German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/24, p.
1946.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Seldom has a government newly come into office so quickly
and so fundamentally arrived on the ground of facts. If for all of us it was
not about Germany, one could almost feel Schadenfreude,
but that is not my aim here.
Here, a Green Economy Minister, whose goal is the end of the
fossil energy economy, requests liquefied natural gas from Arab sheiks, and a
Foreign Minister, who dreams of a feminist foreign policy, needs to think out
for herself a new security architecture. And all are presided over by a head of
government whose party just recently held armed drones to be incompatible with
the German desire for peace.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in terms of security the government
has learned quickly, and 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr is surely a learning
success for politicians who have grown up in the fixed belief in a rules-based,
multilateral foreign policy. Yet as always in cases of over-compensation,
over-drive now threatens.
I know it is difficult in view of ruins, a war of aggression
and millions of refugees to name one’s own failures; that is, the past failures
of the West. Alone of so many: A great power should never be humiliated.
Bismarck had therein erred in 1870-1871, the victors of the First World War in
1919 at Versailles, and the West, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately after 1989.
Since what we did was a humiliation of Russia. We have attempted to construct a
world order without taking regard of this great power. This, ladies and gentlemen,
means, despite all that has happened, despite this war of aggression, that a
European order of peace is only possible with, though never against, Russia,
Europe’s largest country.
It is the error of the Russian President to believe that
greatness would come solely through the barrel of a gun, or today by means of
atomic rockets. A country’s greatness and strength rest mostly on the
acceptance of the state from within and from without, and that is the Russian
President’s deficit.
The great Czars, to whom he readily refers, were reformers:
Alexander I, the conqueror of Napoleon, and Alexander II, the liberator of the
peasants. What should, what can we do to lead Russia back to this European way?
We can intercede as an honest broker for a neutral Ukraine. That would be the
future.
Ladies and gentlemen, so that I will not be falsely
understood: Neutrality does not mean neutrality of thought and heart but a
neutrality of deeds. Sanctions affecting the Russian people are wrong, like the
delivery of offensive weapons which make nothing better but still much worse,
or certainly combat operations like the blockade of the air space over the
Ukraine. I am grateful to the Chancellor that he has quite clearly said that we
are not a part of this war, this confrontation, and that we must remain so.
Ladies and gentlemen, neutrality in the presence of a
threatening world war with atomic weapons is plainly not to be compared with a
private individual’s failure to assist because the victim is not a member of a
volunteer fire department, as Henryk Broder opined recently in the Welt. And no, dear Herr Döpfner, editor
of the Welt, we as Germans deny
nothing of history when we persevere in this neutrality and in peace.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know there was much criticism
exercised of how we here conducted ourselves following the speech of the Ukrainian
President; I do not want to call that up again. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian
President also cannot want the freedom of the Ukraine to be erected on the
rubble of Europe. In the atomic age, compromise is not appeasement but is the
necessity of survival. Egon Bahr certainly knew that, dear Herr Mützenich. In
the end, a neutral and de-militarized Ukraine will demand from all participants
the acknowledgement whether death and destruction were really required so as to
achieve this result, and the Federal government, dear Herr Scholz, will therein
be measured on how vigorously it has interceded for such a solution.
It is one thing to have according to international law a
theoretical right to membership in an alliance, and it is another in a order of
states as it is now to assert one’s place with prudence. Spheres of influence
do not disappear as a result of being denied and a rupture of all relations
with Russia alters nothing of its situation, size and geopolitical influence. Therefore,
here also pragmatic negotiations remain the highest precept.
I am grateful.
[trans: tem]
