(I sent this essay to some of the authors quoted by Dohnanyi in his book “Nationale Interessen” (National Interests).
The following thoughts are the result of reading two books by a very clever, well-informed and experienced German politician, the former mayor of Hamburg and later Federal Minister of Education and Science Klaus von Dohnanyi, who, despite his immense reading, despite a generally remarkably balanced judgment, nevertheless found a late political home with the “Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht” (BSW) – a party that, being more than just US-critical, treats Putin and his regime with kid gloves. How can a clever man go so astray?
I admired this man for his ideology-free view of political reality. In his book “Joch des Profits?” (The Yoke of Profit?), he unequivocally states what globalization means: a loss of democratic self-determination, which, however, he says just as firmly, is unavoidable if the German economy is to survive in international competition: its rules cannot be evaded by any export economy.
This assessment deserves all the more praise given that politicians tend to lure the public with the most extravagant promises if only they are elected.The limits that arise from external restrictions on freedom of action are hardly ever discussed in politics. And the average citizen also likes to behave as if he were sovereign in all matters: he certainly doesn’ t want to hear about external constraints or powerlessness. With his unflinching realism, Mr. von Dohnanyi therefore represents anything but a popular let alone populist position. He sees neoliberalism as an externally imposed fatality. How does such a view fit with an extreme left-wing party like the BSW?
Has Mr. Dohnanyi finally become so embarrassed by his own honesty that he is now emphatically calling for more national self-determination – within the European nation as well as vis-à-vis the great powers?
At this point, the ethical compass of this level-headed and often just observer becomes fully visible. He demands more national self-determination not only for his own country but also for all our neighbors in the EU. And not only that. He strives to understand the Russian national interest as well as the German, the American and so on. This endeavor, which makes him so likeable at first glance, brings him politically close to the radical left-wing position of Sarah Wagenknecht.
But how is it possible that the inherent contradiction of his position does not immediately become apparent to him?As von Dohnanyi repeatedly emphasizes, capitalism and its modern form, neoliberalism, are global forces that companies and states can only oppose at the cost of perishing in the global market. Either they are more inventive and innovative than others, so that they can maintain their higher wage levels and social protection barriers, or the world market forces them into the most unpleasant concessions: They have to sell their labor more cheaply; pay their bosses astronomical fees to keep them at home; subsidize international corporations with tax money to guide them into their own territory, and so on. It is the open world market that forces them to act in this way because every company must be at least as productive as its strongest competitors. “At its core, neoliberalism“, Dohnanyi states, “is nothing more than a flexible ’entrepreneurial‘ response by states as competitors in world markets,” because “national politics is less and less decisive and the world market is increasingly determining the political and social developments of nations” (quoted from “National Interests”). In plain language, this means nothing other than that every nation, especially the weaker and weakest among them, receives its laws less and less from itself and more and more from outside.
Von Dohnanyi presents this as a fatality that by now affects the whole world. But he doesn`t notice the contradiction arising in his latest book “National Interests”, when he calls on Germany and other nations to rebel against this destiny by clinging to their national interests. He wants to put supranational entities such as the European Union in their place as soon as their demands collide with national needs. Dohnanyi seems not to notice that he is arguing against himself when with utmost determination he makes the nation the ultimate point of reference for political action. To achieve his objective, he does not hesitat to call on history for help. Separatist tendencies, he claims, have always fought against larger entities.
Not at all! If there is one law that we may derive from the more than one million years of our species‘ history, it is the tendency to organize into ever larger units. More than ten thousand years ago, a relentless succession of mostly warlike unification efforts welded together small, wandering hordes into clans, clans into tribes, tribes into human agglomerations in cities, cities into states, and states into empires. The tendency towards ever larger, ever more comprehensive units is so obvious that it would be nothing less than a logical absurdity if humanity were to suddenly be stuck in its current state as individual nations just because Mr. Dohnanyi calls for a halt to further development. More enlightened minds such as Immanuel Kant, Albert Einstein, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Raymond Aron and Ernst Jünger envisioned the final state of humanity as a political entity that would embrace all of humanity.
Why does Herr von Dohnanyi’s otherwise infallible sense of reality desert him at this point? He might have easily found the reason for the historical tendency I just described. It is true that people have rarely voluntarily joined together in larger units – almost invariably they were forced to do so. The reconciliation of France and Germany provides a striking example in recent history. Not mutual love but a diabolical legacy of hatred welded them together at the end of the Second World War. They realized that they would finally wipe each other out if they did not find together within a greater unity called Europe. Likewise, most of the earlier mergers arose out of fear and mutual mistrust. Until the 16th century, the Italian city-states represented the spearhead of civilization, but a fragmented Italy and a Germany divided into about 300 rival principalities were ultimately so inferior to mighty France which had been united for centuries that they were forced to form state units themselves. When we read Mr. Dohnanyi’s statement that “the need for self-determination… is a basic need of human existence,” we will certainly not contradict him. But unfortunately for his theory, he overlooks the fact that the need for security and survival acts as an even more powerful drive. There have certainly been many critical voices back then, who vigorously opposed the forced unification of the German Empire. We may be sure that they did so with arguments just as good as those Mr. von Dohnanyi is now putting forward against the supremacy of the EU. Prussia and Bavaria did not love each other (some claim that it has remained that way to this day, nor is it a secret that even the finally united East and West Germans still grumble against each other). Only external coercion will in the end silence these voices – the same coercion that always caused wars in the distant past and then led to larger political entities.
Whether in Europe or on other continents, a prince knew that the greater the number of “souls” he could tax, the more able he was to cope with his neighbors. If he lacked the ruthlessness to appropriate new land and the taxpayers it contained, he had to expect that his competitors would beat him to it. Under such circumstances, lasting peace was only possible provided that the future could be planned. If, for example, the princes agreed that none of them would seek further annexations. But even then, the best intentions were repeatedly thwarted by the power of changed facts. A major invention in weapons technology, an especially good harvest or population increase in one’s own area and the corresponding failure in one’s neighbor’s area was enough to overturn all planning. What Mr. Dohnanyi so convincingly says about the compulsion to which an individual business or national economy is subject in today’s world market may be applied, with only slight modifications, to the external pressure to which all territories and princes were subject from their neighbors before industrial revolution. That is because in the long run, the future could never be planned. At the first favorable opportunity, all previous promises were forgotten so that one’s neighbors could be attacked and subjugated. The only effective barriers against such cravings were seas, high mountains, rivers and deserts. These protected humanity to some extent from one another before the beginning of the industrial revolution.
In the twenty-first century, this protection does no longer existed. The future is becoming increasingly difficult to forsee, let alone plan. This is because economic and, above all, military competition has become omnipresent everywhere on the globe. Von Dohnanyi, who argues so cogently when he describes the overwhelming external pressures on companies, turns a blind eye to the fact that these pressures become particularly explosive at the political top. He calls on us to understand Russia (read: Wladimir Putin), but like the BSW he also wants to convince us that we have good reason to mistrust the Americans. His well-intentioned call to talk to each other – ultimately, of course, the only way to peace! – thus takes on a distorted perspective. Let me explain why.
Since the Industrial Revolution many nations have become rich, but the future has become less and less predictable for all of them. The question is therefore not whether a current or future head of government, be it in the US, Russia or China, is seriously considering attacking the others. Dohnanyi wants to convince us that, in the past, Russia has rarely been the perpetrator of aggression, but more often has itself been its victim. In my view, that is not the most important question. However great or small we may consider the willingness to aggression to be in the case of individual people or nations, another factor turns out to be decisive: the unpredictability of so-called progress, which, in the age of science and technology, makes any lasting balance completely impossible.
This is because every superpower constantly measures its own strength against that of its peers. At the military level, everything plays out exactly as Mr. von Dohnanyi so convincingly describes with regard to the economy. Every major invention – and there are thousands of them every day! – must, the more effective it is, be instantly imitated and, if possible, surpassed; otherwise a company, corporation or even an entire state will be left behind. From the point of view of the military and the political leadership, this race of humanity against itself has turned into a categorical imperative of survival. How can there still be any long-term planning, which alone can make lasting peace possible? Yes, between Gorbachev and Reagan, the medium-range nuclear missiles were scrapped on both sides in 1987, and four years later, a large proportion of strategic nuclear weapons and long-range missiles were destroyed under the START treaty. This mutual reduction could for some time be sufficiently supervised because both sides were able to monitor the inventory of the other camp with the help of satellites and mutual reconnaissance flights. But it wasn’t long before newer inventions such as small tactical nuclear warheads, ultrasonic missiles and, of course, many other possibilities created by the internet, again threw the military balance off course. Even while they were still in force, the old treaties merely formed the old facade for a transformed reality, created by thousands of daily inventions on both sides of the new Iron Curtain.
It is the immense knowledge and skills mobilized by the Industrial Revolution and expanded by hundreds of thousands of scientists working around the clock within every leading power that no longer allows the world to achieve any lasting balance or stability – and precisely for this reason, no lasting peace either. When this pressure eases for a moment – as it did at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when one of the opponents suddenly went to his knees – then voices calling for more self-determination are instantly to be heard, and existing entities may even break up. However, if external pressure increases again, as it has since Putin’s attack on Ukraine, new and larger blocs will be formed, inevitably restricting national sovereignty. The need for protection then quickly outweighs the desire for maximum self-determination. Since China, Russia and Iran formed a common bloc against the West, the USA has in turn established new alliances. Besides the expansion of NATO, which the Swedes and Finns themselves had called for, these include AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, USA) in Asia, Quad as a security dialogue between the USA, Japan, Australia and India, and IPEF (an economic agreement concluded in 2022 between the USA and 13 Indo-Pacific states). As much as states like the small island nation of Japan traditionally insisted on maximum self-determination, facing China, the gigantic neighbor next to them, and its growing economic and military preponderance they see themselves forced to coordinate ever more closely with the United States and provide them with military bases on their territory. This is inevitably accompanied by a partial renunciation of sovereignty – as is likewise the case for Germany.
To assess Mr. von Dohnanyi’s vision of the future, the decisive question is: Will the pressure that states will exert on each other increase in the future, or is it likely to subside? Only in the second case is there a realistic prospect that individual states may again hope for more national self-determination.
In my opinion, the answer leaves no room for doubt. Mr. von Dohnanyi himself would agree, as long as he sticks to his area of expertise, i.e. economics. In his view, the pressure of globalization will impose more and not fewer constraints on companies in the future. So here his judgment remains unfailing. However, economics only covers one aspect of this pressure, albeit an extremely important one. In the future, the military aspect is bound to be even more significant. And here we should carefully distinguish between external symptoms and underlying causes. The assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne in Sarajevo was a symptom, but by no means the underlying cause of the outbreak of World War I. This is proven by the fact that the military of all warring parties already had the deployment plans in place. Likewise, Vladimir Putin carefully prepared his war against Ukraine. That explains why for quite a time Western sanctions did not significantly weaken the Russian economy. To be sure, it is always the will of certain people that triggers a war. Without Napoleon’s intention, there would have been no campaign against Moscow, and without Hitler’s command, the German army would not have invaded Russia. For this reason, traditional historiography has been content to attribute the course of human history to individual figures. But we saw that even in the pre-industrial era that was only part of the truth. The expansion of their own tax base was an externally imposed imperative among princes, no different from the growth imperative for a modern company competing in the international market. If I refrain from growing, then others will do it at my expense!
This imperative, this pressure has, as I said, grown immeasurably strong since the industrial revolution. And it is precisely in the military sphere that it has come to endanger global peace together with human survival. Even dwarf states like North Korea now spend a substantial portion of their budget on research and development of ever more powerful weapons of mass destruction. It is easy to ascribe sadistic tendencies to brutal dictators like Kim Jong-Un, just as Hitler had necrophilia, Stalin perfidious bonhomie or Putin homicidal desires, which he deftly hides behind a charming smile. But much more powerful than any individual perversion is the need of every state to never fall behind the others. This imperative dominates the actions and thinking of the military in the US as well as in Russia or China. The result is an arms race that, due to our exponentially growing knowledge and skills, points in the direction of apocalypse – regardless of the good or evil intentions of the respective heads of state. By now, it is possible to detonate a hydrogen bomb in the Atlantic thereby creating a giant wave that would, so to speak, sweep away half of the United States (not to mention the fact that all marine life would be instantly destroyed). All parties on both sides of the Atlantic are aware of these possibilities. Nuclear bombs circling overhead in satellite orbits are already feasible and were conceived by Ronald Reagan in his vision of Star Wars at a time when they were still far from being realized. Quite real is, however, the fact that the carriers of nuclear bombs tend to be faster with each new generation which means that the warning time for the impact of supersonic missiles is shrinking accordingly. If the enemy launches a first strike, both the Russians and the Americans will no longer have half an hour after detection, as was the case two decades ago. This already minimal period has now been reduced to a few minutes (depending on where the nuclear missile is launched from).
Even so, the risk of an arbitrarily initiated first strike by one of the superpowers appears to be rather low. No president is so powerful that he would not consult his military first – and the experts know about the likely consequences. The situation is, however, quite different with a second strike, which may be triggered by misinformation. This was already the case in the Soviet Union in 1983. Without the courageous last-minute veto of Lieutenant-Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the world as we know it would no longer exist today. Petrov was the only one to say “njet” in a committee of four, where all the others voted “yes” for the nuclear holocaust.
Since John F. Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis, an assistant (currently female) must accompany the American president at every turn with a black briefcase enabling him to give the final order for a nuclear second strike. As a first strike only makes sense if it destroys as much of the enemy’s nuclear arsenal as possible, the second strike must likewise be of maximum strength and range. Due to the minimal time frame of five minutes, a serious consultation with military experts is no longer an option. The president of a superpower must either rely on his gut feelings, on the data transmitted by computers or – more realistically – artificial intelligence is from the start entrusted with the final decision of reducing or not our globe to ashes!
As the pressure caused by our exponentially increasing knowledge and skills has been skyrocketing since the beginning of the present century, there is no place on earth left that can still escape the nuclear threat. Mr. Dohnanyi seems to forget this when he advises his country to focus on its own interests in national self-determination. In his opinion, we should not join the US in imposing sanctions on China and Russia, but instead go our own way in the pursuit of national advantage.
This is precisely what Ukraine did before the Maidan. Until then, it had maneuvered between East and West, playing the two off against each other so as to gain maximum advantage for itself. According to Mr. Dohnanyi’s recommendation, Germany and probably all of Europe should now pursue a similar maneuvering between the blocs. But we know how Ukraine fared, namely like the child in Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, where a true and a mere biological mother tug at him from two sides to pull him over to their own side. Europe would face the same fate from Russia and the United States if it refused to choose one of the two camps. Let’s not forget: Under the aegis of the United States, West Germany fared much better than East Germany under the Russians. Both were vassal states, certainly, but the American “yoke” brought prosperity and security to the Federal Republic. Of course, there is no denying that German sovereignty was restricted and still is today. In the presence of the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Joe Biden threatened to destroy North Stream II and – in my opinion – it was the Americans who carried out this threat. The American government rightly wondered whether Germany should be allowed to transfer large amounts of money to Russia – money used by the latter to fund its aggression against Ukraine – while simultaneously the US was supporting that country with the money from its taxpayers. The United States is a great power that can be accused of many mistakes. But I would rather see Europe’s and Germany’s fate controlled by the United States of America than by Russia or China – and I think most Germans agree. But there is one thing that Germany will no more be able to afford than Ukraine before the Maidan and Ungarn under Orban: maneuvering between the blocs with the aim of gaining the greatest national advantage for itself.
I stand by this criticism of an experienced and clever man, but I nevertheless side with him when he calls for prudence and dialogue. After all, that will always remain the only way to end a war.
And only through discussion and agreement can humanity’s fatal economic and military race against itself be ended. More than half a century ago, the great English polymath Arnold Toynbee had unequivocal thoughts about the matter:
„Today’s independent regional states are unable to maintain peace, to protect the biosphere from human pollution or to preserve the irreplaceable sources of raw materials. This political anarchy must not be allowed to continue in a world-wide ecumenism that has long since become a unity in technical and economic terms… In an age in which mankind has acquired control of nuclear power, political agreement can only take place voluntarily. However, as it appears to be accepted with great reluctance, it will probably be delayed until further disasters have taken place, catastrophes of such magnitude that mankind will eventually consent to a global political unity as a lesser evil“ *
*Cited in Jenner: Reflections on Meaning and Purpose in History