Dare to Trust

Ever since Helmut Schmidt’s irascible answer to an unwelcome question many years ago, anyone who talks about a ‘vision’ should expect to be asked if they are sick. When a journalist complained to the then Chancellor that he was lacking a grand vision, he made the famous diagnosis: people who have visions should go to the doctor. This oft-repeated phrase has not necessarily been good for politics and society. The Schmidt dictum provides a trite justification for a policy of muddling through and elevates the narrow-mindedness of those who cannot see beyond the present moment. The quote serves to hamper visions and cement the status quo. Schmidt also showed his distaste for the word when, later in life as a worldly-wise writer and journalist, he campaigned hard for a world free of nuclear weapons. This was undoubtedly a vision, but he took the precaution of calling it an ‘objective’.

Visions for Europe

In the spring of 2019, French president Emmanuel Macron painted a bright picture of Europe’s future. In a speech to students at the Sorbonne in Paris, he said: ‘The Europe of today is too weak, too slow, too inefficient’, and went on to outline his plans for a ‘sovereign, united and democratic Europe’, speaking of a eurozone budget, a common military and greater tax convergence. Macron has not been sent to the doctor for this, but he has been sent into an election campaign; his ideas have been treated with condescension, including in Germany, and dismissed as election propaganda – as if it were a bad thing to make heartfelt propaganda for Europe before the European elections.

Europe does not need any new ‘surges of deregulation’. What it needs is a popular vision for the future. The lesson of Brexit is that it has to develop a new magnetism: not repulsion, but attraction.

Do those who denigrate Macron as living in cloud cuckoo land think that you are more likely to win votes by spouting EU-speak and words like ‘financial stabilisation facility’? But, contrary to Macron’s opinion, Europe does not need any new ‘surges of deregulation’. What it needs is a popular vision for the future. The lesson of Brexit is that it has to develop a new magnetism: not repulsion, but attraction. You can’t do that by simply praising the Single Market; not with the logic that underpins the Single Market.

The European Single Market is not a peace project, a citizens’ project. It is a societas Europaea, an international trade corporation – but one in which individual companies compete with each other rather than for the good of the whole. Former President of the European Commission Jacques Delor once said: ‘You cannot fall in love with a single market.’ Unfortunately, he did not draw the conclusions that emerge from this realisation. Europe must be cleared of the rubble of neoliberalism; Macron does not stand for this now, but at least he has a vision for the future of Europe; he wants reform of the current treaties; he wants the democratisation of Europe through transnational lists.

Europe must be cleared of the rubble of neoliberalism; Macron does not stand for this now, but at least he has a vision for the future of Europe; he wants reform of the current treaties; he wants the democratisation of Europe through transnational lists.

Without visions, today’s Europe would simply not exist; and without new visions for the future, the European Union will have no future. This Europe partly grew out of the visions for the future that were secretly written on cigarette paper by three Italians during their captivity in 1941. Mussolini banished the anti-fascists Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni to the island of Ventotene in the Gulf of Gaeta, where they developed their ideas ‘for a free and united Europe’ – the Ventotene Manifesto. This tale of the seventy cigarette papers is one of the stories about the EU’s origins that is still much too little known. It describes a European federal state that would establish an army and police force, that would introduce a common currency, and that would create an economy based on the common good.

Smuggled inside a roast chicken

These ideas about the future of Europe were written at a time when Hitler was at the height of his power. The Manifesto was smuggled to the mainland and on to Rome inside a roast chicken. Great ideas need such stories, or ‘narratives’ as we say today. The words written on cigarette papers 78 years ago on an island of exile are testament to the power of visions.

Europe and the world are suffering from fundamentalism, nationalism and fanaticism; but most of all from the fatalism that powerlessly accepts that nothing can be done. 

Macron believes in this power. It would be better still if it came not from above, but from below, as a transnational movement for a new Europe. Europe and the world are suffering from fundamentalism, nationalism and fanaticism; but most of all from the fatalism that powerlessly accepts that nothing can be done. In this situation, Greta Thunberg, that thorn in the side of world leaders, is not only an idol for the younger generation, but a figure of hope – because she has drawn global attention to herself and Fridays for Future. Of course, we can be even more condescending towards 18-year-old Greta than towards Macron.

It was 6 December 1970 – St Nicholas Day. Willy Brandt, a former resistance fighter against Hitler, had been German Chancellor for around a year. Despite insults and attacks by the CDU/CSU opposition, he was in Poland to sign the Warsaw Treaty. That is now more than fifty years ago. It was one of the historic high points of the new Ostpolitik, a policy dubbed ‘change through rapprochement’ in 1963 by Brandt’s close confidant Egon Bahr.

Egon Bahr was Secretary of State and an influential advisor to Brandt. Kempski wrote in the SZ: ‘Negotiated in six rounds of tough preliminary talks and then finally put on paper by foreign ministers in November during an eleven-day conference that was at times on a knife edge, this treaty promises, under the compulsion of history, that the 102,958-square-kilometre provinces east of the Oder–Neisse line will finally be written off as German territory.’ In terms of area, it was about a quarter of the former territory of the Reich: East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Gdansk, Szczecin, Poland and Wroclaw, half of what was formerly Prussia.

In Germany, there was much rumbling among ethnic Germans who had been exiled from Poland during the Second World War. Brandt knew this, of course, and said so in his speech at the signing of the treaty: ‘For many of my compatriots whose families have lived in the East, this is a problem-laden day. Some feel as if the loss they suffered 25 years ago is occurring now.’ But, he said, one must recognise European realities: ‘Nothing will be surrendered by this treaty that was not gambled away by Hitler long ago.’

Derision and death threats

The Warsaw Treaty recognised the border between Germany and Poland. This caused Brandt’s political opponents to deride him as a politician who had ‘surrendered’. However, the surrender no longer applied to territories that had in fact not been owned for 25 years; it applied to the fact that the claim on them was now being surrendered. This led to Brandt and his FDP foreign minister Walter Scheel receiving death threats in Germany. According to Brandt, the treaty would draw a line under the suffering and sacrifice of an iniquitous past and build a bridge between the two nations and their people.

The Warsaw Treaty was preceded by the Moscow Treaty, signed in August 1970 in St Catherine’s Hall at the Kremlin. In it, both countries committed to promoting the process of détente in order to normalise the situation in Europe. A desire for reconciliation shines through the Warsaw speech quoted above. The speech and the treaty to which it applies are an example of great political courage; it was a bold and a necessary undertaking. The rift with the Eastern bloc that Brandt overcame through the treaties with Eastern Europe was even deeper than the rifts that are opening up with Moscow today. Brandt did not complain about the lack of trust but tried to overcome mutual distrust and build trust with his policies. Today, no politician of his stature dares to be so bold.

Willy Brandt’s government policy declaration of October 1969 contains the central message: ‘We want to be and become a people of good neighbours – domestically and abroad.’ Meanwhile, today’s shared European house looks a little like the station at Bayerisch Eisenstein during the Cold War. Here, on the Czech border, the border with the Eastern Bloc, a wall cut the station concourse in two. The toilet was in the east. in 1991, Helmut Kohl reopened the border station.

Now it is time for the reopening of Europe. Russia is part of it, despite the weight of accusations against Moscow today. How can policy be rebooted in light of the Afghanistan debacle? Life lives with and from rituals; and rituals live from their repetition and from staged memory. Rituals respond to expectations, they also create expectations, and when these are not met, it is disturbing. It was disturbing that politicians abandoned the Bundeswehr when the last soldiers returned from Afghanistan on 30 June. After all, they weren’t just returning from a manoeuvre, they were coming back from a twenty-year war.

The Bundeswehr is a parliamentary army because the Bundestag decides on its deployment. But of those who had sent the Bundeswehr into action, no-one showed up. It’s nice to be seen with winners. But not with losers.

150,000 troops were deployed there, and 59 lost their lives. This military engagement cost 12.5 billion euros. So for the last soldiers who landed at Wunstorf air base near Hanover, it was all for nothing? After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was a quiet homecoming for 264 servicemen and women. No President, no Chancellor, no defence minister. The Bundeswehr is a parliamentary army because the Bundestag decides on its deployment. But of those who had sent the Bundeswehr into action, no-one showed up. It’s nice to be seen with winners. But not with losers.

After the withdrawal from Afghanistan

It was the expression of a question that was not officially asked: was it all for nothing? But it was then answered by the swift, humiliating takeover by the Taliban: Yes, all for nothing! The emptiness of Wunstorf was also indicative of the fact that the Federal Republic has not found a proper relationship with the Bundeswehr in the 65 years since it was founded. There is no military tradition, not least because of Germany’s former militarism. It is important to make up for the poor reception given to the returning troops.

One of the state rituals is collective mourning on Remembrance Day. Twenty years ago, in 2001, it so happened that Germany’s Volkstrauertag fell on 16 November 2001, immediately after the Bundestag’s decision to send soldiers to Afghanistan. Germany’s participation in the war in the Hindu Kush was so controversial at the time that Chancellor Schröder felt compelled to combine the vote on it with a vote of confidence.

During the Remembrance Day ceremony, Protestant Bishop Wolfgang Huber expressed doubts about whether war was suitable as the ultimate policy instrument. In the Bundestag, Chancellor Schröder responded: It is one of the bitter truths that peace in Afghanistan ‘has only been brought closer by war’. We know today that it has been brought closer. In the here and now, it is often about arms exports. On paper, Germany is in an excellent position. On paper, Germany has a plethora of political principles and guidelines for controlling its arms exports. Some of these principles are relatively new. They look good on paper, but they are not good because they are not legally binding.

In the Bundestag, Chancellor Schröder responded: It is one of the bitter truths that peace in Afghanistan ‘has only been brought closer by war’. We know today that it has been brought closer.

Only a small proportion of military equipment falls under Germany’s strict War Weapons Control Act; the vast majority falls under the Foreign Trade and Payments Act. Pistols, revolvers, and most types of rifles (known as small arms) are covered by this comparatively lenient law. In this regard, the German government’s ‘Political Principles’ of 2019 state that an overriding goal of government arms export policy is to minimise the risk of proliferation of these small arms and light weapons. It would be nice if that were the case, but unfortunately it is not. The aforementioned Principles can be ignored by the federal government and defence companies without legal risk.‘Peacebuilding without weapons’ slips smoothly off the tongue, but international relations are not so smooth. In reality, therefore, the German construct of arms control still resembles a Swiss cheese.

German arms are everywhere

The victims of the former security holes and the new half-heartedness are people like Innocent Opwonya from Uganda. He was recruited as a child soldier before his tenth birthday. The weapon he was given to fight with was a German assault rifle. Years later, Innocent Opwonya looks back and says: ‘As my tenth birthday approached, the devil came to my door. I was kidnapped at night by the Lord’s Resistance Army and taken to one of their hideouts in the Darfur region of what is now South Sudan. I was so young and had to watch my father being shot in front of me when he tried to help me. I had no alternative, I had to pick up a gun and fight for my survival. The weapon I got from the rebels was a German G-3 assault rifle.’

This is the conclusion of the report’s author, Christopher Steinmetz of the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic Security. His study documents German arms export licences to numerous conflict-ridden countries – and emphasises how, in this way, Germany is violating its obligations under international law. To take just one example, between 2015 and 2019, Germany approved arms exports worth more than 6.3 billion euros to countries in the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen.

A vaccine for peace

Three factors encourage the unimpeded proliferation of German arms and munitions: production under licence, uncontrolled transfers, and munitions exports. Recognition of these factors should have an impact on Germany’s arms export policy. There is not only the need for a War Weapons Control Act, but also a comprehensive Arms Export Control Act that also bans exports of small arms such as assault rifles; it needs to call a halt to all arms exports to warring countries and those that violate human rights. This recent study could be the initial spark for a new appeal for peace called Abrüsten statt Aufrüsten – disarmament not armament. An initiative of this name (supported, among others, by Welthungerhilfe, Greenpeace, DGB, IG-Metall, Verdi, Friedensratschlag, the Deutscher Kulturrat and Fridays for Future) published a ‘Frankfurt Appeal’ in October and called for a nationwide day of action against the increase in arms spending – such as on armed drones or the Tactical Air Defence System, which experts estimate will cost 13 billion euros by 2030.

Three factors encourage the unimpeded proliferation of German arms and munitions: production under licence, uncontrolled transfers, and munitions exports.

The new ‘Frankfurt Appeal’ explicitly refers to the ‘Krefeld Appeal’ against the NATO Double-Track Decision and the stationing of new medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe. In 1980, five million people supported this Appeal. The new peace initiative opposes NATO’s goal of spending 2% of GDP on military purposes. The two percent figure is quite irrational; but the subsequent calculation is rational: Germany would have to spend seventy to eighty billion euros on rearmament, horrendously more than the current fifty billion. In 2019, $1,917 billion was spent on armaments worldwide. Arming our world has created constraints that are not easy to loosen.

International relations and interests are not so smooth; they are so intricate that personally I am not convinced that every conflict can be solved without violence or the threat of violence if goodwill exists.

‘Peacebuilding without weapons’ slips smoothly off the tongue, but in disarmament talks the parties can talk until they are blue in the face. International relations and interests are not so smooth; they are so intricate that personally I am not convinced that every conflict can be solved without violence or the threat of violence if goodwill exists. I admit that I am not a pacifist. But I’m not sure whether it comes down to common sense or lack of courage. Again and again, there seems to be no alternative to arming rebels, to dropping bombs in order to enforce human rights, to military invasion. But the armed rebels of today are the terrorists of tomorrow. The new peace initiative has already collected 175,000 signatures against rearmament. It still has some way to go to attract the five million of forty years ago. At the moment, the whole world is talking about COVID vaccines and their effectiveness. Perhaps disarmament initiatives like Abrüsten statt Aufrüsten could be a vaccine for peace.

This text is based on Prantl's latest book "Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer" (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory), published by Langen Müller Verlag Munich in 2021.