on behalf of “Mothers against war Berlin-Brandenburg”
Brigitte Queck, graduate political scientist in foreign policy September 7, 2023
Previously, the principle of “no arms deliveries to crisis areas” had kept Germany and most European partner countries - at least publicly - out of military conflicts (for which only in exceptional cases one side was solely responsible).
The arms deliveries that have been made since the beginning of the Ukrainian war, in breach of this tried and tested principle, have not contributed to a rapprochement between the conflicting parties, but rather, predictably, to an escalation that is in the process of getting out of control. The loss of control at the level of war actions is based on perception deficits - at the level of historical and current facts and at the level of effective psychological mechanisms.
Since around 160 years, international efforts are made to alleviate the suffering of those injured in war and to outlaw particularly cruel forms of warfare. However, due to resistance from influential militarists, their progress lags behind the technical “progress” of the arms industry. The last success for the humanitarian movement was 15 years ago, the Convention banning cluster munitions in 2008, which meanwhile has been ratified by 123 states.
Since the cluster and uranium ammunition now delivered are defense-breaking weapons, the escalating effect towards massacre is already certain. On the other hand, the “military benefit” that unfortunately also the Federal Government claims cannot be realized at all, since Russia, too has such weapon systems in storage for the case of an escalation.
However, the Federal Government, as the representative of a signatory state to the 2008 agreement, is subject to special obligations in relation to non-signatory states such as the USA and Ukraine. These result from Section 21 Paragraph 2: “Each State Party shall notify the governments of all States not party to this Convention, referred to in paragraph 3 of this Article, of its obligations under this Convention, shall promote the norms it establishes and shall make its best efforts to discourage States not party to this Convention from using cluster munitions.”
The German government and other NATO partner countries have broken this contractual obligation.The unlimited supply of weapons to Ukraine by NATO countries - including Germany - completely destroys its willingness to compromise.We know the fatal results:1. Rejection of the already completed peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022 by Great Britain and the USA.2. The subsequent permanent termination of peace negotiations with Russia by the Ukrainian leadership since May 17, 2022.3. The attitude of the NATO and EU countries shows a subordination to the US dictate and an increasingly authoritarian Ukrainian government demanding new military equipment.Sovereignty of states and right of self-determination of peoples Zelenski legitimately claims for his country the right to sovereignty and territorial integrity proclaimed in Article 2 of the UN Charter of 1945, but at the same time ignores another - the right of peoples to self-determination enshrined in Article 1 of the same Charter.Both rights are capable in different ways of ordering and harmonizing the coexistence of peoples and states. But they are partially in contradiction to each other. In order to develop their constructive effectiveness, they absolutely require a clear and internationally binding delimitation of the areas of validity.Countless conflicts since 1945 have shown the millions of deaths caused by an incomplete international legal structure at such a crucial point. In a dispute over territory, a standard case, negotiations cannot make any progress as long as one side insists on territorial integrity and the other demands the right of self-determination of the population concerned.Important, so far hardly noticed, statement by Zelenski at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022At the 58th Munich Security Conference in February 2022, a few days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect the Russian, as well as the Ukrainian, population who did not recognize the fascist Ukrainian government that came to power in a bloody coup in 2014. In his speech, President Zelenski - after a gross misanalysis of the global political situation - made a highly relevant statement, the validity of which now, around 1 ½ years later, determines the question of whether the escalation into world war can still be stopped:“Russia says Ukraine seeks to join the Alliance (NATO) to return Crimea by force. … But they inattentively read Article 5 of the NATO Charter: collective action is for protection, not offense. Crimea and the occupied regions of Donbas will certainly return to Ukraine, but only peacefully”. Reference: https://kyivindependent.com/zelenskys-full-speech-at-munich-security-conference/Zelenskiy thereby admitted that a Ukrainian attempt to take back Crimea militarily would not constitute a case of defense, but would have the character of an attack - despite the well-known fact that the Kiev peninsula is considered Ukrainian territory.The current narratives and the military attacks against Crimea are in extremely dangerous contradiction to this promise of an exclusively peaceful return of the breakaway Donbas regions and Crimea to Ukraine - and confirm Russian fears that Ukraine does not only search the backing of NATO countries for defense purposes according Article 5, but rather to force the reconquest of Crimea and the Donbass regions.So the red line is being reached at exactly the moment the escalation spiral occurs - both according Russia's warnings about the nuclear option in the event of military force against Crimea - and also concerning Zelenski's words at the Munich Security Conference about a peaceful return of the disputed areas.Since, according to some estimates, the Ukrainian population under the Yanukovych-Azarov government had even lived better than the Germans - and in neighborly harmony with Russia and neighboring countries - the bloody coup in 2014 was rejected by the majority of people - see book “Russians and Ukrainians are 1 people. They only have 1 enemy - fascism. Humanity is at a crossroads: humanity, or barbarism”, orders at: anna.demok@gmx.deFor this reason and because of the consistent breach of all election promises (a peaceful solution for Donbass, curbing corruption, curtailing the power of the oligarchs), new elections after the war are a requirement of fairness.The federal government has to learn from its political mistakes At some point it will be too late to realize that we have to learn from historical mistakes and omissions.This exact moment is now approaching with the threat of World War III. The question inevitably arises as to how such a situation of impending loss of control could develop.When American President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, in his farewell speech he demonstrated a courage that was (still) untypical of politicians by pointing out a source of danger to freedom and democracy that did not lie with enemy powers, but in the midst of Western societies.Eisenhower identified this source of danger as the military-industrial complex, meaning the unofficial consortium of secret services (over 20 in the USA alone), the military leadership, the arms industry and political leaders.His successor John F. Kennedy, who took up the initiative and proclaimed a new era of peace overcoming militarism, was prevented from implementing this vision by his assassination. No president after him has completely rejected the numerous militaristic adventures of the USA (and Great Britain) pushed by the MIC, including Donald Trump, under whom the Ukraine conflict did not escalate.The threatening thing about American military operations is their self-destructive effect. The gigantic costs that are ruining the national budget (around 50% of all global arms spending) do not correspond in any way to the results in the form of military and political failures. However, through selectively incomplete and uncritical media reporting, an artificial acceptance on the part of citizens was maintained for many years for what were actually unacceptable military operations, including in the wars against Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.The extent of the open violations of basic liberal-democratic values almost always only comes to light afterwards and includes the promotion of dictatorships, the use of corrupt governments, involvement in drug trafficking, training of and collaboration with brutal militias, targeted false reports and humiliating treatment of the civilian population. The de facto desecration of the reputation of the USA, the entire West and its liberal-democratic social model is worldwide perceived as such - just not in the Western countries themselves, whose residents continue to be encouraged by their governments and the media to the best of their ability in their previous naive, uncritical worldview.Through praise in the media for the military-industrial complex and the militarism it practices, as well as through highly undemocratic actions by government circles against dissidents, including the threat of prison or very high fines, people in Germany are systematically hindered in their ability to demand non-violent and sustainable forms of conflict resolution.But with each new major military adventure, the character of media reporting as a parallel information war becomes more clearly recognized. Reference: https://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/27247/medien-als-kriegswaffen/.Thought leaders and idealistic organizations in the USA are already at work on the parameters of a comprehensive social reform, which is based on a revival of the liberal value foundation of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and is intended to counteract the undesirable previous social and economic developments.The military-industrial complex is increasingly perceived as just part of a broader system that ultimately embodies the rule of big money.In Europe, too, a growing number of rightly concerned citizens are turning to trends that reject irresponsible militarism.According to a poll in Germany, over 80% of citizens support an immediate withdrawal of all American nuclear weapons stationed in the country.These have been installed in Germany for many decades and not a single federal government has yet considered it appropriate to ensure a withdrawal in response to the security concerns of its citizens.In Europe, too, the image of societies emerges that don´t protect their citizens against the influence of the military-industrial complex on their political representatives. On the contrary, it appears to residents that the MIC has the authority to issue instructions to governments and parliaments. The current Federal Republic is moving away from its externally proclaimed ideal image of a modern, liberal democracy. With the persecution of those who think differently (loss of employment, threat of imprisonment and high fines), we suddenly find ourselves on a dangerous path that threatens to lead back to a form of government that was long considered to have been overcome.The endless arms deliveries to an ultra-nationalist government are making the EU and NATO countries more and more clearly part of the warring party. At the same time, they are moving away from the basic democratic idea by implementing policies that are increasingly detached from the will of the majority of citizens.When it comes to disinformation as a weapon, the MIC has a particularly long history of experiences with censorship in the Spanish American War (1898-1899), the systematic manipulation of opinion by the Creel Committee (1917-1919), and the propaganda of the Office of War Information (1942-1945).It is therefore disingenuous to interpret the war in Ukraine as a defense of liberal democracy or even to speak of a fight between despotism and democracy.Only through a realistic self-assessment of the Western governments - in this case the German government - can the basic requirements for a peaceful conflict resolution be met!This requires being prepared to understand the enemy, just as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King recognized decades ago as a necessary prerequisite for people to live together and as it is an absolute precondition for survival after two world wars in Europe .The propaganda slogan “Putin understander” unfortunately points in the opposite direction and at the same time shows the shallow level of attitude control that brands understanding, preaches escalation and ignores the fact that understanding means something completely different than approving everything.The urgent need to clearly distinguish between pro-Russian partisanship and the effort to provide a fair perspective is already widely recognized by citizens.It is all the more alarming that politicians and journalists are lagging behind the ordinary people in the country in this regard - one of the reasons why this open letter to you is overdue.A peaceful conflict resolution can be achieved if politicians and journalists break free from their subservience to the MIC militarists and once again offer more space for critical thinking. This would also help address the accumulated economic and social problems across Europe.