The militarization of international politics leads to hostility instead of more peace between societies.

By Michael Müller, Peter Brandt, Reiner Braun as a guest article for the Berliner Zeitung

“All the mischief that happens is not only the fault of those who make it, but also those who do not prevent it.” – Erich Kästner

Where is today the spirit of enlightenment that Immanuel Kant described in his “Critique of Pure Reason”? Enlightenment is necessary for survival in our time of great challenges, conflicts, and crises. The answer of the great philosopher Kant, who was born 300 years ago in Königsberg and revolutionized thinking, was: “Enlightenment is the exit of man from his self-inflicted tutelage”. And further: “Tutelage is the inability to make use of one’s mind without the direction of another.”

Kant’s motto was: “Have the courage to use your own mind.” Kantian philosophy is the “revolution of the way of thinking”. It is the also painful process of gaining a distance to opinions, values and decisions that allows to critically question them. As in Kant’s Ethics of the Categorical Imperative, it is about the rules for reason and shared responsibility. What is the legacy of Kant, the Enlightener?

We need the courage to be responsible not only in the face of today’s world players Trump, Putin or Xi Jinping, who are giving “old Europe” a hard time, but also because we find it difficult to recognize and categorize the new realities.  This has led to a simple-minded conformism of opinions and adaptation, yet even to military conformism. Of course: Trump transfers his private business model to politics.  But hasn‘t economic and social policy in our country in the past four decades also been characterised by neoliberalism, which puts the market above democracy? The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine cannot be justified, but does it not also have a complex and complicated history in which the West is significantly involved. Trying to understand Putin’s motives does not mean understanding his condemnable actions. Xi Jinping pursues an independent Chinese theory of development that differs from Western modernity, but does  that make China a “revisionist state”? Does all this justify the defamation, including that of the Foreign Minister, for whom diplomacy and peace are foreign words?

With the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops on February 24, 2022, the conformism and militarization of international politics have taken on a new focus. The war became the catalyst for the fight for a new world order. The competition of the USA with China comes increasingly into the focus of international politics, such as in the concept “NATO 2030”. And during Trump’s second presidency the USA looms to turn into a country of unpredictable egoism.

The criticism of the war of aggression in Ukraine, which violates international law, conceals the fact that it was preceded by a path of alienation, mistakes and escalations. During the war, not only did the ethno-cultural kinship between Russia and Ukraine explode, death, misery and destruction spread, but also did the excessiveness and self-righteousness of Western states in dealing with the largest country in the world became clear. The Zeitgeist became a bellicose furor. Almost the only demand in the political and published opinion of the West is arms deliveries. A war of constant escalation to exhaustion?

Media Analysis: The Hawks are in the Majority

Helmut Donat and Johannes Klotz analysed the talk shows, discussion rounds and commentaries about the Ukraine war in the Erste and Zweite television channels as well as the Press Club from February 24th to the end of October 2022. Their sobering result: over 90 percent of the participants and commentators were “hawks” who called for an expansion of arms deliveries to Ukraine. More and more weapons and ammunition with the unreal goal of victory over the nuclear power Russia? Hardly a word about the people suffering from the war, about ending death and injuries, about the danger of the war escalating. Certainly no demands for a ceasefire and peace negotiations.

For the mainstream Russia is equal to Putin. Step by step in recent years, an irreconcilable confrontation has taken the place of the search for understanding. But our continent needs a pan-European security architecture. Yet even the laboriously concluded treaties for disarmament, arms control and arms limitation between the USA and Russia were terminated.  The scrapping of land-based medium-range missiles is history. Military budgets are growing worldwide, and in our country they have almost tripled in the last ten years from 32.5 to 90 billion dollars according to NATO criteria. Nuclear armament is also on the rise again.

Today, there is no longer any talk about a policy of peace and relaxation. It is no longer a question of “capable of peace”, but of the opposite: “fit for war”. There is no longer any talk of “change through rapprochement”. Egon Bahr’s motto  from 1963 was brazenly twisted to “change through trade”, i.e. economic interests. The North-Stream-Pipeline now stands only for the supply of “climate-damaging gas” from Russia, which fills the Kremlin’s pockets, while the expensive, environmentally destructive fracking gas from the USA is accepted without criticism. It was US President Joe Biden who announced the end of the North-Stream project in the Rose Garden of the White House  , while Chancellor Scholz stood by speechless.

Fake and Framing: Democratic Discourse is in Danger

How could this conformism of opinion come about? Political thinking must be rational and as objective as possible in its perception. Modern neurological research is long questioned this enlightenment principle. The deciding factor is the cognitive interpretive framework, in science called frames. They help determine how political facts are evaluated. Democratic discourse is endangered if discursive structures in our society break away and only a digital individualism shapes public opinion. Framing subjectively emphasizes events while others are placed into relative context or omitted altogether. Political framing can persuade us to think in a certain way, it exaggerates, simplifies or conceals important facts and contexts. Fakes distort reality and become manipulated presentations. Donald Trump is a grandmaster in this. Christa Wolf‘s warning still applies: “When I hear the language of war correspondents, my suspicion increases that we are being manipulated.” In fact, war is associated with deception and lies.

Conformism of opinion often ignores history, even the German one with its dark sides. Russia is per se the other, evil. The end of the Cold War was not seen as a new beginning, but the old is being continued in a new form. Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who still has considerable influence on American foreign policy, claimed in his book “The Grand Chessboard” (1997, reprinted in 2016) that Ukraine is the key country in the fight against Russia. In Germany, the book title is more correctly called “The Only World Power – America’s Strategy of Dominance and the Fight for Eurasia”.

In Germany, too, “security experts” are putting on armaments, war rhetoric dominates. In their view, freedom is no longer defended in the Hindu Kush, but in Ukraine. The FAZ newspaper claims: “Ukraine holds the front that separates us from barbarism.” CDU defense politician Roderich Kiesewetter even demands: “The war must be taken to Russia. We must do everything we can to enable Ukraine to destroy not only oil refineries in Russia, but also ministries, command posts and weapon posts.” The past of the Cold War is back. But doesn’t our Constitution for the Bundeswehr not say “defense” rather than “attack”?

Conformism is also an expression of a time in which a new and old nationalism is putting pressure on the fate of many societies. In which Islamism and the new and old right have a common enemy: Western liberalism. A time in which society’s center is breaking apart, a socienty which no longer seems to harbor any hope for world history and in which a deep feeling of loss is spreading, which leaves many people discouraged. In which a rabble-rousing candidate was elected to the head of a country that holds human rights in its founding document.

Trumpism, which is unconditionally celebrated by its supporters and has elected Donald Trump again, this time as the 47th president of the USA, must be seen against this background. The American democrats wanted to sideline the radical businessman with the attribution of weird – the ridiculous, strange, not to be taken seriously candidate. But this does not do justice to the challenges of our time and the fears and expectations of people. The US election campaign was the opposite of a political discourse about a true new beginning, which needs truthfulness, seriousness and correctness instead of all the ineffabilities, provocations and lies that create a climate of confrontation, but not the mood for a real start.

Trump won the election inspite of his reactionary views. America First! Nationalism is a fundamental trait of our time, which is in the process of becoming fertile ground for a “counter-enlightenment”, not only in the United States, but also in Europe. For specific advances against hard-won values, to argue for a conservative-nationalistic recession versus a global world of understanding.

Bellicism instead of détente: What has become of the peace movement?

We need education and the courage to responsibility. At a time when a brutal war has been raging in Ukraine for more than 1000 days, which could become World War III. A time, in which war and violence in the Middle East threaten to become a conflagration of the entire region. A time when another 20 wars are receiving little attention. A time when the global community is unable to agree on what is necessary to meet the pressing challenges of the future, especially since the exploitation of nature goes much deeper than what can be ended by electric SUVs. In which few people are so rich that entire economies look poor in comparison.

In Germany, too, a bellicose remedy was possible. A remedy that comes as a censor, who  even puts the advocacy for a ceasefire and peace negotiations in a right-wing nationalist corner. Who disparages the peace movement as Putin sympathizising  or even as Moscow’s 5th column. An absurd debate, similar to the one in West Germany in the 1950s, when Adenauer tried to defame the SPD with “All roads of Marxism lead to Moscow”. War conformism negates differentiations that peace needs. But there is a lack of meeting and exchange spaces that create trust and facilitate  negotiations. Those who plead for a ceasefire and peace negotiations must not be marginalized by “opinion soldiers” (Martin Walser).

The bellicose remedy is taking place in the country that in the 1960s and 70s was a pioneer of the policy of peace and détente that led to the overcoming of the German and European divisions. A bellicism in the country that had a strong peace movement and where in the early 1980s almost everyone – except Markus Söder, Friedrich Merz or Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann,  of course – claims to have been present at the three large peace demonstrations in Bonn’s Hofgarten.

For this reason alone, it is worth looking back at the year 1968, when the Warsaw Pact crushed the reform communism of the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia. Certainly, this was an uprising within the Soviet sphere of power at the time, yet parallels are unmistakable. On 22 August 1968, Willy Brandt, then Foreign Minister of a grand coalition, condemned this act of arbitrariness. But he also said: “No none is helped now with strong words and emotional appeals, neither our eastern neighbor nor ourselves. We need to soberly examine what has happened, what our interests demand and what it concludes for European politics. … Our political goal was and remains to do everything possible to render peace more secure and thus also to solidify the security of the Federal Republic, to improve cooperation between populations and to pave the way for a European peace order.” These goals, according to Brandt, “remain the correct ones when others try to evade them.”

The policy of détente was based on confidence-building and a willingness to cooperate. This was taken up by the United Nations. Under the chairmanship of the then Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, an Independent Commission presented the concept of “Common Security” to the UN General Assembly in 1982. The Palme Commission picked up from Albert Einstein‘s insight that the atomic bomb had changed everything except people’s thinking. In the nuclear age, war must never be waged and it can never be won. Therefore, everything must be done to avoid wars, especially when the nuclear powers – in the meantime nine – are involved. Attacks on nuclear power plants would have devastating consequences. But even “conventional” weapons achieve an unimagined quality of destruction. Einstein again: “The development of technology in our time turns the ethical postulate of peace into an existential question for civilized humanity.  It furthermore challenges, without exception, everyone with a consciousness of moral responsibility to actively participate in the solution of the piece problem.”

World Security: We Need Collaboration

What the three Independent UN Commissions – Common Security, North-South Solidarity, Sustainability – worked out in the 1980s, without mention in the remedy, is the following: the world that has grown together depends on common ground in order to have a good future. The global challenges, especially the climate crisis, can be tackled successfully only in cooperation of all states, including Russia and China, to ensure the stability of the Earth system, on which human life depends.

For such a “world domestic policy” (Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) the historic year 1989, which marked the end of the division of the world into East and West, opened unique opportunities. In November 1990, the “Charter of Paris for a New Europe” was signed by all European states as well as by the USA and Canada, with the aim of a pan-European security order from the Ural to Lisbon. However, the window for a peaceful future for Europe has not been opened. The West saw itself as the victor of history, not least through military strength. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Commonwealth of Independent States lost importance. Russia had to find its role anew.

For Germany, the turning away from a policy of détente and the bellicose remedy can be dated to the year 2013. Even during the Iraq war in  2003 and the Libyan civil war in 2011, there were critical voices about Germany’s restraint in military operations. Under the leadership of Markus Kaim and Constanze Stelzenmüller, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (German: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik – SWP) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States set up a 50-member working group of politicians, journalists, members of the military and various think tanks, which presented a policy paper in September 2013. The title: “New Power – New Responsibility – Elements of a German Foreign and Security Policy for a World in Transition”.

The 48-page paper aims to create a new “landscape of thought”, to remove existing taboos against “military force” and to proclaim for Germany internationally a role of leadership in NATO. There would be no alternative to this for Germany, which is extremely dependent on raw materials and vulnerable in its freedom and prosperity due to global trade routes and the international distribution of labor. Passages in the paper sound like those of the American neocons (New Conservative Revolution), who  played a central role in foreign and security policy under President George W. Bush. Their ideology was called “peace through strength”. In the 2003 war of aggression on Iraq, which was justified with a lie, they divided the EU into an “old” and a “new” Europe (coalition of the willing).

In the paper of the German “cultural elite”, core weaknesses and gaps are unmistakable. The authors assume that “the West will lose considerably in influence and importance” and that “America’s engagement in the world will be more selective in the future and its demands on its partners will be correspondingly higher.” Their conclusion is a military strengthening, because only in this way could Germany, Europe and the “West secure its legitimacy based on human rights, the rule of law, separation of powers and democracy”, and take on a strengthened role once more in the future.

It is irritating that the authors do not pursue the question of what caused the caesura of 1990,  and what a global domestic policy that is based on the principles of international law and solidarity should look like. Instead, the impression is created that with further military rearmament, life in its “free, peaceful and open order” can remain as it is. This is unrealistic in our “unequal, overpopulated, polluted and trouble-prone world” (Brundtland Report), in which things must not remain as they are. The great challenges of the future can only be overcome if the division of the world is not deepened and there is more cooperation.

Dare more Kant: Restoring Peace

III. Why is the ability of left-liberal parties, which were the foundation of the policy of peace and détente, to win a majority breaking down? In his world history of the 20th century (“The Age of Extremes”) from the outbreak of the First World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union, historian Eric Hobsbawm highlights three qualitative changes:

  1. The end of Eurocentrism. The dominance of Europe is over. The Europe that at the beginning of the century was the undisputed centre of power, prosperity, military and culture in the world. Today, most countries are looking into a different direction. The Western states of Europe also made the mistake of not seeking closer cooperation with Russia after 1990.
  2. With globalization as the rapprochement of all countries through the market into a single functional unit, the social and economic distribution conflicts are coming to a head. In addition, the economic activities have changed, especially due to unleashed arbitrage and financial capitalism and technical progress in communication and transportation, which overwhelms the creative power of national states.
  3. The old social and relational structures are dissolving and with them the links between past and present. The radical individualism, which picks up the legacy of enlightenment only selectively, destructures society. The severing of traditional ties leads to the erosion of societies. We are experiencing a world in which we have access to more facts than ever before, yet we know less and less about what the connections look like and where the journey leads.
    Hobsbawm did not even grasp the full dimension of today’s Great Transformation. In addition, there are at least two other important facts that have not yet been a topic for the British universal historian:
  4. The ecological challenges are not only coming to a head with the climate crisis, but also with the destruction of biodiversity, the scarcity of important resources and the unsolved problems of global chemisation. The Earth system is overloaded, not least due to the unequal distribution of wealth. The fights for distribution are increasing, and with them the dangers of war.
  5. The digitization of the world, including the advance of artificial intelligence (AI), is changing our lives. AI means the ability of a machine to imitate human abilities with neuronal networks. AI also poses new dangers in warfare, e.g. through drone swarms and autonomous defense systems.

The second Great Transformations, driven primarily by market forces, is radically changing the world. The American philosopher Nancy Fraser sees key causes in a “progressive neoliberalism” that turns everything into a commodity instead of shaping the markets socially, ecologically and democratically. What seemed contradictory at first has become reality in recent decades. In this way, the conditions of global capitalism are enforced by society as a whole. Our understanding of progress has entered a deep crisis. The danger of providing military answers to the crises is growing.

Today, in a phase of human history in which so much is falling apart at the same time, a new access to overcoming social crises and conflicts is needed. This makes it all the more important that we position ourselves in a counter-hegemonic project that frees us from conformism and promotes a vibrant democracy.

Alexander Kluge says: Today we not only need bravery in the face of the “demon war”, but also “bravery in the face of the friend”. Kluge justifies this with the parallels between the Ukraine war and the “July Crisis of 1914”, when the First World War broke out due to the inability of European royal houses and governments to cope with an acute crisis.

Kant’s works, their sobriety and depth of thought, his ethics of human dignity have helped shape the Constitution. His theory of “eternal peace” influenced the League of Nations and the emergence of the United Nations. His independence of thought has justified a critical and historical positioning comprehensively. We need “more Kant”. The most important is: create peace and stop the tragedy of death, misery and destruction, also to end the suffering of the families and relatives of Russian soldiers and, more broadly, of all people who have to suffer from the growing scarcity and cost inflation of energy and food.

Peace is, so Kant, the result of as many people as possible to agree on a reasonable will and action. The rules of reason require the moral progress of humanity for a just and peaceful world – for one’s own good as well as for the good of all others. Today, when the world threatens to disintegrate into competing blocs of power again, this may seem far from reality. But what alternative is there to “daring more Kant” in a world that depends on cooperation and common ground? We need the courage to be responsible in order to create clarity again thru real discourse, something that democracy needs like air to breathe. We must be capable of peace for an end of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the bloody conflicts elsewhere in the world.

This article was published as part of the Open Source Initiative of the Berliner Zeitung and is subject to the Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reused freely by the general public for non-commercial purposes under condition that the author and the Berliner Zeitung are named and under exclusion of editing.

Michael Müller, Federal Chairman of Friends of Nature, State Parlamentary Secretary of the Federal Environment Ministry
Prof. Dr. Peter Brandt, historian, representative of the Initiative “New Détente Policy Now!”
Reiner Braun, President of the International Peace Bureau