The Russia - Ukraine Conflict

African Peasant

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Ok breh.

Just for the record, Germans don't view business relationships in the same way that the anglo world does. Also the German sense of morality is more to do with practicalities than preachy naval gazing "principle" (as per the anglo world).

More recently internationally they have (in some corners) learned to parrot US/UK messaging but at the heart the question with them is "macht es sinn?". This coupled with their social tick for strctured negotiation at all levels of society, be that coallition politics, unions and wages, through to betriebsrat repsentation has ingrained this way of thinking in the populace.

Even "german hawks" (if such a thing could even have significant repsentation in modern germany) would opt for "negotiation" first.

Consensus drives modern Germany and so it is unsuprising when they opt for that rather than a more adversarial stance wrt to Russia. That does not mean that those significant softer elements of the German response are "pro russia".

They are a matter-of-fact driven people. With (and here comes the contradiction) a wild, deeply superstitious and illogical layer under that. A wild Beethoven if you will. The excessive rules in Germany reign that in and reign them into cooperation first type behaviour. After all "Ordnung musst sein".

I have been living on and off, in Germany for a long time now and I speak German.

You seem to understand the german mentality and society more than I do. So I believe you. Germany "softness" can be explained by what you described. However, I still think that Germany's attitude toward Russia is also due to more cold strategic considerations, at least when it comes to certain groups in the upper echelon. These two dimensions can coexist.
 

African Peasant

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Germany unvoluntarily doing the US a solid. Maybe they are both in it and Germany is playing the bad guy.

Cutting Russia off from SWIFT is a very dangerous tool that can backfire.
 
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