How can that be: the more obscure the situation, the more decidedly we speak about it?

In the case of Maybrit Illner, who this time was represented by Marietta Slomka because of the corona, the certainty of judgment was sought and found in the categorical that the concrete did not give.

The narrative operation around the events of the war must be managed.

Every day, the questions of war and peace create a need for speech that often satisfies more (self)therapeutic than informative needs.

Then talk shows become a rhetoric to talk the trauma to death.

Where reliable information is lacking (how often do we hear these days that this or that message from a warring party cannot be verified), statements are made about what we had always thought.

The debate gets something free-floating,

Christian Geyer Hindemith

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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While the actual nature of the war behind his propaganda is difficult to assess (for example, how seriously is the nuclear threat to be taken?), everything appears bright and clear once one conducts strategy debates by textbook rather than by situation.

Florence Gaub repeated the sentence she had spoken to Markus Lanz shortly before.

The deputy head of the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris said she had to say it again and again: The bomb isn't the weapon, it's the fear of the bomb.

Which in itself, as a psychological mnemonic, seems quite plausible, and promptly a debate about intimidation as a means of warfare followed.

The more one went into detail at this categorical level, the easier it was to cover up the fact that nobody actually knows whether Putin is just bluffing or actually has a nuclear strike in mind.

But even this ignoramus, this inability to know what the concrete decision-making situation is about Putin (what else can we say reliably about him apart from his unpredictability?), was not an obstacle to making decisive decisions about the nuclear threat.

Gaub said that one shouldn't be disconcerted by terms like nuclear and atomic when Putin uses them.

Typically, with the help of these terms, one is manipulated into fear and unable to act.

How does the military sociologist know when the fear of the Ukraine war is justified and when it is unfounded?

She did not cite sociological findings.

Does their strategic scenario have any basis for justified fear?

Or does fear only become reality in her security studies as a category of psychological warfare, which one should not fall for?

In the face of an assessment of the nuclear threat that was so detached from real-life circumstances, and which appeared here more like a propaganda thing in itself, it was easy for Norbert Röttgen to recommend himself as a representative of the high command with the slogan “Recognize the situation”.

While Gaub worked on conceptual history (one learned what is meant by punishment strategy in the military field and what is meant by porcupine strategy), the foreign policy expert of the Union opened up the nuclear threat to its potential for development.

Even if Putin is currently only bluffing, the bluff could develop into a military preference, i.e. become real as soon as the warlord comes under further pressure.

The self-evident, with Röttgen it took on the quality of a perspective.

Constanze Stelzenmüller from the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington supported him as a thinker of political-military evolution.

As far as the need for an energy embargo is concerned, Stelzenmüller and Röttgen pulled together in a war of exhaustion.

Stelzenmüller has changed her mind on the embargo question over the past ten days.

The reason: Russia is not only waging a war of attrition, but a war of annihilation against Ukraine.

Röttgen confirmed: Every day we finance the Russian war machine with 600 to 700 million euros.

The pressure to remove Putin from within must come from outside.

Putin only conducts negotiations to gain time.

Negotiations – a new key word for delving into the fundamentals.

It must be negotiated further, in negotiations one always learns something about the opponent, explained Gaub.

But hasn't Putin imposed an embargo on himself with his ruble demand?

What is the benefit for Putin and what is the harm in this counter-sanction of his?

Röttgen thinks it's an illusion: then we could pay the Russian soldiers their wages in rubles right away, he said.

Suddenly the group, robbed of their categorical certainties, was stuck in the concrete.

In the political pros and cons of the embargo talks, ground was regained that had been lost during the nuclear discourse.

In any case, according to Stelzenmüller, this is certain: Even the threat of nuclear weapons, as used by Putin, is a breach of civilization.