German-American Rift – Live on Stage

There was open conflict between Germany and the United States for all to see on stage at the Munich Security Conference. Chancellor Angela Merkel again vehemently spoke out against sending weapons to Ukraine, repeating her mantra that the problems there couldn’t be solved militarily. She explained her position by saying, “I cannot imagine any situation in which improved equipment for the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being so impressed that he believes he will lose militarily.”

A rebuttal came from Republican Senator and foreign policy expert Lindsay Graham: “Ms. Merkel, you are making a big mistake,” he countered, adding, “She can’t see how arming people who are willing to fight and die for their freedom makes things better,” and saying further that it was necessary to raise the costs of Russian intervention to show the world that the West would do more than just talk.

Graham said “Turning down a reasonable request to help oneself, is not our finest hour.” He also reminded the chancellor that other nations had suffered losses in protecting German freedoms during decades of cold war.

Graham may not officially speak for the U.S. government but the government itself is considering whether continued Russian aggression in Ukraine shouldn’t be answered with other measures that could compensate for the imbalance between the Ukrainian and Russian military.

Joe Biden Remains Ambivalent

A group of influential foreign policy experts from the Brookings Atlantic Council and Chicago Council on Global Affairs also made appropriate recommendations last week. The Obama administration, however, doesn’t appear to have taken a position on the issue as yet and has been sending out conflicting signals recently. Secretary of Defense nominee Carter Ashton was willing to go furthest when, at his Senate hearing, he admitted he was “very prone to” sending weapons to Ukraine; but in Munich, Vice President Joe Biden remained ambivalent.

On the one hand, Ashton used the same words as Chancellor Merkel saying that the United States also did not want to see a military solution. But in the same breath he also said, “We need to support Ukraine in defending themselves.”

In his personal meeting with Merkel, Biden gave the impression that in the absence of any peaceful solution to the problem, pressure on Russia had to be increased in the face of Russian escalation.

Support for arming Ukraine also came from Eastern Europe where Berlin’s position is also being criticized after Chancellor Merkel stated that even a better armed Ukrainian military was incapable of prevailing against Russia. But critics say that’s not the point. Radoslaw Sikorski, former Polish foreign minister and current president of the Ukrainian parliament says, “In this conflict, one side is trying to resolve the problem by military means; a truce usually comes about after both sides have determined they cannot win.” Using that logic, supplying Ukraine with arms would serve to halt Russian advances — thereby creating a stalemate — and bring Moscow to the negotiating table.

“Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score” — Frederick the Great

The Munich audience also showed clear signs of being divided. Merkel received acclaim for hesitating to jump on the bandwagon for arming Ukraine, especially from the Europeans. But the British minister of defense also was applauded when he quoted Frederick the Great who said, “Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without a score” and asked how Putin could be compelled to keep a peace deal if the Ukrainian military was equipped with obsolete weapons. The Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves also received applause for telling Merkel that Ukraine had only two alternatives if diplomacy failed: Be armed by the West or surrender to Russia. The Western experts and government representatives were openly divided on that point.

The disagreement about supplying weapons to Ukraine puts the Obama administration in a tight spot if talks with Putin break down and the West is forced to consider other solutions. In the final analysis, both sides of the Atlantic tried to present a united front to the Russians, and the German government assumed that the American government would not try to go it alone against Chancellor Merkel’s wishes.

That may actually be the case, considering Obama’s wait-and-see style when it comes to foreign policy. But it will not be easy to explain to the freedom-loving American people why the West refuses to defend a people whose freedom and democracy is under attack from a despotic aggressor — or at a minimum allow them the means to defend themselves.