Hope?

What a difference we find when we consider Nazi rhetoric at the height of World War II and the universal sentiments expressed two months after the Reich’s defeat! “Do you want total war?” Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels asked at the Berlin Sportpalast in February 1943. Goebbels’ delivered his “Total War” speech after the heavy defeat of the German Wehrmacht in Stalingrad. Thousands of selected party members, assembled for the occasion, shouted back a frenetic “Yes”! This is rightly regarded as the dark nadir of National Socialist propaganda, and evidence of the Reich’s cynical contempt for human nature.
  How decidedly different are the first sentences of the United Nations Charter of June 1945:

“We, the peoples of the United Nations determined
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind;
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
And for these ends
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,
have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.”

Even after the adoption of the Charter, this commitment was not a programme of real-world politics. Nor of the actual decisions of the United Nations and its competent organs, above all the Security Council, which is mainly responsible for security and peace but is composed according to power-politics considerations. Reflecting on the on geopolitical turmoil al around us, how far have we drifted from the UN’s founding ideals? But this commitment was and remains to this day a fundamental expression of the needs of human social nature and human aspiration.
  The UN Charter’s Preamble speaks of the fact that it may be necessary “in the common interest” to use “armed force”, and the Charter formulates specific regulations on this in Chapter VII. It is always true that the use of “armed force” is not discretionary and that alternatives must always be sought – so that before the use of “armed force”, but also during it, everyone has a duty to contribute to ending the violence as quickly as possible and to establishing peace.
  It is all the more disconcerting when the power elites of the Western states make little mention of, and even less appreciation for, the diplomatic efforts of the Chinese government, the governments of some African and Latin American states, but also of the Arab world, to end the “armed violence” in Ukraine and also in the Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc.). Disconcerting but not surprising, however, as it is precisely the West’s power elites that have provoked and constantly fuelled the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, either directly or indirectly.
  China, Africa, Latin America, and also the Arab states know that striving for peace is more than merely idealistic: It is also an expression of what is fundamental to their interests. But it is not only these regions of the world that suffer very concretely in consequence of the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East.
  Reason says that striving for peace is of existential importance for all human beings. This is also true if one takes into account that there are people who profit materially from wars, or believe they can profit. But this is not thought through to the end.
  Erich Vad, a retired brigadier general of the German Armed Forces and military policy advisor to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has argued in an article for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, published on 15 May, that the Western idea of wanting to defeat Russia is unrealistic but that the Western powers have no plan for how to conduct the war in Ukraine and, above all, how to end it.
  Vad includes the Russian position in his considerations. From a “geostrategic point of view”, he writes, “Ukraine’s membership of NATO is not acceptable to Russia”. Therefore, “the demand to give the Russians control over Crimea and the areas with a high Russian-speaking population in Ukraine or to grant the Donbass the broadest possible autonomy is more realistic from a strategic point of view than relying on the Ukrainian right to self-determination or on a long war of attrition with a high potential for escalation”. An “access of the geopolitical rival USA to the Black Sea region would be just as unacceptable for Russia as the loss of control in the Caribbean and the Panama Canal would be for the USA or the loss of control in the South China Sea as well as in Taiwan would be for China”.
  With regard to Europe, Vad writes: “With regard to Russia, the question arises to what extent the continuation of the Ukraine war and the replay of the Cold War that goes with it can be in Europe’s strategic interest”. And: “If one starts from the claim of being a global player and strategic actor, then the situation of the EU, but especially that of Germany, has massively deteriorated with the Ukraine war”.
  Finally: “In a foreseeable multipolar world, which will by no means become safer through mutual strategic disengagement¹, a new version of the Cold War with an Iron Curtain in the East would not be a good option from a European perspective”.
  Seymour Hersh  pointed out in an article dated 17 May 2023 that there is also growing resentment within the European power elites about the negative consequences of the Ukraine war for Europe – this along with calls for an end to the war.²
  Voices such as Vad’s, or others from the European power elites and US intelligence officials, as quoted by Hersh are still a minority within the West’s power elites. Others still make the decisions.
  And these decisions continue to look very bad³ and make use of increasingly absurd justifications.⁴
  Thus, hopes for ceasefires in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as for a better global security order, are currently rightly focused on the serious efforts of the non–Western world. Their success, for which everyone can only wish, will be an admission of complete failure for the Western power elites. For humanity, it would be a blessing.  •

¹ When Erich Vad writes of the dangers of “mutual strategic disentanglement”, he probably means that a multipolar world in which there is less and less cooperation between the major powers will be very prone to conflict.
² https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-ukraine-refugee-question  (see also "The Ukraine refugee question" in this issue)
³ cf. the latest decisions and draft resolutions of the  G-7 summit and the EU foreign ministers: even more weapons for Ukraine (soon also fighter jets?), even more sanctions against Russia, but no plan for diplomacy
⁴ For example, the president of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution said that German democracy is threatened by attacks from within and from outside. A statement like that of AfD politicians that Russia is waging war against Ukraine “because its own security interests have been violated by the West” [which is a very obvious fact] is a “narrative” of Russian “propaganda” that promotes right-wing extremism in Germany. (cf. https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/afd-russland-propaganda-deutschland-thomas-haldenwang-100.html of 22 May 2023) Obviously, the German power elites are worried because Russia’s position “resonates more than ever in parts of the population” – so wrote one of the main mouthpieces of these power elites, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on 23 May 2023. In such a situation, it has been customary in Germany since 1945 to bring out the big hammer of “right-wing extremism” (“Faschismuskeule”).