Whatever. I am as upset
about war as you are. Every war upsets me, no matter where
in the world and when in the past or present (e.g., the
"civilised western world's" war against Yugoslavia, in 1999,
admitted to have been illegal by our former chancellor, Mr
Schroeder). War must not be the "continuation
of politics with other
means". Diplomacy, negotiation, balancing
interests, must be the only way of settling conflicts. But
what if one party to a conflict stubbornly refuses to
oblige? Of course, war is the "ultima
irratio", madness if you like. But wars have
prehistories and contexts, they do not start out of the
blue. Prehistories and contexts should be carefully studied
in order to fairly put the blame on those involved. In
particular, putting the blame on one person is imho always
too great a simplification. For what it is worth: Hegel
would certainly not agree to that kind of
oversimplification. (Jokingly calling Napoleon the"world's spirit on horseback" he
actually points out that the self-declared French "emperor"
is an embodiment (of potentially many) of something much
bigger, transcending the individual, and underlying the
dialectic challenge and response dynamics of interacting and
evolving societies.)
Regarding the current war in eastern
Europe there is a long prehistory, and the (geopolitical)
context has been the subject of numerous academic and
semi-academic treatises among which Mr Brzezinski´s seminal text "The Grand Chessboard" stands
out. Another academic commentator is John Mearsheimer who discusses
the
current
situation with - inter alia - Ray McGovern, a former CIA
analyst, on Consortium News. As to the prehistory I'd
recommend watching "Ukraine on Fire", a
documentary produced by Oliver Stone that covers a large
ground, practically beginning with the end of the
Austro-Hungarian empire and then focusing on the civil war
that broke out in late 2013, early 2014, and that since took
some 14000 lives in the two eastern break-away provinces
around Donezk and Lugansk. What struck me most when I began
reading about the Ukraine-complex was the extent of
Ukrainians' support of and collaboration with the Nazi
invaders in 1941- 1945. They greatly contributed - of their
own accord - to the Holocaust in that part of Europe. These
people's descendants are just as crazy and dangerous. They had
their hands strengthened in the course of the Maidan events
and aftermath. They were the ones who inflicted the most pain
and suffering on their fellow-countrymen in Donezk and Lugansk
(of which little was reported in our standard media because it
was not considered opportune).
Much has been written and put online,
about the run-up to the current tragic situation. Facts are:
In late autumn last year the Russian government probed into
the US-Americans´ and NATO's
willingness to stop luring (or goading) the Ukraine into
formally joining the Alliance. It already had become clear
that the Ukrainian powers-that-be (backed by the US) obviously
had no intention whatsoever to comply with the so called
Minsk2 agreement. In their démarche the Russians defined their
lines. They wanted to negotiate (they even met their
counterparts in Geneva, Vienna and elsewhere - Brussels, I
think) and their demands were not unreasonable and
transparently laid out: non-alignment of Ukraine with either
NATO or Russia, yet guaranteeing Ukraine's independence and
sovereignty by all parties concerned, Donbass autonomy. These
demands were pooh-poohed and dismissed.
To wit, there was even a precedent of
sorts: the Cuban crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union,
responding to the deployment of US missiles in Turkey, shipped
missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba. We all remember what
happened (I was fifteen at the time). Razor´s edge. We do not want this to
happen again.
So far, reactions in the "West" were way
off the mark. Germany has finally joined the warriors - big
time. Up until now there were only skirmishes (like in Mali,
Kosovo, Afghanistan - bad enough). Now it's getting serious.
Now they are supplying weapons to war parties ignoring past
pledges, and set aside an extra 100 billion to beef up the
military; German neo-nazis (of which there are and were many
in our so called Bundeswehr) join the newly established
Ukrainian "légion". Ugly, ugly. May they be
happy with cutting all economic ties, sanctioning to their
heart's content, sawing off the branch they are sitting on,
boosting gas and oil prices no end. One of the ugliest
reactions, however, is the dismissal of Valéry Gergiev, chief
conductor of the Munich Philharmonic, whose employers were
probably bowing to their US masters who forbade Anna Netrebko
to keep singing at the NY Met. Back to the middle ages while
the language gets more and more Orwellian. It´s inquisition time. ("I renounce
Satan and all his work and ways, and surrender myself to You, O
triune Dollar, US, NATO, and our western
values, in belief, obedience, and the earnest resolution to
remain faithful to
You until my end. Amen.") That upsets me too.
Greatly. I do not succumb to pressure to conform, even at the
risk of not belonging any more.
Well, I hope I did not upset you, trying
to present my perspective gained from many sources that seemed
sufficiently plausible. Whatever we know of the wider world,
we know it through some variant of hearsay. That´s what makes me deeply mistrust
our media and keeps me open to changing my mind. Never trust
war reporting, including photographic (that's the worst). But:
there are limits to this openness to changing my mind,
fundamental principles, axioms, as it were, like in
mathematics. One of them is "audiatur et altera pars", well
known in Roman jurisprudence.
31 March 2022
I am not surprised you are shocked
by Germany's newfound warmongering. But this time we are on
the side of the good guys in the trenches, aren't we?.
Hurray! Jane and I are also shocked, appalled and disgusted.
I am attaching an e-version (pdf) of Brzezinski´s ominous "Grand Chessboard", subtitled "American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives". I think it is an interesting read. To
get the gist of it scanning the Conclusion chapter probably
suffices. It is strangely abstract as there is practically
no mention in it of real human beings. There are nations,
states, countries, neatly distributed around the globe, with
Eurasia, the biggest and most resourceful land mass, and
hence the biggest and most important turf of the game.
Strangely enough, in Brz's world, nations (etc.) - not
people - seem to have desires, volition and interests.
I had always assumed that only people, individuals, could
desire or be interested in whatever. Egon Bahr, a respected
West-German politician (in the late sixties and early
seventies he negotiated, as you may remember, key treaties
with Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and Valentin
Falin who later became the Soviet ambassador to Germany)
famously told a bunch of high school students: "International politics is never about
democracy or human rights. It is about the interests of states. Remember
that, no matter what you are told in history class." Although his
intention was laudable and what he said is basically
correct, I think he chose the wrong word. He should have
chosen "power" instead of "interests" (which is way too
diplomatic a term and too fuzzy). And he should have
specified what or - rather - who he means by "state".
In the same vein, Brz does not specify who is
responsible for moving the pieces on his fantastic
chessboard. Instead he uses a convenient but obscuring
"façon de parler". Who is in power? In the old days (say a
couple of hundred years ago) the answer was still relatively
easy. Nowadays it has obviously become more complex as power
can assume so many more shades of grey. Yet, in my humble
opinion there is such a thing as a "power class" whose
members (assisted by willing servants) jointly determine the
fate of their societies, for better or for worse. Mostly for
worse: the more those in power own or are in charge of, the
more powerful they become, the more they want to control and
be in charge of (aided and abetted by the big media). "The
people's rule" ("democracy") has always been, and will
remain, a perhaps well-intentioned illusion. A long time ago
rulers legitimised their power as god-given. Then a new
axiom emerged: "All state power emanates from the people" as
postulated (for example) by the German constitution.
Unfortunately this is wrong as "All state power emanates
from the moneyed class". I guess that's the class someone
like Brz really means when he talks about states, nations
and countries. Shorthand for the moneyed classes (aka the 1%
- or less).
The subtitle is Brz's book's leitmotif:
how to preserve US primacy through control of the rest of
the human world. The US has the right to do so as they are
the most powerful (in several dimensions) and hence most
exceptional and indispensable nation. Only they can keep the
world in check (and in order!). While written in a suave and
matter-of-fact style the arrogance underlying this book is
breathtaking. Brz was an influential man, "security" adviser
to President Carter and counselling behind the scenes as one
of the top US strategists, well into Obama´s tenure. He still has a strong
presence on the Internet.
In his book (actually, this is only one of many he wrote) he
recommends that Russia should break up into a loose
confederation of a "European Russia, a Siberian Republic,
and a Far Eastern Republic", assisted by America
pursuing "the second imperative strand of its strategy
toward Russia: namely, reinforcing the prevailing
geopolitical pluralism in the post-Soviet space. Such
reinforcement will serve
to discourage any imperial temptations". That was
written when Yeltsin was at the helm, happily supported by
US neoliberal economists, all sorts of advisers, including
CIA agents with offices in the Kremlin. It was Mr Yeltsin's
successor, one Vladimir Putin (hand-picked by Mr Yeltsin, as
the story goes) who slowly but surely with the help of his
supporters managed to thwart the US attempt on Russia's
sovereignty and also curbed the influence of the so called
oligarchs (post soviet) who - in cahoots with fellow
oligarchs in the west - had been appropriating the spoils of
the cold war.
It is equally breathtaking to see how in our days a strategy
conceived almost thirty years ago (and more - a strategy
which I think is insane) prevails and in fact, is gaining
momentum. Consortium
News is a non-"mainstream" website that is beyond
reproach as far as being "pro-Russian" is concerned. Its
founder, Robert Parry, was a journalist who uncovered the
machinations behind the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan
presidency and who later left the "mainstream" to become
independent. The current editor of the site, one Joe Lauria,
also wrote for beyond suspicion papers such as the Sunday
Times, the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal. He recently
published a piece entitled "Biden Confirms
Why the US Needed This War" which rather
convincingly outlines the conflation of the old geostrategy
and the current "geotactics" in Ukraine. (It should go without
saying that facts and figures about the goings-on in Ukraine
and their interpretation, published by either of the two sides
in the conflict, are - as usual - propaganda sensu strictu and can safely be
ignored.)
As you can imagine, I am very concerned
about the double standards apparent in the "Western" reactions
to the intensification of the Ukraine conflict, especially in
Germany with its horrific history. Did you know that
well-known German conductors (e.g. Eugen Jochum, Herbert von
Karajan, Karl Böhm) who were more than Nazi sympathisers were
not asked to denounce the Nazi regime after the war? Not at
all. Jochum was even invited to St. Petersburg when it was
still called Leningrad, the city that had been under a deadly
German siege for hundreds of days, to conduct a concert
enthusiastically applauded by a Russian audience. German
research societies (DFG, MPG and tutti quanti) cut all ties
with Russian partners. The anti-Russian hysteria in German
media is deafening. If only they had been as hysterical in the
past, in their response to the endless US wars of aggression
that took an estimated 20 million lives since the end of WW2.
A Ukrainian flag is now waving on the
tower of a nearby castle and this morning when we went to
register in the local town hall we saw yellow-blue all around
us. Even in shop windows. Even so called "Russlanddeutsche",
ethnic Germans who had lived in Russia and other post-soviet
states and been "repatriated", get the brunt of this
deliberately sparked russophobia. Unlike you and me nobody
seems to know any more about Babi Yar
and all the other atrocities Ukrainian and German
fascists jointly commited in WW2. Hypocrisy is in the air.
Unreflected, blunt. In the political and media arenas
name-calling has become almost the norm, nonsensical comments
are being made by all and sundry. Our president (a certain Mr
Steinmeier who - as foreign minister - cowardly did not
prevent the 2014 Maidan putsch from happening) now tells us "Our solidarity and support, our
steadfastness, even our willingness to bear with restrictions will be required for a
long time to come". "Don't
buy from Russians",
does that ring a bell? "Freeze for
freedom", as one former German president, a certain
ex-DDR-pastor named Gauck, had the barefaced cheek to tell his
former "subjects". Another bell ringing? Old.patterns,
believed to be forgotten, are reemerging. The ugly grimace of
German fascism is rising again.
Don't get me wrong. I do not condone
violence, no matter who does it or is behind it, but neither
do I condone one-sidedness and the deliberate abandonment of
an honest and comprehensive assessment of what is happening in
our world (quite independently of current events).
Fortunately, there still seem to be people who do make an
effort to suppress bias and prejudice, who escape
indoctrination, who do dissent, who investigate in depth (!)
all aspects of what is going on. But it is an endangered
species, given the increasing zealousness of censorship.
Belonging to that species can even be life threatening as
Julian Assange's fate clearly shows (the kind of case that
would have had the entire western media world up in arms had
it happened to a dissident in the former Soviet Union).
Enough of that. It is too depressing. On
to another topic, albeit - on closer inspection - it may be
linked to the moral and intellectual decay of our societies
(as also apparent in ongoing events), but in any case it is
linked to Hannah Arendt: Günther Anders, HA's first husband. I
am looking forward to reading two books of his that I have
ordered and received, but have not yet started reading because
of the rather small print. I am waiting for my new glasses to
be made, which would make reading easier. The two books I have
in mind are "Die Antiquiertheit des
Menschen" Vol 1 and 2. French translations exist: "L'Obsolescence de l'homme, t. 1 : Sur l'âme à l'époque de la deuxième révolution industrielle" and "L'Obsolescence de l'homme, t. 2 : Sur la
destruction de la vie à l'époque
de la troisième révolution industrielle". A quote
from Vol 1 made me curious: "The three
main theses: that we are no
match for the perfection of our products; that we produce
more than we can visualize
and take responsibility for; and that we believe, that, what
we can do, are allowed to
do, no: should do, no: must do – these three basic theses, in light of the environmental
threats emerging over the last quarter century, have become more prevailing and
urgent than they were then." I thought I found a
kindred spirit as these questions have been on my mind for a
long time. Of course, like many other texts, it all has to do
with the rude awakening from the dreams of the Enlightenment.
Anders wrote the first volume in the mid-fifties and now,
almost seventy years later, it is more topical than ever.
Another book that is on my list is Horkheimer's "Eclipse of
Reason", first published in 1947, the year I was
born.
The ignorance he addresses may well also
be related to US policy documents that clearly and
unambiguously spell out the strategic goals of US foreign
policy. For example: In early 1992, not long after the demise
of the Soviet Union, the US DoD drafted a document entitled "Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994-1999".
This document lists the objectives in no uncertain terms: Here
is Number One:
"Our first
objective is to prevent the reemergence of a rival that poses a
threat on the territory of the former Soviet Union. This
is a dominant
consideration… and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile
power from dominating a region whose resources would, under
consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global
power… Our strategy
must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any
potential future global competitor."
That's it. 1992, 30 years ago! The draft
was (three months) later revised, yes, but only to mitigate
the wording somewhat, not in essence. Given these objectives
one must admit that the US powers-that-be, regardless of who
was (and is) heading the administration (it can be a buffoon
or an old guy suffering from dementia or a smart, good looking
slim figured Afro-American) have done a superb job. Or so at
least it seems. Mr Brzezinski's treatise was but an
academically more respectable wrapping of something that had
for a long time been in the planning and the making. Keeping
Russia down has been and is a number one goal of US foreign
policy (with China now in the same bracket). The heinous
machinations in the Ukraine plus NATO enlargement have been
but means to advance this agenda. I don't even dare to think
about the damage this agenda has the potential of inflicting
on the whole of Europe. What gives the US power "elites" the
right to devise and maintain such an agenda in the first
place? Nothing.
Well, I guess, unfortunately you are
right. Again this is an end to our peaceful world. (There have
been many endings before.) Thank goodness, the worlds
immediately around us (our own small worlds) are still quite
peaceful, and maybe if we simply ignore (like the infamous
ostrich - or "Vogel Strauss" in German) all the bad news from
the rest of the world we may still live in peace.
9 September 2022
Do you remember a man named Jeffrey Sachs? In the
early nineties he taught the Russians how to run their economy
the American way. Naomi Klein called this “Shock Therapy”. Jeffrey’s
shock therapy did not quite work as he admitted later. (We
all heard of what it was like in Russia in the Jeltsin years.)
He has had a certain public presence since. For instance, he was
the Reith lecturer 2007. His theme was "Bursting at
the Seams”. Recently he gained some prominence through an
article he published on a site called “Other-News”
which was re-published on numerous - what I would call -
“complementary sites” but for obvious reasons not in the -
what I would call - standard media. It is, imho, one of the most
honest texts on the current conflicts. Succinct and clear. (He
is 68 now and probably doesn't care much about his career
…)
HGS, June/September 2022
Addendum 1:
On "Nuclear
War
with Russia?‘A Wall of Fire that Encompasses Everything
Around Us at the Temperature of the Center of the Sun.’"
(Scheerpost 25 March
2022).
Reading this frightening interview, I remembered a letter to
a friend about two years ago in which I wrote him the
following:
"Why must geopolitics be
played out at the expense of 'ordinary people' and their
desire to live decently in peace? Why do so many
unserious, irresponsible, incompetent, corrupt, devious,
lying, morally corrupt and possibly insane people,
intellectual dwarfs to boot, have a free hand in
international politics? One might add: Sleepwalkers, the
title of a best-selling book by an Australian historian on
the outbreak of World War I."
Obviously, our "democratic" system (including its "fourth
estate", the media) fails when it comes to putting the most
capable, responsible and honest in positions of power.
Why is no one standing up and saying "Stop it", just "Stop
it"? Where are the people? Where are "the people's
representatives"? (who are supposed to look after the
interests of the people - which are certainly not directed
towards destruction and chaos)? Questions like these must
have been asked millions of times. Obviously in vain.
Again, the A380 pilot comes to mind. If he or she were
incompetent (etc.), that would endanger up to 800 lives at a
time. The incompetence (etc.) of our politicians endangers
the lives of billions.
In the publicly perceived discussion of the Ukraine
conflict, at best people occasionally refer to the short
story, such as that told by a commentator on the Scheer
website:
A very long discussion. It
is the wrong discussion. Consider how this emergency
happened. NATO refused to talk to the Russians about their
security concerns. The US engineered a coup d'etat
removing a democratically elected Ukrainian leader, which
caused a civil war. This eventually led to the invasion
which to my mind could have been easily avoided. Instead
the West is brandishing swords; everybody wants to fight
Putin who is the enemy du jour. NATO is mobilizing troops.
Everyone is committed to this zero sum game. What should
be done and done immediately is to force the Ukrainian
leader to deal with the Russians. Instead the West is
encouraging him to fight on. The longer this thing drags
on the worse it becomes. Consider the wheat fields.
But even this narrative, correct as it is (especially in its
conclusion), falls short. The question is: "Why on earth did
the US - using NATO - maintain the encirclement of Russia
after the end of the Soviet Union and tighten the noose? Why
are they trying to strangle Russia?"
An answer to this question must refer to the desires of the
"West" (more precisely: Western capitalism) with regard to
the immeasurable treasures of Eurasia: the "new gold mines",
after the old ones between the Atlantic and the Pacific have
been largely exploited.
A danger allegedly emanating from Russia (and formerly the
Soviet Union) certainly plays no role in this encirclement
(see, for example, the article "NATO:
The
Founding Lie" by Werner Rügemer on Nachdenkseiten).
(See also "Chris
Hedges: NATO — Most Dangerous Military Alliance on
Planet".)
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Addendum 2:
On the article "European
failure and the Ukraine war" by Walther Bücklers (Nachdenkseiten 7
May 2022)
War must not be the "continuation of politics by other
means". Diplomacy, negotiations, reconciliation of interests
must be the only way to settle conflicts. But what if one
party to the conflict stubbornly refuses to cooperate in
this?
War is the "ultima irratio", madness, if you will. That is
true. But wars have a prehistory and a background, they do
not arise out of the blue. The antecedents and the contexts
should be carefully examined in order to fairly apportion
the blame of those involved.
Mr Bücklers has certainly presented this antecedent history
essentially correctly, if not necessarily completely. The
conflict (US/UK vs Russia) did not start in 2014, not in
2008, not in 1991 and not in 1945. It has a prehistory that
goes back more than a hundred years, and one should be aware
of that too. (See also the much-cited "Grand Chessboard" by
Zbginiev Brzezinski, in which he promotes an agenda whose
ultimate goal is the break-up of the Russian Federation into
three independent states, an agenda based on the also
well-known "Heartland Theory" by a British geographer named
Mackinder).
The author writes: "There
is no doubt that Russia shares the blame for the Ukrainian
war. The Russian attack is a violation of the UN ban on
violence, a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and a
blatant breach of international law."
The first of these statements basically contradicts
everything else Mr Bückler writes. Of course, it is
undisputed that the Russian government took the final step
and crossed the border. In this respect, the second
statement is probably formally correct, but must be seen
against the background of previous violations of the ban on
violence (even if "only" domestically) and blatant
violations of international law by the "other side" - as the
author himself admits in connection with the Maidan. (How
does violence actually begin? With the delivery of weapons,
for example? With the delivery of heavy weapons?) And
finally, the question arises: is international law "case
law" (judgement according to precedent) or "statutory law"
(judgement according to the code)? Opinions differ on
Russia's "special military operation". According to "case
law", Russia would not be in as bad a position as some would
like (ten fingers are not enough for the number of
acquittals of the only superpower). And "statutory law"?
What do we extraordinary and indispensable human beings care
about our chatter from 1945 in San Francisco (UN General
Assembly)?
Also interesting in this context: "On
humiliation and the Ukraine War" by Michael Brenner,
Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the
University of Pittsburgh.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)