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October 3, 2024 - 1:00pm
It’s been nearly two years since Olaf Scholz last spoke with Vladimir Putin. Now the newspaper Zeit reports that the German Chancellor is considering a telephone call with the Russian President — a move intended to send a message to his own electorate as much as to the Kremlin.
Moscow’s answer came instantly. Putin had Scholz know that “at first glance, there seems to be no common ground [for a conversation]” and that “our relations have practically reached rock bottom and not because of our initiative”. But the deafening nyet from Moscow hasn’t stopped Scholz from making his point in Germany: he wants peace.
The restyling of Scholz from war leader to peace chancellor is in full swing. While emphasising that Germany will continue to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, Scholz’s coalition has recently decided on severe cuts to its aid for Kyiv and his party ran its European election campaign explicitly on a peace message.
Scholz is undoubtedly hoping to draw voters back to his beleaguered Social Democratic Party (SPD), which is currently languishing in third place in many polls. As the recent regional elections in three of Germany’s 16 states have shown, there is a sizeable proportion of the electorate that opposes further support for Ukraine. In all three states, the far-Right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gained nearly a third of the vote while the Left-wing populist Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) gained over 10% in each despite being a brand new party. Both ran on Russia-friendly manifestos.
The argument that pre-war relations between Germany and Russia should be restored is more deeply entrenched in the former East Germany, where the recent elections took place, but it is also widespread across the country where it is usually dressed up as pacifism.
One recent survey indicated that the vast majority of Germans want peace negotiations and that this is an election-deciding issue for 52% of voters in the East and 41% in the West. The survey should be taken with a pinch of salt since it was commissioned by the feminist magazine Emma, which has strongly argued against weapon deliveries to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022, but it is indicative of the public mood swing that Scholz wants to tap into.
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SubscribeWhy are politicians so pathetic. No wonder that centre parties are suffering – their politicians change tack almost every week. Bring on Trump.
Except Trump has flip-flopped markedly. His winning platform of 2016, “America First,” has been sidelined. His transition co-chair, billionaire Howard Lutnick, wants to tap “talent” among the ranks of the security state, the same talent pool that loves endless wars while putting serious American domestic concerns a distant second — absolutely corrupt people from the swamp like Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Niki Haley, John Bolton. Trump’s foreign policy, the debt he owes to $100M funders like Mariam Adelson who want unlimited and unqualified support for Israel, the key people on his team, make his campaign look not much different than a traditional Republican one.
The figure who now most resembles Trump’s 2016 ideology is J.D. Vance, but Trump himself has made a big tack from 2016. He’s always been mercurial, really.
Can we please stop describing a pro-peace platform as being “Russia-friendly”. It isn’t.
The link above sends me to Deutsche Welle, a government mouthpiece and part of the media being weaponised against the AfD and the BSW.
Now that all is beginning to rapidly collapse in Ukraine, now that it is impossible for Western leaders and mainstream pundits to publicly deny anymore that Ukraine is losing the war, Scholz wants to speak to Putin, even “While emphasising that Germany will continue to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes.'”
Putin has repeatedly stated, and recently, that all objectives of the “Special Military Operation” must be met. It’s not going to be the tone and terms of Istanbul now, but a harder line. Namely, Ukrainians must withdraw from all four regions, must agree to neutrality — no NATO — must greatly downscale their armed forces, must fully protect the rights of Russian-speakers and the Russian Orthodox Church, and curb the assorted radical nationalist militias and their allies.
The West has zero leverage. The Russians have no reason to moderate their position because, as everyone knowledgeable concedes, they are going to win the war. The sanctions didn’t work, and in fact Russia’s economy is stronger today. Russia didn’t back off its demands of April ’22 when Scholz imposed sanctions, or in the fall of ’22 when the CIA’s Bill Burns met Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s SVR.
As the article implies, Scholz’s gesture is performative and self-serving. The Russians have even less reason to be flexible now. I wonder if Scholz genuinely believed that Putin would be willing to enter negotiations and make any concessions. The Russians have no reason to do so. Scholz’s gesture seems meant to please voters — “Hey, I tried” — rather than to seriously broker peace. The fact that Putin wouldn’t take the proposed call implies that he considers it would be a waste of time, for all these reasons.
Maybe Olaf has decided that funding the ongoing slaughter of Ukrainians, and Russians for that matter, is not in anyone’s interest, least of all Germany’s.
I would suggest Scholz is more interested in appearing to want a peace deal, rather than actually wanting a peace deal. None of this would be public otherwise.