If you have not read this article you have missed one of the best pieces ofthe last month. This comes from the leading business paper in Germany and is a scathing denouncement of the rush towards nowhere being pursued by Putin and Obama. Link
The article argues that Germany is ill served by slavishly following the US "strategic less" path, and does so in a quality of language and argument rarely seen in journalism today.
Every mistake starts with a mistake in thinking. And we are making this mistake if we believe that only the other party profits from our economic relationship and thus will suffer when this relationship stops. If economic ties were maintained for mutual profit, then severing them will lead to mutual loss. Punishment and self-punishment are the same thing in this case.
Even the idea that economic pressure and political isolation would bring Russia to its knees was not really thought all the way through. Even if we could succeed: what good would Russia be on its knees? How can you want to live together in the European house with a humiliated people whose elected leadership is treated like a pariah and whose citizens you might have to support in the coming winter.
Unlike the far away USA, the German economy is exposed to get a significant jolt from the US led sanctions attack. To date the German media and politicians have played along with the US, but this article has received very wide spread play across the world and within Germany and can be seen as a possible turning point in the European willingness to go along with American policy.
A few choice excerpts from this piece to tempt you to read the whole thing.
When Hillary Clinton compares Putin with Hitler, she does so only to appeal to the Republican vote, i.e. people who do not own a passport. For many of them, Hitler is the only foreigner they know, which is why Adolf Putin is a very welcome fictitious campaign effigy.
If the West had judged the then US government which marched into Iraq without a resolution by the UN and without proof of the existence of “WMDs“ by the same standards as today Putin, then George W. Bush would have immediately been banned from entering the EU. The foreign investments of Warren Buffett should have been frozen, the export of vehicles of the brands GM, Ford, and Chrysler banned.
This policy of running your head against the wall – and doing so exactly where the wall is the thickest – just gives you a head ache and not much else. And this considering that the wall has a huge door in the relationship of Europe to Russia. And the key to this door is labeled “reconciliation of interests“.
Given the US media's continued war warmongering and Putin demonizing it is a welcome change to read something more balanced and with a nod to history, reality and the longer term future, and not just a focus on the politics of now.