Lee Heidhues 9.16.2022
The Speaker was in The House today. Though the House she entered was not her usual place of business. It was Berlin. Historic center of European history.
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.16.2022
“We will persist until the guns are silent,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at a news conference in Berlin on Friday, alongside the leaders of the German, Ukrainian and European parliaments.
“It requires substantial security support, humanitarian assistance, economic assistance — and sanctions, sanctions, sanctions that make sure that Russia feels the pain of this.”
Pelosi touted the bipartisan support for Ukraine, which is no small feat in bitterly partisan Washington, D.C.
“This war must be won,” she added, promising more money to come.
It was against this backdrop that Pelosi met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Friday. They met once before in their current roles, just days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.
Pelosi’s main reason for the journey is a G7 meeting with parliamentary counterparts, and her encounter with the chancellor was brief. But it was a chance for the two allies to size each other up ahead of a winter that is likely to be critical for both.
Don’t say it too loudly, but Germany is on a war-like footing. It may not feel like it, because bombs aren’t falling on German cities and German troops aren’t fighting in other countries. Yet the fiscal response to the pandemic, climate change, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put Germany in a state of crisis.
Whether it’s through efforts to save jobs, secure energy supply or rebuild its military, Germany is raising debt and splashing out billions in ways it has rarely done since World War II. As often happens in war, some goods have become scarce, and inflation is surging.
“It’s hard, particularly in Germany, to say that word ‘war,’ but it’s also important to say it and understand what it means,” JD Bindenagel, a former senior US diplomat to Germany and now senior professor at Bonn University, told DW.
“The gas is hybrid warfare. The collateral damage is the inflation,” he added, referring to Russia’s throttling of its natural gas deliveries, on which Germany has long been dependent.
Top Photo – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz 9.16.2022
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