“We are fighting a war against Russia”, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Council of Europe. “We can fight this war only together” she said, calling to send tanks and more weapons to Ukraine.
By Ben Norton of Geopolitical Economy Report
The government of Germany has stated that Europe is at war with Russia.
“We are fighting a war against Russia”, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock declared, as she addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France on January 24.
Baerbock insisted that Europe must remain united behind the proxy war in Ukraine, because if it is divided, “then Russia and Putin wins”.
“Yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks. But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together, and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia, and not against each other”, the German foreign minister said.
“Obviously, Ukraine needs more military military support, but not only by one country like mine or the US, by all of us. We can fight this war only together”, she added.
“We are fighting a war against Russia”, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Council of Europe.
“We can fight this war only together” she said, calling to send tanks and more weapons to Ukraine, to escalate the NATO proxy war.
More here: https://t.co/TBa3bNmhAk pic.twitter.com/NJWzybl5Qo
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 26, 2023
Ukraine conflict is NATO proxy war with Russia
Baerbock’s remarks are part of a growing mountain of evidence showing that the conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
In a speech in Poland in March 2022, US President Joe Biden made it clear that Washington’s goal is to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin then admitted in April that the Pentagon seeks to “weaken” Russia.
Former US State Department official Eliot Cohen wrote in Washington’s establishment magazine The Atlantic that NATO is fighting a “proxy war with Russia” in Ukraine, and he called to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible, “the more and faster the better”.
The New York Times reported in June that CIA and special operations forces from NATO members Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania have been on the ground in Ukraine, training and advising Ukrainian forces and overseeing the war against Russia.
According to Yahoo News, CIA paramilitaries have been active in Ukraine, training forces to “kill Russians”, since immediately after the 2014 US-backed coup that overthrew Kiev’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral government and installed a pro-Western regime.
Today, the CIA and a European NATO ally are carrying out sabotage attacks inside Russian territory, according to US military veteran and journalist Jack Murphy.
Germany sends tanks to Ukraine as Foreign Minister Baerbock says Europe is at war with Russia
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, addressed the Council of Europe and declared that “we are fighting a war against Russia” just one day before Berlin announced that it would send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.
Germany made this decision, which amounts to a major escalation of the proxy war, promptly after the United States agreed to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
Baerbock is one of the most hawkish, and most powerful, ministers in the German government. She is a member of the country’s centrist Green Party, which is deeply interventionist and advocates a neoconservative foreign policy, strongly supporting the United States and NATO.
Two weeks before making these remarks in Strasbourg, Baerbock traveled to Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine, to visit the front lines of the battle with Russia. There, she urged Western countries to send even more weapons to Kiev.
Although European leaders are thirsty for war, average working-class people in Europe overwhelmingly want peace.
There have for months been large protests across Europe against the NATO proxy war in Ukraine – particularly due to the economic blowback that Western sanctions on Russia have caused, leading to skyrocketing energy prices and runaway inflation.
A staggering 82% of people in the European Union agree with the statement that “Russia and Ukraine should be forced into peace talks in order to end the war”, according to a December 2022 poll by a think tank linked to the Hungarian government.
Support for peace talks stands at a staggering 91% in Cyprus, 89% in Portugal and Greece, 87% in Spain, 86% in Italy, and 81% in both France and Germany.
Yet despite the fact that four-fifths of Germans want the proxy war in Ukraine to end, EU leadership is only escalating the conflict.
Baerbock says Russia is waging war on all of Europe
In her January 24 speech at the Council of Europe, Baerbock argued that “Russia’s war of aggression is not only a war against Ukraine; it is a war against the common European peace order”.
She said: “This war is not only led by military action from Russia. This war from Russia against Ukraine, against the European peace order, also attacks our justice system. It attacks the institution like the Council of Europe. It attacks international criminal law. So I, speaking here has the foreign minister of Germany, but also as a European, yes, we have to do more military aid”.
A warm welcome to German Foreign Minister @ABaerbock, who is addressing the Assembly now, and will later take questions from members.
Watch live in seven languages:https://t.co/3IhvfMJBmN
Or on YouTube, scrollable mid-stream:https://t.co/w7LnaSNHPH pic.twitter.com/loM7rQfiS5
— PACE (@PACE_News) January 24, 2023
“This is about our common European peace order, and this is why we are calling, with regard to tanks and other support, for a big international group”, the German foreign minister continued. “So what I’m saying here is we keep up with our military support, but we will definitely keep on going”.
Baerbock insisted “we have to stand up and fight for” the “soul of Europe”, in a “a clear and united stance against Russia’s war”.
Germany’s Federal Foreign Office stated that its “goal is the strategic reorientation of the [the Council of Europe] organisation following Russia’s exclusion in March 2022”.
Baerbock argued that the “Council of Europe is more important than ever as a place which embodies the very pan-European unity that Putin wants to destroy”.
“We must stand our ground in the face of this attack. Our response must be a resolute ‘now more than ever’”, she proclaimed.
“The Council of Europe is more important than ever as a place which embodies the very pan-European unity that Putin wants to destroy.” – Foreign Minister @ABaerbock visits the @CoE in #Strasbourg, incl. talks at the @ECHR_CEDH & a speech at the @PACE_News. https://t.co/gtDHnK5LEe
— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) January 24, 2023
After her address, Baerbock tweeted that “Europe is bigger than the EU. The COE [Council of Europe] and its convention of human rights is home to more than 700 [million]… In this era marked by Russia’s war, we have to defend these rights and our liberty”.
#Europe is bigger than the EU. The @coe and its convention of human rights is home to more than 700 mio people. People with different stories and dreams – all united by their #HumanRights. In this era marked by Russia’s war, we have to defend these rights and our liberty. 1/2
— Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock (@ABaerbock) January 24, 2023
Leftist leader warns US has made Germany a ‘frontline state with limited sovereignty’, to prevent Eurasian integration
Some leftist politicians in Germany have warned about the dangerous consequences of Berlin’s escalation of the NATO proxy war.
Member of Parliament Sevim Dagdelen, of Germany’s Die Linke (Left Party), said the US pressure campaign to push Berlin to send tanks to Ukraine “is obviously about passing Germany the poisoned chalice”.
“Berlin is to be sent into the line of fire, to conclusively destroy German-Russian relations and turn them into open war for others’ benefit”, she wrote.
“Germany is supposed to draw Russia’s counterfire”, Dagdelen argued. “One cannot escape the impression that it’s hoped a counterstrike would hit Berlin first and foremost. The US would thus achieve one of its long-term strategic objectives: to prevent cooperation between Germany and Russia forever”.
The decision to send tanks to Ukraine “reveals the dangerous limits on German sovereignty”, she added, noting that the United States “has sufficient influence in the governments of its fellow NATO countries to achieve the outcome it desires”.
German lawmaker @SevimDagdelen of the Left Party warns it is a “historic mistake” to send tanks to Ukraine:
“Berlin is to be sent into the line of fire, to conclusively destroy German-Russian relations and turn them into open war for others’ [US] benefit”https://t.co/L6DVzqgXCG
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 26, 2023
Prominent US imperial planner Zbigniew Brzezinski – who, as national security advisor for President Jimmy Carter, was an architect of the US proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan – wrote in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” that the United States was “the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power”.
But Washington’s ability to maintain unipolar imperial hegemony over the planet depended on “whether it prevents the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power“, Brzezinski warned.
“Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played”, he declared, emphasizing that “it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus also of challenging America”.
Brzezinski argued that the most “dangerous” scenarios for US imperialism would be an “antihegemonic coalition” led by China, Russia, and Iran, followed by a “Russo-German or a Russo-French” alliance.
Ever since, the United States has sought to undermine Russian-German relations, sabotaging any attempts at Eurasian integration.
This may explain why the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany were attacked in a suspicious sabotage incident.
Dagdelen argued that, “In the context of a new policy of confrontation with the Eurasian bloc, Germany and Japan are to become frontline states with limited sovereignty for the US”.
“Germany’s warmongers”, like Baerbock, “are acting as if they want primarily to serve the interests of US corporations and the United States as a whole”, Dagdelen wrote.
The Left Party MP lamented that her country “is being swept along by a destructive oligarchisation in the economic and political spheres while masses of people slip into poverty”.
She cautioned that “anyone who is really interested in defending democracy in Germany cannot leave the stage to the mouthpieces of a bored bourgeoisie just because they are afraid to be derided as stooges of the enemy. That is what happened in the First World War, and it must not happen again”.
