Following earlier escalations involving cruise missiles, cluster munitions, and radioactive depleted uranium (DU) ammunition, Western militarists are now taking the war deep into Russian territory through the accelerated delivery of combat drones. https://overton-magazin.de/hintergrund/politik/atomschlag-gegen-deutschland/
In this increasingly tense situation, understanding the adversary's motives is an essential factor in avoiding major escalation and steering toward a settlement. Yet instead of heeding Martin Luther King's rule, European politicians remain mired in hypocritical self-complacency and one-sided blame. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mearsheimer-europes-bleak-future/
The mainstream media bears a large share of the blame by providing a backdrop of understanding for this gross violation of rationality and responsibility. While applaudingly endorsing the alleged military defense of Western principles against Russia, they fail to call out the obvious undermining of those very principles by the European Commission and various European governments.
The role of authentic protectors of the Western foundation of values and the security of citizens thus increasingly falls to independent journalists. Their opposition to the policy of escalation against Russia requires, in particular, an analysis of the adversary's motivations as well as those of our own militarists.
Prominent figures of interest whose personal trajectories represent the transformation of their societies are particularly suitable for this purpose. In the case of Russia, one encounters Sergey Karaganov, who has exerted great political influence for nearly 40 years, was internationally networked for a long time (Trilateral Commission, CFR), and has undergone an inner transformation typical of Russia. In several statements, he recommends that the Russian government carry out a prompt warning strike against Germany.
How could Europe reach a point where a cosmopolitan, historically educated man who was once well-disposed toward Europe like Karaganov now recommends an atomic warning strike against Germany to the Russian government?! The answer lies in the past and its differing perceptions.
While the historical horizon of most Germans barely extends further back than Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Russians allow themselves an unhindered view of their more than thousand-year history. This connects them closely with the Ukrainians, together with whom they successfully repelled advances by the nomadic peoples of Inner Asia. By contrast, the Russian view of Europe as a whole was mixed. Valuable development impulses, especially from Germany, remain anchored in the historical consciousness of Russians to this day.
However, Russia was also one of the primary victims on a divided continent. Four times the country was the target of aggression: in 1812 by Napoleon's troops, in 1854 by a British-French alliance in the Crimean War, in 1917 through Lenin's Western-initiated October Revolution, and in 1941 by Hitler's invasion.
After these bitter experiences, the reunification of Germany accompanied by a Russian withdrawal in 1990, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the disbanding of its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, were advance concessions by Russia—concessions that were met with no reciprocal concessions from the Western side. On the contrary, an expansion of NATO began in 1999 that ran counter to the principles of détente, fairness, and the balance of power.
Whatever one may think of Vladimir Putin, one must credit him with four initiatives aimed at harmony in this already straining environment. The first was the proposal for Russian NATO membership made to US President Clinton in June 2000. The proposal was repeated with justification to George W. Bush a year later. The third initiative was Putin's speech before the German Bundestag in September 2001. In it, featuring a strong appeal for solidarity, a far-reaching economic and security partnership between Russia and the EU was suggested. Even after advanced NATO expansion, Putin repeated and specified this proposal in an op-ed for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in November 2010, advocating the concept of a "common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok."
All of these offers of cooperation and initiatives were rejected or ignored. NATO and the EU (also a military alliance under Article 42 of its treaty) expanded further eastward, and Ukraine was built up into what is now the strongest military power in Europe.
The painful rejection of offered friendship by an unfeeling Western establishment resulted in a dramatic historical identity transformation. Whereas Russians had primarily defined themselves as Europeans for centuries, following this disappointment, they now view themselves today as an independent, Eurasian civilization seeking its future no longer in the West, but in the Global East.
This civilizational break forms the foundation upon which Karaganov's radicalism was able to thrive. In various writings and interviews, he states that the establishment of EU-Europe is steering its nations on a politically, economically, and militarily disastrous course. https://karaganov.ru/en/
Its path toward the nuclear destruction of the continent hangs like a sword of Damocles for as long as militarists have free rein to bring the war to Russia in ever-new ways. Exacerbating the situation, a nuclear strike intended as a warning has long been framed in the West within unrealistic narratives about alleged conquest ambitions of the Russian government. As a result, the warning character of a nuclear first strike risks being misunderstood, failing to generate the necessary respect and shift toward a peaceful settlement, and leading instead to escalation.
When Putin launched the military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, European states did not assume the role of neutral mediators that alone belonged to them in this fratricidal war. Instead, through bias and arms deliveries, they set off a spiral of escalation.
Cynically, they do so by fundamentally violating a principle they themselves champion—European solidarity. Victor Hugo's project of the United States of Europe (presented in 1849) naturally included Russia!
Karaganov's internal shift and his statements drastically highlight the danger into which ignorant European governments have already brought their nations and the allegedly defended inhabitants of the contested territories by disregarding the fundamental rule that pan-European solidarity must take absolute priority. After the bitter experiences of the two world wars—or more accurately, European fratricidal wars—this should actually be clear.