This very interesting development has been more or less eclipsed by recent events connected to our EU referendum, but it is worth commenting on, not least because the theme coincides with the position I have promoted publicly for the last seven years.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier chided NATO for war mongering because of its latest exercise in Poland. He asserts that needling Russia with military exercises on its border is counter productive, inflames tensions and does nothing to secure regional security. He is quite right. When the Soviet Union collapsed its counter to NATO, the Warsaw Pact, was dismantled. The West’s refusal to do the same to NATO and at the same time not to invite Russia to become a full member was a throwback to Versailles in 1919, and a far cry from the enlightened treatment of West Germany after 1945.
History teaches many lessons but it is history. We understood that the emerging Germany was not that of Hitler and needed a different approach to bring it into an alliance focused on peace not war. We did not, and still do not, see that modern Russia, which now enjoys some degree of democracy for the first time in its history, is not that of Stalin. This is in part because Russia likes strong leaders at all times and found themselves Putin, whereas the West prefers to shuffle a pack of political nonentities to lead them and only now and again come up with a Churchill, a Roosevelt, a Thatcher or a De Gaulle. Britain had a go with Blair but he is now very damaged goods, suggesting strong leaders are a bad idea. So Putin is made out to be an ogre when he is no such thing (though neither is he an angel) and Western foreign and diplomatic policy is blundering through its greatest period of failures in modern times.
It is interesting that Germany, yes Germany, has decided to blow the whistle. Watch this space.
