Our Sinking Ship In EuropeWe are not about to make Ukraine an Article 5 NATO member, and playing as if we might only helps China.
By Micah Meadowcroft
January 26, 2022
AGerman naval officer resigns his post after comments he made to Indians (dot, not feather) offend some Ukrainians. It almost sounds like a joke. But, no, that was Saturday, and as Vice Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach drolly said in his Friday remarks to the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses: “I’m not American so I don’t make jokes. I’m German, we make no jokes and we can’t even tell jokes.”
Schönbach has stepped down as head of the German Navy because he made the mistake of being honest, and not only about his read of the situation in Ukraine. His speech and responses to questions are worth watching in their entirety—informative, insightful, and at times, yes, amusing in his oddly Australian-sounding accented English. I confess to a certain jealousy of Germany now; up to this past weekend, they were the kind of country that could elevate a man like that, where such a forthright sailor was not only promoted but given the highest responsibilities. Meanwhile, our Ottoman Pentagon produces overstuffed political upholstery like Mark Milley.
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Schönbach was giving remarks on Germany’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific region and the opportunities for cooperation and partnership with India. It is now, he said citing other officials, German policy to acknowledge that the economic and political center of gravity has shifted from the trans-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific. “The world’s largest economies share Pacific coastlines,” he said, referring especially to China, the U.S., Japan, and India.
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Schönbach is in trouble—no longer head of the German navy—because he dared to acknowledge the implications of two things. One, in terms of sheer numbers, whether they be of men or money or machines, the economic and political center of gravity really has migrated from the trans-Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific, making Ukraine not just a hinterland but a backwater. Two, Ukraine cannot meet the requirements for NATO membership by any accepted standards because, besides being a Northern Virginia money-laundering outfit, it is currently occupied; its territorial sovereignty is already compromised and Crimea is not going to be taken back. Do you risk nuclear war for a backwater? Does it make sense after blinking twice, losing Crimea and the Donbas, to strongly imply you would like to make Ukraine a NATO member, which is tantamount to promising to drive Russia out of Crimea?
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-sinking-ship-in-europe/
