German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/31, pp.
2732-2733.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
It is ever a thankless task to seek explanations for a situation which kills women and children and lays cities in rubble and ash. And when it has to do with freedom, democracy and Western values, one must in a country like Germany stand on the right side of history.The moral always beats the geopolitics.
For long we know
that NATO is a defensive alliance and Putin, if he was not afraid of freedom,
need not fear NATO. So simple, so unterkomplex!
Unless it does not depend simply on our estimate of NATO, but on the Russian
viewpoint. And here since the German reunification, the Russians witness an
uninterrupted advance towards the Russian borders of a military alliance
opposed to them.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is not only a confrontation of
autocracy and democracy but also a clash of political, military and economic
interests. And therefore it is also wrong to heat up this conflict with heavy
weapons. Since – thus, Angela Merkel’s earlier military advisor, Erich Vad – “Every
military solution leads to catastrophe.” When German politicians – and it again
occurs today – postulate “Russia is not allowed to win”, it must then be added:
It is also not allowed to lose, for an atomic power can employ the means of the
20th and 21st Centuries in a war like that of the 19th
Century. And that, hopefully, we also do not want!
In the case of Russia, there is added a further dilemma.
Decrees according to the norms of international law have in history only proved
tenable when the defeated side was included as an equal. The best historical
example is the Vienna Decree of 1815 following the victory over Napoleon. In
that France could play a role as an equal, the participants in Vienna avoided
an enduring, revolutionary discontent of the defeated. The complete opposite of
that was Versailles 1919. And precisely
that, ladies and gentlemen, is today the Russia problem: It never really
accepted internally the one-sided changes following 1989. They would have been better
accomplished working with Russia, and not against a passed-over, weakened power
under Yeltsin.
Comparisons are always imperfect – however, the eastward
expansion of NATO was more Versailles than Vienna. A weakened Russia swallowed
that. Now, where in the Ukraine it touches on the core of the Czarist Empire,
like that of the Soviet Union, the Russian elites see a red line overstepped.
As long as Russia is a great power and an atomic power, an arrangement only
becomes durable when the country internally shares in it. A Western Ukraine is
not it. It consequently can only be a compromise – only a compromise! – to end
this war, not however a victory of one side or the other. The delivery of heavy
weapons to the Ukraine is thus no sensible contribution, ladies and gentlemen.
Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr Gauland, come to a conclusion, please.
A diplomatic initiative by Germany would be much more
sensible and important.
I am grateful.
[trans:tem]
