Is Russia at War With Ukraine, or With the West?
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock this week, on entering a “new era of nefariousness”:
I say clearly and across the Atlantic, what is right and what is wrong shall never be irrelevant to us. No one wants and no one needs peace more than the Ukrainians and Ukraine. The diplomatic efforts of the U.S. are of course important here. But such a peace must be just and lasting and not just a pause until the next attack… We will never accept a perpetrator-victim reversal. A perpetrator-victim reversal would be… the end of security for the vast majority of countries. And it would be fatal for the future of the United States.
Baerbock’s declaration that a “perpetrator-victim reversal” (a Täteropferumkehr, I’m reliably informed) would be “fatal” to the U.S. was historic. It was accompanied by a promise that “as transatlantacists,” Europeans must “stand up for our own interests, our own values, and our own security.” Although new leaders are ready to take the reins in Germany, she said, there can be no waiting for the transfer of power. Immediately, “Germany must take the lead at this historic milestone.”
A few years ago Baerbock pleaded for patience with a British conservative who demanded to know why Germany wasn’t providing Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
Now, with Donald Trump cutting off weapons deliveries and shutting down access to ATACMS missiles, Baerbock’s speech is an expression of more enthusiastic European support for continued fighting.
The war in Ukraine is often called a proxy conflict between Russia and the West or Russia and the U.S., but it increasingly looks more like a fight between Baerbock’s “transatlanticists” and those who believe in “spheres of influence.” In preparing Racket’s accompanying “Timeline: The War in Ukraine,” I found both sides articulated this idea repeatedly.
In January, 2017, as he was preparing to relinquish his seat to Mike Pence, Joe Biden alluded to the recent election of Donald Trump in a speech at Davos. Describing the “dangerous willingness to revert to political small-mindedness” of “popula
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