From a Trot-paper, still a decent summary of the speech and some explanations and context for non-Germans I reckon. If anyone’s interested I can put up her speech in full as well.

Baerbock’s New York war speech

The foreign-policy keynote address, which German foreign minister and Green-politician Annalena Baerbock held in the New School in New York on 2. August, demands a reply. Some lies are so outrageous they can develop a devastating momentum if they stay unchallenged.

Embedded in phrases about freedom, democracy and human rights and reminiscences about Hannah Arendt, who as a Jew fled Germany from the Nazis and taught from 1967-1975 at New School, Baerbock created the vision of a world dominated by the USA and Germany. She not only declared to fight Russia but China as well and justified this imperialistic great-power fantasy with breathtaking falsifications, omissions and distortions.

In 1989 US-president George Bush had made Germany the famous offer of a “joint partnership in leadership”, claimed Baerbock. But then Germany had been to busy with reunification to accept the offer. Today this has changed: “Now is the moment that we have to create it: a joint partnership in leadership.”

Such a partnership in leadership would be “no romantic project to bring back good old transatlantic times”, Baerbock continued. By good old romantic times she meant the Cold War, over the course of which the world teethered on the edge of nuclear annihilation multiple times. Back then the Greens had still protested against nuclear weapons. But meanwhile Baerbock has - like Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubricks famous movie - learned to love the Bomb and thinks about using it herself.

In a particularily bizarre part of her speech she describes children asking at breakfast: “Mum, what are nuclear weapons?”, to then assure: “I really do like NATO” These children’s grandparents had taken to the streets in the 80s to protest against rearmament. “Now these grandparents, mothers, fathers and their childrens discuss rearmament at breakfast.”

Baerbock here is obviously talking about herself and about the well-off clientele of the Greens, not about the large majority of the population that doesn’t have the slightest inclination to be turned to ashes for German great-power fantasies.

Over the entire course of her speech Baerbock repeatedly makes the point that the desired “partnership in leadership” has to be understood militarily. “In Germany we have given up on the long cherished German conviction of ‘change by trade’”, she said. It seems change by military force has taken its place.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has prompted the German government to “question some long cherished sercurity-policy positions: Germany has set up a special budget of €100bn with which we want to strengthen our Bundeswehr. We have revised principles of arms exports that were established for decades so that Germany now counts to Ukraines strongest military and financial supporters. And we have increased our contribution to NATO.”

But this is only the beginning: “It’s our goal to strengthen the European pillar of NATO further…and for the long term.” The EU has to be aligned strategically - “as a union which is capable to act eye to eye with the United States: in a partnership in leadership”. And one that has to “become a stronger security-political actor”, integrate its arms industries further and be “capable of carrying out military missions to stabilize regions in its neighborhood”.

Brazen lies

After its barbaric crimes in two world wars German militarism had to measure itself. Now Baerbock is chaining one brazen lie after the other to justify its resurgence.

This starts with the claim 24. February - the day of the Russian attack on Ukraine - has “changed our world”: “President Putin wants a world in which might makes right rules, not the might of rights, in which great powers can consume smaller states at will.”

“I’m 40 years old, have been born in West-Germany and have luckily never experienced war or dictatorship”, Baerbock continues. But now president Putin is supposedly assaulting “the European peace order, the international order not theoretically - his atttack is brutal reality”.

Baerbock may be relatively young (in truth she’s 41). Yet the claim she has “never experienced war or dictatorship”, is plainly absurd. Since her 10th birthday the USA, with which she’s striving for a “partnership in leadership”, is parctically continuously at war. Not only is it following “might makes right” in that and ignoring all the rules of international law, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria it has destroyed entire societies, killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. By now it’s openly preparing for war against its economic rival China.

Baerbock was 18 when then Green foreign minister Joschka Fischer gave green light for the involvement of the Bundeswehr in the illegal NATO-war against Yugoslavia.

And she was 33, MoP and member of the leadership of the Greens, when they played an active role in the right-wing coup in Kiew, which laid the foundation for todays war. Elected president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown with the aid of fascistic militias and replaced by a pro-Western puppet.

Already then the German government announced it wanted to become a political and military great-power again. Just before the coup in Kiew three high-ranking officials of the state and government - president Joachim Gauck, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) and minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) - had declared this in almost identical speeches at the Munich security conference.

Baerbock’s claim the massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr is a reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine is thus an obvious lie. Rather the war has been a welcome pretext to realize the rearmament plans, which the population strongly disaproves, at break-neck speed.

Since the coup in 2014 NATO has armed Ukraine systematically, promised NATO-membership and sabotaged all efforts for a peaceful solution. Russian president Putin reacted as expected of a right-wing nationalist and a representative of the Russian oligarchy and as hoped by NATO: He struck militarily.

Ever since NATO has exploited this reactionary attack ruthelessly. It’s waging a proxy war against Russia on the back of the Ukrainian population and is doing everything to continue it to the defeat of the Russian army - even if it costs a massive amount of human lives. Its goal: Neutralize Russia as geopolitical rival, unhindered access to its enormous resources and splitting up of its enormous territory. Domestically, in the USA as in Europe, the war against Russia and the offensive against China are destractions from increasing social tensions.

Against this background Baerbock’s invocation of “transatlantic community of values” and “irrevocable transatlantic partnership” - she uses the word “transatlantic” no less than 30 times over the course of her speech - can only cause nausea. It’s a partnership of bandits.

Baerbock wants the “transatlantic partnership in leadership” explicitly to extend to the conflict with China. “It can not be in our interest that China creates excessive economic dependencies”, she declares and announces a new “China strategy” in her ministry “which is to be released next year and which comprehensively takes into account the strategic considerations here in the United States”.

Baerbock meanders about the daily fight for “peace, freedom and security” and the “irrevocable human dignity”, while she’s really preparing another explosion of German militarism.

Yet she’s markedly selective when it comes to human dignity and human rights. Violations - real and alledged - are always invoked when they harm a geopolitical rival, as in the case of the Uyghurs in China. They are ignored and minimized when they’re committed by allies.

Baerbock just three weeks ago greeted Egyptian dictator and butcher of Kairo, Abdelfattah al-Sisi, in Germany as ally in the fight against climate change. Al-Sisi’s police has killed thousands of protesters, tortured tens of thousands in its dungeons and executes hundreds every year.

Leading party of German militarism

The Greens have become the leading party of German militarism. For it they’re even sacrificing their political core topic, environment politics. To continue the war in Ukraine they’re now for longer runtimes for nuclear- and coal-powerplants, for the suspension of renaturation of agricultural land and for the abolition of other environmental protection measures they’ve been fighting for for decades.

Spiegel-reporter Dirk Kurbjuweit recently attested the Greens they’ve replaced the conservative CDU “as German state-party”. “They are for arms deliveries, despite having pacifistic roots, they are temporarily for coal, despite it harming the climate, they are open for a debate about nuclear power, despite emerging from the anti-nuclear-power movement.” They’re supposedly doing all of this not to increase their chances of winning elections, but “so that Germany and Europe manage the crisis better. Thus the Greens, former protest-party, have become the German state-party, a title which so far has been claimed by the CDU.”

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  • @knfrmity
    link
    62 years ago

    So much for the party of pacifism and demonstrations against militarization. Then again the party has been like this for a generation already, it’s just more out in the open now with conflict nearby and warhawks in the Bundestag.

    I found the speech text via Auswärtiges-Amt.de. It’s really quite terrifying, although at the same time totally standard for Baerbock and the Greens. It’s entirely obvious that she has lots of training in the Washington Consensus, between her constant drumming of the holy “rules based international order” and this little gem:

    It cannot be in our interest if China is creating excessive economic dependencies in its region.

    These people act as if they’re the shining light at the top of the hill, governing the world for good and defending against forces of evil.