Perhaps the most striking single feature of the Taurus Huddle is that all participants take breathtaking cheating for granted. No one sees any problems except of a technical nature in the idea of a de facto German attack on Russia as long as German input can be concealed or denied. That is the spirit in which the officers mull over details such as transferring targeting information by either secure data line (oh, the irony…) or maybe personal courier through Poland. (Germans painting a big fat target on Poland for Russians? Qui mal y pense!) Or how the company producing the Taurus (MBDA) could serve as a cut-out to hide the military’s involvement. Their ideas are surprisingly crude, but what’s more important is the sheer criminal energy and boyish recklessness they betray.
In war, all is fair, some may say. But there are two flaws with that response: First, Germany is not, actually, at war with Russia – and the participants of the meeting are not assuming it will be (at least not to begin with, and “the day after” seems not to interest them). Hence, secondly, while deception is a traditional and, principally, legitimate element of warfare, what these officers consider normal is something else, namely replacing deception within a war by covert operations against a state Germany is not and would not be at war with. That is the domain of, perhaps, intelligence services and special forces (and it’s still not a good idea). There are very good constitutional reasons why officers of the traditional military are not even supposed to think of such methods as either admissible or (listen up, Boris Pistorius!) “their job.”
A high point of this attitude occurs when one of the Taurus Huddlers admits that with all the anticipated German training of Ukrainians to handle the German missiles in Ukraine, at least the “first missions” would have to “take place by us in support.” Those who do not know German well may misread this phrase – muddled in the original, not merely in this translation – as simply reiterating that the Ukrainians would need help. But that would be wrong: Read carefully in the context of the preceding discussion, it clearly is a euphemism for Germans actually carrying out at least planning and targeting for these attacks.
Another remarkable feature of the Taurus Huddle is the extreme nonchalance with which highly sensitive and damaging information regarding NATO allies and Ukraine is tossed about. We hardly learn anything surprising about deep British, US, and French involvement in attacks on Russian forces. What is shocking is the slapdash attitude with which German officers shoot off their mouths about these covert operations that are not even their own. As to Ukraine, its air force must have been thrilled to hear the Luftwaffe confirming how few planes of a certain type (“in the single digits”) it has left. It is certain that none of this was news to Russia. But I can imagine Russian officers shaking their heads in a mix of sorry disbelief and wry amusement about their German counterparts.