I broadly agree with Laura Pitel’s assessment of the situation with the “debt brake” here in Germany (“Germany’s next leader must confront a deeply embedded debt brake ‘fetish’”, Report, November 12). And, yes, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in the lead-up to the election in February. But the sentence pondering how much Germany will need to borrow in order to “invest in defence and boost military aid to Ukraine, especially as US assistance is expected to cease once Trump is sworn into office” jumped out at me. It’s a question that will certainly be triggering discussion in many other European governments too.
But what are we thinking here: for Europe to fund a conflict while the US is engaging in negotiations? That sounds like a sure-fire ticket to chaos!
I don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t agree with what Vladimir Putin has done but the war in Ukraine has been grinding on for almost three years now so I believe that it is time to try negotiation. Not to nail our colours to the mast and blindly carry on with a seemingly eternal “bloodbath by proxy”. So let’s step back and reassess the situation . . . with an open mind rather than with our “Trump/Putin blinkers” on.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany