'We still need gas from Russia': In 2022, Annalena Baerbock Warned of 'Popular Unrest if Deliveries are stopped'
Sometimes 'old news' are better than current affairs, as a few telling remarks of the surprisingly prescient German foreign minister show
There are these days when I seriously question whether or not the current stock of politicians understands ‘the internet’. Enter Annalena Baerbock, international laughingstock and current foreign minister of Germany, who, back in the ‘olden days’ of summer 2022 said the following to Der Tagesspiegel. (Remember, Ms. Baerbock said these things before the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.)
As always, translation, emphases, and bottom lines mine.
‘We still need gas from Russia’: Baerbock warns of popular unrest if deliveries are stopped
The Foreign Minister speaks ‘somewhat exaggeratedly’ about possible unrest. But Germany would then ‘no longer be able to provide support for Ukraine’.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned of the possible domestic political consequences of a gas supply stop—but then described her statement as a deliberate exaggeration. The Green politician emphasised the need for Russian gas deliveries on Wednesday evening in Hannover at the ‘RND on Site’ event series organised by Germany’s state broadcasters’ editorial network.
Baerbock's statement referred to discussions with Canada, where a gas turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was being serviced. She is now on her way back to Russia.
The discussions were about compliance with sanctions against Russia in the war of aggression against Ukraine. Because of the punitive measures, the manufacturer Siemens Energy was not allowed to deliver the turbine back to Russia. This required an exemption from the Canadian government. [Canada, of course, in part due to its sizeable, rabidly Russophobic population of Ukrainian ancestry, cited ‘sanctions vs. Russia’, levelled in the wake of its ‘special military operation’, as the reason for the administrative-bureaucratic measures blocking the return of said gas turbine]
‘If we don’t get the gas turbine, then we won’t get any more gas, and then we won’t be able to provide any support for Ukraine at all because we’ll then be busy with popular uprisings’, said Baerbock, reconstructing the negotiations with Canada in an interview with RND. She also discussed the burden on the population caused by high gas prices.
Even if her sentence was ‘somewhat exaggerated’, gas from Russia is still needed, said Baerbock. ‘It is the federal government’s job to cushion the social consequences’, she continued [is that the gov’t’s job?].
Asked what exactly she meant by her statements, Baerbock said on Thursday during a visit to Barleben in Saxony-Anhalt: ‘I deliberately put it in a very pointed way.’
She wanted to make it clear why Germany spoke out against a complete embargo on gas and oil from Russia, while others were in favour of such an embargo as a consequence of the Russian attack on Ukraine.
In such a case, people would have had to be told ‘from one day to the next’ that there was no more gas and without alternatives, said Baerbock. ‘We obviously didn’t think that was the right way, the safe way.’ [no shit analysis]
Nevertheless, the Foreign Minister was convinced that Germany's willingness to help Ukraine will continue. ‘I experience a solidarity in this country that is unimaginable’, she said at the RND event [whipped up media agit-prop plus long-standing Russophobia among the Transatlanticist/Neocon elites, of course, has nothing to do with these ‘experiences’ whatsoever].
After maintenance was completed on Nord Stream 1, gas delivery through the German-Russian gas pipeline started again on Thursday morning. Nord Stream officially announced in the morning that it had ‘successfully completed all planned maintenance work within the scheduled period’ [note, yet again, that this is late July 2022, i.e., a mere two months before the destruction of Nord Stream, most likely carried out by the US]
Baerbock was also irritated by statements made by Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) about the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to start a war that violates international law and that harms not only the Ukrainian people, but also the Russian people, said Baerbock. ‘We are not dealing with a rational government here.’ [projection shall be thy name]
Baerbock continued: ‘The statements surprise me a bit, because neither the German federal government nor any other country in Europe ever wanted war on this continent again.’
Bottom Lines
There are two more rather not-too-related paragraphs in this piece, which I omitted as we’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Ms. Baerbock, of course, is entirely out of her depth here and everywhere else.
A bit more knowledge about ‘history’ comes in handy, esp. if you consider her final statement about war in Europe. We shall, therefore, once again talk about the NATO-led war of aggression vs. Yugoslavia in 1999.
For crucial insights, we turn to Chris Clark’s (Regius Prof., U Cambridge) bestseller The Sleepwalkers (London: Allen Lane, 2012), whose work—as establishmentarian as any—gives away the game (on pp. 456-7, my emphases):
It would certainly be misleading to think of the Austrian note [the ultimatum to Serbia delivered on 28 July 1914] as an anomalous regression into a barbaric and bygone era before the rise of sovereign states. The Austrian note was a great deal milder, for example, than the ultimatum presented by NATO to Serbia-Yugoslavia in the form of the Rambouillet Agreement drawn up in February and March 1999 to force the Serbs into complying with NATO policy in Kosovo. Its provisions included the following:
‘NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access through the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, manoeuvre, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations.’
Henry Kissinger was doubtless right when he described Rambouillet as ‘a provocation, an excuse to start bombing’, whose terms were unacceptable even to the most moderate Serbian. The demands of the Austrian note pale by comparison.
Further particulars can be found in the below-linked piece from summer 2022:
I wish to close on a somewhat less depressing note.
You know, if we look at esp. the first half of the 20th century, Germany and its people were not exactly known for their clown-like manners and behaviours.
I find it quite ‘refreshing’, so to speak, that, less than a century later, that is, in fact, how other countries now perceive Germany and its current political leaders: as bumbling morons who don’t know what they are doing, saying, or thinking.
Sadly, as always, it will be the regular people who will continue to suffer these morons.