International Relations Essays
International Relations Essays
I’m writing these lines after having read the statement in the news, that „fossil fuels are dead”, and also after gaining the impression that oligarchs are now squeaking, at their foreign possessions (various assets – money in frozen bank accounts, villas, etc.) partially being taken away. For now, it’s told about oligarchs on the one „side”, but soon, due to a seemingly endless cycle of sanctions and revenge, there could more oligarch-squeaking in the world.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, people are losing their lives.
These deaths – two weeks ago unimaginable in scale – have meaning only if:
1. ... values are preserved, and the people can keep their homeland.
2. ... upon ending this war hopefully soon, we create a better world, with a better world order inclusive.
For these to happen, we would have to wake up with a different mindset someday soon. The opportunity to do that, however, may be closer than before, in the form of the looming, gigantic refugee crisis.
It is different from the 2015 crisis in that it is internal to the continent, meaning that even the more narrow-sighted can feel empathy, and recognise the technicality in the term refugee. Technically, anyone could be a refugee.
This can lead to the general recognition that we can help others and each other, selflessly, even at the business level (see Airbnb’s recent move on providing shelter). On this note, however, we must be careful, to maintain the continuity of production and services. The devising of such a balance and maintenance would be a task for contemporary, conscious, and maybe even revolutionary economics.
There may be too early for this kind of rhetoric, but: If the value of helping others, and of cooperation gets recognised at new levels, there may even be a new „We the peoples…” moment, after having been reminded of the untold sorrow that the scourge of war has brought upon us… again.
Dear Editor, dear Vendeline von Bredow,
Your podcast episode “Detoxifying a Nazi monument” (September 14th) has brought up memories from my childhood, partially spent in Germany, as well as some concerns about the international attitude to Germans and their country’s past.
When a nation has lived historical phases of such darkness, others cannot let them carry this weight alone. By “them”, I mean the more self-reflecting individuals of a nation under polarization, those who actually feel and express guilt. Carrying the burden plus contrasting fellow citizens whose attitudes are reminiscent of it is too much to ask for.
In Germany I have witnessed my best friend display guilt when we were told about a schoolmate carving Nazi signs onto classroom desks, and I have read her lines in a letter, later, when the class went on a trip to a former concentration camp. I was not sure that it was fair to awaken or raise feelings of shame, focusing on the most receptive citizens. She is the kind of person who has conducted regular choir sessions for refugee children in the 2015 crisis.
I would like to believe that my friend is connected closer to me than any German is to shameful ancestors. We are all Germans in this, I would tell her, and that time and space constitute tighter bonds than ancestral blood.
Few are the people whose view of this phase of history is close and detailed enough, and despite broad discussions, some factors and causes may remain covered. Despite drawing the right lessons, we might not have dug deep enough. Such risks of the past are not restricted to any single country. Moreover, this is only one of Germany’s current troubles, many of which have decisive impacts Europe-wide and beyond.
The Germans who feel historical guilt are not alone. Not in carrying the burden, not in bravely facing the past, and not in fearing, but resisting darker forces in our time.