1.4    Military crises and arms policies 

1.4.1    The growing potential for military violence 

1.4.1.1    Arms exports and the military-industrial complex 

It is understandable that - as long as there is no stable and secure international system through the United Nations, as long as there are highly armed states with aggressive geostrategic intentions - states or alliances of states must also have a necessary minimum of defense capability, despite the primacy of diplomacy and international understanding. Weapons systems that are primarily used for defense, such as air defense systems, are acceptable products of a publicly controlled arms industry. The production of weapons, however, should be under state control and not in the hands of private enterprises, otherwise a military-economic complex with disastrous interlocking interests will develop.
The military-industrial complex is to be seen here as an economy of death that generates returns for its shareholders through military rearmament, increase in arms exports and frequently brutal destruction of social order through wars of various kinds. (84)  Actually, one should speak of a military-industrial-political complex, since it are politicians who make war decisions and control arms expenditures. As a rule, arms contractors, warlords, arms lobbyists and influential politicians - whether in formal democracies or open dictatorships - form a unit with often mutually compatible interests. Or, to put it another way: without the fear of the enemy fueled by the media, without armed conflicts, i.e. without the mass deaths of people in war zones, no significant profits can be made in the arms industry. This means that internationally viable peacekeeping agreements are not in the interests of the arms industry and the military leadership associated with it, as well as the cooperating (and sometimes profiting) politicians. 

It should not go unmentioned here that not only the generals, the bank and corporate bosses and members of governments belong to the military-industrial complex, but also the workers in the arms industry as well as the soldiers in the armies. Both groups have existential interests in the functioning of a privately organized and growth-focused arms industry and identify themselves to a large extent with its goals and structures and at best require a further efficiency increase.
The then outgoing U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower - as a Republican by no means a politically left-wing critic of the system - warned as early as 1961 in a televised speech against the military-industrial complex, which in his view was in the process of undermining the democratic form of government with its influence. Eisenhower urgently warned against the de-democratizing influence of the military-industrial complex: 

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"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." (85)

The interests of the military-industrial complex
- arms exports to areas of tension express moral underdevelopment
 
With her indignant "How dare you?!" question Greta Thunberg accused the heads of state and government represented at the UN Climate Summit 2019 of their ignorance and inaction in the face of the occuring climate crisis. Shouldn't the same indignant accusation be made today against the arms industry and raised publicly against the government representatives approving arms exports to areas of tension: "How dare you!"?

Is the man-made climate crisis not comparable with arms exports to areas of tension? The climate crisis and ethically unjustifiable arms exports represent a global phenomenon caused by man. In the accelerating destruction of social systems caused by arms exports, there are also, as in the global climate crisis, tipping points and feedback effects. 

Ultimately, what remains is an increasing dynamic of destruction with dead and injured, failed states, a destroyed environment, and shattered buildings and institutions.
Both - climate crisis and war situations aggravated by global arms exports - arise from the same state of moral underdevelopment, from the same immature mindset that accepts everything that yields results, despite massive destruction of the basics of life. 

Apart from the exception, where action is taken because of solidarity with a state under attack, greed for profit as an expression of moral underdevelopment, economic and political motives plays a central role in the export of armaments to areas of tension.
In this context, the term 'areas of tension' refers to all states and regions in which either interstate wars, asymmetric conflicts, massive state-organized human rights violations and state-organized terror as well as civil wars are threatening or already exist.

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However, as already discussed, there is one exception where arms exports to areas of tension are reasonable: When a state is attacked by a more powerful state and all offers of negotiation are in vain, then it may be legitimate to support the attacked state with arms deliveries in a very dosed manner (while maintaining diplomatic efforts). The Russian invasion of Ukraine represents such a case of conflict, which led to legitimate arms exports to Ukraine. Here, it would have been important to formulate a binding and principled 'red line' for arms exports, i.e. what may and may not be supplied. Priority should also be given to weapons such as defense systems to shoot down attacking fighter jets or weapons to defend against drone attacks, as well as weapons to defend against attacking tanks, e.g. bazookas. Weapons that can be used primarily to attack the attacking state in the interior of the country, such as long-range missiles and fighter jets, would have to be beyond the scope of decisions that are justifiable in terms of peace policy.Regarding the economic motives of arms exports even to areas of tension - apart from the exceptional case mentioned above - it can be stated that the arms industry is recording growing returns, has rising share prices, is of particular interest to investors and represents a safe commercial context even in times of crisis.The authorizing politicians, on the other hand, pretend they want to secure jobs and technology transfer, some of them also have economic interests ('revolving door effect'), are under massive lobbying pressure from the arms industry and are acting on the basis of geostrategic interests calculations. (86)
In Germany for example, officially every politically responsible person effectively positions himself or herself against arms exports to areas of tension, since the national and international legal situation and corresponding regulations currently indicate publicly observable barriers in regard to this issue. Nor are arms exports to areas of tension popular. The overwhelming majority (more than three quarters) of the German population rejects arms exports to areas of tension. (87)
 In addition to economic motives, geopolitical motives play a role in arms exports. Weapons are mainly delivered to those from whom the authorizing politicians hope to gain an advantage in the event of their military victory. Sometimes even both warring factions are strengthened if their geostrategic weakening corresponds to the interest of the arms supplying nations. The arms deliveries to both Iran and Iraq by the USA and also the then USSR during the first Gulf War are an example of this. The cynical calculation to weaken both sides escalated a war in which about one million people fell victim. (88) 

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What specific legal barriers have been erected in the wake of long-lasting protests and clear criticism of arms exports to areas of tension? In the next section of the study this question will be examined first for the international level and then for the national legal bases of licensing practice. The next question asked is how effective these regulations are for the actual practice of arms exports to areas of tension.

International regulations to prevent arms exports to areas of tension
 
Regulations of the United Nations
The UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted by the UN General Assembly in April 2013 and effective in 2014, is clear. States parties commit to installing a transparent and effective control system for conventional arms exports. According to Article 6, paragraph 3 of the ATT, a State Party may 
"not authorize any transfer of conventional arms (...) if it has knowledge at the time of the decision that the arms or goods would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes as defined in international agreements to which it is a party."  (89) 
The problem here is that not all UN members have ratified the ATT so far: As of February 2025, 116 states have ratified the treaty or acceded to it (“state parties”), 26 states that signed the treaty have yet to do so (“signatories that are not yet states parties”), and 53 states have not yet signed (“states that have not yet joined the treaty”) (as of February 2025). (90) Arms exporters such as Russia and Iran have not yet signed the ATT. The U.S.  approved it but had not yet ratified it. Thus it was not valid for them under international law.  Trump affirmed in 2019 that the U.S. would not ratify the treaty, saying  "Americans live by American laws, not the laws of other countries."  (91)
But the Biden administration has also not  taken steps to ratify the ATT - according to Rachel Stohl (2022): 

„Unfortunately, the Biden administration has been frustratingly and disappointingly silent on the ATT despite support for the treaty appearing in the Democratic Party’s platform and numerous promises to review the agreement and the U.S. role in it. This decision sits firmly in the executive branch’s hands; no congressional action is required to recommit to the treaty. (…)President Biden need only send a letter to the UN stating that it will fulfill its responsibilities as a signatory and be bound by the object and purpose of the treaty, which are to reduce human suffering and ensure a responsible, accountable, and transparent arms trade.“ 
It is not to be expected that the second term of Donald Trump will see the USA sign, ratify and thus join the ATT.

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Germany has ratified the ATT, which means that the treaty is binding for Germany under international law. Besides Germany, also other states that are among the ten largest global arms exporters; China, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, have signed the treaty. China joined the ATT relatively late; it became legally effective with the UN's letter of confirmation in October 2020.
It can thus be stated that two of the leading arms exporters, the USA and Russia, have not yet decided, or are refusing to join the ATT in a legally binding manner. Even if other major arms exporters, such  as China, Germany or France , have acceded to the ATT treaty, its effectiveness will be very limited until at least all permanent members of the UN Security Council are willing to join, among other things, the ban on exporting weapons to crisis regions and areas of tension.
Furthermore, it must be criticized that the ATT does not contain any regulations on binding controls and sanctions. It merely calls on nation-states to transfer the requirements of the ATT into national law and to report the legal basis and licensing practice as well as the characteristics, dimensions and destination of arms exports to the United Nations ATT Secretariat on a voluntary basis. This is to be supported by the incentive of financial support through the ATT Sponsorship Program and the ATT Volantary Trust Fund.
However, it must be noted that these stimuli are not effective enough, since ATT signatory states, such as France, Germany, Great Britain, China and Italy, also export weapons to areas of tension - without there being any support for self-defense in the sense of the UN Charter. Amnesty International (n.d.) lists importing states such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt as examples.  For example, in January 2024, the German government approved the sale of 150 Iris T missiles to Saudi Arabia, even though this country is heavily involved in the war in Yemen. Another example of a violation of the ATT is the 230 million euro arms deal in 2024 to Turkey, which is militarily attacking Syrian Kurdish areas in violation of international law (Kirlidokme 2024).

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EU regulations
At the European Union level, there are also corresponding regulations that strictly prohibit arms exports to areas of tension and seek to exercise control over arms exports overall. 
Within the framework of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), a so-called "Council Common Position" was developed in 2008 (to be updated and adopted again in 2019). (92) Here, it is first all emphasized that member states must examine applications for arms exports or for the export of weapons technology against the background of international agreements. These are primarily alliance obligations towards the EU and the UN, which arise, among other things, from agreements on imposed sanctions, the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, the ban on anti-personnel mines (Ottawa Convention), and the ban on chemical and biological weapons (Art. 2 (1) of the "Council Common Position"). Art. 2 (2) sets out eight criteria for the consent or rejection of arms exports. In particular, if a state violates human rights and international humanitarian law, an export license to a final destination must be denied. 

If there is a risk that the exported arms and military technologies would lead to internal repression in the recipient country, if serious human rights violations and violations of applicable international law would be committed or are to be expected there, if armed conflicts within the country and with other states would be exacerbated as a result, if an undesirable attitude toward terrorism exists, then the export license must be denied. Also, if a diversion of military technology is to be expected and the risk of a further export of military equipment to unsafe and risky third countries is to be anticipated, the export of military equipment must be denied.  With these formulations, the decision making framework is on a par with the UN Arms Export Treaty (ATT).
Problems arise, however, when the provisions of Article 2 (1) and 2 (2) contradict each other. The state licensing practice remains unpredictable and open if, due to alliance commitments, a delivery of armaments is deemed necessary, although these weapons are then used to suppress the own population, for aggression in a neighboring state or for direct delivery to warring parties in areas of tension. For example, the German arms deliveries to Turkey and Saudi Arabia as well as the arms deliveries by France and Italy in the Libyan conflict should certainly be mentioned here. The U.S. and Russia also supply weapons worldwide to their allies involved in military conflicts, without this being legitimized by regulations of the UN Charter.

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Wolf-Dieter Vogel, a journalist specializing in arms exports, also points out that the Council's Common Position is not legally binding in the sense of an EU regulation. (93) Obviously, the Council deliberately leaves a considerable margin of maneuver for the member states when it comes to exporting military equipment. The lack of legally binding provisions for the decisions and the potentially contradictory provisions of Art. 2 (1) and 2 (2) also provide an unfavorable prerequisite for sanctions against EU states that do not comply with the Council's agreement on arms exports to regions of tension or to states that disregard human rights.

National regulations using the example of Germany
Each state has its own regulations concerning arms exports, and they can vary in strictness or negligence. The example of Germany will be used here to demonstrate the extent to which normative expectations with regard to arms trade are formulated there. These will then beexamined in a subsequent step - as also for the global and European levels - to determine to what extent aspirations and reality can be brought together.
The restrictions on the export of weapons from Germany to other countries refer first of all to the fundamental peace requirement of Article 26 (1) and the claims of Article 26 (2) of the German Constitution, in which the manufacture of weapons and the export of weapons are declared to be subject to approval ("Weapons intended for warfare may only be manufactured, delivered and brought into circulation with the approval of the Federal Government". (GG Art. 26 (2)).
For example, in the coalition agreement of 2017, the German government referred to the ATT, the EU's 'Common Position of the Council', the Foreign Trade and Payments Act (AWG) and the War Weapons Control Act (KrWaffKontrG), among other things, and stipulated for itself restrictively with regard to arms exports: 

"Respect for human rights in the recipient country plays a prominent role in the decision-making process. If there is sufficient suspicion that the military equipment to be supplied will be misused for internal repression or other ongoing and systematic human rights violations, a license will not be granted as a matter of principle."  (94)
In addition to compliance with human rights, the second decisive criterion is the question of reliability in terms of peace policy or the threat posed to interstate peace in the recipent country:
 "According to § 6 KrWaffKontrG, there is no entitlement to the granting of a license for the export of war weapons. Such a license must be denied if there is a risk that the weapons of war will be used in an act that disrupts peace, that obligations of the Federal Republic of Germany under international law will be impaired, or if the applicant does not possess the reliability required for the act."  (95)
Actually, these regulations are formulated in a sufficiently restrictive and responsible manner. Nevertheless, Wolf-Dieter Vogel criticizes that these formulations are rather claims and not legally binding regulations ("The German arms export guidelines are not legally binding"  (96)).  In my opinion, this criticism can indeed be related to regulations in a coalition agreement as well as to the Federal Export Report,  but neither to the AWG nor to the KrWaffKontrG, which have the character of  law and on the basis of which prosecution can or should be initiated in case of violations. 

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The official procedure for obtaining a weapons export license involves a preliminary inquiry by a defense company to the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy about the possibility of exporting weapons or military equipment. The Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA), a higher authority of the Federal Ministry of Economics, is involved in the control of war weapons control, to which war weapons stocks and changes in stocks must be reported on a regular basis. In addition to a political assessment of the recipient country, a long and detailed weapons list defining which equipment is subject to export control (Export List to the Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance (2018)) is decisive for the approval of a preliminary inquiry. If a preliminary inquiry from an armament company is rejected, the project is, at least through this official channel, usually not pursued further. If the preliminary inquiry is approved, the arms export can usually proceed. An arms export that is to take place outside Europe to countries that do not belong to NATO or comparable states, or that are considered problematic states, leads, if politically significant, to negotiations in the Federal Security Council (BSR), a cabinet committee chaired by the Chancellor and including, among other things, several federal ministers. There, inter alia, relevant applications for arms exports are negotiated in private. The meetings of the Federal Security Council are secret. Neither a meeting date nor an agenda is announced in advance. The German parliament (Bundestag) is only informed afterwards when a decision has been made. However, the Federal Security Council is not subject to parliamentary control by the Bundestag. As a rule, it decides autonomously on arms deliveries and is only obligated to the federal government where this is stipulated by law. In this context, arms export licenses are related to German security policy and its strategic orientation, as defined by the Federal Security Council and the federal government.
The evaluation possibilites for the Federal Security Council also remain due to the fact that transnational sanctions policy and alliance obligations based on intergovernmental treaties (KrWaffKontrG § 27 ) (97) must be observed. For example, Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty of NATO (1949) obligates the signatory states:

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"In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.“ 

Another problem is that the German arms control law partially contradicts the implementation of European legal norms. There is still no effective control and sanctions policy at the European level due to the legally non-binding nature of the relevant EU regulations. This enables arms exports from Germany to other EU states, which in turn tolerate arms exports to areas of tension. Thus, exports from the EU country in question to third countries, also including areas of tension, is possible.
Indeed, in 2015 the German government formulated guidelines for post-shipment controls, in which, among other things, the final destination of the exported weapons in the recipient country is to be controlled in cooperation with the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, in particular the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA). The problem here arises first of all concerning the principle of exemplary verification and the lack of personnel for complete verifications, as well as concerning the fulfilling of trade interests, when formulated like this:
"The competitiveness of German industry and defense cooperation with third countries must not be jeopardized by the system of post-shipment controls."  (98)
Accordingly, there is no effective way of dealing with direct investments by armament companies in areas of tension or when investments are made in a supposedly safe state outside the EU and NATO. If, for example, German technology is transferred to Australia and a weapons or ammunition factory is built there in cooperation with a German arms manufacturer, there is no guarantee that the weapons produced there will not be exported to areas of tension or used there by the arms-producing state involved, given the corresponding statements by the Australian government and the deliveries have already been made. (99) If a munitions factory is built in South Africa by a German arms manufacturer, then we should not be surprised if German know-how is used to kill people in the Yemen war. 

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The reality of arms exports

The aim here is to start a little earlier in the data analysis in order to be able to follow the development over a longer period of time and determine the changes over time in connection with political events.
The Swedish peace research institute SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) already in its report published in spring 2018 (100) states, that the international arms trade has increased by 12% in the last five years compared to 2008 - 2013. The U.S. arms industry ranked first among arms-exporting nations, with a 34% market share. The contracts for this were signed under the administration of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama. The second largest exporting country was Russia (minus 7.1% arms sales), followed by France (plus 27%), Germany (minus 14%) and China (plus 38%). The arms industries of these five countries were responsible for 74% of all arms sales from 2012-2017. Nearly every third weapon sold was delivered to Middle East countries, which have doubled their arms imports over the past five years. Correspondingly, every second U.S. weapon was sold to the Middle East. German arms sales to the Middle East increased by 109% over the last five years.
In 2019, the U.S. already had an arms export share of 36% and arms exports in the period 2015-2019 76% higher than the exports of the second largest exporting country Russia (minus 7.1% arms sales) (SIPRI 2020a).
Overall, in the global context, annual arms sales increased by 42% by 2018 compared to 2002. Five US companies were at the top of the list of arms-producing companies:
"For the first time since 2002, the top five spots in the ranking are held exclusively by arms companies based in the United States: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. These five companies alone accounted for $148 billion and 35 per cent of total Top 100 arms sales in 2018. Total arms sales of U.S. companies in the ranking amounted to $246 billion, equivalent to 59 per cent of all arms sales by the Top 100. This is an increase of 7.2 per cent compared with 2017."  (101)

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Most weapons were sold to India (tensions with China and Pakistan). Saudi Arabia, which is actively contributing to the destabilization of the Middle East and flying destructive military operations in Yemen, was the second largest importer of arms (tripling its arms purchases in the last five years). Saudi Arabia is followed by Egypt, the Arab Emirates, and China.
China reduced its imports as it increasingly produces weapons itself. The increase in China's arms exports (38%) relates primarily to Pakistan, Algeria and Bangladesh.
"Since 2003, the German government has steadily expanded its relations with Saudi Arabia. The goal of the Federal Republic was and is primarily to promote foreign trade, but some of the more recent deals had a clear security dimension. The peak of the cooperation, which has meanwhile been pursued by three German governments, was the planned sale of 270 Leopard battle tanks to the desert kingdom. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, however, this deal was highly problematic. First of all, this concerned the equipment of the tanks ordered. The tanks in question are the Leopard 2A7-+, which have been converted for counterinsurgency operations in inhabited areas, making them particularly suitable for suppressing domestic unrest." (102)
This clearly means that, despite political discussions and differing political statements by the respective governments, arms deliveries are almost universally made to areas of tension. The economy of death grows with each hotbed of tension - according to Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher of the 'SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Programme':
"Widespread violent conflicts in the Middle East and concerns about human rights have led to political debate in Western Europe and North America about restricting arms sales (...) Yet the USA and European states remain the main arms exporters to the region and supplied over 98 per cent of weapons imported by Saudi Arabia."  (103)

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Arms exports to areas of tension often result in massive military oppression of the civilian population by the various warring parties (see Syria or Yemen), even including racially motivated genocide attempts, such as currently in Myanmar (Burma) with regard to the Muslim ethnic group of the Rohingyas or in 1994 in Rwanda with regard to the mass murder of the Tutsi population by Hutu militias.
The bombing of the Gaza Strip in 2023/2024, which violated international law and resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, especially among the civilian population, was also carried out with Western weapons in a disproportionate response to Hamas' brutal attack on Israeli territory.
Data from SIPRI (2020) also make clear that the U.S., Russia, France, Germany, and China, the five largest global arms exporters, export weapons everywhere - regardless of whether these are areas of tension.
SIPRI (2023) now points to a trend reversal in the regional distribution of arms imports. In particular, European countries increased their arms imports, which is certainly related to the growing tensions with Russia in connection with the war in Ukraine: 

„Imports of major arms by European states increased by 47 per cent between 2013–17 and 2018–22, while the global level of international arms transfers decreased by 5.1 per cent. Arms imports fell overall in Africa (–40 per cent), the Americas (–21 per cent), Asia and Oceania (–7.5 per cent) and the Middle East (–8.8 per cent)—but imports to East Asia and certain states in other areas of high geopolitical tension rose sharply. The United States’ share of global arms exports increased from 33 to 40 per cent while Russia’s fell from 22 to 16 per cent, according to new data on global arms transfers published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).“ 

Figures from the Swedish peace research institute SIPRI made it clear for the period 2015-2019 that arms exports were rising steadily. Arms exports to areas of tension were not exempt from this:               

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Table 1: The 10 largest arms exporter and importers  (104)
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 Arms exports 2015-2019                   Arms imports 2015-2019
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Rank       Country      Share in %        Country           Share in %
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1              USA                  36                Saudi Arabia       12
2              Russia              21                India                     9.2
3              France              7.9              Egypt                     5.8
4              Germany          5.8              Australia               4.9                 
5              China*              5.5              China                     4.3
6              UK                     3.7              Algeria                   4.2
7              Spain                3.1              South Korea          3.4
8              Israel                3.0              United Arab
                                                              Emirates (UAE)     3.4
9              Italy                   2.1              Iraq                         3.4
10           South Korea     2.1              Qatar                      3.4
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In the meantime (2022), Ukraine has become the third-largest
arms importer (SIPRI 2023a).
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* China's arms exports are most likely to be set higher, as no traceable international insight into Chinese arms exports is available . 

Table 1 clearly shows that the U.S. and Russia were by far the largest arms exporters, accounting for more than half of all arms exports (57%). Neither these two states, nor the eight following countries in the ranking of exporters, were deterred by international arms export bans in relation to areas of crisis and tension. Almost all of the world's leading arms importing states were located in areas of tension or were involved in wars and asymmetrical armed conflicts (except for Australia). 
For example, arms exports to the area of tension in the Middle East increased by 61% (!) when comparing the years 2010-2014 with the period 2015-2019. (105)

Syria, Yemen and Libya in particular are war zones where wars are being fought primarily with weapons imported from the USA and Europe (including Russia). 

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SIPRI (2023) now shows that meanwhile Ukraine, which was affected by the Russian invasion, has the largest arms import increases and became the third largest arms importer in 2022:
"From 1991 until the end of 2021, Ukraine imported few major arms. As a result of military aid from the U.S. and many European states following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine became the 3rd largest importer of major arms during 2022 (after Qatar and India) and the 14th largest for 2018-22. Ukraine accounted for 2.0 per cent of global arms imports in the five-year period."
For the period from 2019 to 2023, the proportions of heavy weapons exports changed significantly (Table 2) 

Table 2: The 10 largest exporters of heavy weapons and percentage changes (SIPRI 2024) 

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Exporting             Exporting country                         Exporting country                      Percentage change 

Country                Percentage share %                      Percentage share %                  from 2014-2018 

                              of global heavy exports                of global heavy exports            to 2019-2023 

                              2029-2023                                      2014-2018

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USA                                         42                                                       34                                               17

France                                     11                                                       7,2                                              47

Russia                                     11                                                        21                                              -53

China                                        5,8                                                      5,9                                             -5,3

Germany                                  5,6                                                      6,3                                             -1,4

Italy                                           4,3                                                      2,2                                               86

Great Britain                            3,7                                                       4,1                                              -14

Spain                                        2,7                                                       2,7                                              -3,3

Israel                                         2,4                                                       3,1                                              -25

South Korea                             2,0                                                       1,7                                               12

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In the course of the war in Ukraine, the arms companies in the United States were able to increase their arms exports in the comparative period. Exports of heavy weapons, such as tanks and missile systems, increased from 34% to 42% of global trade. Exports from France and Italy also increased significantly. At the same time, Russian exports fell by 53% from 21% to 11% of global trade in heavy weapons as a result of Western sanctions policy.

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 Example Libya

 Since the fall of the Gaddhafi regime in 2011, Libya has been in an extremely unstable political situation. For many years, a military confrontation took place between the troops of General Haftar and the government troops of the al Sarraj government, repeatedly interrupted by short ceasefires. Despite an arms embargo imposed by the UN Security Council, which was extended again in June 2020, weapons were supplied to the area of tension by various states. Turkey sent Syrian mercenaries, weapons, and drones to support al Sarraj. Qatar also supports the government forces. Russia, the Arab Emirates, as well as Saudi Arabia supported Haftar. Russia sent mercenary troops from private Russian military companies, among others, to Libya. (106)   But even within NATO and the EU, the support provided went in different directions. While Turkey, which is interested in exploiting Libyan gas reserves, provided military protection for al Sarraj, also Italy, which as well is interested in exploiting the oil fields off the Libyan coast and in holding back refugees, supported al Sarraj by military equipment. Italy has a longer tradition here, having already supplied al-Gaddafi with military helicopters, which he then used against his revolting population in 2011.
France, along with Russia, supports General Haftar. Both countries, in turn, have interests in securing contracts worth billions, offering access to the Libyan energy market, pushing back Islamists, and using Libyan Mediterranean ports. In addition, all parties have geostrategic interests and want to strengthen their influence in the Arab region. (107)
 While Germany calls for international negotiations to enforce an arms embargo, the German government in the background is approving large-scale arms deliveries to states that in turn deliver weapons to the Libyan conflict zone - for example, since the beginning of 2019, the German government has approved arms exports worth more than 1.3 billion euros to states that are fueling the Libyan war. (108)
 Due to economic and geostrategic interests, all relevant arms export regulations are ignored. Even an arms embargo unanimously imposed by the UN Security Council hardly shows any effect.
In 2023, Böhm/Nahr (2023) describe the situation in Libya as follows:

- 109 -


"Since the fall of long-term dictator Muammar al-Ghadhafi in 2011, there has been almost uninterrupted war in Libya. Militia bosses, political clans and foreign militia are fighting for power and oil in the vast, sparsely populated desert country. Recently, Hamuda's leader, the internationally recognized Prime Minister Dbaiba, had to fend off his rival Fathi Bashagha, who also claims the office and is supported by the powerful eastern Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. (...) Fighters loyal to Dbaiba managed to repel the attack last summer. Since then, calm has prevailed. For the first time in years, the guns are silent. The local warring parties in Libya are tired, and their international supporters from Turkey, Russia, the West and the Gulf are busy with other things. Recently, even the head of the CIA was in the country to mediate between the hostile politicians in the east and west of the country. (...) Libya is divided, there are two parliaments, two prime ministers, a multitude of armed groups and the elections originally scheduled for December 2021 have been postponed indefinitely."
A UN Security Council resolution of 30.10.2023 continues to call for the holding of free, general elections for Libya and expresses its concern about the security situation in Libya and its destabilizing effect on neighbouring states. 
To summarize: The example of the Libyan state shows how massive military interventions, arms exports to different groups combined with geostrategic and economic interests can destroy a country in the long term. Libya has the status of a failed state and it remains to be seen whether future elections can lead to unification and stabilization of the country.

Arms exports from the EU to areas of tension.

 In 2012, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In the same year, however, EU was the world champion in arms exports. Despite the regulations of the ATT and the 'EU Common Position', massive deliveries of weapons were made from the EU specifically to areas of tension:
 "Out of 51 authoritarian regimes worldwide, 43 received European arms deliveries. Out of 47,868 export licenses applied for, only 459 were rejected. German arms exports to the six Gulf Cooperation Council states alone - including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain - amounted to 1.42 billion euros in 2012!"  (109)
 
- 110 -

But even after 2012 this did not develop differently. Besides Germany, mainly France, GB, Spain and Italy are involved in arms export business. Its share of the arms trade came to 22.6%, almost a quarter of global arms exports - according to a 2020 question from the Left Party in the European Parliament. The exports go primarily to areas of tension such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, the United Emirates and Algeria. (110)
The claims of the "EU Common Position" do not seem to work. When alliance obligations and own geopolitical and economic interests are in the room present, the "Common Position" becomes wastepaper or is bypassed.
Regulations concerning export of goods that can be used for both civilian and military purposes ("EU Dual-Use Regulation") have also not yet entered into force due to differences of opinion in the European bodies. These dual-use goods include electronic products such as jammers, which can be used, for example, to interfere with the Internet and cell phone reception also against the civilian population. Likewise military trucks can be militarily upgraded by attaching a gun carriage and a machine gun.
The EDA (European Defense Agency) however, is already working at full speed within the framework of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) with regard to the coordination of European armament efforts. The EDA is supposed to be responsible, among other things, only for supporting intra-European research and development of military technology. This is taking place within the financial framework of PESCO, in which the participating EU states have committed to increase their investments in defense equipment by 20%. In this context, it is beyond the competence and control of the EDA if a technology developed in this way also becomes the subject of arms exports to third countries.
The current development with regard to European military cooperation illustrates this problem even more sharply. The so-called 'European Peace Facility' (EPF), launched in December 2017 at the EU level based on the request of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, claims to primarily unburden EU development cooperation costs for the security architecture in Africa by, among others, providing a fund of €10.5 billion outside the regular EU budget for this purpose.

- 111 -

In addition to offering military training the EPF explicitly plans to provide export of weapons, ammunition and security technology. 
"Currently, the EU has limited capacity to engage in military or defense activities such as capacity building and provision of training, equipment or infrastructure. The EPF will contribute to building capacity of armed forces in partner countries for peacekeeping, conflict prevention and for addressing security threats. For instance, the success of EU military training missions is sometimesquestioned due to the inability of the partners to take advantage of what they have learned because of often very rudimentary equipment or infrastructure. The EPF will enable the EU to provide comprehensive support through integrated packages that may include training, equipment, and other forms of assistance. This will make it easier for partners to manage crises and security threats on their own." (111)
While the intended separation of civil development cooperation and military spending could indeed have positive effects on the actual volume of civil development cooperation, it is not without risks. In particular, there is a danger that these billions could also be used to finance arms exports to third countries which, firstly, are to be regarded as crisis areas and, secondly, are not safe end-use states, i.e. which themselves forward or sell these arms to areas of tension. (112)
This would then also be a new quality of the official EU foreign and security policy, if arms deliveries could be made openly to third countries or crisis areas. 
The EPF is currently being discussed at EU level but the outcome of the decision is still open.
EPF funds in 2022 and 2023 will also finance, among other things, military assistance to Ukraine (Bundesregierung 2023). 

 
German arms exports to areas of tension

In the second decade of the 21st century, almost €17 billion worth of armaments were exported from Germany.  In the past decade, armaments worth almost €17 billion have been exported from Germany. In the same period, the German government approved arms exports worth around €63 billion for future exports. (113) Also the year 2019 is expected to generate substantial returns for the future. 

- 112 -

Table 3: Licenses for arms exports from Germany (114)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number and value of individual
licenses for military equipment
granted by the German government                   2018  in € billion                        2019 in € billion
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                                                          11,142 individual approvals     11,479 individual licenses  
                                                                                    € 4.82                                          € 8.02
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------to NATO states, EU states 
and NATO-equivalent states                                   € 2.28                                          € 4.48
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
to third countries                                                       € 2.55                                          € 3.53
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------to developing countries                                                 € 0.37                                          € 1.35 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
to developing countries that                                                                                     Egypt (€ 0, 8),

qualify as areas of tension                                                                                        Indonesia (€ 0,2),
                                                                                                                                        India (€ 0,93),
                                                                                                                                        Pakistan (€ 0,63),
                                                                                                                                        Morocco (€ 0, 61)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, Ukraine is the most important destination of German arms exports. (see Table 4)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- 113 - 

Tab. 3 makes first of all clear that the value of arms exports from Germany increased sharply from 2018 to 2019 (from € 4.82 billion to € 8.02 billion). Furthermore, about 44% of the arms exports went to third countries that are either areas of tension and crisis areas themselves or countries in which the final destination of weapons cannot be controlled. But even the final destination of exported weapons to EU states is not guaranteed. For example, weapons produced by the Rheinmetall subsidiary were delivered from Italy to the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen until 2019. 

Arms exports to developing countries have also increased significantly. This includes arms exports from Germany to states experiencing interstate tensions or human rights violations. 

The total number and value of individual licenses issued by the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Federal Security Council are not to be considered equivalent to actual exports of military equipment. Nevertheless, they provide an insight into the arms exports to be expected in the coming years. In this context, arms exports are not just about weapons. There are also, for example, trucks, boats and mine-clearing equipment. These can easily be converted or used to support warlike activities. 

In addition to the individual licenses, there are also collective licenses for 2019 worth approximately half a billion euros. Most of the licenses for military equipment relates to armored vehicles and military trucks (€3.06 billion). (115)

In 2023 and 2024, export licenses for military equipment increased again massively compared to previous years. In 2023, €12.13 billion and in 2024, €13.2 billion (by December 17, 2024) in licenses for arms exports from Germany were issued due to military support for Ukraine. 

- 114 -

Table 4: The 10 countries with the highest cumulative values for licensed arms exports from Germany (1 January to 17 December 2024) [116]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rank Country Total value of individual licences and reportable transactions General licence no. 33 in euros 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 Ukraine 8,137,164,112 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2 Singapore 1,217,944,022 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3 Algeria 558,719,786 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

4 United States 298,518,591 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5 Turkey 230,842,622 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6 India 224,037,084 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 Czech Republic 189,581,537 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8 Israel 161,067,512 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9 United Kingdom 152,462,666 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

10 United Arab Emirates 146,585,330 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Positions 5, 8 and 10 alone illustrate the problem of German arms exports on the basis of the example used here for 2024. Furthermore, it is well known that Egypt in particular is supporting the Saudi coalition in the war in Yemen, so German weapons are likely to be used here, although there is an international arms export embargo supported by Germany for the war in Yemen. 

- 115 -

In previous years, arms exports to the warring parties in Yemen involved in the Saudi coalition also dominated – according to political scientist and journalist Markus Bickel in 2018: 

“Although the European Parliament called for an end to arms deliveries to the countries involved in the conflict as early as 2016, the German government continues to issue export licenses unconcerned. In the past three years, the Federal Security Council has approved military goods worth over a billion euros for Saudi Arabia alone. Egypt received arms exports worth 850 million euros and the United Arab Emirates 474 million euros.” [117]

The German government later justified arms exports to Ukraine – in a departure from its official position of not exporting arms to areas of tension if possible – by citing Ukraine's right to self-defense and the obligation of UN states to provide military support to an attacked member of the UN. In total, Ukraine has received support (as of 2023) of already €14 billion in the form of weapons, direct payments or humanitarian assistance since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022 (German government 2023b). By February 2024, support for Ukraine in the form of weapons, direct payments, and humanitarian aid had increased to €30 billion. This makes Germany the second-largest bilateral supporter of Ukraine after the U.S. since February 24, 2022, the date of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (German Embassy Stockholm, 2024).

In 2023 alone, the German government set a new record for arms export licenses, worth around €12.1 billion. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs announced that €6.44 billion of the licenses were for war weapons and €5.76 billion for other military equipment, such as armored vehicles. With €4.44 billion, Ukraine was again the main recipient country. In 2024, Ukraine, with 8.1 billion euros in licenses, continues to be the country with by far the largest German export licenses for military equipment (Table 4). Ukraine was treated similarly to a NATO country (Handelsblatt 2024).

- 116 -

Example of arms exports to Turkey. 

Arms exports approved in one year are not comparable to arms exports actually taking place in that year. Although the Federal Security Council has been cautious about approving arms deliveries to Turkey since the invasion of Syria, the NATO country Turkey nevertheless, for instance, received nearly €350 million in arms deliveries from Germany in 2019. (118) The excuse given by the government in such cases is that these are older licenses that have to be fulfilled.  

In 2024, however, it is again for approx. 231 million euros of licenses granted by the German government for arms exports to Turkey (see Table 4). 

Turkey is currently an aggressive state that has intervened militarily outside its national borders several times in violation of international law (Syria, Iraq, Libya). Furthermore, there are serious domestic human rights violations (arbitrary arrests of opponents of the regime, long imprisonment without conviction according to the rule of law, questionable jurisdiction, elimination and banning of parts of the opposition). If the German government were serious about the ATT of the UN and the Common Position of the EU Council, as well as about the legal claims formulated in German laws and agreements, it would – due to the worsening situation in regard to Turkey – consistently withdraw given approved licenses for arms exports to Turkey. 

If Turkey crosses the Syrian borders with Leopard 2 tanks from Rheinmetall and fights the Kurdish population there with German weapons and with other weapons originating from Germany, then the German government must be blamed for not having recognized the contemporary signs in time and can hardly avoid being accused of complicity. In the future, the argument of joint NATO membership must also be dealt with more critically. As long as NATO tolerates a member state that violates international law for geostrategic reasons, joint NATO membership can no longer be a sufficient argument for arms deliveries within the NATO alliance. 

Already in the first four months of 2020, Germany had again exported nearly half a billion weapons (40% more than in the same period in 2019). This does not yet include dual-use armaments. 

The left-wing politician and member of the Bundestag Sevim Dağdelen demanded after a report published by 'Der Spiegel' news magazin: 

- 117 -

" 'The export of almost 40 percent more war weapons than in the same period last year in a world where conflicts are increasing every day is completely irresponsible,' said Dağdelen, disarmament policy spokeswoman for her parliamentary group. 'Especially with the war weapons exports to Egypt and Turkey, the German government is encouraging the conflicts in and around the Mediterranean and is thus blatantly violating its own indifferent arms export guidelines in the process.' She said that anyone who would take seriously their own commitment to carry more responsibility internationally would have to stop the exports of war weapons all over the world." (119)
Interestingly enough, numerous states are now no longer listed in Germany's arms export list - including Turkey - on the grounds that this could be used to identify arms companies that have delivered weapons to these states. The classification of these states as classified is done to protect the trade and business secrets of the arms companies involved. In the future, of course, this will make the identification and control of arms exports increasingly difficult and can be seen as a problematic success of the arms industry's lobbying activities.
The exports to Turkey were the first arms deliveries to be declared a secret by the German government and were probably only made public due to an error - according to Dağdelen in a paper published by the Left parliamentary group 
"On the homepage of the Federal Ministry of Economics, however, a parliamentary answer was published –presumably by mistake - according to which Turkey received a total of war weapons from Germany last year worth 345 million euros, which is more than a third of the total German war weapons sales amounting to 824 million euros. In 2018, Erdogan was already the record holder among the recipients of German war weapons exports (770.8 million euros), with 242.8 million euros. Turkey is also among the top ten recipient states from January to April 2020. Against the background of Turkey's numerous wars of aggression in Syria and currently in northern Iraq, which violate international law, the arms deliveries are particularly reprehensible." (120)
The current interest in arms imports from Turkey is shown by the haggling over Sweden's accession to NATO in 2024 in connection with trade agreements for the purchase of fighter jets from Turkey  (Meinardus, 2024). On the other hand, Turkey also uses arms imports to expand its own military know-how and to develop and produce its own weapons, which it in turn exports to areas of tension, including the delivery of Turkish drones (Bayraktar TB2) and armored vehicles to Ukraine and the delivery of electronic material for weapons of war to the Russian Federation, which is at war with Ukraine (Pehlivan, 2023). At the same time, Turkey purchased the Russian S-400 air defense system, thereby duping the USA, which was interested in selling its own defense system (Marz, 2023).

- 118 -

Example of arms exports to the warring alliance in Yemen.
 

The war in Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, is partly internal but has also increasingly become a proxy war between the Saudi-Emirate coalition and Iran, which supports the Houthis. (121) The U.N. Security Council sided with the Saudi alliance, unilaterally imposing an arms embargo on the Houthis in 2015 in its Resolution 2216. Weapons continue however, to unabatedly be supplied largely to the opposing side. UN Resolution 216 is the basis for the blockade of Yemen and the military actions of the alliance of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and supported by Western states. 

The three largest arms exporters to the Saudi alliance waging war in Yemen are the United States, France and the United Kingdom. 

Germany is also involved in exporting weapons technology to this area of tension: For example, there were deliveries of 33 patrol boats produced in Germany (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) to Saudi Arabia, which are used off the coast to enforce the Houthi blockade. The argumentation of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) that these are only patrol boats is contradicted by the fact that they are militarily relevant as blockade boats and, of course, that they retrospectively can be armed with for instance machine guns. (122)

In total, Germany has, according to the German Ministry of Economics, approved weapons to the Saudi coalition waging war in Yemen for approximately €1.2 billion since the beginning of 2019 (a total of 224 deliveries). (123) Hereby, the German government violates its own coalition agreement, in which the halt of arms deliveries to those involved in the war in Yemen was agreed upon. 

In a press release of the magazine 'Die Zeit', the data is summarized in a different way: 

"According to this, 21 arms deliveries worth 802 million euros were allowed to Egypt alone within 15 months. For the United Arab Emirates (UAE), there were 76 authorizations with a total value of 257 million euros. For three other members of the alliance - Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait - arms exports amounted to a total of 119 million euros."  (124)

Only for Saudi Arabia the arms supply freeze was largely observed in 2019. 

In the Yemen war, there are thousands of victims, especially among the civilian population, due in particular to the permanent bombardment of Yemen by the Saudi alliance. 

- 119 -

Western weapons as well as weapons from Germany were used also here. In the meantime, more than 100,000 people have been killed by armed violence in Yemen. In 2020, the journalist Jacob Reimann illustrated the extent of the bombing: 

"Massacres of civilians on behalf of the Saudi-Emirate coalition have always been on the agenda: schools, weddings, funerals, marketplaces, refugee boats, hospitals and mosques have been deliberately bombed time and again. In total, the coalition has already carried out 21,259 airstrikes against Yemen in over five years - an average of more than eleven attacks per day. Since the coalition members - with the exception of Egypt - have only rudimentary arms industries of their own, they rely on the complicity of predominantly Western arms exporters to commit their war crimes. After the U.S., France, Russia, and the U.K., Germany ranks fifth among the main exporters to the eight members of the coalition during the years of war." (125)

However, most of the victims died as a result of the sea and border blockade due to which the Yemeni population was cut off from food and medicine supplies. In the years 2015 to the end of 2019 alone, 85,000 children under the age of five starved to death in the Yemen war, according to the international NGO Save the Children. (126)
The members of the UN Security Council can be accused of being unwilling to draft a neutral resolution with intervening measures due to their own geostrategic interests and their partial involvement in the Yemen war. UN Security Council Resolution 2216 adopted in 2015, on the other hand, acted as a unilateral statement in the interests of Saudi Arabia, among others, and provided the basis for Saudi Arabia's blockade and military measures in conjunction with an alliance of the United Arab Emirates and Western powers to the disadvantage of the Yemeni population:
"Since Yemen's supplies are almost entirely import-dependent, this UN resolution means in particular the legitimization of a total supply blockade. No fuel; no food; no drinkable water; no medicine. Almost zero of everything that is needed even in Yemen for mere survival.
According to the usual understanding of international law, such a blockade is clearly a war crime. With Resolution 2216, the UN is legitimizing genocide - the genocide that has been systematically carried out by the SAC in Yemen since 2015 with massive support from the USA, the UK and France. In other words, the UN itself is abolishing its own foundation, international law" (Meggle 2019)
Western states, such as Germany, can also be accused of supplying further arms to the belligerent state of Saudi Arabia in 2022, thereby helping to prolong the war in Yemen.

- 120 -

The German company 'Rheinmetall' was heavily involved in the arms deals with the Saudi coalition. Until 2019, the company delivered aerial bombs from its Italian subsidiary RWM Italia to the Saudis, bombs that were used against the civilian population in the Yemen war. This is confirmed by bombs of German origin found in Yemen. It was not until 2019 that these arms deliveries from Italy were banned as a result of an intervention by the Italian government. (127) 

The current Greenpeace study on German arms exports draws the following conclusion in regard to such corporate activities: 

“These examples of armaments cooperation, the establishment of subsidiaries in third countries as well as German technology and know-how transfer, reveal loopholes in the German arms export legislation and the associated procedures. These concern the export of technical support and know-how as well as the control options for investments by German armaments companies building up production capacities abroad. These regulatory loopholes have not been closed even after the revision of the Political Principles of July 2019.“ (128)

Conclusion: Although the UN deplores the situation in Yemen with correct figures, it is itself part of the problem and, due to the interests of the UN Security Council, is not in a position to draw more effective consequences from these assessments or to withdraw Resolution 2216. Yemen not only reveals the ruthlessness of hegemonic interests but also the full extent of the United Nations' misery. The United Nations has committed itself unilaterally through Resolution 2216 and is therefore neither capable of effectively helping to re-establish a national order, nor of exerting a moderate influence on the warring parties with the aim of initiating a reorganization of the 'failed state' Yemen that helps the people.
It is pointless to discuss the question of who actually caused this war. This was an interplay of reactions and incidents by all actors involved in the war. Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Western powers supporting the conflict with arms supplies, logistics and espionage, as well as the groups operating within Yemen, are all involved in the escalation of the conflict. It is to be hoped that the UN - despite the rather unsuccessful attempts at mediation to date and the destructive Resolution 2216 - will nevertheless succeed in exerting a moderating influence on all warring parties. The aim is to establish a UN-controlled no-fly zone, ensure medical care and food supplies and, if necessary, send blue helmets with a robust mandate into the contested area to keep the warring parties apart. The attacks in late summer 2019 on the oil facilities in Saudi Arabia point to the potential for this conflict to escalate - especially if Western interests are affected.

- 121 -


In spring 2022, a temporary ceasefire was achieved in Yemen under the mediation of the UN Special Envoy, but this could not be extended in October 2022. Since the outbreak of the war in Yemen, the UN estimates that 380,000 people have died as a direct and indirect result of the war.
An international donor conference attempted to alleviate the suffering of the population affected by the war. However, of the 4.3 billion US dollars required, only 1.2 billion US dollars were collected in pledges, although of course it is not yet known whether these promises will actually be realized.  There also remains the contradiction of supporting one of the warring parties, Saudi Arabia, militarily with arms supplies, among other things, on the one hand, and alleviating the consequences of the war with aid to Yemen on the other. A thorough diplomatic initiative and reconstruction aid, accompanied by a ceasefire and a subsequent peace treaty with mutually agreed regulations, would certainly be more effective.
In the meantime, the Houthis, who are supported (and directed) by Iran, are interfering in the war between Israel and Hamas by attacking the ships of the Israel-supporting West in the Red Sea with rockets. In response to this, 36 targets in Yemen were bombed by a US-led alliance in early February 2024. Weapons depots, missile installations and anti-ship missiles were hit. In addition to the USA and the UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand were involved. 
Meanwhile, in 2024, the Yemeni Houthi rebels are sending missiles to Israel in return and attacking international shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
These events make it clear how an initially regional military conflict that was not resolved is increasingly expanding and escalating. This applies to the war in Yemen as well as the war in Ukraine and the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Palestinian organizations. 

Military-industrial complex and revolving door effects

The largest arms companies are based in the USA. The five arms companies with the highest turnover are based in the USA. This is also where the military-economic complex has above-average influence - after all, high returns and a lot of jobs depend on it.

- 122 -


Tab. 5: The world's 10 largest arms manufacturers (by turnover in millions of US dollars) (compiled according to SIPRI 2024a, 9)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      Rank
2023  2022 |  Company                          | State |               I Turnover|                      I Change I
                                                                                             for amarments*       from 2022 to 2023 in % 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 | 1           1 | Lockhead Martin Corp.      | United States     | 60.810                                | -1,6
 | 2           2 | RTX                                        | United States     | 40.660                                | -1,3
 | 3           3 | Northrop Crumman Corp.  | United States     | 35.570                                | +5,8
 | 4           4 | Boeing                                   | United States     | 31.100                                | +2,0
 | 5           5 | General Dynamics Corp.     | United States     | 30.200                                | +3,2
 | 6           6 | BAE Systems                        | United Kingdom | 29.810                                | +2,3
 | 7           9 | Rostec**                                | Russia                  | 21.730                                |+49
 | 8           8 | AVIC                                       | VR China              | 20.850                                | +5,6
 | 9           7 | NORINCO                              | VR China              | 20.560                                | -2,7
 | 10       10 | CETC                                     | VR China              | 16.050                                 |+13

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* SIPRI: “Defense revenue” refers to revenue from the sale of defense equipment and services to military customers at home and abroad. Military goods and services are defined by SIPRI as goods and services that are specifically intended for military use and include related technologies. Military equipment is military-specific equipment; it does not include general purpose goods such as fuel, office equipment and uniforms.
** SIPRI: Rostec is a holding company with no direct manufacturing capacity and would therefore not normally be included in the top 100 (see note b). The company was included in the 2023 ranking because data is not available for almost all other Russian defense companies. Some of the companies for which data is no longer available are controlled by Rostec and were represented in previous Top 100 rankings: High Precision Systems, KRET, Russian Electronics, Russian Helicopters, United Aircraft Corp, United Engines Corp and UralVagonZavod.

- 123 -


The arms industry also includes equipment companies, private military research institutes, and companies specializing in military transport. Here, too, there are numerous links between politics and the arms industry - Richard B. 'Dick' Cheney was the most prominent example of a US top politician(129) who promoted the Iraq war and whose former company Halliburton consequently profited from equipment and transport orders. According to Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008) such exploiting of a public office signified an affility for corruption. (130)

The "open revolving door system" exists in all nation states. This can also be demonstrated by the example of Germany, where former decision-makers in the political system, in particular former members of the Federal Security Council, move to the arms industry, as do former high-ranking officers.
Dirk Niebel's (FDP) consultancy work for Rheinmetall, Franz Josef Jung's (CDU) move to the supervisory board of Rheinmetall, or the appointment of Georg Wilhelm Adamowitsch (SPD), former state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, a long-serving chief executive of the German Security and Defense Industry Association (BDSV), which is mainly involved in lobbying, are all examples of this disastrous revolving door effect. (131) Another prominent example is the former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr (2000-2002) and former Air Force General Harald Kujat. He was chairman of the NATO Military Committee (2002-2005) after his time as the highest-ranking German soldier and link between the Bundeswehr and the German government. He became chairman of the supervisory board of the defense contractor Heckler & Koch in 2019. (132) As a reminder, it was Heckler & Koch that illegally supplied 5000 G36 assault rifles to the embargoed district of Mexico (Guerrero). These weapons were then used, among other things, to murder the teacher students in 2014 who were on their way to a demonstration against the merging of Mexican politics and organized crime. (133)
Even though Harald Kujat has recently spoken out in public several times in 2023/2024 in favor of ending the war in Ukraine, which he considers hopeless, and has called for negotiations, this does not mean that he is against arms deliveries to Ukraine - as Kujat said in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung in 2024: 

"Whether the 61-billion-dollar aid package that has been under discussion for months will even be approved in Washington is not foreseeable. The EU had 'achieved a lot so far', but could not make up for the decline in American support. Nevertheless, it is important 'that this is continued. That is what the Federal Chancellor wants to achieve. We must give Ukraine the certainty that this support will not be cut off. "  (Fasbender, 2024)

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Wars as economic stimulus
 

Wars are often promoted by warring politicians and some affirmative economists as stimulus packages for the domestic stagnating economy. Joseph Stiglitz (2008) (134) contradicts the views that wars de facto are suitable as economic stimulus programs and calls for the true costs of wars to be made transparent: 

"At the beginning of 2003, the U.S. government said that the Iraq war would cost only $50 to $60 billion. Was this merely a mistake, or were the politicians simply too optimistic? First, at the beginning, only the war costs in the narrower sense were taken into account, i.e., the operational expenditures. Ignored were the war costs in the broader sense, such as interest payments on war loans, the costs of caring for war invalids and veterans, or money for the intelligence services. (...) One must also consider all the things that could have been done for the economy with the three trillion dollars in war spending. For example, building American infrastructure instead of destroying Iraqi infrastructure. From an economic standpoint, war and mass destruction is the worst economic stimulus program." 

Also, it would certainly be more than cynical to choose to discuss the mass suffering and deaths of people on a merely economic level. This would present a world view that would give priority to economic priorities over the necessities of humanity: People torn to pieces, children who lose their parents and parents who hold their dead children in their arms, are all victims covering the spectrum of economic interests of private-sector profit-seeking as well as of national economic expectation of economic stimulus from the booming arms industry in the event of war. 
Nevertheless, the Trump administration's efforts to secure a contract with Ukraine for rare earths at the beginning of 2025 show how economic interests also play a role in military conflicts at the exclusion of humanitarian considerations.

The role of private military companies and security services 

Private military and mercenary companies are also increasingly playing a role in military conflicts. For example in Afghanistan and Pakistan, private mercenary troops act on behalf of the U.S. against terrorist groups financed by drug trafficing; sometimes they are also used against states.

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Moisés Naím describes this relatively new armaments industry in his book "The End of Power“: 

"Often starting as small companies out of anonymous office parks in the outskirts of London or suburban Virginia, firms such as Blackwater (now renamed Academia), MPRI, Executive Outcomes, Custer Battles, Titan, and Aegis took on key roles in different military operations. Some were bought by larger firms, some went out of business, and some remained independent. Among other recent opportunities, private military firms have found a market for their services in protecting commercial vessels from Somali pirates. Mercenaries, with all the ancient associations of the word, have turned into a booming and diverse industry." (135) 

The state as well as the private-sector use of mercenaries from private security or military companies entail even greater risks, e.g. with regard to compliance with the law of war, such as the Geneva Convention or the Hague Convention on Land Warfare. 

The killing of 17 civilians in Iraq by Blackwater mercenaries in September 2008 (136) highlighted the activities of private military and mercenary companies and led to broader discussions about the legitimacy of state cooperation with such companies, which originate mainly from the United States and the United Kingdom.The 'Wagner Group' is a military company with direct contacts to the Putin government that is fighting particularly brutally in the Russian invasion and is responsible for numerous war crimes.The soldiers of the Russian Wagner Group are also known for their extremely robust actions and covert operations.
The Wagner Group's attempt to turn against its own opponent, the government of the Russian Federation, in a coup attempt in June 2023 is particularly curious. This ultimately ended after the failed coup attempt with the crash of the plane in which the head of the Wagner Group was flying and was thus also killed. 

But other institutions and organizations, such as multinational corporations, some NGOs and Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) also work with military security companies. The market for this has high growth rates. (137)

Mercenarism or privately paid military services have existed in history for a long time, but today's private military services are, according to Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008, 2f.), characterized by the specifics of their organizational embeddedness, 

"One of the main differences between the current private providers of military services and private military organizations in the past is the corporatization of military services. The services are now provided by private firms, operating as businesses to increase value for their shareholders, and many of them are part of bigger multinational corporations." 

Mercenaries from private security companies or military companies are often used by governments of highly developed states, as they are more experienced in at using highly specialized technical equipment, and fallen members of military companies attract less public attention. Mercenaries can also be used behind the front lines. Thus they can also be used more flexibly in the fight against terrorist groups, i.e., in part by circumventing national and international law, in the sense of secret armies with illegitimate missions. The transition to private military companies also corresponds to the trend toward cost-saving, profit-increasing and lower-risk outsourcing in a neoliberal sense. 

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Relativization of the state monopoly of force
 

The attempted coup by the Russian Wagner Group and the associated march on Moscow in 2023 showed how the state monopoly on the use of force can face competition from an increasingly powerful mercenary organization, even in an authoritarian state.
However, the use of mercenaries from private security companies is also highly problematic in Western democracies, as it relativizes or undermines the monopoly on the use of force of democratically legitimized governments:

"While a key principle of modern states is that they alone have the exclusive legitimacy to exercise violence - the state monopoly of violence - the reliance on private companies for its execution increases the distance between decision making and implementation of force, creating an intermediate actor with its own private, profit-maximizing goals. This thus challenges both the ability of government to exercise direct control over the use of force and the accountability of security providers to the electorate." (138)

Hence, the SIPRI researchers Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008, 17) aptly summarize the problem of private military companies as follows: 

"The continuing expansion of the private military services industry raises many issues. The view that outsourcing is economically efficient can be challenged on a number of grounds, not least when these services are provided in operationally deployed contexts. The involvement of private companies in assisting military operations in armed conflict situations such as Iraq also raises serious concerns about the democratic accountability of armed forces, the status of civilian contractors in military roles, and the political influence of companies that have a vested interest in the continuation of the conflict." 

The Frankfurt political scientist Tim Engartner refers to the difference between democratic objectives of a state and business cost-benefit thinking and its consequence for an army supposedly controlled by parliament. Along with a sell-off of state services and institutions, such as the postal service or the German railroad, the military also comes under the spotlight of state privatization efforts in a neoliberal sense: 

"As in the case of privatization in other areas that were previously the responsibility of the state, there is still a divergence of interests between the profit motives of the private sector and the public service obligations of the public sector. Short-term savings potentials cannot justify the surrender of parliamentary control and the associated de-democratization. Otherwise, a moderately democratic state runs the risk of giving away security-relevant information and leaving decisions making that affect one of the most precious goods of all - the good 'peace' - to private companies." 

(Engartner 2018, 13) (139)

 
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Civil society as a target 

A further level of escalation of armed conflicts is the targeted bombing of civil society institutions. The violent attacks and mass murders in military conflicts do not stop at educational institutions or children and teachers. The organization "World Vision" in its initiative "Safe Schools Declaration", which is supported by UNICEF, states among others: 

"In the last decade, the number of violent conflicts has nearly doubled, resulting in one in four children worldwide not attending school. The scale of attacks on educational institutions is staggering: the recently released 'Education Under Attack 2018' report documents more than 12,700 attacks on educational institutions between 2013 and 2017, in which more than 21,000 learners and teachers were injured or killed. More than 1,000 attacks (targeted or as "collateral damage") on schools were documented in each of the Democratic Republic of Congo (639 of these in the Kasai region alone in 2016/2017), Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Nigeria, and Yemen. Between 500 and 999 attacks on schools were recorded in Afghanistan as well as South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine." (140)

This problem is exacerbated when militant groups deliberately use schools and hospitals in order to escape enemy attacks. Accordingly, schools, hospitals and ambulance transports are increasingly becoming the target of military attacks, with the argument that enemy fighters are hiding under their protective shield or would operate from there. 
In the course of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, civilian objects are also targeted. Not only the energy system of Ukraine was the target of Russian missile attacks in 2022/2023, but also schools, hospitals and residential districts. Furthermore, in March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague convicted the Russian president of complicity in the abduction of thousands of Ukrainian children and their release for adoption to Russian parents. Putin can theoretically be arrested from now on in all states that recognize the ICC. Also, of course, this is an important symbolic act that no one should be above the law. The corresponding consequences of this fact for the war in Iraq and for the former US-Präsident Bush Jr. should be obvious.
Likewise, the killing of over 1000 Israeli civilians and, in response, the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians - including thousands of children, young people and women - must become the subject of international jurisdiction as soon as possible after the end of the war in the Middle East.

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Conclusion: The military-industrial complex oriented towards private-sector profit maximization should not be understood as a "normal" economy, but against the background of existing political structures, as a destructive economic concept, as an economy of death. Deliveries of weapons to areas of tension, massive lobbying, wars as economic stimulus packages and private-sector warfare with high returns, point to a cynical approach to the fact of deaths on a massive scale among the civilian population affected by warfare. Speculation with shares of arms companies in connection with military conflicts and wars, as exemplified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the associated rearmament pledges by Western governments, lead to high profits for war profiteers. The timely purchase of shares in the arms companies led to high profit increases, which are achieved with the suffering of people affected by war.

The next chapter analyzes how the military-industrial complex, with the support of politics, will continue to assert itself and how a new arms spiral will contribute to the increasing disorder of the world. 

1.4.1.2    The return of the rearmament spiral 

With the help of the realism theory of international relations, it can be justified that a state must constantly rearm in order to be able to defend itself against a potentially hostile state. This other state, in turn, uses the same argument of a threat situation to arm itself militarily. The prevailing thinking is that security can only be achieved at the price of military strength. This is legitimized by the view that those in favor of peace must arm themselves for war. It is also argued that the backing of a highly armed military is advantageous in building up pressure for international diplomacy negotiations. This, however, creates an initial and increasing dynamic of rearmament between states and military blocs with all the human, political, ecological and economic consequences and risks that this entails. 
In the war in Ukraine, it is further argued that peace negotiations would only make sense once the Russian army has been defeated or largely pushed back. Therefore, an escalation of arms deliveries to Ukraine and an increase in arms production are demanded. In this context, Germany has decided on a special fund for arms spending worth 100 billion euros in 2022. Russia is reacting accordingly and is in turn increasing its own arms production.
US companies in particular will benefit from new arms orders. In this context, Germany has also decided on a special fund for armaments expenditure worth 100 billion euros in 2022. The Russian Federation, which is primarily responsible for the military aggression, is reacting accordingly and is transforming its economy into a war economy, thereby increasing its own arms production, which in turn leads to further calls for armaments in Western countries. The escalation spiral continues to develop within the framework of this war-focused mindset, leading to an expansion and intensification of acts of war with unforeseeable consequences.

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A rearmament spiral does not necessarily have to occur
 

The successful disarmament negotiations at the end of the 20th century within the framework of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, from 1995 OSCE) (141) , in which the USA, Canada and the former Soviet Union also participated, show how diplomacy and talks can be successful in order to get rid of a large part of conventional and nuclear weapons and also to help 'human rights' to achieve a breakthrough. The prerequisite for this was, among other things, civil society support from a broad-based transnational peace movement involving the commitment of millions of people. The agreements concerning the observance of human rights, free elections, freedom of expression, etc., which had already been achieved in 1975 within the framework of the CSCE Final Act, in turn led to numerous Helsinki groups engaged in civil society and to a political opening of the Warsaw Pact states. The resumed INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) negotiations within the CSCE resulted in 1987 in a treaty for the destruction of land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty) was signed by 22 heads of government from the Warsaw Pact and the NATO countries. The result of this, in turn, was the elimination of approximately 50,000 conventional offensive weapons systems (tanks, artillery, attack helicopters and combat aircraft stationed in Europe) by the end of 1995. Furthermore, as a result of the Helsinki Document of 1992, war prevention and peacekeeping measures were agreed upon between the signatory states. (142) Those who claim that arms control and large-scale disarmament are fundamentally unsuccessful should be countered by this historic negotiation success in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Social orders in the field of military and security policy can certainly change if a corresponding social pressure arises. This seemed to widely have opened the door to a fundamental new order with an associated peace dividend. 

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The counterforces also became active ...
 

However, also the counterforces with regard to a peacebuilding new order mobilized in this situation of change. The military-industrial complex and its supporters in politics have of course no interest in eliminating rearmament programs, since this would eliminate a lucrative business model and chauvinist geostrategic options would no longer be viable. 

In recent years, therefore, a new global rearmament spiral has emerged due to the politically supported media staging international enemy images and to existing geostrategic and economic interests. This could lead to enormous returns for the arms industry. 

The intervention of U.S.-led troops in Iraq and Turkey's invasion of the Kurdish regions in northeastern Syria in violation of international law, Russia's occupation of Crimea, also in violation of international law,  and Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and its attempt to split off parts of Ukraine's eastern and southeastern regions, Iran's proxy war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen violating international law, China's increasing aggressiveness (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South China Sea), and the wars in Syria and Libya, initiated a new rearmament spiral on the basis of regional hegemonic interests instead of primarily resolving conflicts by diplomatic means.  In this context, the U.S., China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are continuing their rearmament efforts. The U.S. and NATO are attempting to oblige NATO members to a military budget of of at least 2% of their gross domestic product. In the case of Germany this would mean almost doubling the military budget.  In this context, Germany has also decided on a special fund for armaments expenditure worth 100 billion euros in 2022. The Russian Federation, which is primarily responsible for the military aggression, is reacting accordingly and is transforming its economy into a war economy, thereby increasing its own arms production, which in turn leads to further calls for armaments in Western countries. The escalation spiral continues to develop within the framework of this war-focused mindset, leading to an expansion and intensification of acts of war with unforeseeable consequences.), and the wars in Syria and Libya, initiated a new rearmament spiral on the basis of regional hegemonic interests instead of primarily resolving conflicts by diplomatic means. In this context, the U.S., China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are continuing their rearmament efforts. The U.S. and NATO are attempting to oblige NATO members to a military budget of at least 2% of their gross domestic product. In the case of Germany this would mean almost doubling the military budget. (143) In 2004/2005, not only 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) for the European NATO states, but already 3.5% and also 5% of the GDP are being demanded. For Germany, 5% would already account for about 40% of the national budget. The spiral of escalation continues to develop within the framework of this war-focused thinking, leading to an expansion and intensification of military action with unforeseeable consequences.
The 2024 Republican presidential candidate and former US president irresponsibly escalated the international situation in February 2024 in the sense of extorting protection money - according to CNN's report:

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" 'NATO was busted until I came along,' Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina. 'I said, 'Everybody's gonna pay. They said, 'Well, if we don't pay, are you still going to protect us?' I said, 'Absolutely not. They couldn't believe the answer.
Trump said 'one of the presidents of a big country' at one point asked him whether the US would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they 'don't pay.
'No, I would not protect you,' Trump recalled telling that president. 'In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.
President Joe Biden said Sunday that Trump 'is making it clear that he will abandon our NATO allies' and outlined the potential consequences of Trump's comments." (Sullivan 2024)
You have to realize this: Trump would encourage Putin to invade Western countries if they did not contribute at least 2% and more of their gross domestic product to the NATO budget. It should also be borne in mind that US armaments companies in particular would benefit from Western investment in armaments. A clear case of international protection racketeering.

The rearmament spiral is accelerated by the media constructing manipulative enemy images  (e.g., reciprocal U.S. - Russia, Iran - U.S., Saudi Arabia - Iran, U.S. - China) indicating that the counterpart would seek military superiority in a weapons sector, would not abide by international arms control agreements, would adopt a fundamentally hostile and untrustworthy attitude, would have the wrong ideology or religion,  and would plan or fight a war of aggression. (144)

The war in Ukraine has drastically intensified the global arms spiral. Furthermore an escalation of competition between China and the United States can be seen in recent years. This is where a significant global conflict potential is likely to occur in the near future, as China is increasingly catching up with the U.S. in the geopolitical, economic and military spheres and has already achieved superiority in some areas. 

 
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Global arms race in figures
 

The facts are as follows: Overall, arms spending is on the rise worldwide. The Swedish research institute SIPRI calculated that global arms spending increased to $1.739 trillion in 2017 (2018: $1.83 trillion, 2019: $1.9 trillion). The U.S. military budget accounted for one-third of total global defense spending in 2018 ($649 billion vs. $610 billion in 2017), 2.7 times ahead of China reaching second place (228 billion). China increased its defense budget by 5.6% in 2017, India by 5.5%, and Saudi Arabia by as much as 9.2%. 
In 2021, global arms spending rose well above two trillion dollars (2.113 trillion). The top five arms investors were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia. They accounted for 62% of global arms spending (SIPRI 2022).
The defense spending of Russia in 2017, however, decreased by 20% compared to the previous year (2017: $66.3 billion) and again in 2018 by another 3.5%. The reason for the decrease in Russian defense spending was due to economic difficulties. Russia had modernized its army in recent years and had repeatedly tested it in various military conflicts. Russian costs for weapons systems and personnel were also much lower than in Western countries, so these figures are not readily comparable.
However, Russian military spending then increased again in 2019 by 4.5% to over $65 billion.  In 2021, Russia again increased its military budget by nearly 3%, using 4.1% of its GDP on defense spending in 2021 (SIPRI 2022).
Russian arms spending then increased significantly again in 2023/2024 in the wake of the Russian Federation's war in Ukraine - SIPRI (2023b) estimates
" that Russia's planned military spending of 12,765 billion roubles (around 140 billion US dollars) in 2024 would be 29 percent higher in real terms than in 2023, which corresponds to 7.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 35 percent of total government spending."
At the same time, and in clear response to the Russian attack, Ukraine has drastically increased its defense spending for 2022 - according to SIPRI (2023c):
"Ukraine's military spending reached $44.0 billion in 2022. At 640 percent, this was the highest single-year increase in military spending ever recorded in SIPRI data. As a result of this increase and the war-related damage to the Ukrainian economy, the military burden (military spending as a share of GDP) rose from 3.2 percent in 2021 to 34 percent of GDP in 2022."
Germany ranked 9th on the global arms scale in 2017 ($47.2 billion) with a slight increase, rising to 8th in 2018 (up 3.8% arms spending) and 7th in 2019. Arms spending by all NATO countries was 52% of total global arms spending in 2017 (about $900 billion in military spending by NATO countries). This increased to 53% of global arms spending for 2018. (145)

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Global arms spending for 2019 increased by another 3.6% over the previous year to a total of $1917 billion. The increase for the USA alone was as large as the total German arms budget (SIPRI 2020b). 

The defense budget for 2024 provides for an addition of the normal defense budget and the special assets for Germany - according to the Federal Ministry of Defense (2024):
"Compared to the previous year, the 2024 defense budget has increased by 1.83 billion euros. With 51.95 billion euros from the defense budget and around 19.8 billion euros from the Bundeswehr Special Fund, further important investments in the best possible material and equipment for the troops can also be made this year."
With a defense budget of over 70 billion euros in 2024, Germany will have clearly exceeded the 2% of GDP threshold.
China is arming itself massively. In parallel with its growing economic power, China is increasingly catching up militarily with the USA, and it is estimated that China will be at the same level of armaments as the USA in about ten years if the development continues in the same way. 

China is now building its own aircraft carriers, supersonic cannons, special torpedoes and stealth jets. Although China insists that its armaments are exclusively for national defense purposes, the country is expanding military bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea, which is also confirmed by other surrounding states. 
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis criticized this at a conference in Singapore in June 2018: 

"Despite China's claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapon systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion," (146)

There would be Chinese bombers landing on the islands, and in addition to anti-aircraft missiles, there would be missiles capable of attacking ships within a radius of 550 miles. (147)

Meanwhile, China has the largest conventional missile potential. China also has a large arsenal of combat drones and is now the world's largest exporter of such drones. China is expanding – just as the U.S. publicly declares – capabilities for reconnaissance and action in space, e.g., in terms of destroying enemy satellites. (148)

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China is continuously increasing its defense budget, according to SIPRI (2023c):
"China remained the world's second-largest military spender, spending an estimated $292 billion in 2022. This is 4.2 percent more than in 2021 and 63 percent more than in 2013. China's military spending has increased for 28 consecutive years."
The SIPRI statistics of 2020 and 2021 show an increase in the defense budgets of most countries in absolute terms - despite the shrinking gross domestic product (see table 6).

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Tab.6: Arms expenditure in international comparison (taken from SIPRI 2021, 2022, 2023c)

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  State                2020 in US $                Change in %                            World share in % and
                            billion and (change    (2011-2020)                           (share of nat. GDP in %)     
                            2019-2020 in%)           
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  1 United States   778 (+4.4)                       -10                                                       39 (3.7)
  2 China                (252)  (+1.9)                    +76                                                      (13) ((1.7)
  3 India                   72.9  (+5.5%)                  +34                                                     3.7 (2.9)
  4 Russia                61.7 (+2.5)                      +26                                                     3.1 (4.3)
  5 United                 59.2 (+2.9)                       -4.2                                                    3.0 (2.2)
     Kingdom
  6 Saudi Arabia       (57.5) (-10%)                   +2.3                                                   (2.9) ((8.4))
  7 Germany              52.8 (+5.2)                    +28                                                      2.7 (1.4)
  8 France                  52.7 (+2.9%)                   +9.8                                                   2.7 (2.1)
  9 Japan                   49.1 (+1.2)                      +2.4                                                   2.5 (1.0)
10 Südkorea            45.7 (4.9)                      +41                                                       2.3 (2.8)
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Total                         1.981                             
(world-wide):          US $ trillion                 

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Share of NATO countries totalled $1103 billion in 2020. The USA, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Canada accounted for 90 per cent ($995 billion) of total NATO spending and nearly 50 per cent of global military expenditure  

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SIPRI (2022): "Total global military expenditure increased by 0.7 per cent in real terms in 2021, to reach $2113 billion. The five largest spenders in 2021 were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia, together accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure". 
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SIPRI (2023c): "Global military spending rose by 3.7% in real terms in 2022, reaching a new high of 2,240 billion dollars. Military spending in Europe recorded the strongest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years."
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The Kenyan doctor Bonventure Machuka (2025) takes stock of the effects of the arms trade and armament in African states. Conflicts, such as in Sudan, between Tigray and Ethiopia, in the Sahel zone or in Yemen, are fueled by foreign powers, making it more difficult for the African Union to effectively mediate peace:

“The global arms race is fueled by geopolitical competition between major powers and harms developing countries through proxy conflicts. Sudan and Yemen are prime examples of how arms deliveries from the Global North have prolonged conflicts.(...) The consequences are mass displacement, famine and a deterioration in living conditions.

The economic impact of the arms trade on developing countries is significant. A study in the Journal of Public Health Policy shows that military spending diverts resources from vital sectors such as health and education, undermining development and public well-being.

Similarly, Amnesty International emphasizes that the funds allocated to arms imports are often at the expense of infrastructure and anti-poverty initiatives, leaving millions without access to essential services. The arms race also strengthens authoritarian regimes in developing countries.”

In African states, the problem of corruption, jihadist influences, and the incompetence of state institutions and responsible politicians are compounding the problem, leading to popular dissatisfaction. In particular, the trade in small arms in African states has a destabilizing and dangerous effect on the population (Machuka 2025).

The danger of nuclear war increases 

Nuclear disarmament treaties are being abandoned. At the same time, investments are currently being made not only in conventional weapons, but also in nuclear forces and nuclear weapons technologies; there is also a threat of a new nuclear arms spiral – according to the press release of ICAN Germany on the occasion of the Munich Security Conference 2018: 

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 "The Stockholm-based peace research institute SIPRI warns about the gigantic modernization programs of nuclear weapons states. According to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the United States alone plans to spend more than $400 billion on its nuclear arsenal within ten years. Also Russia is investing heavily in its nuclear forces and testing new intercontinental missiles. China, Pakistan and India are also increasing their nuclear arsenal. The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, announced last week that the spending on the maintenance and renewal of French nuclear weapons would be almost doubled – to six billion euros a year, a total of 37 billion over the next seven years. In addition, with North Korea the number of states possessing nuclear weapons has recently increased further. All this is taking place in a highly unstable security environment. Never before have there been so great tensions between so many nuclear-weapon states. There is currently no nuclear-weapon state that is not in a situation of crisis or conflict." (149)

In particular, with the development of hypersonic drones and missiles driven by China, Russia and the USA, a new dimension has been reached in the arms race. Due to the speed and maneuverability of the Russian cruise missiles, which, for instance, fly at 32,000 km/h and are equipped with nuclear warheads, defense in the event of an attack is virtually impossible. (150) 

Not only are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council constantly expanding their nuclear armament program – also with regard to a more flexible and limited application. Even extremely unstable states, such as Pakistan, Israel, North Korea and India, already have the nuclear bomb due to the transfer of nuclear technology by the permanent Security Council members. Other states that are considered problematic, such as Iran, are on the threshold of nuclear technology. 

When radical religious practices, political ideologies, economic interests, and ideas of geostrategic hegemony collide in certain regions of the world, possession of nuclear technology or hydrogen bombs leads to a global threat the consequences of which are unforeseeable. 
Conflicts between China and India as well as India and Pakistan (Kashmir conflict) also pose incalculable threats between nuclear powers, some of which cooperate inadequately and non-transparently in the multilateral system. (151)

A new threat arises from the announcementby the former US President Donald Trump that smaller nuclear bombs will be developed and used in military conflicts. 'Mini-Nukes' could be used for a 'limited nuclear strike' in the sense of tactical nuclear weapons. (152) Since the planned 'mini-nukes' are still capable of destroying cities the size of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of their destructive power, these announcements merely further accelerate the nuclear arms spiral and thus also lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons – as confirmed by former US President Trump in 2016 during the election campaign: "If we have them why can't we use them?" (153)
The Russian side also threatened the West with nuclear attacks in 2022 in the course of the war in Ukraine, and nuclear weapons were put into operational readiness.
 

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The European Union also has massive nuclear armament plans for the future. Here, the focus is on the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which involves a complex system consisting of novel and nuclear equipped combat aircraft accompanied by swarms of drones based on satellite network with armed forces on land and sea. The new 6th generation fighter aircraft is a stealth bomber that is also equipped with cyber warfare capabilities and an air combat cloud and it is by artificial intelligence connected with the other combat systems. FCAS is expected to be operational by 2040 but it is still competing with another similar European rearmament project "Templet". The development cost of FCAS is estimated at 100 billion euros. The acquisition cost is estimated at 500 billion euros. (154)

Anti-personnel mines - a terrible war legacy 

In 2017, 1.7 trillion dollars were spent on the production of weapons worldwide. In 2018 it was already 1.82 trillion dollars, in 2019 1.917 trillion dollars and in 2022 already 2.24 trillion dollars (see Table 5). International rearmament and the associated alarming situation are again accelerating. 

A terrible instrument of violent conflict and dangerous armament are the anti-personnel mines. Although there was a first breakthrough due to the international ban on the use, transfer and development of anti-personnel mines in 1999 with the 'Ottawa Convention', the largest mine suppliers USA, Russia and China have not yet signed the treaty. 

There are currently between 70 and 110 million landmines in more than 70 countries in the form of anti-personnel or vehicle mines, which, when hidden in the ground, pose a threat primarily to the civilian population. This situation has hardly changed in 2025 since the period between 2003 and 2016. (155)

Triple-digit billions of dollars will be needed in the future to eliminate landmines - if this can be fully accomplished at all.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) (2024), an association of approximately 1,400 NGOs with the aim of educating people about the distribution channels and victims of landmines, summarizes the figures for 2023:

“The Landmine Monitor 2024 report describes the widespread impact anti-personnel mines have on civilian populations even decades after they were laid. In 2023, at least 5,757 casualties of landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) were recorded. Civilians made up 84% (4,335) of all recorded casualties, where the military or civilian status was known. Children accounted for 37% (1,498) of civilian casualties, where the age group was recorded.” 

At the end of 2024, then-US President Biden authorized the delivery of anti-personnel mines to Ukraine to stop or slow the Russian military advance, in addition to the use of weapons with a long range against Russia. Russia also deployed dense fields of anti-personnel mines in eastern Ukraine to make a Ukrainian counterattack more difficult.

 
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Threat of escalation through hypersonic weapons 

The Russian Iskander hypersonic missiles with nuclear weapons and stealth technology, which are located in Kaliningrad and elsewhere, can reach Germany, for example, in a matter of minutes. This is a threatening development and an irresponsible measure by the government of the Russian Federation, which must be clearly criticized.
In the war in Ukraine, hypersonic missiles were also used by the Russian side for the first time - fired from fighter jets - and are very difficult to defend against:
"The Ch-47M2 Kinschal ("Dagger") hypersonic missile is one of the most fearsome new additions to the Russian Air Force. The approximately eight-metre-long missiles fly extremely fast and extremely high, but remain maneuverable according to Russian information. According to NATO estimates, they can hardly be intercepted by conventional air or missile defenses in March. The Western alliance has christened the new Russian weapon AS-24 Killjoy ('spoilsport')."  (rnd, 2022)
However, the Ukrainian leadership claims that it recently shot down several Russian Kinshal missiles with the help of the Patriot defense system, even if this was not easy (Rugalla, Lukas, 2024).
The USA and NATO are now threatening a backlash, as there are increasing signs that hypersonic missiles ('Dark Eagle', designation: Long Range Hypersonic Weapon) are also to be stationed in Europe, for example in Germany or Poland (Wagner 2021, Reckmann 2022).
The deployment of long-range missile systems under US command in Germany is meanwhile planned for 2026. US hypersonic missiles are also to be stationed here.
These weapons travel significantly faster than Mach 5 (= over 6000 km/h) and carry guideable gliding missiles that are difficult to intercept using existing techniques. A reaction is associated with considerable difficulties due to the high flight speed, the great variability of the gliding missiles and their low approach phase below the radar. The US hypersonic missiles currently in the final test phase are equipped with conventional warheads, but could also be converted for 'dual use' with nuclear warheads. NATO denies this, but how credible is this in the event of an escalating conflict - especially as the Russian hypersonic missiles can be equipped with nuclear warheads according to Russian information? 
In the event of a software error or a self-dynamic or faulty behavior of the AI, neither the defense nor the comprehensive testing of an appropriate counter-reaction is possible. Even conventionally equipped hypersonic missiles can trigger a nuclear war. They are designed as a means of combat in the sense of a decapitation strike, i.e. to eliminate the opposing government leadership if it is located in buildings located above ground. One can only imagine how a nuclear-armed state attacked in this way will react.

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Therefore, in view of the current aggressive global situation and the (imminent) deployment of hypersonic weapons, an appeal against nuclear armament was launched and a return to disarmament negotiations was called for. (see https://www.change.org/p/gegen-die-atomare-bedrohung).
The German government is the addressee here. The German government is called upon to veto the future deployment of hypersonic missiles and to advocate the revival or further development of nuclear disarmament treaties. Among other things, the Federal Government is calling for the signing of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which is already in force under international law and which would also put an end to Germany's nuclear sharing.

Exiting the logic of deterrence

Of course, naivety is not an option. There are political and economic interests behind the military escalation. The ominous combination of the economic interests of the military-industrial complex, geostrategic interests, national-religious ideologies and the authoritarian profiling of (mostly male) politicians under pressure is leading to a continuous escalation of the global security situation. But in a nuclear inferno, everyone loses - including the billionaires, the ideologues and the warlords on all sides.
At present, military violations and aggression are generally met with even stronger counter-attacks instead of abandoning the logic of deterrence and punishment and choosing the path of negotiation with the involvement of the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, such as the OSCE.
The Austrian Nobel Prize winner Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) criticized the blindness and stupidity of the warmongers and the policy of deterrence and escalating punitive actions. She wrote very accurately in this context: 
"It will not occur to any sensible person to want to clean up ink stains with ink, oil stains with oil - only blood, that is to be washed out again and again with blood."  
(von Suttner, Bertha, 1889)

Use of artificial intelligence in military conflicts 

A more recent danger is the use of artificial intelligence via human-robotic systems, e.g. in the use of combat drones and the evaluation of the footage via intelligent algorithms in order to quickly identify and differentiate between humans as the basis of attacks. (156) There are already NGOs that are critically following this development or calling for protests, such as the US civil rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC). 

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According to the EFF (157), the U.S. Department of Defense invested $7.4 billion in the development of artificial intelligence for military purposes in 2017. It becomes particularly problematic when drones use criteria, such as race or skin color to autonomously distinguish between people - according to Kate Conger and Dell Cameron (2018) on the EFF homepage: 

"Maven was tasked with using machine learning to identify vehicles and other objects in drone footage, taking that burden off analysts. Maven's initial goal was to provide the military with advanced computer vision, enabling the automated detection and identification of objects in as many as 38 categories captured by a drone's full-motion camera, according to the Pentagon. Maven provides the department with the ability to track individuals as they come and go from different locations. 
Artificial intelligence is already deployed in law enforcement and military applications, but researchers warn that these systems may be significantly biased in ways that aren't easily detectible. For example, ProPublica reported in 2016 that an algorithm used to predict the likelihood of recidivism among inmates routinely exhibited racial bias." 

The international Campaign to Stop Killer Robots already brings together more than 60 non-governmental organizations that oppose killing by artificial intelligence-equipped war machines: 

"So far no state has used fully automated weapons systems, but that could change. Major powers like the U.S., Russia and China are already preparing to use "killer robots" in combat. The reason could be the fear of not being able to keep up with a possible future arms race. Although the the German army has so far ruled out acquiring such systems, and the German parliament would have to approve such an operation anyway, German defense policy must prepare for the fact that German soldiers could one day face such systems." (158)

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) calls for a ban and a development control regarding autonomous killer machines or killer robots, since major powers such as Russia, China and the U.S. obviously are working at a great speed to develop these weapons. Thompson Chengeta (ICRA) therefore calls at a UN hearing: 

"Finally, human control over critical functions of weapon systems and a ban on fully autonomous weapon systems are two sides of the same coin. States are urged to focus on the requirement of human control rather than technical definitions of autonomy. Further, States must move towards negotiation of a legally binding instrument on this issue." (159)

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Computer scientist and AI specialist Karl H. Bläsius (2024) sees a threatening development of nuclear weapons systems, particularly in connection with AI. AI will be interposed for rapid detection in the face of ever faster and more difficult to locate missiles with nuclear load, as humans are overwhelmed with the process of perceiving, deciding and commanding in such a short time. However, if AI is ultimately decisive for a nuclear counter-attack, then there is a risk of 'nuclear war by mistake'. AI can never make 100% reliable statements and does not have the moral and ethical standards that responsible humans might have.

To sum up: Instead of disarmament, the arms spiral continues to grow. The USA is verifiable the driving force behind this trend in terms of the volume of arms spending. However, major states such as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are also constantly increasing their already high arms expenditures, either overtly or covertly. 
The Russian war in Ukraine shows how a state, in this case Russia, develops aggressively when its substantial arms investments make it feel powerful enough to invade a neighboring state in the wake of a neo-imperialist ideology underpinned by ethnic motives. 

In particular, the risk of a nuclear conflict is growing as nuclear weapons become more widespread and appear usuable due to the development of mini-nukes or in terms of tactical nuclear weapons. This has once again been clearly demonstrated by the war in Ukraine. The deployment of hypersonic missiles, which can be equipped with nuclear weapons, also poses a significant threat in this context.
The combination of AI and modernized weapons systems is currently leading to a particularly dangerous development, which is already being tested in the war in Ukraine.
The deployment of hypersonic missiles that can be equipped with nuclear weapons also poses a particular threat in this context.

This is in contrast to the efforts to preserve peace through diplomatic means, compromises, and in the spirit of a shared global perspective. Moreover, these trillions of dollars are not available to mankind for more meaningful expenditures in the sense of a peace dividend that in the event of disarmament could be used for combating climate catastrophe, for preventive reactions to famine catastrophes, for the fight for clean water and for the elimination of global social injustice. 

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1.4.1.3    Environment, military and war 

One aspect of rearmament and military activities that has been neglected for a long time is the massive environmental destruction caused worldwide by the military, especially during and after wars. But the military is also the largest institutional emitter of climate change gases in everyday military operations and exercises. In addition the environmental destruction and emissions caused by the production of weapons must also be added. 

The poisoning and destruction of the environment with serious consequences for humans, animals and plants are only now gradually getting public attention in connection with the current protests of the environmental and peace movements. But the Norwegian peace researcher Johan Galtung addressed this aspect in a far-sighted manner already in 2004: 

 “One thing is damage to the eco-system and eco-deterioration; another is reinforcement of the general cultural code  of domination over nature, also a part of the rape syndrome. Countless millions watch on TV not only people killed and wounded but also nature destroyed, poisoned, going up in flames. The war is legitimated. The damage may be deplored, not the legitimation.” (160)

History of military environmental degradation 

However, military-related interference with the environment and self-evident legitimizing of destruction of nature in the context of military conflicts and for military use purposes already took place already hundreds of years ago. Ecological destruction by the military was rarely seen as a threat in the past; economic and geostrategic objectives had priority. For example, as early as in the 1st century AD, the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder criticized deforestation and the devastation of landscapes in Italy, Spain, and North Africa in order to extract, among other things, timber, copper, and iron ore for trade and war: 

"One digs through the earth in pursuit of wealth, because the world demands gold, silver, electron, and copper - there for the sake of ostentation, for precious stones and dyes for walls and wood; elsewhere, to get hold of iron, which for war and murder is valued even more than gold." (161)

The consequences of these massive interventions in nature can still be seen today, for example, in the karstification of large parts of the Italian and Spanish mountain landscape. 

Later, colonialism was associated with further environmental destruction and interference with ecologically adapted and functioning subsistence farming systems: Indigenous peasants were forced to leave their land in conquered territories. An intact environment often turned into a monocultural and one-sided plantation desert due to the military intervention of the colonial powers. 

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The two world wars transformed numerous regions into landscapes destroyed and contaminated by remnants of war. 

According to estimates by the Fraunhofer Institute, approximately 1.6 million tons of conventional and about 200,000 tons of chemical warfare materials lie on the seabeds of the Baltic and the North Seas. Sea mines, bombs and poison gas grenades corrode, become porous and release their toxic charge into the environment and the poison enters the human food chain via the fish. (162)

The two atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 caused, in addition to a quarter of a million deaths in 1945 alone, radioactive contamination of these regions as well as numerous cancer deaths and children born with genetic defects. 

There were pesticides used in Vietnam as early as in 1961 by order of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to defoliate the rainforests in order to deprive the Viet Cong of cover and to destroy their rice fields. From February 1967 onwards, the plant poison 'Agent Orange' was used to defoliate the Vietnamese rainforest and to destroy the Viet Cong's rice fields as part of the largest chemical attack in history during the Vietnam War. The dioxin it contained has not been removed until today and is the reason for massive appearances of cancers and genetic defects in Vietnam. In total, 70 million liters of airborne herbicides were spread over Vietnam by the U.S. Army with devastating consequences for nature and human health. (163)

Current environmental destruction by military and war 

The 'International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons' (ICAN), which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, estimates that approximately 2000 nuclear weapons tests with the explosive power of 29,000 Hiroshima bombs were conducted underground, in water and above ground. The nuclear weapons tests have caused extensive radioactive contamination of various regions as well as approximately 2.4 million cancer deaths today. For instance, the USA conducted a total of 1032 tests from 1945 to 1992. The Soviet Union carried out 456 nuclear weapons tests alone in Semipalatinsk in the Kazakh area between 1949 and 1991. (164)

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However, nobody knows exactly how many millions of people actually fell ill with cancer and died especially as a result of the above-ground tests. The organization 'International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War' (IPPNW) sets the number of victims even higher than the ICAN study 'Threat to Life from Radioactive Radiation'. The study, led by the Munich biochemist Prof. Roland Scholz, concluded as early as in 1997, 

"that external radiation exposure from bomb fallout alone could cause 3 million additional cancer deaths worldwide by the year 2000. In addition, there would be the consequences through ingestion of radionuclides in food and the air we breathe. This internal radiation could cause an additional 30 million casualties." (165)

Burning oil wells in the military conflicts in the Arab region, e.g. in the Iraq war, caused massive CO2 pollution of the biosphere. Another example is the burning oil wells of Saudi Arabia during the Yemen war. 

But in particular the 30-year bombardment of Iraq should be mentioned here, during which hundreds of thousands of missions of fighter aircrafts with deadly bomb loads caused massive environmental destruction. The U.S. and its allies killed a total of 2.7 million people over 30 years in the course of the 2nd and 3rd Gulf Wars and the subsequent operations and measures, an average of 270 people per day. (166) Furthermore, there was massive ecological damage from bombing, setting fire to oil facilities, and the use of uranium munitions (DU, depleted uranium) – according to the German journalist Jacob Reimann (2021, n.d.): 

"On February 24, 1991, the U.S. began the ground invasion of Kuwait and was able to recapture the entire country within a few days. Retreating Iraqi troops set dozens of oil facilities on fire and opened Kuwaiti oil terminals, causing a devastating environmental disaster in the Persian Gulf. (...) 

In 1991, the U.S. fired 320 tons of radioactive DU ammunition in Iraq. Cancer rates skyrocketed. As with the chemical warfare of the USA in Vietnam using Agent Orange, DU hits the youngest ones the hardest: In just ten years, there was a seventeen-fold increase in the number of neonatal malformations in Basra. (....) The U.S. has virtually created a new category of human misery and suffering with its DU ammunition." 

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Beyond this: 

When U.S. troops leave an occupied territory, they often leave behind an ecological disaster that has serious consequences for the health of the people still living there. According to its own statute, the U.S. Army is not allowed to leave any materials behind, thus, everything that is not taken away is burned in so-called 'burn pits.' These are large pits where oil residues, chemical waste, explosives, batteries, paint, wrecked cars, among other things, go up in flames. The fires often burn for weeks after U.S. troops have withdrawn. The resulting unfiltered emissions release toxic particles into the environment, which effect people and the environment. Groundwater is contaminated, cancer and lung disease as well as increased miscarriages occur in the vicinity of the 'burn pits'. Also those who fuel the fires, the U.S. soldiers, have increased rates of cancer and lung disease. (167)

But uranium ammunition was not used only in Iraq. Uranium ammunition used by NATO in former Yugoslavia, among other places, also poisoned the environment and caused radioactively contaminated areas. Radioactive ammunition was also used in Iraq and today in Syria, especially for armor-piercing offensive weapons. As a result, more and more children are born with massive deformities and are often unable to survive. 

The correspondent Karin Leukefeld, accredited in Damascus for many years, reports on the health consequences of uranium ammunition made from depleted uranium, which - in addition to its directly destructive effect - is highly toxic to the environment, animals and humans, including future generations: 

"The consequences of the depleted uranium ammunition used by the U.S. and its allies in several Gulf wars are still affecting families in southern Iraq and west of Baghdad, in Falluja. Countless children are born dead or with severe deformities: open backs, fused legs, external bladders, one eye or no eye at all, open skulls, to name just a few examples." (168) 

Uranium ammunition is also used in Syria. When fired, the uranium burns at up to 5,000 degrees Celsius to form nanoparticles that are 100 times smaller than red blood cells, and falls to the ground as radioactive fine dust that contaminates the environment. (169)
The Russian invasion and the war in Ukraine starting in February 2022 also brought massive environmental destruction affecting people, buildings and infrastructure as well as the biosphere. Thousands of detonations from bomb and missile attacks, blasts, exploding fuel depots, the danger of radioactivity leakage from attacked nuclear power plants, extensive CO2 emissions from operating thousands of military vehicles and fighter jets, destroyed landscapes and mined terrain are the results of this war. 

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In a study by de Klerk et al (2023), it was determined that within one year of war in Ukraine, both warring parties emitted approximately as much CO₂ emissions as in Belgium as a whole in the same year. This amounted to 119 million tons of CO₂ equivalents.

Stuart Parkinson and Linsey Cottrell (2022) also summarize their study on the climate damage caused by the military and wars as follows: 

„If the world’s militaries were a country, this figure would mean they have the fourth largest national carbon footprint in the world – greater than that of Russia. This emphasises the urgent need for concerted action to be taken both to robustly measure military emissions and to reduce the related carbon footprint – especially as these emissions are very likely to be growing in the wake of the war in Ukraine.“

Susanne Aigner (2022) adds another threat to this damage and destruction in her report on the ecological consequences of the Ukraine war:
"In addition, there are other types of radioactive contamination, one of which can be traced back to the war in the Donbass: since the start of the war in 2014, the old coal mines there have not been properly pumped out and maintained. As a result, some 200 mines have been flooded, some of which were dug with nuclear blasts, spreading chemicals such as mercury and arsenic into the groundwater. As measurements by Ukraine's Environment Ministry showed back in 2016, radiation levels in wells throughout the region were ten times above the limit." (Aigner 2022).
The war in Ukraine leaves behind a destroyed co-environment, for which the Russian Federation will have to pay billions of euros in reparations, although ultimately only the shallow damage would then be repairable here. The hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, as well as the profound impact on human health caused by inhaled emissions, drinking contaminated water and the radiation to be endured, cannot be offset with money. 
Bálint Rosz (2025) summarizes the CO2 emissions caused by the war in Ukraine in the first two years of the war until February 2024 and compares this with the annual emissions of 90 million vehicles with internal combustion vehicles:

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“As more and more experts are trying to point out, the Russia-Ukraine war is also causing significant environmental and climate damage. The latter could be a particularly worrying development, as human civilization itself is fighting its own war on climate change. According to preliminary estimates by De Klerk and colleagues, during the first 24 months of the war (from 24 February 2022 to 23 February 2024), military activities and the destruction of related infrastructure resulted in significant excess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, further exacerbating global climate change. Cumulative emissions over this period are estimated to be around 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), equivalent to the annual emissions of an advanced industrialized country.”

But the military is not one of the biggest global polluters only in military operations, i.e. in war, but also in everyday military operations, i.e. in regions still free of war. As Markus Gelau (2018) writes, using the U.S. military as an example: 

"Officially, 320,000 barrels of oil are consumed daily at the 1,000 military bases around the world. Mainly used by the 285 U.S. Navy combat and supply ships constantly in service. Likewise, some 4,000 combat aircraft, 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 other vehicles, over 4,000 helicopters, several hundred transport aircraft, and 187,493 transport vehicles (all figures from 2012) consume lots of fuel. 

In addition, decommissioned ships and their highly toxic cargo are usually not dismantled and disposed of properly, but simply bombed and sunk with torpedoes and missiles on the high seas. This is said to have been done at least 109 times between 1999 and 2012. Only 64 ships were dismantled and recycled in the same period." (170) 

In the U.S. alone, there are, according to Pentagon figures, approximately 39,000 contaminated military training areas, which would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to decontaminate. (171)

Germany, for example, is not an exemption in regard to this problem. This is demonstrated by the massive forest fires on the former training grounds of the GDR army and the Bundeswehr with the associated danger of exploding ammunition in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as well as the bombs that are still being found in major German cities. 

The German peace and environmental activist Bernhard Trautvetter considers the worldwide military forces to be one of the most dangerous institutional climate polluters causing massive destruction already in normal operation – not to mention war: 

"A Eurofighter burns about 3,500 kg of fuel per flight hour, producing about 11 tons of CO2. (...) A tank consumes about 500 liters of fuel per 100 km, depending on the terrain." (172)

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It is assumed that the climate pollution of the U.S. military alone corresponds to the emissions of three countries - this is the result of an enquiry made by scientists at the 'Defense Logistic Agency': 

"Based on this data, the scientists determined that if the U.S. armed forces were a nation-state, they would be the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world if only emissions from fuel use were taken into account. This would mean that the U.S. military alone would produce more emissions than Portugal, Sweden, or Denmark. 

In 2017, the U.S. military used about 42.9 million gallons of oil each day, emitting more than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide. The U.S. Air Force purchased $4.9 billion worth of fuel that year, the Navy $2.8 billion, followed by the Army at $977 million and the Marines at $36 million, emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries." (173)
A study by Dr. Stuart Parkinson (Scientists for Global Responsibility and expert reviewer for the IPCC) not only assumed direct CO2 emissions from transportation and exercises, but also included emissions from weapons production, infrastructure construction, and supply chains. For the largest army by far, Parkinson calculated 340 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalents in 2017, and this is unlikely to have decreased at present. For the global situation, Parkinson calculated that 5.5% of the world's CO2 emissions are attributable to the military of all nations. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the percentage of global CO2 emissions caused by the military is much higher. 
Parkinson (2020) summarizes the necessary consequences based on his findings on the military's ecological footprint as follows:
"The key to real reductions in military carbon emissions is thus to shrink the huge military budgets around the world - which totaled more than $1,800 billion in 2018. (...) And the key to shrinking these budgets is to reduce military tensions. So, rather than looking for new, lower carbon ways to fight wars, our governments should be prioritising measures such as diplomacy, international disarmament treaties, fair trade, poverty alleviation and, of course, reductions in carbon emissions right across the economy. Only then can we confidently achieve a more secure world."

Another problem is the ecological contamination from landmines. 

The United Nations estimates that more than 100 million landmines have been planted in more than 70 countries in the past decades. (174) Such areas, for example in former Yugoslavia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia or Chechnya, are thus contaminated with explosives and cannot be used for a long time for housing or agriculture, as the clearing of explosives is expensive and can only be carried out step by step over a long period of time. 

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Common interests of the environmental and peace movement 

The above record could be continued with numerous other examples (use of cluster munitions by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, barrel bombs by the Syrian military, sunken Soviet nuclear submarines in the Baltic Sea, CO2 emissions from military operation in the air and on the ground ...) and shows: 

The environmental and peace movements have a common substantive cross point. The demand for an end to environmental destruction by military operations and wars should be addressed by the environmental as well as the peace movement as central political demands. 

This assessment is further supported by the fact that the military is not only the cause of climate damage, but the climate crisis is related to capitalist and geostrategic interests (175) will in turn, be the further cause of conflicts to be carried out militarily and to the destruction of political systems, especially in the poorer regions of the world - according to Michael T. Klare (2015), Professor of Peace and World Security at Hampshire College in Massachusetts: 

„While the strongest and wealthiest governments, especially in more temperate regions, will be better able to cope with these stresses, expect to see the number of failed states  grow dramatically, leading to violence and open warfare over what food, arable land, and shelter remains.  In other words, imagine significant parts of the planet in the kind of state that Libya, Syria, and Yemen are in today.  Some people will stay and fight to survive; others will migrate, almost assuredly encountering a far more violent version of the hostility  we already see toward immigrants and refugees in the lands they head for.  The result, inevitably, will be a global epidemic of resource civil wars and resource violence of every sort.“ (176) 

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This means that global military activities can be both a cause and a consequence of environmental degradation. 

Accordingly, the peace activist Karl-Heinz Peil (2019, 13) (Bundesausschuss Friedensratschlag) demands: "For the peace movement (...) only drastic disarmament will make global sustainability and resource protection possible." (177)

This is equally true for the environmental movement, which should focus more clearly on the ecological threat posed by the military in times of peace as well as in times of war. If a rearmament of Germany and the EU is carried out according to NATO requirements (2% of GDP for military expenditures), then this money will be missing for the existentially necessary fight against the climate crisis – according to the international peace networker Reiner Braun and the environmental politician Michael Müller (2018): 

"But we live in an uncompleted peace in which social inequalities and ecological risks are increasing. Hunger, misery and environmental destruction generate a violence that can trigger wars. In addition, almost 30 billion euros for the military would be lacking for the modernization of infrastructure, social housing, development cooperation or in the fight against climate change. 

Money must flow into the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible. These are investments that are indispensable for peace. “ (178)

In this context, the question of financing the elimination of environmental damage caused by the military must also be raised. In addition to the warring parties causing the damage, the armaments industry would also have to be involved. For the armaments industry in particular, it is not justifiable that the (considerable) profits are privatized while the costs are shared between the state and the taxpayer. Such externalization of costs and internalization of profits in the defense industry are no longer acceptable. It is completely incomprehensible why, for example, the manufacturers of anti-personnel mines should not also pay for their removal and for damages claims from the victims. 

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Above all, the exclusion of the military as a climate polluter from the Kyoto Protocol and  the fact that this was also left non-binding in the Paris Agreement, especially under pressure from the USA, also points to the international dimension of the problem. (179) Here, the United Nations is called upon to include the environmental problems in connection with the military and with war operations in the inventory of international climate treaties. This would be easier for them if an appropriate civil society pressure were built up, e.g. by the Fridays for Future movement and the Easter March movement or other activities of the peace and environmental movement. 

In particular, attention should be drawn to the disproportion between military spending and investment in environmental protection, which is an expression of a the problematic level of consciousness among the political rulers and, of course, also meets the interests of the arms industry. The peace activist Bernhard Trautvetter (2019a) has documented this impressively in figures for Germany: 

"In Germany, too, the indirect environmental impact of armaments becomes immediately clear just by looking at the federal budget: the allocation for so-called defense reached a new record in 2019, jumping from around 38.5 billion euros to 43.2 billion euros. The allocation for the environment, nature conservation and so-called nuclear safety rose from just below 2 billion euros to just below 2.3 billion euros. The relationship between military spending and the budget, which includes environmental costs, is approximately nineteen to one." 

We must appeal to the electorate accordingly: No longer to vote for a party that does not have a clear ecological position; no longer to vote for a party that supports the expansion of the arms budget and arms trade, even if this is justified by the job argument; no longer to vote for a party that is prepared to take part in wars that violate international law and are always directed against people as well as the environment. 

Furthermore: If the growing international environmental movement, which is currently supported primarily by the younger generation, makes contact with the peace movement in regard to the connection between the military, war and environmental destruction, and starts networking with it, thelong-term social relevance will continue to increase. If the connection between the environmental destruction, mainly caused by an unrestrained pursuit of profit and geostrategic interests, and the violent displacement conflicts as well as the migration of fleeing groups of people is also addressed, then such a social movement could possibly in the long term have an even greater systemic significance than the 1968 movement. 

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1.4.1.4 Asymmetric wars and 'New Wars' 

Parallel to traditional wars in which individual states or alliances of states fight each other ('symmetrical wars'), changed forms of armed conflicts have been taking place for some time. Terrorist attacks, guerrilla wars, cyber attacks, civil wars, warlord regimes exploiting and dominating the population, and racist-religious riots lead to permanent military conflicts not only in the peripheries but also increasingly in the capitalist metropolises. War returns with a different face to the zones of prosperity also as terrorist threats and mass migrations. 

The political scientist Herfried Münkler (2014) distinguishes between symmetrical and asymmetrical wars. The classic war between states with armies fighting against each other on behalf of a territorially limited nation state, and which tend to proceed with the same military strategies and are based on the same military principles, e.g. the attempt to defeat the opponent in a decisive battle, is referred to as symmetrical war. Asymmetric wars are characterized by inequality in terms of military strategy, by serious difference in military strength, and by undermining the regulations of the Peace of Westphalia, which aims at symmetrical conflicts and, for example, also distinguishes between a the treatment of combatants (members of the army) and the non-combatants (civilian population) with regulations in case of war. Münkler (2002, 2004) predicts for the 21st century in particular three types of violent conflicts, which are already increasingly occurring alongside traditional forms of war and can be described as 'asymmetric' wars: 

·  "Resource wars at the periphery": Local and regional conflicts develop at the edges of prosperity zones, in which warlords with their mercenaries, in conjunction with internationally organized crime on the one hand and multinational corporations on the other, fight for military power over a confined area in order to exploit the raw materials, such as diamonds, oil or tropical timber. At the same time, the local population is subjugated and forced into labor slavery in order to increase the profits from the sale of the raw materials. Examples of this are diamond mines in Congo and opium cultivation in Taliban-dominated regions in Afghanistan.

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Resource wars are difficult to cool down and end with the help of existing means, since sanctions are often shifted to the civil society of the affected region and resource wars are usually linked to the global shadow economy - according to Münkler (2004, 1): 

 "These resource wars are financed by so-called open war economies, i.e. by their linkage with the capital and commodity flows of the world economy. The consequence of this is that these wars do not end as a result of economic exhaustion, or because those involved in them become more willing to make peace as they become more exhausted, instead the low intensity war itself constitutes the economic flywheel." 

 Often, the criminal gangs give themselves a legitimate image by ideologically claiming religious or other cultural differences and discrimination as the motive for their activity. 

·  "Pacification wars": In this case, the prosperous powers, above all the USA or alliances led by the USA, intervene in regional conflicts, e.g. also in resource wars. Also prevention of  proliferation of ABC weapons can be given as a motive for pacification wars. The reasons for pacification wars can be based on economic and geostrategic interests, but also on human rights and international law. There is often a mixture of different interests. 

The second Iraq war is an example of a pacification war. Here, in addition to massive human rights violations against the Iraqi Kurds, the construction or imminent possession of nuclear weapons by Iraq was cited as a reason for the intervention in Iraq by the U.S.-led alliance. 

The claim of a nuclear threat later turned out to be a lie of the U.S. administration led by George W. Bush. Such claims served to forge an alliance and thereby realize economic interests of the arms industry, interests of the oil industry and hegemonic interests of the USA in the Arab region. 

Pacification wars are usually short-lived due to the lack of popularity among the own population, the unwillingness in post-heroic societies to risk dead and wounded, and the high costs involved. Therefore, resource wars can often hardly be ended by pacification, or then it only leads to a change in the power constellations in the affected area. For example, the second Iraq war led to the ousting of the Sunnis from power in favor of a central government dominated by Shiites. This, in turn, was one of the reasons why the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) was founded in Iraq and then also in Syria, whose military core was composed, among others, of some of the Sunni soldiers of Saddam Hussein's former regime, which originally was brought to power by the CIA. 

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· "Wars of devastation against the North." : These are mainly wars of terrorist organizations against the wealthy OECD world. However, in my opinion, this also includes terrorist attacks, e.g. in Russia by Chechen underground organizations or the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 9/11. In contrast to guerrilla warfare, terrorists usually cannot rely on the protection of the civilian population, but use the modern media infrastructure and modern means of transportation in a clandestine manner to carry out their terrorist activities. Organizations such as the IS or the Taliban, use cultural or religious justifications as ideological legitimation. However, the real reasons for such terrorist activities are more likely to be a mixture of religious, power-political and economic interests. 

Terrorist organizations attack pedestrian zones, airplanes or holiday centers in groups or, increasingly, via individual perpetrators motivated by them, in order to spread fear among the population of the rich countries of the North: According to Münkler (2004, 3), this is done to achieve, among other things, a withdrawal of troops, e.g., in the context of pacification wars: 

 "But what they are actually attacking is the unstable psychological infrastructure of the Western world in particular in order to wear down and exhaust the political will of the country under attack. In doing so, they rely primarily on the psychological effects of violence, i.e., terror, which is spread all the more intensively the greater the media density of the country under attack." 

This tripartite division of 'new wars', which already exist and will intensify in the future, has a high degree of plausibility. However, the 'new wars' will not completely replace traditional forms of war and war alliances. Often, there will also be a mixed form between traditional and new wars. This is exemplified by the war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. In addition to an attack by one state on a neighboring state in the sense of a traditional war - which is hardly considered possible - forms of 'new wars' in Münkler's sense are also being practiced here. Cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, the use of guerrilla groups, missile terror and fighting mercenary armies lead to an aggressive mixture within a military conflict that can hardly be controlled. 

In addition to the three new forms of war outlined by Münkler, there are also genuine wars of liberation, in which the majority of a population revolts against dictatorial regimes and achieves political system change first through guerrilla warfare, then through massive civil society resistance, and finally through the military loss of support for the regime. With the global rise of autocratic and dictatorial regimes, an increase in wars of liberation can be expected, sometimes in conjunction with international military interventions. Especially if the non-interference in state sovereignty enshrined in the UN Charter is replaced by a right of the UN and military alliances commissioned by the UN to intervene in dictatorial regimes in the event of massive violations of human rights, more regional and national wars of liberation in the sense mentioned above can be expected as also their successes with the support of UN-led and democratically controlled world police forces with a robust mandate. This fourth type ('war of liberation') is, of course, to be assessed differently in terms of human rights and international law than the other three types of warfare described by Münkler. (180) 

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However, it becomes problematic when a self-proclaimed international military alliance, in its own geostrategic interest, acts as a liberation army in order to support resistance movements or to fight autonomy movements. In Yemen, Syria and Libya, we find asymmetrical conflict chains in which a hybrid of guerrilla warfare, counterterrorism, state self-assertion and proxy warfare leads to a devastating situation for the civilian population. 

International legal problems of secret armies and interventions by foreign intelligence services
 

The existence of secret armies in post-war Europe, built up in Western Europe against communism by the CIA, by NATO in conjunction with right-wing politicians and by groups such as 'Ordine Nuovo' in Italy also represents a variant of asymmetrical conflict. 

The secret organization 'Gladio' in Italy, for example, was originally set up to from behind the lines carry out attacks in the event of a Soviet invasion. Secret military units were established and trained, and hidden weapon storages were set up in Italy. When the Soviet invasion did not take place, the function of 'Gladio' was changed. In cooperation with right-wing terrorist groups and the Italian secret service, brutal attacks were carried out among the population and the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was blamed for this. The intention was to tighten security laws – especially in their application against the Italian left – and to bring about a shift to the right among the population. 

Similar secret armies also existed in Germany, Greece, Denmark, France and Belgium, among other countries – according to court transcripts of interrogations and testimony given by Giulio Andreotti, several times head of the Italian government. (181) 

Noam Chomsky confirms the research of the Swiss peace researcher Danielle Ganser on the destabilization of Italy by CIA-controlled secret operations and extends this to the situation in South America: 

"National regimes that threaten „stability“ are sometimes called „rotten apples“ that might „spoil the barrel“ or „viruses“ that might „infect“ others. Italy in 1948 is one example. Twenty-five years later, Henry Kissinger described Chile as a „virus“ that might send the wrong messages about possibilities for social change, infecting others as far as Italy, still not „stable“ even after years of CIA programs to subvert Italian democracy. Viruses have to be destroyed and others protected from infection: for both tasks, violence is often the most efficient means, leaving a gruesome trail of slaughter, terror, torture and devastation." (Chomsky 1999, 25f.) 

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In addition to traditional wars, new forms of military operations that are increasingly difficult to limit and control are emerging. They take place partly in secret on behalf of governments, as guerrilla activities, as military suppression by 'warlords' in cooperation with multinational corporations, or as terrorist patterns of action. These forms of war are no longer covered by the international laws of war, which are inapplicable to them because of the clandestine nature of the methods. Nor do such actors, some of whom operate undercover, adhere to any regulations of the law of war, such as the Geneva Convention or the Hague Conventions on land warfare. 

International terrorism takes advantage of the lack of territoriality 

Whereas the precondition of the symmetrical wars between states predominantly carried out after the Peace of Westphalia was nation state demarcation, asymmetrical conflicts are characterized by non-territoriality - according to Münkler (2014, 64): 

"The basic prerequisite of symmetrical political constellations is their territoriality, i.e. their comprehensibility and thus vulnerability, which can be seen as a guarantee of political rationality. In comparison , the deterritorialization of political actors is comparable to their acting undercover: they are capable of attack without having to take reciprocal responses into account. This is precisely the situation that arose with the emergence of transnational terrorism." 

International terrorism does not have to expect a counterattack using the same means, since it is difficult to identify, as it uses the infrastructure of a state and has no demarcated territory. If terrorists use poison gas or explosives for their attacks, they do not have to expect a comparable attack on their own territory, since they are internationally organized and act without an assignable nation-state territory. As the so-called Islamic State (IS) became territorially confinable, it was possible to attack it there and, in part, to defeat it militarily. The IS had to react accordingly and went underground again, from where it could exploit the advantages of asymmetric warfare in the form of international terrorism operating with small terrorist cells. 

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Conclusions and perspectives: Asymmetric warfare in a globalized concept are further arguments for a (democratically controlled) world police structure to be installed alongside a UN to be reformed. Whereas conventional wars are to be banned and prevented, the above-mentioned predominantly newer forms of war are to be relentlessly prosecuted as criminal acts of war by the corresponding United Nations world police organs and military units to be installed in the future. 

On the one hand, this certainly requires a robust mandate for the UN military, which is to be adopted by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. To a great extent unarmed blue-helmet troops are in this case of little help or are more likely to be used as human shields against attacks by military alliances or interventions by UN-led troops. On the other hand, where terrorist activities are deterritorialized and cannot be assigned to a specific region, a world police structure offers better conditions than nation-state and insufficiently transnationally networked approaches. (182)

1.4.1.5   Media and 'enemy images' 

'Enemy images' are constructed by the media. They manipulate people and are part of a socio-psychological preparation for war. This can be shown by current examples. (183)

What is the concept of an 'enemy image'?
 

The term 'enemy image' refers to all linguistic attempts or patterns of social interpretation to extremely discredit other persons, groups of people, ethnic groups or states with the help of negative symbols or negative metaphors in order to deprive them of their human dignity. 
This discrediting is intended to trigger unpleasant emotions toward these groups of people or states, such as disgust, hatred or fear. A prejudiced perception of reality is used with manipulative intent to prove one's own worldview as the only truth and to stigmatize the opponent in such a way that he no longer belongs to the circle of an accepted human community. (184)

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Examples of the development of enemy images 

Already Caesar described the Gauls in the middle of the first century B.C. as characterless, undisciplined and unpredictable. He thus discredited the enemy in order to eliminate reluctance to killing and to motivate the Roman troops. 

The famous novel "Lay Down Your Arms!" (1889) by the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Austrian peace activist Bertha von Suttner describes the perspective of a young woman who, in the run-up to the Austria-Italy war (1859) (185), critically deals with images of the enemy in Austrian society: 

 | "Such bad qualities, however, as these lust of conquest, love of fighting, hatred, cruelty, guile, were also certainly to be found, and were admitted to be shown in war, but always by the 'enemy'. To him, his being in the wrong was quite clear. Quite apart from the political necessity of the campaign just commenced, apart also from the patriotic advantages which undoubtedly grew out of it, the conquest over one's adversary was a moral work, a discipline carried out by the genius of culture. These Italians! what a foul, false, sensual, light-minded, conceited people! And this Louis Napoleon! what a mixture of ambition and the spirit of intrigue! When his proclamation of war, published on April 29, appeared with its motto, 'Italy free to the Adriatic Sea,' it called out amongst us a storm of indignation. I did allow myself a feeble remark that this was at least an unselfish and noble idea, which must have an inspiriting influence on Italian patriots, but I was soon put to silence. The dogma that 'Louis Napoleon is a scoundrel' was not to be shaken as long as he was  'the enemy'. Everything proceeding from him was ab initio 'scoundrelly'." (186)

This reveals the principle: To discredit the opponent with negative attributions thus depriving him of the protection of humanity. This is a principle that has been used at all times to eliminate people's scruples about killing. Hitler created the image of the 'Slavic subhuman', whom it was necessary to subjugate in the 'struggle for living space (Lebensraum) for the Aryan race'. Communists were described as 'vermins' that had to be exterminated. Kissinger referred to states that wanted to break away from their dependence on the United States as viruses that needed to be killed. Bush Jr. spoke of rogue states, referring to North Korea, Iraq and Iran. During the Cold War the USSR equated U.S. soldiers with murderers and robbers. Chinese police referred to protesters in Hong Kong as cockroaches. 

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Russophobia in the run-up as a pretext for military aggression 

On the one hand, in view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is now difficult to call the warning about Russian aggression and about Putin's personality a completely unjustified construction of enemy images. On the other hand, it is also difficult to estimate the share of the effect of the construction of the enemy image 'Russia' on the decisions of the Russian president. 

The image of a Russian was painted in western spy films as that of a brutal person with an ugly accent, who murders ruthlessly and, of course, is always wrong. Former US President Ronald Reagan spoke of the former USSR as the "evil empire". 

The current russophobia was transferred to the media by the USA and NATO via so-called experts. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine daily newspaper editor Kerstin Holm (2019), Russia has "little economic and technological development impetus to offer" to its neighboring states and can therefore only compensate for the loss of influence with military force or the threat of it. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also cultivates the enemy image of Russia by demonizing Putin as an evil person ("a smart, but a truly evil person"), as a nationalistic former intelligence officer with great power fantasies. (187)  In the context of the NATO image of Russia as an enemy, the extremely dangerous withdrawal from the INF Treaty by the Trump administration in 2019 was also possible without any presentation of solid evidence of a Russian violation of the INF Treaty banning medium-range missiles. 
Barely noticed by the public, by the way, an EU task force was founded in 2016, the justification of which is not unproblematic on the part of the EU Parliament. In the press release of the EU Parliament it says: 

„The resolution stresses that the EU needs to counter disinformation campaigns and propaganda from countries, such as Russia, and non-state actors, like Daesh, Al-Qaeda and other violent jihadi terrorist groups. 

Hostile propaganda against the EU and its member states seeks to distort the truth, provoke doubt, divide the EU and its North American partners, paralyse the decision-making process, discredit the EU institutions and incite fear and uncertainty among EU citizens.“ (188)

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A common enemy image of Russia/Islamist terrorism is thus developed, which treats these two influences equally in terms of their propagandistic pressure. Of course, the information and sometimes disinformation coming from Russia must also be critically observed and attended to. However, no differentiation is made in the statement above by the highest European democratically elected body, and there is an additional discrediting of Russia through the parallel mentioning of the propaganda activity of Islamist terrorists. (189)
Before and during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Putin also brutally devalued the democratically elected President Selenskyj, calling him a drug-addicted fascist. Through this, he wanted to psychologically prepare the assassination attempts on the Ukrainian president as a legitimate measure in the Russian public. 

Putin was a projection screen for enemy images, but he also used the enemy image construction mediated by Russian state television to push through his aggressive geostrategic goals, which were contrary to international law. 

U.S. - Iran: Fabrication of mutual enemy images
 

A second example can be seen in the Western Islamophobia and the Iranian USA phobia of the USA. There is a media construction of mutual enemy images in both states: USA: Iran as a terrorist mullah regime, as a rogue state that in a discriminatory manner is characterized as a member of the "axis of evil" – according to then U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11. On the other hand, Iran insults the USA as a "great Satan", as an "imperialist devil", as "thoroughly rotten" (see, e.g., Roodsari 2019). The mutual discrediting is an expression of a reciprocal historical influence, the cornerstones of which are marked by the CIA- and British MI6-directed overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq (1953), the installation of the Western-oriented autocrat Shah Reza Pahlavi, the overthrow of the Shah by the Islamic Revolution (1979) led by Ayatollah Khomeini. As a result the Iranian occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the hostage-taking of the staff took place. In the Iran-Iraq War, the U.S. tolerated Iraq's use of poison gas and provided Iraq with plans regarding the deployment of Iranian troops. The story continues with clandestine U.S. arms deliveries to Iran; after all, the deal was not to be missed (from 1985, Iran-Contra affair). Steps toward Iran's nuclear armament and provocations toward the U.S. escalated with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also took an extremely hostile stance toward Israel. Since the nuclear agreement was negotiated in 2015, Iran has – according to the International Atomic Energy Agency – complied with the agreement and refrained from unauthorized uranium enrichment. See Roodsari (2019) for a good overview of the chronicle of events as presented here, characterized by mutual devaluations and accusations. People or states discredited in this way become vulnerable to military attack.

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The discrediting serves the dehumanization and the exclusion from the (own) humane circle of values, and becomes the ethical or moral legitimation for all following measures. 

Now that the U.S. and the Trump administration have unilaterally withdrawn the nuclear agreement with Iran, the degrading rhetoric between the two states has again intensified, leading to a dangerous escalation, among other things, in connection with the tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and the assassination by U.S. drones of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's Al Quds Brigades, in the Iraqi capital Baghdad in early 2020. 
The Iranian regime's violent treatment of the protests of Iranian women who wanted to shake off the oppression of the Iranian state and male rule contributes to the creation of an enemy image.
The tensions between Iran and the Western camp intensified in 2023/2024 due to Iran's indirect warfare through the attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah on Israeli territory as well as the missile and drone attacks by the Houthis on Western merchant ships - three organizations and groups that are closely allied with and supported by the Iranian regime. By supporting these militant measures, Iran will certainly not be able to lose its enemy status as a member of the 'axis of evil'.

Chinaphobia: The Yellow Peril 

A third example is to Chinaphobia and should also be outlined here in more detail. In the 1960s, the then German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger – a former high-ranking NSDAP member and National Socialist propaganda official – was already warning against the "yellow peril" from the Far East. Emphasizing the foreign cultural and completely different character of the Asians and especially the Chinese, some media portray them as dangerous and barbaric. The Chinese are said to be authority-fixated, collectivist, environmentally hostile, deceitful, ruthless, hostile to human rights, aggressive, hegemonic and competition orientated – all prejudice-laden stereotypes that in a general manner are attributed to the Chinese as such. 

Recent exclusively negative attributions, such as in Kinkartz (2019), can be summarized as follows: 

•     Chinese headhunters are stealing skilled workers from the West. 

•     Chinese steal Western know-how via cyberattacks. 

•     China wants to expand hegemonically (South China Sea, Taiwan). 

•     China is destroying its environment and contributing massively to global CO2 pollution.

•     China brutally oppresses its minorities (e.g. Uyghurs). 

•     China is a totalitarian surveillance state ('social credit system'). 

•     China is destroying the Western solar industry through state-subsidized dumping prices. 

•     The Chinese Silk Road project is an attempt to exploit the resources of other countries (labor, mineral resources, ports). 

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There might be some truth in this. However, positive achievements of the Chinese society are not mentioned, such as the growing prosperity of the average population, the political cohesion of such a large national territory, the infrastructural achievements, the highest rate of solar installations in China or the increasing technological innovation capacity. 

If one believes that trade wars can lead to military conflicts, then the discrediting of the Chinese and the Chinese culture must be seen in the context of the U.S. protective tariffs against China. (190) 

The democratic media as projection of enemy images
 

Another example presents a reverse point of view. Here the media itself is the enemy image - the 'lying press' or 'fake news'. Enemy images of group-related hostility against migrants, against Muslims or generally against foreigners from the South, have the effect that media that do not act according to these right-wing extremist enemy images is discredited as lying press. Journalists are bombarded with hate and threatening emails or corresponding messages in the social media, or they are denied the floor at press conferences accused of being “fake news” (Trump). The media itself turns into an enemy image – the "lying press" or "fake news“.

The pressure by politicians on the press to produce corresponding enemy images or at least to remain neutral toward the production of enemy images by politicians is increasing. In this way, a mainstream press is being shaped within the frames of which differing journalistic assessments can lead to the end of a journalistic career. 

Socio-psychological functions of enemy images 

The socio-psychological significance of enemy images will now be outlined on the basis of four theses that point to the manipulative use of enemy images out of a systemic interest: 

Thesis 1: Enemy images discredit a counterpart significantly with the help of false or falsified information in the media,. They generate aversion, feelings of threat and hatred in order to overcome humane scruples in dealing with these people. 

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Thesis 2: Enemy images are the prerequisite for considering such discredited people, groups or societies as non-human, so that harming or destroying them is not regarded to be inhumane, but an 'act of social hygiene'. 

Hypothesis 3: Enemy images are meant to distract attention from one's own systemic weaknesses and to direct social aggression away from its causes and toward external opponents. This can lead to systemic stabilization through turning emotionalized attention towards an external enemy. 

Thesis 4: Hate communities are created through enemy images, and their destructive emotional potential is reflected in violent outbreaks that can be politically instrumentalized and directed. 

A critical approach to enemy images does not mean that all verifiable facts contained in the justification of enemy images are to be rejected or suppressed. Russia, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, for example, are certainly problematic in terms of their role in international peacekeeping and war prevention. But the one-sided negative evaluation of facts in connection with pejorative and discriminatory attributions constitutes the concept of the enemy image and its destructive effects. 

Therefore, it is important to also recognize one's own entanglement in the construction of enemy images and to to make efforts to destroy them. 

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Everyone should also ask themselves personally:
•       What kind of enemy images do I have?
•       What prejudices are involved?
•       What general discrediting of others do they include?
•       How did these enemy images emerge?
•       How can I erase them again?
•       Is there a way to erase them together? 
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If one opposes the general discrediting of individuals, population groups or states in the form of enemy images, this does not mean that all clashes of interests and antagonisms should now be harmoniously ignored. These clashes of interests and antagonisms exist, and they should not be kept secret. However, becoming aware of enemy images enables tensions caused by these images to be negotiated in civil society and can also lead to compromises. Manipulatively created and emotionally anchored enemy images, however, aim at the destruction and annihilation of the other counterpart. 

Construction of enemy images as an act preparing for war 

There is already a long historical tradition of constructing enemy images and legitimizing wars with false information or fake news. 

Political, geostrategic and economic interests are concealed and enforced through manipulative, media preparation and also official dissemination of enemy images. 

The Hitler regime's faked attack by alleged Polish soldiers on a German border post , the declared second attack by Viet Cong gunboats on a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Tonkin that never took place (and at the time only was assumed probable), the tearing out babies from incubators in Kuwait, staged by a media company, and the falsified documents on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction presented by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell before the U.N. Security Council are all well-known examples of faked reasons for war and/or fictitious reasons for the intensification of military activities. 

The destructive effects of enemy images enable high growth rates and returns in the arms industry, a branch of industry that profits from 'enemy images' and military conflicts. Without wars prepared and generated by enemy images, there would be no market for the 'economy of death'. Or to put it another way: The demonization of states as the 'axis of evil' is the basis of profits that are otherwise only possible in the drug industry. 

If images of the enemy as an extreme form of cultural violence are not fundamentally erased after a military conflict with the help of rituals and procedures of reconciliation, they continue to exist after a war and prevent peace in a broader sense. Societies thus remain culturally ready for war - according to Johan Galtung (2004): 

 „Any sign that the enemy is still alive will trigger ready-made responses; in the absence of such signs other enemies will be found to complete the Gestalt formed by this type of cultural violence.“ 

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1.4.2                Peace protests and peace Movements 

1.4.2.1             Easter March Movement, protests against the Vietnam War and against the               NATO Double-Track Decision 

The first Easter March with 10,000 participants took place in the UK in 1958 and went from London to a missile research center. The campaign was initiated by the British peace NGO Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In 1960, the idea of the Easter March was taken up in Germany, and the first march went simultaneously from Hamburg, Bremen, Braunschweig, and Hanover to the Bergen-Hohne military training area. 

The precursors of the German Easter March movement had been pacifist protests in the late 1950s against the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany and the expansion of its military power and, in particular, against German Chancellor Adenauer's demand for independently deployable, nuclear-tipped short-range missiles. 

An extra-parliamentary grassroots movement emerged that was unusual for the early 1960s in the Federal Republic of Germany and that, as it grew, paved the way for later citizens' initiatives and the extra-parliamentary protest culture of the late 1960s. 

While the first Easter March in Germany started with 1200 participants, about 300,000 participants took part at the peak of the German Easter March movement in 1968, which was especially directed against nuclear armament. 

In these years, protests focused on protest against the Vietnam War of the USA. Beginning in the mid-1960s, international protests starting in the U.S. led to mass demonstrations, rallies, hearings and panel discussions against the Vietnam War. In particular, the use of napalm bombs and pictures of burning children, the defoliation of the Vietnamese rainforests through the carcinogenic 'Agent Orange' as well as film footage and photos of area bombardments with their devastating consequences led to massive pressure on those in power. The negative publicity in the media led to the ceasefire agreement in 1973 and, from 1975, to the cessation of the Vietnam War and American withdrawal from Vietnam. 

The U.S. attempt to protect ostensibly Western interests against communist influence and to keep a corrupt regime in power that refused to hold free elections for all of Vietnam as agreed upon by the Indochina Conference (1954) cost millions of lives: 

"A total of 58,000 soldiers lost their lives on the American side in the Vietnam War. In South and North Vietnam, about one million soldiers and two million civilians were killed. An additional two million people became permanently disabled, and still another two million suffered permanent damage from the use of toxic chemicals." (191)

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After the number of participants in peace demonstrations in the 1970s had declined following the end of the Vietnam War, renewed, larger, and more forceful demonstrations took place in the wake of the rearmament through the neutron bomb and the NATO double-track decision and the subsequent stationing of nuclear missiles at the borders to the Warsaw Pact states. Because the USSR modernized its nuclear missiles (SS 20), Western politicians, such as Ronald Reagan or Helmut Schmidt, perceived the USSR as a growing threat. NATO threatened to station new nuclear missiles (Pershing II) at the borders to the Warsaw Pact states if disarmament negotiations were not held promptly. In the early 1980s, large crowds, especially in Germany, demonstrated against this logic of deterrence and its potential dangers. Because NATO planned to stop a possible Soviet invasion with a 'limited' nuclear strike in Germany, about two million people demonstrated in Germany in October 1983 against a potential 'Euroshima' in Europe and Germany. (192)

At the same time, the pacifist 'Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament' (CND) in Britain had greater success as well, according to Wernicke (1997): 

"With more than 90,000 national members and 250,000 participants in local groups, CND peaked in 1984, a year after Britain had seen the largest political demonstration since 1909, similar to the one in Bonn's Hofgarten with over a million in 1983." 

These mass protests in various European states had their share in the political pressure that would lead internationally to disarmament negotiations and corresponding treaties, such as the 1991 START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). Contributing factors were of course the fact that the Soviet system was economically and politically finished and that Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, was forced to make reforms and concessions. 

Easter Marches continue to take place and in 2019 resonated with more people in light of global crises and increasing awareness of the connection between environmental destruction, the military, and war. In 2020, Easter Marches fell victim to the corona virus. After that, the manifestations and demonstrations took place again in the context of the Easter marches. In view of the stationing decisions for US medium-range missiles in Germany, the resonance for 2025 and 2026 should increase again there.

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The core of the Easter March movement remains the protest against nuclear armament and the modernization of nuclear weapons, as well as demands for the withdrawal of nuclear missiles from Germany (Büchel Air Base), for the ending of military attacks in the Middle East via Ramstein Airbase, and for accession to the nuclear weapons ban treaty developed by ICAN in cooperation with the United Nations. Other important demands are a ban on German arms exports, especially to areas of tension, and the disarmament and arms conversion of the weapons industry into peace industries. Recent years have also seen resistance to the militarization of Europe and protests against the interventions of Western military alliances in the Near and Middle East in violation of international law. 
A quote by the political scientist Christoph Butterwegge (1990), who attempts to characterize the Easter March movement in terms of the significance of its social influence, can serve as a summary assessment: 

"The Easter March is the first organically grown mass movement in the history of the Federal Republic that was not appropriated by parties or organizations, but remained independent and non-partisan until the end. Characteristically, the Easter March movement of the 1960s made important decisions in local, regional and central decision-making bodies according to the principle of consensus, without perceiving its minimum consensus (rejection of all nuclear weapons) as a restriction to a single point. Minorities and extreme positions were not excluded but integrated, and heterogeneity and plurality of opinion were understood as the hallmarks of a new protest culture. The Easter March proved that ideological, political, and 'cultural barriers' can and must be overcome if our species‘s interest (in the survival of humankind) in the nuclear age demands the cooperation of all peace forces." 

Because this assessment was made shortly after the successes of the Easter March movement in the 1980s, it must be modified somewhat for the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century. Despite increasing numbers of participants, the Easter March movement is still waiting for its renaissance. This will probably happen when, on the one hand, people become aware of the growing danger of war and, on the other hand, the peace movement succeeds in uniting with various other protest movements to form a broader culture of protest. (193)

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1.4.2.2 "No blood for oil!" - Protests against the Gulf War 

A distinction is usually made between three Gulf wars. The first Gulf War (1980-1988) took place between Iran and Iraq over territorial disputes regarding disputed access to local oil wells and over aspirations toward regional hegemony. 

On September 22, 1980, Iraqi troops invaded the oil province of Khuzestan and bombed Tehran.  Over the course of the first Gulf War, the world's arms producers supplied weapons of various kinds to the two warring nations without restraint. Iraq, in particular, was able to obtain almost unlimited supplies of weapons from Western sources, which it financed with oil sales and loans from some of the Arab states. China and Russia also supplied weapons to the warring parties. This clearly led to a prolongation of the war. 

Iraq frequently and with devastating consequences used poison gas, which is outlawed under international law. In 1988, the Iraqi Kurdish regions, too, were attacked with poison gas by the Iraqi government. World public opinion took rather casual note of thousands of poisoned Kurds in Halabja. Meanwhile, Iran sent children to the frontlines so that trained soldiers would not be shredded by explosive traps set by the Iraqi. In the first Gulf War, 95,000 Iranian child soldiers died. The environmental consequences of countless attacks by both sides on oil tankers and oil platforms were significant. Figures on the number of war dead vary. The highest estimates put the total war dead at about one million. Numerous mines still lie in the contested area and regularly cause casualties. 

In 1988, both warring parties finally accepted the UN-brokered ceasefire. Saddam Hussein and Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini signed the agreement. The borders remained unchanged. After the end of the war, the UN Secretary General stated that the aggression had originated with Iraq. (194)

The second Gulf War began in 1990 when Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and seized its oil wells. Iraq's war debts to Kuwait and other Arab countries were so high that Saddam Hussein saw this as the only solution. There were disputes over the oil claim between Iraq and Kuwait, as well as territorial claims on the part of Iraq. 

Following Iraq's occupation of the much smaller territory of Kuwait, the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions on Iraq. 

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About six months later, the U.S. at the head of a coalition was authorized by UN Resolution 678 to intervene militarily in the conflict and restore the sovereignty of Kuwait. With its air superiority and deployment of massive ground forces, the U.S.-led coalition was able to destroy most of Iraq's military installations and war machines within about two months. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians died in the first Iraq War. On the Allied side, about 350 soldiers died. Iraq's infrastructure was largely destroyed. Massive environmental damage was caused by burning oil wells, as Iraq had set fire to or blown up over 700 oil wells during its withdrawal—fires that took several months to extinguish. But the environmental damage caused in particular by uranium munition was also immense. The increased number of children born with deformities in southern Iraq in the post-war period has been linked to the use of uranium munition. (195)

Large parts of the Iraqi army fleeing Kuwait were surrounded and a short time later captured in Iraq. Baghdad was not attacked, and Saddam Hussein was left in power. 

While there were hardly any rallies or demonstrations in Western countries during the first Gulf War, the reaction during the second Gulf War (the first Iraq War) was more pronounced, although it did not take on the character of a mass movement. Students walked out of school, chanted "No blood for oil!" demonstrated, and spontaneously occupied main roads. Vigils took place in major cities with demands for the protection of Iraqi civil society, among other things. But as quickly as the second Gulf War was over these protests faded away. 

The third Gulf War took place in 2003. It followed the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN because Iraq, particularly in the view of the United States, repeatedly kept weapons inspectors away from military storage sites or failed to meet deadlines for weapons inspections. As a result of the economic sanctions and also of the blocking of food and medicine imports, millions of Iraqis, especially children, died from malnutrition and medical shortages. 

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Whereas in the first Iraq war George Bush had refrained from defeating Saddam Hussein's regime in order to maintain a regional counterweight to the Khomeini regime in Iran, the administration of his son George W. Bush overrode these concerns. Supposedly backed by a UN resolution calling for Iraq to fully submit to international arms controls, the United States and a 'coalition of the willing' attacked Iraq in March 2003 with the bombing of Baghdad. 

The military intervention was justified with the argument that Iraq was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons to attack the USA and Israel. Fake pictures of underground nuclear launch pads were presented to the UN Security Council by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. Following the second Iraq War, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated that the attack was not covered by UN decisions and was illegal under international law. 

Propagandist lies were thus deliberately deployed to assemble a coalition for the attack. Also, the assessment of the alleged dangerousness of Iraq was contrary to the assessment by the UN arms controllers, who assumed that Iraq was 90% disarmed. Saddam Hussein's alleged links to al Qaeda and 9/11 could not be proven either. (196)

This time, Iraq suffered a devastating defeat, and the Hussein regime was ousted. The destabilization of Iraq led to civil war-like conditions with numerous horrific terrorist attacks in Iraq and ultimately gave birth to the regional terrorist organization 'Islamic State' (IS), which at its core resulted from Sunni former military officers of the Hussein regime having gone underground after the defeat of Iraq and allying themselves with various Islamist terrorist organizations. 

Although on May 1, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush had announced Iraq's defeat and the end of hostilities on a U.S. warship to the world‘s media, the occupation of Iraq dragged on until 2011, accompanied by numerous attacks and insurgencies. More than 100,000 people lost their lives during this period. (197)

The transparent propaganda maneuvers, violation of international law, torture of prisoners and aggressive interrogation methods, presumed U.S. interest in Iraqi oil wells, and glaringly obvious profits of the military-industrial complex in the U.S. triggered a protest movement in Western countries that was much larger than that against the first Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated all over the world against the attack on Iraq. Russia and China requested that the attack be classified by the UN Security Council as illegal under international law but were overruled by the USA and Great Britain, both permanent members with veto power. 

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Germany, too, saw mass protests against the second Iraq war. In Berlin, for example, about 40,000 people protested against the military invasion. Here are some excerpts from the coverage: 

"Demonstrators in Hamburg protested against the attacks on Iraq with posters such as 'War is mass murder' or 'While Baghdad burns, Georgie Boy takes off for the weekend' and with chants such as 'We don't want your war, Schröder close the airspace.' Iraqi, Kurdish and Iranian groups also took part in the protests, as did many families with children. 

In Frankfurt am Main, several speakers at a rally organized by the peace movement, political parties, churches and trade unions called for an end to the war and warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq. There was harsh criticism of U.S. media for turning the war 'into a glossy reality TV show.'" (198)

In London, several hundreds of thousands demonstrators marched through Hyde Park. In Bern, 20,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the government building. There were also protests in countries in the Middle East, as well as in Asia. (199)

In 2013, the Kassel-based political scientist and peace activist Peter Strutynski summed up the situation created by the second Iraq war in extremely critical terms: 

"The Iraq war of 2003, which the top U.S. commander George W. Bush famously declared over on May 1, 2003— 'Mission accomplished'—only really took off afterwards. Today, Iraq faces the complete disintegration of its state. The northern Iraqi Kurdish regions have long been de facto independent, and the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites over the distribution of oil profits has taken on suicidal features. The only consolation in this situation is the fact that the main warmonger, the U.S., has come out of this war empty-handed, economically speaking." (200)

1.4.2.3   Current protests against the militarization of the world:
                International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Global Partnership for                                the Prevention of Armed Conflicts (GPPAC), Peace Brigades (PB) 

                ICAN: Negotiating power against nuclear war, Appeals for peace on the war in
                Ukraine 

The non-governmental organization ICAN was founded in 2007 in Vienna with significant participation of IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) and has its central headquarters in Geneva. ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its campaign against nuclear armament and for nuclear disarmament in a global context. ICAN is currently (201) supported by 541 NGOs in 103 countries. After ten years of preliminary work, ICAN succeeded in getting 122 states of the United Nations to agree to the 'Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty', combined with a request that individual nations sign it as binding. 

"Since our founding, we have worked to build a powerful global groundswell of public support for the abolition of nuclear weapons. By engaging a diverse range of groups and working alongside the Red Cross and like-minded governments, we have helped reshape the debate on nuclear weapons and generate momentum towards elimination. 

We were awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for our 'work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons' and our 'ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons'." (202)

The 'Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons under International Law', which has been submitted to the United Nations for signature, must be signed and ratified by 50 nations before it enters into force. Of course, it will only be valid for those states that have signed. Critics point out that none of the states possessing nuclear weapons participated in the treaty negotiations and neither did most NATO states. 

Ratification is based on national legislation and means incorporation of the treaty into national law. The treaty contains a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons: 

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"The treaty prohibits states from testing, developing, producing, and possessing nuclear weapons. It also prohibits the transfer, stockpiling, use, or threat of use. In addition, the treaty prohibits supporting, encouraging, or inducing another state to engage in such activities. Further, states are prohibited from deploying nuclear weapons on their own soil." (203)

ICAN is working to expand its networking at all levels of society. It puts particular emphasis on convincing states to sign and ratify the treaty. 

We must ask of course how it can possibly convince the nuclear states in particular to give up their nuclear weapons and to no longer produce and spread new nuclear weapons. What kind of social pressure by which organizations and social movements is necessary to support ICAN effectively in its efforts to get the treaty supported? 

Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflicts (GPPAC) – a growing international peace network 

GPPAC is an international civil society organization founded in 2003 that works nonviolently for war prevention and peacekeeping. It consists of several hundred NGOs organized in 15 transnational (regional) networks. 

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 "Vision: GPPAC seeks a world where violence and armed conflicts are prevented and resolved by peaceful means based on justice, gender equity, sustainable development and human security for all.
Mission: GPPAC is a global network that links civil society with relevant local, national, regional and international actors and institutions to collectively contribute to a fundamental change in dealing with violence and armed conflicts: a shift from reaction to prevention." (204)
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GPPAC's work is driven by a common strategy based on the 'Global Action Agenda' (2005), which was drafted at international conferences by over 1000 peace organizations. The organization now adheres to its third 'Strategic Plan' (2015) for the period 2016-2020, based on the fact that the human costs of war are unacceptable—not to mention the environmental and economic costs: 

"Violent conflict destroys lives, assets, infrastructure, ecosystems and social and economic capacities. It disrupts communities, leaving traumatised victims in situations requiring long-term, high investments to support reconstruction and rehabilitation. The global economic cost of violence in 2013 was estimated at US$9.8 trillion, which represents 11.3% of Gross World Product. Measuring the cost of violent conflict often involves analysing human rights violations and the resulting mortality, injury, displacement or disability rates. However, neither the value of human life, nor human suffering can be quantified in any meaningful way. From the outset, we take the normative position that the costs of violent conflict from a human perspective are simply unacceptable." (205)
In numerous interactions during the approximately 15 years of its existence, members of GPPAC have worked on persuading governments and transnational institutions of their pacificist agenda. GPPAC members are also involved in community mediation processes, provide peace education on the ground, draw attention to the situation of women in contested areas and, in particular, try to make heard the voices of communities that have suffered massive damage as a result of war. 

By referring in particular to UN Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions (206), GPPAC attempts to win over  governments and local communities to engage in more effective war prevention. 

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Three key points in the current five-year plan (2016-2020) address the GPPAC agenda: "enabling collaboration, improving practice and influencing policy". (207)

GPPAC hence seeks to inform the public well in advance of emerging conflicts, to conduct conflict analyses, to develop activities that promote solidarity, to share knowledge of war prevention strategies with other organizations, and to establish political contacts from local levels all the way up to the United Nations. (208)

Specific actions taken by GPPAC include: 

·      Promote consideration of women in peacekeeping processes based on UN Security                   Council Resolution 1325; 

·      Convince peace educators and educational authorities to include the topic of                               peacekeeping and war prevention in their curricula; 

·      Initiate intergenerational dialogue in Colombia to promote a renunciation of violence and           develop a culture of peace; 

·      Start a civil society dialogue for peace and social stability for Northeast Asia in                           Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia; 

·      Implement a peace education video project with youth in Kyrgyzstan to build their 
       capacity as 'change agents' for peaceful conflict resolution; 

·      Cooperate with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the development of strategies and         training programs to strengthen civil society organizations, especially in regions of East and West Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia; 

·      Support and locally implement UN SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) especially with         regard to the peace references contained therein; 

·      Train 'Peace Champions' in Uganda through projects with youth in 'post-conflict                           communities' to prevent youth re-radicalization. (209)
The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC) (2025) summarizes its concern and its options for action as follows:

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"As a member-led network connecting over 250+ civil society organisations worldwide, we champion a network approach to peacebuilding. 

It is simple yet powerful: We connect, collaborate, and catalyse change across regions.

We are a vibrant hub and safe space for local peacebuilders to share their knowledge, exchange experiences, and explore innovative peacebuilding approaches. We embrace inclusive and participatory decision-making, ensuring that all voices, especially those of women and youth, are heard. 

We lead peacebuilding efforts.

Our structure guarantees that local peacebuilders are in the lead. We put co-creation at the heart of designing and implementing peacebuilding projects.

Shaping global change based on local insights.
  Our influence reaches far beyond our network. We're passionate advocates for locally-led and locally-owned peacebuilding, bridging the gap between local insights and global policy by engaging policymakers at all levels. By leveraging our network's knowledge, we shape global policies and programs. This synergy ensures peacebuilding strategies resonate with local realities, resulting in effective and lasting change.

Three pillars, one goal

We concentrate our peacebuilding efforts around three themes 

1. Locally-led peacebuilding action: We are deeply committed to ensuring local ownership and leadership for sustainable peacebuilding.
2. Inclusion of women and youth: We have unwavering confidence in women and youth as agents of change. Inclusion isn't an afterthought; it's a guiding principle in everything we do.
3. Climate security and emerging threats: We firmly believe in putting local leadership and knowledge at the forefront to effectively tackle the pressing challenges of climate change and other emerging threats." 

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GPPAC may well be a future candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The question is, however, whether GPPAC has sufficient civil society power at its disposal both to turn rulers away from violence and toward "peace keeping" and to reduce violence at the structural and systemic level. 

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Peace Brigades (PB): Brigade members alongside war victims and peace activists 

The organization 'Peace Brigades' (PB) was founded in 1982 and is another international NGO committed to peace and human rights. Its special feature is the deployment of Peace Brigades and the support of local peace workers in conflict zones: 

"We provide protection, support and recognition to local human rights defenders who work in areas of repression and conflict and have requested our support. We believe that lasting transformation of conflicts cannot come from outside, but must be based on the capacity and desires of local people. We avoid imposing, interfering or getting directly involved in the work of the people we accompany. Our work is effective because we take an integrated approach, combining a presence alongside human rights defenders on the ground with an extensive network of international support." (210) 

Peace Brigades have worked in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, North America, Haiti, Nepal, the Balkans, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico and Nepal. They collaborate with local human rights defenders to open spaces for peace processes, transform violent conflicts, provide targeted legal advice, and save lives through international presence in conflict zones. Their work is shaped by the spirit of peaceful engagement ("non-violence", "non-partisanship") in a civil society. (211)

The work of Peace Brigade members is not without danger, just as the engagement of local human rights activists carries a high level of risk: 

"In countries where communities are subject to violent conflict, intimidation or repression, human rights defenders can be key agents for resistance and change, whose work has the potential to bring about the long-term development of democratic civil society and ultimately peace. This often places them at risk, making them targets for threats, abductions, forced disappearance or assassination, and other insidious kinds of attack, including public stigmatisation, defamation or criminal proceedings on trumped up charges." (212)

To date, the idea of the Peace Brigades is unique in scope, as is its highly professional way to support peace and human rights activists in conflict zones, to attract international attention to conflicts, and to protect threatened people. 

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Summary assessment: The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflicts (GPPAC), and Peace Brigades (PB) are three international NGOs that deploy peaceful means in different ways to achieve peacekeeping and war prevention. ICAN fights for an international ban on nuclear weapons in cooperation with the UN. GPPAC organizes projects for preventive peacekeeping, and PB supports local peace activists and human rights activists with its peace brigades. May the world pay attention and provide financial and political support for their valuable peace work, for their commitment and for their resistance against systemic violence.

Public Denunciation of the Peace Issue -

On the Social Treatment of Appeals for Peace on the War in Ukraine (Moegling 2024c)

Irrespective of the question of whether the Russian Federation bears sole responsibility for the military escalation in Ukraine or whether NATO or influential NATO states, such as the United States or Great Britain, are also partly to blame for the outbreak of war, various peace initiatives attempted to find support in the peace movement and in broader circles of the population with the help of appeals and calls. The means to this end were, in particular, lists of signatories on Internet platforms or websites, sometimes combined with calls for rallies and conferences.
Particularly worthy of mention are Alice Schwarzer's open letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, with over 500,000 signatures, and the 'Manifesto for Peace' initiated jointly by Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht, with almost 1.000,000 signatures on the Change.org Internet platform (as of February 2025). 
The public reception of this peace action, which reached broader sections of the population, especially by representatives of government policy, political scientists and the media, will be written about in more detail below.
In addition, there was an international appeal by the International Peace Bureau (IPB) at Christmas 2022/23, which was signed by only a few thousand international peace activists. Also a Peace Appeal with first signatories from 10 countries on the internet platform 'Action Network' found so far only a little over 3000 international signatories (as of April 2023).

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Appeal for Peace

A German-Austrian appeal, the 'Appell für den Frieden' (Appeal for Peace), found a little more signatures in the international context with over 7000 signatures so far. It features a peace ecology approach and contains three demands:
National governments and transnational institutions should advocate for three peace-political and -ecological measures in particular: 
1. diplomatic initiatives would have to take priority in the war in Ukraine, at the latest from now on. To this end, it is demanded that an international high-ranking and highly legitimized negotiating commission headed by the UN Secretary General would have to clear the way for ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine as a prerequisite for peace negotiations. The German and Austrian governments should strongly advocate such a peace initiative to the UN Secretary General.
2. In future climate protection negotiations, rules and guidelines should be drawn up for more binding consideration of military-related CO2 emissions, obliging individual states to be more transparent. This should include effective controls and strict sanctions for failure to take into account military-related CO2 emissions at home and abroad in national CO2 balances. 
3. The war in Ukraine is currently being instrumentalized for the international arms build-up spiral. In addition, almost all major arms control and disarmament treaties have been terminated or suspended by the USA and the Russian Federation. In contrast, controlled and coordinated disarmament negotiations should be called for through the UN. In particular, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, successfully introduced by ICAN to the UN, should be signed, ratified and implemented by the states to be addressed in a mutually coordinated and monitored process. (Austria has already ratified the treaty).
Common to all these different peace appeals is that such peace policy initiatives have been subjected to extreme 'shitstorms' in social media, in addition to endorsements. The authors also had to listen to or read abusive criticism and personal insults as well as threats. Here we can see a brutalization of the public debate now also around peace policy content via social media, such as Facebook or Twitter.
One also has the impression that organized forces are using the protection of anonymity and their aliases to discredit people advocating ceasefires and peace negotiations as Putin's servants, traitors to the Ukrainian people, paid by Putin and the like.

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Build peace!

The latest peace initiative (in April 2023) was penned by SPD politicians, including the eldest son of Willy and Ruth Brandt, Peter Brandt (historian and retired professor), Reiner Braun (International Peace Office), Reiner Hoffmann (former chairman of the DGB) and Michael Müller (federal chairman of the Naturefriends). This appeal was published in two German newspapers under the title "Build Peace! Ceasefire and Common Security Now!" with 200 signatories, among them the former Bundestag president Thierse, the ex-minister of justice Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin, Dr. Margot Käßmann, theologian and former chairman of the council of the EKD, and EX-EU-Commissar Verheugen as well as several political scientists. In this appeal, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is asked to form a negotiating commission together with France and in particular the states together with France in particular Brazil, China, India and Indonesia, which should bring about a ceasefire and peace negotiations in Ukraine. The text states " (...) With each passing day, the danger of the expansion of hostilities grows. The shadow of a nuclear war lies over Europe. But the world must not slide into a new great war. The world needs peace. The most important thing is to do everything for a quick cease-fire, to stop the Russian war of aggression and to find the way to negotiations.
The war has turned into a bloody war of positions in which there are only losers. A large part of our citizens do not want to see a spiral of violence without end. Instead of the dominance of the military, we need the language of diplomacy and peace. (...)" [213]
The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany had already attracted attention with his drastic statements (about Chancellor Scholz: "insulted liver sausage") and his exorbitant demands for arms deliveries for Ukraine, which were made with great audacity. He also immediately intervened here via Twitter in a tone that certainly does not help Ukraine. Andrij Melnyk, promoted to deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, wrote on Twitter that Brandt and Co. should go to hell with their "senile ideas" of "achieving a quick ceasefire" and "making peace only with Russia." [214] No further comment on this .... 

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Signing opportunities for ceasefire and peace negotiations in Ukraine:

- Open letter to the German Chancellor
              https://www.change.org/p/offener-brief-an-bundeskanzler-scholz
- Manifesto for Peace
              https://www.change.org/p/manifest-f%C3%BCr-frieden (almost 1 million signatures!)
- Christmas Appeal
              https://www.christmasappeal.ipb.org/german-de/
              (ended in early 2023)
- Peace Appeal
              https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/appeal-for-peace/ (finished at the end of 2024)
- German-Austrian Appeal for Peace: The killing in Ukraine must be stopped!
              https://chng.it/N2ggCS5Q (finished at the end of 2024) 

 - Berliner Appell, Gegen neue Mittelstreckenwaffen und für eine friedliche Welt, 
                https://nie-wieder-krieg.org/

- Gegen die nukleare Bedrohung, https://www.change.org/p/gegen-die-atomare-bedrohung

Furthermore, similar peace initiatives are known in the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Mexico, Brazil, the Czech Republic and Italy, among others. 

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The propagandistic campaign against the 'Manifesto for Peace'.

The Schwarzer and Schwarzer/Wagenknecht campaigns were able to draw on large networks and publication media that had been built up over many years. This explains - in addition to the high profile of the two personalities - the high number of signatories of these two peace texts.
Therefore, especially the 'Manifesto for Peace', which was linked to a large rally at the Brandenburg Gate, was the focus of public reactions.
The 'Manifesto for Peace' spoke out against an escalating continuation of the war in Ukraine and for immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations. It ends with the demand to the German Chancellor:
"We call on the German Chancellor to stop the escalation of arms deliveries. Now! He should lead a strong alliance for a ceasefire and peace negotiations at both the German and European levels. Now! Because every day lost costs up to 1,000 more lives - and brings us closer to a 3rd world war." 
Four examples will now illustrate how attempts were made to falsify the text and the intentions of the two initiators and to discredit them.

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1) The authors were accused in the media and by leading politicians of having written in the text of the manifesto that they were fundamentally opposed to the supply of weapons to support the self-defense of Ukraine under attack. (215) 

The former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, accordingly also expressed himself pejoratively: "Hello you two Putin's stooges:inside @SWagenknecht & #Schwarzer, you can roll up your manifesto for betrayal of Ukrainians & throw it straight into the trash garbage can at the Brandenburg Gate." (216)
But the fact is: In the text, the authors oppose the "escalation of arms deliveries," which is a different matter. This is about the crossing of 'red lines' that can lead to an uncontrollable escalation dynamic. Jürgen Habermas addressed this with his naming of tipping points, a 'point of no return'. (217)
2. The authors have been accused of a perpetrator-victim reversal. This accusation is first made by the German political scientist Herfried Münkler (218) and then repeated mantra-like by various politicians. Schwarzer/Wagenknecht are accused of primarily seeing NATO and the West as the aggressor and the Russian Federation as the victim. This is also a misrepresentation, since the text of the manifesto clearly names the Russian aggressor. There it clearly states, "The Ukrainian people brutally invaded by Russia need our solidarity." (219)
Nevertheless, political scientist Münkler denounces the text as an "unconscionable manifesto" and Schwarzer/Wagenknecht "are doing Putin's business with ignorant talk." (220)  (219)
3. Schwarzer/Wagenknecht are accused of wanting to hand over Ukraine to the Russian Federation via a Russian dictatorship peace. According to Foreign Minister Baerbock: "A dictatorial peace, as some are now calling for, that is not peace. Rather, it would be the subjugation of Ukraine to Russia." (220)  But the fact is that the manifesto states:
"Negotiating does not mean capitulating. Negotiating means compromising, on both sides. With the aim of preventing further hundreds of thousands of deaths and worse. That's what we think too, that's what half of the German population thinks. It is time to listen to us!" (223)  Such a formulation, however, is far from acceptance of a 'dictatorship peace'.

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4) Schwarzer/Wagenknecht were accused of not distinguishing themselves from right-wing extremism and of accepting that right-wing extremists would take part in the manifesto-related rally. (224). This was also the verdict of 'Der Spiegel': "At the so-called peace demonstration in Berlin on Saturday, the contours of what Sahra Wagenknecht is actually striving for became apparent: a pro-Russian, anti-American, nationally oriented rallying movement. The AfD is reacting delightedly." (225)  Apart from the fact that it is impossible to prevent individual right-wing extremists from mingling with the crowd at a rally attended by more than 10,000 people, however, this accusation is also based on a false statement. For example, it is publicly documented via video recording that Sahra Wagenknecht, in her speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, very clearly distanced herself from right-wing extremist participation with the following words:
"Of course, neo-Nazis and Reich citizens, who stand in the tradition of regimes responsible for the worst world wars in human history, have no place at our peace rally."  (226)
Green Party co-chairman Omid Nouripour also demagogically distances himself in this direction and insinuates that the chairman of the AFD is one of the first signatories of the manifesto: "The chairman of the AfD is one of the first signatories of the manifesto. The Left Party must ask itself how it wants to deal with the fact that one of its best-known faces signs papers together with AfD chairmen." (227)  This statement is also wrong, because the AfD chairman is not one of the 69 first signers, but had mixed himself among the numerous co-signers, which certainly cannot be prevented in an open signing situation like at Change.org.

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Conclusion

Peace activist Bernhard Trautvetter sums up the criticism of society's handling of the 'Manifesto for Peace' and the campaign against the peace movement as a whole in his own way:
"The campaign against the peace movement is based on invalid assertions, it corrodes democratic structures by excluding democrats, it strengthens war profiteers such as the arms corporations in the NATO states as well as nationalists such as those in the AfD, to which it gives attention by claiming that there is an alliance with their participation, it valorizes militarism by taking up its narratives. the campaign against the peace movement goes against the vital interests of people not only in our country, because it increases tensions and the risks associated with the escalation of violence. And it distracts from many worldwide violations of international law in which NATO states are actively involved, for example, with the formulation that one is against war, as if there were no other wars in, say, the wider Gulf region or in Africa." (228)
Despite the repeated denials by Wagenknecht/ Schwarzer and other initial signatories of the 'Manifesto for Peace', the four false statements addressed here are permanently repeated by authoritative politicians, political scientists and the media. In particular, the reporting of this part of the bourgeois press is not an expression of independent and critical reporting, but rather evokes memories of 'embedded journalism'. In contrast, the media, as the self-appointed fourth authority in democracy, must be expected to weigh arguments of contrary peace policy positions independently and critically. All forms of 'embedded journalism' with elements of war propaganda and denigration of dissenters contradict the media's self-claim as the fourth power in a democracy -  on the contrary, this represents an influence to undermine existing democratic structures. (229)

Notes

(Chapter 1.4)

(Bibliography see at the bottom at this page)
 

(84) The remainder of this chapter draws on, among other things, the remarks in Moegling (2020b) on arms exports in areas of tension, and parts of this contribution are adopted in modified form.

(85) Eisenhower, Dwight (1961)

(86) Cf. on the efficiency of investments in the arms industry: Stocker, Franz (2020).

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(87) For example, according to a Greenpeace survey published in 2019, 81% oppose arms exports to countries involved in the Yemen war. Cf. https://www.dw.com/de/umfrage-deutsche-gegen-waffenexporte/a-49169332, 6/13/2019, 18.2.21. According to another representative poll by the opinion research institute YouGov, 64 percent of respondents generally oppose arms exports. 80% of respondents voted against arms deliveries to war and crisis zones. 83% of respondents opposed the export of armaments to Turkey. See https://www.welt.de/newsticker/news1/article176788904/Umfragen-Deutliche-Mehrheit-der-Deutschen-ist-gegen-Verkauf-von-Waffen-an-andere-Staaten.html, 5/29/2018, 18.2.21.

(88) Nepo, Sara, 2012, The Iran-Iraq war 1980-1988. the balance politics of the great powers. In: file:///C:/Users/Klaus_neu/Downloads/2222-2770-1-PB.pdf, 1.3.2013.

(89) ATT of the UN, reprinted in German translation in: German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) 2020, 49ff.

(90) Data according to https://thearmstradetreaty.org/treaty-status.html?templateId=209883, as of 26.2.2025. 

(91) https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-04/nra-waffenhandel-usa-donald-trump-un-vertrag-att-waffenexport, 5/29/20.

(92) For the complete "Common Position of the Councils" (2008/ 2019), see Annex 2 in the Military Equipment Export Report 2019, op. cit. p.43ff.

(93) Vogel (2015)

(94) Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020), 6.

(95) Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020), 10.

(96) Vogel (2015), n.d.

(97) Cf. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/krwaffkontrg/__27.html, as last amended 27.6.2020.

(98) Cornerstones for the introduction of post-shipment controls on German arms exports. In: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020, 42f). It should be noted here that, in its own assessment, the Federal Republic of Germany was the only EU country in 2019 to have attempted systematic post-shipment controls at all. Cf. Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020, 14). 

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(99) Cf. Wälterlin, Urs, (2018).

 (100) Cf. http://www.zeit.de/news/2018-03/12/mehr-waffenimporte-in-den-mittleren-osten-und-nach-indien-180312-99-441610, 12.3.18 and https://www.sipri.org/news/press-release/2018/

asia-and-middle-east-lead-rising-trend-arms-imports-us-exports-grow-significantly-says-sipri, 3/13/2018.

(101) See SIPRI data at https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2019/global-arms-industry-rankings-sales-46-cent-worldwide-and-us-companies-dominate-top-5; 9.12.19, 9.12.19.

(102) Steinberg (2013).

(103) SIPRI (2018).

(104) SIPRI Yearbook (2020a, 13). 

(105) Cf. SIPRI (2020, 12).

(106) Cf. Knipp (2020).

(107) Cf: Libya: the borderless conflict? In: https://www.daserste.de/information/politik-weltgeschehen/weltspiegel/libyen-180.html, 19.1.20, 21.2.21.

(108) Cf. Salzen, v. (2020). 

(109) The Left in the European Parliament, 2020, arms exports/ arms exports. In:https://www.dielinke-europa.eu/de/article/8988.waffenexporte-ruestungsexporte.html, n.d.

(110) Cf. SIPRI (2020a, 13).

(111) European Peace Facility. An extrabudgetary EU fund for peacebuilding and strengthening international security. In: https://op.europa.eu/de/publication-detail/-/publication/b678ff59-7f34-11e8-ac6a-01aa75ed71a1/language-de/format-PDF, 6/13/2018, 21.2.21

(112) Cf. for a critical examination of the EPF: Bergmann/Furness (2019) and: European Military Facility poses significant risks to peace. Press statement by 'Ohne Rüstung leben' together with 17 other organizations. In: https://www.ohne-ruestung-leben.de/nachrichten/article/offener-brief-europaeische-militaer-friedens-fazilitaet-erhebliche-risiken-329.html, 8.10.19
(113) Cf. Germany exports significantly more war weapons. In: https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2020-07/waffenexporte-ruestungsindustrie-kriegswaffen-deutschland, 14.7.20, 21.2.21.

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(114) All figures tabulated from: Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020, 8 u. 22).

(115) Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (ed.) (2020, 24), the level of collection permits ibid, p.23.
(116) Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (Hrsg.) (2024):  

Vorläufige Rüstungsexportzahlen für das Jahr 2024 veröffentlicht und Rüstungsexportbericht für das Jahr 2023 verabschiedet. In:

https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Pressemitteilungen/2024/12/20241218-vorlaeufige-ruestungsexportzahlen-2024-ruestungsexportbericht-2023.html#:~:text=Dezember%202024%20sind%20nach%20vorl%C3%A4ufigen,Euro%20f%C3%BCr%20sonstige%20R%C3%BCstungsg%C3%BCter%20zusammen. 18.12.2024.

(117) Bickel (2018, n.d.). 

(118) Turkey receives more than one-third of German arms exports. dpa report, 6/23/20, in: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/tuerkei-erhielt-mehr-als-ein-drittel-der-deutschen-waffenexporte-a-52c320a4-147c-4b92-8a35-9fcfe1dd27a8, 6/23/20.

(119) Turkey receives more than one-third of Germany's arms exports. dpa news release, 6/23/20, in: op. cit.

(120) Die Linke, Business with War Weapons Booming. In: https://www.sevimdagdelen.de/geschaeft-mit-kriegswaffen-boomt/, 16.7.20, 22.2.21.

(121) Cf. in more detail on the Yemen war in Reimann (2020b).

(122) Cf. Bickel (2018, n.d.).

(123) Rüstungsexporte: Deutschland liefert Rüstungsgüter für 1,2 Milliarden an Yemen-Allianz, In: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-04/ruestungsexporte-jemen-krieg-deutschland-allianz, 1.4.20.
(124)  Rüstungsexporte: Deutschland liefert Rüstungsgüter für 1,2 Milliarden an Jemen-Allianz, In: a.a.O., 1.4.20. 

(125) Reimann (2020b, o.p.).

(126) Cf. https://www.mena-watch.com/im-jemen-sind-bis-zu-85-000-kinder-verhungert/, 8.10.2019.

(127) https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/italienische-rheinmetall-tochter-muss-bombenlieferungen-stoppen,RXsavKn, 1.8.2019, 1.8.2019.

(128) Greenpeace (ed.) (2020, 29).
(129) Former U.S. Vice President Cheney was vice president of the Halliburton corporation from 2001-2009, which profited through its companies as equipment suppliers and transportation contractors from the 2nd Iraq War taking place during that time.

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(130) "Furthermore, a long-term contracting relationship can lead to the 'capture' of the contracting process by the private firms and even to corruption. The close relationship between contractor and customer can create a 'revolving door' between government and industry, with senior personnel often moving from one to the other, and can result in a high degree of lobbying power for firms intimately connected with government activity." (Perlo-Freeman/Sköns 2008, 15).

(131) Cf. Vogel (2015, n.d.).

(132) Cf. Danner (2019); in the meantime, by the way, Kujat fell victim to a power struggle between two major investors and had to leave this position again.

(133) Cf. Eglau (2019) 

(134) The following quote comes from a 2008 interview with Joseph Stiglitz by Stephan Kaufmann in the Berliner Zeitung (Stiglitz 2008).

(135) Naím (2014, 118).

(136) Cf. Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008, 1).

(137) Cf. Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008, 2).

(138) Perlo-Freeman/Sköns (2008, 13).

(139) Cf. also the corresponding chapter 'War sells': The Bundeswehr. in Engartner's book (2016, 109ff.).

(140) https://www.worldvision.de/pressemitteilungen/2018/05/22/safe-schools-declaration,o.D, 23.5.18.
(141) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

(142) Among other things, the Conflict Prevention Center (CPC) and the CSCE Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC) were established in Vienna.

(143) Cf. https://www.wdr.de/tv/applications/daserste/monitor/pdf/2017/manuskript-milliardenschwere-aufruestung.pdf, p.1, n.d., 5.4.2018.

(144) Cf. in more detail ch. 1.4.1.5.

(145) In: http://www.rp-online.de/politik/ausland/ruestungsausgaben-steigen-weltweit-usa-spitzenreiter-aid-1.7550249, o.D., 2.5.18, cf. tab.1.
(146) Root (2018).

(147) Cf. Wurzel (2018).

(148) Cf. Schiltz (2021).

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(149) In: https://www.icanw.de/neuigkeiten/msc-abschreckungspolitik-treibt-welt-an-den-abrgund/, 2/15/2018, 3/3/2018.

(150) Cf. Rötzer (2019).

(151) Cf. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3nnaa/trump-tiny-nukesZitat, 5.3.2018.
(152) Cf. Saalmann (2021) 

(153) In: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/donald-trump-asked-why-us-cant-use-nuclear-weapons-if-he-becomes/, 5.3.2018.

(154) Cf. Wagner (2021)
(155) Cf. for 2003: https://www.landmine.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Publi/broschuere2003.pdf, 7/24/2018 and in comparison for 2016: https://handicap-international.de/sites/de/files/faktenblatt_landminen_3-2016.pdf, 7/24/18.
(156) See, e.g., the U.S. 'Project Maven' in which Google employees are cooperating with the U.S. Department of Defense, according to the New York Times and Taz: http://www.taz.de/Googles-Zusammenarbeit -US-Militaer/!5510134/, 3.6.2018.
(157) Cf. the article by Conger/Cameron (2018).
(158) Adani (2018).
(159) https://www.icrac.net/icrac-statement-at-the-april-2018-ccw-gge/, 9/4/2018, 4/6/2018.
(160) Galtung (2004).

(161) Sonnabend (2010).

(162) Cf. Fraunhofer Institute (2018).

(163) Cf. Langels, Otto (2017): The largest chemical attack in history. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/agent-orange-im-vietnamkrieg-der-groesste-chemie-angriff.932.de.html?dram:article_id=378270, 7.2.17, 9.7.19.

(164) Cf. ICAN (n.d.).

(165) Retrieved from: https://www.ippnw.de/atomwaffen/humanitaere-folgen/atomtests/artikel/de/millionen-krebstote-durch-atomtests.html, No Date, July 13, 2019.

(166) Cf. Reimann (2021, n.D.)

(167) Cf. Leukefeld (2019, 162f.).

(168) Leukefeld (2019, 163).

(169) Cf. Leukefeld (2019, 164) on an analysis carried out by Frieder Wagner of the 
Mode of action of uranium munitions.

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(170) Gelau (2018).

(171) Cf. Braun (2019, 4).

(172) Cf. Trautvetter (2021)

(173) Cf. Krebs (2019)

(174) In: https://handicap-international.de/sites/de/files/faktenblatt_landminen_3-2016.pdf, 12/2015, 30/11/2019.

(175) See Klein (2012, 2019) for more detail on the connection between capitalism and climate destruction.

(176) Klare (2015).

(177) Peil (2019).

(178) Braun/Müller (2018), cf. also the lecture given by Michael Müller (Chairman of the Naturefriends of Germany, NFD) in December 2018 at the 25th Peace Council in Kassel (Müller 2019).

(179) Cf. Braun (2019, 3).
(180) Cf. on the establishment of UN-controlled global police structures chapter 5.6.
(181) Cf. on the use of CIA-controlled secret armies in Latin America and in Europe Chomsky (1999, 24ff.) and for more detailed evidence of the operation of secret armies in Western Europe the doctoral thesis by Ganser (2005/2016). While Ganser later formulated partly unsubstantiated theses, e.g. on 9/11, his approach here is transparent and can be regarded as scientifically appropriate.
(182) In the 1995 Bosnian war, 400 Blue Helmet soldiers were abused by the Serbs as human shields against NATO attacks (see, e.g., the documentary at https://www.lr-online.de/nachrichten/hintergrund-menschliche-schutzschilde-sind-kriegsverbrechen_aid-2683689, July 31, 2006, 8/20/2018).
(183) This chapter is based on Moegling (2019 d); the article has been revised and expanded on the basis of additional reader comments. I would like to thank the corresponding readers for their contributions to the discussion, which have led to some further considerations.
(184) With regard to the definition given here, I have referred to my own reflections as well as to corresponding thoughts in Pörksen (2000), among others.
(185) This was the second Italian war of liberation.
(186) From: Suttner (1889), chapter 1.
(187) Cf. Ultsch/Vieregge (2016).
(188) EU Parliament press release justifying the task force, after Hofbauer (2019).
(189) See also Trautvetter (2019b) on the discrediting of Russia in the media. 
(190) Cf. Listl (2019). 
(191) In: https://rp-online.de/politik/proteste-in-den-usa_aid-8308577, 30 Apr. 2000, 29 Oct. 2019.
(192) See, among others, Vensky (2009).

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(193) In addition to my own observations and categorizations of the Easter March movement, the following sources were used: Butterwegge (1990), https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostermarsch, 8/13/2019, 10/28/2019 and https://www.atomwaffena-z.info/initiativen/geschichte-der-anti-atom-bewegung/artikel/f2082e13bb/die-ostermarsch-bewegung.html, 2019, 10/28/19 and http://archiv.friedenskooperative.de/netzwerk/omhist.htm, n.d., 10/28/2019.
(194) For figures used here, see https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/der-erste-golfkrieg.871.de.html?dram:article_id=127099, 9/22/2010, 10/29/2019, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erster_Golfkrieg#cite_note-92, 10/14/2019, 10/29/2019 and https://www.dw.com/de/vor-20-jahren-endete-der-erste-golfkrieg/a-3577432, 8/20/2008, 10/29/19.
(195) For facts used here, see https://pauls-domain.de/Medinfos_1984-1993/1992-02%20%20Irak-%201%20Jahr%20nach%20dem%20Golfkrieg.pdf, Feb. 1992, Oct. 29, 2019, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweiter_Golfkrieg, May 19, 2005, Oct. 29, 2019 and https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/irak-der-golfkrieg-1991-116582.html, Feb. 24, 2001, Oct. 29, 2019.
(196) Cf. Bittner/Drieschner (2003).
(197) Cf. https://www.lpb-bw.de/irak_krieg.html, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019.
(198) https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/krieg-ist-massenmord-zigtausende-protestieren-in-ganz-europa-a-241716.html, 22 MAR. 2003, 30 OCT. 2019.
(199) Cf. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/krieg-ist-massenmord-zigtausende-protestieren-in-ganz-europa-a-241716.html, 22 Mar. 2003, 30 Oct. 2019.
(200) Strutynski (2017b, 177).
(201) Data extracted from ICAN English language home page (https://www.icanw.org/campaign/campaign-overview/), n.d., on 30 Oct. 2019.
(202) In: https://www.icanw.org/campaign/campaign-overview/, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019.
(203) In: https://www.icanw.de/grunde-fur-ein-verbot/verbotsvertrag/, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019.
(204) GPPAC (2015, 4).
(205) GPPAC (2015, 6).
(206) Z.B. UN Security Council Resolution 2171 on Conflict Prevention, UN General Assembly Resolution 66 /290 on Human Security.
(207) GPPAC (2015, 11).
(208) Cf. GPPAC (2015, 11ff.).

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(209) See for a fuller account of these GPPAC activities https://www.gppac.net/what-we-do, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019.
(210) In: https://www.peacebrigades.org/en/about-pbi, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019.
(211) See https://www.peacebrigades.org/en/about-pbi, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019. 

(212) In: https://www.peacebrigades.org/en/people-we-protect, n.d., Oct. 30, 2019. 
(213) https://www.naturfreunde.de/frieden-schaffen-waffenstillstand-und-gemeinsame-sicherheit-jetzt, o.D., 1.4.2023. 
(214) https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/peter-brandt-initiiert-friedensappell-prominente-spd-mitglieder-unterschreiben-100.html, 1.4.2023, 1.4.2023. 
(215) See, e.g., https://www.rnd.de/politik/manifest-fuer-frieden-junge-politiker-kontern-petition-von-wagenknecht-und-schwarzer-LDP5L5PETFBXJOEEHGMT4HSCY4.html, 2/24/2023, 3/31/2023, or https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/open-source/kommentar-meinung-krieg-waffenlieferungen-ukraine-konflikt-ist-das-manifest-fuer-frieden-ein-manifest-der-unterwerfung-li.321476, 2/25/2023. 

(216) https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/annalena-baerbock-schmettert-ukraine-vorstoss-von-wagenknecht-und-schwarzer-ab-manifest-fuer-frieden-li.316625,11.2.2023, 30.3.2023.
(217) See his interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, where he argues for parallel political, humanitarian, and military support for Ukraine and for pushing ceasefire and peace negotiations in the sense of a dual strategy: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/juergen-habermas-ukraine-sz-verhandlungen-e159105/?reduced=true, 2/14/2023, accessed 3/6/2023, (behind a paywall).
(218) Cf. https://rp-online.de/politik/deutschland/herfried-muenkler-nennt-wagenknecht-schwarzer-manifest-verlogen_aid-84912697, 2/14/2023, 3/31/2023.
(219) https://www.change.org/p/manifest-f%C3%BCr-frieden 

(220) https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/gewissenloses-manifest-berliner-politologe-herfried-muenkler-verurteilt-friedensaufruf-von-alice-schwarzer-und-sahra-wagenknecht-li.317574, 2/14/2023, 3/30/2023.

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(221) Matthias Kreck critically examines Herfried Münkler's theses and concludes with the following summary: "Mr. Münkler's criticism does not stand up to scientific analysis. And when, in response to his very thoughtful article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, he wishes his esteemed colleague Habermas were "a bit more of a political scientist," the question arises, in view of the scientific errors I point out in this article, whether colleague Münkler should attend the basic course on good scientific practice."

(222) https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/annalena-baerbock-schmettert-ukraine-vorstoss-von-wagenknecht-und-schwarzer-ab-manifest-fuer-frieden-li.316625, 2/10/2023, 3/30/2023.
(223) https://www.change.org/p/manifest-f%C3%BCr-frieden
(224) Cf. https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/politik/wagenknecht-schwarzer-manifest-frieden-afd-100.html, 3/4/2023, 3/31/2023.
(225) https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/kundgebung-in-berlin-querfront-ja-aber-bitte-diskret-kolumne-a-9abaaaab-c006-4cca-947a-f81465217086 26.2.2023, 31.3,2023.
(226) Quote from YouTube original recording: https://www.google.com/search?q=Sarah+Wagenknechts+speech+at+Brandenburg+Gate+2023+demarcation+against+right-wingextremists&oq=Sarah+Wagenknechts+speech+at+Brandenburg+Gate+2023+demarcation+against+right-wing extremists&aqs=chrome. .69i57.19759j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:7c9181da,vid:I0AwgCYNz5s, 25.3.2023, 30.3.2023.
(227) https://www.rnd.de/politik/omid-nouripour-die-aeusserungen-von-frau-wagenknecht-wirken-in-der-ukraine-wie-hohn-E6KEVS7BMNAN5ABYGVOUZY4KIQ.html , 2/24/2023, 3/31/2023.
(228) Quote from an as yet unpublished manuscript by Bernhard Trautvetter (3/2023): The Strategic Communication of the Military Lobby and the Campaign against the Peace Movement.
(229) In contrast to this, the journalistic approach of Malte Lehming in the Tagesspiegel, who poses five important questions to the peace policy opponents to be weighed up, is to be mentioned positively. Cf. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/deutschland-streitet-uber-den-richtigen-weg-zum-frieden-beide-seiten-mussen-funf-fragen-beantworten-9359345.html, 16.2.2023, 31.3.2023.

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Chapter 2

Impending global scenarios - Disorder as a principle of order

The continued development of the present crisis-like conditions analyzed above and the ensuing negative future scenarios do not have to occur in this form. However, there is a real possibility that they can occur if mankind does not come to a paradigm shift and continues its destructive behavior.

The rapid worldwide spread of the Coronavirus in the spring of 2019 made one thing clear: the world has become a global village due to increasingly efficient transport links and the associated travel activity. A hazard or aberration in one global location can also pose a threat to people who living far apart in a short period of time. At the same time, the handling of the Coronavirus makes it clear how quickly freedoms can be restricted, and how important it is to work together again afterwards to ensure that this does not remain a permanent state.

The philosopher Hans Jonas developed a so-called 'heuristic of fear' and meant by this that possible undesirable developments must be described in all sharpness and threateningness in order to look the potential risks directly in the eye and to decide to recognize one's own responsibility for the planet and the fate of future generations - according to Jonas (1979/2015, 7):

"What can serve as a compass? The foreseen danger itself! In its weather glow from the future, in the appearance of its planetary extent and its human depth, the ethical principles from which the new duties of new power can be derived become discoverable for the very first time."

Of course, this negative vision must be connectable to the developments already analyzed, it must not be taken out of the air. Also, beyond Jonas’ demand for a heuristic of fear, a positive vision of humane development in the sense of a new order should be presented following this. Of course, fear of a catastrophic planetary scenario can motivate global redirection. But the exact direction of a global reorientation and constructive impulses for identity formation can only be conveyed by a positive vision generated from the interplay of socio-theoretical analysis, scientific investigation, ethical maturation and the experiences of alternative political practices as well as a changed approach of working and living together.

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2.1    The military annihilation scenario

If serious disarmament on a global scale does not succeed and military nuclear and hydrogen technology, as well as biological and chemical warfare agents, continue to proliferate, humanity will no longer be safe from an apocalypse. For hundreds of generations, much of planet Earth will be uninhabitable.

Disarmament negotiations on nuclear weapons technologies are currently no longer a serious issue for the existing nuclear powers. On the contrary, all nuclear powers are in the process of modernizing their nuclear weapons and increasing the number of situations in which they can be utilized. If either at present or in the future all nuclear disarmament treaties or nuclear development bans are in effect terminated, the use of nuclear weapons is foreseeable in view of growing geopolitical tensions. No region of the world will be spared from this.

The use of biological and chemical weapons can have incalculable consequences for life on this planet. Once harmful bacteria and viruses are developed and released, it will be difficult to destroy them again or to develop antidotes. The spread of the coronavirus shows the danger of contamination by viruses, even though much more dangerous viruses than the coronavirus are conceivable here.

The events in Syria show how difficult it is to prove the use of chemical weapons in a contested area or to attribute it to a warring party.

Weapons from the 3D printer pose a threat to peace within society and to world peace that can hardly be assessed. In this case, registration and weapons control is no longer possible.

All major powers are currently working intensively on the development of killer robots that, equipped with artificial intelligence, can autonomously decide whether or not to kill people. Even the selection of the groups of people to be killed is left to them. Will humanity be threatened in the future by machines equipped with artificial intelligence? The Geneva Convention and the Hague Regulations on Land Warfare, as well as other stipulations of the international law of war, will become obsolete in the course of the use of killer robots. Everything that moves and is identified as hostile is shot at.

Why is this being worked on? Is there no limit and ethical guideline at all anymore, which protects humans from technologically steered self-destruction? Have the people in power gone mad?

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Furthermore, the means of hybrid warfare will lead to an escalating dimension of warfare if no countermeasures are taken in time. Unthinkable are the consequences if cyber attacks by hostile groups or by an AI taking on a life of its own lead to the hacking of nuclear technology or trigger nuclear first strikes. 

The spread of propaganda and fake news via the Internet, cyber attacks to cripple national infrastructures, targeted intrusions by terrorist groups, and the subsequent use of means of conventional warfare are also likely to be used more often, for example after the war in Ukraine, if international peace resolutions with appropriate sanctions are not reached.

The war between Azerbaijan and Armenia has shown that future wars can only be won with the massive use of drones. Kamikaze drones swoop down on battle tanks. AI-controlled swarms of drones ('loitering weapons') linger in the air for hours and then attack scouted targets in a swarm that can no longer be defended against.

If the UN does not succeed in becoming capable of acting worldwide with regard to the various conflict regions, major powers with hegemonic ambitions will assert themselves in the existing power vacuum and divide the global spheres of influence among themselves again. These are likely to be the United States, China, Russia and possibly Saudi Arabia.

As long as the United Nations has inadequate structures which prevent it from taking effective action against illegal wars, secret armies, human rights violations and staged terror, the destruction of the peace order envisaged by the UN Charter must be expected.

There will increasingly be the formation of 'failed states', more proxy wars of great powers or their alliances. For example, NATO countries have for some time been increasingly weakening the principles and institutions of the UN - according to NATO opponent and controversial Swiss peace researcher Daniele Ganser (2017, 328):

"The historical facts of the last 70 years clearly show that NATO countries have repeatedly attacked other countries and violated the ban on the use of force enshrined in the UN Charter. NATO is not a force for security and stability, but a threat to world peace."

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But - it must be countered - it is not only NATO activities that are problematic. China is trying to strengthen its hegemonic influence in the South China Sea, poses a threat to Taiwan, has long since seized Tibet and destroyed it as an independent state. The Russian Federation is fighting a brutal war of aggression in Ukraine with worldwide consequences. Russia further militarily supported the Syrian dictator, while the U.S. supported the opposition Syrian Armed Forces as well as part of the Kurds. NATO member Turkey is invading Syria and fighting the Kurdish regions in violation of international law. Israel expels Palestinians from their allotted territories, and Palestinians fired rockets at Israel.
The brutal Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 marked the beginning of a murderous war of annihilation in 2024/2025 that will continue to have a negative impact for generations to come. 

Saudi Arabia and Iran are waging a proxy war in Yemen with the cooperation of Western states. India and Pakistan are in military conflict regarding the bombing of terrorist camps in Pakistan and the disputed province of Kashmir. In Mali, West Africa, German and French troops are fighting Islamist terror there. The situation in Venezuela will soon show whether there will be U.S.-led military intervention there. 

Also, the emergence of a new bloc situation is already foreseeable. Russia, which has been rejected by the West, is increasingly turning to the PRC and concluding economic and military agreements there. In the future, the European NATO states on the one side and Russia/China and allied states on the other will be hostile to each other. The USA in the second Trump administration period is increasingly leaving the joint defense pact against Ukraine. The scandal in the Oval Office at the end of February 2025 is an expression of this. An escalating confrontation and the associated military disruption are then in the interests of the respective military-economic complexes and the aggressive-nationalistic forces present in the respective states. 

If the UNO cannot be strengthened and democratized at the same time, then a chaotic state of affairs is foreseeable in the future, where nationalist states, as well as alliances of states, oriented toward regional hegemony permanently wage wars to enforce their interests. Here, the most modern and effective war technology will be used. Above all, the civilian population will suffer. A nuclear conflict is foreseeable - even if the nuclear chain reaction would be triggered by a hacker attack or accidentally.

Apart from this, the globally deployed nuclear power plants pose a latent threat. Not only by the uncertainty of a GAU associated with their operation, but also about the possibility of terrorist attacks or the risk of their operation in war zones, such as in Ukraine.

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Example of the danger of an accidentally triggered Nuclear War

The event at hand occurred during a time of growing political and military tension and could also be relevant to a future military scenario. [1] 

In January 1981, Ronald Reagan, then berating the USSR as the "evil empire", took office as U.S. president. While the Soviet Union had built up the SS-20 nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe, the Americans wanted to deploy Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in accordance with the NATO Double Decision (adopted in December 1979). Military escalation was then within the realm of possibility when a South Korean passenger plane was shot down by Soviet air defense on September 1, 1983. All 269 people on the plane were killed.

In this historically tense situation, 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, an engineer, goes on duty on the evening of September 25, 1983, at a USSR satellite surveillance facility 100 kilometers south of Moscow. Shortly after midnight, at 0:15 Moscow time, a missile alarm goes off. A launch of a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile in North America toward the USSR is reported by the computerized early warning system. Petrov, knowing that the anticipated attack scenarios assume a hail of missiles from various missile bases, decides to report the warning as a false alarm.

But during his phone call to the General Staff, he sees that the computer indicates four more missile launches. He must now decide again whether to report a real attack. This would trigger an immediate massive nuclear backlash from the USSR, which in turn would send nuclear-tipped missiles towards the United States. Petrov is not quite sure but again decides to tell the General Staff that it is another false alarm and that he wants to find out the causes. 

With this, he saved the lives of millions of people. Afterwards, it turns out that his decision was correct and that there was an error in the computer-controlled early warning system. The system had interpreted reflections of sunlight on clouds above a U.S. air force base as missile launches.

It was only after the fall of the USSR that this nuclear risk case became known. Stanislav Petrov later made clear the explosive nature of the situation at the time in his 2006 speech to the United Nations, saying, "The worst thing about that night was that I had massive doubts about whether my decision was right. But fortunately, it was."

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In the future, an accidental nuclear strike is still possible, triggered by either technical or human error. If nuclear arsenals continue to be upgraded in the future, if more states acquire nuclear weapons, then the latent danger of accidentally triggered nuclear war also increases.

Petrov warned until his death in 2017 that a nuclear war would break out and wipe out humanity.

Conclusion: The world is increasingly getting into disorder, respectively economic, political and cultural differences of interest are increasingly settled with violence and military means.

If the UN does not find its true purpose, the international situation of the future will be determined primarily by war, military annihilation of people, environmental destruction and mass exodus.  

In particular, the role of an AI taking on a life of its own poses a major threat. The negative military scenario will assume apocalyptic proportions for billions of people if weapons of mass destruction that can no longer be controlled are used. A spiral of violence will emerge that will hardly be controllable.

2.2 The ecological devastation scenario

"People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?!"

Greta Thunberg (2019) at the UN General Assembly.

If it is not possible to keep the warming of the Earth's atmosphere below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, or even prevent it from rising by two degrees Celsius or more, serious consequences for life on planet Earth are to be expected. [2]

As early as 2008, the German Federal Environment Agency warned of the impending climate crisis with a nuanced reference to ecological tipping points and feedback effects:

"Tipping points carry the risk of drastic, sometimes abrupt climate changes. As a consequence, adaptation measures might not be taken in time, or might be associated with very high effort and extremely high costs. It is therefore imperative to reduce anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. By continuing to emit greenhouse gases, humans are conducting a global experiment with the air envelope of their planet that they do not know exactly how it will turn out. Tipping points in the climate system may occur as early as this century. This is cause for swift and focused action." [3]

How little has happened since then. The danger of abruptly triggering tipping points, with the complex and dramatic consequences, is now much closer. And: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 6th Assessment Report (IPPC 2021a) summarizes the long-term nature of the environmental damage that has already occurred:

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"Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millenia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level."

Different climate scenarios

Assessments of the extent of, for example, temperature rise in the coming decades as well as by the end of the century, or analyses regarding the expected rise in sea level, diverge between the estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate researchers. According to climate scientist David Spratt and emissions trading specialist Ian Dunlop (Spratt/Dunlop 2019, 5) in classifying different research findings:

"In one example, the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report in 2014 projected a sea-level rise of 0.55-0.82 meters by 2100, but said 'levels above the likely range cannot be reliably evaluated.' By way of comparison, the higher of two US Department of Defence scenarios is a two-metre rise by 2100, and the 'extreme' scenario developed by a number of US government agencies is 2.5 metres by 2100.

Another example is the recent IPCC 1.5°C report, which projected that warming would continue at the current rate of ~0.2°C per decade and reach the 1.5°C mark around 2040. However the 1.5°C boundary is likely to be passed in half that time, around 2030, and the 2°C boundary around 2045, due to accelerating anthropogenic emissions, decreased aerosol loading and changing ocean circulation conditions."
If it is possible - according to the IPPC (2021 b, 18) - to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C by 2040, then this would also be possible by the end of the 21st century if the right decisions relevant to the climate are made. However, if the right climate policy decisions cannot be made, escalating global warming with apocalyptic consequences can be expected - according to IPPC (see table 7):

Table 7: The best course and the very likely range in the most negative climate scenario (IPPC 2021b, 18), in degrees Celsius
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    Scenario          near term, 2021-2040          mid-term, 2041-2060          long-term, 2081-2100
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                              best             very likely           best            very likely          best             very likely
                              estimate      range                 estimate     range                 estimate     range
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

   SSP5-8.5           1.6 C.           1.3-1.9 C.          2 .4 C.           1.9-3.0 C.          4.4 C.           3.3-5.7 C.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    

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Determinants of a negative climate scenario

Of course, these differences cannot be decided here. However, in the context of a negative scenario, the more pessimistic assessment should be used. From this, the following developments can then be derived from a holistic perspective that emphasizes thinking in terms of connections and contexts:

One consequence of man-made climate change is the already observable melting of the poles and glaciers, the warming of the oceans, and the incipient flooding of coastal areas, riverbanks, and low-lying regions, especially in the poorer regions of the world, which lack the resources for ecological adaptation measures, such as building dams or changing building standards. 
This is how the World Meteorological Organization (2024) alarmingly summarizes this development for 2023/2024:

"Weather hazards continued to trigger displacement in 2023, showing how climate shocks undermine resilience and create new protection risks among the most vulnerable populations." 

If this development continues, the low-lying regions of the earth will become largely uninhabitable. 

There is no doubt that the melting of the poles and the warming of ocean waters will cause the seawater level to rise. 
However, the average possible rise of 2.5 meters by 2100 does not represent the extreme points of the water level. Especially during storm surges, the increase in seawater level can be several times this value and lead to flooding deep into continental areas. 

Islands and coastal regions, as well as deeper inland areas, will be flooded, destroying the living conditions there and in turn triggering migration. Not only groups of islands will disappear, but also countries, such as Bangladesh and India, will be flooded in large areas and trigger mass migrations. Here, the rise in seawater levels combined with the monsoon rains, which are already increasingly devastating in this region, will have a particularly dangerous effect. [4]

The shift in climatic conditions towards droughts, wildfires, violent storms and massive rainfall will also lead to a change in life on Earth. Vast regions will become uninhabitable. Future average temperatures of 50-60 degrees are expected in the Persian Gulf, so that human life will no longer be possible here for the average population, or will only be possible in artificially cooled rooms. [5] 

Spratt/Dunlop (2019, 6) predict that even if the Paris climate treaties were adhered to, no stable climate development can yet be expected. In particular, climatic feedback effects would make the Earth largely uninhabitable for human civilization by the end of the century:

"With the commitments by nations to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the current path of warming is 3°C or more by 2100. But this figure does not include "long-term" carbon-cycle feedbacks, which are materially relevant now and in the near future due to the unprecedented rate at which human activity is perturbing the climate system. Taking these into account, the Paris path would lead to around 5°C of warming by 2100. Scientists warn that warming of 4°C is incompatible with an organized global community, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

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A negative scenario of such an increasingly heating biosphere must expect increasing forest fires. Large areas of the planet will begin to burn. Rolls of fire driven by massive storm gusts will engulf everything in their path: Trees and bushes, houses, animals and people. Such firestorms will be impossible for humans to control and fight, and will rely on massive rainfall, which we don't know will fall in the very regions that are burning due to climate shifts. The desertification of entire swaths of land is the result of humanitarian, environmental and financial problems on a global scale.

The thawing of the Arctic and Siberian permafrost will lead to a massive increase in global warming through the associated release of carbon dioxide and methane, abruptly intensifying all the processes that interact with it.

If a UN that needs to be strengthened is unable to dissuade unscrupulous governments from  

generation-egoistic destroying the rainforest for the purposes of cattle breeding, soybean cultivation, the search for mineral resources or land speculation,  then this too will not only destroy the lungs of the earth but also cause a drastic climate shift. 

Globally raging wars, consumption of nature and emissions from weapons production and emissions from explosions and fires are worsening the climatic development and at the same time preventing effective measures against the climate dystopia from being taken by the affected regions.

Catastrophic impact on social and political development on a global scale

Mass migration in the sense of mass exodus or migration of peoples will be triggered by the climate shift. In this sense, migration to date can at best be regarded as the tip of the iceberg if billions of people set out to flee in the event of further unhindered global warming. It is not difficult to imagine the conflicts and military confrontations that will result from these upheavals in the struggle for ecologically intact regions. According to the International Peace Institute SIPRI:

"Climate Change poses a new class of security challenges that are confronting societies worldwide. Increased risk of famine, destroyed infrastructure, houses and shelter, and violent conflicts might all be consequences of climate change through gradual changes to ecosystems and extreme weather events." [6]

Global warming will lead to massive crop failures and associated famines. The global agricultural food system will collapse. The struggle for food and survival will lead to massive price increases, looting and military conflict.

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The struggle for drinking water will intensify on the one hand due to increasing droughts and on the other hand due to the prevailing profit-oriented privatization of water sources. Privatized water sources will be guarded by militarily organized security services against raids by groups of thirsty people. In drought areas, people will die of thirst, especially those who no longer have the financial means to buy the scarce and thus more expensive commodity of water.

In other parts of the world, the climate shift will lead to the collision of air masses with extremely different temperatures and to correspondingly devastating storms in the form of tornadoes and hurricanes. Houses, cars, animals and people are whirled through the air and shattered. Skyscrapers collapse, the infrastructure of electricity, internet, water and gas lines is irreparably destroyed. Radioactivity will be released from destroyed nuclear power plants, which will travel around the earth in the atmosphere, rain down and lead to increased cancer rates and deformities in humans and animals.

So far, only a few developments have been mentioned here. Dangers such as temperature change and the resulting redirection of the Gulf Stream, the decrease in the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator, which leads to a weakening of the jet stream, the release of methane bound in the seabed, insect mortality due to the increased use of pesticides in agriculture, the destruction of clean drinking water due to the overfertilization of fields, as well as plastic pollution of the oceans and the death of all life in increasingly larger marine regions are likely to represent additional negative scenarios that will exacerbate the massive problems mentioned.

The question thus is, when the point will be reached from which there is no return to ecological balance spanning over many generations. Here, scientific assessments certainly differ as to whether this point has already been reached or whether this will only occur after a few generations. For example, the renowned scientists and Club of Rome presidents Weizsäcker/Wijkman (2017, 194) summarize in the current Club of Rome study, especially with regard to the connection between ecological disaster, population growth, and irresponsible military and economic behavior:

"There is great urgency. System collapse is a real danger. Evidence of human impact on the planet is evident. Radioactive residues from atmospheric nuclear bomb tests are found everywhere today. CO2 from fossil fuel combustion has changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans: (...) let's not fool ourselves. We are facing enormous challenges due to rapid population growth, overexploitation of resources and the associated pollution, loss of biodiversity, and overall we are experiencing a creeping loss of livelihoods.

The crisis is brought to a head by the ideological belief that the loss of high GDP growth will lead to economic collapse."

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The progression of overpopulation with unchecked growth thinking and consumerism leads to increased ecological exploitation of the Earth system under the conditions of an increasingly overcrowded planet. Hereby decreasing any scruples to use climate-damaging and dangerous resources of the earth, like for example, brown coal, oil or radioactive material. Approaches to organic farming and species-appropriate animal husbandry are being pushed back due to the population pressure from increased factory farming, i.e. the mass torture of animals, as well as the associated nitrate poisoning of soils and groundwater.
Here, however, it is to be expected that it is not population pressure that is primarily responsible for environmental destruction, but in particular the irresponsible consumption of resources by the richer part of the world's population.

Tab. 8: Global income groups/ annual income in purchasing power parity in US dollars | Projected per capita CO2 emissions in 2030 | Factor in relation to the maximum CO2 emissions required for the 1.5-degree target (2.3 tons per capita)  

(compiled according to Roettig 2021) 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Richest 1%/ more than 172,000 | 70 | x 30
| Richest 10%/ 55,000-172,000 | 21 | x 9
| Middle and lower income 40%/ more than 9,800-55,000 | 5 | x 2
| Poorest 50%/ less than 9,800 | 1 | x 0.43

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

According to an OXFAM (2021) study calculating into the future, the richest one percent of the world's population will emit 30 times as much CO2 into the environment in 2030 than it is likely to in order to meet the 1.5-degree target. By contrast, the poorest 10% of the world's population will have an extremely small environmental footprint (see Tables 8 and 9).

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Tab. 9: Environmental footprint and global income groups 
            (compiled according to Roettig 2021)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Global income groups/              Projected per capita CO2 emissions            required for the 

annual income in purchasing    in 2030 Factor in relation to the                    1.5 degree target 

power parity in US dollars          maximum CO2 emissions                              (2.3 tons per capita)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richest 1%/                                                       70                                                                x 30    

more than 172,000 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Richest 10%/                                                      21                                                                x 9

55.000-172.000 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Middle and lower incomes, 40%/                      5                                                                 x 2

more than 9,800-55,000 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Poorest 50%/                                                        1                                                                 x 0,43

less than 9,800
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This trend can be predicted in the absence of drastic climate protection measures and, in particular, curtailment of the lavish lifestyles of the richer part of the world's population.

The violent competition for the use of resources is increasing, the more people have to be satisfied in their basic needs as well especially as in their luxury needs. Not only the struggle for clean drinking water and food but also the struggle for lithium and comparable raw materials, lead to violent conflicts between different groups of people and regions - according to Hans-Jürgen Burchardt:

"Natural disasters and environmental damage have been at the top of the list of causes of flight in recent years, and many forecasts predict that the number of climate displaced persons will rise sharply. Here, too, it is clear that the industrialized nations, as the main perpetrators of climate change, share responsibility for the fact that people are fleeing. Nevertheless, they continue to try to achieve progress and prosperity at the expense of nature. This is particularly perfidious in North-South relations, where nature is often destroyed in the name of environmental protection. For example, after the nuclear phase-out, the German energy turnaround is also made possible by cheap coal imports from Colombia. There, mining is carried out in highly polluting opencast mines, entire communities are forcibly displaced, and human rights violations are commonplace. Even the much-vaunted green economy, which relies on electric mobility, would not be possible without the lithium reserves in the Andes. On the ground, however, lithium mining robs local residents of their livelihoods." [7]

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The war in Ukraine should also be viewed from an imperialist perspective, in which Russia and the USA are trying to divide up the raw material deposits among themselves. The historic dispute between Trump, Vance and Selenskyj in the Oval Office in February 2025 and the negotiations between the Russian and US governments are an expression of this. The global extraction of raw materials due to national border crossings or imperial agreements or imperial wars will by no means be environmentally friendly and climate-friendly. 

Spratt/Dunlop (2019, 9) also describe the societal consequences of a climate shift at the 3-degree level. States and societies will be overwhelmed and come under extreme collective stress:

"Massive nonlinear events in the global environment give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In this scenario, nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious challenges, such as pandemic disease. The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress, including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in agricultural patterns and water availability. The flooding of coastal communities around the world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China has the potential to challenge regional and even national identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible. The social consequences range from increased religious fervor to outright chaos. In this scenario, climate change provokes a permanent shift in the relationship of humankind to nature."

To summarize: Next to the military threat scenario, the ecological threat scenario is the closest and most tangible, which will be exacerbated via the rapidly developing population growth , coupled with the lack of ecological insight and imperial way of life of the rich classes of society. 

What appears particularly threatening here is that the negative consequences of climate change will occur with a time lag in terms of their causation. The factors of these negative developments can also only be changed to the positive again with a time lag. The inertia of climate change means that it is not so much the generations that cause it that feel the consequences, but rather their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. These, in turn, will also no longer experience the drastic positive changes of their possibly changed behavior due to the planetary climate inertia. This fosters a generational egoism that is harmful to the climate and once again emphasizes the need for the current living generations to have a forward-looking responsibility for future generations. This responsibility can be brought into focus by analyzing likely negative scenarios in the absence of radical redirection and reorganization.

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How can politicians and societies still think about increasing budgets earmarked for armaments and the military and for promoting economic growth when such ecological challenges loom in the future? How short-sighted and generationally egotistical must we be if we do not pool all our forces and resources as quickly as possible to avoid the impending ecological collapse?

How strong must the agro-industrial lobbies and interests be that so-called free trade and investment protection agreements are concluded by the EU, such as with the MERCOSUR states or also with Canada (CETA), which - despite protestations to the contrary - represent a de facto carte blanche to damage the biosphere?
And from a peace-ecological perspective: How much time is left to prevent a new world war or permanent war in the context of ecological displacement conflicts and imperial exploitation of raw materials?
Will wars in the context of symmetrical and asymmetrical conflicts become increasingly threatening in relation to the fight against the climate catastrophe that is occurring?
How much power will the global counterforces still have to effectively counter such madness?

It turns out that the holistically conceived context, if it is applied in the context of a negative development, has just as effective a systemic effect in a negative sense, as it does in the case of the interaction of influences towards a positive development. Even in the negative scenario, everything works in conjunction with each other and therefore unfolds a very effective and global development dynamic. 
After reading this chapter, perhaps the despair and fears as well as the assumed responsibility in the actions of the 'Last Generation' and future comparable environmental groups will be more understandable  - even if one does not want to endorse their forms of action.

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2.3 Failed states and the helplessness of the international community 

There is an increasing number of examples of collapsing state systems. ‘Failed states' or 'collapsed states' arise primarily in the peripheries or economically poor countries in the global context. Hussein M. Adam uses the devastating example of Somalia in the early 1990s to describe the characteristics of a failed state:

"The visible collapse of the Somali state has lasted half a decade. In some aspects the country appears to have reverted to its status of the nineteenth century: no internationally recognized polity; no national administration exercising real authority; no formal legal system; no public service; no educational and reliable health system; no police and public security services; no electricity or piped water systems; weak officials serving on a voluntary basis surrounded by disruptive, violent bands of armed youth." [8]
In such collapsed states, the state monopoly on violence breaks down, and violence is exercised decentrally by different groups. The trust of the groups holding a society together in the state's ability to regulate is destroyed due to its longer-term and structurally applied distortions, such as corruption, dictatorship and extreme social differences. This can lead to violent uprisings, regional military revolts, regional rule by warlords or terrorist gangs that oppress and exploit the population. The difference between this and a change of system or a crisis leading to a successor government is particularly the serious destruction of identification with a state system as such and the failure of civil society standards - according to Zartman (1995):

"What distinguishes this scenario from other instances of government change is the inability of civil society to rebound: to fill positions, restore faith, support government, and rally around the successor. The maimed pieces into which the contracting regime has cut society do not come back together under a common identity, working together, sharing resources. The whole cannot be reassembled and instead the components of society oppose the center and fend for themselves on the local level. Organization, participation, security, and allocation fall into the hands of those who will fight for it - warlords and gang leaders, often using the ethnic principle as a source of identity and control in the absence of anything else." [9]

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Certainly, it must also be asked whether the collapse of states is not also a postcolonial reaction to the arbitrary drawing of state borders regardless of tribal areas and cultural affiliations. It is also possible that the system of the Western nation-state is not the globally generalizable and appropriate model for every region and culture. Here, then, the critique of imposed nation-building and the postcolonial critique meet.

In any case, the breakup of states and the emergence of 'failed states' lead to a longer-term state of insecurity and fear for large parts of the population, to mass murder and torture, and to the subjugation and exploitation of large parts of the population of the original state territory. After a longer period of time, this can lead to new and also regional, smaller state formations, but it can also be left for an unforeseeable period to those who succeed in arming themselves, forming hierarchies and terrorizing regions.
The United Nations has not yet found a way to respond adequately to the case of collapsing states. The horrific massacres of the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, the Islamist-oriented attempts at regional terror in the Arab region, the interference of foreign powers fighting for regional hegemony in Yemen, the unspeakable situation in Afghanistan, and the collaboration of corporations interested in raw materials with rebel groups in Central Africa show the helplessness of the United Nations in dealing with the situation of 'failed states' and 'killing fields'. But robust world police interventions by the United Nations or mandated alliances are necessary to prevent massacres, mass rapes, and uses of torture against civilians, as well as a stay of UN intervention forces until new viable political structures respectful of human rights have formed [10] - according to Michael Walzer:

"An independent UN force, not bound or hindered by the political decisions of individual states, might be the most reliable protector and trustee - if we could be sure that it would protect the right people, in a timely way." [11]

The example of Afghanistan, however, shows in a negative sense what can happen when interventions are conceived primarily in military terms. If, in parallel with military intervention, e.g., by an alliance of states mandated by the UN, appropriate resources are not provided to rebuild a country, human rights problems will only be shifted into the future, conflicts will not be dealt with in civil society, terrorist activities will be nurtured, and the system of the state will collapse once again.

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2.4   Religious fanaticism and terrorism

Terrorist organizations use religious fanaticism to assure total loyalty and self-sacrifice to their organizational members. Increasingly, religious fanaticism is replacing extremist political ideologies because leaders of such organizations can more easily assure their allegiance in this way.

This was the case with the disastrous Christian Crusades, when predatory conquest and geostrategic thinking were cast with Christian motives. This is likewise the case with the Islamist terrorist organizations IS, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda, so that after the terrorist mission and suicide bombing, the reward is promised in paradise. The supposedly divine mission removes any inhibition in killing and justifies any cruelty - after all, it is carried out against devalued and excluded unbelievers or those of a different faith.
This is a terrorist counter-model to the Enlightenment project, which is oriented toward secularization, human rights and humane values. If it was believed for a while that modernization oriented to the Enlightenment would encompass all parts of the world and also eliminate religious traditions, it must now be feared that religiously legitimized dictatorships with a global claim to omnipotence will increase.

If this is coupled with the possession of the atomic bomb, the consequences are incalculable.

Normally, Iran, whose state religion is the Shiite version of Islam, is quite rightly mentioned here. The traditionalist Sunni-oriented and highly armed Saudi Arabia should also be mentioned here. But government activities by the Israeli state can also be observed in this context. Here one must be very careful - especially as a German - when criticizing measures of the Israeli government and look closely and argue in a differentiated manner. In particular, a distinction must be made between the government, the state and the various groups within the Israeli population. Between orthodox Jews, militant settlers in the West Bank and Israeli representatives of the BDS movement [12], there is a big difference to be made in terms of political and cultural assessment.

Israel possesses the atomic bomb in an extremely conflict-ridden and crisis-ridden region full of hatred and religious reservations. A militant Orthodox Jew assassinated Jewish peacemaker, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It would be a very threatening scenario if militant factions of the Jewish Orthodox, whose religious fundamentalism, like the fundamentalism of all corresponding religions, is antithetical to the values of the Enlightenment and human rights, were to gain power in Israel. It would be even more problematic if they were to have a significant share in government power and displace moderate, democratic-minded Israelis in their claim to cultural validity and from positions of sociopolitical relevance.
The radicalization of Christian movements and churches with the goal of a white, patriarchal theocracy could also increase. The so-called 'Theo Bros', consisting of arch-conservative Protestants and Catholics, are spreading from the USA and believe that women should be deprived of the right to vote. The man, as the protector and breadwinner of women and families, should have the sole right to vote. Extremist preachers are increasingly spreading the view that strong male personalities should take over and counteract the feminization of society.
Joel Webbon, pastor in a Texas church and operator of the 'Right Response Ministries' platform, calls for men with backbone and Christian values to take over governments. Brigitte Theißl recognizes a trend in this - according to Theißl (2025) in the Austrian magazine 'der Standard':
“Webbon's publications could be brushed aside as particularly radical outgrowths of Christian nationalism. But the pastor is not an isolated extremist, he is part of an influential network that the US media outlet Mother Jones calls the “Theo Bros”: predominantly young, arch-conservative men who have built up successful online channels, condemn pornography and other sinful temptations and dream of a white Christian theocracy.” 

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But the most explosive constellation in terms of world politics is rooted in the spread of orthodox or Salafist influences of political-militant Islam, which, in addition to people of other faiths, make people of other orientations of the Islamic faith, i.e., Muslims as well, the victims of their attacks and mass murders. These extremist influences are already at work worldwide and are clearly directed against the achievements of the Enlightenment, such as the emancipation of the sexes, human rights, the faith-independent rule of law, and democracy. The negative scenario of worldwide development must be based on an increase in the activity of these Islamist extremists, some of whom are clandestine and operate in separate branches and cells in global Islam, and who also seek to suppress or destroy pacifist currents of Islam and those based on charity, such as certain groups of Sufism.
These aggressive Salafist and terrorist-oriented currents and organizations of political Islam strive for a worldwide state of God and the subjugation or annihilation of dissenters or non-believers. Pluralism in the sense of tolerance in life plans, world views and political concepts is alien to them. They place their religious ideology above state legislation. They are morally on a pre-medieval level but possess modern technologies. This is what makes them dangerous.
But the activities of radical Islam on the internet and in social media also contribute to the radicalization of individual Islamists and often mentally disturbed perpetrators who carry out attacks in Western countries in the form of knife attacks and attacks with cars driven into crowds.

This fact must be analyzed soberly and not glossed over or played down. However, the threat should not be exaggerated either, because then right-wing extremist groups would gain momentum worldwide, and states would tighten their security mechanisms in such a way that the democratic freedoms of citizens would be suppressed. Both tendencies can already be observed at present: Armed right-wing extremists attack and murder Muslims, and Islamist terrorists carry out attacks. States are increasingly restricting democratic freedoms so that what they claim to protect - freedom and democracy - are compromised.

In the present negative scenario, however, it can be assumed that right-wing extremist attacks on Muslims or fellow Jews and Islamist attacks on non-Orthodox Muslims and people of other faiths or non-believers will increase in a mutual spiral of violence and shake the foundations of democratic societies. In this context, the right-wing extremist and racially motivated attacks in Norway, the USA, France, Germany and New Zealand, to which Muslims, Jewish citizens and supporters of a multicultural society fell victim, are probably only the beginning of an - albeit avoidable - development.

It is to be hoped that this negative scenario will not come to pass. This can only be achieved through a well-coordinated and consistent criminal prosecution of the perpetrator groups in a worldwide context via the UN and the transnational or regional security authorities. The perpetrators must also be deprived of their recruiting base by preventing social, economic, political and ecological conditions in which religious legitimations for terrorist acts fall on fertile ground. Democratization in a local, regional and global context and tangible evidence of the benefits of this democratization for human coexistence will also play a decisive role here.
The terrorist attack by Hamas in October 2023, which killed over 1,000 people, and the subsequent disproportionate Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip, which killed between 40,000 and 50,000 people by the beginning of 2025, almost half of them children, shows the drama that arises when geopolitical and religious claims become a disastrous ideological mixture.

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Once again, it becomes clear that the phenomenon under consideration, religiously camouflaged terrorism, can only be understood through a multitude of interacting factors, and that only by working through these various levels will it be possible to find an effective solution to this problem.

2.5   Collapse of the world economy, overpopulation and famines

The economic negative scenario to be presented here first assumes the end of free-market competition in favor of a monopolization of central industries in the hands of huge economic groups, which are economically active worldwide and in the course of a fusion of industrial, banking and speculative capital. In this process, every relevant industry is dominated by a few companies or even by a single corporation.

Corporations, such as Walmart, Nestlé, Goldman Sachs, Coke, VW, General Motors, AT&T, Cargill, Apple, Shell, Amazon, Google, Bayer, Unilever, Shell, Tesla and BlackRock, have now finally asserted themselves in this negative scenario and prevent free-market competition in their industries. As a result of the domination of the industries, prices generally rise and the quality of the products falls. The political course for this is set, among other things, by bought politicians in government offices. The corporations' own media departments generate the corresponding awareness among politicians who cannot yet be bought and among the electorate. Huge legal departments of the corporations successfully fend off any lawsuits. The right of class and collective action has been abolished in many states or has not even been installed. Multilateral economic treaties have installed the right of corporations to sue before special courts representing their interests. The corporations' contractually agreed right to sue is used by them worldwide in the event of impairments to their investment and production activities, for example as a result of a state's environmental laws. The world is in the hands of the corporations, and in this negative vision, any democracies that still exist are only formal and disguise the actual conditions. The democratic state becomes a facade.

But even this system is not stable: The economic success of the privately producing bourgeoisie or the capitalist class - according to the Marxist analysis - however also creates massive economic crises at the same time, which occur due to the rapid technical development of the means of production in the relations of production which become too narrow for this. Highly developed capitalism with modernized means of production and concentrated economic power is able to produce more than can be sold in the form of usable goods and services, i.e. affordable for people. This leads to trade and sales crises. Marx/Engels analyzed the economic chain reaction triggering further crises:

"Bourgeois relations have become too narrow to contain the wealth they produce. – And how does the bourgeoisie surmount these crises? On the one hand, through the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other through the capture of new markets and a more thoroughgoing exploitation of old ones. How exactly? By preparing more comprehensive and devastating crises and diminishing the means for preventing them.” [13]

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World economy as global financial speculation of anonymous actors

Financial speculations with listed securities, mortgage securitizations up to high-dollar risk bets on political and economic developments are already carried out on a gigantic scale. Since profits from the production of goods and the creation of services - exceptions here are the business with drugs, armaments and digital products such as 'war games' - is limited, international finance capital is increasingly turning to financial speculation in a wide variety of forms. Instead of banks investing in real value creation and, for example, providing small or medium-sized businesses with the necessary loans, they tend to speculate with their investors' money and equity capital, as they expect this to result in much higher and faster loans.

Already, the speculative capital that is being moved around the globe digitally is developing many times the volume of capital invested in real value creation.

This trend will intensify in the negative scenario that may occur and will become even more confusing than it already is at present due to the emergence and use of digital currencies or cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ether. In this context, digital currencies will increasingly be used for money laundering in relation to drug deals or protection rackets or illegal arms deals due to the use of pseudo names and stolen identities.

In addition, cryptocurrencies reduce the state's influence on monetary policy, for example, making it more difficult to steer the economy.

Financial speculation represents the postmodern variant of the 'rottenness' of late capitalism. Speculative bubbles are regularly created but are not secured by anything. When they burst, the overlapping involvement of the actors causes them to spill over into the real economy, resulting in the destruction of social order. [14] 

The negative scenario for the globalized economy, which is further developed here, assumes that the crises triggered by financial speculation will become ever more violent and entail ever-greater dislocations in the real economy. If the world community does not succeed in containing global financial speculation, the economic system of world capitalism will become even less regulable than it already is. Societies will be left to the financial speculation of anonymous powers whose only concern is their own profit.

Capitalism, social inequality and world hunger

Although there is tremendous productivity in highly developed capitalism, the available resources are not enough to feed the growing world population. Human rights activist Jean Ziegler (2015, 50) attributes the fact that, according to World Bank estimates, approximately one billion people currently live on less than $1.25 per day, that is, in extreme poverty, to the hegemonic nature of capitalism, to its cannibalistic character:

"The massacre of millions of people caused by malnutrition and hunger is today, at the beginning of the third millennium, a scandalous expression of the struggle of the rich against the poor, a monstrosity, an absurdity that cannot be justified by anything or legitimized by any policy. It is a crime against humanity repeated countless times.

Today, a child under the age of ten dies every five seconds from hunger or a disease caused by malnutrition. In 2014, more people died from hunger than in all the wars fought that year."

Studies by the NGO Oxfam make it clear that the gap between rich and poor is widening. In a study published in 2018, Oxfam summarizes the data collected [15]:
 

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"Globally, seven out of ten people live in a country where income inequality has increased. Wealth inequality has worsened dramatically at the global level, as Oxfam has shown: The richest one percent of the world's population owns more wealth than the bottom 99 percent combined. In 2002, the share of total wealth held by the richest one percent was still 43 percent. (...) 

For its analyses of global inequality, Oxfam uses the figures of the World Wealth Report of the major Swiss bank Credit Suisse and the annual listing of the world's billionaires by Forbes. These show an unbroken trend of growing global wealth concentration. According to the most recent information, only 42 people had the same wealth as the world's poorest 3.7 billion people in 2017."
OXFAM (2025a) summarizes the acceleration of social inequality with the following figures:

• “In 2024, there were 204 new billionaires worldwide. This corresponds to an average of almost four new billionaires per week. There are 2,769 billionaires worldwide.
• The total wealth of billionaires worldwide increased from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in 2024. This corresponds to around 5.7 billion US dollars per day. Thus, the total wealth of billionaires worldwide grew three times faster in 2024 than in 2023.
• For the richest 10 billionaires, wealth grew by an average of 100 million US dollars per day. Even if they were to lose 99 percent of their wealth overnight, they would still remain billionaires.
• In Germany, the total number of billionaires rose by nine to 130 in 2024. Germany has the fourth-highest number of billionaires worldwide.
• The total wealth of all German billionaires rose by $26.8 billion to $625.4 billion in 2024. That's $73 million a day. 
• Oxfam has calculated that 36 percent of the total wealth of billionaires comes from inheritances. In Germany, the figure is as high as 71 percent.
• While the super-rich are getting richer and richer, the number of people living below the World Bank's extended poverty line of $6.85 a day has remained unchanged since 1990 and now stands at almost 3.6 billion.
• For many families, poverty means hunger. Today, 733 million people worldwide are starving – about 152 million more than in 2019.
• The new Oxfam Inequality Report also shows how super-wealth and social inequality can be traced back to the history of colonialism. The economically strong countries in the Global North continue to set the rules that benefit the super-rich and their corporations. They dominate institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, as well as the financial markets. Between 1970 and 2023, governments in the Global South paid $3.3 trillion in interest to creditors in the Global North.”

Serap Altinisik, who is serving as executive CEO of Oxfam Germany in 2025, puts this into context: 
“Every week, four new billionaires are created. At the same time, the number of people suffering from hunger has risen to 733 million in the past five years. The super-rich are getting richer and richer, while there is hardly any progress in the fight against poverty and, for example, Germany is even cutting support for low-income countries. The abyss of inequality continues to widen, with consequences for our democracy. Because wealth goes hand in hand with political power. We see this today at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump: a billionaire president supported by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.” (OXFAM 2025a)

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There is no evidence yet that this unequal wealth distribution will reverse, so it is likely that social inequality in this regard will continue to grow in the future. Even if extreme poverty has declined in recent decades, too many people still live on the brink of starvation, and it is unacceptable that once again social injustice particularly affects women and children in the countries of the poorer South, who - if they have work at all - have to work under worse conditions with inadequate pay than men.
Oxfam sees the cause of social inequality in an economic system that lacks solidarity, in the greed and the desire for enrichment of the small percent of internationally wealthy:

"The structural causes of growing inequality are similar worldwide: our economic system puts the profit interests of a small group above the welfare of the vast majority. This is particularly evident in the fixation on stock profits, tax avoidance, excessive austerity policies and privatization, and the restriction of the rights of civil society and workers. The fixation on short-term profits and dividend payouts has increased sharply in corporate headquarters. In Britain in the 1970s, 10 percent of corporate profits were passed on to shareholders; today the figure is 70 percent. Globally, $1.2 trillion in dividends alone were paid out in 2015." [16]

Moreover, it would be quite possible to feed almost twice the current world population if we did not burn millions of tons of corn and wheat for biofuels, favor the meat industry, engage in land speculation, and turn fields into pastures, as well as destroy food that cannot be sold - according to Jean Ziegler (2015, 52):

"The annual Food Insecurity Report of the Food and Agriculture Organization shows that, with the level of productive forces it has reached, agriculture worldwide could normally feed - by supplying 2200 kilocalories a day for an adult - 12 billion people, almost twice the current world population. Therefore, the massacre of millions of people caused by hunger today is not related to the fact that too little food is produced, but to the access to food. Those who have enough money can eat and live; those who do not have enough money suffer from malnutrition, the diseases that are a consequence of it, and from hunger. A child who dies of hunger today will be murdered."

If this trend is not curbed, the consequences for the future are foreseeable: People in rural areas will be increasingly dispossessed via 'land grabbing', evicted from their properties, and then end up in the slums of the big cities, where they can expect an unsecured existence, mass unemployment, unsanitary conditions and diseases, crime and child prostitution. At the same time, the rich must isolate themselves in areas protected by walls and guards, in enclosed, gated areas that look similar all over the world. Extreme structural heterogeneity as a vision of the future - unalterable? [17]
At the same time, the growing pressure of migration is expected to increase right-wing attitudes and the number of authoritarian governments, which seek to protect locals' privileges above all else and develop group-related hostility towards people fleeing and seeking protection.

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Global population growth and growing ecological footprint

A study by the Club of Rome (v. Weizsäcker/Wijkman et al. 2017) on overpopulation concludes that the Earth is full. The population of the earth will multiply to about 10 billion by 2050 [18], making it difficult for the earth to develop in a way that is oriented toward sustainability. The consequences will be further climatic changes, violent conflicts and flight movements to other regions of the earth. 

The proportion of the world's population living in cities is rising steadily. Between 1900 and 2017, the world's population increased fivefold, but at the same time, the urban population increased 18-fold. By 2030, five billion people will live in cities and suburbs. But the ecological footprint of cities is incomparably greater than the environmental impact of people living in rural areas. The Club of Rome estimates that the ecological burden is four times higher. [19] 
An OXFAM study makes it clear that rich people in particular have an extremely high ecological footprint:
The OXFAM report (2025b) “ ‘The deadly consequences of the climate crisis’ breaks down the consequences of the emissions of the German super-rich and calculates the massive economic damage, crop failures and additional heat-related deaths. The super-rich are responsible for a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gases through their luxury consumption and investments, thus escalating the climate crisis.” 
Since carbon taxes cannot affect these people due to their wealth, it is to be expected that the ecological footprint of the rich will increase even further in the future.

The struggle for raw materials, drinking water, basic foodstuffs and energy, which is being carried out violently, will intensify drastically if no change is made here. Also, more and more people will try to flee from the impoverished and ecologically devastated areas of the world to regions of the world still spared from this. The counter-reactions, i.e. the measures to defend the indigenous rights, are foreseeable and currently already noticeable in many places.

Refugee camps of people fleeing Venezuela are being attacked by locals in Brazil. In the Mediterranean, European countries are drowning refugees in the sea to deter further refugees. In Libya, refugees are kept in camps under inhumane conditions; some are sold as labor slaves or forced into prostitution. In Australia, refugees are intercepted and taken to islands offshore and far away in the Pacific Ocean, where they are imprisoned under guard. In the U.S., children of Mexican refugee families have been separated from their parents and incarcerated separately. These are just a few examples or the harbingers of conditions where multiplying refugee movements will occur as global crises increase.

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2.6 Cyber wars

It is possible that after the U.S. elections in 2017, for the first time in human history, a president came to power in part because of a cyber attack carried out through social media. The corresponding investigation led to results, which were, however, denied by the government elected through this attack.

The same picture emerged when Great Britain left the European Union. The vote required for the 'Brexit' was also manipulated by targeted false reports in the social networks.
Further interventions in the form of targeted disinformation and election advertising by foreign powers also occurred in later elections, e.g. in Romania in 2024 and in the German federal election in 2025.
Moegling/Bläsius (2024) therefore urgently warn of the danger of manipulating digital media in connection with AI: 

"With the help of deepfake techniques and generative AI systems, masses of texts, images and videos can be generated that communicate supposed facts. Such disinformation can be used to manipulate people and destabilize societies. If more and more media content is generated automatically without the possibility of verifying its truthfulness, political action in democratic states will become increasingly difficult. Chaos with social upheaval, riots and possibly civil wars could be the result." 

A newer form of bellicose aggressiveness is evident in cyber attacks, the serious consequences of which should not be underestimated and which may be the dominant form of war in the future. Hacking digital networks, traffic monitoring, electricity supply, nuclear technology or water supply, as well as military technology networks, can have serious consequences ranging from power outages in hospitals to the collapse of private and public transport, to manipulated military attacks and missile launches.

Large-scale digital crimes, such as the tapping of user data from social networks or the digital manipulation of elections and votes, such as the 'Brexit', have already occurred and are difficult to prevent.

Combining cyber espionage with conventional military attacks will lend itself to aggressive nations, both to spy on sensitive data from a nation's defense and security sectors and to be able to shut down that nation's infrastructure in the event of a military incursion.

These are not spontaneous hacking attacks by one country, but long-term hacking attacks by skilled hacking groups subsidized by an aggressive state.

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"This is how 'Snake' works.

The Russian cyber espionage group 'Snake' has been active since 2005. According to an analysis by antivirus specialist Kaspersky, it is one of the most complex ongoing cyber espionage campaigns.

Snake targets mainly government agencies (ministries of interior, economy, foreign affairs, intelligence agencies), but also embassies, military institutions, research and educational organizations, and pharmaceutical companies.

In their attacks, the hackers try to infect their victims through so-called watering hole attacks. To do this, the spies first spy on websites that are of potential interest to the victims. Fake emails are then used to redirect the victims to a manipulated web server that looks confusingly similar to the original. The victim's computer is then infected in this way.

Thus, keyloggers can also be installed that record every keystroke and forward them to the attackers." [20] 

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An example of the beginning of cyber wars was the attack on the federal government's networks that became public in the spring of 2018, in which sensitive data from the security sector of the Federal Republic of Germany was taken via very complex malware by highly professional attackers. [21] 

Cyber attacks are part of hybrid warfare, in which propaganda on the Internet, the targeted use of fake news, and threats in the sense of disinformation campaigns are first combined with destabilizing hacker attacks on the infrastructure of a country or region and then, in the most negative case, with military intervention.

Artificial intelligence and cyber war

These previous notions of cyber war were based on deliberate human intervention in the international system, but do not yet take into account the possibility of software in computer systems taking on a life of its own as artificial intelligence develops. What if the frantic activity in the field of research and installation of artificial intelligence by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Co. leads to its interfering with digital networks and becoming active in terms of military attacks and corresponding defensive reactions? Is this completely out of the question and utter nonsense?
Computer science professor and AI expert Karl H. Bläsius (2024) confirms that the dangerous future trends mentioned here are certainly realistic threats:
"Nuclear weapons can also act as a deterrent against other threats. Military strategies sometimes provide for this, e.g. in revenge for serious cyber attacks. However, such a nuclear deterrent could only be effective against other states. This would be of no use against risks posed by systems such as ChatGPT. Nuclear deterrence is also ineffective against terrorists or other groups that carry out serious cyber attacks with the help of AI (ChatGPT or similar), for example. Nor can such a nuclear deterrent protect against systems such as ChatGPT getting out of control, becoming active themselves and possibly achieving Internet dominance with worldwide chaos. On the contrary: in such situations, there is a high risk that nuclear weapons will be used without such weapons systems still having a deterrent protective effect."

Neurobiologist and physicist Christoph v. d. Malsburg, who otherwise has a rather sober attitude toward artificial intelligence utopias, states: 

"I still think you have to take the danger of artificial intelligence very seriously; it's worse for humanity than the atomic bomb." [22]

Even such a process, if it does occur, is likely to happen rather insidiously and barely noticed at first. It becomes especially dangerous when the software used for military control purposes becomes independent and develops its own initiatives in military terms, e.g. falsely documenting the firing of enemy nuclear weapons against its own national territory.

How implausible is this development in such a scenario?

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Information scientist Werner Meixner believes that there is a fundamental contradiction between the globally networked system of 'Big Data' and a successful security concept for networked computers, which becomes an uncontrollable threat to humanity:

"Networking becomes a mortal danger, however, when a building block of the autonomy of warlike attacks acts from the Internet because algorithms command to avert a presumed danger. This may sound like science fiction, but this building block is already being developed. (...) It enables autonomous preemptive cyber warfare and is necessary because response times are too short to allow a human decision-making process to precede it.

Responsible hackers and whistleblowers have shown what we should fear. A rapidly growing cybercrime is emerging. Nuclear plants, energy supplies, water supplies, hospitals, public transportation, government agencies are all at risk of attack and espionage. The livelihood of every individual is in danger of being destroyed.

Because of the already existing risk situation, all critical facilities must be taken off the Internet immediately. Universities must sound the alarm. Politically, it must be asked whether oaths of office are being violated.

The worldwide networking of the "world of things" with central data processing is a dangerous aberration. It means the loss of the sovereignty of all nation-states because the nation-states can no longer guarantee their own security. Inevitably, a centralized surveillance state will emerge because it alone is expected to provide security.

But even the central state cannot provide the hoped-for security and will gradually abolish all the freedoms of its citizens because it is no longer clear who the enemy is in a cyber war. Why should peoples allow the livelihoods of future generations to be gambled with on the roulette tables of research and development?" [23]

2.7 Digital empires and the medial transformation of the Human

As early as the mid-19th century, Marx/Engels saw the permanent need for the owners of factories and service enterprises to further develop the technical, organizational, legal, and political means to survive in regional and global competition:

"The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instruments of production, hence the relations of production, and therefore social relations as a whole. The continual transformation of production, the uninterrupted convulsion of all social conditions, a perpetual uncertainty and motion distinguish the epoch of the bourgeoisie from all earlier ones." [24] 

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The extent of future digitalization represents one of these revolutionizations of social relations described by Marx/Engels, the scope of which is probably still underestimated. In the context of a negative scenario, the digitalization of society can make people superfluous as working beings and leave them to the digital control of the rulers. The digital transformation of work processes releases people from work processes, but relies on controlling them digitally so that they do not rebel against this system.

Total digital transparency: Google knows us better.

In the present negative scenario, the digital revolution is a form of social transformation whose driving force is the unrestrained greed in capitalism for ever greater profits at the expense of the human.

Negative scenarios of an overpowering digital age or digital hegemony in the interest of economies and political power relations geared to this in utopian literature have in part already been caught up with or overtaken by social reality. The threat to humanity, i.e. the human core, via the digital coupling and domination of individuals into a human-digital hybrid, a cyborg, is increasingly recognizable. A symbiotic relationship of life consisting of digital watches, smartphones, Alexa and Siri, chip implants under the skin, digitally networked audiovisual systems and human substance leads to the loss of subjectivity. Total digital transparency enables the annihilation of individual freedom margins, any privacy and also the possibility for systematic doubting and practiced maturity and critical faculties. The 'antiquated human being', i.e. a human being who adheres to the goals of the Enlightenment, becomes the counter-image to be pursued of a digital modernization that wants to exclude and destroy enlightened antiquatedness. [25]

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Man is no longer able to keep up with his technical inventions, no longer overlooks the consequences of the digital surveillance of subjects in individual, social and socio-political relations. Günther Anders (1956) focused above all on the nuclear threat and the planetary apocalypse related to it. This threat scenario is now joined by the digital apocalypse, via the merging of the human with the digital.

The German computer scientist and committed representative of scientific ethics, Werner Meixner, warns of a development that has already occurred and will continue to intensify in the future, in times of legally adopted state Trojans, controlling apps, as well as security loopholes already built into smartphones, tablets and other PCs during production, which endanger or destroy the human private sphere:

“Our privacy is at massive risk, and there is every reason to address the causes and originators of the threat. In an article for the news channel CNN, Marc Rotenberg has called the invasions of privacy by the Internet company Google 'one of the greatest violations of the law in history'. Rotenberg was president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an independent nonprofit research center in Washington, D.C., that works to protect basic civil liberties.

And Google chief Eric Schmidt boasts that Google knows us better than we know ourselves (...). One wonders if any further proof is needed that our privacy is at risk. Incidentally, both data theft and government surveillance are largely invisible to those affected.

An upheaval is taking place. Step by step, the Basic Law is being changed or rendered ineffective. The essential social decision-making processes are being taken away from parliament and shifted to undemocratic outside bodies. The maturity of citizens is systematically undermined by no longer openly discussing parliamentary issues (...).

The upheaval we are talking about here is nothing less than an attack on the constitutionally guaranteed foundations of our state.” [26]

Individuals are allowed to finance the costs of this digital domination to a large extent themselves, since the digital age and the corresponding media are made palatable to them via manipulative advertising strategies as well as via computer games, beginning already during childhood. 

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The human being between algorithms and values

Seen in this light, the digital age also offers gigantic returns for the digital economy, which is increasingly spreading and at the same time concentrating in huge media corporations that are trying to propagandistically and manipulatively implement the new image of man and the digital understanding of the modern into people's thinking and feeling. Similar to the way religions used to seek manipulative access to people at an early age, even small children are being accustomed to the displays of digital media and are being transformed step by step into a digital-human cyborg. The increasing entering of virtual worlds ('virtual reality') also by children and adolescents with the help of VR glasses mixes the real reality with the virtual world without the certainty that both can still be kept apart or without the knowledge of how they influence each other. The age of digital hybrid humans has been ushered in.
If Facebook's 'metaverse' becomes established, it can be assumed that the virtual world will become so important that the real world will lose more and more of its value. Then social crises and catastrophes in the real world will also lose their threatening nature from the perspective of gambling addicts - after all, escape into virtual worlds is possible, where life can be lived in real time thanks to 5G and blockchain.

In the course of the enforcement of digital access the relationship between artificial intelligence and the specific nature of the human being must be clarified and the extent to which artificial intelligence can still be controlled in the future. It will be decisive when politicians become aware of this problem, whether they support it or are resistant, and whether they develop binding ethical guidelines for the development of artificial intelligence in cooperation with the scientists involved. 

The prerequisite for this is that a discourse takes place about what actually constitutes a human being. Is it the ability to love, the ability to understand or the ability to empathize, the ability to be ethically critical? Are these the qualities that distinguish humans from intelligent machines? In the same way, it must be asked what the technologically possible reaches of artificial intelligence are, and what threats to the continued existence of humanity are to be seen in this - according to Ulrich Schnabel (2018, 39):

"Whether all the abilities of Homo sapiens - love, empathy, art, susceptibility to error, flexibility, innovative strength, moral thinking, and confidence - will ultimately be sufficient to keep machines under control in the long run remains to be seen. But if we don't start thinking about differences, we've already lost."

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ChatGPT

The AI information system ChatGPT ("Generative Pre-trained Transformer") is an app that enables access to information resources on the internet when the corresponding questions are asked digitally. ChatGPT can easily be used in schools, universities and training centers. At first glance, this sounds as if it would make it easier to obtain information. All of humanity's knowledge could be available with just a few clicks.
But appearances are deceptive. With a little thought, it becomes clear that this could also lead to a negative vision of human development. If knowledge is constantly and easily available, if pre-formulated answers to most questions can be obtained by anyone without much effort, what does this do to the human being as a learning and receptive individual? The result could be a person who is lazy and incapable of thinking and who relies on their ChatGPT app. The result would be a hermaphrodite who becomes dependent on a digital program that defies critical evaluation. Your own creativity in thinking no longer seems worth the effort. The program already provides everything - but only the knowledge that is available on the Internet and cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect information. Imagine a world of knowledge that only reproduces what is available, is in the hands of the private sector and, of course, is constantly threatened by hackers from authoritarian systems who want to manipulate human knowledge in their direction.
Marie-José Kolly (2023) warns accordingly:
"That's why the content is always wrong. Sometimes obviously, sometimes only subtly. And that's why the guard rails that are supposed to protect the bot from manipulative users can also be manipulated. This means that every response from the bot is a priori unreliable. It cannot be trusted.
Half-truths, untruths and absurdities are now circulating in various corners of the Internet. You can see this on some pages. Sometimes it takes several clicks to check a piece of information. But you can't tell the quality of a chat with a bot. And what bots write sometimes sounds so right that even professionals are dazzled. For example, former Google employee Blake Lemoine thought that Google's language model had a consciousness. Chatbots pretend to be something they are not. No wonder, we believe that someone - something - is thinking behind them.
This mixture - the bot writes more convincingly than many people, but it can't care whether what it writes is true - is extremely dangerous."
Moegling/Bläsius (2024) warn of AI developing independently on the internet, e.g. via ChatGPT. It could only be a matter of time before a superintelligence is formed on the internet that becomes independent and there is a danger that an intelligence superior to humans will interfere in civilian critical infrastructure, especially in military defense or attack systems:
"There have been some surprises in civilian AI applications in recent years, with unexpected capabilities being achieved, most recently with generative AI systems such as ChatGPT. In 2023, the world's leading AI scientists and heads of major AI companies issued urgent warnings about the potential risks of this development. Superintelligence that far exceeds the level of human intelligence is also considered possible in the coming years."

China's 'Social Credit System'

Hundreds of millions of digital video cameras are expected to achieve absolute transparency and control over people in China in the future. Regional test programs are currently underway in China to implement the Chinese 'Social Credit System,' under which China's citizens will be seamlessly monitored and sanctioned.

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The recordings from the video cameras are mixed with digitally ascertainable information, e.g. from digital networks or official records on individual persons, the judicial file situation, financial data as well as school and professional assessments, and together they result in an evaluation according to points, the evaluation criteria of which are to be the same for all Chinese.

In the current pilot test, positive behavior is still sanctioned positively, but this can of course quickly change after full implementation, so that undesirable deviant behavior is generally considered negative and leads to a loss of points with corresponding consequences. However, even in 2023/2024, the system has not yet been fully implemented nationwide – according to Mattheis (2024):
“The social credit system is still under construction. All the elements for total surveillance are in place and are being used, for example in the Xinjiang region inhabited by Uyghurs. It is uncertain whether they will one day be linked to a large centralized system. In any case, the technical requirements are in place.”

All of a sudden, a citizen receives the message that he or she is no longer allowed to travel by train, that treatment of him or her in a hospital is no longer possible, or that no one responds on a dating portal because the score displayed is too low.

A society is thus digitally controlled down to the finest details of social behavior on behalf of the state. This goes far beyond Orwell's or Huxley's Dystopia. [27] 

A current variant of such a negative scenario, which may come to pass but need not occur, is the digital health dictatorship. The Corona crisis has shown how quickly people can be influenced and their freedoms massively restricted in the face of health threats (bans on going out and assemblies, abolition of freedom of demonstration, restriction of freedom of the press). There is a danger here that future pandemics will be exploited to basically abolish civil liberties and to control this, among other things, with mandatory digital apps in communication media that must be used.

2.8   Mass crises of meaning, psychological distortions and escapes

In his "Speech to the Little Man," first published in 1948, Wilhelm Reich also analyzed the psychological distortions of people identifying themselves through authoritarian personalities and national greatness, whom he sees as dangerous and sick:

"That is why I am afraid of you, little man, irrepressibly afraid. Because on you depends the further fate of the world of men. I am afraid of you because you flee nothing so much as yourself. You are sick, very sick, little man. It is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to free yourself from your illness. You would have shaken off your real oppressors long ago if you had not tolerated and often directly supported oppression. No police force in the world would be powerful enough to oppress you if you had an ounce of self-respect in practical everyday life." [28]

If democratic claims become more implausible and political systems become more authoritarian and intolerant, then resistance movements against them will also arise. There will be mass protests in the streets, refusals to vote and the election of extremist parties, as well as an increase in terrorist activities. The mainstream of a society, however, will possibly neurotically duck away, adapt or even partly participate in the organization of an authoritarian society. In the negative vision of social development, educational institutions foster authoritarian traits with an extremely limited and neurotic personality profile. Blind obedience, opportunistic behavior, a latent fearfulness and an insufficient awareness of one's own thinking, feeling and acting are then the consequences of such an education. Parallel to this, therefore, massive disturbances of well-being occur on the part of those affected by such sociality - according to health scientist Annelie Keil (1988, 115):

"Oppression can be exerted on the individual in many ways - through poverty, hunger, social injustice, and political violence, or through the family and personal contexts in which violence tends to have a psychological impact. The affected person tries to compensate for the experience of oppression: by dulling the consciousness, by adaptation, by substitute allowances, much less often by revolt and struggle. However, the most frequent difficulty in reacting to the experience of suppression is precisely in the disturbances of well-being: the causes of suppression and thus the causes of the disturbances of well-being are misunderstood. There is confusion about the essence of oppression. To misrecognize this origin is not only to be unhappy without knowing why but something much worse: it is to assume that it is our fault if we are unhappy."

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Furthermore, if Western societies develop seemingly and primarily on a formal level democratically in the sense of an entitlement or façade democracy, with pervasive digital state control, with a simultaneous late-capitalist predatory economy, then the human psyche is also threatened with significant problems over the lack of a positive vision and perspective on life. If goals and possibilities to get out of a life lacking meaning and real happiness are missing, then psychosomatic reactions, like depression and psychosomatic diseases, like migraine, sleep disorders, chronic anxiety or cardiac arrhythmia are threatening. The number of people suffering from depression worldwide has increased by 18% in the last 10 years, according to a study published in 2017 by the World Health Organization (WHO). 322 million people worldwide currently suffer from depression. In this case, depression often combines with a neurotic disorder, especially an anxiety disorder. [29]
“According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), one in ten people worldwide lives with a mental illness - and the trend is rising. In the first year of the pandemic alone, the number of people suffering from a depression or anxiety disorder increased by 25 percent. (...) The most common illnesses include depression, anxiety disorders as well as affective and bipolar disorders. People with mental illnesses also have an average life expectancy that is ten years shorter. According to the WHO, this figure is as high as 20 years globally. “ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen, 2023)

Suicides in various forms

Chronic illnesses with a psychosomatic background arise from the suppression of the living in a person, from not living life due to over-adaptation and the thus suppressed possibility to search for and develop a positive meaning of life for oneself. [30] Not lived life and subjectively experienced meaninglessness within corresponding social structures lead not only to the described form of psychosomatic illness but also to life-destroying susceptibility to drugs, such as hallucinative chemical drugs as well as the compulsive and permanent dwelling in virtual realities. It is possible that the future for many people will be a combination of biochemical manipulation and virtual escape as part of a negative development scenario. Billions of gamers, some of them under the influence of drugs, will kill, have sexual experiences, humiliate and elevate themselves in virtual spaces.

The world drug report [31], which refers here not to alcohol and nicotine but to chemical drugs, particularly opiates, shows the following figures and marks the seriousness of the problem:

"About 275 million people worldwide, which is roughly 5.6 per cent of the global population aged 15-64 years, used drugs at least once during 2016. Of those, 31 million suffer from use disorders, meaning that their drug use is harmful to the point where they may need treatment. Initial estimations suggest that, globally, 13.8 million young people aged 15-16 years used cannabis in the past year, equivalent to a rate of 5.6 per cent. Roughly 450,000 people died as a result of drug use in 2015, according to the WHO. Of those deaths, 167,750 were directly associated with drug use disorders (mainly overdoses). The rest were indirectly associated with drug use and included deaths related to HIV and hepatitis C acquired through unsafe injecting practices. Opioids continued to cause the most harm. PWID - some 10.6 million worldwide in 2016 - endure the greatest health risks. More than half of them live with hepatitis C and one in eight live with HIV."

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According to a WHO study published in 2014, 3.3 million people died each year from alcohol addiction.[32] Furthermore, 7 million people die annually worldwide from nicotine use. Over the course of the 21st century, the cumulative number of nicotine deaths could reach one billion people.[33]

Several hundred thousand people are already attempting to take their own lives every year: “According to WHO estimates, more than 700,000 people commit suicide worldwide every year. In Germany alone, more than 9,000 people took their own lives in 2019, three times more people die by suicide than in traffic accidents. “ (German Society for the United Nations, 2023) 

Every 40 seconds, a person on earth kills themselves.[34] 

Escape by way of drug consumption, as well as gambling, and all the way up to the loss of control and suicide already characterize the psychological instability of a large part of the world's population and the situation will certainly worsen considerably in the case of a negative scenario of social development.

Using crises as an opportunity

If, on the other hand, a psychosomatically experienced life crisis is seen as an opportunity to search for the cause of an illness and is accompanied by an honest search for meaning - possibly also in a therapeutic context - then positive possibilities open up and paths to recovery can be taken.

This makes it all the more important to resist societal structures and the norms and values associated with them, individually and in solidarity with others affected worldwide. Such structures based on excessive pressure to conform lead to neuroses and often force people to over-adapt, to loss of meaning and unlived happiness in life.

For such resistance, a positive vision of social development is necessary in order to know in which direction a collective path to happiness in life is laid out for oneself and for other people.

Liberated and meaningfully ordered social conditions then represent a favorable prerequisite for subjective search for meaning and for the necessary identity experiences for a happily lived life. When the pressure of domination subsides, when meaning in life - oriented to people's own needs - emerges, then neurotic basic attitudes lose their social function. People then no longer have to be kept down and locked up in psychic prisons so that the economic exploitation of existing power relations can be secured. Drug dealers and drugs of all kinds then have a much smaller chance to poison people. Medially staged fear inductions then lose their psychosocial basis in people. Upbringing and education then do not produce fearful and over-adapted children but promote their individual potential on the way to a liberated humanity.

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2.9 External planetary threats to the future

When addressing external threats-that is, threats from outer space-there is, of course, a danger of exaggeration and fiction. One must think carefully about whether to address this, lest one fall under suspicion of unscientific speculation.

Nevertheless, when considering the use of financial resources, realistic external threats must be included that have demonstrably affected planet Earth in the past and have a serious likelihood of playing a role in the future. Humanity can no longer afford - apart from the associated humanitarian and ecological catastrophes - to wage wars of various kinds against each other or to use its resources to build up armies, missile systems and NBC weapon systems as a deterrent. If not in 10, 30 or 50 years, in any case in the centuries to come, mankind will face global threats for which it must be prepared.

The planetary threat of impacting asteroids

First, the Earth has been shown to be repeatedly targeted by asteroids from space with devastating consequences for flora and fauna. It cannot be excluded that in the medium future, e.g. in the next 50 to 500 years, another asteroid will hit the earth. Mankind must prepare for this situation in the interest of its continued existence. Resources of financial means, experts and material must be made available worldwide, in order to be able to deflect an asteroid becoming dangerous to the earth e.g. over an explosion at least. Everything else would be negligent and would override the interest of the following generations on the planet earth generation-egoistically.

Asteroids often fly dangerously close to Earth. In mid-April 2018, for example, a 650-meter-diameter asteroid passed by Earth at 4.6 times the Moon-Earth distance, relatively close. In 2027, NASA predicts that an asteroid ("1990 AN10") will pass by Earth only 380,000 kilometers away, much closer still.

If an asteroid of this magnitude hits the Earth, the consequences are almost unimaginable: tsunamis, atmospheric pressure waves, darkening of the sky, hurricanes, fires and earthquakes. 

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The United Nations is making it clear that these are not ideas just for future novels or science fiction movies:

"To bring the issue further into the public eye, the United Nations General Assembly last year proclaimed June 30 World Asteroid Day. The date marks the anniversary of the largest asteroid impact in recent history: on June 30, 1908, a hit in the Tunguska region of Siberia had devastated some 2,000 square kilometers of uninhabited territory. According to researchers' estimates, the asteroid had a diameter of 30 to 40 meters.

Should such a chunk in its trajectory set course for Earth again, there are only two options for the European space agency ESA: deflect it or destroy it. There are many proposals, from solar mirrors to hydrogen bombs. However, most of them are not technically or financially feasible. More realistic, he said, is the use of impact projectiles to deflect orbits.

Kinetic impactors, or simply "bouncers," is what Wünnemann calls the objects that would be actively placed in the path of an asteroid on its way to Earth. The joint ESA and NASA "Aida" mission, which is aimed at asteroid defense, is expected to provide insights into this."[35]

It was quite telling that former and reelected U.S. President Trump saw space exploration only from a military point of view and called for U.S. military dominance in space and had appropriate funding allocated for that purpose. Trump called for a sixth arm of the U.S. military in the form of a space army ('Space Force'):

"When it comes to defending America, it's not enough to just have an American presence in space. There has to be an American dominance in space" [36]

Space exploration, contrary to these militaristic statements, would have to prioritize the purpose of being able to repel asteroids from space. NASA's DART mission, successfully carried out in October 2022, shows that the need for future defense against dangerous asteroids has been recognized here. [37]

Of course, it must also deal with other civilian purposes, such as the influence of solar activity on Earth's digital networks.

Threat from shifting poles

Also of note are the currently observable shifts of the north and south poles and the associated changes in the planetary magnetic field. There may also be a complete reversal of the Earth's polarity in the medium or long term. This has already happened several times in the history of the Earth. This naturally has a considerable impact on digital communications and corresponding infrastructural networks on Earth. Precautions must be taken to prepare for this.

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"For centuries, the Earth's magnetic field was stable, but since 1840 it has been weakening, by one-sixth by now. The magnetic field, which extends far into space, still shields the Earth from radiation from outer space. How much longer?

An animation by the U.S. weather agency NOAA shows what's going on: the magnetic pole, which is located near the geographic North Pole, is shifting from Canada toward Russia at a rate of about one kilometer per week.

Pole migration is symptomatic of the Earth's changing magnetic field. Compass needles still point north, and the magnetic field protects the Earth - but the rapid shift of the pole has researchers asking, "Is a dangerous pole reversal looming?" [38]

Third, further research is needed on the impact of major solar storms on global infrastructure, and appropriate precautionary measures need to be developed for these events. Solar storms have already occurred in our lifetime, some of which led to the grid failure of larger regions, e.g., in Canada in 1989 and in South Africa in 2006.[39]

No more waste of resources

When these external threats are combined with internal global threats, such as the onset of global warming and the increasing danger of war, the conclusion must be reached even more decisively that existing resources must no longer be invested in the arms industry and military technology. 

In addition, the Club of Rome calls for a stabilization of the earth's population on a full earth.[40] 

More and more research funding needs to be invested, incentive systems and educational strategies developed to prevent the human population from continuing to grow (April 2017: 7.6 billion people, March 2025: 8.3 billion). 

The overpopulation of the Earth leads to accelerated resource depletion and accelerates climate catastrophe. It also leads to a widening gap between rich and poor and to corresponding social disasters and also, of course, migration movements and the associated social conflicts.

Also in the health sector, for example with regard to the problem of the threatening ineffectiveness of penicillin or antibiotics or also the possibility of the occurrence of planetary epidemics, which so far can still be confined locally, research must be intensified, suitable medicines developed in global cooperation and prevention strategies planned. The Corona pandemic provides a glimpse of the potential magnitude of a planetary threat from pandemics.

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This list of massive internal planetary threats could certainly be continued (dominance of artificial intelligence, insect extinction, plastic littering of the oceans, drinking water shortages, air pollution, etc.), but it already makes it clear: humanity can no longer afford to destroy its ideas and creativity, its financial resources and its people for violent conflicts of various kinds or for the construction of weapons systems for use against other states or groups.
All surplus resources that are not necessary for global peace, which is to be secured by various types of global police measures on behalf of the United Nations (see chapter 5.6), must finally be used to deal with the imminent dangers to planet Earth and future generations of humanity. 

The former Club of Rome presidents von Weizsäcker/ Wijkman (1917, 195) therefore make an energetic and well-argued plea for a radical shift toward planetary reordering and oppose pessimists who believe that nothing can be changed anyway:

"There is a way to a better future. It is the obligation of all of us to try to create this better world. It is possible for humanity to avoid collapse. But for this to happen, there is one thing that is more important than anything else: a new direction, or even a new 'narrative', or more profoundly, a new enlightenment to counteract what has put us on the speeding train. (...)

A new narrative would explain how to realize flourishing lives within ecological limits, how to realize universal well-being that meets all basic needs, and how to achieve sufficient equality necessary to maintain social stability and provide the basis for genuine security."

However, in my view, global power structures and economic interest groups that will try to work against this vision should not be overlooked here. The hegemonically mediated imperial way of life (Brand/ Wissen 2017) that a large part of the earth's population aspires to, which people especially in the global North have already developed, is also a major obstacle. Therefore, the demand for radical change must then also always specify who should be the bearers of this change and how this can be achieved through educational processes, civil society engagement, and regional and global organization in solidarity resistance to the tendencies to plunder the earth and exploit people, especially in the poorer regions of the world.

In this sense, in the next chapters a reorganization in holistic terms, i.e. taking into account the different levels or dimensions of human existence and understanding the interrelationships of these levels and the influencing factors, will be sketched and the first steps on the way to it will be outlined.

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Intermediate reflection

At this point in the book, the critical analysis and also the heuristics of fear envisioned by Jonas now end and give way to a positive vision of social development in a global context. To be sure, the negative scenarios in particular are not always easy to bear. But looking at a possible catastrophic future can bring about a jolt to oppose this possible development. 

Within the last 20 years, the resilience of the planet has reached its limit or has demonstrably exceeded it in some areas. 

The Doomsday Clock makes this clear: "The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains" and: According to the Doomsday Clock, which was founded and is calculated by Albert Einstein in 1947, among others, in January 2025 we are already 89 seconds before the destruction of the planetary foundations.

But in dwelling on a negative vision and without a positive vision of social development, this rebellion remains stuck in the negative and destructive. A jointly developed and supported positive vision is necessary in order to work with commitment, inner drive and joy on a successful future - together with similarly minded people - in different contexts of social engagement.

In this context, one cannot accuse such a vision of being visionary, just as one cannot accuse a utopia of being utopian. That is precisely its character and its peculiarity. A vision that is not visionary is no good.

Nor can a vision rightly be accused of not being directly linked to current world events and of not dealing with their limitations and restrictions. A positive vision of social development must free itself from this and clarify in ideal-typical terms where the journey is to go - even if it may take several generations.

Only then is it worthwhile to consider what initial steps can be taken in the direction of this unfolded vision, based on the current state of society.

 
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Notes

(Chapter 2)

[1] Reconstruction of events is based on https://www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-stanislaw-petrow-verhindert-atomkrieg-100.html, 9/26/19, 10/1/19, and https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/held-des-kalten-krieges-stanislaw-petrow-verhinderte-einen-atomkrieg-15206332.html, 9/19/17, 10/1/19.
[2] Parts of this negative scenario are based on the climate scenario of Spratt/Dunlop (2019) 

and the newer world climate reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in case the 1.5 degree target is not reached and climate warming of two degrees or more should occur, cf. http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/klimawandel-ipcc-bericht-zum-1-5-grad-ziel-vorgestellt-a-1231805.html, dated 8.10.2018, 6.4.2019 and IPCC (2018, 2019).
[3] Federal Environment Agency (2008, 22).
[4] See, among others, Germund (2017).
[5] See, among others, Läubli (2015) and Stoller (2015).
[6] Cf. Dellmuth/Gustafsson/Bremberg/Mobjörk (2017, 1).
[7] Burchardt (2017).
[8] Adam (1995,78).
[9] Zartman (1995, 8).
[10] See the arguments in favor of humane interventions in Mills (2002), Walzer (2002), and Ignatieff (2002).
[11] Walzer (2002, 31).
[12] BDS = Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: international movement started by Palestinian activists and even some Israeli opposition activists, which opposes the oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state and in particular the settlement of the West Bank. Here, the Israeli government is accused of apartheid and colonialism against the Palestinian population. The BDS movement is politically controversial, condemned for example by the German Bundestag as anti-Semitic and brought close to terrorist activities by the government of Israel. However, the movement defends itself against this, rejects the accusation of anti-Semitism and emphasizes its legitimate civil society character (cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment
_and_Sanctions, Dec. 1, 2019, Dec. 1, 2019).

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[13]  Translation of Marx/Engels (1848/1983, 31) by Carver (2015) 

[14] See, for example, Altvater (2006), Wagenknecht (2008), Scherrer/Dürmeier/Overwien (eds.) (2011), and Scherrer (2015).
[15] Oxfam Germany (2018, 4).
[16] Oxfam Germany (2018, 6).
[17] Cf. Ziegler (2015, 53)
[18] Cf. v.Weizsäcker/Wijkman et al. (2017, 68).
[19] Cf. v.Weizsäcker/Wijkman et al. (2017, 73 ff).
[20] Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine, March 2, 2018, p. 18.
[21] Cf. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/hacker-angriff-russische-hackergruppe-snake-wohl-hinter-angriff-15474037.html, 2.3.2018.
[22] Cf. the statement by v. d. Malsberg in: Die Zeit, 28.3.2018, p. 39.
[23] Meixner (2018).
[24]  Translation of Marx/Engels (1848/1983, 25 and 27) by Carver (2015). 

[25] On the concept of human antiquatedness, see in particular Günther Anders (1956) with the title 'Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. On the Soul of Man in the Second Industrial Revolution'; and Morat (2006).
[26] Meixner (2018).
[27] On China's Social Credit, see e.g. System Gruber/Kühnreich (2017) and Hennig (2018).
[28] Reich (1948/2013, 22).
[29] Cf. https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/73297/WHO-Millionen-leiden-an-Depressionen, dated 23.2.2017, 27.8.2018.
[30] Cf. in more detail Keil (1988, 112ff.).
[31] In: http://www.unodc.org/wdr2018/en/exsum.html, n.d., 27.8.2018.
[32] In: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/112736/9789240692763_eng.pdf;
jsessionid=D855D8C4D60FA04FF15083420802C288?sequence=1, 2014, 27.8.2018.
[33] In:https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/76041/Rauchen-Millionen-Tote-Milliardenkosten-und-Umweltfolgen, from 30.5.2017, 27.8.2018.
[34] In: https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/76041/Rauchen-Millionen-Tote-Milliardenkosten-und-Umweltfolgen, dated 4/9/2014, 8/27/2018.
[35] In: https://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/gut-zu-wissen/artikel/913707/was-wenn-ein-asteroid-die-erde-trifft-1, dated 6/23/2017, 8/27/18.
[36] In: https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article177796900/Weltraum-Trump-will-US-Militaer-um-Space-Force-ergaenzen.html, dated 6/18/2018, 8/28/2018.
[37] Cf. Nasa: Dart-Sonde hat Flugbahn von Asteroiden erfolgreich geändert. In: https://www.zeit.de/wissen/2022-10/nasa-dart-sonde-asteroid-erfolgreich-abgelenkt, 11.10.2022, 13.10.2022.

[38] Bojanowski (2018).
[39] Cf. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/weltraumwetter-die-gefahr-durch-sonnenstuerme-fuer-unsere-technik/13955920.html, dated Aug. 1, 2016, Aug. 27, 2018.
[40] v.Weizsäcker /Wijkman et al. (eds.) (2017, 34ff.).

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3.4    Meditation as experience of self and world

 
On the present understanding of meditation (1) 

 There are various significant ways of a holistic processing of biographical experiences and an opening of consciousness for new life perspectives and social developments. In this context, besides institutional educational experiences, life shared in solidarity, therapies and systematic conflict management in the context of social transformation processes, meditation plays a significant role - even (or perhaps because of) this is a path that does not primarily originate from the Western cultural area.
In Zen Buddhist and Daoist tradition, meditation is to be understood as the experience of alertness inwardly and outwardly. It is about a complex and at the same time differentiating attentiveness towards all processes of the living. Here, meditation is not seen as drifting into nirvana and as mystical speculation or even as an experience of deity. Therefore meditation loses its appropriating religious grasp. Meditation, thus understood as an intensive experience of mindfulness, keeps in a holistic sense connection to carefully worked out ways of practice of ancient cultures as well as to methods of humanistic psychology [2], to ecological demands, to peace-political as well as health-scientific approaches. [3]

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Becoming attentive to one's own psychological structures, to one's own corporeality as well as to the environmental conditions within the framework of a meditative path of is a good prerequisite for a political commitment in a regional and supraregional context. Meditative mindfulness is the core of any body-ecological practice. Here an ecological approach to the world comes into harmony with one's own approach to the body. Both approaches are about mindfulness as well as respect.
Precisely in the re-sensitization for the corporeal in the sense of a bodily-ecological understanding, could lie the consciousness key for the respect and careful use of nature in the extracorporeal realm.
Even if Krishnamurti (1992, 131ff.) is right in saying that in the prevailing meditation methods, e.g. to meditate sitting for half an hour every day, the actual goal is not laid out, but it is founded in the everyday becoming attentive to one's own perceptions, thoughts, feelings and actions, some suitable meditation practices shall now be briefly introduced. They can at least help to find oneself and to become attentive, but they are not an end in themselves and can be replaced by comparable ways of practicing.
Attention is a priority decision for the here and now. What I do, I do consciously. This contradicts both the professional demand for 'multitasking' and media productions that want to manipulate and prepare for social purposes.
Various non-religious and philosophically based meditation practices that start from bodily experience can point the way to attention and mindfulness here: [4]

Zazen
 
Zen Buddhism must not be confused with religious currents of Buddhism, such as Shintoism. Zen Buddhism is a teaching of mindfulness - not a religion characterized by the fictitious presence and worship of God. Zen is associated with the conscious perception of the everyday - according to the Japanese professor of Zen Buddhist philosophy and practicing Zen Buddhist Daisetz T. Suzuki (1984, 50):
"For Zen has no God to worship, has no ceremonial rite to observe, no future in the hereafter to which the dead are consigned, and, finally, Zen has no soul whose salvation must be considered by any other, and whose immortality other people must concern themselves with. Zen is free from all such dogmatic and 'religious' burdens."

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Therefore, Zen Buddhism is connectable to enlightened Western thought. The Zen Buddhist practices - similar to the Daoist practices - are a strict and precisely ordered system of knowledge, which with its experience-oriented methods, such as zazen and kinhin, trains people to be attentive to the present.
There is nothing spectacular in this and there is no exaggerated mysticism:
"Zen seeks to take hold of life where it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious in Zen. I raise my hand; I take a book from the other side of the desk; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds drifting over the nearby woods: with all this I practice Zen, I live Zen. (...) I don't know why - and it doesn't need any explanation, but when the sun rises, the whole world shouts with joy, and all hearts are filled with bliss. If Zen is at all comprehensible, it must be grasped from here."
(Suzuki 1984, 103)
The main method of practice in Zen Buddhism is very simple - zazen. During zazen, one sits in a precisely constructed posture in calmness and composure. Thoughts that arise are contemplated like passing clouds in the sky and are also let go. At some point it occurs: Thoughtless presence. It is complete attention and complex perception while sitting.
A phase of meditative walking is often inserted between two phases of zazen. Here a space is traversed in slow motion on a fixed path with the hands in front of the heart area (e.g. in a circle or square). Here, deep breaths are taken into the abdomen and the feet are placed and rolled very slowly and attentively.
This mindfulness-based understanding of meditation can also be found in other Zen arts. In Zen archery, after a long period of inner contemplation and concentration on the target, the shot of the arrow takes place without willful firing ("It shoots"). This presence is also found, for example, in the art of flower arranging, the tea ceremony or in calligraphy understood as meditation.

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Zen Buddhism also includes riddles that are difficult or impossible to solve ("Do you hear the clap of one hand?"), so-called 'koans', into which one can immerse oneself and thereby step out of the normal tracks of thought. Conversation with the meditation teacher or Zen master ('sanzen') is also part of Zen practices.
The spiritual state in the awareness and unity of day-consciousness and subconsciousness, in the meditative connection of self and world is called 'Satori' in Zen. The attainment of a higher form of consciousness, characterized by peacefulness and maturity, takes place without a god and without metaphysical experiences that enter via divine guidance. Once again, the essence of Zen is practical practice and can be seen in everyday things,
"because Zen can experience an unfathomably deep thought just by picking up a finger, by a good morning greeting to a friend we meet by chance on the street. In the eyes of Zen teaching, the most hidden is at the same time the most practical and vice versa. The whole teaching system of the Zen school is only the reflection of this basis of experience."
(Suzuki 1984, 45).
Through Zen, a way is given to step out of lack of selfawareness and to leave one's inner prison constructed by the unconscious and cultural constrictions. It is a matter of learning to look into one's own being, to become aware of it and to live it - so again Suzuki (1984, 59):
"If Zen is understood in the deepest, the mind attains perfect peace, and a person lives as he should. What higher do we want?"

Qigong
 
Qigong was originally described in the earliest texts as Tui-na (推拿), breath exercises, and Dao Yin (导引), or exercise postures. It was also used in Taoism as a way of attempting physical and spiritual immortality. It is a term that describes a very complex and diverse tradition of spiritual, martial and health exercises from China. The word Qi Gong is a modern term that categorize over 1500 different styles of these exercises into a meaningful context.
Qigong is a meditative movement art, which can be assigned to Daoism (Taoism) and NeiJing (内经)/TCM theories, among other things. Qigong promotes the observance of the Yin-Yang principle, the principle of not wanting to force ('Wu-Wei'), through the relationship between breathing and energy in the understanding of 'Qi' and the orientation to the movement quality of slowly flowing water. Like Zen-Budhism, such Daoism is not a religion, but a philosophy that is very close to nature and peace-loving.

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The central Daoist work of Laodse (Laotse, LaoTzu, Laozi or also Laudse), the Daodejing (also Tao te king or Daudejing) - translated 'The Book of Meaning and of Life' (in the translation made by Richard Wilhelm) - was written with its 5000 characters and 81 verses in the 4th century before the Western calendar. Two excerpts from the verses of the Laodse make clear the peaceful background of the work in a time of numerous warlike conflicts between the different empires - so first an excerpt from the verse 31:
"Weapons are ominous devices, all beings hate them.
Therefore, who is with the Dao does not want to know anything about them. (…)
Only when he can't help it, he uses it.
Calm and peace are the highest things for him. (…)“
Cleverly, the issue of war and peace is also addressed in verse 46:
"When the Dao reigns on earth,
this is how you breed the race horses for work at the field.
When the Dao is lost on earth,
so war-steeds are bred on the Anger."
Accordingly, health oriented Qigong is usually peaceful. Slow and flowing movements that, because of their softness, cannot and will not inflict pain on anyone.
Qigong (translation: traditional exercise system for the care of breath and energy, also Chi Kung) is a Chinese exercise tradition, which is differentiated into inner or silent (quiescent) Qigong（内功）and outer (dynamic) Qigong（外功). In silent (quiescent) Qigong, commonly sitting or standing meditation postures are assumed and invisible breath and energy adjustments are made. Through e.g. regular breathing in the small energy circuit, among other things, an inner calm and balance is created. 桩功 is a good example of this form of qigong.
The imagined directing of energy, qi, for example in standing post qigong, is an example of internal qigong.
The external qigong also includes internal processes, but is mainly characterized by visible movements. The Baduanjin (Pa Tuan Chin), the 8-fold elegant movement series, with its eight positions and healing gymnastically justifiable movements is a very well-known example of external qigong.

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There are numerous and very different styles of Qigong and a widely differentiated Qigong movement culture. But all Qigong exercise paths serve the inner calming, the alertness inward and outward, combine breathing and movement with each other and are therefore also part of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). [5]
Here, Qigong is based on a relationship of human to nature, which consciously sees oneself as part of nature. The study of the yin-yang principle in nature was the basis of qigong exercises, where, for example, tension (yang) and relaxation (yin) are in balance. It is precisely in this respect that such a body-ecological system of exercises as qigong is of considerable importance for modern man, who often no longer perceives himself to be in harmony with nature. The Hungarian sinologist and expert of Far Eastern meditation practices, Stephan Pálos, referred to the aspect of nature integration in Qigong, which is native to TCM:
"Accordingly, bodily processes are inseparably connected with the elements, forces and processes operating in nature. Behind this conception there is also the realization and experience that man cannot be detached from nature, that he stands in a close dependence with the whole cosmos, since he himself forms a part of this cosmos."
(Pálos 1980, 29)
The separation of man from his surrounding nature, the lack of awareness of his inner and outer nature and of their connection to each other is one of the foundations for the planetary destruction of nature. Those who value their breath will want to pay attention to clean air. Who has learned the alternation of tension and relaxation, will not want to overstrain himself and his environment continuously. These are also the consequences of a holistic approach to perception.

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Taijiquan
 
Taijiquan (often called Tai Chi in the West) is also to be understood against the background of Daoism and TCM. Taijiquan consists of slow and flowing movements, which - correctly and regularly practiced - have attributable healing gymnastic effects and can be understood as movement meditation. Here, too, in a decelerated quality of movement, it is a matter of being very attentive, centered inwardly and awake outwardly, to experience mindfulness. Taijiquan is divided into Taijiquan solo forms and partner Taijiquan. Taijiquan solo forms consist on the one hand of various 'hand forms' as well as weapon forms, which are also performed in slow motion in fixed sequences of movements. Thus, the Taijiquan sword is also called the 'peaceful sword'. The partner Taijiquan consists on the one hand of fixed movements in pairs, which are performed together in hand-arm contact and partly with steps and turns, like a meditative dance. Very advanced students then also go into free partner Taijiquan with each other, where the point is to point out to the other person in a friendly way that he or she was not attentive, e.g. by a push at the elbow or a gentle tug on the arm got out of balance. It is, as the ancient people on the Pearl River in Guangzhou (Canton) in southern China practiced every morning (and the author was able to experience firsthand), a peaceful togetherness in playful competition and great mindfulness. [6]
The description of the postures and ways of moving are to be seen in a context with the experience of self and world that characterizes these movement systems. It is about peaceful and meditative experience of self and world, even if this is of course threatened by competitive sporting and movement colonial appropriation - also in China.
Above all, however, Tai Chi means pausing and lingering because of the slowing down of the movements. The slowing down of the movement opens the possibility to become attentive to oneself. It is a counter-world to the acceleration culture and to rushing around in pressure-filled working conditions.
With reference to the ecological understanding [7] possibility of the 'Five Transformational Phases' contained in Qigong and Taijiquan, the Osnabrück Taiji and Zen teacher Klemens J. P. Speer (2019) formulates regarding a spiritual-social engagement against the climate crisis:
"This is where the spiritual martial art of Taiji would be called upon. Since Taiji has spread worldwide, it could also act and advocate worldwide (a 'new boxing uprising, this time worldwide'), as of course could many other national and global organizations. Couldn't Taiji practitioners actually, with their knowledge of the phases of transformation, provide a helpful understanding easily understood by all people towards a global socio-ecological-economic balance?"

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Yoga
 
Yoga (translation option: uniting) consists of very diverse traditions, from, for example, Hatha Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, Raja Yoga, Integral Yoga to Kundalini Yoga. Yoga does not necessarily have to be connected with the Hindu religion, but can be a body-oriented way of experiencing oneself and the world, which can lead to inner peace and psychosomatic balance with the help of stretching positions (asanas), fluid changes of position, breathing exercises (pranayama), concentration exercises and also mantra chanting. [8]
Yoga is embedded in the traditional, philosophically based culture of Ayurveda (Sanskrit: knowledge of life) and has a firm place here in the Ayurvedic art of healing.
Here, the approx. 2000 old sutras of Patanjali, consisting of 195 verses, are an important philosophical background - to be transferred to today's conditions, of course - without re-integrating the practitioners into a religion and committing them to an image of God.
The 'Salutation to the Sun' (Surya Namaskar)[9] and the so-called 'Rishikesh series' [10]are very famous combinations of asanas that involve intense concentration and breathing exercises, while stretching, strengthening and activating the cardiovascular system. All movement sequences, postures and positions of yoga are performed in mindfulness and sensitivity to one's own body, experienced in a basic meditative posture.
Certainly there are other meditative practice paths that are similarly structured and can have comparable effects, such as Kum Nye, Polarity, Acupressure, or Tantric Shiatsu ('Tantsu').
All of these philosophically and ethically based practices are about being grounded, mindful, and calm in order to meet others peacefully and with human maturity - psychosocial prerequisites that are likely to be conducive to peaceful and non-violent coexistence.
What is also sympathetic about these paths of practice is that they are not based on inner isolation in the sense of 'false inwardness', but rather, after a sufficient phase of meditative self-awareness, call upon the practitioner to get involved in social life again. The story of the Zen monk who rides the buffalo, plays the flute and turns to the people in the marketplace is a good illustration of this attitude of mind.

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The former co-founder of the taz, television journalist and yoga teacher, Gudrun Kromrey, concretizes the socio-political reference of yoga from her point of view in the interview:
"Ahimsa, the first rule of Patanjali, means non-harming or compassion. Harming people, animals and all living things is excluded here. Social Darwinism, factory farming and unecological behavior do not correspond to the yogic idea that we are not detached individuals, but are connected with everything that surrounds us. Exactly the opposite is what the capitalist system has always told us. Phrases like 'subdue the world,' 'Every man is the architect of his own fortune,' or 'Survival of the Fittest' lead us directly into the mindless hamster wheel, into the hell of hopeless dependencies, and into further ecological destruction." [11]
These Far Eastern methods receive their possible connectivity to the achievements of the European Enlightenment through the renunciation of the subjugation and worship of a god.[12] The spiritual maturation path to peaceableness and sociality takes place through the psychosocial performance of the individual, often also in common exercise with spiritually similarly tuned persons. Teachers on this path do not build themselves up as authoritarian masters under the conditions of a society with democratic self-demands, but are experienced companions who can guide and advise in partnership and increasingly let go when a person begins to develop further.
Especially in the meditative practices, body-oriented ways of experience, which were developed for the most part already 2000 to 3000 years ago in the Far Eastern cultural area (China, India, Japan), an important cultural transfer from the East to the West can be seen. Here it is necessary to learn from the achievements of another culture with regard to a peaceful way, which starts at the physical. Meditation paths are opened, which are to be met respectfully, and which can show the great gain when cultures meet and exchange with each other in peace.

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Meditative movement practices could also be a part of the cultural life practice of communitarian living communities. Here, the separation into leisure and work would have to be abolished and the practice of meditation would have to be seen as an existentially relevant contribution to the community of life. Here the alternative forms of living and working fit to the consciousness and body-ecological intention of these movement practices as part of an alternative culture of movement [13] in the context of communitarian, democratic and solidary life communities.
" 'Yogas chitta vritti nirodha' ", says Patanjali, yoga leads to the coming to rest of thoughts in the mind. And then, and only then, are we able to look at the world with an unbiased, unmanipulated view and to look at ourselves. Only then can we make decisions that are good and prosperous for us and others. With breathing exercises and meditations we reach places in our consciousness where fear is not yet present. So we go in front of the fear. Here we can dissolve thought patterns that limit us and are harmful to us. This is the place where gender or social role patterns do not yet exist. Here lies the true knowledge of ourselves and the role we should and want to play in this world. If one recognizes this, then one can deal with acquired and social constraints much more confidently or even free oneself from them completely. Fear is the fuel of our social and economic system. Those who are afraid do not make demands. So let's imagine what a society might look like in which individuals act free of fear, serene and calm, and walk through life upright and stable with poise - physically and intellectually." [14]
Wilfried Belschner, a professor of psychology and course instructor for 'body-based consciousness-raising', points out, however, that spiritual cultivation through meditation will also encounter social resistance when an increasing number of people exert a system-changing influence through their changed lives - according to Belschner (2025, 16):
The opponents of consciousness cultivation “will use their diverse personal, economic and media resources with all available power in a mercilessly ruthless manner to stigmatize people who practice such methods of consciousness cultivation and to cause them to ‘voluntarily’ abandon their liberation project if they fear that the existing order of their advantages could be called into question.” 

Finally, back to the Daodejing
My proofreader and Taijiquan/ Qigong practitioner Sharon Rose rightly comments here:
"It would be wonderful for our world to come together to create and live in such harmonious society. Can we accomplish this through meditative practices alone? I think these practices are good vehicles to get us to a place of peace and freedom within ourselves. However, the spiritual benefits from these meditative practices can only be fully realized if the driving principles/philosophies behind them are fully understood and absorbed. The unification of mind and body will enlighten and empower us as individual, as well as a society as a collective when such individuals come together as a whole."

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Finally, the wisdom of the Daoist teachings is once again made clear in two excerpts from the Daodejing with references to the topic of peace and responsible policy-making - first from verse 13:
"He who in his person honors the world,
you can probably entrust the world to him.
Who in his person loves the world,
I guess you can hand the world over to him."
The message of the Daodejing is also quite political in other places of the work and connected with a positive vision, when it is formulated in the 54th verse:
"Whoever shapes his person, his life becomes true.
Whoever creates his family, his life becomes complete.
Whoever shapes his community, his life will grow.
Whoever shapes his land, his life becomes rich.
He who shapes the world, his life becomes wide." [15]
How farsighted these sentences are formulated! They virtually challenge to a socio-political commitment and establish the connection to the quality of one's own life. The 81 verses of the Daodejing, along with the sutras of Patanjali and the classical Zen texts, are a very suitable philosophical basis for practicing the meditative paths of self-experience that begin with one's own body.
And lastly, in wise summary, Sharon Rose:
"My understanding is that what these three ancient philosophies have in common is the emphasis on individual cultivation, responsibility and respect for laws of nature. Ultimately, living in harmony with nature to seek and obtain balance is the premise for health and happiness. Meditations and martial arts practice are physical expressions of such philosophy in action. They are good vehicles to help one learn and cultivate self-awareness and therefore, find self-enlightenment. When every individual achieves health and harmony within oneself, the society will become so as a whole. That's the Dao of nature."

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Notes

(Chapter 3.4)
 

(bibliography see at the bottom of this page) 

[1] Many thanks to Sharon Rose for English-language proofreading this chapter, for adding the Chinese characters and also for suggesting supplementary content considerations.
[2] Cf. e.g. on the relationship between Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis Fromm/Suzuki/de Martino (1971).
[3] See also Moegling (2019b).
[4] Only those meditation practices from Asia are presented here with which the author has firstly several years of personal experience and secondly which are based on the approach of mindfulness education meant here.
[5] See in more detail, e.g., Zöller (1986) and Pálos (1980).
[6] Cf. on the cultural meanings, the subjective constructions as well as the movement quality of Taijiquan among others Scientific Advisory Board of the DDQT (2009) and Landmann (2005) as well as for the different exercise methods of the most widespread style worldwide, the Yang style, Yang (1991) and Song (1991).
[7] Sharon Rose adds: "Concurrently, the natural law by the Confucian School of Philosophy emphasizes the idea that the individual had responsibility for self cultivation or development as very important for the wellbeing of one's own life and therefore a society as a whole."
[8] See, among others, Yesudian/Haich (1990) and Lysebeth (1982).
[9] Cf. Lysebeth (1982, 273ff.).
[10] Cf. Lysebeth (1982, 103ff.).
[11] Kromrey (2019).
[12] Of course, religions also try to incorporate these practices into their system, but this is not necessary from the practice material and is quite avoidable.
[13] Cf. on the understanding and principles of an alternative movement culture Moegling (1988).
[14] Kromrey (2019).
[15] Both verse excerpts come from the Daodejing by Laudse again in the translation by Richard Wilhelm (1982). Sharon Rose added to the 54th verse: "This verse is about governing by the principle of relative balance (平衡法) so that harm could be avoided for individuals, families, communities, countries and the world. It is about the importance of this natural law (dao) and how it could benefit all if followed. "

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Chapter 4 

Socioeconomic, institutional and socioecological foundations of sustainable development and effective peace policy  

4.1  Taming the Tiger: transforming the global economy for sustainability and peacebuilding

“You have to act as if it were possible
to radically transform the world.
And you have to do it all the time.
‘Radical’ simply means
grasping things at the root.” 

Angela Davis 

Capitalism no longer has a future. The core of capitalism is private ownership of companies and the recurring attempt to siphon off surplus value from the results of commodity production and marketing at the expense of working people and at the expense of nature. Incalculable financial speculation increases the problem of an economic system based on injustice.

Marx/Engels saw in a communist society, which unfolds via the detour of a socialist development phase, the utopia of a completely developed society.

In place of a divided society, "there is an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". [1] 

 This is certainly a positive vision. But what will it look like in concrete terms? It certainly cannot be a form of dictatorship of the proletariat envisaged in the Marxist concept of socialism. A dictatorship never provides a social framework "for the free development of all." No freedom can arise by oppression.

But - on the other hand there is the question: How can a democratic and peaceful development be established in a world of inconsideration and violence in power. One basic answer is this: Such a reorganization - as necessary, as it is - can only become real in a peaceful and radical change, because the dangers arising from technical processes of nature cultivation as well as from products destroying nature and civilization in the high tech-society and associated with an uncritical economic growth mindset must stay under control or be overcome. [2] 

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What kind of market economy is meant? 

The historical development of the so called 'real socialist' states in their different variants has shown that this attempt to 'tame the tiger' was not suitable to enter into a free society in social and ecological responsibility. Nature was extrahistically plundered there, just as in the capitalist states. Moreover, the economy did not function for the benefit of all, but at best for the luxurious provision of a corrupt elite. The centralized planning of economic processes, down to the subtleties of allocation, accumulation, production and consumption has paralyzed productive freedom in decision-making scopes for people, which are necessary for a functioning economic system. Human needs can only be directed, planned and satisfied by central decisions to a limited extent.  Nor is the motivational potential of a market economy embedded in a socio-ecological framework exploited, where individuals or individual communities can produce and sell in a self-effective way in decentralized markets (and now digitally). Here, they receive motivating feedback on the success of their economic performance. 

The question therefore arises as to how new societies can emerge at the local, regional and global levels that can, on the one hand, enable the positive shares of (responsible) market mechanisms and, at the same time, prevent large-scale economic and financial concentrations and thus the corresponding concentration of political power. 

On the one hand, it must not be the case that the quite constructive drives of people to produce, advertise, trade and sell in their local and regional contexts are suppressed – the error of Soviet-style real socialism. On the other hand, the market power of monopolies or monopoly-like structures must be prevented, which destroy precisely the decentralized structures of competition and markets - the systemic error of Western, capitalist-style forms of society. 

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Kinds of solidarity-based economy in a non-fossil society 

Political scientist Elmar Altvater already comes very close to the approach advocated here when he sees the new elements of order in a non-fossil society coupled with new modes of production based on solidarity and ecology, decentralized appropriation processes and changed patterns of consumption - a development that will take time: 

"This can only be done in the long term, and if the transition succeeds, it will be to a shore that no longer says 'capitalism' but something else. We don't have an easy name for it after the failure of 20th century socialism. Socialism of the 21st century? Perhaps it makes more sense to call it a solar (because sustainable) and solidarity (because building on resources) society. 

So there are convincing alternatives. The continuation of capitalism as we know it ends in disaster. An 'empire of barbarism' threatens, if it has not already emerged. A regime of renewable resources with the appropriate social forms and an economy based on solidarity is the end of capitalism as we know it. New social forms can be developed. History is not at an end, it is open and continues." 

(Altvater 2006, 21) 

Instead of a capitalist society based on social division and economic advantage-taking, a society must be developed step by step in all regions of the world, starting with the actual state of society, in which the economy is there for society and not vice versa. Altvater's designation of such a society as a solar-solidary form of society already matches this well.

Approach towards a sustainable mode of production

This naturally also includes orienting industrial and agricultural production to the idea of sustainability. This could be achieved through a more effective system of internationally issued environmental certificates, ecologically oriented taxation and a corresponding pricing policy. Timely limits must also be set above which it is no longer permissible to extract oil and coal from the earth for burning to generate energy. 
In addition to more effective emissions certificate trading, there is another international economic strategy to deal with states that try to evade obligations arising from the climate crisis.
The U.S. American winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economics, William Nordhaus, first objects to the idea that international climate conventions are fundamentally ineffective - saying Nordhaus (2020):
"In light of the failure of past agreements, it is easy to conclude that international cooperation on climate change is doomed to fail. This is the wrong conclusion. Past climate treaties have failed because of poor architecture. The key to an effective climate treaty is to change the architecture, from a voluntary agreement to one with strong incentives to participate."
The core of such a binding architecture of a climate treaty is the formation of intergovernmental cooperation partners ('climate clubs') that agree on common standards and rules as well as on prices for CO2 emissions. If other countries outside this 'climate club' do not adhere to its climate-friendly standards and rules, they must pay an effective tax surcharge for their export products. In this case, it is no longer worthwhile for these countries, as 'free riding nations', to produce in an environmentally damaging manner. The agreement of the club states on common ecological protective duties would thus have a considerable systemic leverage effect related to the fight against the climate crisis. According to Nordhaus (2020), this is one of several effective ways to reach a binding treaty architecture:
 "There are many steps necessary to slow global warming effectively. One central part of a productive strategy is to ensure that actions are global and not just national or local. The best hope for effective coordination is a Climate Club-a coalition of nations that commit to strong steps to reduce emissions and mechanisms to penalize countries that do not participate. Although this is a radical proposal that breaks with the approach of past climate negotiations, no other blueprint on the public agenda holds the promise of strong and coordinated international action."
Of course, countries subject to punitive tariffs can respond with counter tariffs. But if several larger countries and also transnational associations, such as the European Union, come to these joint agreements, then it would be difficult for a single state to stand up to such an economic power.It might also be necessary to consider compensation payments to poorer countries for a transitional period, so that this is also done in a climate-just manner (cf. also Schieritz 2021).
 
 

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Strengthen common good economies 

Communitarian forms of solidarity economy represent the most radical form of system transformation at the local level. Here, people live and work communally without separating these levels from each other. The people living and working here generate value in which they share equally. Often they are also committed to the idea of communitarian democracy and ecological sustainability in their actions. The movement of communitarian forms of solidarity-based economy is increasingly beginning to network internationally. [3]
The approach of the common good economy, which was significantly developed by Christian Felber, can offer an alternative in this context and it is to be wished a further spread. In short, it is about producing or providing services in such a way that positive performance is achieved in the areas of ecological sustainability, social justice, human dignity, solidarity and democratic co-determination/transparency. Public benefit-oriented companies should then also receive tax advantages. The banking system should also grant advantages in lending to public welfare-oriented enterprises, or special banks should be established for certified public welfare-oriented enterprises or corresponding business start-ups. This promises a peaceful and gradual transformation of capitalism from an economic exploitation society to a globally spreading form of society that does not serve the profit rate of a few rich people but the common good of all people - according to Felber in the context of the concept of the common good economy (2018, 8): 

"The economy must become more humane, more social, more distributive, more sustainable, more democratic - more ethical all around: more public good oriented." 

The world economy and the peace issue must be seen in a context. If the social gap continues to widen worldwide due to the activities of multinational corporations and speculating hedge funds that are contrary to the common good, as well as a neoliberal-oriented economic policy that supports this, there can be no peace in the various regions. The enormous social differences resulting from the different positions in the production and service process are extremely unjust on this scale, lead to social tensions, promote poverty-induced criminality, lead to mass migration and, especially in the poorer regions of the world, provide a conducive basis for terrorism. 

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Human Development Index (HDI) instead of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 

The gross domestic product and also the gross world product are no longer independent economic yardsticks, since an unreflected economic growth becomes the reference point of the economic performance. Even environmental destruction, e.g. the accident of an oil tanker, enters positively into the balance via attempts to eliminate it, which have to be priced. External effects, such as the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, on the other hand, are not taken into account. Moreover, with increasing social inequality, the gross domestic product or gross world product can grow and at the same time the majority of the population can become increasingly worse off. 

Joseph Stiglitz therefore proposes using the HDI (Human Development Index) of the United Nations Development Programme as an economic measure in place of gross domestic product because, unlike GDP, it also takes health, education and income distribution into account: 

"The goal of economic production is to increase the well-being of the members of a society, however this is defined. Not one measure alone can capture the complexity of what goes on in a modern society, but GDP as a measure fails in a very crucial way. We need measures that capture individual welfare levels (measures of median income are much more meaningful than measures of average income), metrics of sustainability (that capture, for example, resource depletion and environmental degradation, as well as increases in debt), and on the state of health and education." 

(Stiglitz 2010, 356) 

This means breaking away from growth thinking that serves one-sided interests and moving toward an understanding of global economic development that declares responsibility for the biosphere and the well-being of those who live in it to be a priority goal. 

It will even be necessary to aim for zero growth and even negative growth, if at the same time value is placed on satisfying the basic needs of all people, reducing resource consumption and avoiding the production of pointless and unnecessary products. 

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Characteristics of a post-growth economy 

In this context, essential elements of the post-growth economy envisaged by sustainability researcher Nico Paech (2018), among others, must be taken into account, such as the dismantling of a large proportion of ecologically damaging and nonsensical industrial production facilities, the regionalization of production and consumption with a simultaneous shortening of transport routes, a local subsistence economy for self-sufficiency in communal form, energy saving and decentralization of energy supply, a significant reduction in wage labor time due to digitalized production with a simultaneous increase in the working time contributed to the self-sufficiency economy, as well as the liberation from the need to produce environmentally harmful and nonsensical products.These include a communal form of local subsistence economy, energy conservation and decentralization of the energy supply, a significant reduction in wage labor time due to digitalized production with a simultaneous increase in the working time contributed to the self-sufficiency economy, and the liberation from unnecessary consumption ballast through a partial renunciation of consumption. [4] 

If one takes a closer look, in the context of a post-growth economy, some areas would have to continue to grow, others would have to be significantly reduced, but overall a reversal of the growth trend would have to be achieved - according to sociologist Silke van Dyk (2017): 

"Social services and care activities should continue to grow, here we have not too much, but too little. In fossil energy production, it is particularly important that we shrink. The question is, where can we succeed in getting out of the growth constraints of capitalism? It is a system that, in order to remain stable, is designed for permanent increase. Here lies the problem: All economic activity involves material and energy transformations - this cannot function indefinitely in a world with limited resources. And the efficiency promises of green capitalism are completely illusory." 

Since economic structures have long since become neoliberally globalized, economic imbalances must also be addressed at the global level: Market economy and trade must be possible, but they must function according to strict rules and a socially responsible and ecologically sound regulatory framework. Financial speculation, such as betting on the development of interest rates or share prices, will be prohibited. Moreover, financial speculation must be subject to effective financial transaction taxes so that the financial resources of banks and funds flow back into the real economy. 

The agents, institutions, groups and initiatives, who aim at this radical change have the responsibility to stick to nonviolent means of change in order to make sure, that their aims of a sustainable and just future-society is not endangered by violent actions and developments, which can lead to a loss of control and social barbarism.. 

The agents will then have the most real chance of success, when scientists and wage-earners as well as people, who depend on public welfare join in, since they experience the necessitiy of change the most.

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The Role of the United Nations in the Course of Economic Reorganization 

Large economic concentrations and interdependencies must be disentangled and tamed under the direction of the appropriate UN specialized agencies. International corporations must be expropriated transnationally and nationalized, i.e. placed under the supervision and management of the relevant specialized UN agencies, if they violate the principles of the UN,  e.g. production and distribution based on sustainability criteria or the ban on arms exports to areas of tension. 

The rights of employees in companies must also be enforced worldwide. These include freedom of trade union activity and the establishment of works councils - achievements that exist only in some regions of the world, and even there only in part. 

At most, tax corridors should be established worldwide through the coordination of the United Nations Economic and Financial Council, the variance of which is oriented to the neediness of the respective region and has a defined range of variation. This will close global tax loopholes and tax profits and salaries more fairly. This also includes a minimum tax of e.g. 20% or 25% for multinational corporations to avoid tax dumping by states and indirect tax evasion by corporations. 

National tariffs are to be approved only upon application to the Economic and Social Council of the UN or its special organizations designated for this purpose in the event that a country has to compensate for an economic development disadvantage and its production is to be favored by means of protective tariffs. Punitive tariffs imposed unilaterally by a country are to be prohibited; they can only be imposed by the world police through democratic decisions of the United Nations in the event of a country's continued violation of the rules. 

Currency speculation, which can drag entire regions into a social downward spiral, becomes impossible by introducing - in the longer term - a world currency issued and controlled by the United Nations. Cryptocurrencies are to be banned by the United Nations because they are non-transparent and speculative. 

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The economic and political hegemonic intentions of individual actors within the framework of post-colonial structures must be countered by a concept of inclusive multilateralism that takes the interests of the countries and institutions of the Global South into account more comprehensively and respectfully than before - according to Plagemann/Maihack (2023, 225):

"In the long term, reliable multilateral processes, as desired not only by us but also by the majority of societies in the Global South, are more important than individual, even particularly valued bilateral relationships. Because this is the only way to break the power of the few over the many."
This also includes better representation of the interests of economists and politicians from the Global South and more favorable financing conditions in multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Of course, this also includes improved representation in the UN Security Council, as long as it still exists with the existing rights.

In the global context - i.e. not only for initiatives in the Global North - neoliberal globalization must be contrasted with a concept of sustainable development oriented towards the common good, which ensures security of supply for all with the common goods of water, air, soil and food - according to Peter/Moegling (2005, 27):

"While the neoliberalization process expropriates, the sustainable development process appropriates. Thus, the political demand of sustainability is still: socialization and democratization of those key areas and public goods that are the basis for peoples' lives: primary resources such as water, soil, air, food and secondary resources such as health services and education. Education in particular has a central role to play here: processes of sustainability depend on a high educational potential of its bearers." 

Already existing forms of a solidarity-based economy [5] and of the broadening and networking of this movement could become the nuclei of a new society, linking up with trade union organizations, with NGOs pushing for democratization, with environmental initiatives as well as with the international peace movement. A new society does not come along as if by chance, but is already building itself within the old society. When people's discontent will increase in the wake of economic and financial crises, brutal capitalist exploitation and unjust distribution of wealth on a global scale, initiatives of solidarity-based and ecological economy and the reappropriation of land, production and value creation will enter a favorable time for them everywhere, in all regions and places of the world. 

This will also increase the social pressure on the institutions of politics - also via changed election results - to assert themselves against the resistance of the hedge funds, the international corporations, the big banks as well as the super-rich and to open up to alternative policy concepts. 

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Transformation of the defense industries 

Central to the economic foundations of peace will be arms conversion, i.e. the transformation of most national arms production into peace production. Weapons and technical security systems are to be produced only for world police institutions and measures under the control of the UN. Nuclear armament experiences its end; all nuclear weapons are banned, dismantled and disposed of. 

This includes the step-by-step withdrawal of the financial basis for a privately organized arms industry that is getting out of hand. This is being done in the course of demilitarizing the individual nations and regions by removing the public buyers, the nation states. The UN-controlled sectors of the international arms industry, which will continue to be required for the necessary equipment of the UN police organs and the UN military, will only need a fraction of the previous nation-state financing in terms of the necessary financing costs. This will create an enormous peace dividend that will make it possible to finance investment programs for public welfare-oriented, economic projects and for social and ecological objectives. 

But banks must also be persuaded and possibly forced - even if only by mass pressure from customers - to withdraw from financing military armaments projects. For example, Norwegian and Dutch pension funds have already withdrawn from financing nuclear technology used for military purposes. In the USA and Germany, for example - according to ICAN - a large number of banks are still financing nuclear armament projects. [6] 

Overcoming arms export regulations by the arms companies

International and national commitments against arms exports to areas of tension are currently being violated all over the world. States of the European Union, and Germany in particular, are no exception - on the contrary: they are leading arms exporters and demonstrably do not shy away from supplying arms to areas of tension. 

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A Greenpeace study on German arms export policy, for example, sums up the unconstitutionality of such government behavior for Germany: 

"Despite the principle of the peace commandment in in Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law, Germany exports war weapons and armaments to controversial third countries. Arms exports to third countries from Germany have become the norm - in the past ten years, up to 60 percent of German war weapons and armaments have repeatedly gone to third countries."[7] 

In addition, various strategies are used by the arms industry to circumvent existing export restrictions: 

- Lobbying, formal application for arms exports and attempts to obtain approval from the            Federal Ministry of Economics or the Federal Security Council; 

In the event of failure in the official approval process: 

• Outsourcing of production to countries that have relaxed export regulations; 
• Circumvention of export requirements by means of delivery to other EU countries, NATO countries or countries with NATO membership,                  
• then deliver to the area of tension; 
• Establishing arms factories directly in the area of tension as joint ventures to circumvent arms export restrictions; 
• Delivery of individual parts that are assembled to completed weapons, ready to use in the target countries, 
• Delivery of dual-use goods to areas of tension, e.g. delivery of military trucks on which mounts with machine guns are then mounted for counterinsurgency purposes, or of speedboats which are then equipped with machine guns on site to enforce port embargoes. 

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The Greenpeace study once again confirms in summary the internationalization strategy of the armaments industry using the example of the international armaments group Rheinmetall with a view to the significance of the production and supply of ammunition: 

"However, ammunition plays a role not only in the functionality of small arms and light weapons, but also as a broad spectrum for land, naval and air forces, for example, in the form of ammunition for tanks, howitzers, artillery pieces or as naval guns. The topic of ammunition production in particular reveals another pattern of German arms export policy, namely the acceptance of a trend toward the internationalization of German arms companies. Joint ventures such as that of Rheinmetall in South Africa, which established a new site with the acquisition of Denel, are also aimed at supplying ammunition to the conflict- and tension-prone countries of the MENA region, Latin America and South (East) Asia." [8] 

Demands to control arms exports 

Resulting from the analysis of arms exports made here, the following must be demanded if one really wants to adhere to the normative demands of international and national regulations on arms exports: 

1. An end to all arms exports to areas of tension: To this end, the UN's Àrms Trade Treaty' (ATT), the 'Joint Decision of the Council of the EU' and national regulations must be supplemented with binding control mechanisms and sensitive sanction options. Restrictions and exceptions that allow arms exports to areas of tension must be removed. The expert-groups monitoring this process must be controlled by parliamentary commissions, who have to give reports about their work and results to the entire UN-General Assembly. 

2. At the European level, a special representative with sufficient human and financial resources should be appointed to closely monitor and control arms exports from the EU and to have veto power over arms exports, technology exports and joint ventures to areas of tension. 

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3. For the Federal Republic of Germany, a strict arms control law is to be demanded, which stringently combines the current different and in part confusing legal regulations and develops them into a transparent and binding law. 

4. the possibility of post-shipment controls with the right of verification for the exporting country should be established as a European standard. 

5. the legal and contractual basis must be created for the withdrawal of licenses for arms exports that have already been granted if the situation in the recipient country changes for the worse. 

6. No bank loans or government Hermes guarantees may be granted for arms exports to areas of tension. 

At the UN level, the control function must be strengthened if national and regional controls fail. In this context, economic sanctions and other measures against states should also be envisaged, if arms are transported from them to regions of tension. 

To achieve this, however, a democratization of the United Nations is necessary, which would have to be linked, among other  aspects, to a reform of the UN Security Council and the establishment of a democratically elected UN Parliament. Otherwise, controls and sanctions would be blocked by those states that are themselves the largest global arms exporters. 

It  is essential to increase civil society pressure in the various nation-states by bringing court-proof actions, supported by initiatives and NGOs such as Greenpeace or Transparency International, against arms exports to areas of tension, referring to the ATT, to the Common European Position or to national constitutions such as the German Basic Law. The German Basic Law Article 26 (1) and (2), for example, states - in addition to the licensing requirement for arms exports - that "acts which are likely and are undertaken with the intention of disturbing the peaceful coexistence of peoples (...) are to be made punishable" (Article 26 (1)).  And: German Basic Law Article 20 (4): "Against anyone who undertakes to eliminate this order, all Germans have the right to resist if no other remedy is possible." 

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Such a court action can be directed against specific arms companies and arms dealers as well as against government officials authorizing arms exports to areas of tension. In addition to the publicity such a lawsuit would receive in the media, the very fact of conducting such a lawsuit and the necessity of the responsible actors' own involvement could also have a deterrent effect on them. 

Ban arms exports in general? 

Furthermore it must be asked whether arms exports should not be banned as a matter of principle. This would dry up existing and future military conflicts and give greater weight to the peace-building activities of the United Nations. 

In this context, one immediately hears the argument: If we stop arms exports, other states and arms companies will immediately step in. 

However, the same argument could also be used to allow drug cultivation or the chemical production of synthetic drugs and drug trafficking in Germany. Here, too, we are dealing with an economy of death. Both economies - drug trafficking and arms dealing - are particularly profitable. 

Then it is often argued:For example, a country like Germany only has a share of 6% of the world's arms exports and therefore a renunciation of arms exports would be insignificant. 

One could argue against this: If Germany could send out a signal, this would have an impact with a spillover effect and German demands for a stop to arms exports would be credible. 

It is also repeatedly argued that jobs would be destroyed by damaging the arms industry. 

Here, it must first be emphasized once again that not everything that can be produced should be produced, especially if it is socially and also ecologically harmful. In addition, there are a number of possibilities for arms conversion that have already been conceptually developed and with which the arms industry, also in cooperation with the trade unions, should at last seriously concern itself. It is a matter of converting production to socially useful and socio-ecologically responsible goods. 

The conversion of arms production to civilian, peaceful goods on the one hand and the redirection of state funds into the promotion of helping and supporting professions, e.g. in the care sector or for the elimination of military-related ecological damage [9], are good examples of a conversion of a war industry into a peace industry as well as the sensible use of public resources. 

In addition, more jobs will be created here than are maintained in the defense industry. 

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European solutions 

A first intermediate step and a strategic demand could be to export arms only to the EU and no longer from the EU to the outside world. This would also largely eliminate the question of arms exports to areas of tension. 

As long as international disarmament cannot be initiated, national disarmament could take place at the European level at least, in a clear departure from the cost-increasing requirements of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), by bundling defense efforts at the EU level and thus planning a significantly reduced use of resources. This would mean a deliberate departure from NATO's 2% GDP aim. In this context, a significantly changed 'European Defensive Agency' (EDA) could play a leading role. 

The (EDA) is an intergovernmental agency subordinate to the Council of the European Union. It could be expanded within the framework of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) with the declared goal of reducing European defense costs - as opposed to the hitherto largely isolated and very expensive nation-state technology development. In parallel, the CSDP would have to be further developed in order to achieve a common defense policy at the expense of national armament and defense readiness. This should result in a European peace dividend coupled with a change and an intensification of EU foreign policy based on diplomacy, which is based on the reduction of enemy images, e.g. toward Russia and China. However, it must be ensured through resolved resolutions, e.g. of the EU Parliament, that CSDP is not used for further rearmament, but is defined in terms of an improved *peace-orientated policy in order to establish an international system of settling conflicts  on the base of mutual negotiations and agreements.*In regard of the European Union this would  mean a politically intended departure from the PESCO proposals for a medium-term increase in defense spending of 20% for all participating EU states.[10] It would mean to establish an international peace-order, which respects the security interests of all states, no matter how mighty they are. 

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Finally, on the question of a change of direction in armaments policy, US President Dwight Eisenhower, who at the time was trying to end the Korean War, should have his say in a speech on 16 April 1953: 
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"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signi-fies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, tho-se who are cold and are not clothed. 

This world in arms is not spending money alone. 

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. 

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. 

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. 

It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. 

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. 

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed mo-re than 8,000 people. (...) This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." [11] 
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Therefore it is necessary for the current political debate in the framework of a social system with democratic self-claims for the upcoming elections to check whether parties are resolutely against arms exports to areas of tension and credibly represent a consistent peace policy. Democratic parties that are fundamentally in favor of the abolition of all arms exports from the EU and also of reducing national arms spending would then be particularly supported by voters interested in war prevention and peacekeeping. 
However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shows that there should be an exception for arms exports to areas of tension: If a state is attacked by another state and has to defend itself against the aggressor, this is an emergency situation that also permits arms deliveries in the sense of the UN Charter. If all diplomatic and negotiation-based steps fail, the resistance struggle of the attacked state is to be supported with arms deliveries with a sense of proportion. It would be better, however, if a functioning UN could intervene here as a world police force. In any case, neither the UN nor transnational organizations such as the EU should stand idly by while another state is destroyed and a population slaughtered by a military aggressor. In this case, the world community must also provide military assistance to this state - knowing full well that there is a danger of military escalation in this. Therefore, the military strengthening of the attacked state must always be intensively and effectively accompanied by credible offers of negotiations which, in the event of a peace agreement, provide for the withdrawal of sanctions and arms deliveries as well as arrangements for reparations payments and measures of international jurisdiction for the prosecution of war crimes. 

On the other hand, how questionable it is on the part of right-wing populist politicians worldwide to get excited about the number of refugees in their own country, but to advocate arms exports to areas of tension with the argument that jobs in the arms industry are to be preserved. This contributes to the fact that more and more people have to flee from the areas of tension - especially to the regions of the rich north, from which the weapons destabilizing their homeland originate. 

 

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Mayors for Peace 

An interesting peace initiative calling for an end to the nuclear economy and the production, stockpiling and deployment of nuclear weapons was launched in 1982, when the then mayor of Hiroshima called on the world's mayors and cities to transcend nation-state boundaries, join together and put pressure on the nuclear weapons industry and on states with nuclear weapons. From this call and various cooperative projects and conferences of mayors on an international scale, the NGO 'Mayors for Peace' emerged in 2001. It describes its broad mission as follows: 

"The purposes of the 'Mayors for Peace' are to contribute to the attainment of lasting world peace by arousing concern among citizens of the world for the total abolition of nuclear weapons through close solidarity among member cities as well as by striving to solve vital problems for the human race such as starvation and poverty, the plight of refugees, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation." [12]  

By August 2023, 8,200 mayors from 166 nations had joined Mayors for Peace. This is an important signal for peace policy from elected and legitimized personalities from cities in different regions of the world. It is also an expression of the discussions in a city and in the municipal bodies. It is necessary to develop this movement and from this decentralized level, in connection with the central actions of the entire NGO, to increase the pressure on the nuclear industry and the governments of the nuclear states. Accordingly, it is also the task of the peace-politically committed part of the city population to carry out educational and persuasive work in their municipal context, *to cooperate with local initiatives for peace and for the protection of the environment,* to hold discussions with their city officials and the responsible committees, and to initiate resolutions to join the 'Mayors for Peace' and to integrate their city into an international urban peace movement. 

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Goals of the international NGO 'Mayors for Peace':
1. "Immediately de-alert all nuclear weapons. Even today, thousands of nuclear weapons around the world stand ready to launch on warning. This level of alert is madness, and stepping down is the quickest, easiest way to prevent an accidental nuclear holocaust.
2 Immediately start substantive negotiations towards a universal nuclear weapons convention After repeated promises at NPT Review Conferences and other occasions by the nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, we call on national governments to start substantive negotiations now to achieve a nuclear weapons convention.
3 Conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention We call on national governments and other institutions to work toward the conclusion of a nuclear weapons convention that comprehensively prohibits the development, production, testing, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons and provides for their elimination.
4 Physical destruction of all nuclear weapons by 2020 The weapons can be destroyed. Fissile materials can be rendered unusable. Strict international control is technically feasible. A nuclear-weapon-free world is possible. [13]
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Furthermore, the disarmament of private organizations and of individuals who possess small arms must also be carried out step by step through national and international legislation. 

The disarmament of private individuals must also take place step by step. In this context, the regulations for the acquisition of weapons must first be tightened in international coordination. Ultimately, after a transitional phase, all privately owned weapons must be handed over and destroyed or recycled as raw materials for peace products. The printing of weapons via 3D printers must be made a strict punishable offense. The development of killer robots with artificial intelligence must be banned worldwide. Universities must not accept arms contracts (binding civil clauses). Private military companies that hire out mercenaries must be closed down. Scientists and entrepreneurs who invent chemical and biological weapons must be charged and convicted. The protection of people has priority over the profit interests of the weapons industry. 

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Summary: The counter-model of a neoliberal predatory capitalism has been developed within the framework of the present chapter, which is oriented towards the ethical principles of solidarity, ecological sustainability as well as democracy and justice. The economy must serve people and not the other way around. It must be compatible with planetary resource limits and oriented toward ecological sustainability. A socio-ecological market economy under the primacy of such an understanding of the common good represents a significant systemic change. If such a socio-ecologically oriented and solidarity-based marketeconomy on the economic level is combined with a further developed democracy on the political level, a gradual and peaceful transformation of capitalism on the system level is at hand. These rather local, national or regional processes are accompanied and controlled by a change of the global economic structures, the establishment of tax corridors, an unbundling and restricting of the large corporations as the first step to the socialisation of the core industry under democratic control as well as the containment of financial speculation on the part of the corresponding institutions of a strengthened and democratized UN. 

The arms industry is strictly controlled and, within the framework of the vision of [14] a comprehensive reform of the UN presented here, works exclusively and on a much smaller scale of production for the world policing function of the United Nations. This will free up a trillion-dollar annual peace dividend that can be used to build a world economy based on solidarity, for social measures and for the fight against the economically induced climate crisis. 

The orderly systemic change envisaged here differs significantly from the ideas of a "Great Reset" as proposed by the 'World Economic Forum' (WEF) in 2020. The Covid 19 crisis would have to be used for a major upheaval, which leads to a change of direction in ecological, economic and political terms by replacing shareholder value in corporate culture with stakeholder value, so that more far-reaching interests could be taken into account. [15] The "Great Reset" is therefore more of a makeshift repair of capitalism without attacking its basic principles. WEF head Klaus Schwab himself puts the system-changing approach of the "Great Reset" into perspective, emphasizing in an interview: 

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"No, capitalism is not the problem. I am convinced that the entrepreneurial power of each individual is the driving force for real progress - and not the state. ... I am not arguing for a change in the system. I'm arguing for system improvement."  

Thus, neither the questions of limiting private property and breaking up multinational corporations, nor the destructive character of the capitalist profit motive, nor the question of a decidedly fairer distribution of social wealth are raised here. But it is precisely the solution of these questions, which are decisive for the solution of global problems, such as the destruction of the natural environment, the erosion of democratic systems, the loss of livelihood for many people and the flight from their native regions, as well as for the destruction of world regions by military and war. 

The basic structural problem inherent in the capitalistic economy and society is the combination of private property, extraction of the surplus value, competition and egoism in the fight for advantages at the expense of business rivals. This is a structural obstacle on the path to cooperation, solidarity, distributive justice and ecological behavior, which is the very base of a solar-solidary society (Altvater) and for finding a way to overcome the future threats. 

4.2 Democratic Renewal of Societies, Institutions and ways of life 

Many People in richer Western societies living in representative democracies enjoy a degree of freedom of expression and organization that is unprecedented in past societies. The most of the western democracies also score above average in a comparison of current political systems. The success of settling social conflicts in the political system, combined with an extractivist economic system that makes use of resources such as mineral resources and cheap labor in the rest of the world, has led to a relatively large scope of behavior for their citizens as long as they have gained an economic standard above poverty. 

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But how will ruling and profiting elites react when the economic system enters a long-term crisis and people begin to protest more effectively against the capitalist constitution  of the economy and try to impose forms of solidarity-based economics? Will democratic institutions and opportunities for democratic participation then be preserved? It remains to be seen into which future structures the institutions of the past and present will then evolve. 

It is precisely the imperial way of life of Western societies at the expense of the poor societies of the global South that has provided many of its citizens with considerable political freedoms, as only a few people and social groups in Western societies have questioned the system as a result. Nevertheless, structural problems can be found in the political system of a predominantly representative democracy and a stuck democratization of the economic sphere.

According to a study by the German Economic Institute (IW), in 1996, 49% of companies in Germany still had a works council. By 2024, only 7% of companies in Germany had a works council. Only just under one in three employees in a private company will still be represented by a works council. (Klauth, 2025). In addition to an outdated and bureaucratic Works Constitution Act, the intimidation of employees who want to set up works councils is mentioned, among other things. Precarious and temporary employees also find it more difficult to get involved in co-determination at work. 

Brand/ Wissen (2017, 185) therefore point out that in the course of an elimination of the imperial way of life, democratization must also be advanced: 

"Lifting the restrictions of a liberal, increasingly authoritarian democracy in favor of a comprehensive societal democracy is a central component of the struggles for a solidary way of life. This includes defensive struggles against the social and political shift to the right as well as the repression of imperial practices and the institutional safeguarding of the new. Its starting point is the insight that the social and ecological dislocations with which we are confronted today and which cause endless suffering have their causes in global social conditions - and not (...) in endogenous processes of the global South." 

Democracy is to be thought of more comprehensively than is often done in everyday political discourse. Democracy is to be thought of as a form of rule, a form of society, and a form of life (Himmelmann 2016). This means that societies at all levels are to be shaped democratically: In the economy, in administration, in the media, in clubs and associations, and in schools and families. And of course: at the level of representing citizens' interests. 

This is an enormous task that requires structural reforms, but also further awareness-raising. Certainly, schools will also have to make enormous efforts in the sense of democracy education with regard to their forms of democratic participation and their teaching content and methods. 

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Media expansion of democratic public spheres 

An opportunity should therefore be seen here in the further development of a deliberative democracy (Habermas 1992). A constitutive element of this is a democratic public sphere through which different reasons, assessments and opinions can be exchanged, accessible to all and with equal opportunities to speak, before a political decision is made. 

The independence of the media is constitutive for this, an independence that is by no means realized due to the largely private ownership of the media, such as newspapers, a large part of the television stations and the digital media. 

What should be demanded here are socialized solutions for media ownership, such as cooperatively organized forms of disposal and ownership relationships oriented toward the economy of the common good. Certainly, public television stations must be preserved, but they must be further democratized in the sense of citizen participation. 

Only when the link between private-sector media power and a correspondingly interest-driven control of political attitudes and judgments is broken can a deliberative democracy continue to develop. Already existing examples of a socialization and democratization of media can be seen in the Swiss online magazine 'Republik' and the German magazine 'Die Tageszeitung' (taz). 

Digital media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn, must also be freed from the algorithms used by the private sector, which only enable communication with a high public impact if this is also paid for accordingly. Otherwise, only a small, limited portion of one's contacts will receive the posted information, which is actually intended for a larger public. 

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Balancing direct democratic and representative structures 

When speaking of 'Western democracies' in terms of their legitimacy of democracy and their constitutional reality, it is necessary to distinguish between the different political systems of Western democracies. For example, the political systems of the USA, Switzerland, Germany or France differ considerably from each other. Both the constitutional constructions and the relationship between constitutional claims and constitutional reality are very different in the states mentioned. 

It is important to learn from political systems that have a balance of representative and direct democratic elements of the political system. Germany, for example, has clear deficits with regard to direct-democratic structures at the federal level. Switzerland, on the other hand, is an example of a combination of representative-democratic and direct-democratic procedures from which it is necessary to learn in a critical review of this model. 

In this context, a reorganization of the democratic system requires a precise analysis of which problems and conflicts are suitable for direct-democratic decision-making. The question of reintroducing the death penalty or abolishing rule-of-law structures should not be put to a vote in either the representative or the direct-democratic system. However, there are certainly issues that can be decided directly democratically at the nation-state level, such as the question of whether a state should join a multinational economic alliance like CETA or MERCOSUR. Precisely then, however, it will also be important to have a deliberative public sphere whose media communication is not primarily influenced by private-sector interests and companies such as Cambridge Analytica. Such a decision must be preceded by a carefully worked-out process of information, discussion and decision-making. 

On the one hand, such an approach will make it possible to contribute to a specific problem solution. On the other hand, participation in several direct-democratic procedures structured in this way will develop democratic competence in the population in the sense of building up understood knowledge and competence in analysis, judgment and action. 

Direct forms of democracy could also be used much more creatively. In addition to citizens' petitions and referendums, experiments could also be carried out with citizens' tribunals, self-government elements in residential blocks (citizens' councils), with expanded citizen participation in public television and radio stations, and institutionalized participation of NGOs in certain parliamentary decisions. 

These considerations and proposals referred primarily to national societies. How democratic reorganization could be carried out at the multilateral level is described in more detail in Chapter 5, using the reorganization of the United Nations as an example. 

 

Introduction or revival of co-determination at the workplace

On the one hand, in many states of the global South there has never been any significant co-determination at the workplace. Here, of course, the first step would be to demand that the legal basis for co-determination at the workplace be created. The situation was different in the richer states that could afford co-determination at the workplace. The widespread suppression of co-determination, for example in Germany either through the active obstruction of works council elections by the company management or through other, legally less secure employee models, would have to be reversed in the context of a further development of social democratization. It is to be demanded that any obstruction of works council initiatives or elections is subject to more severe penalties. Protection against dismissal for election initiators is also to be demanded.

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The most democratic form of co-determination is certainly to be seen in solidary collectives, where at least in smaller companies the company belongs to the employees, who jointly discuss and vote on the central decisions. Such an approach to workplace democratization is also rooted in the Economy for the Common Good. 
Democracy must not bypass companies. Otherwise, the systemic contradiction between the economic basis and the political superstructure, between capitalism and democracy, will persist. 

4.3   Social justice from an international perspective 

Chapter 2.5 described in detail the current social inequality and the looming scenario of a world in which fewer and fewer rich people try to exclude ever larger parts of the world's population from social wealth. 

Sociologist Stephan Lessenich (2018) summarizes the problem again using the Oxfam Poverty Wealth Studies  – and in 2025, things don't look any different: 

"Every year, the Oxfam report on poverty and wealth reveals something shocking: Life chances in this world are unequally distributed to an almost unbelievable degree. 

But you can also say that Oxfam reveals the well-known every year: Global capitalism knows a few winners who are able to enrich themselves in an almost obscene way. And it creates many losers who live in inhumane conditions and have to work under unspeakable conditions. 

The fact that both winning and losing are interrelated in global capitalism cannot be made clear often enough: The incomes and fortunes of the rich and super-rich of this world are drawn from the labor and poverty of large majorities of the population around the globe. This is what is actually scandalous about the conditions that Oxfam documents at the beginning of each year: Some enrich themselves at the expense of others. 

This principle applies in every single country in the world - and it also applies on a global scale. In virtually every country in the world, social inequality is growing, and the rich and super-rich are able to concentrate more and more income and wealth among themselves. But even on a global scale, inequality remains extreme: If the entire world were a single country, its income inequality would be on par with that of South Africa, one of the most unequal countries of all." 

It is necessary to ask with which structures and systemic processes this global and also in individual nation states existing unequal distribution of wealth is connected. 

Of course, capitalism – and especiallythe neoliberal interpretation of world capitalism – has once again exacerbated the poverty situation. Tolerated tax havens for the rich, through which public property is stolen from the majority of the population, the connection between abuse of power, corruption and personal enrichment, unchecked financial speculation, the externalization of ecological costs and a worldwide observable dismantling of democratically controlled welfare state achievements are, especially in their interconnectedness, the cause of the ever-widening social gap. 

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A global redistribution via modified taxation systems 

Measures to create social justice for a new order on a global scale must start here. A democratically controlled world government of the future would have to work on this in cooperation with powerful social and civil society movements in all parts of the world and effectively initiate opposing tendencies. This must involve drastic redistribution in local, regional and global contexts, initially through changed taxation systems and their strict control. Different tax corridors must be set up for different regions in order to gradually equalize the poverty gap. Speculation taxes should be levied in such a way that speculation on the financial markets is no longer profitable. Tax havens in which corporations and super-rich individuals no longer have to pay any or almost any taxes will be closed. An effective global CO2 tax on every ton of emitted CO2 can be used to initiate a global socio-ecological turnaround. 

A globally valid minimum taxation, in particular of multinational corporations, must finally be implemented worldwide and without exceptions. 
In view of the above-average income growth, OXFAM (2025c) calls for an additional wealth tax for billionaires and multi-millionaires:

“Introduction of a minimum tax (billionaire tax) of 2 percent on the wealth of billionaires and the highly wealthy to offset tax privileges for high levels of investment income.”

Basic social security and a dignified minimum wage for all people 

In the debate on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals ('SDGs'), there is a particular call for basic social security, especially for the poorer sections of the population in the different regions of the world, in order to provide them with access to basic food, education and medical services, i.e. the fulfillment of the most fundamental human rights - according to the Global Policy Forum et al. (2017): 

"Social security systems are essential for sustainable poverty reduction. Although the right to social security is enshrined in international law in the Social Covenant, 73 percent of the world's population still has no access to the most important social security systems. They have no protection against elementary life risks such as illness, poverty in old age or unemployment. Against this background, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has called on member states to introduce at least universal basic social protection that provides access to basic health care and elementary income security. Social security reduces the risks of poverty and contributes to social equality." 

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Neoliberalized globalization relied on being able to exploit the labor of workers in the poorer regions of the world ('low-wage countries'). Therefore, in the long run, a minimum wage level has to be introduced worldwide, which has to be adjusted to the purchasing power of the respective currency and which enables a dignified life for all people. 

A strict supply chain law must finally be enforced globally, i.e. for all corporations worldwide, which makes the contracting corporations legally responsible for humane standards and appropriate rewards in the upstream production facilities. This should also be supported through the incorporation of socio-political and ecological regulations in bilateral and multilateral treaties. 

In addition to the paradigm shift in tax policy, the reduction of the profits of multinational corporations, huge sums in the trillions will be freed up to finance social security, minimum wage levels and regional social equalization, as national armaments budgets will be eliminated or considerably less money will be needed to finance the UN's global forces of order. 

A global structural compensation and the repayment of the stolen resources 

Through global structural compensation, strict supply chain laws, an acceptable global minimum wage and the global development of central social security systems, the colonization gains of the rich states, including the effects of the unjust global economic 'terms of trade', the organized theft of human beings and the plundering of mineral resources, are paid back to those regions of the world that would not recover without this compensation. These resources flow into the development of the economy there, whereby above all collective enterprises and non-private enterprises in the form of cooperatives or similar legal forms are to be promoted - in particular, if they produce ecologically. With this global structural equalization, major causes of rural exodus and migration will then also cease to exist. It is now possible to stay in one's own homeland and help there to work for a socially just, peaceful and ecologically compatible reorganization. 

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4.4   The ecological preconditions of peace 

Australian climate and energy experts Spratt/Dunlop (2019, 10) highlight the societal risk if no fundamental attitude change and associated drastic action is taken to save the world's climate: 

"This scenario provides a glimpse into a world of 'outright chaos' on a path to the end of human civilisation and modern society as we have known it, in which the challenges to global security are simply overwhelming and political panic becomes the norm. 

Yet the world is currently completely unprepared to envisage, and even less deal with, the consequences of catastrophic climate change. 

What can be done to avoid such a probable but catastrophic future? It is clear from our preliminary scenario that dramatic action is required this decade if the 'hothouse Earth' scenario is to be avoided. To reduce this risk and protect human civilisation, a massive global mobilisation of resources is needed in the coming decade to build a zero-emissions industrial system and set in train the restoration of a safe climate. This would be akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilisation." 

This should make the extent of the necessary measures clear: The climate catastrophe can only be prevented with a resource effort as it was done in the course of the emergency caused by World War 2.
However, this is not to suggest that previous efforts to contain the climate crisis have been in vain. Although the UN environmental and climate conferences have not achieved the necessary optimum, without them the climate crisis would have been even more severe than it already is. Both the entry into force of the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994 and the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 have certainly provided effective impetus for a gradual change in energy supply - even if this is far from sufficient.

Future measures, e.g. in energy supply or agriculture, must be strictly checked for their climate -impact in order to reach climate-neutrality. Within a period of 5-10 years, a level of zero additional climate gas emissions must be reached. If this aim fails to a small extent after that, then the emissions must be carefully accounted for and compensated in a controlled manner via technical or biotic measures. These include replacing fossil energy generation with photovoltaic or wind power plants, for example, or creating additional CO2 sinks through forest cultivation, for example. Overall, however, in addition to the climate neutrality of future measures, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that have already occurred must also be undertaken. Compensation alone must not be relied upon, as this will not prevent the emission of climate-damaging gases, e.g. during production. Appropriately high CO2 taxes and improved and effective handling of trading in emissions certificates are sensible measures in this regard. 

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Ultimately, largely abandoning fossil fuels is the most effective method of climate protection: in particular, leaving coal and petroleum in the ground, using energy more sparingly, and employing regenerative forms of energy production in a climate-neutral manner. 

The goal must be a reduction of net emissions of  climate-hostile gases [16], such as CO2, methane or nitrous oxide, towards zero. Climate neutrality means that all man-made greenhouse gas emissions that cannot be neutralized by natural sinks, such as forests or peatlands, must be prevented. 

For a climatic change, however, the earth must not be worked on with the same industrial-technological awareness that led to the ecological problems in the first place, as is the case, for example, with geoengineering measures. For example, dimming the sun via SO2 to be injected into the atmosphere to cool the biosphere overlooks the complex and highly sensitive interplay between atmospheric changes and rainfall or plant growth. Ecological disasters would be pre-programmed. [17] 
Climate scientist Niklas Höhne (New Climate Institute, 2023) also calls for this in summary:
Governments "must stop trying to adopt false solutions like carbon capture and storage with fossil fuels - this is simply the fossil fuel industry attempting to extend its life, when it needs to face up to the reality of a fossil fuel phase out." 

A changed awareness of nature 

Humans of our time have the responsibility to take the right measures in order to maintain the vitality of the biosphere on earth. Environmental researcher and former Wuppertal mayor Uwe Schneidewind summarizes the changing role of humans in dealing with nature in the epoche which many scientists call 'Anthropocene': 

"Mankind is no longer the sole driver of geological processes. It is helping to shape its own ecological future. The earth is thus placed in the hands of humanity, and this leads to a new dimension of responsibility." 

(Schneidewind 2018, 134) 

However, this requires a change in consciousness in the mainstream of humanity. Many people no longer consider themselves an integrated part of nature, they are alienated from nature, and they use technology in order to be separate themselves from nature. Such people move too little in nature, do not practice gardening, eat an unhealthy diet, do not provide their body with the biorhythm it needs, consume meat dishes based on animal cruelty, consume alcohol and cigarettes in excess, neglect their body via rampant media consumption, working until burnout. 

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It is therefore incumbent upon human beings - especially in the digital age - to respect and treat nature within and around them with care. The environment is rather to be perceived as a co-environment, i.e. to be put into a subjective relation that does not allow a distanced splitting off. Without a change of consciousness in the relationship between man and nature, political measures to restore the ecological balance in the sense of sustainable development will encounter insurmountable obstacles.
This applies to both inner and outer nature and also to the connection between the two.
The change in ecological awareness must be accompanied by a more responsible understanding of nation-state sovereignty and multilateral cooperation, because the ecological crisis does not stop at nation-state borders, according to Stewart M. Patrick (2021):
"The natural world obeys no sovereign boundaries, and neither does the worsening ecological crisis. It is time to take bold steps to overcome the disconnect between an international system divided into 195 independent countries, each operating according to its own imperatives, and a global calamity that cannot be resolved in a piecemeal fashion. It is time to govern the world as if the earth mattered."

Criteria of a sustainability-oriented policy 

In this holistic approach, sustainability is more than just a superficial fashionable phrase; it has a great deal of complexity and must be understood in a multidimensional way. Sustainability has ecological, economic, social and cultural dimensions, and a policy based on the principle of sustainability can be defined in more detail using the following criteria: 
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Rules of a policy oriented toward sustainability: 
(supplemented overview based on Peter/Moegling/Overwien 2011, 84)
Instead of the longstanding understanding of a growth-oriented pursuit of economic and social goals - i.e., a regulation of the capitalist economic process oriented toward efficiency and return - social and ecological sustainability is about a sustainable and livable world in which people can live differently and better. Sustainability means: It must no longer be produced and lived at the expense of the future. Every measure and every way of life must be examined to see what effect it has on the biosphere and on the living possibilities of present and future generations. The understanding of sustainability includes prioritizing the ecological dimension - knowing well that the various dimensions of ecological and social coexistence are interrelated. 
If economic stability is to be achieved with substantially reduced resource consumption, both the North and the South must change to comply with the key sustainability rules. These include: 
* Use of renewable raw materials only in compliance with the regrowth rate (regenerative rule); 
* Economical use of non-renewable raw materials or taking into account their substitutability (economy rule); 
* Observance of the assimilation limits of the natural balance and preventive avoidance of damage to the climate and biodiversity (adaptation rule); 

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* Extensive avoidance of the dangers and risks of using large-scale technology (precautionary rule); 
* Increasing the efficiency in the technological use of natural resources in order to reduce their consumption (efficiency rule); 
* Elementary livelihood security for all, including protection against major life risks and access to elementary education. 
* Equitable distribution of social resources and social wealth regardless of social situation, gender, culture or geographic location; 
* Abandonment of the burning of fossil raw materials in favor of renewable energy production and energy saving; 
* Consumption renunciation with regard to products if their production and distribution destroys resources that significantly affect the lives of future generations; 
* Ending animal cruelty in the context of industrial factory farming in favor of a global decrease in meat consumption and exclusively species-appropriate animal husbandry; 
* Preserving cultural diversification in a global context, especially where it contributes to a tolerant cultural identity and a sustainability-oriented way of life; 
* Democratization of political and economic spheres of society in order to place ecological control of central areas of society in the hands of those affected.
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A critical understanding of sustainability goes beyond the fashionable use of this category and is resistant to the deceptive attempts to misuse sustainability for life-threatening technologies ('greenwashing'). An analysis and assessment based on a critical understanding of sustainability uncovers structures of collaboration between bought scientists, lobbyists, dependent politicians and fossil fuel industry. Such an approach to the issue of sustainability also takes a critical look at the relocation of CO-2 emissions and Western waste to the Global South. It is not acceptable for people in the global North to create a clear ecological conscience for themselves by avoiding environmental destruction in their living environment while shifting ecological destruction to the global South. 

Cornerstones of a policy of sustainability 

Solar power infrastructure, clean water, breathable air, and decelerating population growth.
 

It is, for example, inacceptable that drinking water - the essence of life, just like clean air to breathe - becomes anobject of speculation and profit maximization. The struggle for water will increasingly determine the future of humanity. This primary source of life must be protected by all legitimate means from private-sector seizure. Internal and inter-societal peace cannot occur without protection and public availability of clean drinking water. 

This is just as true for the air we breathe. Especially in larger cities, poorer people breathe the polluted and unhealthy air on arterial roads where rents are lower. This injustice must be eliminated via changed mobility concepts and innovative concepts of a reclamation of urban living space. 

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In view of the climatic changes that are already taking place, the energy economy, which is based on the production of electricity from carbon dioxide, must be converted more quickly and more widely to a solar energy economy. Especially the countries of the global south have here an inexhaustible energy source and a natural resource, which they should use faster and more extensively.
Electricity production through photovoltaic systems combined with electricity storage and wall boxes for charging electric cars, heat production through solar thermal systems on roofs, and the expansion of wind energy (on- and offshore) combined with large storage capacities, such as 600 megawatt storage units, as well as efficient use of the energy generated through combined heat and power plants, heat pumps supplied with green electricity, or the use of the heat energy generated during electricity generation as a district heating supply are elements of a solar energy supply infrastructure. 

The 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC 2021, 38) sets CO2 residual budgets on a scientific basis:
With a probability of 17%, the 1.5 degree Celsius global warming target can be met if global emissions of 900 gigatons of CO2 are still emitted. Since this is a very low probability, the global residual CO2 budget should be closer to 300 Giga tons of CO2 (83% probability). Only below 300 Giga tons of CO2 will there be a certain probability that the 1.5 degree target can still be achieved by the end of the 21st century. Government policy as well as the climate policy of the United Nations must be oriented to this residual budget. With a view to the necessary climate justice, richer regions of the world must reduce C02 emissions faster than poorer regions, which would have to be given even more time for the transition.

Energy supply via nuclear power plants and nuclear energy is not applicable due to their uncontrollable dangerousness and the unsolvable disposal problem. Also, the effort to keep the hazardous material separate from the biosphere requires an enormous expenditure of energy and use of resources that proponents of nuclear power ignore. Furthermore, the energy generated by nuclear power plants is by far the most expensive energy (Kempfert 2021), which is only competitive at all due to high state subsidies.

In the face of an overcrowded earth, it is also crucial to slow down population growth through education, free distribution of contraceptives - and if this does not help decisively - through restrictions on the number of births, in order to avoid one of the various causes of the increasing migration movements and the associated displacement struggles, and at the same time to conserve the earth's resources. In this regard, one should look at China's attempts to lower the birth rate there. Thus, it is also necessary to learn from China's mistakes, which consisted in a too drastic reduction within the framework of the one-child policy and in the associated, targeted abortions, especially of girls. The limits to the groth of the world-population must be respected by all countries in order to keep the door into the future of mankind on the planet earth open. 

Also, at least part of the trillions of dollars freed up by the national renunciation of armaments could be invested in the healing of the biosphere or the perspective counteraction against the threatening climate catastrophe, which has not only ecological but also - as has already been mentioned - peacemaking functions in the medium to long term. 

 
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Ecological transport policy and recovery of the urban habitat 

The abolition of the gasoline engine must be enforced with the creation of ecologically compatible mobility solutions on a global scale via positively reinforcing taxation incentives. In this context, e-mobility is critical because of its environmental impact if it does not use solar-generated electricity and is based solely on battery-driven technology, which causes the destruction of large areas of land in the Global South and a lowering of the water table there, for example, in the course of lithium mining. The solution is more likely to be found in e-mobility with other storage technologies, such as primarily hydrogen-based technology combined with lithium-free batteries - even though too much energy is currently required to produce hydrogen. A further prerequisite for this is that the energy required to produce the hydrogen is obtained regeneratively. [18] 

Of course, the development of a well-timed and reliable local transport system as well as a safe and extended network of bicycle paths must be  preferredin order to replace individual mobility solutions using combustion engines. In regard of individual mobility 'green hydrogen' represents an ecologically justifiable option; but the key solution in this context lays in the expansion of public transportsystems and of the replacement of engine-driven vehicles by bikes. 

The ecological added value of a change in mobility behavior can at the same time be used to increase safety and improve the quality of life in the public urban space. Streets would be freed from through traffic and become public living space again. Urban squares would transform their use as parking lots in favor of local markets, re-naturalization and communicative meeting places. A change in mobility behavior would also lead to the recovery of clean air, which, along with the availability of clean water, is a key fundamental right. The impairment of breathing caused by the unbearable smog in the global cities of all world regions and the accompanying respiratory diseases and massive mortality rates point to the necessity of freeing the air from exhaust gases such as carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. 

This improvement in the quality of life could be supported by various  municipal measures: 

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- Expansion of local and long-distance public transport; 

- Collective parking on the outskirts of the city with simultaneous 
  connection to trains and buses with short time intervals; 

- Premiums for the elimination of internal combustion engines in favor of 
  ecological mobility solutions; 

- Increase in taxes for cars powered by gasoline or diesel; 

- Introduction of a renter's ticket with a simultaneous increase in the price 
   of inner-city parking; 

- Expansion of the network of safe and comfortable bicycle paths; 

- Reduction of the urban speed limit; 

- Targeted deconstruction and renaturation of urban streets and squares; 

- Introduction of a city toll for companies with many motor vehicles; 

- Promotion of photovoltaic systems on roofs to refuel e-cars and e-bikes 

  via energy generation on the roofs. 

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Of course, an ecologically oriented transport policy also includes the abandonment of domestic flights in favor of the use of long-distance public transport. This also includes the technical conversion of aircraft to electric or hydrogen-powered engines whose primary energy source is solar-generated electricity. These conversion processes in air traffic must be promoted and accelerated by an effective kerosene tax, minimum quotas for solar-generated propulsion energy and stricter emissions trading, which in turn must benefit the technological transformation process. 

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Renaturation and reforestation as part of an ecological program 

A high taxation of the global transport of goods leads to a strengthening of regional production. This taxation must be increased even further if the products, such as soy or beef, result from the clearing of rainforests. As early as possible, however, the destruction of rainforest stands must be banned worldwide under the auspices of the United Nations. At the same time, the renaturation and reforestation of forests must begin. Of course, it is not enough to offset or reduce CO2 emissions through reforestation. Nevertheless, the worldwide planting of trees can be an important factor of various factors in combating the climate crisis. [19] The increase of forest fires as an accompanying circumstance of the climate catastrophe raises the relevance of renaturation and reforestation. 

A Brazilian forester shows that the rainforest does not necessarily have to become the victim of land speculators, gold diggers, cattle ranchers and soy farmers. Such initiatives must be strengthened - even against the resistance of the ruling politicians and the dominant corporations: 
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"Brazilian forester Rafael Fernandes is a contented man these days. He can help the threatened rainforest grow a bit bigger again. An hour and a half's drive northwest of the megacity of São Paulo, he runs a forest experiment center jointly operated by the Dutch beer company Heineken and its NGO called SOS Mata Atlântica. They've been here since 2007 on a former coffee plantation, restoring a run-down patch of forest all around and planting new trees. 'Most recently, we counted 206 additional bird species,' Fernandes says proudly, 'and recently a puma was sighted.' Fernandes is by no means alone in the region around São Paulo: The rainforest there, the so-called Atlantic Forest with its at least 8,000 indigenous animal and plant species, is returning after decades of overexploitation by coffee and sugar cane farmers. Data from Brazil's Mapbiomas research institute shows that new rainforest the size of Belgium has been created in the southwest of the country within 16 years."
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Promotion of subsistence farming 

A change in the mindset of consumers is also required:  they need to prefer local products and to reject products transported intercontinental by sea or air in their purchasing decisions. Home cultivation of agricultural products also finds its subsistence revival in this ecological framework. This seems relatively easy in rural areas, where sufficient land and areas make this possible. But in urban areas, too, there are already numerous approaches in the sense of the economy of the common good of community gardens and cultivated areas, as well as attempts to cultivate vegetable gardens on the flat roofs of houses on a larger scale. Urban gardening', for example in New York, is already taking place there on a larger scale: 

"The economic potential for carrots, lettuce or radishes from the roof appears great - some even speak of a new green revolution. According to Fraunhofer researchers, Germany's cities offer 360 million square meters of roof space that could be used to grow fruit and vegetables. (…) 

In Ghana's capital Accra, urban farmers supply up to half the food. On the roof of a former warehouse in New York's Brooklyn neighborhood, lettuce, tomatoes, pepper and herbs thrive on 6,000 square meters within sight of Manhattan's skyscrapers - all in organic quality, as the operator of the Navy Yard Farm emphasizes in her self-promotion." [20] 

Here, the environmental emissions due to transport costs are eliminated and offer the possibilities of organic farming. If the roof static can not tolerate the heavy soil, hydroponics can also be created. 

However, not only the agricultural cultivation of flat roofs but also the communal cultivation and use of fallow land based on principles of agricultural sustainability is increasingly taking place in cities. This involves sowing, cultivating and harvesting communities that cover a large proportion of their nutritional needs on a plant basis and dispense with the use of toxic pesticides and polluting forms of soil fertilization. [21] 

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Here, individual and collective ways of sensible ecological behavior on the local level become apparent. Nevertheless, the structural level with regard to the global world trade situation must not be neglected. Therefore, ways must also be sought to revise international free trade and investment protection agreements due to the existing ecological threat situation. If such treaties, such as CETA or the treaty of the EU with the MERCOSUR states, lead to increased rainforest deforestation, then the United Nations must create legal framework conditions that allow for a revision of such treaties that threaten the world climate. 

The implementation of a solar economy and solar energy supply as well as a sensible balance of centralized and decentralized energy supply structures preserve jobs and has an ecologically sensible effect if the underlying technology is also produced in an environmentally compatible manner and is also recycled. 

In particular, attention must be paid to a significant increase in efficiency in the area of energy production with the same energy-saving measures. [22] Combined heat and power generation is a highly effective instrument of energy-efficiency, it can be applied in decenralized as well as in centralized systems. 

Furthermore, a strict circular economy must be implemented globally, which provides for waste avoidance, waste separation and waste recycling in order to stop the littering of the earth and to reduce the extraction of raw materials.

Building blocks of ecological agriculture 

The fertilization of fields with manure from factory farming must be regulated in an environmentally compatible manner. Furthermore, weed and pest control with pesticides that are harmful to health must be banned and replaced by nature-friendly measures of biological-ecological agriculture. Record-keeping obligations and precise accounting of the amount of fertilizer applied should be linked to stricter regulations in order to ensure the protection of soil and water. 

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In this sense, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sees positive influences of agriculture and forestry oriented to the principle of sustainability on future climate development: 

"Sustainable land management, including sustainable forest management, can prevent and reduce land degradation, maintain land productivity, and sometimes reverse the adverse impacts of climate change on land degradation (very high confidence). It can also contribute to mitigation and adaptation (high confidence). Reducing and reversing land degradation, at scales from individual farms to entire watersheds, can provide cost effective, immediate, and long-term benefits to communities and support several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with co-benefits for adaptation (very high confidence) and mitigation (high confidence). Even with implementation of sustainable land management, limits to adaptation can be exceeded in some situations (medium confidence)." [23]