Putin’s War Is Europe’s 9/11
On the morning of Feb. 24, as Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, German army chief Alfons Mais got up and wrote on LinkedIn that he had “never ever expected to experience war again” in Europe. After years of budget cuts, he observed, the Bundeswehr, Germany’s military, “stands naked. The options we can offer our government to support the [NATO] alliance are extremely limited.”
Only three days later, on Feb. 27, after Putin had put his nuclear deterrent forces on alert, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz committed an extra 100 billion euros (around $112 billion) to his country’s 2022 defense budget. In another major turnaround, he also authorized third countries such as the Netherlands to ship German-made defensive weapons to Ukraine, and he supported a call for the European Union to finance the supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine. All this, he said
