It is not easy to find a taboo in Germany that has not yet been broken.
Robert Habeck even had to fly to Ukraine for this.
The taboo he broke there, however, was unbearable even for the Greens, who would otherwise not shy away from crossing borders.
Their party chairman violated one of the most important commandments of the still deeply pacifist party: You should not deliver weapons to crisis or even war zones.
That's why many Greens, including the Chancellor candidate Baerbock, were happy that Habeck had "clarified", "clarified", "corrected", not even referring to "defensive weapons" when he spoke of "weapons for defense, for self-defense" that one could “hardly deny” Ukraine, which was attacked by Russia and fighting for its freedom.
The swagger from the complex crisis
Did the Greens chairman actually misjudge the “complex crisis management in the region and the internal situation in Ukraine”, as the SPD parliamentary group leader Mützenich instructed the “former state environment minister”? Undoubtedly, in this war too, good and bad, guilt and innocence, cause and effect cannot always be clearly separated. But even a former state environment minister can evidently recognize a few simple facts that are (should) be obscured by the “complex crisis” often enough.
It was not Ukraine that occupied and annexed part of Russia in violation of international law, but rather Russia part of Ukraine.
Not Kiev is supporting insurgents in western Russia with money, weapons and soldiers, but Moscow is supporting its mercenaries in eastern Ukraine.
It was not Kiev, either, but the Kremlin that deployed an invading army on the border with the neighboring country, of course only for training purposes.
However, the sequence of a children's birthday was not practiced.
This can be called “complex crisis management”.
But also: war of aggression, blackmail, stranglehold.
Or should Mützenich have meant the crisis management of the West, the climax of which so far was the Minsk Agreement?
With this agreement, the war in eastern Ukraine was at least contained.
What Putin wants to prevent at all costs
But soldiers and civilians are still falling victim to him. And Putin's campaign is still preventing Ukraine from prospering politically and economically. Because that is the main purpose that Putin is pursuing with the war in the neighboring country: A prosperous democracy must not develop at the gates of his empire that could give the Kremlin ruler's subjects foolish ideas. Putin wants to prevent that at all costs, including by force of arms.
In Germany, however, the following applies to all parties: violence is not a means of politics. The “conflict” in Ukraine cannot be resolved militarily either. In the case of an opponent who does not have these scruples and who even threatened his nuclear arsenal during the occupation of Crimea, one really has to think three times about climbing the escalation ladder. But because Germany also wants to continue doing business with Moscow - see Nord Stream 2 - Berlin only has the power of words. Putin exploits this asymmetry in conflict readiness to the limit. A former Federal Chancellor, however, continues to serve him faithfully.
The attitude of the West becomes an even greater mockery, of which Habeck also spoke, when the victim is placed on the same level as the aggressor. Nothing else happens in the debate as to whether Ukraine should at least be given “defensive weapons”. That is a fuzzy political term. Even wounded transporters and night vision devices can be used in offensives. But should one really believe that Ukraine would invade the nuclear power Russia if Berlin made anti-tank missiles available to Kiev (like the Peshmerga in Iraq)? The Ukraine, which handed over 5,000 nuclear warheads to Russia in return for an international guarantee for its territorial integrity, also given by Moscow?
This fear is simply nonsense.
Apparently, Kiev should not even be put in a position to regain control over its own territories in the east or even over the annexed Crimea.
Because it is to be feared that Moscow would then strike with all military might.
German politics in particular prefers the peace of the cemetery à la Putin.
In any case, nobody from Berlin has to bother them, especially not a former state environment minister.
Don't provoke Moscow!
In Ukraine, he had also not been able to pull a Nobel Prize-worthy peace plan out of the steel helmet. But Habeck at least understood one thing: if the West's line of "complex crisis management" remains not to "provoke" Moscow and not to provide it with an excuse for further aggression, which has now been warned again, then Putin will almost be an invitation understand how to expand one's sphere of rule in other "complex" cases using the tried and tested means.