“Peace on earth, good will toward men”? What is currently happening in West Asia is nothing but a violent demonstration of power. Bombs and missiles, murder and manslaughter, devastation and destruction from the armouries of the West – the Christmas present of 2024?
Seventy-five years ago, all states signed the Geneva Conventions, and one year earlier the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How much hope was associated with these works of peace at that time! But the West, led by the would-be hegemon we scarcely need to name, is mocking and burying everything that was once considered an achievement of European intellectual tradition.
Everything that humanity has achieved – sometimes after the bitterest experiences with the murderous madness of violent expansion of power and war – is trampled underfoot and mocked, from the first thinking about ethics and the human condition through to natural law and the foundations of international law, from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights through to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, signed by all states, this last standing as the international humanitarian law. And of much more that people all over the world have already achieved in the way of humanistic tradition and reflection on the question of human coexistence.
Even if what we currently experience is not entirely new, what we currently experience defies description: The bombing of civilian populations, of humanitarian facilities, schools, hospitals, diplomatic missions; the assassination of political leaders, the contamination of entire regions, making them uninhabitable – all of this prohibited. Accordingly, the International Court of Justice has unequivocally characterised and condemned the Israelis’ genocide, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against the senior officials most responsible.
The “world ruler” is still ignoring everything and prolongs the bloodbath with brute force. This is never right. With sheer brutality, everything is nevertheless authorised and planned – all justified in the name of the self-proclaimed mission for the blessings of a way of life that has forgotten and lost the cultural – let us say human – roots of its founding fathers.
Human compassion is stifled with Manichean invocations of good and evil, distortions of reality and long-disproved horror stories and enemy stereotypes that stir up the dregs of human prejudices, which are not made any truer by constant repetition. But they are meant to numb the mind and obscure the spirit.
For decades, the peoples who populate the Western sphere of influence have been set on a course of war. The ICRC’s 2020 study “Millennials on war”, which shows “the little reassuring attitudes of young people”, is one indication of this: 41 per cent of respondents believed that torture is justified under certain circumstances; the majority of respondents come from countries without experience of war. On the other hand, 70 per cent of Syrian young people opposed torture under all circumstances.1
Let us have no illusions: Human rights and international law apply to everyone – or they do not apply at all. This is incontrovertibly so even if we, in our latitudes, do not yet understand this in the same way as the people in the war zones of this world. But the ICRC survey clearly shows: Constant propaganda, constant influence and suggestion, create a mood and an atmosphere that is difficult for individuals to escape. It has also become colder in our countries.
At the same time, those ruling circles entertaining fantasies of world power for some years now increasingly have to realise that other countries do not accept world domination and insist on the self-determination of peoples, nations, and cultures. The plan of the US to weaken Russia and subordinate it to its own sphere of power by the expansion of NATO and the deliberately provoked war in Ukraine, which has been openly proclaimed for decades, has failed due to Russian resistance. China has achieved a level of development that the hegemon’s media try to play down as much as possible – but which makes Westerners feel so threatened in their dominance that they are openly seeking war there, too. The BRICS nations and other associations are obviously another unbearable challenge to those nursing a lust for world power.
Now, one appendage of the West is demonstrating in West Asia that it is not willing to join the world community by peaceful means but will instead do everything it can to maintain its greed for power and money for the few. Even if it is already clear today that the concept of world domination is fundamentally impossible – the clinging to privileges, supremacy, and demands for power will furthermore continue to demand an unbearable number of completely absurd sacrifices.
The henchmen of Western plutocracy and arrogance of power in politics and the media are – once again – showing off, calling it “victory” over a “regime” that has been on their hit list for decades. This is the reality of what has just occurred in Syria. The US and its clients in West Asia and Europe are drowning the West Asian region in violence and call it “peace”. The “elites” applaud power and “assertiveness” and present themselves as mentally and morally superior.
The loudness of power and arrogance are likely to drown out the voice of humanity, the power of compassion, and rational thinking. In reality, they celebrate the violent power of the bigger fist, the cunning of the criminal and a moral “superiority” in the style of a mafia boss. In their presumption of power and their feeling of self-importance they are unrivalled. Some do this very openly. They find their admirers, just as violence has always found them. Those who practise violence and are “successful” with it always find those who admire them, imitate them, cosy up to them, suck up to them, like to share in the power and benefit. And many who say nothing.
But: It is a small minority that consciously strives for this megalomaniacal politics of dominance. You can ignore human nature. But you cannot abolish it or subordinate it – it remains – all our new “AI” and all transhumanism notwithstanding. The overwhelming majority of people long to live together in peace and mutual respect. And this majority knows that everyone is entitled to this: Human beings are capable of compassion.
If something makes us human, then it is first and foremost this ability to empathise with the needs and suffering of others, but also with the joy of others. This is part of our social nature. Without this ability humankind would not have survived as it has. This ability also forms the basis for resistance against violence, against injustice, presumption of power, and arrogance.
The greed for power is an aberration of human intellectual and social development.
Erika Vögeli
1 Mérey, Kay. “The ‘Circle of Young Humanitarians’”. In: The International Committee of the Red Cross. In action. December 2024/No. 12. p. 5. https://www.icrc.org/en/publication/millennials-war
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