Why must the US and the EU supply arms to Ukraine? The answer is that the heroism of the Ukrainian people, their ability to resist the invasion ordered by Putin, like it or not the "peacemakers" who have taken the place of virologists on talk shows, represent the desperate condition needed to open a path to a ceasefire and a negotiating table. All this with the direct commitment of the great powers - the same ones that signed the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 - to guarantee the security and sovereignty of Ukraine after the concessions to the aggressor that Kiev will be forced to make. The intervention of diplomacy can have some effectiveness if the Russian tyrant is convinced that he has wrong plans for the offensive and that he has underestimated the costs of the operation. For this to be possible, the international community can do nothing but step up sanctions, despite knowing that it cannot go too far until – and it is not a matter of weeks – it has found a way to obtain supplies elsewhere and with other sources, at least in sustainable dimensions, of the indispensable energy needs.
Right to supply Ukraine with weapons: World War III is not around the corner
But the main option lies in the supply arms to Ukraine to hold out as long as possible. I find the explicit calls for surrender coming from the "unbeknownst Putinians" of our country to be shameful, as if the third world war were around the corner, as if Putin did not know that Russian cities too would be bombarded by missiles similar to those he threatens to launch on European capitals. For 80 years the so-called balance of terror he kept the peace.
Paradigm shift in international relations
Granted and not granted that the massacre ends and a solution capable of ensuring the survival and independence of Ukraine is found, even if it is impaired in the territory and placed in conditions of neutrality (if this were not the case, we would be forced to ask ourselves those problems which for now do not even pass into the antechamber of the brain), the West must imagine and rely on a different perspective as regards international relations.
The abominable escape from Afghanistan gave the impression of a strategic weakness of the "policeman of the world" – the USA – to which Europe had delegated the problem of its own security. After Ukraine, Taiwan's time could strike, on another chessboard, with the intervention of popular China which could claim – with some arguments – the reconstruction of its territorial integrity. In short, by pursuing the objective of avoiding war at all costs, the free world (let's go back to the old days) could find itself involved in a conflict regardless of its intentions, moreover in conditions of great unpreparedness.
Arms to Ukraine to guarantee peace: Germany is convinced
Rearmament once again becomes the true guarantor of peace. The strategy to be undertaken in the shortest possible time is the one indicated by Germany. Berlin made a U-turn in defense policy: for the Social Democrats and the Greens, defense spending was mixed. Spending cuts were seen as a dividend of a new post-Cold War era. Before the Russian war against Ukraine the politicians of the new coalition, especially Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, always supported the idea that everything can be done with diplomacy.
After that tragic February 24, the Germans realized that they were half naked. As things stand, they would not be able - Army sources said - to deploy even a fully equipped brigade of 5 soldiers. This was seen when Germany limited itself to offering Ukraine, in the first few days, only 5 helmets.
On February 24, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, former head of the Greens, publicly acknowledged on TV (ZDF): "We have to admit that we were naive".
The turning point announced by Scholz
At the Bundestag meeting on Sunday 27 February, Scholz made a speech of historic significance, also denouncing Putin's impropriety on a personal level, since he had received him in the Kremlin when he had already prepared for war. In addition to the immediate measures taken with European partners and the blockade of the Nord Stream 2 submarine gas pipeline, the real novelty of German defense policy regards the announcement to the Bundestag of an extraordinary budget. In the budget for 2021, the Merkel government had planned expenditure by the Ministry of Defense of 46,9 billion euros (1,3% of GDP). Spending will be increased by up to 2% of GDP. In addition, a special fund of 100 billion euros "on top" is planned. Approximately 2,8% of GDP to be financed, with the creation of an extra debt fund, to be repaid over a long period of years.
In this regard wrote one of the directors of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berthold Kohler, in an editorial published close to the session of the Bundestag: “Even looking at Germany, Putin must ask himself: what have I done? In one night, the Putin shock transformed moralists, pacifists and Putinists into realists who can no longer understand how they let themselves be deceived for decades by the dictator and his propaganda. Germany was one of the most important and weakest links in the western chain in the face of growing aggression from Moscow. This was not just the fault of Schroeder, Merkel and Steinmeier. Driven by the desire for peace and the search for profits, many others have also ignored the signals coming from the Kremlin. This had been going on for so long that Putin believed that he could go on like this forever ”.
But "Putin deluded himself about Germany as Germany did about Putin – continued the article – Berlin, after a sudden turn in its foreign and defense policy, is now suddenly in the front row of those who cry out to Putin: 'Not even one step forward!'. To stop it, the parties of the traffic light coalition sacrifice positions, which were sacrosanct for them".
Many beautiful souls here are calling for the surrender of Ukraine – which should be encouraged without arms shipments – as an act of realpolitik. It seems to me that the only concrete line of realpolitik is the one indicated by Berlin.
