Finally, the intercepted conversation between high-ranking German military officials about the possibilities of a Taurus deployment convicted the Chancellor of untruth. German soldiers do not have to be stationed in Ukraine in order to program this weapon system.
Something like this is actually only known from relevant films or books: a foreign power can listen in at will when high-ranking military officials discuss strategic issues. At the same time, this power has the chutzpah to publish the recordings of these conversations and ridicule those who were intercepted.
The message that Putin sends to the Germans via his propaganda channel “Russia Today” cannot be surpassed in terms of clarity: “I am everywhere. I know everything about you. So be careful.” Because in case of doubt, Putin’s spies know a lot more about us than the Kremlin tsar has now published for propaganda reasons.
Now Germany’s politics are taking revenge after the annexation of Crimea
You have to have as naive an image of Putin as some incorrigible SPD leftists, the AfD or Sahra Wagenknecht’s troops in order not to recognize the seriousness of the situation. Putin is not planning to invade the Federal Republic of Germany tomorrow. But he lets us know: If the worst comes to the worst, you have no chance.
The fact that the grand coalition under Angela Merkel (CDU) and Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) continued to see Russia as a supplier of cheap energy and not an aggressor after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 is now taking revenge. As a result, the Bundeswehr became a “piggy bank”.
It’s also a shame that all federal governments didn’t consider cybersecurity important enough to properly upgrade it. When it became known in 2015 that American intelligence had been spying on top German politicians and government agencies for decades, alarm bells should have rung. But that apparently didn’t happen.
Anyone who doesn’t want to be a defenseless victim must be fit for war
Even in the Bundeswehr, strategic questions are discussed carelessly via systems that are apparently easy to intercept. This underlines the demand of Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) that Germany must become “war-ready”.
Contemporaries inclined towards pacifism may groan in horror. Of course, being ready for war does not mean wanting to start a war tomorrow. Anyone who does not want to be a defenseless victim in a war that is forced upon them must be fit for war.
Putin’s demonstration of his frightening superiority on the cyber battlefield makes one thing clear. The required German war capability cannot and must not be a long-term project. Making them allows no delay.
The Chancellor speaks in the usual Scholz tone of a “very serious matter”. From Rome, he commented on Putin’s wiretapping coup: “That’s why it’s now being investigated very carefully, very intensively and very quickly.” Well, what else?
Eavesdropping disaster shows how dangerous Putin is
The Taurus debacle would be a security policy debacle for any head of government. But for Scholz there is still personal “collateral damage”. When justifying his rejection of Taurus deliveries, Scholz claimed that “target control and accompaniment of target control” could “not be done in Germany.” However, if German soldiers supported the Ukrainians on site, Scholz was concerned, Germany would become a warring party
In the telephone conference between the air force inspector and other senior officers, however, it became clear that the use of Taurus cruise missiles by Kiev in no way necessitates the deployment of German soldiers on Ukrainian soil. This is extremely embarrassing for the Chancellor.
But Scholz’s tricks are only a side aspect of this wiretapping disaster. What is much more important is the realization that Germany has not yet accepted how dangerous Putin is – and how defenseless we are.
Restoring war capability, which was certainly present during the Cold War, must – unfortunately – be a top priority. It is obvious that this will not be easy. The sentence of the great liberal Friedrich Naumann, which Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD) liked to quote, applies: “What use is the best social policy if the Cossacks come.”