Mr Vad, what do you say to the delivery of the 40 Marder tanks to Ukraine just announced by Chancellor Scholz?


This is a military escalation, also in the perception of the Russians – even if the Marder, which is over 40 years old, is not a wonder weapon. We are going down a slippery slope. This could develop a momentum of its own that we can no longer control. Of course it was and is right to support Ukraine and of course Putin’s invasion is not in conformity with international law – but now the consequences must finally be considered!

And what could the consequences be?


Are the tanks being delivered in order to achieve a willingness to negotiate? Does one want to reconquer the Donbass or the Crimea? Or is the aim to defeat Russia altogether? There is no realistic end-state definition. And without an overall political and strategic concept, arms deliveries are pure militarism.

What does that mean?


We have a military-operational stalemate, but we cannot solve it militarily. Incidentally, this is also the opinion of the American Chief of Staff, Mark Milley. He has said that a military victory for Ukraine is not to be expected and that negotiations are the only possible way. Anything else means the pointless attrition of human lives.

General Milley’s statement caused much anger in Washington and was also strongly criticised publicly.


He spoke an uncomfortable truth. A truth, by the way, that was hardly published at all in the German media. The interview with Milley by CNN did not appear prominently anywhere, yet he is the Chief of Staff of our leading Western power. What is being conducted in Ukraine is a war of attrition. And it is a war of attrition, with nearly 200,000 soldiers killed and wounded on both sides, 50,000 civilian deaths and millions of refugees. Milley has thus drawn a parallel to the First World War that could not be more apt. In the First World War, the so-called ‘Blood Mill of Verdun’ alone, conceived as a battle of attrition, led to the deaths of nearly a million young French and Germans. They died for nothing at that time. The refusal of the warring parties to negotiate thus led to millions of additional deaths. This strategy did not work militarily then – and will not do so now.

You, too, have been attacked for calling for negotiations.


Yes, as has the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, General Eberhard Zorn, who, like me, has warned against overestimating the Ukrainians’ regionally limited offensives in the summer months. Military experts – who know what goes on among the intelligence services, what it looks like on the ground and what war really means – are largely excluded from the discourse. They do not fit in with the media’s opinion-forming. To a large extent, we are witnessing a media conformity that I have never seen before in the Federal Republic of Germany. This is pure opinion-making. And not on the orders of the state, as we know from totalitarian regimes, but out of pure media self-empowerment.

You are being attacked by the media across the board, from BILD to FAZ and Spiegel, and so are the 500,000 people who signed the Open Letter to the Chancellor initiated by Alice Schwarzer.


That’s right. Fortunately, Alice Schwarzer has her own independent media to be able to open this discourse at all. It probably wouldn’t have worked in the dominant German media. The majority of the population has been against further arms deliveries for a long time and according to the latest polls. But none of this is being reported. There is no longer any fair, open discourse on the war in Ukraine, and I find that very disturbing. It shows me how right Helmut Schmidt was. He said in a conversation with Chancellor Merkel: Germany is and remains a nation at risk.

What is your assessment of the Foreign Minister’s policy?


Military operations must always be linked to attempts to bring about political solutions. The one-dimensionality of the current foreign policy is hard to tolerate. It is very much focused on weapons. But the main task of foreign policy is and remains diplomacy, reconciliation of interests, understanding and conflict resolution. That is what I miss here. I’m glad that we finally have a female foreign minister in Germany, but it’s not enough to just engage in war rhetoric and walk around Kiev or the Donbass wearing a helmet and flak jacket. That is not enough.

Yet Baerbock is a member of the Greens, the former peace party.


I don’t understand the mutation of the Greens from a pacifist to a war party. I personally don’t know any Green who has even done military service. Anton Hofreiter is for me the best example of this double standard. Antje Vollmer, on the other hand, whom I would count among the ‘original’ Greens, calls things by their name. And the fact that a single party has so much political influence that it can manoeuvre us into a war is very worrying.

If Chancellor Scholz had taken you over from his predecessor and you were still the chancellor’s military advisor, what would you have advised him to do in February 2022?


I would have advised him to support Ukraine militarily, but in a measured and prudent way, to avoid the effect of a slippery slope into a war party. And I would have advised him to influence our most important political ally, the USA. Because the key to a solution of the war lies in Washington and Moscow. I have liked the Chancellor’s course in recent months. But the Greens, the FDP and the bourgeois opposition – flanked by a largely unanimous media accompaniment – are exerting such pressure that the chancellor can hardly resist it.

And what if the Leopard tanks are also delivered?


Then the question arises again as to what the tank deliveries will be used for. To take over Crimea or the Donbass, the Marder and Leopard are not enough. In eastern Ukraine, in the Bachmut area, the Russians are clearly on the advance. They will probably have completely conquered the Donbass before long. One must only consider the numerical superiority of the Russians over Ukraine. Russia can mobilise up to two million reservists. The West can send 100 Marders and 100 Leopards, but they won’t change the overall military situation. And the all-important question is how to get through such a conflict with a belligerent nuclear power – by the way, the strongest nuclear power in the world! – without getting into a third world war. And that is exactly what the politicians and journalists here in Germany are not getting into their heads!

The argument is that Putin does not want to negotiate and that he must be put in his place so that he does not continue to rampage in Europe.


It’s true that one must send a signal to the Russians: This far and no further! Such a war of aggression must not be allowed to continue. That’s why it’s right for NATO to increase its military presence in the East and for Germany to join in. But it is not true that Putin refuses to negotiate. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians were ready for a peace agreement at the beginning of the war at the end of March, beginning of April 2022. Then nothing came of it. After all, the grain agreement was also negotiated during the war by the Russians and Ukrainians with the involvement of the United Nations.

Now the dying continues.


You can continue to wear down the Russians, which in turn means hundreds of thousands of deaths, but on both sides. And it means the further destruction of Ukraine. What is left of this country? It will be razed to the ground. Ultimately, that is no longer an option for Ukraine either. The key to resolving the conflict does not lie in Kiev, nor does it lie in Berlin, Brussels or Paris, it lies in Washington and Moscow. It is ridiculous to say that Ukraine must decide.

With this interpretation, one is soon regarded as a conspiracy theorist in Germany… 

I am a convinced transatlanticist. I’ll tell you honestly, when in doubt, I’d rather live under an American hegemony than under a Russian or Chinese one. In the beginning, this war was only a domestic political dispute in Ukraine. It started back in 2014, between the Russian-speaking ethnic groups and the Ukrainians themselves. So it was a civil war. Now, after Russia’s invasion, it has become an interstate war between Ukraine and Russia. It is also a struggle for the independence of Ukraine and its territorial integrity. That is all true. But it is not the whole truth. It is also a proxy war between the USA and Russia, and there are very concrete geopolitical interests at stake in the Black Sea region.

Which are?


The Black Sea region is as important to the Russians and their Black Sea fleet as the Caribbean or the region around Panama is to the USA. As important as the South China Sea and Taiwan for China. As important as Turkey’s protection zone, which they have established against the Kurds in violation of international law. Against this background and for strategic reasons, the Russians cannot get out either. Apart from the fact that in a referendum in Crimea, the population would certainly decide in favour of Russia.

So how is this going to continue?


If the Russians were forced by massive Western intervention to withdraw from the Black Sea region, then before they step off the world stage they would certainly resort to nuclear weapons. I find naive the belief that a nuclear strike by Russia would never happen. According to the motto, ‘They’re just bluffing’.

But what could be the solution?


One should simply ask the people in the region, i.e. in the Donbass and Crimea, to whom they want to belong. The territorial integrity of Ukraine should be restored, with certain Western guarantees. And the Russians also need a security guarantee. So there should be no NATO membership for Ukraine. Since the Bucharest summit in 2008, it has been clear that this is the Russians’ red line.

And what do you think Germany can do?


We must ration our military support in such a way that we don’t slide into a Third World War. None of those who went to war in 1914 with such great enthusiasm were still of the opinion afterwards that it was the right thing to do. If the goal is an independent Ukraine, one must also ask oneself what the perspective of a European order involving Russia should look like. Russia will not simply disappear from the map. We must avoid driving the Russians into the arms of the Chinese and thus shifting the multipolar order to our disadvantage. We also need Russia, as the leading power of a multi-ethnic state, to avoid flare-ups of fighting and wars. And frankly, I don’t see Ukraine becoming a member of the EU, let alone NATO. In Ukraine, as in Russia, we have high corruption and the rule of oligarchs. What we in Turkey – rightly – denounce in terms of the rule of law, we also have that problem in Ukraine.

Mr. Vad, what do you think awaits us in 2023?


A broader front for peace must build up in Washington. And this senseless actionism in German politics must finally come to an end. Otherwise we will wake up one morning and find ourselves in the middle of the Third World War.

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