“Ukraine has been a geopolitical figure on the world political chessboard from the outset”

by Michael Holmes

[This article posted on 7/24/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=118458.]

An interview with Günter Verheugen and Petra Erler from July 10, 2024 about their new book “The Long Road to War”, the West's great complicity in the Ukraine war, the peace negotiations in Istanbul sabotaged by the USA and Great Britain, the great danger of a nuclear Armageddon and the history of détente. The interview was conducted by Michael Holmes.

In their gripping book “The Long Road to War”, Günter Verheugen and Petra Erler provide a fact-filled and sharp analysis of the origins of the Ukraine conflict and level serious accusations against Western foreign policy. They convincingly argue that the West has contributed significantly to the escalation of the conflict by increasingly replacing a successful policy of détente with confrontation and power politics since the 1990s. They show how NATO's eastward expansion, the termination of important arms agreements and the rearmament of Ukraine have developed into a serious threat to Russia's security interests. They explain in detail how the war in Ukraine could have been prevented by diplomatic means. The book exposes the war propaganda and passionately calls for a return to a willingness to engage in dialogue and confidence-building measures in order to pave the way for a sustainable European security architecture that includes Russia and Ukraine.

Günter Verheugen, a European and foreign policy expert, former Secretary-General of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and, after switching to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Member of the Bundestag from 1983 to 1999 and foreign policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group, made significant contributions to the policy of détente and European integration. In the 1970s and 1980s, he worked closely with Egon Bahr in the Federal Chancellery and played a central role in implementing the new Ostpolitik, which aimed to reduce tensions between East and West and promote dialogue. His diplomatic efforts contributed significantly to building trust and understanding between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Eastern Bloc. From 1999 to 2010, Mr. Verheugen was a member of the European Commission, first as Commissioner for Enlargement and later as Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry. During this time, he was instrumental in the EU's 2004 eastern enlargement, which led to the accession of ten new member states.

Petra Erler is a distinguished political scientist and EU expert who has made significant contributions to European integration and administration. As head of the European Commission's “Strategy and Policy Planning” department, she was instrumental in the development and implementation of strategic policies. Erler worked closely with her husband Günter Verheugen in his role as EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Industrial Policy, contributing her expertise in political and administrative matters. Since 2010, she has been the managing director of a strategy consultancy in Potsdam.

Michael Holmes: Mr. Verheugen, Ms. Erler, you have written a new book: “The Long Road to War”. I read it with great pleasure and much profit. I would really like to recommend the book to each of our listeners and viewers. In the book, you describe the long road to war in Ukraine. You describe the conflict, which was initially very cold and then became hotter and hotter, between the West and Russia.

They describe the war as a proxy war. This long road is quite complex, and that's why you can hardly blame people who don't have much time for politics for not understanding when we say that the West is largely to blame. Who has the time to deal with the details, with NATO's eastward expansion and then the civil war in Ukraine and the arms agreements between Russia – formerly the Soviet Union – and the West? But that is exactly what they do in great detail in the book, and if you read it with concentration, you also realize why it is so important. Because it paints a picture that I find very convincing. The overall picture is that the West has provoked Russia in many ways and in a very serious way. That does not justify the war of aggression that violated international law, and they make that perfectly clear in the book.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that other major powers would have reacted in a similar way to Russia in a comparable situation. This is certainly true of the USA, and it is probably also true of European powers. This is because NATO's policy – and this is not just about NATO's eastward expansion – was increasingly becoming a threat to Russia's existential security. At least that is how it was perceived. I would like to leave it up to you to decide where to start and what you consider to be the most important. I think we should definitely talk about the Istanbul negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. In the book, you show – and I think the evidence is now very strong – that we came very close to a peace agreement that would have been acceptable to Ukraine, and that we really missed an opportunity for peace. But it was not the only, not the last and certainly not the first opportunity for peace.

Günter Verheugen: You have already presented all this very well. Our concern is to make it clear that there is a difference between the occasion of a war and its causes. The occasion is quite clear: at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, Russian policy had come to the conclusion that vital, indispensable Russian security interests could not be enforced by diplomatic means, and then Russia resorted to a war that was contrary to international law. But the cause is quite different: the cause is a failure that goes back more than 30 years and begins with the year of German unification, with the major changes in Germany and in Europe, and the failure to seize the opportunity to create a European peace order in which Russia has an equal and respected place. Instead of doing that, the triumphalist feeling took hold that we had won the Cold War and that we would now shape the world according to our will. That is essentially what we are saying about this war, and we then substantiate it with many details. I will mention just one: the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Hodges, said before the outbreak of the war: “Russia has been our enemy for decades.” I find that a very distressing testimony to the wrong turn we are taking.

I think what is really hard for many people in the West to understand is that you have to think about the various provocations from the West together in order to get a sense of why not only Putin and the elites in Russia , but also the people of Russia feel threatened, and this includes the NATO expansion to the east, the termination of the arms agreements – and here we are talking about nuclear weapons, NATO naturally holds the nuclear shield over all its members. And then you also have to understand the internal situation in Ukraine, namely that right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis actually play a role in the Ukrainian army and police. Taken together, these things make up the threat scenario for Russia: nuclear weapons, neo-Nazis in the army, a government that is unpredictable and dangerous for Russia, supported by the West, and then the arms build-up by NATO.

Petra Erler: If we go back to history, 1990 was the time when the USA suspected that it was now the only remaining world power, and they intended to exploit this special position. And the only real opponent at that time, from the point of view of some in the US, was the Soviet Union or the emerging Russia, and consequently all US strategists from 1990 onwards – and this is verifiable – thought about how to destroy this potential challenger. Can you destroy it? And that continues to this day. That was also the US strategy, and that is verifiable. In 2019, the Pentagon commissioned a study by RAND to examine how Russia could be weakened or made to retreat. And Ukraine plays a key role in this strategy. Of course, the Pentagon thought at the time: well, that's not without problems, if we start using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia, then Russia might retaliate. The beginning of this weakening was in 1991, and in 2006 you could read in the American media that they were considering how to achieve nuclear superiority. And everyone should let that sink in: nuclear superiority means the willingness to wage a nuclear war.

Günter Verheugen: This has a long history. It is about the idea that whoever controls the Eurasian landmass controls the whole world, and after 1990 it was concluded that everything that could lead to Russia regaining the old strength of the Soviet Union must be prevented. The key to solving this question in this sense is Ukraine. Ukraine has been a geopolitical figure on the world political chessboard from the outset. This led, for example, to a coup d'état in 2013, the year of the Maidan, which was co-initiated by the USA and a number of other Western states, and which resulted in a government in Ukraine that was certain not to seek an understanding with Russia.

From a Western perspective, it was a legitimate democratic revolution against an authoritarian, corrupt regime supported by Russia. This ignores the role of the right-wing extremists on the Maidan. I believe they were a minority, but a militant and dangerous minority. It also ignores the opinion polls at the time in Ukraine. Ukraine was a deeply divided country, even regionally. The center of Ukraine and the west were more pro-European and pro-Western, while the east was more pro-Russian and in favor of the Yanukovych government. In one opinion poll, the approval ratings for the Maidan revolution were pretty much evenly split between those in favor and those against. In this divided situation, the West clearly took sides with one side, thereby violating the country's sovereignty, which is hardly ever mentioned. Can you say a little more about the Maidan Revolution?

Petra Erler: Ukraine has been a divided country since 2004 – with forces pushing towards the West and forces interested in maintaining good relations with neighboring Russia. Everyone knew that. The problem for the Yanukovych government, which came to power in 2010, was that Yanukovych was pushing for membership of the European Union on the one hand, but on the other hand was interested in keeping Ukraine neutral. From 2012 onwards, Yanukovych's opponents, who at that time included right-wing extremist and right-wing nationalist forces such as Svoboda, were up in arms about this. They were supported by the West. We wanted a Ukraine that would not seek its new direction through democratic elections, but rather a Ukraine that would take a definitive stand against Russia. That is why hardly anyone in the West was interested in how the coup unfolded, which was funded with a great deal of money and a great deal of secret service involvement.

We should have said: enough! Ukraine is deeply divided. We need a mechanism that can overcome this division politically. Steinmeier tried to do this at the time, together with the Polish and French foreign ministers. But as soon as the violence on the Maidan, the decisive violence, began, everything was forgotten. And that showed where the interests lay.

It initially turned into a civil war, in which the West and Russia quickly took sides. So the civil war gradually became a proxy war. It is well documented that both sides committed serious war crimes. The separatists, supported by Russia, but also the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian militias, some of whom wore neo-Nazi symbols, committed serious human rights violations: torture, killing of civilians, etc. There was a lot of hatred on both sides. The Minsk agreements were actually supposed to ensure peace. If you look at them in detail, they really do look like a good peace solution, at least the blueprint for one. The question is: why didn't the West push Ukraine harder to keep its part of the agreement?

Petra Erler: The war against Donbass was not started by Russia, but by the transitional government of Ukraine. At the time, it was a government that lacked democratic legitimacy. And it was tired of the uprisings in eastern Ukraine, similar to the uprisings on the Maidan. It was, so to speak, an anti-Maidan. Buildings were occupied just like in Kiev or Lviv in 2013/2014. And the transitional government sent the Ukrainian army against these rebels. That ended catastrophically at the time because part of the army defected, while part of the army remained loyal. But that didn't solve the problem in Ukraine at all, namely that it looked to the West on one side and to the East on the other. And that was the idea behind the Minsk negotiations.

Günter Verheugen: But there is no need to say much more about this, because three of the main participants have already spoken out publicly: former German Chancellor Merkel, former French President Hollande and former Ukrainian President Poroshenko. All three of them said in unison that the Minsk agreements were not about finding a peace settlement for Ukraine, but about buying time to prepare the country for the inevitable war with Russia. In other words, according to the statements of these three leaders, the entire Minsk policy was not meant seriously at all. It was a pretext, or one could also say a deception. If you look at the content of these agreements, it quickly becomes clear why the government in Kiev had no great interest in implementing this agreement. It would have meant a shift in the balance of power in the country. We have already pointed out the fact that Ukraine is a torn, a divided country. This is also reflected in the voting behavior. So if the millions of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are not allowed to vote in elections, then you get the kind of majorities you want.

Right. And I think at this point we can move on to the decisive Istanbul negotiations. Because now, of course, the Russian invasion will take place in 2022. But the negotiations in Istanbul will begin two to three weeks after that, in March and April. For a long time, there was hardly any reporting on this in the West. Now, first Foreign Affairs and then the New York Times have reported on it. They present it a bit tendentiously, as you would expect from the New York Times. But at least they are giving us new information. Everything we know about it really calls into question the Western portrayal of Russia's motives. If you look at what Russia's demands were, you have to say that from the Russian perspective this is about defense against NATO. Could you describe that a bit? You do that in your book in detail and very convincingly. What was negotiated in Istanbul, and why was it such a missed opportunity? And what does it tell us about the motives of Putin's government?

Petra Erler: Well, four days after the Russian aggression against Ukraine, or rather after the fact that Russian troops, together with the troops of the Donbass, rose up against the central government in Kiev, there was a willingness to negotiate on both sides. This strongly suggests that at that point in time, the Russian calculation was that this aggression was intended to make it very clear that they were serious about their demand for Ukraine's neutrality and that Russian security interests were affected. Prior to that, Russia had proposed to NATO and the USA that a new security architecture was needed in Europe. The Russian security problem is – and the USA has proven it – that Ukraine could potentially become a deployment area for NATO.

These negotiations went quite well, and all the Ukrainian negotiators said so. We also described this correctly in our book. If they had been successful, it would have ended with Ukraine becoming neutral, Ukraine being demilitarized, but Russia withdrawing from the Donbass and being willing to negotiate about the future of Crimea. Ukraine, for its part, also wanted security guarantees, and Russia wanted the Russian language to be recognized in the new demilitarized Ukraine. These were all issues that were of burning concern to both countries. The Western position was that such a thing could not be negotiated with Russia. The negotiating concept showed that the NATO position was not about whether Ukraine was a NATO member or not, but that it was actually only about the fact that Russia could not tolerate democracies in its neighborhood. Of course, all of this was wrong, and the New York Times also exposed it.

Boris Johnson finally came to Ukraine and called on them not to agree to this outcome of the negotiations. My personal opinion is that Ukraine was still trying to circumvent the views of Johnson and Biden at that point. They knew they would lose this war. They knew it. That's why they put Boris Johnson's actions in the newspaper. They didn't want to go down that road, but they had no one left to support them. That is the tragedy of the whole story. Since then, Zelensky and all the other Ukrainians have been convinced that they will win the war against Russia. It will cost at least 600,000 lives, if not more. There have already been more than 1.5 million seriously injured in Ukraine. That is the package we have to carry.

Günter Verheugen: This brings us to the strategic decisions of the West. Petra Erler has just explained why these peace negotiations failed. But what was the motive behind it? It is quite clear. The West has decided on a strategy that it calls a victory peace. It says that negotiations can only be held and a solution to this conflict can only be found on the basis of a military victory. This means that a diplomatic solution is ruled out. All the experiences of the policy of détente in the past are being trampled underfoot, and the word is being put about that a purely military solution is the way forward. That is the deeper reason why we felt driven to write this book. We see an incredible danger approaching. We see the danger that this military conflict will spiral out of control, that it will escalate with increasingly dangerous weapons, and that the goal of ending this war with a Western victory will ultimately only be achieved through the use of nuclear weapons. But then nobody wins, we're all dead. The point is to say: stop it! Stop this slaughter, give diplomacy a chance!

In the Istanbul negotiations, if you read the New York Times on the subject and look at the comments of Western politicians, they have basically now admitted that we were close to a peace agreement. But logically they blame Russia for the failure and essentially give two reasons. One reason is the war crimes in Buha, which have not been well investigated, but there is a lot to suggest that Russia committed war crimes here. However, the fact that the negotiations continued very intensively after Buha, as the book also shows, speaks against the argument that this played an important role. The second argument is also unconvincing, namely that Russia wanted to turn Ukraine into a kind of satellite state. In fact, the Istanbul communiqué, if I understand it correctly, shows that both the West and Russia guarantee and assure Ukraine's neutrality and that they will intervene in the event of a military invasion or a violation of sovereignty on the part of Ukraine. Why should Russia commit itself to intervene on the side of Ukraine against the West if they were not serious about this neutrality? It would be important to clarify whether Russia tried to push Ukraine into a kind of colonial status in Istanbul, or whether it was serious about neutrality.

Petra Erler: The Istanbul negotiations show, firstly, that it was a Western lie that Russia is not willing to negotiate, and secondly, that the West has never been interested in peace. The entire war in Ukraine, which is supposedly being waged for Ukrainian freedom and democracy, is just a pretext to weaken Russia, if not to ruin it. Our foreign minister, Ms. Annalena Baerbock, was the first to say this. It was later confirmed by Joe Biden and the US Secretary of Defense. We are not talking about saving Ukraine here, but about destroying Russia. A swift peace agreement in Istanbul could have prevented many war problems, war crimes and deaths in Ukraine. Apparently, it was not important to the West. I would like to remind you that the former president of the International Red Cross said: “Surprisingly few civilians are dying in this war because both armies, the Ukrainian and the Russian, are very familiar with international law.” He thought it would be a turning point in international warfare. That was in November 2022. He was wrong, as we know, but not in Ukraine, not in the war with Russia, but in the war in the Gaza Strip.

But that is the significance of the Istanbul process: Russia wanted it, Ukraine wanted it, the West did not. And the West did not want it because it believed that if we just supported Ukraine sufficiently, then Russia would be brought to its knees and might even end up like Germany in 1945. Since then, it has been perfectly clear that this is about the existence of Russia and that it is about the question of who rules the world.

Günter Verheugen: That is exactly what the famous Mr. Melnyk, who was here as the Ukrainian ambassador, said, as the Ukrainian war aim: We want to see Russia where Germany was in 1945, lying on the ground, destroyed, ruined. And here I ask myself, does this man know what he is talking about? Does he actually understand what it means when a nuclear superpower becomes unstable, when it is taken apart, when internal unrest occurs, when violence is directed both internally and externally? This could plunge the whole world into ruin. It must be said quite clearly: absolutely irresponsible people are at work here, driving us into something that we must prevent at all costs.

The Western postulates are unattainable. When it is said that we can only talk to Russia if Putin is gone, I can only say: that's not how we're going to get rid of Putin. That's not our business either, by the way; the Russians have to decide for themselves who should govern them. But if we believe that a change of regime in Moscow would somehow alter Russia's security interests and its interest in this conflict, then we are completely off the mark. There is no significant political force in Russia that sees Russian interests differently from the current Russian government. The argument that we cannot allow negotiations now because Ukraine is too weak is just as adventurous. You can only negotiate from a position of strength.

And that is very interesting, considering that at the beginning of the conflict we were told that the Russian army was no good, that the Russian way of waging war was no good, that they were no good at military matters. And now we are hearing something completely different. Now we are hearing: Yes, we absolutely have to stop them there, because if we don't stop them in Ukraine, then they will attack the Baltic countries next, and then Poland, and then they will be just outside Berlin. These are lies. These are propaganda stories that are being invented to maintain public support for Western involvement in this war. And we are fighting against that.

I think it's worth remembering that during the Cold War, both the USA and the Soviet Union had to tolerate really clear injustices and crimes, such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid a nuclear war. Conversely, the Soviet Union also often had to accept that the USA intervened everywhere in Latin America and in Vietnam, of course, and in Angola. Both sides often had to accept what they saw as the other side's great injustice in order to avoid a nuclear war. That is why we exist today at all. And what I find absolutely terrifying, and what sometimes keeps me awake at night, is that people have completely forgotten what a nuclear war would mean. There are even studies from the Lancet that show that a nuclear war between the USA and Russia would kill up to 90 percent of humanity. It's hard to imagine. Mainly because of the nuclear cooling that would destroy the harvests. It's an absolute nightmare. You have to ask yourself: even if you don't accept any of the other arguments and share the Western point of view, you have to appeal for us to do everything we can to prevent a nuclear war, if only for reasons of common sense. Even if we have to accept things that are perhaps unjust, such as the occupation of parts of Ukraine. Can you say anything else about the danger of a nuclear war?

Petra Erler: I think you are addressing a really difficult question. Can an aggressor, by virtue of its possession of nuclear weapons, prevent others from defending themselves? This question can only be answered by asking how it came to this. Why has Russia come to the conclusion that it must use military force? This brings us to NATO, which, contrary to its own statutes, has said that it is not prepared to negotiate with Russia in any way. We don't care what Russia thinks. This way of thinking has existed explicitly since 1994. Since then, we have been living as NATO states, gambling with what Russia could do as a nuclear power. That is no longer reasonable at all.

The second thing is, of course, that I am convinced that we must not allow anyone in this world to call into question the entire civilization. The only problem is that so far I have only seen the desire for nuclear first strike capabilities on the part of the United States, expressed in 2006 and still in the US nuclear doctrine today. The Russians do not have such a far-reaching nuclear doctrine. The third thing is that I can only warn everyone that if we start believing that we can do it like the boys in the schoolyard: who has the longer, who has the better – then we will end up exactly where we never wanted to end up. Personally, I believe that it is not likely that humanity will survive in any way if this nuclear exchange takes place. Everyone agrees on this, including American neoconservatives. It is not Russian propaganda. We are approaching the point where nuclear weapons will be used. If they are used, there will be those who die immediately. Then there will be those who are irradiated, and then those who starve. Those who are left will no longer be human.

Günter Verheugen: That is the consequence of what we are discussing right now, and Petra Erler has just described it very movingly. The consequence is simple: the top priority of international politics remains the prevention of war. That is simply the case. Under the conditions in which we live today, we simply can no longer accept war as a means of politics. That is why we are dealing very intensively in this book with the experiences we had during the earlier Cold War and how we ensured that it did not become a hot war. The instrument was called the policy of détente. Today it is often misrepresented as if it were geared towards making money. That is a completely false view. I would like to make it very clear: I was there at the time, I am that old now. The aim of détente is limited, and that aim is to avoid conflict. It creates a framework that enables us to avoid conflict on the basis of verifiable treaties and agreements.

We must not overburden the policy of détente with demands that it cannot fulfill. It is not the task of the policy of détente to change the internal conditions in a state or to bring about a change of regime. It is all about how we can avoid war. This requires a minimum of trust between the parties involved.

And if things go well, as we saw after 1975, détente can very well lead to changes in social systems and to fundamental strategic realignments. So we reject the theory that détente was a thing of the past and is no longer needed today. It is quite clear that we are not where we are today because we pursued détente. We are where we are because the experiences of the 1970s and 1980s were not utilized. It was never said that “change through trade” was the way forward. That is an invention of the opposition in Germany at the time, to discredit the policy of détente.

Petra Erler: It's about the assumption that you can use wars to change the world, and to change it according to your own tastes. This assumption was a driving force behind American behavior after the Second World War, in Vietnam, in the first and second Iraq wars and in all subsequent wars against terror. We have seen a policy that, based on the strength of the United States, wanted to shape the world according to its own ideas. And so far, it has always gone wrong, ever since Vietnam. Nobody is willing to deal with the fact that we can live together, that we can respect each other, and that it is not naive to be convinced that the life of the other is not one's own life model.

Like Kennedy, who of course did not want the Soviet Union. For him it was a foreign system, but it was a system with which one could live. And today we have the peak of what we already had in the McCarthy era. So according to the motto, we cannot live with them. They are the bad guys, and anyone who speaks positively of them is also one of the bad guys and should be locked up and silenced, and so on and so forth. We have arrived at an era in which we can no longer think rationally about what our common will to survive and our common interest in survival is. Because if we continue like this, there will be nothing left but to smash the evil enemy's head in with a nuclear missile or whatever. And where will we end up? We in Europe will become the battlefield.

Yes, I also think that one of the great strengths of your book is that you put your finger on this ideology, which is so widespread in the West today and which is a little difficult to grasp. Because we all love democracy and freedom of expression, and many of the Western values are of course a wonderful thing and we would like to see them in some respects in the rest of the world too. But the West is using it today for a kind of fanaticism, which is absurd and really in the sense of George Orwell, that democracy is basically used here for a Manichean madness. So we are the absolute good and the others, our enemies, are the absolute evil. So Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and so on are absolutely evil, and that's why we can't negotiate with them, and in the name of this ideology we wage one war after another.

Günter Verheugen: First of all, we should make it clear what that actually means, the rest of the world. The expression you just used: the rest of the world, that's those who don't think like us. Yes, there are about seven billion people. We are not the majority on this planet with our values and our way of life, on the contrary, we are a minority whose importance is shrinking, demographically as well as economically and politically. We should finally stop giving the impression that we are the masters of the universe – we are big, everyone has to agree, and everything dances to our tune. The so-called rest of the world is no longer willing to put up with this. Those days are over, and that is also a major part of our book. We describe the transition from a system in which one world power dominated to a multipolar system.

In truth, that is the great political challenge we face. How do we manage this transition to a multipolar world order without it leading to armed conflict? In other words, without this issue leading to a military confrontation between the US and China, for example. The issue of China is always in the background of everything that is happening right now, and in the Ukraine war, too, it is quite openly said that our behavior there should be a lesson to the Chinese, that they realize we are not to be trifled with.

So to sum up: the real task we face is to find a completely new approach to politics, as Kennedy tried to do, as Gorbachev tried to do, because we have to join forces to solve the major problems facing our planet, and we cannot afford to waste our energies by killing each other.

Petra Erler: As an East German, I know how seductive the taste of freedom is, and I don't understand at all why today's so-called Western democracies no longer have the self-confidence that Kennedy once had – according to the motto, we are actually attractive. Of course, because they are no longer, because the balance sheet of Western democracies is not very good. They are the ones who have supported wars, who have supported regime changes, who have made people afraid in this world, but in the end, for me, democracy and the taste of freedom is unbeatable.

Could you say a few words about Gaza? I see a connection, because I have never experienced such a warlike mood as during the Russian invasion, a kind of foreign nationalism, that is, the fact that the Germans were so enthusiastic about the Ukrainians. Ukrainian flags were everywhere. I'm not against it in principle, I've been to Ukraine twice and have a lot of sympathy for the country. But it was very strange, this whipped-up mood, and it also became very intolerant. Russia's invasion made the West even more fanatical, welded them together against the rest of the world, and then also blinded them to what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip. So I think this unconditional support for Israel from the US, the UK, Germany and the EU would not have been possible without this heated, fanatical and intolerant mood in the West.

Petra Erler: It was never about Ukraine. Ukraine was brought into position to weaken Russia. So this whole war lie that the Ukraine war was fought for the freedom of Ukraine is really completely absurd. People have to realize that they have been lied to here, and in a big way.

The second problem is the events of October 7 and the subsequent events in the Gaza Strip. That is a completely different story that has been developing since 1948. We did not trace this development in our book; we were concerned with the long road to war in Ukraine. But one thing is clear: what is happening in the Gaza Strip is a major humanitarian failure. The Lancet has suggested that between seven and nine percent of the people in the Gaza Strip may be dead. Whoever wants to end wars, as we want to end the war in Ukraine, must end these battles in the Gaza Strip and find a solution.

What was originally thought, namely the two-state solution, must come. We need a solution in Ukraine in which people of different ethnic origins and different affinities live together and say to each other: “I live in peace with my neighbors to the east and to the west, and I hate no one.” That is what we have in common; we cannot tolerate hatred in Europe and should not encourage hatred in the Middle East. To be honest, I have to say that whoever sows the seeds of hatred is giving free rein to hatred against whomever they want, and people are very inventive when it comes to hating.

Willy Brandt's kneeling was a great sign of humility, and that is something I miss so much. I experience the West as very arrogant and intolerant. We have a monopoly on the truth. Could you say something else to end on a more positive note? Would a policy of détente still be relevant today? What would change in our culture, in our politics and in our society if we were able to learn more from the lessons of the past?

Günter Verheugen: If we were to return to the principles of the policy of détente. The circumstances today are different from those in the 1970s, but the principles have not changed. Principles mean that you always have to consider the interests of the other side. A problem cannot be viewed solely from your own perspective, but must also be considered from the point of view of your opponent. You have to try to find out whether there are common interests, and if there are, you have to act on them. You have to develop areas of cooperation where you can work together. The prerequisite for this is a minimum level of mutual trust. If that is not there, you cannot pursue a policy of détente.

My greatest concern is that so much trust has been lost and deliberately destroyed over the last 20 years that it will not be possible to return to a policy of détente overnight. Nevertheless, we must try, using all the instruments at our disposal. The alternative is that we will have to continue to live under the constant threat of our existence. This means that what is needed here is a change of policy. Petra and I would like to see the European Union play a leading role in this attempt to realign international politics. I would much prefer all the talk of strategic autonomy for Europeans and of taking our fate into our own hands if it were linked to clear initiatives to make a policy of détente possible again.

Petra Erler: I would like to add one more thought: I have always been convinced that one of the strengths of the European Union is that it has a strong public broadcasting system. The media play an important role in providing citizens with objective information. In recent years, I have seen with great concern that this is no longer being fulfilled at all. That cannot reassure anyone. It is important that there are alternative media, such as the NachDenkSeiten, which report on the complexity of things and ask uncomfortable questions. If this does not continue and is attacked, we have no good chance of coming together to talk about what the right way to peace is and how we can master it together. Instead, we will have an increasingly divided society. In this sense, I would like to see many people demand that our media finally tell the truth, regardless of our book.

A personal question for you: you have a lot of authority when it comes to Eastern Europe and Ukraine, and now you have written a new book. Are you getting the discussion you deserve about what happened in Ukraine and how we got there? Or are you only on the NachDenkSeiten with your help?

Petra Erler: We have a good discussion and an astonishing number of responses from readers who write to us privately. Of course, we are aware that not a single so-called liberal medium has ever pretended to have read our book.

You are ignored by the major media, is that fair to say?

Yes, but we are still number 19 on the bestseller list. Ignorance is perhaps also a weapon. People know where they can get their information when they are no longer informed by those who should be informing them. Our book is proof that the public media should urgently reconsider what their mandate is.

I feel a moral obligation towards Ukraine because I have friends there and traveled to Kiev last year during the war. I have my doubts about whether I am doing justice to the interests and needs of the people there. What would you say is your position? Because it is always simply said, pro-Ukrainian or pro-Russian. Why would you say that your position serves the people of Ukraine?

Günter Verheugen: Because we are committed to a values-based foreign policy. This means that the most fundamental value, which is binding for all of humanity, must be realized in foreign policy, and that is the right to life and physical integrity. This means an appeal for peace and détente. We are convinced that it is better for the people of Ukraine to live in a good neighborly, if not friendly, relationship with Russia than to be slaughtered in a war whose end no one can foresee.

Petra Erler: I have known Ukraine personally since 2002 and was there regularly from 2015 to 2017. I got to know the Soviet Union in 1988 and 1989, and Russia later, in 2019. In Ukraine, I experienced a great desire for reconciliation in 2015 and 2016. But I also saw that American forces wanted to prevent this reconciliation. My personal effort, and I think the Ukrainians are an interesting, great people, you have to preserve and save them. You can't sacrifice it on the altar of a very mean policy that aims to destroy Russia, which, by the way, won't work. That's what the old Brzezinski tried, the Kaiser of Germany and Napoleon. My God, can't you invent something new?

Okay, that was a very nice conversation. Thank you very much.

Günter Verheugen: I just remembered something at the end. At the very beginning of the presentation, you said to Petra that she was a politician in the GDR. That is correct, but it would have been important to say that she was a member of the only democratically elected government. Yes, she had no political responsibility at the time of the SED, but was in the government at the time of the Wende. She was a state secretary in the first and only freely elected democratic government of the GDR, not before that.

I was a member of the European Commission until 2010, and in my first term of office I was responsible for enlargement. In my second term I was Vice-President and, among other things, European Chairman of the Transatlantic Economic Council. That legitimizes me to talk about US policy. Unlike most of those who express an opinion on this subject in German politics, we have known the countries, the people involved and the context for over 50 years. It's a bit rich for the leading media to ignore the book. But well, it's still selling.

Petra Erler: What is really important to me is that today, media like the NachDenkSeiten not only fulfill the role that public media used to fulfill, right? At the same time, I am deeply concerned if it were only the NachDenkSeiten. You can see what happens in the USA when public media buckle. You always need alternatives. If that doesn't work, we are lost in my view. Nine million people watch public service media every day. That's the difference. If these nine million people are being brainwashed and realize that they are being brainwashed, the NachDenkSeiten will never be able to catch them.

No, otherwise you could send me to the Ukraine to do research and such things. But then there's no money for that.

_________________________________________________________________

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When is a person a person? – Dehumanization and humanization in propaganda

by Maike Gosch

[This article posted on 7/24/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=118633.]

In the world of propaganda and psychological warfare, the impact of language and visual representations plays a major role. One important method of influencing the perception and thus the attitude of the population, especially in the event of conflict or war, is the use of techniques to “humanize” and “dehumanize” people. A new article in the series Propaganda Tactics by Maike Gosch.

What do “humanization” and “dehumanization” mean? We are all human beings. We could even talk about a “human family”. The technique of humanization serves to remind us of this common humanity, to make us feel connected to each other. The technique of dehumanization serves the exact opposite: to make us forget the humanity of a counterpart or a group.

How does humanization work?

The way in which people and events are portrayed influences our feelings and our identification with the people depicted.

The narrative perspective plays a central role here. If a situation is presented from only one particular perspective, we automatically identify with the narrator or the person who is placed at the center of the action, who is “zoomed in on” and whose world of experience we enter.

Just pay attention to the side from which the events are being reported, whose perspective is shaping the events – whose suffering and losses are being reported, whose feelings, perceptions, hopes and fears are being reported. Unfortunately, nowadays this is always the side that our government is currently strategically supporting. Responsible journalists who are also interested in peace would describe both sides, the arguments and perspectives of the government as well as the experiences and suffering of the population on all sides. If this does not happen, we have left the realm of journalism and are in the middle of propaganda. This approach can currently be observed very well in the reporting on the war in Ukraine and the military action of the Israeli government in the Gaza Strip.

Humanizing is therefore achieved first and foremost by choosing the right perspective.

Finding common ground

Another technique of “humanizing” is to emphasize what people have in common – that is, to describe people in such a way that those to whom the communication is directed can discover common ground with these people and thus feel close to them.

In practice, this means that while one side is “dehumanized” by being disparagingly referred to, dehumanized and reduced to a very one-dimensional activity, characteristic or function (e.g. “pig police officers”), the people who are to be humanized are presented in their contexts as “father”, “mother”, “entrepreneur”, “cancer patient”, “football player”, “owner of a nail studio” etc. As many and as emotional as possible, or those that are positively associated with the target group, are described and the circumstances, dreams, plans, activities, feelings, expressions, hopes of this person are told, thus achieving the effect that readers or viewers perceive them as human beings, even get the feeling of “knowing” them, identifying with them and being able to empathize with them. This creates feelings and thoughts such as: “I know this person now,” “I could be her friend,” “This could be my child.”

In itself, it is nice and positive to strengthen the love between people and the sense of community. However, it becomes problematic when it is part of propaganda, used one-sidedly and serves, for example, to make war crimes unrecognizable (see, for example, the reporting on IDF soldiers as young, happy girls doing TikTok dance routines as part of the military action in the Gaza Strip).

Perhaps a note for clarity: many of these mechanisms also arise as spontaneous emotional impulses and reactions, without having to be controlled manipulatively.

Let's take a very banal example from everyday life: we are stressed and arrive at the airport with too little time, we are afraid of missing our flight, maybe our small child is crying, we have eaten too little and just before that we argued with our partner about the right alternative route due to road works. We have been standing in the check-in queue for a long time and the airline employee who is supposed to check us in now is on the phone for what seems to us to be an extremely long time and doesn't even look at us.

We become angry with her, start to become aggressive, and when she finally does attend to us, we are curt, rude and harsh. Due to the stress and the situation, we only see her in her function as “staff” and “function”, not as a whole person with many dimensions and feelings, with whom we may have a lot in common, but as a kind of hostile object. Let's assume that she suddenly “steps out of character” at that moment, wipes the sweat from her brow and says: “Ah, I'm dizzy, I shouldn't have skipped breakfast.” or “How old is your son? My daughter is almost exactly the same age.” If we are not already completely upset and have a reasonably stable character, our image of the woman will change completely and the mood will improve dramatically. We will be reminded that she is also “only” a human being who has weaknesses and feels bad, a mother who has small children, or any other aspect that reminds us of our common humanity.

The role of emotions

This is where a major topic comes into play that actually deserves its own article, namely the role of emotions in political communication. Emotions play a major role in the context of humanization/dehumanization techniques, because both humanization and dehumanization work by arousing emotions. And our emotional state also determines the extent to which we humanize or dehumanize others (see below).

Humanizing arouses feelings such as love, sympathy and empathy, while dehumanizing arouses feelings such as hatred, fear, rejection and contempt. The more emotional the terms used by politicians and journalists, the more likely we are to find ourselves in a situation in which humanization/dehumanization is intended or unintentional. Unfortunately, the use of very emotional terms, descriptions, but also photos and films often serves to manipulate the public – or they are (in the most innocent case) a sign that the reporters themselves are so strongly guided by their own feelings that they can no longer report objectively.

Emotions also play a role in humanizing or dehumanizing, because the increase in stress, time pressure, the feeling of urgency, of crisis or threat, but also a traumatization or retraumatization through the description of atrocities, death, torture, danger, loss, destruction or the threat of it, have an impact on human perception, on information processing and on our emotional reactions.

When we are under stress, we tend to think in black and white and to categorize people as friends or enemies. Our ability to think and analyze suffers, as does our ability to differentiate, tolerate ambiguities and understand complexities. Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of tantrums or heated arguments. When negative feelings and stress overwhelm us, we can no longer think clearly, we can no longer put ourselves in the other person's shoes or feel their perspective, we become abusive, simplistic, accusatory, abusive, etc. The same thing happens in political discourse, in social media or in traditional forms of media. When we are put under stress, pressure and anxiety (whether intentionally or not), our ability to empathize suffers considerably.

Human animals

What methods are used to reduce empathy? Here, individuals or a group are described as alien, different and evil. What is striking is the lack of differentiation. The people who are to be dehumanized have no good qualities, no comprehensible motives, we have nothing in common with them. They are completely alien. In English, this is also referred to as “otherizing”, i.e. portraying one or more people as completely “different” and having nothing in common with us. A very good video on how “otherizing” can be overcome is this advertisement by a Danish TV channel about Danish society:

For a while, I researched the training of people to become torturers because I wanted to understand how it was possible to have no empathy for people who are suffering pain. Of course, there are people who generally feel very little empathy, but there are additional ways to further reduce our ability to empathize. These include increasing stress and pressure, as well as the gradual dehumanization of the “victim”.

You may remember the scene in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” in which the mother of the kidnapped woman addresses her televised plea to the mentally ill serial killer and kidnapper of her adult daughter, repeatedly mentioning her daughter's name and describing her personal characteristics. The FBI agent and her colleague, who are listening in, explain that she is doing this strategically to make it more difficult for the killer to kill her daughter, because the mother wants to make him see her as a “person” and not just as an “object” or “item”. That he does so, that he perceives her as an object, is shown in a conversation between him and the victim, in which he speaks of her in the third person and refers to her as “it”, for example (in the German dubbing) saying: “It will take the lotion and rub it in.”

The Nazis systematically dehumanized their opponents and victims. Jewish citizens were referred to as “parasites” and “vermin,” Slavs as “subhumans,” people with disabilities as “life unworthy of life,” and political opponents as “enemies of the people,” “traitors” and “pests.”

“This increasing denial of human feelings and experiences fits with the assumption that such dehumanization reduces moral concerns in the run-up to an act of violence, thus facilitating it,“ explain Landry and his colleagues. By depicting Jews as ‘subhumans’ in propaganda, they were, to a certain extent, denied human dignity and thus the protection of their lives.”
(Source: wissenschaft.de)

The people with whom no empathy is to be felt for strategic reasons are often completely denied their humanity by propaganda. Then words like “monsters”, “animals” and “beasts” are used. But the word “terrorist” also serves this dehumanization. For political opponents or leaders of enemy states, words like “dictator”, “ruler” or “brutal butcher” etc. are used.

The second aspect – in addition to dehumanization – is the focus on the threat posed by the opponent: he or she is described as thoroughly hostile and dangerous and portrayed as a threat.

“After the start of the Holocaust, we observe an increase in terms that associate the Jewish population with evil and sinister intentions,” the historians report. The Jews were now accused of seeking world domination, actively undermining public health or harming the ‘German people’ in other ways. ‘These patterns correspond to a demonization of the Jews,’ says Landry and his team. According to this, the Jews put their intellectual abilities entirely at the service of morally reprehensible goals – and thus proved to be “subhuman.””
(Source: wissenschaft.de)

Very disturbing current examples of dehumanization are the statements made by Israeli politicians and prominent citizens about the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (“They are human animals”), but also in the Ukraine war, in which Ukrainian soldiers and politicians call Russian soldiers and, in general, all Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainians “Orcs” (the semi-human monsters from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy), while Russian soldiers call Ukrainian soldiers “pigs” or “Ukronazis”.

Unfortunately, during the corona crisis (approximately 2020 to 2022) – certainly exacerbated by the stress and fear of the population and politicians and the general, extremely charged crisis atmosphere – there was also a tendency in Germany to strongly devalue and dehumanize fellow citizens. Terms and insults such as “Schwurbler” and “Querdullis” showed how little respect was shown to fellow citizens with a different opinion on certain political and scientific issues. In particular, people who decided against vaccination were met with the full brunt of anger and hatred from politicians, journalists, opinion makers and many angry citizens. CSU politician Markus Söder called them “dangerous crackpots”, while SPD politician Stefan Weil even called them “social parasites” (for more examples, see: ich-habe-mitgemacht.de).

One of the low points of the debate was certainly the statement by the author and presenter Sarah Bosetti, who compared the part of the population that had decided against vaccination and expressed this with an appendix that could be removed by society.

These quotes show how strongly the rhetoric in the public debate on corona measures and vaccinations was polarized and how strongly dehumanization and discrediting became socially acceptable again. Unfortunately, this trend has not really decreased since the end of the crisis, which was followed by the Ukraine war and then the Gaza war and a plethora of other crises.

How could this happen? In Germany, every schoolchild learns about the dangers of devaluation and dehumanization and that these are the precursors to physical and political violence. In recent years, there has also been a great deal of sensitivity regarding “violence in language” and “hate speech”. How can it be that the very people who deal with these issues (protection of minorities, hate speech) often resort to these extremely offensive, degrading and dehumanizing terms themselves when confronted with people who hold different opinions? And how can they still see themselves as “good people” and “on the right side”, convinced that they are fighting against “Nazis” and “populists”? How can this internal contradiction be explained?

In fact, the explanation is much simpler to find in the effect of emotions on our language and our discourse behavior than in intellectual constructs. It is the simple dynamics of escalation. The more stressed a person is, the more afraid they are, the more they see the world in black and white, divided into friends and enemies – the less able they are to differentiate, to process different, contradictory theses in parallel in their heads, and the more they resort to negative and insulting terms themselves (see above). Of course, this is not alien to me either. For example, when I read or see something on Twitter that breaks my heart and makes my blood boil (currently, for example, the terrible pictures of the children killed in Gaza), my first impulse is to type the worst and most dehumanizing insults against those I consider to be responsible. How much stronger must this impulse be if someone has been subjected to this violence themselves, or if a loved one has been affected, or if someone is re-traumatized by such news?

When the AfD started to gain strength (around 2016) and with it the fear of the AfD and, as a result, the discrediting and dehumanization of AfD politicians and voters, I was appalled by this development and asked acquaintances and colleagues who reacted most strongly to it with “hate and agitation” where this strong emotional reaction came from. In doing so, I learned that many of them had experienced threats and severe physical violence from neo-Nazi groups themselves in their youth, either in the anti-fascist movement or as part of an alternative youth culture, often in eastern Germany. Conversely, many AfD politicians, for example, describe their own experiences of violence and threats against themselves and their families by violent anti-fascist activists, which certainly also has an influence on their choice of words, such as “left-wing, green-washed society” and similar expressions.

This is the dehumanization and devaluation that arises in the heat of the moment and happens almost involuntarily. Here, it is up to each of us to be careful and not to fall into this trap ourselves – no matter how much we think we are on the “right” side.

Guiding empathy in reporting

Then there is also the case of manipulation. Here, these effects, both of increased empathy and of switching off any empathy, are deliberately provoked. However, there are certainly many cases in which these two elements are mixed (one's own emotionality and unrecognized one-sidedness with the desire to influence).

We can always recognize whose side our politicians and, unfortunately, now also our journalists are on in a conflict by paying attention to whose perspective is chosen, from whose point of view a situation is told, with whom we are allowed and should sympathize and with whom we should not. The best examples of this are currently the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza. The German government and thus the entire press landscape are, as always in recent years, 100 percent on the side of the United States and thus on the side of its allies in Ukraine and Israel.

This means that for years, the reports on the war in Ukraine in all media completely emphasized the perspective of the Ukrainian population and the Ukrainian military and almost exclusively reported on them. Their suffering, their hopes, their perceptions, their perspective were reported. They were given a face, they were portrayed with their hobbies, interests, professions, personal characteristics, etc. The suffering of the Russian-speaking and pro-Russian population in eastern Ukraine and throughout the country, their persecution, the terrible human rights violations they have suffered, the terror bombing in the years before the war and during the war were only described by alternative journalists. Similarly, Russian soldiers, journalists and the Russian civilian population have no face or voice in our media, unless they are dissidents and enemies of Russia, such as the American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has just been sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage, or the now deceased Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny. A real cult of personality is being built around them, and they get more front-page stories and home stories than Taylor Swift.

The conflict is not portrayed from both sides, so that German readers/citizens could form their own opinion of the situation, but rather German politicians and the media behave as if Germany itself were at war with an enemy. The conflict is therefore portrayed in a one-sided manner, and it is absolutely clear which side the population's solidarity is supposed to be with. The measures even go as far as criminal sanctions (penalization) for deviating assessments. It is now a punishable offense to declare support for the Russian military operation, for example by using the letter “Z”, while showing the Ukrainian flag in support of the Ukrainian side on social media profiles and even in front of almost all official buildings, town halls, government buildings, ministries, etc. is considered good form.

The result is that people are given the impression that they are no longer allowed to form their own opinions. Of course, they still do so in their heads, but they are only allowed to discuss and exchange them in public to a very limited extent. This ensures that the media do not have a reinforcing effect. The criminal prohibitions, as well as the social and professional sanctions and denigrations, also have a strong “freeze” effect, which means that people censor themselves and no longer express their opinions freely and openly – which in turn has the desired effect of preventing the group of people who have opinions that differ from the official line from networking well with each other and making it difficult for them to estimate how many they actually are.

The good, the true, the beautiful

Images and videos also play an important role in steering empathy. All the tricks and techniques known from communication psychology and marketing are used to portray one side as beautiful, noble, loving, etc., and the “opposite side” as ugly, evil, devious, etc. The use of beauty, i.e. beautiful faces and bodies, as an argument for “goodness” and ugliness, or a deviation from aesthetic norms as an argument for rejecting a person and their political stance or nation, is particularly interesting.

A good example of this is the dehumanizing “fat shaming” of Green Party politician Ricarda Lang by critics, mostly from the right-wing conservative camp, who repeatedly use her weight and body shape as an argument instead of attacking her political position or “lending weight” to such an attack.

Be vigilant

I don't need to repeat what a danger dehumanization represents. It is well known that dehumanizing certain people is always a (conscious or unconscious) precursor to doing something to them – be it genocide, war, or state or non-state repression or violence.

It is important to be aware of it when it happens. Be attentive! Whenever a person or a group is dehumanized, we are on the wrong track or being manipulated. And it is also important to be careful not to dehumanize the other person in your own anger and excitement – even if it happens in the conviction of one's own rightness and being on the right side (“AfDler kill”). Don't become what you fight against. Or, as Friedrich Nietzsche put it so beautifully:

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

So this is the conclusion of my thoughts:

Be careful when selectively “humanizing” and “dehumanizing” and consider in which direction your empathy should be directed in such a situation.
Pay attention to your own language in the heat of the moment in these turbulent and tense times.
Take a deep breath, try (even on Twitter) to get out of the fight mode, and remember that we are all human beings and have to get along with each other in this country and on this planet.