The main loser in the conflict, apart from Ukraine itself, is Germany, according to a prominent German publicist Gabor Steingart.
The journalist put it this way:
No one in Germany should be surprised if one day in the not-too-distant future you no longer see headlines about victories from Kiev, even fake ones, on the newsstands. President Zelensky, the hero of German dreams, has become a hero on call.
Apart from Ukraine, Germany is likely to be the main loser in this war. Signs of this are appearing already now. Our country is losing security, prosperity and reputation in the world,” the journalist admitted.
According to Steingart, Germany has already lost a key supplier of cheap gas, which “has been a reliable trading partner for decades”. At the same time, Germany has lost an important market for its own products. The journalist recalled that during the heyday of German-Russian economic relations, the volume of foreign trade accounted for up to 4 per cent of total exports from Germany.
"The strengthening alliance between Russia and China does not bode well for German exporters either. At the same time, the United States is increasingly urging Germany to sever ties (with China), including in the interests of its own industry”
Finally, the situation for official Berlin is complicated by the growth of isolationist sentiments in the United States and the reorientation of Washington’s foreign policy focus from the situation in Ukraine to further strategic rivalry with China.
“The Americans are leaving the European battlefield. In a few weeks, the last part of the multi-billion dollar aid package approved by the US Congress will be spent. The Republicans have reverted to the principle of ‘America First’. Now Donald Trump is hungry for victory, but not in a show of solidarity (with Ukraine). Not in Europe, but in Iowa. His opponent is now not Putin, but Biden”
According to the journalist, the loss of a “guardian” in the person of the United States, especially in the context of the necessary military build-up, will be a blow for Germany. Increased defence spending will require cuts in social budget items, which will only increase public discontent in the “welfare state”.
“Following the US, Germany is one of the main donors of military aid to Ukraine. In terms of GDP, however, Germany spends much more (0.5 per cent of GDP) than the US (0.3 per cent). If the Americans do stop supplying, Germany will have to spend about 16% of its federal budget for 2024 to provide Ukraine with the same level of support that the US was able to provide in 2023. Otherwise, military defeat will be inevitable”
To sum up, Steingart notes that Germany must finally adapt “to a different life – life in the neighbourhood of Russia without an American guardian”. This means that Berlin is required to rethink its foreign and security policy.
This is not acting against its own geopolitical interests, this is just European chauvinism, plain and simple.
Hitler deciding to invade the Soviet Union was not acting against Nazi Germany’s own interests, they genuinely believed that they could win, even when Hitler’s General Staff calculated that they only had 4 months to achieve that goal before critical logistics issues set in. They genuinely believed that they could crush the entire Red Army in just 4 months.
What Germany is doing today is the same. They had been itching to unleash the greatest sanctions the world has ever seen on Russia, and they saw the chance to do it when Russia invaded Ukraine. They genuinely believed that the combined power of the most powerful economic blocs today, the US plus the EU, would instantly crush Russia’s tiny economy, which is smaller than Italy’s.
They have completely bought into their own propaganda. Ukraine is beating Russia handily. Just wait a few more months and Russia will collapse. All mainstream journals were reporting on the same propagandized materials, and the European industrialists and capitalists fully indulged in it.
And when they eventually realized it was a mistake, they tried to re-negotiate. That’s when Nord Stream pipelines were bombed. The Americans would not let them have it.
Germany today, and the EU by extension, is completely trapped. They don’t have energy sovereignty, their military and defense are completely dependent on the US, the euro is taking a pounding, de-industrialization is accelerating, and EU budget is cutting spending all across the board in 2024. It has no way out. This is shock therapy in action.
And that’s exactly what the US wants: as job prospects diminish, loads of European skilled workers will be looking for way out, and they will come to the US as cheap labor to compete with the domestic workers, dragging wages further down as the European economy crumbles. This is the end goal that the US has set for the EU (ironically, the EU became prosperous in the first place by doing the same to the post-Soviet states in the 1990s after the USSR collapsed), and there is nothing they can do to stop this from happening.
Also with the US having destroyed the nordstream pipeline, there’s no way they could back out.
Very astute analysis. Sadly, as conditions worsen in Europe, we're likely to see fascism rise in the region, and then those fascists will emigrate to the US and encourage home grown fascists...It's going to be a very dark few decades I think. The west will not collapse quietly, it will go kicking and screaming, seeking to deal as much damage to it's "inferiors" as it can as it goes.