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clubofinfo · 7 years ago

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Expert: Pink Floyd always was, and still is, wildly popular and successful here in Germany. The legendary rock group’s former bass player and singer, Roger Waters, still has quite a following here too as a successful solo artist. That following does not, however, include the German government, nor does it include supporters of the current government of Israel, who last fall successfully petitioned the broadcasting honchos who run Germany’s public television network ARD to drop a planned live concert by Mr Waters from the programming schedule. The grounds: as a supporter of the BDS boycott movement and a passionate advocate of justice for Palestine, Waters was accused of being an “antisemite”. Israel’s interests, whether real or imagined, carry a good bit of weight here in the former stomping grounds of Herr H and his millions of supporters, which included a great many who simply had no idea what was going on in those concentration camps — if they are to be taken at their word — and now there are even more millions of their children and grandchildren who sincerely feel deep shame and revulsion at what was done by their relatives and their country. Understandably, they want the world to know that times have changed in the land where the Holocaust was organized and administered. Jews were not the only group targeted and murdered en masse, which may come as a surprise to some. But thanks to what the courageous academic, author, and crusader for Palestinian rights Dr. Norman Finkelstein calls Israel’s and Judaism’s “Holocaust Industry”, there is no danger that those Jewish victims of Nazi bloodlust will ever be forgotten. This cannot necessarily be said of the many Sinti and Roma, gays, disabled persons and others who shared that horrible fate [Not to mention communists, socialists and other sworn political foes of fascism]. We don’t know how many of those others were wiped out, but we all know how many Jews were murdered: six million. Most people who are not illiterate can tell you that number immediately. Dr. Finkelstein is a Jew, both of whose parents were interned in concentration camps by the Nazis. It should not be possible to tar him as an “antisemite” but the Israeli government does it anyway, as is also the case with members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jews now banned from entering the country. Finkelstein’s honesty and passion for justice also cost him a professorship at DePaul University. His new book has just been published. Times have, in fact, changed. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish persons are now living in Germany again, their numbers growing pretty rapidly. A great many of them are young people moving from Israel to live in ultra-hip Berlin. I have never been in Israel, although for years I was related by marriage to a good many orthodox Jews, but I have been in Berlin many times and I can easily imagine that it might be more pleasant for many young Israelis to blend into that multicultural megalopolis than to remain at the eye of the Zionist storm, especially if one does not identify strongly with the religious aspects of Israeli culture (as many of these Israeli immigrants do not). Berlin is surrounded by the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik, communist East Germany as it was then, now once again part of the (dare I say it?) Fatherland. Most East Germans could not be reunified with the Klassenfeind (“class enemy”) fast enough after the “fall of the wall” in 1989, but these days an awful lot of them are very disillusioned and disappointed, as are many others in the former Soviet Bloc. The majority of those Eastern Europeans renounced the official socialist ideology with obvious pleasure, having apparently never taken it terribly seriously except to the extent one had to in order to stay out of trouble. They tried to walk the capitalist walk and they expected to be welcomed as long-lost brothers. And in many newspaper editorials and speeches by politicians, they were. But 28 years after reunification, in practice those in East Germany are still the objects of West German scorn and arrogance. Many of them have repaid that ongoing slight and condescension by adopting the views and politics of the aforementioned Herr H, expressing their hatred of foreigners, immigrants, refugees and Jews at the drop of a hat, and in many cases going a good bit farther. In some recent years the number of attacks on foreigners and refugees by Germans has reached one thousand for a single year, although it is the rare violent crime by a refugee here that the media continues to find much more horrifying and newsworthy. Not all German Neo-Nazis and associated sympathizers are East Germans, not by a long shot, but it is fair and accurate to say that the center of ultra-right-wing evil here is the federal state of Saxony. Where Bach and Wagner once made musical history, a different cultural phenomenon is now growing rapidly, and in Saxony that fact actually made the xenophobic Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Saxony’s biggest political party in the September 2017 parliamentary election (see my article “The German Election: The West’s Nervous Breakdown Continues”). Nationwide, the party hauled in almost 13% of the vote, taking so much support from the ruling Christian Democrats and Social Democrats that, four months later, attempts to form a new governing coalition have not yet succeeded. So in Berlin, we now have a large number of Jews living in a single city surrounded by a population which nourishes quite a lot of Neo-Nazi hatred of Jews and immigrants and refugees. It is no surprise that this causes the German government great anxiety. The government was also mortified and embarrassed when a group of demonstrators, which allegedly included many Muslim immigrants, burned Israeli flags at a recent public demonstration in Berlin. That demonstration was organized in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he had decided to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. This flag-burning so infuriated conservatives in the government – who had already spent much of the last year trying to outdo each other with public displays of anti-refugee zeal, and proposing new measures to deport as many refugees as possible – that they immediately began to demand the deportation of any immigrants unwilling to “accept Israel’s right to exist”, and began as well to propose major new programs and laws against antisemitism. The political dimension of the demonstration was practically never mentioned. As we have seen, the government here brands most criticism of Israel, including virtually everything to do with the BDS boycott movement, as “antisemitism”. While the German government joins the rest of the EU in officially opposing Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, calling them “obstacles to peace”, in practice it demands no changes in that policy in exchange for European weapons sales and other support for the Israeli government and military — exactly like Israel’s Ally Number One, the USA. Last year the German Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was snubbed and publicly humiliated by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who refused to meet with him as scheduled, after Gabriel visited some groups of pro-Palestinian activists in an embarrassingly pathetic and transparent attempt to show some “balance”. Once again, reference was made to the long-dead “Peace Process” as if it still existed. Even this, however, was too much for Bibi, who had not been informed in advance, and immediately cancelled his own scheduled subsequent meeting with Gabriel in a raging hissy-fit, leaving the latter with egg on his face to stammer mild expressions of surprised concern to the media. Gabriel, in typical obsequious German grovel-before-Israel fashion, insisted that while it was all a bit overdone and unnecessary, it would not harm Germany’s ties with Israel in the slightest. Which really says it all, in a nutshell. In a speech last year, the German Head of State, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier – himself for many years the Foreign Minister under Merkel, and a former failed Social Democratic candidate to replace her as Chancellor – referred darkly to alleged poorly-disguised antisemitism as the true motive behind much left-wing criticism of Israeli policy. As outrageous as I found this assertion, I was even more outraged by the fact that I heard not one word of public criticism of this sneering smear in subsequent media reaction to the speech. Germany has groveled before Israel so habitually for so long that it is hard to imagine what it would take to arouse any real resistance here to Israeli apartheid and war crimes. During last year’s international arts festival “Documenta”, which takes place every year here in part with government support, the performance of a scheduled theatrical production called “Auschwitz On the Beach” — which attempts to draw attention to the disgraceful manner in which Germany and the EU are complicit in the drowning deaths and Libyan captivity, torture and slavery of refugees attempting to reach Europe — was also cancelled. Many Jews and supporters of Israel were furious at the implied comparison between these refugee deaths and the Holocaust, which must in their opinion always be treated as an unparalleled crime unique in history. The festival’s staff quickly capitulated and the only thing most people ever saw of the work was the subsequent controversy, having been denied the opportunity to see it and make their own judgments. In his 2011 address to the Palestine Center in Washington DC on the occasion of the annual Shirabi Lecture, retired US diplomat Chas Freeman stated: … the cruelties of Israelis to their Arab captives and neighbors, especially in the ongoing siege of Gaza and repeated attacks on the people of Lebanon, have cost the Jewish state much of the global sympathy that the Holocaust previously conferred on it. The racist tyranny of Jewish settlers over West Bank Arabs and the progressive emergence of a version of apartheid in Israel itself are deeply troubling to a growing number of people abroad who have traditionally identified with Israel. Many – perhaps most of the most disaffected – are Jews. They are in the process of dissociating themselves from Israel. They know that, to the extent that Judaism comes to be conflated with racist arrogance (as terrorism is now conflated with Islam), Israeli behavior threatens a rebirth of antisemitism in the West. Ironically, Israel – conceived as a refuge and guarantee against European antisemitism – has become the sole conceivable stimulus to its revival and globalization. Demonstrably, Israel has been bad for the Palestinians. It is turning out also to be bad for the Jews … In the same address Ambassador Freeman stated: Examples of criminal conduct include mass murder, extra-judicial killing, torture, detention without charge, the denial of medical care, the annexation and colonization of occupied territory, the illegal expropriation of land, ethnic cleansing, and the collective punishment of civilians, including the demolition of their homes, the systematic reduction of their infrastructure, and the de-development and impoverishment of entire regions. These crimes have been linked to a concerted effort to rewrite international law to permit actions that it traditionally prohibited, in effect enshrining the principle that might makes right. As the former head of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Legal Department has argued: ‘If you do something for long enough the world will accept it. The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries . . . International law progresses through violations.’ In the seven years since those words were written, the situation has only worsened. It is clear to any open-minded observer that much of what the German and Israeli governments insist on describing as growing “antisemitism” is actually growing international revulsion in response to the policies and war crimes of the Israeli government and military, policies and crimes committed with plenty of support from the USA and the EU. Of course, there are, and always were, bigots and racists and Neo-Nazis who would and will hate all Jews whatever happens in Palestine. Their numbers may be growing somewhat as well, or they may simply be growing more outspoken about views they have always held, in the current epidemic of nationalist hysteria nourished in particular by social media. But to continue to assert that the true antisemites and the rapidly growing number of persons worldwide – including millions of Jews – who vehemently oppose Israeli ethnic cleansing and military occupation are all motivated by antisemitism, is to be willfully blind. It does credit to Germany that its citizens and political elites sincerely wish to atone for the sins of the Nazis. It is a crime, however, to insist that Palestinians should pay the price for that atonement. In fact, many of Germany’s allies have never expressed much regret over their own genocide, massacres, and ethnic cleansing – whether the extermination of 100 million Native Americans in the United States, the murder of an estimated 60 million persons in India under British rule, or the brutal elimination of 10 million in the Congo by Belgium – and Germany itself is refusing demands to pay reparations to Poland and Namibia. But direct reparations to the victims of such historic horrors and their survivors, whether feasible or not, would certainly be a more just means of atonement than support of a colonial racist regime which is itself committing slow genocide against an imprisoned and largely defenseless population. Germany adds insult to injury when it enshrines in government policy the vicious lie, echoing those equally vicious smears from Tel Aviv, that passionate advocates of the Palestinian cause are motivated by racism. http://clubof.info/

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fatimakhans12345 · 7 years ago

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Speech by Federal Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel at the opening of the conference Making Conventional Arms Control Fit for the 21st Century

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let me open with words spoken by a man concerned about peace.

A peace researcher, if you will.

He says: “I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living.”

Every year, he explains, billions of dollars are spent on weapons that are “acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them”. This, he concludes, is certainly not “the most efficient means of assuring peace”.

This peace researcher then proposes the exact opposite. He demands, and I quote, “general and complete disarmament”.

Who is this peace researcher?

He’s an American. But it must be said that this is a quote from a speech delivered in 1963 – by the man who at the time was President of the United States. These words were spoken by John F. Kennedy.

Just imagine if today we had a US President who would make this same statement and work toward this goal.

By the way, John F. Kennedy delivered this speech at a time when confrontation between the former Soviet Union and the United States was heating up, not cooling down.

In that political climate, an American President spoke about a “strategy of peace”. In the middle of the Cold War, the American President spoke about peace as the “necessary rational end of rational men”.

Willy Brandt, who at the time of Kennedy’s speech was mayor of West Berlin, seized on the ideas of John F. Kennedy and developed a peace policy for Germany – the foundation of which remains in place to this day.

Of course, Brandt said, Germany must ensure “military protection”. He was firmly anchored in the Western Alliance. Nevertheless, the balance of terror, Brandt insisted, must “take a second seat to the attempt to solve problems peacefully without any illusions”. That, he said, is the right strategy for peace.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Why am I referring to Kennedy and Brandt?

One reason to remember Brandt is that, forty years ago, almost to the day, he became Chairman of the Brandt Commission on the North-South Divide, which looked at ways that the world’s poor and wealthy could live together better. Incidentally, the Commission also predicted there would be refugee flows and dealt with the issues of armament and arms control.

The most important reason is, however, that these two people, along with many others – at a time when hardly anyone believed in de-escalation or in a world with fewer weapons, and when things were moving in the opposite direction – focused their political efforts on the idea of disarmament and arms control.

Willy Brandt clearly finalised his policy of détente in 1968, the same year that Warsaw Pact forces marched into Prague. It was one of the darkest hours of the Cold War.

The lesson we must learn from this is that our assessment of the current situation must not prevent us from seeing what is actually needed for people to live together in peace.

If we want to seize on the ideas of Kennedy and Brandt and use them in our present-day situation, I think the first step must be to do a stocktaking – as Brandt put it, “without any illusions”.

When taking a level-headed look at the security situation, I believe we will come to a rather depressing conclusion:

We are currently straying from the path we originally embarked on at the end of the Cold War.

Instead of peaceful coexistence, we run the risk of entering a new arms race – one that is set to take place not only between Russia and NATO, but on a global scale. Wherever you look, there’s talk of rearmament: in China, in India, in the Pacific, in America, in parts of Africa and in Europe.

We’re moving toward what looks like a huge new arms race.

Proven disarmament mechanisms are coming under strain, and trust is being lost that is needed for cooperation.

What we are currently witnessing in North Korea shows how dangerous the world could become for our children – and for us as well, in a few years, when countries begin to acquire nuclear weapons.

If North Korea actually attains the objectives it’s pursuing with its aggressive nuclear programme, this will get other countries thinking. That could be especially, but not only, true in the region, which is why no one should be more interested than China in preventing nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. Other countries will begin to think about whether their own regime may be better defended and regional conflicts better managed, or bent to their will, if they acquire nuclear weapons.

If this were to happen, the world would become a more dangerous place than it ever was during the difficult times of the East-West confrontation.

I think this is why the idea that is so firmly rooted in international political strategy, namely that we need a balance of terror, merely reflects the situation during the second half of the 20th century – and can’t be applied to what we may face during the first half of the 21st century.

How, I ask, would the so-called balance of terror work if nuclear weapons were to spread to many countries in the world – and who would such a balance be between?

That is why seasoned politicians like Henry Kissinger, who truly cannot be considered one of the world’s peaceniks, is so decisively campaigning for an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Not only that – he says that Global Zero is the right objective. He argues that, if we want to prevent many small countries from acquiring these arms, then the major powers that possess them today must actually begin to disarm. Otherwise their actions would no longer be credible.

However, we must also work to ensure that consensus on current disarmament and arms control treaties, especially in the nuclear domain, is not further undermined – because according to Kissinger the world is moving in the wrong direction.

Right now, we are in danger of losing historic achievements.

I recently hosted members of the so-called Deep Cuts Commission. These are scientists from Russia, the United States and Germany who for many years have been dealing with the issue of nuclear disarmament.

They point to cracks in a crucial building block of our global security architecture:

Russia is expanding its non-strategic nuclear arsenal in Europe and is suspected of violating the INF Treaty that was concluded between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Treaty bans an entire category of weapons, namely intermediate-range land-based missiles. It’s a cornerstone of European security, something we still benefit from today. In Germany, two years before German reunification, before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the agreements that were reached between Gorbachev and Reagan brought us a peace dividend. To this very day, we benefit from the ban on land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. It is precisely this treaty that is under threat. Because NATO and the United States, too, are these days considering whether they should shelve it.

Let me give you two examples that illustrate how much strain conventional arms control mechanisms are under today.

First, in Europe, we’ve lost the progress we’ve made on controlling conventional weapons.

Beginning in 1990, tens of thousands of tanks and other heavy weapon systems were destroyed under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, the so-called CFE Treaty. Moreover, a verifiable limit was placed on the future number of these weapon systems.

All States Parties made a commitment to declare their military assets and also agreed to permit inspections.

Later, however, we failed to obtain ratification of an adapted CFE Treaty, and Russia suspended implementation of the Treaty in 2007.

Second, the state of confidence-building measures, for example those regarding military exercises in border regions, is not good:

Next week, a major exercise will be held in Russia and in Belarus. It may be one of the largest since the end of the Cold War.

Why can large exercises like this one not be notified in line with the current rules? That way, they could be comprehensively monitored, transparency would be maintained, and possible fears wouldn’t even arise in the first place.

Yes, Western countries also conduct exercises. However, NATO and Allied countries adhere strictly to the Vienna Document and comply with their respective commitments in both letter and spirit, through timely notification and by inviting outside observers.

Ladies and gentlemen,

What can we do, given this state of affairs? The entire world is talking about rearmament. Nuclear treaties are under strain. This applies to New START as well as to the recently concluded nuclear deal with Iran. To further complicate the situation, the agreed mechanisms for conventional arms control are not working, even though these instruments were designed with difficult times in mind. They were created for when there’s a lack of mutual trust. When one invites the other side as an observer precisely for this reason, and when one visits the other side to keep an eye on what they’re doing. When one builds a measure of confidence in times of mistrust, if not through disarmament, then at least through arms control mechanisms.

So what do we do?

I believe that, first of all, we must speak out in favour of charting a new course, one that doesn’t simply follow the current mainstream.

For this, we need those with political responsibility to change how they think and act. Most importantly, we need a debate on this issue.

Kennedy and Brandt and those who followed in their footsteps had the unenviable task of guiding us through the Cold War, under the constant threat of nuclear escalation.

But I do envy one thing that they and their successors had: a broad public debate on disarmament.

Looking around, I don’t see this international debate. I see people talking only about rearmament. When I take the floor at a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers and say that we should actually be discussing disarmament and arms control, as well, I almost feel like I’m rocking the boat. My general impression right now is that Ministers are not guided by the political principle that we need both – deterrence as well as efforts toward arms control and disarmament – and that both should be equally important for determining political action. This holds true not only for NATO, but also for many countries, including Russia, China and India.

The fact that the public was keeping a critical eye on, and often drove, government policy, is at least one reason why good results were achieved in this truly important policy area.

I’ll give you an example.

In 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev met for a summit in Reykjavik.

There was only one item on the agenda: disarmament.

More than 3,000 journalists from the US had travelled to the meeting, to report live on the American evening news about the outcome of disarmament negotiations in this small white house in Iceland between the leaders of the world’s two superpowers.

These days, it’s hard to imagine what that was like.

Here in Germany, we’ve had far more controversial public debates. Everyone who experienced the debate – and demonstrations – surrounding the NATO Double-Track Decision knows what I’m talking about!

I think that today, as well, we need an intensive and much more critical public debate on the issue of disarmament. It is, after all, again a matter of war and peace.

Today, we can be grateful for one thing: we currently have a greater and more broad public debate about foreign policy than we did a few years ago.

But I do think that the discussion, which should be focussing on both disarmament and arms control, is lopsided.

Right now, we’re only discussing military protection against threats. That’s important, no doubt.

But we are talking far too little about opportunities for confidence-building measures, disarmament initiatives, joint arms control efforts and building trust.

I have the impression that we sometimes pursue an orthodox policy of rearmament without giving thought to what will secure a peaceful international order in the long term.

Of course, these days we also need security vis-à-vis one another. But that alone is not a permanent solution. We must get back to a multilateral system that guarantees security through cooperation, as a basis for maintaining permanent peace.

Ladies and gentlemen,

“General and complete disarmament” like Kennedy envisioned will not be attained overnight – that should be clear to everyone.

Yet that is precisely why I am convinced that we must take many small concrete steps in a determined effort to reach this goal. And our fist step should be to promote the instruments of arms control and confidence-building measures.

This includes doing everything we can to prevent the undermining of treaties that have proven their worth.

We must do everything within our power to maintain and jointly develop them – and, if necessary, to dare to embark on a new path, for example, toward conventional arms control.

This means, on the one hand, making sure that existing arms control and disarmament mechanisms, such as the Treaty on Open Skies, the Vienna Document and the Chemical Weapons Convention are maintained, also by pressing for their faithful implementation.

On the other hand, it means taking the initiative to create new arms control and disarmament mechanisms, wherever necessary. This includes establishing rules for unregulated domains, for example, autonomous weapons.

So what we need is an architecture for arms control and disarmament that has been made fit for the 21st century – not geopolitical strategies from the 20th century.

Of course, in the difficult current situation, and considering that not only European security is under threat, we cannot simply say “give peace a chance”.

We must always pursue the peaceful resolution of conflicts. However, like Willy Brandt said, we must do so from a militarily protected position.

We therefore absolutely say that, yes, we must maintain our defences, for the protection of our European friends, our partners in NATO.

But we also want to make offers to pursue arms control and disarmament – particularly in Europe.

For this, it is important to include all European countries, in much the way this is already happening in the OSCE.

That is why we used our OSCE Chairmanship in 2016 to intensively campaign for a modernisation of the Vienna Document, and we continue to pursue this goal.

We also are worried about the fact that, since suspension of implementation of the CFE Treaty, Russia and NATO are no longer having to comply with any strict arms control rules. That bears risks and dangers!

It is why Frank-Walter Steinmeier, my predecessor as Foreign Minister and our country’s current Federal President, has proposed that we embark on new paths toward conventional arms control.

We intend to take up again and pursue this initiative. We will be pressing for a joint effort to revisit the methods and aims of conventional arms control in Europe, and to achieve concrete results in this sphere.

New momentum is needed in the nuclear domain, as well. Of course, one priority must be to contain North Korea.

But we must think beyond this, as well. Because they possess more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, Russia and the United States still have a special responsibility to reduce their nuclear arsenals and thereby begin a new era of détente.

Incidentally, throughout Europe and in this country, we are talking a lot about the current crisis in Ukraine. It was triggered by what we view as Russia’s illegal operation in Crimea, and this of course means we are now more or less in a phase marked by confrontation.

Nevertheless, we have argued that our efforts at this point should focus on achieving a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

Yesterday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin made a proposal that Germany has been asking him to make for quite some time, because we know that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission is unarmed and its monitors are constantly in danger when out on patrol and performing inspections, also at night. We know that ceasefire violations are occurring on both sides. So we said: Let’s think about whether we could get a United Nations peacekeeping mission deployed there. Its mission would be not to replace, but rather to accompany and protect. It would be a parallel institution to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, for the purpose of monitoring the ceasefire.

So far, Russia has always said that it will go along with this only if negotiations on a political process begin at the same time. Ukraine has said, and I think it’s a justified demand, that as long as there is no ceasefire, there can be no talks about elections in eastern Ukraine. We think this makes sense and have pointed out to Russia: “In Syria, you say there must first be a ceasefire, followed by peace negotiations in Geneva – why shouldn’t it be the same for eastern Ukraine?”

Yesterday, the Russian President announced his proposal and declared that he has instructed his Foreign Minister to draw up initial ideas on how such a UN peacekeeping mission could be employed in eastern Ukraine.

Now we all know this gives rise to what seems like a thousand questions, including: What should Blue Helmets do? What will they be responsible for? What are the various interests of the parties to the conflict? We know that.

Yet it would be remiss not to welcome this public announcement by the Russian President. It marks a true departure from his previous position. We should welcome the proposal and say we’re happy that this initiative is now moving forward. So now let’s talk about the various ideas that are on the table. Let’s focus on beginning dynamic negotiations with the aim of getting some results – results that will truly help all sides, Ukraine and Russia, as well as the Donbass, to actually achieve a lasting ceasefire.

I also think that, subsequently, Europe should make an offer, namely by volunteering to assist reconstruction efforts in eastern Ukraine. I can still remember the depressing images from last winter, when for example the water supply was cut off and waste water treatment was interrupted. I think this is an area where we can help.

But before we get to that point, there will be many weeks and possibly also months of negotiations about the proposal. It would not be wise for us to turn down this proposal out of hand, by alleging there must be a malign plan behind what Russia is saying, so we don’t even want to talk to them about it. I think that would be the wrong thing to do.

We must take a proactive approach, by looking at how the proposal can be implemented, and how, as a next step, we can gradually and truly de-escalate the situation.

My fear is that currently the United States is focussed on new sanctions against Russia, and that this could intensify the nationalistic rhetoric of election campaigns in Russia. That, in turn, would generate momentum away from, rather than toward, détente. If there is a voice that has a vested interest in the opposite development, then I think it’s the voice of Europe, and of Germany.

Ladies and gentlemen,

it has long been clear that our arms control mechanisms, even if they were still functioning properly, are somewhat outdated and eroded. They’ve fallen behind developments in technology and logistics, for example regarding the current deployability of troops and military assets.

Twenty years ago, no one would have imagined how rapidly troops can be assembled and heavy military equipment deployed over long distances.

We want arms control agreements in place that create transparency, trust and, ultimately, equilibrium – but at low levels, not leaving us armed to the teeth like during the Cold War.

We Germans must remain a force for peace, and we must work hard to prevent an arms race. However, to this end, we must also look at our own country’s policies.

As I mentioned earlier, after his Chancellorship Willy Brandt served as Chairman of an international board, the Brandt Commission on the North-South Divide.

The Brandt Commission’s final report included a very impressive finding: The military expenditure of only half a day would suffice to finance the whole malaria eradication programme of the World Health Organization.

I think this is food for thought.

These days, I suspect this funding could be secured with not even half a day’s, but maybe only half an hour’s, military expenditure.

I am sure the money we spend today on the military and military equipment could be used for much more than funding health programmes.

If we want to stop the spread of war, civil war, fundamentalism, Islamism and migration flows, this will ultimately not be possible without fighting hunger and poverty, as well as hardship and suffering, or without building hope and prospects for the future in the affected countries.

In Germany, too, there is currently a debate that’s not in any way tied to military policy aims, but is rather simply campaigning for certain military spending targets.

If these were implemented, it would lead to a doubling of our country’s military budget. According to the targets that the United States President would like us to meet, our country would spend 70 billion euros on military equipment.

The entire Federal Budget amounts to only 300 billion euros. Even France – which is a nuclear power, after all – spends “only” 40 billion on its military equipment.

What we actually need is much more money to spend on the fight against hunger, poverty and lagging development, as well as to fund education and research.

That is why we are proposing that, for every euro Germany spends on better equipment for the Bundeswehr – and it certainly does need equipment, that’s different from rearmament – at least an additional 1.5 euros be invested in crisis prevention, stabilisation and economic cooperation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

This is also about how we – the countries of the world – approach these challenges. It’s about joint action and a collaborative effort. Indeed, it’s about charting a new course, in line with the policies of peace researchers such as Kennedy and Brandt, and others after them.

The first step is to build confidence. This will only happen if we revitalise our arms control mechanisms. It’s the first step toward disarmament and détente.

Thank you very much.

from UK & Germany http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2017/170906-BM_Conventional_Arms_Control.html?nn=479796

#UK & Germany

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