The struggle for the heart of Eurasia

Once upon a time there was a declining world power. It had taken up the cause of democracy, freedom and human rights. At least, that’s what the spin-doctors wanted, who earned their money in glass palaces by leading people down the garden path. And the task was not easy, since the land of freedom was founded on the carcasses of millions of murdered natives, an indigenous population that had not invited the unsolicited immigrants from the 16^th century onwards. The second stain that the spin-doctors knew how to whitewash was the deportation of millions of Africans who, as slaves, created the basis for the immense wealth of the immigrant Europeans.
  When the vastness of the prairies was “developed” and the freedom of the southern neighbours and islanders in Asia was prepared to be “protected”, one felt called by God himself to take on the burden of the world’s policeman – one had learned well from the former colonial power, which had previously taken on the burden of the white man and “pacified” half the world and all the oceans.
  When the world was first tearing itself apart in the 20^th century, people set out to give peoples the “right to self-determination” and make the world “safe” for democracy. The fact that they became financially healthy was not unintentional and was the basis for their rapid rise, which was not stopped by the further bloodshed of millions, but rather promoted it. The old colonial power was finally bankrupt, now only one adversary stood in the way, but it finally struck sail and imploded after decades of cold struggle.
  Now history was declared to be over and one’s own way of life to be the finally victorious one. Then it went on in quick succession: in thirty years until today, one country after the other was invaded, millions of people were slaughtered, the world was covered with a carpet of propaganda that made people loose their sight and sound. There were also admonishing voices at home, but they were drowned out by the drums of war, which, however, came across like the sounds of a shawm: They were still fighting for freedom, for human rights, against terror, and they were trampling these very values underfoot in illegal torture camps, with illegal killings by drones, with illegal sanctions that let hundreds of thousands of children starve to death – but it was worth it to the only remaining superpower, as one brave lady let it be known – she, whose family had had to experience the Holocaust. One fought against rogue states and misjudged oneself. Who would dare to clearly point out their behaviour to the biggest villain? A band of robbers, as the Church Father Augustine would have formulated, who had the most powerful army, the world currency and countless European “vassal states”, as one of their Polish-born strategists never got tired of boasting? Who was tired of life? And wasn’t it all so bad after all? Did one still see the corpses of starving children, mutilated men and women in the media?
  “Smart” was the new motto, “smart” was to be the “power” with which one made the world happy, as a combination of “hard” and “soft power”, as a foreign minister and later would-be president had put it.
  And lo and behold, the roller suddenly came to a halt. It was like hitting a Chinese wall. There were, in fact, powers that would no longer put up with the game. Syria and Afghanistan were the beacon, the Anglo-Saxon pit bull had cut its teeth on it. Nevertheless, it continued with colourful “revolutions”, alleged popular revolts, but always made in the homeland of the actual terror.
  The struggle for the heart of Eurasia had begun, the world island that could only be dominated, according to the strategic formulation of relevant ideologists, if Europe was dominated, and Europe could be dominated if Eastern Europe was dominated, and there was one country that played a central role – not because of its fertile black earth soils, that too of course, but because of its hinge between East and West: the Ukraine conflict was born. And what the world’s no. 1 power now offered was outrageous. Freud would have spoken of projection: suddenly the media were full of terms that had hitherto been kept quiet or dismissed as conspiracy theories. There was talk in the leading media of planned false-flag operations, of staged causes of war, of disinformation, of propaganda, of spin-doctoring. As if the world hadn’t seen it all before, only now it was screaming loudly from vassals’ and sovereigns’ mouths: “Stop the thief!” And what if the thief wasn’t a thief? And did not plan an attack? Then you yourself would be the hero who prevented a war that was never planned.
  In which country was the film “Wag the dog” made? Where, in a fictional (?) story, a presidential hopeful call the master of spin-doctors, masterfully played by Dustin Hoffman, to distract because of a sexual affair. With what? With a war, of course, and then when it was exposed as a fake? With a hero, a forgotten hero. The script is familiar, the war rhetoric too. Will the hero come next now? Who selflessly goes into the field against evil? On a field that is not a field at all, in a war that is being propagandistically conjured up? In a world that was already on the brink when the two nuclear powers risked a showdown and a crisis of which the defence minister of the “good guys” said in his life confession that they had “lucked out”?
  Does the world need that again? And what if luck is not on our side this time? If the rationality of individuals fails? When a chain reaction once set in motion can no longer be stopped? When will the European vassals finally shout the truth in the face of the half-naked emperor? And invite the power addict to withdrawal and to join the human family as an equal among equals? It is not yet too late for peace – if only one wants it.
  Once upon a time … Don’t fairy tales have a happy ending? Modern fairy tales must have one.  •