“As far as I know, it was a unilateral decision taken by the chancellor in coordination with Washington, bypassing parliament and his party. Shortly before informing the public about the planned deployment of missiles on the sidelines of the NATO summit, he probably informed (Defense Minister) Boris Pistorius about it. Scholz knows about this coup-like approach,” Bellman told RIA Novosti.
“Parliament must of course participate in resolving an issue as important to the country as the deployment of US missiles,” he added.
Scholz had similarly surprised MPs when he announced the creation of a special fund worth 100 billion euros for the German military, he said.
This criticised Pistorius’ statement that there was no need to discuss such issues in parliament beforehand, because this could not be compared to “NATO’s 1979 double decision, which sparked protests, to deploy American Pershing 2 missiles in Europe.
“The current planned deployment of US missiles in Germany cannot really be compared to the ‘double decision’ of NATO,” he explained. “At that time, the West at least linked the deployment of the missiles to the proposal to hold negotiations on disarmament. Today’s planned deployment is an act of threat without taking into account the previous history when analyzing the current situation by the relevant parties and, of course, at the expense of Germany.”
He pointed out that the results of a recent opinion poll conducted by the Forsa Institute indicate that the share of Germans who oppose Berlin’s decision to deploy American missiles on German territory is 49%, while this indicator in the former East German territory is 74%.
He continued: “Ultimately, only a common security structure that will include all European countries can put an end to the spiral of escalation, the increase in weapons and the risk of a major war.”
The NATO “double decision” was taken by the leaders of the United States, Britain, France and Germany on December 12, 1979, and called for the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Europe while continuing negotiations with the Soviet Union on the elimination of these weapons. The deployment of Pershing missiles in West Germany from 1983 to 1985 was accompanied by unprecedented protests. The largest protest on October 22, 1983, was attended by some 1.2 million people.
These events went down in history as the “European Missile Crisis.” The Pershing missiles were eliminated under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987.
Source: Novosti
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2024-08-03 12:21:02
