WHY DO foolhardy spoilers insist on causing embarrassment? Why must out-of-step fools upset well-steered apple-carts? Why did German vice-admiral Kay-Achim Schonbach open his big mouth in far-off Mumbai — and spill so many beans?
 
Many or most US media overlooked it — that is, buried it. Or emasculated it. In Germany they couldn’t fully ignore it — though unpleasant as a messy cat cadaver near the red carpet at a major film event. This was no star-studded premiere, however, but a dangerous, frightening political and military programme and the disturbing element was not a raggedy, dead alley-cat but the elegantly-uniformed boss of the German navy. Yet here, too, a demise was involved — that of the vice-admiral’s career.
 
What sin earned him such a fate? When asked about the month-long Nato-Washington campaign against Putin and Russia, based only on vague, dubious assumptions and prophesies by anonymous experts yet rushing headlong toward military catastrophe, this top-level expert had the temerity to puncture the foundation of the whole campaign with one word: “Nonsense.”
 
Is Schonbach a secret left-over leftist? By no means. Indeed, his views on other matters — like China — are far from pacifist. But in just a few words he recalled the glass-shattering voice of little Oskar Matzerath in Gunter Grass’s the Tin Drum. When asked “What do you think Russia really wants?” this navy boss responded: “Is Russia really interested in adding a tiny little strip of Ukraine to its territory? No, that is nonsense. I think Putin is using pressure because he is able to. He knows that he can split the European Union. What he really wants is respect.

“He wants respect on a basis of equality. My god, give him respect. That costs so little, really nothing at all. If you ask me — but nobody asks me: it is easy to pay him the respect which he desires and really deserves. Russia is an ancient country, Russia is an important country. Even we, India, Germany, need Russia, we need Russia against China.”

While his reasoning may be questionable, his taboo-breaking disclosure, based on inside knowledge, was rendered even more troublesome by his next contribution to the discussion: “Crimea is gone... and will never come back, that is a fact.”
 
Schonbach, who had been commanding an armed frigate waving the German flag in Indo-Pacific waters, was speaking to a group of Indian military men in Mumbai. Thus, his advocacy of lining up with Russia against China was not surprising — nor was it realistic. But the revelation by a top insider in the Nato military machine was like a gut punch to all the hysteria about those deep dark secret plans of Putin.

The new minister of defence, Christine Lambrecht, a Social Democrat, suspended him immediately from all duties and titles. Her earlier predecessor, Ursula von der Leyen, now European Union boss, announced that the EU has allocated over €17 billion in grants and loans to Ukraine since 2014 and now plans €1.2 billion more.