Ukraine needs tanks

Is Germany tanking?

Image: https://fitzport.com/exercise/tuck-crunch/

Alamy sells posters and you can buy reproductions of pretty much anything there. One of their offerings is to be found at https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-digitally-restored-propaganda-war-poster-47854897.html, which depicts a poster bearing these words: above the image of a barrage of gun barrels, “United we are strong” and, underneath, on the barrels themselves, “United we will win”.

Each of the barrels, clumped as a battery, bears a flag, and one can discern those, from left to right, of Brazil, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the United States of America, China, the USSR, Australia and Czechoslovakia.

The World War II “Allies”, as they were called, headed up by “The Strange Alliance” of the world’s largest capitalist nation, its largest communist state and its largest colonial power, did in many ways unite, to defeat the Axis, Germany and Japan et al., in that conflict. Tensions were many, and these were to be manifested at the summit meetings held in Teheran (Persia, now Iran), Yalta (USSR, now de iure in Ukraine, de facto in Russia) and Potsdam (Germany).

Use of the word “United”, whilst intuitive, stemmed from the 1942 “Declaration of United Nations”, and was frequently used as a moniker to encourage support for the Allies’ war goals. The 1942 Declaration itself had nothing to do with the United Nations as they would emerge in 1948, but the wording proved inspirational.

Until Britain declared it on 3 September 1939, the Second World War was not a war but an incursion by Germany into sovereign territories internationally recognised as belonging to other states: until that date no declaration of war had been issued by Germany herself. In law therefore, Britain’s declaration, predicated on Germany’s failure to respond to the UK’s ultimatum, was an act of aggression. It was action it was duty-bound to take under existing treaty obligations with Poland, however recent the date of those obligations was. The aggression manifested by the UK was a response, therefore, to unwarranted aggression shown by Germany, Slovakia and the USSR on 1 September 1939, although war was declared against only one of those three.

There are no treaty obligations at the present time that are due to Ukraine. Ukraine has no international alliance on which it may call to repel the current incursion on it by Russia. It is attempting to negotiate one but, to date, none exists. Therefore, the assistance being given it by other nations is entirely voluntary. So, should Germany even be thinking of providing assistance?

Germany is one of the three biggest suppliers of armaments to Ukraine at the present time, behind the US and the UK. It has therefore done much to help repel Russia’s onslaught. But should it provide tanks? It is wavering. It fears, by all accounts, incurring Russia’s wrath against it for providing Ukraine with munitions that are not merely defensive in nature, but offensive, and thus far it has baulked, in view of its constitutional obligations to itself.

The distinction between a defensive and an offensive war is clear on paper; in the field it is less clear. When Britain rallied to the defence of Poland, it did so based on a declaration of aggression. But the net aim was to defend Poland. It came about due to the technicality that, whether Germany declared war against Poland or not, its acts were such as to constitute such a declaration. That is a fine distinction, and one that is disingenuous: for if the simple distinction between defence and aggression is defined as being who declares war on whom, then one is left in the invidious position that, absent a declaration of war, any nation could simply swallow up a neighbour and not thereby incur any consequences by those outraged by the outrage. It’s a philosophy that Russia is attempting in Ukraine.

What Germany must decide in all of this is whether delivering offensive armaments to Ukraine would be an act of aggression against Russia or an act of defence in favour, primarily, of Ukraine and, ultimately, of Germany herself. To date, it’s not inclined to think the latter, but to err to the former. Germany’s territorial integrity has, meanwhile, not been impinged on and has not to date been threatened.

It must decide, however, whether that status quo ante bellum would be tenable in a status quo post bellum in the eventuality that Russia won in Ukraine, and thereby, it will be considering the following factors: first, that Ukraine is not the first expression of expansionist will by Russia, which has already conquered other areas of the former USSR, so that there can be no assumption that Ukraine would end Russia’s quest to reconstitute the USSR under another name; and, second, Germany herself occupies a territory that, whilst never a part of the USSR proper, was certainly a territory that fell within the panoply of influence of the USSR: the former German Democratic Republic. If the former GDR were invaded, Germany would certainly respond in its defence. But the former GDR is not Ukraine.

Germany must decide what it now does based, in part, on gazing into a crystal ball. It’s a crystal ball that foretold, in 1939, that the declared limitation of Germany’s ambitions, as contained in the 1938 Treaty of Munich, was unreliable as a statement of its will. Germany itself has therefore shown to the world that statements of future intent cannot be counted on and these are statements that Russia has not even uttered in putative defence of its action in Ukraine; rather, it has left the interpretation of those ambitions wide open.

Perhaps Germany might ponder this: if Ukraine survives without Germany’s “offensive” assistance, just how much assistance would it expect from Ukraine if that nation eventually joined NATO and Russia did attack German territory? Historians may well identify Germany’s ambitions in sourcing fuel from Russia as a cause of this current conflict. But will they identify Germany as one of the prime contributors to its resolution in Ukraine’s favour?

United we are strong and United we will win were expressions of the will of the righteous Allies to put down the Axis of evil. It was of no matter that that was predicated on a declaration of war by one of them against the state whose acts triggered their response. They united because they believed in the virtue of their acts. How far does today’s Germany now believe in the virtue of its own?

That’s a crunch.

#standwithukraine