Germany Assumes Leading Role in Western Escalation against Russia
While there can be no doubt that the main decision-makers behind the the package of economic and military measures taken last weekend against Russia were Anglo-American geopolitical circles, they also involved a shocking turnaround in Berlin and the announcement of a huge rearmament program. Helga Zepp-LaRouche called this policy shift “an earthquake” and an “absolute catastrophe”, because Chancellor Scholz turned the government into “a de facto war cabinet”.
Indeed, the German government gave up its original caution about sanctioning Russia on SWIFT, it caved in to pressure to allow weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and it signaled its readiness to sacrifice all economic ties with Russia — going far beyond the natural gas deliveries. Moreover, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated at the Bundestag, as if he didn’t know better, that the target of the sanctions agreed upon by the G7 (chaired this year by Germany) would be Vladimir Putin and not the Russian people.
Berlin’s approval of the economic warfare package against Russia, will affect all of the European Union – even those still reluctant to impose sanctions — simply by virtue of Germany being the single largest national economy. The Scholz government apparently decided to disregard the many warnings that the SWIFT sanctions would primarily have a boomerang effect primarily against those European economies having substantial exports to Russia. Thus, the old Mackinder geopolitical script for separating Germany from the Eurasian heartland seems to have finally prevailed. And it spells an end to German-Russian economic relations.
Olaf Scholz, in his Bundestag statement, announced that no less than €100 billion would be spent for rearming the German armed forces. That money, as Finance Minister Christian Lindner indicated, will come from increased taxes on the population. The halting of gas imports from Russia and their replacement — which Scholz said would begin with the construction of two LNG terminals at the ports of Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel — will lead to higher gas prices both for industry and for private households.
Giving top priority to war-time military measures that imply massive social sacrifices and emergency regimes for the German population (and others) recalls the policies implemented by Hjalmar Schacht in the 1930s to transform the German economy for the war effort. Today, military expenses coupled with an acceleration of the “climate transition” to replace reliable sources of energy with inefficient “renewables” make an explosive mixture of Schachtian economics aimed at providing income flows for the military-industrial complex and financial speculators by wrecking the physical economy. Since such a policy cannot be carried out in a democratic regime, introducing centralized censorship against independent media, as announced by the EU Commission, will mark the slide into an authoritarian regime.
The decision to supply arms to Ukraine, a country at war, violates the German Constitution, which is based, even more than any other fundamental charter in Europe, on the rejection of war. It remains to be seen how the Constitutional Court will respond to the appeals that are being prepared.
