This was published in German here: https://www.blog-der-republik.de/gruene-und-krieg-partei-austritt-des-gruendungsmitglieds-ulfried-geuter/

The below translation is from google chrome.

With the author's permission, we are publishing below the statement regarding his resignation from the Green Party. An extremely accurate and excellently formulated analytical text. The Greens' current departure from their roots in the peace movement and the turn towards a dangerous "olive-green" aberration could not be more accurately stated.

Prof. Dr. Ulfried Geuter:

“I have thought a lot about it and would like to help counteract the madness in current German politics, even with the tiny contribution of my reasons for leaving.”

Letter of resignation:

I was once happy and proud to be a Green. When the red-green federal government decided, against the combined pressure of the conservative press, not to take part in the war of aggression by US and British troops on Iraq. When the Green German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer opposed the US Defense Minister Rumsfeld at the Munich Security Conference in 2003 and thus dared to confront the hegemonic policy of the NATO partner USA, while Angela Merkel, as opposition leader, went to the USA in a unique act of undermining German foreign policy traveled to assure George Bush that a CDU-FDP government would have taken part in this attack. I could be happy and proud to be a Green.

Today, when Anton Hofreiter and Annalena Baerbock have the say in green foreign and security policy, I can no longer do it.

Today, when a Green Foreign Minister does not have the courage to summon an ambassador who insults the Federal President and the Chancellor, and who admires a politician whose organization took part in pogroms against the Jewish population in Ukraine during the Second World War alongside the Wehrmacht involved.

Today, when the primary goal of green foreign policy is no longer to end wars and avoid suffering, but where it only has one direction: to supply more and more powerful weapons in order to then possibly be able to negotiate “with the gun on the table”. . Where green foreign policy wants to achieve peace through victory in war, when Annalena Baerbock states that the goal is that Ukraine must “win” the war. Green foreign policy is driven by this goal - and is therefore no different from the foreign policy of the once ardent George Bush admirer Friedrich Merz and the arms lobbyist Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. Anyone who only sets the goal of winning has already surrendered to the logic of war, is mentally at war and no longer has the power to act against the war itself and to politically pursue ending it as the highest goal. The American historian Barbara Tuchman used the example of the First World War to show that nobody actually wanted this war, but Europe fell to pieces because everyone got involved in war as a political means.

I became a member on October 5, 1978 at the founding meeting of the Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection, which became the newly founded Green Party in 1980. So you can't be a member of the Green Party for longer than me. Over 45 years. They're coming to an end. As Antje Vollmer wrote in her last essay, the Greens have sacrificed their peace and environmental policy ideals “for the mere goal of playing in the great geopolitical power poker.” That's why I'm leaving.

The final deciding factor was Anton Hofreiter's attack against Olaf Scholz's sensible policy of not wanting to deliver Taurus missiles, an attack in coalition with Merz and Strack-Zimmermann. Hofreiter describes Scholz’s refusal as “irresponsible”. Joe Biden, on the other hand, declares that he does not want to deliver long-range ATACMS in order to avoid a third world war. According to military officials such as ex-Brigadier General Erich Vad, former military policy advisor to Angela Merkel, the delivery of Taurus would escalate the war. Does Hofreiter take responsibility for this? And for the fact that the supply of every additional heavy weapon blurs the border beyond which NATO becomes a warring party, as ex-Brigadier General Helmut Ganser says?

What exactly is the aim of supplying first Leopard tanks and now Taurus cruise missiles? They cannot change the fact that Russia has greater potential to escalate the war than Ukraine. Should more weapons be delivered if Russia continues to escalate? “Do the proponents [of arms deliveries] not see the risk of escalation to the point of nuclear war?” asked Christian Ströbele in April 2022. They seem to be playing with it today in order to feel morally on the right side.

Some time ago I read an interview with a Ukrainian politician in which he said that he was not afraid of a nuclear war because the technologically superior USA would be faster than Russia in a nuclear exchange. How blind do you have to be to speculate on the devastation of the northern hemisphere for the sake of justice? Annalena Baerbock and Anton Hofreiter also seem to be blinded by the supposed superiority of Western weapons and do not shy away from military confrontation with the world's strongest nuclear power. Erich Vad has realistically pointed out that Russia would rather resort to nuclear weapons than strategically withdraw from the Black Sea region. John F. Kennedy once said in 1962 that nuclear powers must avoid confrontations “that leave an adversary with only the choice of humiliating withdrawal or nuclear war.”

Mark Milley, US chief of staff until September 2023, said there can be no military solution. Former NATO general Harald Kujat describes it as fanaticism when politicians say that Ukraine will win because it has to win. Russia has already moved tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and has ten times more tactical nuclear weapons than NATO has in Europe. Their use poses a real risk. Brigadier General (ret.) Helmut Ganser, former German representative at NATO, criticizes the fact that this is being carelessly overlooked. And he writes that the justified indignation over Russia's war against Ukraine should not block the "taking of paths that prevent far worse things."

There is no sign of this in Green foreign policy. Not a single initiative by the Foreign Minister to at least reach a ceasefire. Instead, she declares to the Council of Europe: “We are fighting a war against Russia,” showing how she thinks. Green foreign policy today has the main goal of humiliating Russia, even though the Russian leadership has made it clear on numerous occasions that it would rather resort to nuclear weapons than allow itself to be humiliated. Medvedev said in February last year that if the US wanted Russia to be defeated, it had the right to resort to nuclear weapons. Delivering Taurus to win means nothing other than pursuing a policy that aims to force Russia's defeat militarily.

Anyone who thinks of solidarity primarily in terms of arms deliveries understands solidarity in military terms as a brotherhood in arms. Those who issue the slogan “Continue to victory” do not think about the numerous additional dead, maimed and traumatized people that this policy will cost. Why is protecting borders more valuable to Green foreign policymakers than protecting lives?

At school I once learned the old Roman wisdom that you should think about the end in everything you do. Where should the politics of wanting to win lead? The unconditional surrender of Russia that Zelensky demands can only be achieved in an epic war, a Third World War, that could devastate Europe or even the Northern Hemisphere.

And if Russia could be defeated without nuclear war, would it be a less dangerous Russia? Germany fought World War II because it was defeated, humiliated by reparations and enormously weakened economically. It stimulated the economy through a war economy, which from the late 1930s could only continue to exist as a predatory economy. Wouldn't a weakened Russia be a far more dangerous Russia?

Baerbock can't think that far ahead. In February 2022, she announced that she wanted to “ruin” Russia through sanctions. None of this happened. As a result of the sanctions, Russia's ties with the world's largest countries, China and India, and with the African continent have been strengthened. The formation of a bloc between the BRICS states became solidified, including the first joint naval maneuvers by Russia, China and South Africa.

Anyone who uses a word like “ruin” wants to humiliate without thinking that Germany waged war to destroy Bolshevik Russia. But lessons from history are no longer being learned in Green foreign and security policy anyway. She has become blind to history. And driven to preserve Western hegemony.

On October 3, 2023, Annalena Baerbock only thanked the Western Allies for reunification, although the Russian leadership did much to deserve it, while England tried to prevent it. Either Baerbock doesn't know this or she is distorting the facts. Both disqualify her for her position. She disrespectfully stayed away from Gorbachev's funeral.

With the Greens, those who do not want to acknowledge that the West, Europe and North America, have lost their role as hegemon have been given the say in foreign policy. Baerbock is trying to replace the lost military and economic dominance with moral dominance. Therefore, she travels the world as a teacher and announces everywhere what “should” or “must” happen. This is called values-driven foreign policy and means calling China's head of state a dictator during an official visit or shouting to Lavrov with a raised fist at the G-20 summit: "Stop the war." With such gestures she can feel like a righteous person and score points with those who in Germany confuse outrage with reason and want to feel comfortable with our foreign minister showing them to be one of the good guys and stand up to the bad guys. She does not stand up for Assange, and Elon Musk is not criticized when he has his Starlink satellite network around Crimea switched off in order to prevent the Russian Black Sea Fleet from being sunk with satellite-supported underwater drones. He's an American. When Ricarda Lang says in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung that Russia's attack is directed “against democracy as such,” analysis is replaced by pure chatter.

Baerbock's value-driven foreign policy substitutes outrage for reason and thus succumbs to the populist pull of pacifying the feelings of a supporter longing for justice. Baerbock hasn't achieved anything so far. She presents herself as a good guy instead of using diplomatic means to try to do something, even if it's just a little bit better. This foreign policy does not have a politically effective strategy. Because acting strategically does not mean saying what you want, but rather working for what is possible for the well-being of people and your own interests. The clever Egon Bahr once said that international politics is about the interests of states. Baerbock's politics do not follow interests, but rather moral imperatives. The former head of the policy department at the Foreign Office, Hellmut Hoffmann, aptly characterized this attitude as follows: “Justice prevails, even if the world perishes.”

Before Russia invaded Ukraine, being against corrupt regimes was considered part of the Green Party's human rights policy. According to Transparency International's corruption index, Ukraine was ranked 122nd at the start of the war. No country in Europe was considered more corrupt than Ukraine. The comedian Zelensky was elevated to office by the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky through the power of television.

Anyone who ran against the interests of the oligarchs in Ukraine had no chance. Today, Kolomoisky himself is in prison, while Zelensky is expanding his autocracy through martial law. This will all be forgotten.

Lavrov said in Beijing last year that peace talks would be possible if a new world order emerged without US hegemony. We can't trust that. But as Barbara Tuchman has noted, you have to be able to see the enemy's perspective in order to avoid slipping into war. Green foreign policy, however, insists on defending Western hegemony. If the West is not prepared to recognize that the world has become multipolar and that it has lost its supremacy over the world, and instead continues to fight for this supremacy through moral, economic and military means, it must expect that the world order will collapse in a major way World War III will change, just as the dominance of Europe and Japan was broken by World War II. Anyone who believes that Russia will never use the nuclear weapons it has is naive. Putin constantly points out their readiness for action, and he has already shown in conventional war that he does not shy away from escalation. Russia's possible actions can only be understood based on the forces of history and the inherent logic of wars. Anyone who thinks that Russia would never use nuclear weapons essentially considers themselves to be the ones who actually “understand Putin” because they believe they can rationally calculate his possible actions.

The Greens from the founding generation still knew that there would be no winner in Europe if a war broke out here. Today's Greens join in the chorus of wanting to fight to victory, led by Hofreiter and Baerbock, whom the clever Green Party Antje Vollmer described as the “shrillest trumpet of the new antagonistic NATO strategy”. I have nothing in common with this policy, which follows the logic of war and puts the security of Europe and the world at risk in order to feel like the most righteous of the righteous. That's why I'm leaving the Greens.