wildcat.english

translated from: Wildcat no. 111, spring 2023

Translated by angryworkers: We’ve translated this comprehensive article by comrades from Wildcat in Germany (Wildcat no.111, Spring 2023), which places the war in Ukraine in a wider global context and explains the particular role that forces like the Green Party play to shift the social atmosphere in Germany towards further militarisation. Since the article was published, the leak of US military intelligence has detonated and, in many ways, confirmed the comrades’ assessment that the war in Ukraine is primarily a proxy war. We look forward to discussing the article. Please feel free to refer to previous articles we have published on the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine War

“Putin thinks we are wimps”

(Christoph Heusgen, head of the Munich Security Conference)

Far too often, in the following article, we still refer to countries as subjects (“Russia is doing this, the US is doing that”), which indicates that we have not yet made much progress with our analysis. However, we have a lot to say about ‘analyses’ like that presented by Heusgen in the headline above. We think this justifies the publication of this work in progress.

Because of its geostrategic position, Ukraine has become the scene of a proxy war between NATO and Russia. The failed ‘special military operation’ has become a bloody war of attrition. We can assume that 100,000 soldiers have already been killed; both sides treat the numbers as a secret. “The Russians, … to cover up the desolate war campaign. The Ukrainians, to keep up the morale of their battered population”, wrote the Swiss newspaper NZZ.¹ The UN has recorded 8,006 civilian casualties (7,519 adults and 487 children) in the first year of the war, but assumes a high number of unreported cases. Almost eight million people have fled to neighbouring countries, three million of them to Russia. In addition, there are 5.3 million internally displaced people. The civilian victims are largely borne by eastern Ukraine, while in the western city of Lviv property prices have doubled since the war began. There are fewer Ukrainian flags in Kharkiv than here in Germany. The war also has aspects of a civil war and creates new class stratifications.²

The Russian invasion cannot be justified by the West’s breaches of international law in the past, nor by NATO’s broken promises not to extend to Russia’s borders. The domestic situation in Russia has been depressing for a long time; Putin, in alliance with the Orthodox Church, has destroyed the left opposition and is using external enemies to create internal cohesion. Putin is not Hitler – and does not want to end up like Saddam Hussein. Before the US invasion, Saddam was America’s ally who attacked Iran in 1980 and massacred the Kurds with poison gas in 1988. Only the left made an issue of that at the time; but afterwards, the US used it as a justification for bombing Iraq into the Stone Age. Same as Gaddafi etc. Putin was welcome as a brutal partner in the ‘war on terror’ (war in Chechnya), but then Obama publicly demoted him to the same level of political leader as Saddam (he was seen as a ‘regional power’, rather than as an ‘ally’ per se).³

Since 2014, the USA has been preparing Ukraine for a war against Russia. The assumption, however, was that Russia would make a rapid conquest of large parts of the country, followed by subsequent guerrilla warfare. The weapons systems needed for this, such as the Javelin portable anti-tank guided missiles, were supplied. Tactics for small military units were trained. Instead, a war of position developed, thanks also to the rapid delivery of Soviet tanks and artillery from Eastern Europe and the provision of target coordinates. This war has been much more expensive for the West than a guerrilla war would have been. The US alone has provided Ukraine with a total of $46.6 billion in military aid, which is more than two-thirds of Russia’s total annual defence budget ($65.9 billion). Foreign financial assistance covers more than half of Ukraine’s state budget. This total dependence on foreign aid enforces a triumphalist narrative that Ukrainian victory is imminent – if the West sends even more money and ever more powerful weapons. To maintain the narrative, Ukrainian soldiers are sacrificed in bloody battles, as in the counter-offensive around Kherson and the sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. According to the Ukrainian state’s own statements, Bakhmut was defended in a ‘battle of attrition’ in order to inflict the highest possible losses on the Russian troops.

Germany’s Green Party foreign minister Baerbock and NATO justify their support for Ukraine with ‘values’. The Ukrainians are supposed to fight for those values that are actually decaying in the USA, where ‘democracy’ is increasingly eroded and ever new corruption scandals come to light. The fact that eastern Ukraine will be destroyed in the process – even if not on the scale of the Iraq war, which cost the lives of between 800,000 and 1.3 million people – is taken into account as collateral damage. This is because, according to the president of the European Commision, Ursula Von Der Leyen, “Ukrainians are prepared to die for the European perspective.”⁴

Prehistory of the Ukrainian war

For three decades, NATO has pushed its expansion to the borders of the Russian Federation, deliberately crossing all of Moscow’s ‘red lines’. The USA and Germany had explicitly and repeatedly promised Gorbachev not to expand NATO “one inch to the east” after he dissolved the Warsaw Pact. As early as 1997, his successor Yeltsin agreed to the first eastward expansion of NATO, saying that he was “only doing this because the West is forcing (him) to do it”. In the same year, NATO concluded a strategic partnership agreement with Ukraine. At the time, 50 former US senators, retired military officers, diplomats and academics wrote to President Clinton calling NATO expansion a political mistake “of historic proportions”. This was followed by four more eastward enlargements of NATO territory.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin made it clear in a speech that Russia would not accept the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO. NATO continued to provoke by promising Ukraine (eventual) membership in 2008 and has been conducting manoeuvres there ever since. Putin then changed his strategy, and began to align his sphere of influence against the West. This was also a (late) reaction to NATO’s new doctrine of 1999, which justified wars on three grounds: “humanitarian intervention”, “migration movements” and “securing resources”. The war of aggression against Serbia in 1999 was supposed to be undertaken for ‘humanitarian’ reasons, but actually, it was against international law. For two and a half months, 1,000 aircraft, including German ones, bombed cities and industrial plants, infrastructural facilities, cultural institutions and homes. Senator Joe Biden was at the forefront of this at the time. In June 1998 he declared that he was in favour of mass bombing during the Bosnian war: “I have suggested that we bomb Belgrade … and blow up all the bridges over the Drina.”⁵ In October 1998, he said, “NATO has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of European countries without the explicit authorisation of the UN Security Council.”⁶ Although US fighter jets bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on the 7th of May 1999, China remained neutral at the time.

Under Obama, Biden became Vice President and envoy to Ukraine. After Ukraine’s NATO accession failed in 2008 due to opposition from France and Germany, he focused on de facto integrating the country into NATO from 2009 to 2017. He did this together with Victoria Nuland⁷ in the US State Department. In 2014, the US Congress passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act. As a first measure, weapons were authorised for 100 million dollars. Since then, the US has delivered a total of $30 billion worth of weapons.⁸ For years, Ukraine was the country with the highest annual growth in arms spending worldwide. At the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, the US trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers by early 2022. In 2020, NATO finally declared that it had achieved “interoperability” with Ukraine, the mutual coordination of military and command structures, a prerequisite for NATO membership.⁹ After the announcement at the NATO summit in June 2021 that Ukraine would now be admitted after all, the situation exploded. At the end of September 2021, Ukraine conducted joint manoeuvres with NATO units while Russia massed troops on the border.

Red lines

It was clear to parts of the US security apparatus that the Russian objections were not ‘just for show’. William Burns, now CIA director, wrote dozens of diplomatic dispatches during his time as US ambassador to Moscow from 2005 to 2008; they are now publicly available via WikiLeaks. Again and again he warned that NATO expansion would be, “seen far beyond Putin as a major threat and provocation” throughout Russia; or “Ukraine joining NATO is the furthest of red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” This would inflame and strengthen the hardliners and nationalists in Russia and could lead to war. Such warnings stretched into 2019, when the Pentagon-funded Rand Corporation also reported that fears of a “direct military attack on Russia” were “very real” and could lead Russian leaders to make “hasty, self-destructive decisions.”¹⁰

One of the reasons why Putin was able to stay in power for so long and transform the country into an autocracy was exactly because he gave the impression that he had a strategy against the aggressive NATO! Branko Marcetic quotes a Russian analyst according to whom the demand for Ukraine to join NATO “helped the ‘America-haters’ in Russia [to] come to power and gave legitimacy to the hardliners’ vision of a ‘Fortress Russia’.”¹¹ 

The War for the ‘Great Heartland’

In her essay ‘The Battle for Eurasia – From Globalisation Back to Geopolitics’, Birgit Mahnkopf describes how, after the end of the Cold War, the USA deliberately prevented the ‘European peace order’ envisaged by France, Germany and Russia. For this peace order would have made NATO superfluous, created a huge internal market and, once the European axis would cooperate economically with China, produced another competitor to the USA. 

“Geopolitical conflicts still revolve around the same region as they did during the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the British geographer Halford MacKinder had described the huge land mass of the Eurasian region, including Africa, as the ‘the World Island’, comprising three continents close together and representing the ‘Heartland’ of the world. This is where the last major resources and the last presumed reserves of fossil raw materials are to be found today – and by far the largest quantity of minerals and metals, which are needed for all civil and military technologies of digitalisation, but also for the production of energy from renewable sources and e-mobility, for the chemical industry and the aircraft industry, as well as for the medical equipment of modern industrial societies. … [It is] also the region of which Zbigniew Brzezinski, influential advisor to US administrations from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama,¹² once wrote that whoever dominates this huge landmass also dominates the world. Therefore, as has been the credo of US foreign policy since the early 1990s, no power should be allowed to gain the ability to drive the US (located in far distance from the continent!) out of Eurasia. This is the purpose of the 750 or so US military bases in 80 countries that have created an ‘iron ring around Eurasia’ and now include the expanded ‘pivot areas’ (original in English) of the Indo-Pacific region.”¹³

Neo-conservatives in the US see this as a battle against time; for them the only contested issue is whether the hegemon will step down gradually or with a big bang. During the 2003 Iraq war, one neocon think tank gave the US a maximum of 15 more years; then China would limit their military scope of action to such an extent that they could no longer “intervene globally.”¹⁴

Since the crisis shock of 2007, capitalism has been teetering on the brink; to this day, the socio-economic consequences of the crisis have not been overcome. In this situation, from 2010 onwards, the new US President Obama tightened the US stance against China – to which China responded with the ‘New Silk Road’ project (Belt and Road Initiative – BRI) and military armament. In 2013, Xi Jinping announced that the Belt and Road Initiative would develop the vast Eurasian landmass into the “largest market with unparalleled potential” through a tricontinental network of railways, oil and gas pipelines, and industrial infrastructure (power plants, ports and electricity grids). New road and rail links should enable much faster transport between East and West, but also from Africa to Europe and Asia. Compared to the waterways which had been used as major trade routes so far, these new transport links would also be less exposed to the dangers of a blockade by the USA and its allies. Between 2013 and 2016, Chinese direct investment abroad tripled to $216 billion. In 2017, the Belt and Road Initiative was officially ‘opened’. According to a survey by the American Enterprise Institute, $838 billion worth of projects were launched from 2017 to the end of 2021. The trillion targeted by Xi is not far off. China could “succeed in what all hegemonic world powers have attempted for 500 years: domination of the tricontinental landmass that is home to 70% of the world’s population.”¹⁵

Also in 2017, the US published its National Security Strategy, entitled ‘Great Power Competition’. In it, they see themselves in a “merciless competition with Russia and China”, which they classify as “revisionist powers”¹⁶. All economic and technological resources would have to be thrown into this struggle in order to curb China’s influence, also in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the strategy paper, the Chinese Communist Party was trying to expand its state-directed economic model, oust the USA from the Western Pacific and reshape the region. A new “era of great power competition” had dawned, including a systemic clash “between free and repressive notions of world order”.¹⁷ Then in 2022, NATO and the Pentagon classified China as a “strategic threat”, alleging that its integration into the international order had failed.

In 2019, the Kieler Institut für Weltwirtschaft [Kiel Institute for the World Economy] in Germany reiterated this position: China had “ceased to align its economic system with the Western model”. What this actually means is that, according to them, China has become too powerful and can no longer be kept at the status of the ‘workbench of the world’ even through economic sanctions and (protectionist) trade policies; China no longer wants to be limited to the supply of raw materials and intermediate and semi-finished products, but want to incorporate themselves into the production of higher-value end products for the sale on the world market. In order to block this economic development of China, the West is increasingly replacing the rules of international economic relations that apply to all with their own understanding of ‘values’. At an Atlantic Council event on the 13th of April 2022, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen proclaimed that it is no longer about “fair” trade, but about “safe” trade (friend shoring). This statement is only superficially a reaction to the Russian attack on Ukraine – but in reality it refers to the increased power of the BRICS (alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). In any case, the Ukraine war has dealt a heavy blow to China’s New Silk Road railway project.

One year of escalation

In 2022 we saw the most rapid militarisation of language, thought and action in Germany since the end of the Second World War, primarily pushed by the media and official politics. What began with the supply of 5,000 military helmets has reached enormous proportions in a short time: at the end of April they decided to supply Gepard anti-aircraft tanks, at the beginning of May they delivered self-propelled howitzers; in January 2023 they supplied the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, then the Leopard main battle tank. In the first year of the war, Germany delivered three billion euros worth of weapons. It is involved in the West’s economic war against Russia and plays an important role through intelligence support and the training of Ukrainian soldiers. The chairman of the German Armed Forces Association (Bundeswehrverbandsvorsitzende) says that, “we have to move into a kind of war economy”. The FAZ, one of Germany’s main liberal daily newspapers, speaks of a, “conversion to a defence economy”. Who could have imagined that a year ago?

In March 2022, NATO torpedoed the Ukrainian-Russian peace talks in Istanbul, which envisaged a neutral Ukraine. One of the two negotiators, former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett, later said there would have been a good chance of a ceasefire if the West had not prevented it. The other mediator, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, had already told CNN Türk in April: “There are countries in NATO that want the war to continue.” Zelenskyi’s advisers also claimed that, during his visit to Kiev, Boris Johnson had said that Putin and Russia should be “put under pressure instead of negotiating with them”. Should Ukraine reach an agreement with Russia, the “collective West” would not participate.¹⁸

In December 2022, the Pentagon even admitted to giving Ukraine the green light for drone attacks on targets in Russia.¹⁹ And the Washington Post revealed on the 9th of February 2023 that the US wants to deploy “control teams” in Ukraine to monitor troop movements. They were already providing targeting information for any attacks with modern weapons systems. A Ukrainian military official told the newspaper that if the US supplied state-of-the-art ATACM missile systems, no one would have to worry about them being misused to fire at Russia. “You’re controlling every shot anyway, so when you say, ‘We’re afraid that you’re going to use it for some other purposes,’ well, we can’t do it even if we want to.”²⁰

To the public, NATO is increasingly portraying the conflict not as a limited attempt to help a country repel an invasion, but as an existential struggle for the ‘survival of the West’. If Russia sees its existence threatened because of military aid to Ukraine, retaliatory strikes are to be feared. Most recently, on the 27th of February 2023, Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia said: “If the question of the existence of the Russian Federation arises seriously, then it will not be decided during the hostilities in Ukraine, but with the question of the existence of all human civilisation in the future”. The arms deliveries actually risk escalating into a Third World War.

Nuclear weapons – the tougher test case

For this reason, Friedrich Merz, chairman of the main opposition party CDU in Germany, declared in early May 2022 that he was not afraid of a nuclear war. For months, the media spread the message that anyone who was afraid of the nuclear bomb was engaging in “Kremlin propaganda” or had at least, “fallen for Putin”. On the 16th of February 2023, an article in the FAZ demanded that Germany should now realign its foreign and security policy. And not only with arms deliveries, more money for the Bundeswehr, etc., but: “The tougher acid test (Nagelprobe) lies [in] the public commitment to nuclear deterrence as an indispensable and legitimate means.”²¹

Like in the 1950s and 1960s, German media again publishes tips that the best way to escape the blast wave after an atomic bomb explosion is to get away from windows, doors and out of corridors. Documents declassified in 2006 show that the use of nuclear weapons was seriously considered in Korea in 1954 and in Vietnam in 1968. It was not until October 1969 that such planning was halted. Nixon had concluded that the US public could not be won over to a “decisive nuclear strike” against North Vietnam with probably hundreds of thousands of deaths.

The Pentagon has learned the lesson about the significance of ‘public opinion’ and today employs 27,000 people to supply the public media with information. In 2015, NATO’s Joint Air Power Competence Centre organised a high-level conference in Essen, Germany, on ‘strategic communication’ against the peace movement, sponsored by arms companies such as Airbus and Lockheed Martin. “Russia’s behaviour towards Ukraine underlines the urgency for NATO and NATO states to use offensive public diplomacy more effectively, beyond the capabilities they have developed for their Afghanistan mission.” This is because the real frontier for waging wars is ‘domestic’, the relation to one’s ‘own’ population and working class – the biggest concern is ‘war fatigue’, and the central enemy is the peace movement. The conference recommended spreading simple stories with a clear good/evil pattern and not engaging in substantive arguments that could be refuted like the ‘Iraq weapons of mass destruction’ war propaganda back then.²² This lesson has been internalised by large sections of the media. Anyone who speaks out in favour of peace is immediately told to, “tell that to the women who have been raped in Ukraine”.

The war regime and its’ ideological apparatus

At the beginning of the Russian invasion, it would not have been feasible for the governments  of most European countries to supply offensive weapons. The population had to be prepared step by step. For this, the narrative of the ‘heroically fighting people of Ukraine’ was crucial. The non-stop media coverage showing Ukrainians building Molotov cocktails could have made you believe that the war would be won by the determined self-defence of the population alone.

In recent months, the war-mongering of many media outlets has overtaken the federal government. When debris from Ukrainian air defences hit Poland in November, killing two people, many journalists immediately agreed that it was a Russian missile and that NATO must now strike back. It became almost physically unbearable to follow the bourgeois media during the Ukraine war: tanks, tanks, tanks. “It’s simply true: public broadcasting has largely become a mouthpiece for the Green Party. Even if I were their supporter, I wouldn’t like that as a citizen. That’s not what I pay for … But that’s where you get into murky waters!”²³

On top of that, the war is trivialised and made kitsch. At the end of January 2023, the Swiss daily newspaper NZZ had the headline: “Germany in Tank Fever”, expressing disbelief regarding a “German foreign policy at emoji level”, referring to statements such as “The Leopard is Liberated” by the Green vice-president of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt and “other public embarrassments”. Baerbock’s Foreign Office had also inserted a leopard emoji into an official tweet. Fittingly, the foreign minister was given a medal by the German Carnival Association for the lowest level of public wit. In June 2022, the Ukrainian author Zhadan had been awarded the ‘Peace Prize of the German Book Trade’. In his book ‘Himmel über Charkiw’ (Heaven over Kharkiv) he calls “the Russians” “barbarians”, “criminals”, “animals”, “rubbish” and wishes them: “Burn in hell, you pigs.” A peace prize!

Spreading confidence of military victory

Military analyst William Astore recently recalled how often US military leaders testified before Congress that everything was going according to plan during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “They talked of “progress’, of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being successfully trained and ready to assume their duties as U.S. forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”²⁴ Today, the same is going on in all the states involved in the war in Ukraine. But after the incubators in Kuwait, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, after the revelations of Katharine Gun and Chelsea Manning, who believes a word the ‘security experts’ have to say?

The majority, or at least half of the people in Germany, want to end this war through negotiations; in a Forsa poll, 31% thought that further arms deliveries would enable Ukraine to win the war, 64% did not believe this. But such positions are overrun by the media’s war enthusiasm and rhetoric like in 1914, by the “bellicose tenor of a concentrated published opinion” (Habermas). Herfried Münkler, a professor and political commentator,²⁵ raged: “Anyone who is not prepared to hand over weapons to Ukraine is morally a louse.” For the popular blogger Sascha Lobo²⁶ and Green Party leader Ralf Fücks²⁷, anyone who objects to arms supplies is a “lumpenpacifist” and “subjugation pacifist” respectively. Lobo accused the “peace pacifists” of abandoning Ukraine to mass murderers, torturers and rapists. Former pastor and German President Gauck found that “pacifism … only cements the dominance of the wicked, the inhuman and the criminal.” On the occasion of the ‘Munich Security Conference’ in February 2023 he managed to surpass himself, conjuring up the spirit of the “German Christians” under National Socialism: “Listen to those who want to fight!”²⁸

Denouncing the peace movement

“In these days of war, journalism in our country often works according to the motto: ‘The US president declares, the German federal government announces, the police informs’. … Today it goes so far that privately financed so-called ‘fact-checkers’ work towards the decomposition of opposition to war policy and declare quasi-officially what is right and what should not be right.”

(Sevim Dağdelen, Left Party member in the Bundestag)

After the publication of the Schwarzer/Wagenknecht “Manifesto for Peace”²⁹, which called for a ceasefire and negotiations, the liberal-left daily newspaper ‘Taz’ questioned Schwarzer’s whole life (“ruined life’s work”). The FAZ spoke of “propaganda aid for Putin”, the liberal daily newspaper FR of “dogmatic ideological pacifism”, the Tagesspiegel of “moral depravity”, the Green Party Minister for the Environment in Baden-Württemberg called the peace demo, “the ugliest grimace of Germany and a disgrace for our country”; The Green Party Vice-Chancellor Habeck saw a “the population being misled”. The elected representatives of the Green Party and their think tanks can only play their (war mongering) role because their milieu supports this course of action. A good action against this Green militarism took place in Berlin at the end of January. The activists announced that: “The military drill unit of the Provisional Anarchist Anti-War Council Berlin launched a mobilisation drive on Saturday, the 28th of January 2023. The primary aim was to enlist as many volunteer men and women as possible within the Green Party clientele. After all, the chai latte will not be defended at Kollwitzplatz (posher area of Berlin), but in Ukraine.”³⁰

“No weapons and armaments to war zones. Vote Green on 26.9!”

… this was a Green Party poster in the 2021 Bundestag election campaign. Baerbock wanted to push for the withdrawal of US nuclear bombs from Germany if she won the election. Only a year later, in early August 2022, she declared her support for “German participation in nuclear deterrence” during a meeting in New York. This was not a U-turn due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the same 2021 election campaign, Habeck had demanded arms deliveries to Ukraine during a visit to the country.³¹ Already in 1999, the Green Party foreign minister Fischer had bombed Serbia with an anti-fascist pose: “I have learned not only ‘never again war’, but also, ‘never again Auschwitz’, “no pasaran!”

The same ploy was used when, from the very first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war was described as a “war of extermination”, thus linguistically revoking the Nazi war of extermination against the Soviet Union; this was relativising history in the service of domestic military mobilisation of the population. The aforementioned ‘Taz’ article against Wagenknecht and Schwarzer concludes: “One can hardly imagine how both of them would have related to the uprising in the Nazi-infested ghetto of Warsaw in 1943. They both are amoral, nothing else.”

The Green Party’s following is more pro-war than the right-wing CSU. Long-time Green Party politician Antje Vollmer says that “the leading media representatives and outlets – all of the same age as the Green Party – play a central role in this. In the talk shows and radio interviews, it is a group that is not so well known but has great influence: a growing crowd of political think tanks and so-called military experts – who, by the way, seem to be getting younger and younger and more and more female.”³²

Think tanks

At the forefront is the ‘Zentrum Liberale Moderne’ (Centre for Liberal Modernity), founded in 2017 by Ralf Fücks and his wife and Green Party politician Marieluise Beck. “Two former top politicians use all the networks of the institutions in which they have long been active and then use state money to found an anti-Russian think tank, which they call a non-governmental organisation and which doesn’t have any real practice in the country.”³³ They have so far been given five to six million euros from several ministerial funds and the Federal Press Office. Their first activity was the online portal ‘Ukraine verstehen’ (Understanding Ukraine). Together with Ukrainian nationalists, they organised, for example, the demo on the 24th of February 2023 in Berlin, displaying a bombed Russian tank. Fücks, a former KBW member (Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschlands – sectarian communist party project of the New Left) uses the ‘Projekt Gegneranalyse’ (Project for the Study of Opponents) to go after dissenters in the manner of an intelligence service in order to “mark other views on the prevailing social relations as undemocratic and eliminate them”. This project has so far received almost 300,000 euros from the Federal Ministry for Families(!)³⁴

Led by such think tanks, civil society has become a war civil society. It is pushing the war in Ukraine on the basis of the narrative that civil society itself is at stake there. We are witnessing a return to the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries – with ‘feminist foreign policy’ right at the centre.

‘Feminist foreign policy’

“When a politician starts ranting about values instead of stating his interests, it is high time to leave the room.” (Egon Bahr)

The two public figures most in favour of arms deliveries in Germany are the Liberal Party leader, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann,  and Green Party leader Baerbock. Strack-Zimmermann’s motives are economic. She is chairwoman of the Defence Committee and at the same time in the three most important arms industry lobby groups: in the Deutschen Gesellschaft für Wehrtechnik (German Society for Defence Technology), the Förderkreis Deutsches Heer (Supporter Organisation for the German Army) and the Deutsch-Atlantischen Gesellschaft (German-Atlantic Society), of which she is vice-president. She is also on the Beirat der Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik (Advisory board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy). Transparency International and others consider it a problem that she gives the arms industry “very close and privileged access to parliament”.

Antje Vollmer calls Baerbock, “the shrillest trumpet of the new antagonistic NATO strategy. Her justifications astound with argumentative simplicity. “There were more women than ever at the Munich ‘Security Conference’ (SiKo) – Kamala Harris, Ursula Von Der Leyen, Sanna Marin etc. – and they all spoke out in favour of intensifying the war. The supporting programme of the SiKo included a ‘Women 100 Dinner’ at the fine The Charles Hotel, where Baerbock explained her feminist foreign and security policy.  “Around 100 women, including two Nobel Prize winners, all kinds of presidents and bosses from business and politics,” was how the daily newspaper Süddeutsche described the evening. “Female empowerment, feminist discourse, these are the magic words at the white-covered tables. The menu is vegan”.

Then, just in time for International Women’s Day, the Foreign Office presented the guidelines for feminist foreign policy, which are to be part of the new “national security strategy”. The 80-page document deals, among other things, with promoting “gender-sensitive approaches in arms control and arms export control”; proving war crimes and punishing the perpetrators: “holding the perpetrators accountable for conflict-based sexualised violence in Ukraine”. The journalist Sonja Zekri commented in the Süddeutsche on the 10th of March: “Feminism and gobbledygook”.

“Feminist foreign policy” is an integral part of a “value-led foreign policy.”³⁵ Baerbock hides the economic and political interests she represents behind values. Her stance is not ethically-morally based, but moralistic. This is a big difference. Moralism paints the world as it pleases and is prepared to sacrifice many many people ‘for the good cause’. International law is no longer the reference point for the foreign minister’s actions.³⁶ Many of the older warmongers like Fücks used to be Maoists; they only had to slightly adapt their idea of ‘just wars’. And just as anti-imperialists glorify the respective opponents of the USA, Annalena Baerbock does the same with Putin’s adversaries.

The balance of power is changing

Every day in the newspapers we’ve read that NATO is “more united than ever” and Russia is “isolated worldwide”. Yet almost the opposite is the case: the ‘West’ has fewer and fewer followers worldwide, and in NATO there has been a shift of power towards the Washington-London-Warsaw axis. The US government is strengthening this alliance against the Berlin-Paris axis and playing the two off against each other, much like the “new Europe against old Europe” (Donald Rumsfeld) during the Iraq war. No matter how the war ends in military terms, Russia will have lost massively, Ukraine will be devastated, and the USA will have played its role as the world’s police – and Europe its role as a deputy sheriff in any case. From a historical distance, the current wars will have been a series of geostrategic rearguard actions by the US.

After becoming president in 2021, Biden came to Europe, more precisely to England and to Brussels, to announce: We are back! The withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021 showed the opposite: it was a military, moral and organisational failure vis-à-vis the allied Afghans. Moreover, the retreat was uncoordinated with the ‘NATO partners’, who also subsequently took to their heels.³⁷ In this situation, Biden used the escalation around Ukraine to silence his critics within the US. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he did not want to show any ‘weakness’ and therefore refused to negotiate with Russia in autumn 2021. He had already assembled the right team before coming to power. In addition to Foreign Minister Tony Blinken (his National Security Advisor as Vice President from 2009 to 2013) and Defence Minister Austin (a representative of the arms industry), it includes two people who were “intimately involved in the US effort to overthrow Yanukovych; Victoria (“Fuck the EU”) Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State, now Under-Secretary of State; Jake Sullivan, then the security advisor to VP Joe Biden, and now the US National Security Advisor to President Biden”; “the same neoconservatives who pushed the US’s targeted wars in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011) and Libya (2011). … As a result, Biden is leading Ukraine, the US and Europe into another debacle.” That’s according to Jeffrey Sachs, of all people, the US economist who implemented the economic shock therapy in Eastern Europe after 1989.³⁸

The sabotage of Nord Stream – a “covert act of war”

The Nord Stream pipelines were considered a central element of Germany’s energy supply. The USA was vehemently opposed. Since the 1950s, West German governments had been trying to conclude gas pipe deals with the Russians, then still called the ‘Soviets’. The first attempt was stopped by the Kennedy administration in 1962, still through diplomatic pressure. In 2022 it was undermined through explosives. The blowing up of Nord Stream was an extension of the war beyond the Ukrainian borders. It eliminated much of the possibility of Germany and Russia resuming economic relations after the war ended. On the 26th of September 2022, Nord Stream was blown up. The message was understood worldwide. The former Polish foreign minister thanked the US via Twitter; US Secretary of State Blinken saw the “enormous opportunity to end dependence on Russian energy once and for all.”³⁹ One day after the explosions, the Baltic Pipe was opened, transporting Norwegian gas to Poland.

The blast released an estimated 350,000 tonnes of methane gas, which, according to the UN was, “probably the largest release of climate-damaging methane ever recorded” (methane is about 28 times more damaging to the climate than CO2 and is responsible for about a third of the global temperature rise since the Industrial Revolution.)⁴⁰ On the 8th of February 2023, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a detailed whistleblower report on how US Navy divers, under orders from the US President, worked with the Norwegian Navy to plant the explosive devices as part of a NATO naval exercise in June and set them off in September.⁴¹

On the 7th of March, the New York Times and several German media outlets broke the story that a pro-Ukrainian group had used a rented yacht to transport the explosives to the pipeline. According to the Times, this had already been known in intelligence circles a week after the attack and a Scandinavian delegation in Brussels had been informed. Whether there is a connection to Ukrainian authorities is still in dispute. According to the New York Times, US officials think it is possible. Previously, all experts had agreed that only one state had the military and intelligence capabilities for such a sabotage operation. It remains exciting to see how long the German government will continue to practice the silence of complicity.

The ‘Global South’

‘Global South’ used to be a left-wing propagandistic term of struggle – during the Ukraine war it became a political reality. Asian, African and Latin American governments are being wooed from all sides and appear self-confident. The people in the South, however, are suffering more than ever. In 2021 the rich countries have bought away their vaccines, in 2022 their liquified natural gas. In the ‘South’, no one understands the claim that the Ukraine war represents an “unprecedented breach of international law”. This is because it was preceded by numerous illegal wars by the USA, violent depositions of elected governments, the bombing of civilian infrastructure, drone killings and extra-legal executions. The war in Yemen alone has so far cost the lives of some 400,000 people, almost 70% of them children under five. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have left behind failed states. Here, the Americans were the “lunatics” who wage wars without a “positive war goal”, and leave behind only scores of dead people and broken infrastructure.

It’s almost exclusively states that are already part of the western alliance that also participate in the sanctions against Russia. Even at the EU-Asean summit in Brussels at the end of 2022, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand were not prepared to strongly condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine. Indonesia called for more equality in mutual relations.⁴² Most of today’s neutral states were in the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s – but some that were developing countries then are now global powers, both politically and economically. In terms of numbers of people and gross domestic product, they outnumber the West. Their economic and geopolitical interests stand against a renewed bloc formation as in the Cold War. The view that the days of the West are numbered and that its supremacy must give way to a multipolar world order forms an ideological bridge between Russia and this ‘global South’, including China.

The USA is no longer a leading power without alternatives – not even in the Middle East. When OPEC+ cut oil production in 2022 in order to get higher prices, Biden threatened to stop supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons. Upon his arrival in Saudi Arabia in July 2023 Biden was greeted with a very cool reception, whereas Xi Jinping’s visit in mid-December was greatly celebrated. The G7 countries have overestimated their control over global oil trade. The price cap on Russian oil, for example, has only caused oil to be diverted. Russia is pushing ahead with a gas project with Iran. Together with India, both countries have revived the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). In February 2023, South Africa conducted a major military exercise with Russia and China. And in March 2023, even Iran and Saudi Arabia resumed diplomatic relations through China’s mediation.

Besides Africa and Asia, Latin America also benefits from a multipolar and non-aligned world. Lula da Silva has already offered himself as a mediator several times. At the press conference with Scholz at the end of January, he again proposed a peace initiative. When Biden urged him in Washington to supply weapons to Ukraine, Lula replied, “I don’t want to be involved in the war. I want to end it.” For the US, however, B(R)ICS states are unacceptable as neutral negotiators: they are, after all, fighting this and other wars to prevent a multipolar world order from replacing them as global leaders. When the Chinese government announced a peace plan for Ukraine in mid-February, the USA immediately sharpened the tone and launched the news that China wanted to supply weapons to Russia.

The USA is interested in a long war to decisively weaken Russia. Moreover, Biden, like all Democratic presidents before him – except Carter! – uses the war as a means of domestic politics. He will only agree to negotiations when the war becomes too ‘expensive’ for him in terms of domestic politics. The same goes for Putin.

The business with the Ukrainian transformation

“The more the war progresses, the better it is for the Ukrainian leadership to become a Western protectorate.”⁴³

Negotiations on an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine began in the early 2000s; by the end of 2013, both sides were set to sign. The offer was not particularly good, the IMF conditions for loans were very tough. Russia tried a mix of sanction threats and cheap gas prices to ensure that the agreement did not materialise. Ukraine’s President Yanukovych, who had been balancing between the two sides, unexpectedly backed down, triggering the uprising on the Maidan. Yanukovych fled and a pro-European interim government was installed in February 2014. At the same time, Russia began annexing Crimea (February/March), and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics were proclaimed in the Donbass (April/May). In June, the newly elected Ukrainian President Poroshenko signed the association agreement. It fits into the framework of the EU’s ‘Eastern Partnership’, an initiative started by Poland with the aim of tying the states of the former Soviet Union more closely to the West and, above all, to remove Ukraine from Russian influence.

In 2015, Poroshenko banned all three communist parties in Ukraine. He is the main person responsible for the nationalist policy of ‘de-Russification’ and the complete imposition of the Ukrainian language. On the 1st of September 2017, the agreement with the EU came into force, accompanied by an aid programme for Ukraine worth eleven billion euros for the period 2014 to 2020. The 2135-page treaty “can certainly be read as a document of voluntary submission. … In a very classical way, the articles on trade oblige Ukraine to remove most of the barriers to free competition… ” “’The Association Agreement is in some ways an expression of a colonial attitude’, admitted a Western diplomat in Kiev in 2013.”⁴⁴

From regulations for the treatment of frozen vegetables to the privatisation of public institutions and the free movement of capital, it’s Brussels that dictates the legal framework to its ‘partners’. In Ukraine’s case this includes the obligation to legalise ‘lobbying’ – so much for the ‘fight against corruption’! Article 7 of the agreement deals with “approximation in the field of foreign and security policy, including the common security and defence policy”. The chapter on “cooperation in the field of energy, including nuclear issues” stipulates that “energy sources, suppliers, transport routes and transport methods” are to be diversified and all standards originating from the Soviet Union are to be withdrawn. In other words, Ukraine must ‘de-russify’ its economy.

At the 2018 Ukraine Reform Conference, it was decided to privatise state-owned enterprises – against the will of the people. According to a poll, only 12% of Ukrainians were in favour of privatisation at the time. In 2020, President Zelenskyi lifted the ban on the sale of arable land in order to meet the conditions for a five-billion-dollar loan from the IMF. In the same year, the IMF presented a bill to re-privatise the banking sector.

Ukraine as an experimental field…

The Ukraine Recovery Conference in July 2022 in Lugano adopted a kind of Marshall Plan to rebuild Ukraine which promised $1.25 trillion future funding. The plan is a long list of measures to attract foreign investment: privatisation of banks and state-owned enterprises up to and including nuclear power plants, capital-friendly financial, tax and customs policies, ‘targeted’ (rather than universal) social assistance, but above all, ‘abolition of outdated labour legislation’.

In times of war, economic policy usually becomes state interventionist; paradoxically, Zelenskyi continues with privatisation and cuts taxes. Labour protection laws have also been scrapped: in mid-August 2022, he signed a law allowing small and medium-sized enterprises with up to 250 workers to employ people outside of the general labour laws. In these companies only the individual labour contract will apply. This new law will affect 70% of Ukraine’s labour force, as most people are employed in such small and medium sized enterprises.

On the 1st of September, Zelenskyi launched the ‘great privatisation’. On the 6th of September, he was allowed to virtually ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, inviting investors from around the world to buy over $400 billion worth of Ukrainian shares. The US Agency for International Development helps with the sale and guarantees the security of the investment. The World Bank and, above all, private investors are also involved. Zelenskyi met several times with Larry Fink, the founder of BlackRock.⁴⁵ Another bill wants to introduce a working day of up to twelve hours and abolish protection against dismissal.⁴⁶ Zelenskyi had already presented the new labour laws in 2021, but did not receive a majority for them in parliament. After the remaining eleven opposition parties had been banned in March 2022 in the course of martial law, it was then enough for a majority in the summer of 2022.

Even before the war, Ukraine (together with Moldova) was the poorest country in Europe. In 2021, the statutory minimum wage was half that of Bulgaria. In 2022, Ukraine’s GDP fell by more than 30%, wages by another 25%. The war has exacerbated inequality, which was already extreme. 17.6 million people – almost 40% of the Ukrainian population – are dependent on humanitarian aid, while the rich can buy their way out of military service and now live in western Ukraine or abroad.

…. and supplier of labour

Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, which were admitted to the EU in 2004, had already supplied the EU with a large labour force. The relocation of production to the new member states was essential for European and especially German industry. Now Ukraine is to follow. The association agreement provides for the “progressive liberalisation of the cross-border provision of services between the Parties”. Such services are now provided locally by Ukrainian refugees in EU countries. In mid-February 2023, the German Federal Employment Agency reported that since the beginning of the war, some 65,000 Ukrainians had been added to the workforce subject to social insurance contributions, plus 21,000 in mini-jobs. These figures refer to the labour market in Germany alone and they will increase significantly after the completion of integration and professional language courses. In interviews at the border, 66% of the refugees said they had a higher educational qualification – the average in Ukraine is 29%, in the EU 33%. They are ‘deliberately’ trying to ‘make use’ of these qualifications instead of dumbing people into unskilled jobs. According to a study, one in four refugees from Ukraine wants to stay in Germany in the long term. This development is supported by the fact that more and more men of working age are coming to Germany – regardless of the compulsory military service in Ukraine.

“The rich supply the weapons, the poor supply the corpses” (demo poster)

The war lies like a leaden blanket over everything. Western Europe and Germany are increasingly being dragged into it – or pushing themselves into it. The decision of the 27 EU defence ministers on the 30th of August 2022 to send a European mission to train the Ukrainian armed forces was a direct EU initiative. “The transformation of the EU Commission into a command centre and political-military coordinating body of the inter-imperialist war effort is a historic change.”⁴⁷ The militarisation of society always equates to a massive attack on social conditions themselves. “One jet plane means this many fewer schools and hospitals. Every time we’re building up our military budget, we’re attacking ourselves.” (Noam Chomsky)⁴⁸

At the classic peace demonstrations in Germany, people over 60 are in the majority. For many young people, ‘peace’ is no longer a value – perhaps because their parents’ generation have not experienced war? Those who grew up with the propaganda of ‘humanitarian wars’ feel morally obliged to unrestricted military aid, Habermas says. Even ‘Fridays for Future’ demand peace and at the same time weapons for Ukraine. The Cohn-Bendit/Leggewie⁴⁹ duo is opportunistic enough to want to suck up to such positions, too: “Climate protection and arms supplies are not contradictory.”⁵⁰ Such idiots will soon be old news. Our biggest problem, however, are vociferous left-wing radicals who, in chorus with the Green Party, demand sanctions against Russia and weapons for Ukraine – without having any influence on who supplies which weapons to whom and for what purpose. ‘Antinationals’ defend a nationalist ‘people’s war’. A legacy of the anti-Germans, who three decades ago accused every prole of anti-Semitism who dared to say “we” (meaning, whoever referred to any form of collective subject) and at the same time demanded “bombs on Baghdad”. Unlike then, today many arms supply advocates amongst the radical left even brush aside their earlier insistence on the singularity of the Nazis’ policy of extermination by comparing the Russian invasion with Nazi aggression.⁵¹

But Ukraine is not Spain in 1936 or Rojava today. Large sections of the Ukrainian left initially spoke of the “right to national self-defence”, as well. Anarchists especially had joined the Territorial Defence Forces after the Russian invasion, which have since been integrated into the army. The Sotsyalnyi Rukh/Social Movement plays (or played) a major role here. According to its own information, it is the most important “anti-capitalist organisation” in Ukraine, with around 100 members: “Today everyone is fighting, everyone is on the front line defending Ukraine: leftists, anarchists, the trade unions, the middle class, the extreme right,” its member Vladislav Starodubchev boasted in the German magazine Konkret. But there are also Ukrainian leftists who do not want to take sides in the “imperialist war between NATO and Russia on the soil of Ukraine”. The experiences at the front have also made some of the anarchist defenders of the fatherland rethink. The brutality of the war of attrition is not only changing the morale of the soldiers – there are now many desertions – but also the political positions in the West and the willingness in the wider population to continue to support or ignore the war.⁵² Also at the Schwarzer/Wagenknecht rally there were many people who had initially advocated arms deliveries, but who, in view of the military escalation and the many dead, now plead for ceasefires and negotiations.

“War! – What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!”

(Edwin Starr)

After the Russian invasion many Ukrainians queued up in front of the army recruitment office, but enthusiasm has faded since the military cemeteries are getting bigger. The army has problems finding soldiers and resorts to illegal methods. Many people are hiding from the war or have found their way abroad. However, 10,000 conscientious objectors are said to have already been arrested at the border. In a remarkable interview in early March, Ukrainian soldiers commented on their situation in Bakhmut and spoke of a survival rate of 30:70. Men would be sent to the front line after a two-week crash course. Some called for a military retreat.

Russia, contrary to Putin’s promises, forcibly mobilised 300,000 troops in the summer, bringing the war closer to the general population. This has led to a massive flight of young men abroad. Unlike Ukrainians, however, they do not get recognition as refugees in Germany because their reason for fleeing is not ‘political’; Baltic states deport conscientious objectors. In a video appeal on the 11th of March, Russian reservists complained that they were being deliberately sacrificed. Putin should take care of the situation on the ground, at the front-line itself, not just on paper, they said. In mid-February 2023, the German magazine Weltwoche lamented: “Recently, the Yougov Institute published a survey: How many Germans would defend their country in the event of an attack? The result: 11%. 5% voluntarily, the rest forced. … What went wrong?”

Who could force serious negotiations?

China has repeatedly offered to put the brakes on Russia; Brazil has offered to be a mediator. Now the Pope wants to fly to Russia and Ukraine. Even Ischinger, the long-time chairman of the ‘Munich Security Conference’ is suddenly in favour of negotiations. As soon as the USA withdraws its support and guarantees Ukraine’s neutrality, the war would be stopped for the time being. 

A ceasefire would not be peace, but only a respite in the face of crises at all levels of society. In order for the conflict not to be merely ‘frozen’ as it was in 2014 – which would only give opportunity to all sides to continue arming themselves – a new broad, transnational, social and cultural movement from below would be needed, as was the case against the Vietnam War. Only such a movement could really change things. One step would be for all nuclear powers to station their nuclear weapons only on their own national territory. The Non-Aligned Movement has been demanding this for years. (Incidentally, in 2010 the Bundestag voted by a large majority for the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Germany). Yankees go home!

The development of the class struggles in Russia, South Africa, India, Iran, China… and above all in the USA will be decisive. They are central to what happens next in the world.

“I dedicate this show to the American deserters”
(Jimi Hendrix 1969)

Footnotes:

[1] Worth reading! Benedict Neff, “Wish and reality mix in reporting”, in: NZZ 9.2.2023.

[2] Katja Maurer in the preface to Raúl Sánchez Cedillo, This War Does Not End in Ukraine, pp. 9-10.

[3] The current CIA chief William Burns writes in his book ‘The Back Channel’ (2019) that Putin repeatedly watched the video footage of Gaddafi’s assassination. The US magazine The Atlantic saw a “direct line” from Gaddafi’s demise to the war in Ukraine in early March 2022: “As an international leper, the Libyan ruler fared best; only when he opened up to the West did Washington smell weakness and force his fall – a fate that could await [Putin] as well.” In the Security Council, Russia had surprisingly refrained from vetoing the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya – interim President Dmitry Medvedev had allowed himself to be persuaded by then US Vice President Joe Biden, probably without consulting his Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. This allowed French fighter jets to bomb Gaddafi forces unhindered. “And contrary to Moscow’s expectations, NATO attacks are not limited to the capital, but under US leadership – going beyond the mandate for humanitarian intervention – forces the fall of the Libyan tyrant. Gaddafi has to flee. On the 20th of October 2011, the new government’s militiamen track him down near the port city of Sirte, hidden in a huge drainage pipe. They beat him bloody and shove their bayonets up his anus until one of them finally redeems the violated man with gunshots.” (“At Midnight with the Despot” Die Zeit, 11.9.2022)

[4] Speech on 17.6.2022.

[5] Source: /www.govinfo.gov

[6] https://www.c-span.org/

[7] Married to Robert Kagan, who worked for US governments (under both parties), among others. He is one of the best-known neo-conservatives in the USA and is regarded as a specialist in international politics, especially security policy, terrorism, the Balkans, Russian-American relations and issues surrounding NATO enlargement.

[8] Jürgen Wagner, “Der Ukraine-Krieg”, Endnote 15, IMI Analysis 2023/08, imi-online.de, 22.2.2023.

[9] Cf. Wolfgang Streeck: “Die Amerikaner meinen es bitterernst”, FR 24.2.2023.

[10] The conversation “Ukraine war follows decades of warnings that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe could provoke Russia”, 28.2.2022, in German among others Branko Marcetic on 17.2.2023 on Telepolis: “USA knew it was crossing Russia’s red lines on NATO expansion”.

[11] Ibid.

[12] In reality, he was already a campaign advisor to Johnson, later security advisor to Jimmy Carter and had founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973.

[13] Birgit Mahnkopf: Der Kampf um Eurasien – Von der Globalisierung zurück zur Geopolitik, in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, October 2022. / see also: Ukraine and the battle for Eurasia – Asia Times

[14] See Wildcat special issue on the Iraq War. www.wildcat-www.de.

[15] Mahnkopf, op. cit.

[16] In international law and international politics, revisionism is the endeavour to change border demarcations and other regulations agreed in international treaties, says the Political Dictionary of the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
Great Power Competition and Nuclear Strategy – United States Department of State

[17] See the article worth reading by Susan Watkins: “America vs China”, New Left Review 115, Jan/Feb 2019 – own translation.
https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii115/articles/susan-watkins-america-vs-china

[18] “Boris Johnson pressured Zelenskyi to ditch Peace Talks with Russa: Ukrainian Paper”, Common Dreams, 6/5/2022. www.commondreams.org

[19] “Pentagon gives Ukraine green light for drone strikes inside Russia”, The Times, 9.12.2022.

[20] “Ukraine’s rocket campaign reliant on U.S. precision targeting, officials say”, Washington Post, 9.1.2023.
Ukraine’s rocket campaign reliant on U.S. precision targeting, officials say – The Washington Post

[21] “The nuclear litmus test of the turn of the century”, FAZ 16.2.2023.

[22] Bernhard Trautvetter: “Strategic communication: nuclear rebels against peace movement”, on: Telepolis, 19.1.2023; there are also further sources.

[23] Michael Angele on Deutschlandfunk: “Help, I can’t stand my favourite radio station any more”, freitag 04/2023.

[24] William Astore: “George Santos, the U.S. Military, and Lying”, 2.2.2023.
Lying, George Santos, and the U.S. Military – LA Progressive

[25] Herfried Münkler – Wikipedia

[26] Sascha Lobo – Wikipedia

[27] Ralf Fücks – Wikipedia

[28] Quote of the conservative politician Gauck, which might as well come out of the (far-)left western corner when explaining their support for the Ukraine war effort:
“We have to listen first of all to those who are fighting. There is no German who would force any Ukrainian into partaking in the war, but for peculiar reasons it’s the Ukranians themselves who think that peace alone is not the most valuable goal, but that peace in freedom is what they are striving for. And mysteriously there is such a strong moral force within them that they are willing to sacrifice their lives for it. It would be a dangerous arrogance of the West if they wanted to censor this will…”

[29] For a skewed report from The Guardian: Leaders of German left condemn ‘peace rally’ over far-right involvement | Germany | The Guardian

[30] https://de.indymedia.org/node/256275

[31] Wildcat 108, Summer 2021, p. 19: “But whenever NATO countries talk about ‘values’, they are preparing wars… The hawkish Daniel Brössler commented in the Süddeutsche: ‘Biden will leave [the German government] no room for a zigzag course between the powers.’ And the next federal government with the participation of the Green Party will happily agree (Habeck has already sounded out Ukraine; and combat drones are no longer rejected). Kampf-Knarrenbauer has already sent a warship to East Asia…”

[32] Antje Vollmer: “For me, the war in the minds began in 2008 at the latest and even more so in 2014”, Telepolis, 15.11.2022.

[33] Antje Vollmer op. cit.

[34] Markus Mohr: “Gegen die, die schon wieder mit den Schweinsteufeln und Schlangengeistern tanzen!”(“Against those who are already dancing with the pig devils and snake spirits again!”) see also: “Ukraine and ‘Parallel Media’. Around 4.5 million euros from five government pots”, Telepolis, 18.10.2022; there also further sources.

[35] On the genesis of “feminist foreign policy, Torsten Bewernitz has written an article worth reading: “Too good to be true” – Feminist foreign policy between state feminism and global emancipation; express 02/2023.

[36] Very worth reading are the two interviews with Daniela Dahn on telepolis on the 25th and 26th of December 2022: “Völkerrecht nicht mehr Referenzsystem staatliches Handelns”.

[37] See: Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad: The Withdrawal. Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. August 2022.

[38] Worth reading: Jeffrey D. Sachs “Wider die Lügen: The Ninth Anniversary of the Ukraine War”, Telepolis 3.3.2023.
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/yjae8gc8hp2p293tmt4dlr4z2dpe2s

[39] US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, 30.9.2022.

[40] The CO2 burden on the atmosphere associated with rearmament and war is not mentioned specifically in their climate reports at the intervention of the USA; official figures are therefore hard to come by. According to calculations by a Dutch researcher, the war produced 100 million tonnes of additional CO2 in the first year. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nord Stream sabotage may have added 28.5 million tonnes of CO2. (Methane is converted to CO2).

[41] Seymour Hersh: “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline”; German in junge Welt, 9.2.2023.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

[42] “EU-Asean summit ends without joint condemnation of Russia”, Die Zeit, 14.12.2022.

[43] Raúl Sánchez Cedillo: This War Does Not End in Ukraine. Arguments for a Constituent Peace. February 2023, p. 30.

[44] Pierre Rimbert: “Kiev’s false friends”, in Le Monde Diplomatique 10/22.

[45] “Ukrainian economy is open to investors”, businesswire, 6.9.2022.

[46] “Ukraine’s anti-worker law comes into effect”, OpenDemocracy, 25.8.2022.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-labour-law-wrecks-workers-rights/

[47] Cedillo, op. cit., p. 287.

[48] Noam Chomsky: “Every Time We Build Up Our Military Budget, We’re Attacking Ourselves” (jacobin.com)
https://jacobin.com/2022/06/noam-chomsky-interview-russia-ukraine-war

[49] The horrors of Mariupol should remind us of a new danger to Sarajevo | Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Timothy Garton Ash, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski and Claus Leggewie | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2022/mar/22/horrors-mariupol-new-danger-sarajevo-balkans-eu-serbia

[50] FAZ, 26.2.2023.

[51] Worth reading: Ingar Solty “Knots in the head” in junge welt, 1.3.23.

[52] Nick Braun’s “Stimmen aus der Klandestinität” in junge welt, 23.2.23.