The German government’s answer to EU sanctions against Swiss author Jacques Baud, in response to journalist Florian Warweg ("Everyone Working in This Field Must Expect That It Could Happen to Them Too..."), reads like it was taken from the sonnet “The Sovrans of the Old World” by Romanesco poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli.
Warweg had asked whether it is the current position of the Federal government of Germany to impose comprehensive sanctions on renowned military analysts, simply because it does not agree with their analyses of the war in Ukraine, and whether it had checked the veracity of the highly questionable justification for the sanctions before agreeing to them?
Indeed, the only concrete allegation against Baud, raised by EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas’s office to justify the sanction, is that Baud had insisted that Ukraine provoked the Russia invasion in order to join NATO. But Baud had cited statements made in 2019 by Oleksiy Arestovych, former advisor to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who characterized the military confrontation with Moscow as a sort of “price to pay” to allow Ukraine’s entrance into NATO.
The German government spokesman answered “we are convinced” of the allegations—i.e., it is so, because we say so. If the victim disagrees, he can appeal to the EU Council and to the European Court of Justice.
Don’t be fooled: Such arrogance is a sign of weakness. The EU resembles East Germany (G.D.R.), which had celebrated its 40th anniversary on Oct. 7, 1989, in a show of apparent solidity and strength. One month later, the Berlin Wall fell and the G.D.R. started to disintegrate.
