Peter Schwarz — Leading German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says Russia should be threatened with nuclear war

Topping John McCain, even discounting that this is being reported by WSWS?

One day before the crisis meeting on Ukraine in Minsk, a leading German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), published an editorial calling for NATO to militarily escalate the confrontation with Russia to the point of a nuclear attack. 

The conservative newspaper appeared on Tuesday with a front-page commentary by its co-editor, Berthold Kohler, calling for a policy of “deterrence” against Russia up to the “highest level.” 

Kohler accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of shrinking “from delivering weapons to Kiev that could entangle the West in a proxy war,” even though Russian President Vladimir Putin was prepared “to escalate the dispute to the brink of a nuclear conflict.” 

“If the West maintains its view that the conflict ‘cannot be solved militarily,’” Kohler warned, “then, in the worst case, the Kremlin could allow its ‘separatists’ to march to Kiev.” 

He then posed the rhetorical question: “How can one deal with an aggressive and expansionist power that disregards the fundamental principles of peace in Europe?” The answer, he said, was “unpleasant but inevitable. Deterrence, all the way up to its highest level.” 

Kohler clearly had nuclear weapons in mind, writing: “Would Putin have dared to occupy Crimea if Ukraine also possessed nuclear weapons?” 

He left no doubt about his willingness to use such weapons. NATO had to make clear to the Kremlin, he wrote, “that any breach-of-area will be countered with a military response and the willingness of the West to go up the escalation ladder, in the worst case, even faster than the Russians.” 

Kohler complained that, “of course, no one in the West speaks openly” of such scenarios, because they contravene “the existing dogma of de-escalation.” 

This is the unadulterated voice of German imperialism, heard previously in World War I and World War II. The FAZ publisher is willing to contemplate and threaten a nuclear war that would cost billions of lives and very likely spell the end of human civilization. 

WSWS

Leading German newspaper says Russia should be threatened with nuclear war

Peter Schwarz