Cold War Reloaded - Der neue Ost-West Konflikt

Zitat von Wemir

Also im Zweifel gewaschene Geheimdiensterkenntnisse.

Also eigentlich deutsche Qualitätsjournalisten, die die Erkenntnisse ihrer kleinen True Crime Podcast-Menschenjagd vertrauensvoll dem Geheimdienstvehikel Bellingcat übergeben haben.

Zitat

she has personified President Biden’s commitment to put diplomacy back at the center of our foreign policy

LOL

Immerhin weiß Vicki, dass man ein sinkendes Schiff verlassen aufhören sollte, wenn's am schönsten ist.

Nato is growing reckless over Ukraine – and Russia’s German military leak proves it

An intercepted meeting on sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine suggests the west is on the brink of a risky and futile escalation

Zitat von Simon Jenkins - The Guardian, 05.03.24

[...] The west’s justified objective in Ukraine was to help foil Putin’s attempt to topple Kyiv’s elected government. This was achieved in a matter of months, thanks to the Ukrainian army, with western logistical support. At no point did Nato risk that timeworn precursor of so many past European wars, the reckless escalation of a local conflict into a continent-wide one.

But as the conflict in Ukraine has reached predictable stalemate, Nato’s strategy has lost all coherence. This is the moment when such wars run out of control. For two years now, western leaders have polished their macho images at home by visiting and goading Kyiv’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy to seek total victory with their help. It was Boris Johnson’s favourite pledge, but then his voters were merely paying for it, not dying. France’s Emmanuel Macron has at least suggested sending troops.

Equally predictable was that total victory was never on the cards. This meant that at some point doubts would ensue. Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, now declares we must “stay the course”, without saying what that means. Germany’s generals may want escalation, but its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has long been cautious. So, too, is a large swathe of US public opinion, while the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, remarks only that the west must ensure Russia’s war “continues to be a strategic failure”.

Moscow at war can always play long. Horrific though it seemed at the time, the mooted deal in spring 2022 to revert to some version – almost any version – of the pre-February 2022 border would have made sense. Instead Ukraine has come to seem ever more like a Nato mercenary for western generals wanting to boost their budgets and relive the cold-war games of their youth. The price is paid by their taxpayers and Ukraine’s young men.

Western Europe has no conceivable interest in escalating the Ukraine war through a long-range missile exchange. While it should sustain its logistical support for Ukrainian forces, it has no strategic interest in Kyiv’s desire to drive Russia out of the majority Russian-speaking areas of Crimea or Donbas. It has every interest in assiduously seeking an early settlement and starting the rebuilding of Ukraine. [...]

Zitat von Hohli

https://www.zdf.de/gesellschaf…vom-5-maerz-2024-100.html

Da hat man den palästinensischen jungen Mann aber schön durch die Sendung Gassi geführt. Wie sie alle anfangen zu schwitzen, als der Redakteur der Jüdischen Allgemeinen "But Do you condemn UNWRA aka Hamas?" anfängt. Lanz hält den Verdacht naturgemäß für gut begründet, stand ja in der Zeitung.

Edit: Muss ich erwähnen, dass ich Kiesewetter für eine äußerst verabscheuungswürdige Person halte?

Geil. Oberst Roderich steigt gleich mal mit einer angedeuteten Verschwörungstheorie zu Wirecard ein und geht dann umgehend dazu über, einfach erneut kontrafaktisch zu behaupten, in dem Bundeswehr-Gespräch sei der Kanzler mit der Aussage, der Taurus könne nicht ohne deutsche Beteiligung eingesetzt werden Lügen gestraft worden.

A propos Verschwörungstheorie:

Zitat von Utan

Oberst Roderich

hat auch noch mal seine bestechende Eskalations-"logik" zum besten gegeben und damit sogar bei Lanz ein bisschen kognitive Dissonanz erzeugt.

Sinngemäß geht das so:

Oberst R.: Und überhaupt haben uns namhafte Völkerrechtsexperten bestätigt, dass Deutschland völkerrechtlich vollkommen dazu berechtigt ist, der Ukrainischen Armee Waffen zu liefern, mit denen sie Russisches Kernland angreifen könnte.

Lanz: Ja aber das Völkerrecht interessiert doch Putin nicht.

Oberst R.: Und genau deswegen macht sich Scholz zum Helfershelfer Putins, weil er Angst davor hat, dass Putin die Lieferung solcher Waffen als deutsche Kriegsbeteiligung sehen könnte. Denn das stimmt ja gar nicht laut Völkerrecht.

Überhaupt hat es der notorische Geheimnisverräter und Denunziant Oberst Roderich sehr mit der Rechtstreue. Für ihn steht es außer Frage, dass die Ukrainer deutsche Waffen gegen das russische Kernland einsetzen würden, obwohl sie das völkerrechtlich dürften, denn wir würden das denen ja gar nicht erlauben, und die müssten das dann auch unterschreiben.

Das findet dann auch die Nahost-Expertin einleuchtend.

Zitat von Roy

Ich vermute mal das hat auch niemand gleich richtiggestellt?

Lanz selbst geht tatsächlich später nochmal darauf ein und stellt immerhin fest, dass man die Superwaffenfeatures - wie zum Beispiel selbständig im Tiefflug unter dem feindlichen Radar hindurch einen Brückenpfeiler treffen - eben doch nicht ohne deutsche Beteiligung nutzen könne.

Ohne die ist das Ding halt auch nur eine arschteure Drohne.

NATO Should Not Accept Ukraine—for Ukraine’s Sake

The top five reasons that expanding the Western alliance would make Kyiv even worse off. (Stephen M. Walt - Foreign Policy, 05.03.24)

"[...] To make my own position clear: If I were a member of U.S. Congress I would vote for the additional aid package without hesitation, because I want Ukraine to be able to hang on to the territory it still controls and I want Moscow to realize that trying to take more territory is going to be costly and difficult. More aid today will improve Kyiv’s bargaining position when serious discussions begin, most likely after the U.S. presidential election in November. That said, bringing Ukraine into NATO now is a bad idea that will prolong the war and leave Kyiv in an even worse position over time. [...]

NATO’s current “open door” policy is a more recent development. It is sometimes viewed as a formal commitment that any aspiring country can join once it meets NATO’s membership criteria. In effect, the open door policy subtly shifts agency from NATO to aspiring members; it tells the latter that “the door is open and you’re free to walk in once you’ve met our standards.” The original treaty implies something slightly different, however: It says the door is closed until the existing members collectively agree that bringing in a new member will “further the principles of the treaty and … contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area.” At that point the members can decide to open the door and issue an invitation. The distinction is an important one, insofar as the original treaty creates no presumption that the alliance is actively committed to expanding. [...]

Ukraine’s cheerleaders in the West were wrong last spring when they offered up optimistic forecasts about the then-upcoming counteroffensive, and they are repeating this error by suggesting that there are still lots of ways for Ukraine to turn the tide. I wish it were otherwise, but we should base policy choices on the world as it is, not as we might like it to be.

My second assumption is that Russia’s leaders care more about Ukraine’s fate than the West does. They do not care more than Ukrainians do, of course, but it is a more vital interest for them than for the leaders and populations in most NATO countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his henchmen have been willing to send thousands of soldiers to fight and die in Ukraine, and no NATO country is willing to do anything remotely like that. [...]

Third, I further assume that one of the main reasons Putin launched his illegal invasion in February 2022 was to prevent Ukraine from gravitating closer to the West and eventually joining the alliance. Recent revelations of steadily increasing collaboration between the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence services, the West’s post-2014 efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses, and NATO’s oft-repeated commitment to bring Ukraine into the alliance undoubtedly fueled Moscow’s concerns, in a classic illustration of what international relations scholars call the “security dilemma.” Putin’s actions may also reflect certain beliefs about the cultural unity of Ukrainians and Russians, but the evidence that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO drove his actions is impossible to deny. [...]

In light of those three assumptions: Here are the top five reasons why Ukraine should not join NATO.

1. It doesn’t meet the membership criteria. Ukraine is still a fragile democracy at best. Corruption is still endemic, elections have been suspended since the beginning of the war, and there are still influential elements in Ukrainian society whose commitment to democratic norms is questionable. [...]

2. It is not clear that NATO would honor its Article V commitments. As I’ve noted before, Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty is not a tripwire that commits members to fight in the event another member is attacked. At U.S. insistence, Article V only commits a member state to regard an attack on one as an attack on all, and then to take “such actions as it deems necessary.” [...]

3. NATO membership is not a magic shield. [...] If you truly believe that Putin is going to wrap up the war in Ukraine, take a brief pause to rebuild his battered armed forces, and then launch a new assault on Finland, Estonia, or some other NATO member, then you don’t really believe that the magic shield is all that reliable. [...]

4. Membership now will only prolong the war. If I’m correct that Moscow attacked in good part to prevent Kyiv from joining NATO, then bringing Ukraine in now will simply prolong a war that the country is presently losing. If that’s why Putin launched his “special military operation,” he’s not likely to end it if his forces are doing decently well and Ukrainian accession to NATO is still on the table. [...]

5. Neutrality may not be that bad. Given the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations (including the events of the past 10 years), one can understand why many Ukrainians do not want to accept a position of neutrality. But neutrality is not always a bad thing, even for states in close proximity to Russia. Finland fought a costly and ultimately unsuccessful war against the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1940, and eventually had to cede about nine percent of its prewar territory. But like Ukraine today, the Finns had fought heroically and made the much larger Soviet Union pay a large price for its victory. The result was that then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did not incorporate Finland into the USSR or force it to join the Warsaw Pact after World War II. Instead, Finland remained a neutral country and a democracy, with a market economy that traded with both the USSR and the West. [...]"