objective
argued rationally. That is meanwhile
already like a reflex. […]
Our image of the enemy is also consolidated
like our arrogance […].
Matthias Platzek
Ex-Prime Minister of Brandenburg
and head of the German-Russian Forum
In the late 1950s and early 1960s a polio epidemic was rampant in the FRG; In 1961 over 4,500 people fell ill. In the GDR there were only four in the same year, because an oral vaccination from the Soviet Union had been available there since 1960, which – vaccination was mandatory – was quickly used across the board. Neither was there in Germany – neither serum nor mandatory vaccination. At the time, the GDR offered to make three million doses of serum available. The Adenauer government rejected this as a “propaganda trick”. This episode, in which the Cold War took precedence over human welfare, was just remembered in the third season of “Charité”.
The reaction in this country was comparable to hubris when Moscow presented “Sputnik V”, the world’s first corona vaccine, in August 2020. From “Vaccine botch from Moscow” (DOES) and “bad[r] Vaccine Propaganda “(Southgerman newspaper) was the talk, was whispered of “signs of manipulation” (Frankfurter Rundschau) and claims that Russia is carrying out a “high-risk experiment on humans” (Medical President Klaus Reinhardt). Even the “assault gun” of democracy (Rudolph Augstein on his Spiegel) did not stand aside: “Did those responsible for the vaccine (Russian – W.S.) Scientists thought up their results or even pimped them up with Photoshop? “*
So there it was again, the collective as well as stupid-arrogant attitude of West German elites towards the “Upper Volta with rockets”, said the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1977 about the Soviet Union.
Given the parallels to the polio epidemic, one could joke: “Everything changes the way it was.”
But that would be inappropriate to the seriousness of the situation, in the context of which Corona is just another facet of the new East-West confrontation. Antje Vollmer, the ex-President of the Bundestag, recently hit the point when she stated: “At this critical moment, everything depends on whether the political, intellectual and media elites of Western democracies are still capable of comprehensive self-criticism . And about the necessary consequences from it. ”Even if historical comparisons often lag, putting the current critical moment on the same level as those of the building of the Wall in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the time after the NATO double resolution of 1979 seems quite obvious appropriate. (The Russian Chief of Staff Gerasimov recently referred to the military rivalry in cyberspace and in space as “risk factors for a nuclear strike”.) But protagonists of the time such as Brandt, Bahr, Kennedy and Gorbachev, who understood the signs of the times and converted them into political paradigm shifts, are not in sight. Nowhere.
*
Apropos seriousness of the situation: The miserable state of relations between the West and Russia has only recently been highlighted by events on the American and Russian sides:
- On December 8, 2020, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met with AfD leader Tino Chrupalla in Moscow for an exceptionally long conversation (almost “three hours” – THE MIRROR) together. The Kremlin rated Chrupalla’s stay as an “important visit” and Lavrov described the AfD as a “politically significant force”. AfD senior Gauland (“Hitler and the Nazis are just a bird shit in over 1000 years of successful German history”) was only absent for health reasons. According to press reports, Lavrov sent his warmest greetings and wished them a speedy recovery.
- As one of his first personnel decisions, President Biden Victoria nominated “Fuck the EU!” Nuland as State Secretary for Political Planning in the State Department. In the same position under Obama, she headed the “Europe and Eurasia” department and played a leading role in the coup in Kiev in February 2014, which led directly to the Ukraine crisis. Now it should “formulate the broad lines of US foreign policy”, as it is in the TIME was called. What she envisions with regard to Moscow, Nuland had in the July / August 2020 edition of Foreign Affairs under the programmatic title “Nail Putin. How a self-confident America should deal with Russia ”. She was reminiscent of that “statecraft […]that won the Cold War ”. Specifically: “This strategy required consistent leadership of the US at the presidential level, unity with democratic allies and partners and a shared determination to deter and drive back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin.” Of course, from a “position of strength.” And if Russia “continues to block the Ukraine, sanctions and other forms of political, economic and military pressure should be increased.” Biden’s “announcement” in his telephone conversation with Putin that “the times in who the United States kissed before Russia were over “(THE MIRROR). And when Biden’s appearance at this year’s (virtual) Munich Security Conference, it reached exactly that well-known cliché with which the NATO leadership over the decades tried again and again to keep its own ranks closed: Moscow “is trying to make the United States to weaken European unification and the transatlantic alliance ”.
- In the meantime, Moscow has made it clear once again that on the parquet of mutual relations it knows how to use the sledgehammer instead of the foil just as the West does: As a High Representative with Josep Borell for the first time since 2017 from February 4th to 6th Foreign Minister Lavrov said at a joint press conference that the EU was an “unreliable partner”. And added, referring to Germany, France and Sweden’s refusal to cooperate with Russia in an investigation into possible poisoning of opposition member Navalny: “Such arrogance on the part of us [des] cultivated Europe seems to be absolutely unacceptable and categorically inadmissible. ”This public diplomatic slap in the face was followed shortly afterwards by a real knockout. Borell is said to have been sitting at a working lunch with Lavrov when news spread on Twitter that Moscow had expelled diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden. Participation in illegal activities on January 23rd was the official reason. What was meant were the pro-Navalnyj demonstrations that were illegal from the authorities’ point of view on that day. Regardless of whether the expelled had exceeded their internationally documented rights or not – the demonstrative character of the act was unmistakable. Especially since Lavrov added a little later – Russia was “prepared for a break in relations with the EU” – and this declaration was given a martial conclusion: “Anyone who wants peace is preparing for war.”
*
Against the background of undiminished confrontation, the few voices of reason and proposals for a gradual new east-west detente are all the more important, even if they are generally ignored by western politics and at best reproduced selectively by the mainstream media:
- “Russia is the second largest nuclear power in the world. That is why I advocate that we find ways, means and possibilities of peaceful coexistence, which in the future again contains aspects of partnership. And we finally need a security architecture on an equal footing. “
(Matthias Platzek) - “The situation calls for more dialogue and the resumption of political and military contacts. For example, more frequent meetings between the Chief of the Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Chairman of the Joint Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, the Supreme Allied Commander in Chief NATO Europe, and the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee could discuss ways to reduce tension and the possibility of military misunderstandings. These exchanges could lead to new agreements dating back to 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union […] Establish a concluded agreement on the prevention of incidents at sea and regulate how warships and aircraft of NATO and Russia operate in mutual proximity. “
(Sergey Rogov, Director of the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Adam Thomson, Director of the European Leadership Network; Alexander Vershbow, former US Permanent Representative to NATO and former US Ambassador to Russia) - “It is time to transform the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) established under the 2002 agreement into a real military liaison office charged with handling incidents between the armed forces of both sides on land, sea and air to prevent and, should such incidents occur, to prevent their escalation. “
(Dmitri Trenin, Leiter Carnegie Moscow Center)
However, to say it with Brecht: “No advance is as difficult as the one back to reason.”
* – Today, just a few months later, the Russian information on the effectiveness of “Sputnik V” (91.6 percent) is no longer seriously questioned internationally. Even the Chancellor spoke of “good data”, and while in this country and in the EU there are still debates about guilt issues with regard to deficiencies in their own vaccination strategies (including vaccine orders), immunization with “Sputnik V” is already taking place in around 20 countries.
– .
