By Oskat Lafontaine, German politician of SPD, Die Linke, BSW
"He who digs a pit for others falls into it himself," says a proverb. The European warmongers in politics and journalism, who have been digging a pit for Ukrainians and Russians for almost four years, are now falling into it themselves. "And if all others believed the lie propagated by the (war) party — if all records said the same — then the lie entered history and became truth," wrote George Orwell. Did he perhaps foresee to what extent the propagandists of lies themselves would become victims of their own narrative?
For years, they have denied that NATO's eastward expansion almost inevitably led to the war in Ukraine. The Russians do not want Western troops and US missiles on their border. For years, propagandists have denied that Obama and Biden financed the Maidan coup in 2014 and that installing a US puppet government in Kyiv led to the civil war in the Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine with 14,000 deaths. For four years, they have lied to Ukrainians and Europeans by claiming that increasing Western arms deliveries are enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia.
Shameless demands
Now they are stuck in their own pit of lies and cannot get out without losing face. And because they fear the public will someday realize to what extent they have been harmed and deceived, they want to continue and torpedo Donald Trump's peace negotiations.
Trump is anything but a peacemaker. Unlike Merz, Macron, and Starmer, he has recognized that the war in Ukraine is lost for the West and that one cannot force or provoke a nuclear power too much when it comes to its security. That is why he wants out and, as a dealmaker, after securing access to Ukraine's rare earths, also wants to profit from the reconstruction. He makes shameless demands on the EU, and Europeans cannot embrace him because they, trapped in their lies, are unable to present the US president with the long-overdue bill. The USA bears the main responsibility for this war and should therefore be the first to cover rebuilding costs.
As was also stated on May 16, 2023, in the New York Times, the American weapons industry wanted this war and ultimately got it. Yet Europe is supposed to pay the bill? One only had to read and listen to George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Burns, and many other US politicians to know where the neocon-driven foreign policy, under which four percent of the world population is supposed to rule the world, would lead. But European warmongers in politics and journalism have closed their eyes and ears. The US arms industry has made billions.
Policy of confrontation
The US energy industry sells its expensive gas to Europe, and America also wants to make good money from Ukraine's reconstruction. Europeans pay with pointless, gigantic rearmament, too expensive energy, increasing deindustrialization, bear the lion's share of refugee costs, and now, as if possessed, want to admit Ukraine into the EU. Ursula von der Leyen or Kaja Kallas have often proven they do not understand what a billion is, but is there no one in the Brussels administration who can count to three and knows basic arithmetic?
We can be grateful that in Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Spain, there are politicians who keep their populations' interests in mind and prevent the worst at the European level. The US withdrawal, uncoordinated with the Europeans as in Afghanistan, will prevent von der Leyen, Merz, Macron, Starmer, and the other warmongers from continuing their megalomaniac policy of confrontation with a nuclear power, without which there can be no peace in Europe.
The sad realization remains: It will not be compassion for the victims that ends this far-too-long war, but the business interests of a real estate tycoon who, as US president, unlike Obama and Biden, recognized that pushing Russia and China into an ever-closer strategic partnership was a grave mistake.
This article first appeared in Weltwoche Deutschland No. 49.25 and at NachDenkSeiten.
Also here in German.
